Nightmare City (16 page)

The wind blew harder, with a hollow roar like the sea’s. It carried the first drops of rain in it. Tom felt them on his neck and cheeks. He tried the door. It was locked. He rattled it, but it wouldn’t budge. There was a fresh grumble of thunder. It sounded—weirdly—like the low laughter of the Lying Man. Tom looked over his shoulder, half expecting to see the man himself standing right there behind him. What he saw was almost as scary: the first tendrils of mist were swirling up the hill after him. The fog—and the malevolents within it—were on their way.

He rattled the school door again.

“Gordon?” he shouted. “Are you in there? Let me in! I need to get in!”

There was no answer.

“Gordon!”

An electric crackle made Tom stiffen. White light flashed around him, making his image on the glass door transparent and phantom-like. Lightning. The storm was beginning again. He didn’t want to be exposed out here when it struck. He had to get inside fast.

He stepped back from the door. He lifted the Louisville Slugger in his two hands.

Well
, he thought,
since I’m inside my own mind, I guess this isn’t a crime
.

He jabbed the head of the bat at the glass door. Then
he did it again. That second time did the trick. With a loud crack, a triangle of glass broke away from the rest of the pane. The shard fell into the school and Tom heard it shatter on the floor in there. He reached through the hole, hoping to find a latch, but the door had a key lock. There was no way to undo it. So, as the thunder rolled again—the thunder that sounded like eerie laughter—Tom worked quickly, jabbing through the glass of the door with his bat head again and again, breaking off piece after piece, clearing a larger and larger hole for himself.

The thunder subsided then, but the wind rose. Tom took one last look behind him. The mist was creeping up the hill, advancing quickly with a slithering motion back and forth across the grass. The air was now laced with thin rain. Tom turned and, stooping low to keep from getting cut, stepped through the hole he’d made in the door and entered the school.

At first there was the noise of glass crunching under his sneakers. But as he moved away from the litter on the floor, the noise stopped and a deep quiet surrounded him, broken only by the steady sough of the wind through the broken door. He was in the school’s front lobby, a place he saw almost every day. A broad, open hall decorated with bulletin boards and posters and signs. “Spring Comes to Springland” read a banner in one display case. There were various poems and works of art taped up inside. There were posters for school
shows nearby and sign-up sheets for clubs and programs. And there was a trophy case displaying plaques and prizes the school had won: top test scores in the county, winner of a state essay contest—and, of course, the trophy for the state football championship, the one now under investigation because of Tom’s story.

Two corridors ran off from the lobby, one on either side of him. The halls were dark, sunk in shadow. Peering into the gloom, he could make out rows of lockers on the corridor walls, their bright green paint muted in the dim light. At first glance, the halls looked empty. But as Tom paused there for a moment, peering down the corridor to his right, he suddenly saw something. He caught his breath. There had been a swift movement in the shadowy reaches at the end. Someone crossing the hall from one side to the other. A moment later Tom heard a door swing shut down there.

“Gordon?” he called.

But there was no answer. No sound at all except the wind through the broken door. The wind that sounded like a whisper.

And then there
was
a whisper: “Tom.”

Startled, Tom wheeled around. That sounded like Lisa. Yes! There she was. Or at least he thought he could make her out standing in the shadows down the other hall, down by the principal’s office. Just standing there, watching him.

“Lisa?” he said softly, his throat dry. This place was really beginning to spook him.

The figure didn’t move, didn’t answer. Just stood there, watching him. Creepy. Very.

He started walking toward her slowly. “Lisa?” he said again—though he could barely get the word out now. “Is that you?”

Still, the figure stood motionless. As Tom got closer, the shadows seemed to gather around her. Her shape seemed to blend in with their darkness. As he came even closer, he saw that the darkness was all there was. Lisa had faded away like a mirage, vanishing so smoothly into the shadows that Tom couldn’t be sure she had ever been there at all.

He reached the spot where Lisa had been—or where he thought she’d been—about halfway down the hall. It gave him a very eerie feeling to find the place empty.

He was right outside the principal’s office now. There was a large pane of glass here. Usually, on a school day, you could look right through the glass and see the outer office where the principal’s two assistants worked. But today the glass was completely—weirdly—black. Nothing was visible through it. Nothing at all.

Just then, from behind him—through the glass door he himself had broken—there came a rattling crash of thunder. Lightning flashed almost simultaneously. The electric glow
flickered over Tom where he stood—and in that momentary light, Tom caught a glimpse of someone standing on the other side of the principal’s window, looking out at him.

Tom gasped—and then his breath came out of him unsteadily. He recognized that half-seen face. It was the Lying Man.

I’m not only traveling with you—I’m waiting for you wherever you go
.

“Tom! This way! Hurry!”

With another start, Tom turned toward the whisper. It sounded like Lisa again. And again, there she was—or the ghost of her—standing still and dim in the hall’s far shadows.

He took another glance at the principal’s window, but it was black again. If the Lying Man was in there, Tom couldn’t see him. All the same, he was glad to get away from that place. He moved down the hall toward the figure of Lisa, calling out to her as he went.

“Lisa, is that you? Wait for me.”

But she didn’t answer him. She stood eerily silent. And eerily, she did the mirage thing again, fading away into the shadows before he could reach her.

Tom’s heart was rabbiting inside him. He felt like he was in a haunted house. A school full of phantoms. It was almost more frightening than the fog full of monsters. And the thunder and lightning outside didn’t help any either.

“Tommeeee.”

Lisa’s ghostly whisper drifted to him again, but this time when he looked into the dark, he couldn’t see her.

“Tommmeeeeee.”

He moved toward the sound. He reached the end of the hallway. There were stairs there, a broad flight going down into the basement.

“Tommmeee.”

That’s where her voice was coming from.

Was she trying to get him to come down to the
Sentinel
’s office? To get the address he’d left there, the address of the woman in the white blouse? But why haunt him like this? That’s where he was headed anyway.

“Tommy, come down,” she whispered from the darkness below.

This was just plain creepy now. It reminded him of the time he’d met Hank in the parking garage. He didn’t know what he was walking into.

“Come down, Tommy.”

He had to do it. He had to get that address. He had to find the woman in the white blouse. He had to remember what he had forgotten—who shot him and why—if he was ever going to get out of his coma. If he was ever going to learn the truth. If he was ever going to make it home alive.

Tom heard the low thunder outside—or was it just the
Lying Man’s laughter? He knew there was no going back—not for him, not with the need to know that beat inside him like his own pulse. He had to move.

He started down the stairs. Every nerve in him seemed to be standing on edge. He was listening for any noise, any threat. He reached the bottom and stepped down into yet another dark corridor. He paused, staring into the deep shadows, waiting for his eyes to adjust.

“Tommeee.”

He held his breath. Lisa’s whisper. And wait . . . someone else now.

“. . . just for a little while . . .”

Who was that? He wasn’t sure.

“I don’t like it . . .” Yet a third voice, a third whisper.

And then more:

“This way, Tom.”

“Go to the monastery.”

“Why did you do it?”

“. . . ruin everything . . .”

Tom finally breathed out, quivering. The corridor was full of whispers, full of ghostly voices.

“He’s not your friend.”

“The monastery.”

“This way, Tommy.”

As Tom stared, he thought he saw movements in the
shadows, but the fleeting figures were so faint he wasn’t sure they were really there.

Clutching his baseball bat in one hand, he started to edge forward—moving with slow care, barely lifting his feet as he shuffled along.

“Go to the monastery.”

“I don’t like it.”

“It’s just for a little while.”

“This way.”

Tom moved deeper down the hall, deeper into the darkness. He felt a breath of air on his face as something rushed past him. But when he turned to look—nothing—there was nothing there. Only the whispers.

“Tommmeee.”

“He’s not your friend . . .”

There was another movement. And another. Each time, when Tom looked, there was no one, nothing. And yet the whispers went on as he shuffled slowly forward. It was so bizarre that words finally burst out of him: “Is anyone there? Is anyone . . . ?”

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.