Andrew Klavan - Nightmare City

“Oh, baby,” said Marie with feeling. “I know. I know, I know, I know. It’s because you’re so good, you’re so sweet. But I have to do it. Trust me, okay? If I can just make him feel he has a chance with me, I know I can keep him from… you know. From writing anything else. I know he’ll stop. For me. And he’s got to stop. He’s got to. Otherwise, he could ruin everything. Oh, come on, baby,” she said as Gordon turned his back on her. She climbed down off the rafters now. She went to him. She stood behind him. Put a hand gently on his back, between his shoulder blades. “Come on,” she said, her voice soft and coaxing. “It’s just for a little while. I promise.”

Gordon could not resist her—any more than Tom had been able to resist her. Gordon turned. He wrapped his arms around her. She clung to him, pressing her face against his chest. They held each other fast.

Tom stepped back and let the door close. The light beneath it went out. The memory was over.

He stood in the darkness without moving. He stared at the door in front of his nose. He stared at nothing. All of Marie’s sweet smiles. All her admiring words. That kiss outside her house. All lies. All make-believe.

He’s had a creepy crush on me since forever .

No wonder he hadn’t wanted to remember this. No wonder he’d blanked it out. He could not believe how much it hurt. Next to Burt’s death, it hurt more than anything he had ever felt in his life. He understood now why people said they were brokenhearted. It felt that way. He felt as if Marie had tossed his heart to the ground and broken it into a million pieces.

“But why?” he whispered into the dark. Why had she done it? Even in his sorrow, the curiosity that always pulsed at the core of him would not leave him alone.

I know I can keep him from writing anything else. I know he’ll stop. For me .

What had she wanted to keep him from writing? The story about the team was already published. Why had she pretended to like him? Why had she hurt him so badly?

“Why?” he whispered again.

In answer, there came a low, casual laugh from behind him.

Tom spun around, clutching the Warrior bat in his two hands.

There in the darkness stood the Lying Man.

The anger went off in Tom like an explosion, a red rage that blasted out of his core and spread all through him. He had just seen Marie—remembered Marie—revealing her disdain for him, dashing his heart to the ground. And now here was the laughing, conniving, insinuating, threatening, and terrifying Lying Man. And Tom had had enough.

He cocked the bat over his shoulder. He wanted to pound the Lying Man’s laughter back into his throat.

But where was he? A moment ago his shadowy presence had been standing right in front of him. That lean, dark face with its smart, bright eyes—that face that somehow sent a chill up his spine—had been smiling at him from no more than a few feet away. And now…

Now the laughter came again from a distance. And Tom saw the Lying Man—the shadow of the Lying Man—halfway down the hall.

Furious, he cocked the bat even farther over his shoulder and stepped forward.

“What do you want?” he shouted. “Come on, you coward! What do you want? Stop trying to mess with my mind! Stop playing head games with me! Just come on and say it! What do you want?”

Tom advanced another step, but the Lying Man didn’t back away. He didn’t seem afraid at all. He stood in a relaxed posture, his eyes glinting in the darkness. Just as before, something about him, something about his half-seen features, sent an icy shiver up Tom’s spine. Angry as he was, he felt it. For all the Lying Man’s easy laughter, for all the soothing calm of his voice, there was just something terrifying about this guy.

The Lying Man’s laughter trailed off into a low chuckle. “I told you, Tom,” he said in a tone full of friendship and sympathy. “I only want for you what you want for yourself. I mean, you wanted the truth, right? Well, now you have it. Now you see. The truth is that Marie doesn’t really like you very much at all. All that love you felt for her? All that tenderness and yearning all these years. Marie just thought it was—what was her word?— creepy . When she pretended to like and admire you, she was playing with you, my friend. She was playing with you so she could control you, like a puppet on a string—convince you to do whatever she wanted.”

Tom came another step closer, brandishing the bat, breathing hard. But he could feel the anger—and the strength—draining out of him. The Lying Man wasn’t lying now, was he? He wasn’t lying about Marie. That was the truth about her, all right. And just hearing it spoken out loud filled Tom with sorrow—a heartbroken grief that sapped his energy.

The Lying Man seemed to sense this. Rather than retreating from him in fear, he took a casual step toward him. Tom could now see his smile, his teeth gleaming gray in the shadows. For some reason he couldn’t name, the sight made his gorge rise into his throat, made him feel he might be sick.

“I know it’s painful for you, Tom,” said the Lying Man sympathetically. “But better to find out now, right? Better to find out before you make a fool of yourself. Or, that is, before you make a bigger fool of yourself than you already have. You see? I’ve helped you, Tom. I’ve helped you find the truth you were looking for. And here you threaten me with that bat of yours. Where’s the sense in that? Why should you be angry at me?”

Tom had no answer. The tide of his sorrow rose within him and the tide of his strength and anger continued to recede. He stopped advancing on the Lying Man. The bat drooped and settled onto his shoulder.

The Lying Man seized the moment and took another easy step toward him. The lean face and its arch features became clearer in the dark—and though Tom felt even more nauseated, somehow he couldn’t look away.

“You know what this reminds me of?” the Lying Man said. “Do you remember, Tom, when you wrote that story about the football team? Do you remember how everyone got angry at you? And why? All you’d done was tell the truth. You told the truth and they didn’t want to hear it, so instead of facing it squarely, they got angry at you. They got angry at the messenger because they didn’t want to hear the message. Isn’t that exactly what you’re doing to me now? I’ve shown you a truth you didn’t want to know, and now instead of confronting it bravely like a man, you’re yelling at me and threatening me! It’s a kind of cowardice really, isn’t it?” He laughed again, clearly unafraid.

Tom let the bat drop off his shoulders. He let the head of it sink to the floor. What was he going to do? Brain the guy with it? For what? Talking? Telling the truth about Marie? No. The Lying Man was right. That was just cowardice. There was no point taking his anger out on him. That wouldn’t change a thing.

He let a long stream of breath come sighing out of him. He just felt tired now. Exhausted, in fact. Totally played out.

Marie , he thought miserably.

“Oh, don’t be too hard on her, Tom,” said the Lying Man. It was as if he could hear Tom thinking! “After all, you’re not so pure of heart either, are you?”

Tom stood powerless as he watched the Lying Man come another step closer, as the Lying Man moved smoothly into a patch of deeper shadow that nearly obscured him from Tom’s view.

“That’s part of the truth, too, isn’t it?” he said in his serene and reasonable voice. “What Marie said about you. About your motives for writing that story. She has a point, doesn’t she? You were upset you couldn’t be on the team. And you were jealous of Gordon, weren’t you?”