Andrew Klavan - Nightmare City

Tom was a reporter, after all. Finding the truth was his business. Finding the truth—even when it was painful, even when it went against his own inclinations and desires. Even when it made everyone in school hate him.

He took one last yearning look around him. The green lawn. The white temples. The golden light. He wanted to go into the park. He wanted to go to heaven.

But he heard the phone singing its song in the distance behind him. He summoned all the willpower he had and turned back to answer it.

Tom blinked, confused. Where was he?

He looked around him. His eyes passed over the framed newspaper stories, the sports pennants, the long flag from Burt’s coffin. He was in his bedroom at home.

A dream , he thought. Heaven was a dream .

He heard the guitar riff, the Haggard song, his phone ringing. He twisted until he could see the phone on his computer table. It jumped and rattled around as it rang.

A dream , he thought again. It was all just…

No. Wait. He sat up in bed quickly, tossing the comforter aside. He remembered. The heavenly park. This empty house. The fog outside. The monsters.

This was no dream. This was real—bizarre but totally real. And it was all happening again!

He reached out quickly and grabbed the phone. Checked the readout to see who was calling.

Number blocked .

Right. Just like before. He remembered that, too. The phone vibrated in his hand as it rang again. He answered.

He knew what he would hear before he heard it. There it was. That static. Weird white noise coming from an alien and frightening place far away. He listened intently. Next there would be a voice. The voice of that ghostly woman in the white blouse…

It began, “I need to talk to you. It’s important.”

He could hear her a little better this time, a little more clearly than he’d heard her before.

“Where are you?” he said, trying to keep his own voice steady and clear. “I need to find you. I need to know where you are.”

“My address is…” Then the static overwhelmed her. Her voice was swept under the crackle and hiss.

“What’s your address?” Tom shouted. “Say it again.”

The woman tried again, calling to him from beneath the static. Her voice was now so dim that Tom’s face contorted with the effort to make out her words.

“…school… you left my address…”

“At school?” Tom said, straining to hear her. “I left your address at school?”

Yes. That was right. He wasn’t sure how he knew, but he knew. Her address was at the office of the Sentinel . He had scribbled it on a pad there.

“Please… please… you have to…,” the woman called to him—and then, as he knew they would, the two beeps came. He pulled the phone away from his ear and looked at the readout.

Connection lost .

This time Tom didn’t hesitate. He leapt out of bed. He rushed to his dresser. He pulled on his sweatpants and the Tigers sweatshirt as fast as he could.

A familiar feeling of excitement was coursing through him: the feeling he got when a news story began to come together, when things began to make sense. This was what he loved about working on the Sentinel : finding the answers. And he was beginning to find them now. He was beginning to figure this crazy thing out, beginning to understand what was happening.

And he knew what he had to do next.

He didn’t bother to stop in the bathroom this time. It didn’t matter whether he shaved or not. None of that ordinary stuff mattered anymore. He just had to get to the basement as fast as he could. It was a matter of life and death.

He stampeded down the stairs into the front hall. He paused at the door only a moment to look out through the sidelight. The lawn and the driveway were clear again. No fog. He could see all the way down to the end of the driveway. The newspaper was lying there near the street, just as it had been the first time. And the mist was beginning to gather in the street as it had before, too. Soon, he knew, the fog would move in. It would become thick again. And it would bring the malevolents with it.

He didn’t have a lot of time. He had to hurry.

He ran down the hall to the kitchen, to the basement door. As he pulled the door open, he half expected to hear Burt’s voice again, shouting from the TV screen.

This is your mission!

But no. It was different this time. The basement was silent. Tom understood. Burt had called to him before because he wanted to get him to come down, to see what was on television, to face a truth his mind didn’t want to face. Burt had reached out to him from an impossible distance and done the best he could to get his message across the gulf between them.

But this time Tom didn’t need that help. This time he was ready to face the truth on his own. He was scared—he was very scared—but he was ready.

He went down the stairs.

He came into the family room. Saw the TV with its dark screen. The silent speakers. Fighting down the anxiety that tightened his throat, he moved to the easy chairs. There was the remote lying on the seat of the nearest chair. He picked it up. Pointed it at the TV. Pressed the Power button.

It was time to face the facts.

For a moment, the TV stayed dark. The silence went on for such a long time that Tom began to think he had gotten it wrong, that he would have to look for the truth elsewhere. Another silent second passed, and then another. Tom started to turn away.

Then a voice startled him by shouting over the speakers, “Dr. Leonard to the ER—stat!”

There it was. Just like before. Only different. The voice was calling for Dr. Leonard this time, not Dr. Cooper. Tom got it. Dr. Cooper was just a character in the TV show Mom liked. Dr. Leonard was real. Tom had seen The Cooper Practice on the screen before because he wasn’t ready to face reality. Now he was. At least he hoped he was.

The TV came on. The nurses and aides and doctors were crowding around the gurney as they rolled it up the corridor to the emergency operating room.

“Single GSW to the chest!”

“His pulse is falling fast!”

“Clear Trauma One.”

They rolled the gurney down the hall and came to an alcove hidden behind a curtain. One of the aides tore the curtain aside, and the gurney was rushed through into the emergency operating room.

“Where’s Dr. Leonard?”

“Here I am. What have we got?”

“Single GSW to the chest. We’re losing him.”

“Get him onto the operating table. On my count of three.”

The people around the gurney leaned in as the doctor counted off.

“One, two—three.”

Tom’s pulse sped up as he watched them lift the body—the body hidden behind their bodies—from the gurney onto the operating table. He knew what was going to happen next, of course. He knew what he was going to see.

The crowd around the operating table broke apart—and there he was. Tom stood in the basement and stared helplessly as he saw himself on the television set. He saw himself lying unconscious on the operating table, his torso covered in blood. The doctors and nurses darted here and there around him. One nurse sliced Tom’s shirt off with a small knife, and another began to clean his wound. A third worked a tube into his throat so he would be able to breathe. Once again it made Tom gag as he stood there watching it happen on the screen. He felt his legs go weak beneath him as he watched. He sank down slowly into the easy chair behind him. Leaning forward on the edge of his seat, he went on staring at the scene.

But the next moment was so difficult for him to watch that he had to narrow his eyes until they were almost shut—make the images less clear, less devastating. Even so, he could hardly bear the sight of the doctor laying the blade of the scalpel against his bare skin. He let out a groan as he watched the blade slice into his flesh, the red blood flowing out from underneath the flashing steel.