Andrew Klavan - The truth of the matter

I-the present me-wanted to reach out and stop the old me, but I couldn’t. All at once, I was fading away from the scene, helplessly drawn back out of my room, back and back into…

Nothing. Blackness. Where was I now?

My room was gone. The trophies, the poster on the wall, the computer, my former self. It had all vanished.

And suddenly, I was scared. Very scared. I was alone in the darkness and now there was… something… a noise… an awful noise… someone screaming… terrible screaming in the distance… And I knew: it was me, it was me, in the chair in the Panic Room, screaming in pain…

I didn’t want to go back there, back to that room, back to that chair, back to that agony.

I turned this way and that, looking for another way out.

There… up ahead… a dim gray light…

I moved toward it.

Now I was on a street. No, a country road. It was night. Dark. No streetlights, no houses. Somewhere in the distance, a dog was barking.

I looked around, confused. I saw a sparkle, very faint-the stars on water. My eyes began to adjust. I recognized this place. Reservoir Road, up in the wooded hills above my hometown. I could see a hill of dark trees rising up against the night sky to my right, a sandy slope falling away to my left. There was the Morgan Reservoir at the bottom of the slope, the water glinting in the starlight.

I looked around. I half expected to see myself-my younger self-as I had seen him before. But he was nowhere to be found. I was alone. I looked down and…

What was this? I wasn’t wearing my fleece anymore. I was wearing a windbreaker. I could feel the brisk air of early autumn on me.

Slowly, I lifted my hands, touched my cheeks, felt my hair. I understood.

I didn’t see my younger self because I was my younger self. I had become my own memory.

The fear, then, was all mine. I knew why I was afraid too. I was here to meet the man behind the mysterious voice on my phone.

If you want to know who killed Alex Hauser…

Before, back in the safety of my room, I’d been excited by those words, excited at the prospect of this mysterious meeting, at the idea that I might possibly solve Alex’s murder. But now, now that I was actually out here, out here alone in the dark with no one knowing where I was-now suddenly it occurred to me: what a knucklehead I’d been! What an unbelievably stupid idea it was to come out here to meet some voice on the phone without even letting anyone know I was doing it! I mean, didn’t I think? Didn’t I realize? There was only one person who could possibly know who had killed Alex-and that was the murderer himself! And the only reason the murderer would want me to come out and meet him on an empty road in the middle of the night…

Well, let’s just say visions of autopsy scenes from CSI: NY flashed in my head, with me starring as the body!

I thought I better get out of there-fast, before this killer clown showed up. I was about to turn around, about to head back to my car, my mom’s SUV parked on the road behind me…

But before I could, two lights flashed at me out of the darkness. Headlights. On for a moment. Then off.

There was another car parked on the Reservoir Road.

This didn’t seem like a memory now at all. I didn’t feel separated from my younger self. I felt I was my younger self again. I felt I was there, really there, really standing in the dark on the road, expecting to see the person who had killed Alex Hauser come leaping out at me at any moment.

I stood where I was, uncertain. Did I go toward the headlights and find out who had called me? Or did I do the smart thing and jump in my mom’s car and drive out of there, tires squealing, just as fast as I possibly could?

I know, I know. The smart answer was obvious. I should never have gone out there in the first place. There could be no good reason to follow a mysterious voice into the darkness. There could be no good reason to stay here now that I’d come to my senses. I felt as if my heart were hammering in my throat-and that meant my body was trying to tell me something. It was trying to tell me: Hey! Don’t be an idiot! Go home where you belong!

But I couldn’t. What can I say? It was a guy thing. I knew I should never have come, but now that I was here-well, no way I was going to run for it. I didn’t want to feel like a coward. I didn’t want to let my dead friend Alex down. I wanted to finish what I’d started and find out who his killer was and be a hero, even if it got me killed. A guy thing, like I said. So no matter what the consequences, running away was just not an option.

Before I even came to a conscious decision, I was already moving along the road toward the place where I’d seen the headlights. With every step, my heart beat even faster. My body tensed as I tried to prepare myself mentally for any surprise attack. Soon, I could make out the shape of the car on the road ahead of me. It was a long black car of some kind: a limousine. Now I was close enough to see the silhouette of the man sitting behind the wheel. Was that him? I wondered. Was that the man who had killed Alex?

But as I took another step, the back door of the limousine came open. The light inside went on. I could see the driver was not alone. There was someone else sitting in the backseat.

I came around the side of the limo, closing the final distance to the rear door. The light inside was very dim. It didn’t illuminate much. The driver’s face was still in shadow-though I could make out a deadpan expression and cold, lidded eyes. And the man in the backseat was obscured by the top of the door frame. From where I was, I could only see him from the neck down, the suit and tie beneath his open overcoat.

I took another step toward the open door. Then I stopped. I bent down to get a look at the man’s face. I didn’t know him. He was older, fifty or something. A serious sort of person, a businessman or something like that.

“Get in, Charlie,” he said. It was the voice I had heard over my cell phone.

I hesitated. Hadn’t my mother been telling me since I was a child that I should never get in a car with a strange man?

The strange man in the car took out a wallet and flipped it open. I saw the government identification inside. I recognized the name of the agency. “Come on,” he said. “We’re not going to hurt you. We just want to talk.”

Well, my mother always was a worrier. And I was a black belt, not a child anymore.

I took a breath and slipped into the limo’s backseat. I pulled the door shut and turned to the man beside me.

“It’s nice to meet you, Charlie,” he said quietly. “My name is Waterman.”

Out of the Past Then I woke up. I was lying on the floor of the Panic Room. I was curled up on my side. The cot was right above me, as if I’d been lying on it and had fallen off. My clothes were damp with sweat. I smelled. And the room stank of puke.

I felt as though I had been lying there unconscious for a long time. I looked at my watch. I couldn’t believe it. Almost ten hours had passed! It must be nearly morning now.

I started to uncurl. Bad idea. I was hit with a sharp cramp in the stomach. I gave a growl and clutched at myself, curling up again, until the pain passed. Then, again-more slowly, more cautiously this time-I started to unwind my body. I rolled over.

The first thing I saw was the chair-the metal chair in the middle of the room. It stood above me, looming, threatening, frightening, the handcuffs dangling from the chair-arms, where they’d held my wrists.

I groaned and turned onto my back. The light from the fluorescents on the ceiling seemed to slice right through my eyes into my brain. Flinching, I raised a trembling hand to shield myself. With the other hand, I reached out blindly until I found the edge of the cot. Then I slowly pulled myself into a sitting position.