Andrew Klavan - Nightmare City

Dr. Cameron lifted a glass of orange juice in a toast to him. He was a tall, trim, broad-shouldered man with a face as perfect as his daughter’s, his hair a silvery blond. “Marie has told us so much about you, Tom,” he said with a smile. He had a calm, reassuring voice—a good voice for a doctor, Tom thought. “We’re really glad to know we’ll be seeing more of you around here in the future.”

Tom was glad to know this, too—it was the first he’d heard of it! But Marie seemed to agree. She smiled in that way that made Tom ache.

It was a wonderful lunch. Tom talked about his work at the newspaper. He talked about his story, the one about the football team, and how he was working on new leads. Instead of being angry at him, Marie and her family admired him. It was a nice change from being at school.

After lunch, Marie walked him over the broad front lawn of her house to where Tom’s Mustang was parked at the curb.

“Daddy really likes you,” she said. She took hold of his arm as they reached the car. She pressed close to him. “That’s a really good thing, you know. He’s the best guy in the world. And he knows a lot of important people—all the important people around here, for sure! He can be a really good friend to you, Tom, when you’re applying to colleges or looking for a job, all that stuff.”

“Yeah, well, he seems like a really good guy,” Tom said. And he thought he could probably use some help applying to colleges now that the principal and all his teachers hated him.

They reached his car. Tom turned to look at her. He wanted to ask her about Gordon then. He wanted to make sure everything was over between them, that there would be no hard feelings about him moving in on Gordon’s girl or anything like that. But he didn’t say a word. With Marie holding his arm and looking up at him the way she was, he didn’t want to do anything that might ruin the moment.

He was still trying to convince himself to speak when Marie suddenly moved in even closer and kissed him.

At which point Tom completely forgot about Gordon Thomas, and about everything.

Urged on by the wind and thunder, Tom hurried over the last yards of the hill to the school’s front door. The door was made of glass and was dark, like the windows. As he approached it, he thought he saw another figure within, but it was only his own reflection. It was the first time he’d seen himself since he left the house. He was shocked by his expression of wild-eyed panic. With the baseball bat gripped in his fist, he looked like some sort of madman ready to bust up the world.

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.