Andrew Klavan - Nightmare City

“I’m sitting beside your hospital bed. I’m holding your hand just like this. I’m talking to you. The doctors said that if I talked to you, you might be able to hear me.”

“I do hear you,” he said. “I mean… I don’t think… I don’t think this is what you’re really saying exactly. I think a lot of this conversation is me talking to myself in my own mind. But I hear the sound of your voice and… I can feel you’re there. And I’m glad you’re there, Lisa. You’ve always been a good friend.”

Lisa tried to smile, but her mouth trembled down quickly in a deep frown. The lenses of her glasses grew misty. And a thought flashed through Tom’s mind, a new thought, one he’d never had before. It was a thought he could barely believe, but there it was anyway. He thought that maybe Lisa liked him—really liked him, not just as a friend, but as more than that. Funny, all that time they’d spent together in the Sentinel’s office, and he’d never noticed it before. Until this moment, he’d been thinking about Marie so much, yearning for Marie so much, that it never crossed his mind.

Lisa’s grip tightened on his hand. “Tom,” she said softly. “Listen to me. The doctors say…”

She faltered. He answered her grip with his own. “Go on.”

“The doctors say if they lose you again, if your heart stops beating again, they doubt they’ll be able to revive you. They doubt you’ll be strong enough to make it back. And you’ve got to make it back, Tommy! You’ve got to. I don’t think I could… I don’t think your mother could survive if she lost you like she lost Burt.”

“Right. Right.” Tom took a deep breath, braced himself. “What are my chances?” he asked her. “Did the doctors say? What are the chances I’ll come out of this coma alive?”

“They said…” Lisa’s voice broke. A single tear spilled from behind her misted lenses, rolled down her freckled cheek. “They said they didn’t know. They said it was fifty-fifty. It could go either way.”

Tom made a noise: whew . “Fifty-fifty,” he repeated. “And if I die again, I’m done for. So I only have one more chance, and if the malevolents get me this time…”

Lisa only nodded, unable to speak.

Tom swallowed hard. “Fifty-fifty. One chance. Live or die. Man, that’s scary. I’m scared, Lisa. I’m seventeen. I’m not ready to die. But I don’t know if I’ve got the courage to…”

“Shh! Shh!” She put a finger to his lips, silencing him. Then she pulled her hand away to wipe her cheek dry. “You have plenty of courage. All you need. More.”

“I don’t know, I don’t know,” said Tom. “I was never the hero type. Not like Burt.”

“Yes, you are,” Lisa told him, crying harder. “You’re just as brave as Burt ever was. Just in a different way, that’s all. That’s…” She couldn’t finish. She bowed her head.

Tom looked at her, looked at the top of her head, the part in her hair where a line of white scalp peeked through the wavy red. He didn’t know why, but the sight of it made her seem fragile to him somehow. Which was funny, seeing as he was the one in the coma, on the brink of death! But he was sorry now that he’d shown her his fear, sorry he’d made her cry. Even if she couldn’t really see it sitting there in the hospital next to his bed, he wanted to give her strength, to send his strength to her, his courage to her.

“Okay,” he said. “Okay. Fifty-fifty. It’s better than nothing, right? I’ll take my chances. But what do I do? How do I find my way out of here? How do I get out of this coma and get back to you?”

It was a long moment before Lisa could lift her head, could speak again. Then she said, “I’m not sure, but I can tell you what I think.”

Tom knew that the information she was giving him was really information coming from the depths of his own mind. But he needed to hear it. He needed to hear it spoken out loud. He said, “Go on.”

“I think there’s something holding you here, something that won’t let you leave.”

“Okay. Like what?”

“I don’t know. Believe me, if I knew I would tell you. But there’s something, something that wants to keep you in the dark, that wants to keep you in this coma, that maybe even… even wants you to die.”

“Whoa.” He swallowed hard. “Whoa,” he said again. “How do I find it, then? How do I get rid of it?”

“Well, whatever it is,” Lisa said, “it must be here somewhere. It must be something inside your own mind. Something you know but can’t get to somehow.”

“You mean, like, something I’ve forgotten. Or something I’m blocking out.”

“That’s right. I think…,” Lisa went on—and Tom could tell she was working it out as she spoke. “I think maybe if you could find out what happened to you, find out who shot you—who shot you and why—then you could break the barrier, break through and face the truth and wake up.”

Her damp eyes gazed into his with so much feeling that Tom looked away, embarrassed. He looked down at the table.

“That’s got to be it, Tom,” Lisa said. “Find the truth. The truth is always the way, even when it’s scary, even when it’s hard. It’s like the Bible says, you know. Find the truth—and the truth will set you free.”

Tom felt a fresh energy go through him, a fresh fire of inspiration. He raised his eyes to hers. They looked at each other for a long moment, and Tom had the strangest feeling that he had never really seen Lisa before. Sure, he’d seen her face. He’d seen her goofy sense of humor and her insecurity about her looks. He’d seen her courage in trying to deal with her parents’ divorce and with the fact that she and her mom didn’t have much money anymore, even though they used to be rich. He’d seen her—but he’d never seen her like this, never seen the sweet whole of her, the way he was seeing her now, here in his imagination. It was a sight that filled him up in a way he couldn’t have described.

Slowly, she drew her hand away from him.

A new bout of fear went through him. “Don’t,” he whispered before he could stop himself. “Don’t leave me.”

“I have to, Tom.” She stood up. “This isn’t something I can do with you.” She tried to smile. “I’m just the editor, right? I can send you out on a story, but you’ve got to find the answers on your own.”

He looked up at her. He tried his best to smile. “Man! This imagination—it can be a pretty scary place, you know? I don’t want to be alone in here.”

“Oh, Tommy,” said Lisa. “You’re not alone!” Quickly, she reached behind her neck and undid the clasp of her gold necklace. She drew it off her throat and pressed it into his hand. Tom looked down and saw the gold cross gleaming in his palm. “You’re not alone, Tommy,” Lisa said again. “Just find the truth. And the truth will set you free.”

Tom closed his fist around her necklace and held it fast.

The next time he looked up, Lisa was gone.

The moments passed. The house was silent around him. The fog gathered in the backyard. Tom knew his time was running out and yet second after second, he sat where he was, staring at his closed fist.

Find the truth, and the truth will set you free .

All right. Good advice. But how did he do it? How could he find the truth? Where did he begin?

Come on , he told himself. You’re the steely-eyed, big-brained reporter. Figure it out, bro .

He shook his fist as he went on gazing down at it. To find the whole truth, he needed to know who shot him—who shot him, and why. And hey, how hard could it be to get that information? He had been shot in the chest, after all. The person who shot him must have been standing right in front of him. He must have seen the person at the time it happened. He must already know who it was. So, as Lisa said, the answer must be here somewhere, somewhere inside his mind. But where?