He wiped his eyes clear and crawled back to the edge of the glass, stopping when he reached the key ring. He picked it up and pulled himself to his feet—a little dizzy, but not too bad—took a couple of deep breaths, and jumped over the glass.
This caught somebody’s attention.
“Hey. Boy.”
Corry looked around, puzzled. His eyes were adjusted to the poor lighting, but despite that he couldn’t see anybody around.
“Over here.”
Mr. Conway was still dead behind him, and ahead of him there were two more apparently dead bodies along the opposite wall.
“Where are you?” Corry asked, his heart rate picking up and causing his hand to throb harder.
One of the bodies in front of him waved. “Under Elton,” he said.
Corry walked closer, squinting. “What are you doing under there?” he asked. It wasn’t two dead bodies. It was one, with a living one underneath it.
“Keep your voice down!” he barked. “Lie on the floor, against the wall. Go on.”
Picking a spot on the opposite wall, he did as he was told. “How’s this?”
“Not bad. But you should really find a body to hide under if you can. I think there’s one over there.” He pointed to Mr. Conway.
Distantly, someone was laughing. It was an unsettling sound, more like the Joker than the Carol Burnett studio audience. “Why are we doing this?” Corry asked. He had fervently hoped that the person he was talking to was sane. He sounded like it at first, but the fact that he was wearing a dead person didn’t help his cause.
“He won’t hurt us if he thinks we’re dead.”
“Oh. Guess that makes sense.” Corpse Boy. “Who won’t hurt us?”
“Look out. Here comes Marty again.” Marty, the screaming naked man ran past a few seconds later. This time Corry took note of the fact that his feet were bleeding; probably cut them on some of the same glass that got his hand.
“What happened to his clothes?” Corry asked.
“He hates clothing and he likes young boys, not necessarily in that order,” said his new friend. “Don’t let him see you either.”
“Either?”
“Marty won’t kill you, but he might hurt you. The other one, he’ll probably just kill you.”
“What other one is that?”
“The one who did all this.”
“Well, who is it?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I haven’t seen him.”
“I can’t tell,” Corry said. “Are you a patient?”
“So they tell me,” he said. “Does that surprise you? Should I perhaps do something wildly insane so that you might be satisfied?”
“Sorry,” Corry said, as he’d evidently offended the man. “Just saying, because you seem okay.”
“Thank you. To be honest, I’m actually enjoying this. It’s much easier being insane in a world equally so. Don’t you think?”
“I wouldn’t know,” Corry said. He sniffled a couple of times; his nose was still running from the earlier bawl-fest. I don’t have time for this, he concluded. “Listen, I’m thinking I’m gonna keep moving. D’you know where the public room is from here?”
“You’ll be much better off if you just lie where you are until it’s over.”
“I want to find my mom and get home, mister,” he said, climbing back to his feet. “That’s why I’m here.”
“Get down!” the man urged.
“But I can’t find her if I just lie on the floor.”
“She’s probably dead already.”
“Shut up!” Corry said, louder than he wanted.
“Don’t—”
“No! This is stupid,” Corry said. “You know what? I’m starting to think this is all over and nobody knows it yet.”
“Keep your damn voice down!”
“Seriously, somebody’s s’posed to have a gun, right? So where are they?”
“They’re invisible.”
“Oh, don’t you start with that!” he snapped.
Corry had started off the day with a certain respect for the difficulties of the insane, but that understanding had been worn away to nothing over the past hour or two—or however long it had been. Now they believed in the boogeyman, which was fine for them, but he didn’t have to if he didn’t want to. And the boogeyman couldn’t hurt you if you didn’t believe in him.
“Quiet! Quiet! Quiet!” the man screamed. Someone, somewhere on the floor, echoed his words. A loud bang—the sound of glass shattering—soon followed.
“What was that?”
“HIM!” the man said.
“Tell me where the public room is,” Corry said.
“He’s coming!” the cowering man cried. And for a second, Corry started to think maybe there really was somebody coming. No, he thought. Not real.
“Quickly, mister,” he said. “The public room. Tell me or I’ll shout some more.”
“Down the hall and around the corner. It’s the second door on your left. Hurry, before he gets you.”
“Thanks,” Corry said.
“Goodbye,” he said. “It was nice to have known you.”
* * *
Corry had to go past another possibly dead person and step aside for Marty the screaming naked guy’s third circuit, but aside from that, the trip to the public room door was uneventful. It seemed—again, aside from Marty—that all of the Really Crazy people on the floor were acting more like the guy who had given him the directions. They were hiding somewhere, waiting for it all to end.
The way Corry figured it, if a twelve-year-old kid could make it from the emergency exit to the public room, then all the adults inside could easily make it from there to the exit. So he was feeling pretty good about himself, seeing as how he’d found a way to be heroic without doing much more than wandering past crazy people. Maybe that’s all there was to being a hero—not being afraid to keep going.
Then he opened the door.
Mr. Nilsson was standing in the middle of the room on top of one of the tables, and at first, Corry was so happy to see a familiar face that he didn’t even notice the gun in his hand.
He was spinning around in a slow circle with the gun pointed more or less all over the place, aiming at either nothing or everything, depending on one’s perspective. His shirt was torn and stained with blood, his feet were bare, and his pants had drifted slightly south, revealing the top of his underwear. His expression was weirdly calm, like the face on someone reading an especially exciting book.
“Oh no,” Corry said.
“Master Corry,” he said, although he never, it seemed, actually looked at Corry. “Thank God you’re here. I’m going to need your help.”
Corry knew all too well that there was something slightly unhinged about Harvey Nilsson, but it never would have occurred to him that he was the one behind everything going on that day. It never occurred to him that it could be anybody he knew, actually, because everyone he knew was so nice.
Of course it was worse than that. Mr. Nilsson was the one person in the entire world he’d ever seen move in a way he could not foresee in the Secret Future. And he was waving a gun around.
Get out, get out, get out, he thought. His body turned and tried to do just that.
“Corry?” It was Violet’s voice, and hearing it made him hesitate. “Oh, God, Corry get out of here!”
He heard the door close behind him, and the lock engage. Oops. “Door’s locked,” he announced. He turned back around. Mr. Nilsson was still spinning slowly atop the table. Corry kept his eyes trained on him while speaking, as this seemed to be a wise thing to do. “I have a key, but . . . Mom, where are you?”
“Over here,” she said. She was, as he’d thought, behind the chairs. There was a whole bunch of people back there with her, mostly along the floor beneath the windows.
“She’s safe, Corry,” said Mr. Nilsson. “Don’t worry; I’ll protect her.”
“Um, okay,” Corry said. He backed up until his butt was again
st the door, and then edged along the wall. Feeling the sturdy concrete behind him was a comfort at a time when his knees didn’t want to hold him up. “Safe from who?”
“It’s one of them,” Mr. Nilsson said. “It came here for me.”
“Harvey, let the boy come over here,” said somebody from behind the chairs.
“Dr. Ames, I told you before to be quiet,” said Mr. Nilsson. “I meant it.”
Corry didn’t know what to do but decided leaving was probably out of the question, as it would take him a long time to get the door open, and he didn’t think Mr. Nilsson would want him to try. He could join Violet behind the chairs, but he was pretty sure once he got back there he wouldn’t want to get out again, and being trapped like she was didn’t strike him as all that exciting or necessarily all that safe. So he decided to pretend there was no gun and just talk.
“What do you want me to help you with?” he asked Mr. Nilsson, trying to sound like he wasn’t about to wet himself.
“I need you to help me spot it. Only you and I can see him. I explained this to you.”
“Y-yeah, okay. Is this why you shot all those people?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I didn’t shoot anybody. It was him. He can manipulate things, don’t you see? Make it look like somebody else. Do you think I alone could have done all of this? An old man and a handgun?”
He actually had a point. Carl, Ned, Mr. Conway, and all the others in the hallways . . . only some of them had been shot. “Where do you want me to look?”
At least it’s something to do, he thought. And so far Mr. Nilsson hadn’t tried to shoot him, which was pretty good news. Maybe it was okay.
“No! Corry, come here right now!” Violet demanded.
“It’s okay. I’m just gonna help Mr. Nilsson look for . . . what am I looking for?”
“You will know when you see.”
“Right. Okay.”
“Check under the tables.”
And so Corry became Vision Boy, peering under tables and behind chairs, looking for a monster that only Mr. Nilsson could see. He could hear his mother crying in terror from behind the chairs. He sort of understood why she was so afraid and all, but still, it was embarrassing to have her making such a scene.
“I’m not having any luck,” Corry said, after a few minutes. His search had taken him pretty close to Mr. Nilsson, but he wasn’t nearly strong enough to take the gun away, so he didn’t try. “Are you sure he’s here?”
“Positive. I shot at him.”
“Oh,” Corry said. “Recently?”
“I don’t know. The timeline is . . . I’m having trouble focusing, Corry. You understand how that can be sometimes.”
“Yeah.” He was having just that problem, because Mr. Nilsson kept moving in unanticipated ways. It made the whole Secret Future collapse when he looked in his direction, although sometimes it just blurred. It was an uneasy sensation, like trying to get your legs back under you right after getting off a roller coaster, except it wouldn’t go away.
“Where was he then?” Corry asked. “When you last saw him. Where in the room?”
Mr. Nilsson lowered his gaze for just a second, long enough for Corry to note that this was an upsetting question for some reason.
“Near the chairs,” he said.
Corry looked over at the chairs that were protecting everybody. One of the seat backs had a bullet hole in it. Behind the chair, on the ground, he saw blood. At least now he understood why Violet was so worried. There was a big difference between a guy waving a gun around and a guy waving a gun around and also shooting it at invisible monsters. He was starting to appreciate how unstable this situation really was. Can’t go back now.
Staring at the bullet hole, he said matter-of-factly, “You missed him and hit somebody else instead.”
“He moved!” Mr. Nilsson insisted.
“Who did? The invisible monster?”
“It’s not . . . I know this sounds insane, Corry, but when you see—”
“Who did you shoot?” Corry said, his voice raised to a low yell.
“Now you’re here, and you can help me fix it!”
“Who did you shoot, Mr. Nilsson? Who was behind the chair?”
“It’s Osgood Pierce, Corry,” his mother said quietly. Corry’s heart, which had been drifting up his throat for the past few minutes, dropped right out the bottom of his stomach.
“Is he dead?” Corry shouted.
“No,” said the doctor guy, Ames. “But he needs medical attention soon or he will be.”
“How could you do that?” Corry asked Mr. Nilsson. “He didn’t ever do anything to you. He’s my friend!”
“We can fix this!”
“How? Are you going to go back in time and un-shoot him?” Corry didn’t even recognize the sound of his own voice at this point. The entire afternoon of horrors had boiled down to a simple equation. Mr. Pierce was dying, Mr. Nilsson was going to let him, and Corry was going to have to stop him.
Mr. Nilsson looked taken aback by the burst of anger. “Help me, and then we’ll get him to a hospital. They won’t see until I’ve killed—”
“Fuck you, you crazy old man! There’s nothing here!” It was the first time he’d ever uttered a curse word around an adult, and he didn’t even think about it.
“That’s because he’s hiding!” Mr. Nilsson insisted.
“Was he hiding behind Ned when you took his gun and shot him in the back?”
“I didn’t do that! I told you—”
“Or how about Carl? Or Mr. Conway?”
“You have to—”
“You’re a liar, Mr. Nilsson!”
“Don’t move.”
“You’re crazy, and now my friend is dying, and—”
“I said don’t move, Corry!” Mr. Nilsson barked.
Only then did Corry realize, first, that he was about ten feet away from the barrel of the gun, and second, that Mr. Nilsson was pointing it right at his head.
“Okay . . .” Corry said quietly. Headless Teen. Brain-Dead Boy. The Faceless Wonder.
Mr. Nilsson took two calming breaths and steadied the gun. Corry looked right down the barrel and into the darkest place he’d ever seen. “Corry,” Mr. Nilsson whispered. “Listen to me. He’s right behind you.”
“Corry!” Violet called out.
“Harvey, don’t . . .!” Dr. Ames said. There was a gaggle of half-choked off voices coming out from behind the chairs, all trying at once to talk Mr. Nilsson into not shooting, which Corry very much appreciated.
“Who’s . . .” His voice caught on the rest of the words. He tried again. “Who’s right behind me, Mr. Nilsson?”
“He’s standing five feet behind you. He has the end of a mop in his hand. He’s been sneaking up on people all afternoon, hitting them. It’s . . . you were right. He’s a monster.”
“Guys . . . is there anybody standing behind me?”
“No, honey, there’s nobody there!” Violet cried.
“See, Mr. Nilsson? Nobody there.”
“They can’t see him.”
“Well, okay . . .” He had his hands out in front of him, palms up, shaking. Calm down. “How about this? How about I turn around, and if I don’t see anybody either, you stop with the shooting and . . . and give me the gun or . . . give it to someone else if you want to.”
“Trust me,” Mr. Nilsson said. “I know what to do.”
In the Secret Future, Corry saw Mr. Nilsson firing the gun. He saw himself move to get out of the way of the bullet, but then the future blurred when Mr. Nilsson adjusted to him moving and blinked out for a millisecond. Concentrating very hard, he saw himself trying out other possible futures, and wherever he dodged, Mr. Nilsson corrected. He was running out of time.
At the last possible moment, Corry did the one thing the future did not show him doing; he stood completely and utterly still. It was like Mr. Nilsson had described it when doing his secret talking—decide to do something and then, at the last moment, don’t.
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The gun fired, which was a ridiculously loud sound, but one for which—thanks to Charlie Bluff—Corry was somewhat prepared. Still, he winced at the sound and slammed his eyes shut without meaning to. When he opened them again, he discovered that he was still alive and didn’t have any holes in him.
Mr. Nilsson was smiling at him. “I got ‘im. Finally. I got him.” He fell to his knees on the table. “I’m so proud of you, young Corrigan.”
In the Secret Future, Mr. Nilsson put the gun up to his temple and fired. But the gun was empty. Seeing this, and knowing Corry could see it as well, he just smiled, let the gun slide from his hands, and collapsed onto the table.
Corry walked over and picked up the gun.
“Corry, honey, no!” Violet shouted, still sounding desperately afraid, perhaps of what her son would do with a loaded gun in his hands. Hearing commotion behind him, Corry turned around and saw everyone swarming out from behind the chairs, more or less all at once.
“What are you doing?” Corry shouted at them. “Get an ambulance for Mr. Pierce!”
“We will,” one of the lab coat guys said. “Just hand over the gun, son.”
“Oh, right. It’s not loaded. See?” He pointed it at the ceiling and pulled the trigger. The clicking noise confirmed for all of them that the gun was out of bullets.
For some reason—Corry couldn’t imagine why—this caused his mom to faint.
* * *
An hour later, after all the adults in the room finished freaking out and somebody had contacted both an ambulance and every cop in the entire city of Belmont, Corry was sitting on a table in the public room next to Violet, who had been unable to find a way to stop holding onto him.
“I’m all right, Violet, Jesus,” he said, blushing.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I just thought—”
“I know what you thought. I’m sorry if I scared you, but . . .” I was trying to rescue you, he wanted to say. And he did, which was why he really wished she’d quit babying him.
“You should have gone for help as soon as you saw something was wrong,” she said, and now suddenly she was angry with him, which he completely did not get.
“I didn’t think they’d believe me.”
“You should have tried!”
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