Andrew Klavan - Nightmare City

He was safe. For the moment.

Exhausted, gasping for breath, weak with relief, Tom felt his knees go wobbly under him. The Warrior bat dropped from his trembling fingers, making a metallic sound as it hit the sand. He staggered and had to grab hold of the climbing frame’s post to keep himself up. His eyes lifted and he saw—he almost couldn’t believe it—he saw the sky! The blue sky made pale by the last thin layer of mist. Could it be that the fog was clearing?

It was. He leaned on the frame and peered off into the distance. The wind continued to stir and the fog continued to blow away from before him.

And now, like a magic city emerging from the clouds, a welcome and familiar scene appeared. A grassy hill. A winding asphalt path along the top of the slope. And at the peak: the school, his school, Springland High.

He was almost there!

Tom would never have thought he could be so glad to see the place. The school was not exactly a crystal fairytale palace to look at. Just a sprawling one-story structure of brick, metal, and glass. It was a building Tom came to almost every day. He had become so used to the sight of it that he hardly noticed it at all most of the time. If you had asked him, he would have had to think for a minute before he could say what it looked like. But he noticed it now, all right. He saw it clearly. And what it looked like to him was a refuge, a place to hide, a place to get away from the army of murderous creatures behind him and begin to find the answers he so desperately needed. The woman in the white blouse. The address he’d scribbled down and left in the office of the Sentinel . The path back into his memory and the secret of what was keeping him in this coma, so close to death.

He had to get up that hill. He had to hurry, too. He did not know how long the wind would continue blowing, how long the fog would hold off.

He pushed wearily away from the climbing frame until he was standing on his own. He looked back into the mist out of which he’d come.

The malevolents were still there, still milling along the edges of the marine layer. They snarled and pawed at the churning whiteness as if hoping to break through into the clear. But they couldn’t do it.

Tom turned away from them, turned back toward the school. The wind continued to blow, making a path for him through the mist, a clear path up the hill. He took a step toward it.

Remember the Warrior .

Right. He’d nearly forgotten. He bent down and picked the baseball bat up out of the sand. Then, gripping the Warrior in one hand, he started moving. He trudged over the playground sand to the edge of the grass. He started up the hill.

It was slow going. His legs were so tired from running. He was still out of breath. Even this small climb was an effort. His shoulders slumped, the bat bumping over the sod behind him, he trudged upward.

He was just about halfway to the top when there was a new noise. A dark rumble inside the rising rush of the wind. Thunder. Tom felt a fresh twinge of anxiety. The last time it had started to rain, the monsters had gotten him. He couldn’t let that happen again.

He paused. The cold air rushed over him. He could feel the storm coming. He looked back down the hill. The pillowy whiteness of the fog was on the move again. It was beginning to roil with the wind. It was starting to roll forward, over the edges of the playground where Tom had just been. Even as he stood there watching, the climbing frame began to fade and grow dim, then the seesaw…

The fog was coming after him. And with the fog came the malevolents. Tom could see them moving into the playground, limping amid the equipment, searching for him.

Another low rumble of thunder. No time to waste. He faced forward again, up the hill, toward the school. But before he started moving, he saw something that made him pull up short. Something inside the school. Something alive.

There was a long line of windows in the front of the school. They were tall, the panes starting just off the ground and rising to about shoulder height. The lights were off inside the building and the windows were dark. But as Tom looked, he was almost sure he saw a slow movement behind the unlit glass.

Where are you headed now? To your school? I’ll be right there when you arrive .

Tom shuddered at the memory of the Lying Man’s promise—or was it a threat? Were the Lying Man and the creatures he controlled already ahead of him? Were they already waiting for him inside the building?

He swallowed. He glanced back over his shoulder. The wind continued to blow and the fog continued rolling toward him up the hill. Already, most of the playground equipment had disappeared in the whiteness. Already, the first of the malevolents were limping toward the bottom of the slope.

Tom had no choice. He had come this far. There was nowhere to go but forward.

He began to climb the hill again. He neared the school slowly. He reached the path at the top of the slope. Just as he did, another movement at one of the school’s windows caught his eye.

This time it was unmistakable. A figure was emerging from the darkness inside the school. It was approaching the window.

The thunder rolled. The wind blew. The fog rolled toward him up the hill.

The figure inside the school became clearer—and even more clear. It pressed itself against the glass and looked out at him.

“Gordon?” said Tom out loud—but his voice was lost in a fresh rumble of thunder.

It was. It was Gordon. The Tigers football star stood for a moment, pressed to the window. He peered out at Tom with a strangely empty expression on his face. Slowly, he lifted his hand in greeting.

But before Tom could respond, the thunder rolled again like dark laughter. There was a first flash of lightning. And Gordon drew back into the darkness of the school’s interior and vanished like a ghost.

There came a nightmare day. A Wednesday afternoon. The last class period but one. For Tom, that meant PE. He and ten other guys doing gymnastics, climbing ropes in the gym, working on the horse and the beams and the mats and so on. When the class was over, the guys headed into the locker room. They showered. They got back into their street clothes. Tom was standing in front of his locker, buttoning his shirt, when he felt that something was wrong.

He looked up. Looked around him. Where was everyone? Somehow, while he was concentrating on getting dressed, all the other guys had quietly slipped out of the locker room. The place was empty. He was alone.

Alone—and then not alone. The locker room door opened and three guys came in. Not just any three guys. Three Tigers. Big Tigers, too—jumbo size—from the defensive line: Matt Halliwell, Hank Thatcher, and Dub Simpson.

As Tom stood staring, they moved in on him. They stood around him in a semicircle. Tom’s back was against his gym locker. There was nowhere for him to run.

Tom’s fingers were still fiddling with the last button on his shirt. He didn’t even have his sneakers back on yet. He was in his socks. He realized this must’ve been part of some kind of plan: the other guys slipping out, leaving him alone; the three football players converging on him. His mind raced, trying to think of an escape strategy. He came up with nothing. He felt just about as helpless as it was possible to feel. If these guys wanted to rough him up, he was going to get majorly roughed.

Matt Halliwell spoke first. Broad-shouldered, fat-faced, flat-faced, with black hair so short it looked like iron filings standing up on top of a magnet. He put a finger the size of a sausage against Tom’s chest. Poked him hard.

“Nice story you wrote about us, wimp,” he said.

Dub Simpson, shaped like a cinder block and about as smart as a cinder block, shoved Tom’s shoulder with his open palm.