Nightmare City

by Klavan, Andrew

  For a moment after he spoke, there was silence. Then—something new. A snap and crackle. A flicker of light. Not lightning—not down here. Instead, it was the wavering purple glow of a fluorescent bulb trying to come on but not quite making it. It was coming through a doorway just ahead to his right, lighting the rectangle of the entrance. Tom knew what room it was. The Sentinel’s office. The light flickered again. He moved toward it.

  The whispers around him seemed to dim. The movements grew more distant. He reached the open doorway where the light was flickering and stepped through. He reached for the wall. Found the light switch. Pushed it. To his enormous relief, the fluorescents in the ceiling flickered on and stayed on.

  The Sentinel’s office was empty.

  Tom let out a sigh. It was comforting to be back in the familiar place, the cramped little cubicle of a room with the desks jammed into it and papers littering the desktops and the walls. He had spent a lot of happy hours here, sitting with Lisa, working with Lisa, talking over stories with her and just, really, gossiping about stuff. They were some of the best times he’d ever had.

  He wove quickly between the desks. Went to the front of his own desk. He leaned the Warrior bat against it. Started pawing through the papers scattered around the base of his computer, searching for a page with the address on it. There were Post-its, notebooks, notices, printouts of articles he’d been writing. Paper clips. Pens. A dead-tree phone book. A syllabus, ditto. But no address. Where was it? Tom began to feel hollow inside. Was it possible he had figured this all wrong? Was it possible he had left his house and braved the fog and the malevolents for nothing? He pawed through the papers more quickly, more frantically. No address.

  He stopped. He straightened. He tried to think. The haunted school was silent all around him.

  Then, suddenly, that silence was shattered. The phone rang—not the cell in his pocket, but the phone on the desk. The noise was so loud and unexpected he nearly jumped out of his own skin.

  He picked up the handset. Spoke uncertainly, “Hello?”

  A voice came over the line—also uncertain: “Is this . . . is this the Sentinel?”

  It was her! It was the woman in the white blouse. The same voice that had tried to speak to him before through the alien static. There was no static now. The voice was clear as a bell.

  “Uh . . . yeah. Yeah, this is the Sentinel,” said Tom.

  “I want to speak with Tom Harding.”

  “This is Tom,” he said.

  “I need to talk to you. It’s very important,” said the woman. Her voice was low, as if she was afraid of being overheard.

  “All right,” said Tom, “I’m listening. Go ahead.”

  As he spoke the words, Tom had a powerful sense of déjà vu, a powerful sense that he had had this conversation before, lived through this moment before. He felt as if everything that was going to be said now had already been said. More than that. He had the strangest feeling that the script of the conversation had already been written, and that he could not speak any other words but the words that he would speak.

  She’s about to tell me that she can’t talk over the phone, he thought. That it’s too dangerous.

  “Not now,” said the woman. “I can’t talk over the phone. It’s too dangerous. You have to come to my place. Tomorrow. In person. Alone. I have information you’re going to want to hear.”

  “What kind of information?” said Tom—the words just came out of him. He knew he couldn’t say anything else. The script was already written.

  “Never mind that now. Just come to my apartment tomorrow at four. My name is Karen Lee. I live at 47 Pinewood Lane. The Pinewood Apartments, apartment 6B. Come alone, and don’t tell anyone. Don’t let anyone see you.”

  Without thinking, Tom picked up a pen and scribbled the address down on a Post-it note: Karen Lee. 47 Pinewood Lane, Apt. 6B.

  “Miss Lee, can you just give me some sort of idea what we’ll be talking—” he heard himself begin to say.

  But then—as he knew it would—a dial tone interrupted him. The woman had hung up.

  Slowly, Tom lowered the handset back into its cradle. How weird was that? Knowing what she was going to say before she said it. Being unable to answer her in any way but the way he had.

  Because it was a memory, Tom realized. That’s why. Because the conversation already happened in the past and I was just remembering.

  He stared at the Post-it note, at the name and address scribbled there. Then he raised his eyes to the door, and to the darkened hallway beyond.

  They’re all memories! he realized. Those ghosts out in the hall. Those whispering voices. They’re all memories.

  That’s why the school was haunted. It was his memory. It was haunted by things that had happened but that he had forgotten since being shot, since lapsing into a coma. He had come here to find a source of information and he had. The source of information was his own mind.

  Well then, he had reached his destination, hadn’t he? That was the good news. He had found his way into his memory. Now all he had to do was find the trail of memories that would lead him to the truth—the truth about who had shot him, and the reason he couldn’t wake up.

  Just as he thought that, the lights in the ceiling started to flicker. The Sentinel’s office went in and out of shadow.

  Tom quickly stuffed the Post-it note into his pocket. He picked up the Warrior bat.

  The light snapped off. The room was plunged into darkness.

  “Tommy.”

  A whisper from the doorway. He looked. Very faintly, he could make out Lisa’s figure.

  She beckoned to him.

  She whispered: “This way.”

  21.

  By the time he reached the office doorway, Lisa had melted away again into the shadows. He was hardly even surprised this time. But he wondered: why had she been there at all? He had gotten the address he’d come for. Wasn’t that what she was trying to lead him to? What else was there?

  Tom stepped hesitantly into the hall. Immediately his eye was drawn by a light to his right—a thin line of light running across the floor at the corridor’s end. He knew it was coming from underneath the gym’s big double doors. Someone was in the gym.

  And Lisa—her silhouette—was standing in the nearby shadows.

  “This way, Tommy.”

  There was more she wanted him to see. More he had to remember.

  Tom began moving toward the line of light. As he did, he became aware that a new tension had come into his body, a new acid sourness was roiling his stomach. He did not want to do this. He did not want to go to the gym. There was something in there. A memory. A memory he did not want to recover.

  That was the trouble with searching for the truth. It wasn’t always pleasant. It wasn’t always something you wanted to find.

  Tom moved reluctantly toward the light beneath the gym doors. He watched Lisa’s silhouette meld with the shadows and vanish as he approached. All around him, he heard faint whispers, felt movements as if people were passing by him. Phantoms of things that had happened, things half recalled. He ignored them. They were just distractions now. He kept moving toward the gym.

  As he neared the door, he heard muffled voices on the other side. A guy and a girl, talking. He couldn’t make out the words. He heard a clank and a bang. He recognized that sound. Someone was lifting weights. Dropping the weights on the mat.

  I came here after school to get my keys, he thought.

  He was remembering now. The three guys from the football team had surrounded him in the locker room. Gordon had come to his rescue. In the excitement, Tom had forgotten his keychain, left it in his locker when he went back to his final class. He hadn’t noticed the keys were gone until later, after school, after he’d gotten ready to leave the Sentinel and head home. Then he went to the gym to recover his keys. He had thought the school was empty by now. But it wasn’t.

  He reached the gym door. The voices continued within. He put his hand out in the da
rkness until his fingers brushed the metal bar that released the latch. He pushed the bar gently, opened the door just a crack, just enough for him to see through.

  He knew what he would see a moment before he saw it. All the same, the sight—the memory—struck him like a punch.

  In the bright light beyond the door, he saw Marie and Gordon. They were at the far end of the gym. Gordon was standing near the wall racks where the free weights hung. He was dressed in shorts and a sleeveless undershirt. He was curling a bar with heavy weights on it. Tom could only guess how much: A hundred pounds? More? Gordon’s massive biceps bulged and strained as he brought the bar up from his thighs to his chest.

  Marie was sitting in the small bleachers there, sitting on the second tier, watching Gordon lift. Her blond hair was tied back, and she was beautiful in a white blouse and jeans, beautiful as always. She sat leaning back, with her elbows propped on the tier behind her. She never took her eyes off the weight-lifting quarterback.

  And even from across the room, the look in Marie’s eyes was unmistakable. It was a look of powerful admiration, powerful attraction. And something else, something more. It was a look of . . . What was the right word? Ownership. Yes. She was looking at Gordon as if he belonged to her, and as if she belonged to him, too.

  Tom had come into the gym when he thought it would be empty, and he was seeing now what he had seen then.

  Finishing his set of curls, Gordon gave a grunt and dropped the bar to the floor. The weights bounced against the mat, rattling loudly. Marie and Gordon did not notice him there in the doorway.

  Marie shook her head in open admiration. “You are a mighty man, Gordon Thomas,” she said. She fluttered her eyelashes comically. “You make my girlish heart go pitterpat.”

  Gordon couldn’t help but smile a little at the flattery, but it was a grim smile and he turned away from her.

  Marie rolled her eyes. “Oh, come on, sweetheart, don’t be like that, all right?”

  “I just don’t like it,” he said.

  Marie leaned forward, her elbows on her knees. “Oh, baby, I know, but it’s just for a little while.”

  Gordon put his hands on his hips. He looked down at his sneakers, shaking his head. “Three of the guys almost shredded him today,” he said. “He doesn’t deserve that. And he doesn’t deserve what you’re doing to him either.”

  “Right!” Marie lifted her eyes heavenward again. “You’re such an innocent, Gordon, you know that? You think Tom’s your friend. You think he wrote that story because he’s some kind of heroic reporter dedicated to telling the truth no matter what. Well, he’s not your friend, sweetheart. He’s never been your friend. He’s been jealous of you since we were in elementary school. And he’s had a creepy crush on me since forever, too. That’s why he wrote that stupid story. To get back at you. And to get to me. Well, now he has me. Or he thinks he does, anyway.”

  Still standing with his hands on his hips, Gordon looked at her. “It’s mean,” he said. “It’s mean and it’s dishonest and . . . I don’t like it.”

  “Oh, baby,” said Marie with feeling. “I know. I know, I know, I know. It’s because you’re so good, you’re so sweet. But I have to do it. Trust me, okay? If I can just make him feel he has a chance with me, I know I can keep him from . . . you know. From writing anything else. I know he’ll stop. For me. And he’s got to stop. He’s got to. Otherwise, he could ruin everything. Oh, come on, baby,” she said as Gordon turned his back on her. She climbed down off the rafters now. She went to him. She stood behind him. Put a hand gently on his back, between his shoulder blades. “Come on,” she said, her voice soft and coaxing. “It’s just for a little while. I promise.”

  Gordon could not resist her—any more than Tom had been able to resist her. Gordon turned. He wrapped his arms around her. She clung to him, pressing her face against his chest. They held each other fast.

  Tom stepped back and let the door close. The light beneath it went out. The memory was over.

  He stood in the darkness without moving. He stared at the door in front of his nose. He stared at nothing. All of Marie’s sweet smiles. All her admiring words. That kiss outside her house. All lies. All make-believe.

  He’s had a creepy crush on me since forever.

  No wonder he hadn’t wanted to remember this. No wonder he’d blanked it out. He could not believe how much it hurt. Next to Burt’s death, it hurt more than anything he had ever felt in his life. He understood now why people said they were brokenhearted. It felt that way. He felt as if Marie had tossed his heart to the ground and broken it into a million pieces.

  “But why?” he whispered into the dark. Why had she done it? Even in his sorrow, the curiosity that always pulsed at the core of him would not leave him alone.

  I know I can keep him from writing anything else. I know he’ll stop. For me.

  What had she wanted to keep him from writing? The story about the team was already published. Why had she pretended to like him? Why had she hurt him so badly?

  “Why?” he whispered again.

  In answer, there came a low, casual laugh from behind him.

  Tom spun around, clutching the Warrior bat in his two hands.

  There in the darkness stood the Lying Man.

  22.

  The anger went off in Tom like an explosion, a red rage that blasted out of his core and spread all through him. He had just seen Marie—remembered Marie—revealing her disdain for him, dashing his heart to the ground. And now here was the laughing, conniving, insinuating, threatening, and terrifying Lying Man. And Tom had had enough.

  He cocked the bat over his shoulder. He wanted to pound the Lying Man’s laughter back into his throat.

  But where was he? A moment ago his shadowy presence had been standing right in front of him. That lean, dark face with its smart, bright eyes—that face that somehow sent a chill up his spine—had been smiling at him from no more than a few feet away. And now . . .

  Now the laughter came again from a distance. And Tom saw the Lying Man—the shadow of the Lying Man—halfway down the hall.

  Furious, he cocked the bat even farther over his shoulder and stepped forward.

  “What do you want?” he shouted. “Come on, you coward! What do you want? Stop trying to mess with my mind! Stop playing head games with me! Just come on and say it! What do you want?”

  Tom advanced another step, but the Lying Man didn’t back away. He didn’t seem afraid at all. He stood in a relaxed posture, his eyes glinting in the darkness. Just as before, something about him, something about his half-seen features, sent an icy shiver up Tom’s spine. Angry as he was, he felt it. For all the Lying Man’s easy laughter, for all the soothing calm of his voice, there was just something terrifying about this guy.

  The Lying Man’s laughter trailed off into a low chuckle. “I told you, Tom,” he said in a tone full of friendship and sympathy. “I only want for you what you want for yourself. I mean, you wanted the truth, right? Well, now you have it. Now you see. The truth is that Marie doesn’t really like you very much at all. All that love you felt for her? All that tenderness and yearning all these years. Marie just thought it was—what was her word?—creepy. When she pretended to like and admire you, she was playing with you, my friend. She was playing with you so she could control you, like a puppet on a string—convince you to do whatever she wanted.”

  Tom came another step closer, brandishing the bat, breathing hard. But he could feel the anger—and the strength—draining out of him. The Lying Man wasn’t lying now, was he? He wasn’t lying about Marie. That was the truth about her, all right. And just hearing it spoken out loud filled Tom with sorrow—a heartbroken grief that sapped his energy.

  The Lying Man seemed to sense this. Rather than retreating from him in fear, he took a casual step toward him. Tom could now see his smile, his teeth gleaming gray in the shadows. For some reason he couldn’t name, the sight made his gorge rise into his throat, made him feel he might be sick.

 
“I know it’s painful for you, Tom,” said the Lying Man sympathetically. “But better to find out now, right? Better to find out before you make a fool of yourself. Or, that is, before you make a bigger fool of yourself than you already have. You see? I’ve helped you, Tom. I’ve helped you find the truth you were looking for. And here you threaten me with that bat of yours. Where’s the sense in that? Why should you be angry at me?”

  Tom had no answer. The tide of his sorrow rose within him and the tide of his strength and anger continued to recede. He stopped advancing on the Lying Man. The bat drooped and settled onto his shoulder.

  The Lying Man seized the moment and took another easy step toward him. The lean face and its arch features became clearer in the dark—and though Tom felt even more nauseated, somehow he couldn’t look away.

  “You know what this reminds me of?” the Lying Man said. “Do you remember, Tom, when you wrote that story about the football team? Do you remember how everyone got angry at you? And why? All you’d done was tell the truth. You told the truth and they didn’t want to hear it, so instead of facing it squarely, they got angry at you. They got angry at the messenger because they didn’t want to hear the message. Isn’t that exactly what you’re doing to me now? I’ve shown you a truth you didn’t want to know, and now instead of confronting it bravely like a man, you’re yelling at me and threatening me! It’s a kind of cowardice really, isn’t it?” He laughed again, clearly unafraid.

  Tom let the bat drop off his shoulders. He let the head of it sink to the floor. What was he going to do? Brain the guy with it? For what? Talking? Telling the truth about Marie? No. The Lying Man was right. That was just cowardice. There was no point taking his anger out on him. That wouldn’t change a thing.

  He let a long stream of breath come sighing out of him. He just felt tired now. Exhausted, in fact. Totally played out.

  Marie, he thought miserably.