Andrew Klavan - Nightmare City

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Tom Harding only wants the truth. But the truth is becoming more dangerous with every passing minute.
As a reporter for his high school newspaper, Tom Harding was tracking the best story of his life—when, suddenly, his life turned very, very weird. He woke up one morning to find his house empty… his street empty… his whole town empty… empty except for an eerie, creeping fog—and whatever creatures were slowly moving toward him through the fog.
Now Tom’s once-ordinary world has become something out of a horror movie. How did it happen? Is it real? Is he dreaming? Has there been a zombie apocalypse? Has he died and gone to hell?
Tom is a good reporter—he knows how to look for answers—but no one has ever covered a story like this before. With the fog closing in and the hungry creatures of the fog surrounding him, he has only a few hours to find out how he lost the world he knew. In this bizarre universe nothing is what it seems and everything—including Tom’s life—hangs in the balance.

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Tom lowered his chin, looked at the floor. “Sometimes,” he muttered. He wished it wasn’t so, but it was.

“And you did want to steal Marie away from him.”

Tom shook his head weakly. That wasn’t why he wrote the story. It was never his reason.

“Are you sure?” said the Lying Man, as if Tom had spoken these words aloud. “Are you absolutely sure those weren’t your motives? Are you sure you’re not just as much a liar as Marie is? I mean, look at yourself, Tom. Really look at yourself for a change. Look at your life. You’ve lost your brother. You’ve lost your friends. You’ve spent years pining for a girl who despises you. And as for who you are… well, you like to think of yourself as a courageous seeker after truth, I know. But I sort of suspect you’re just an envious little person trying to use your newspaper to take vengeance on people who are more successful than you are.”

Tom stood slumped, unable to find the energy even to answer. Was it true? Was that really his life? Was that really himself? Right then, right after seeing Marie, right after hearing what she said about him and feeling his heart break inside him, he certainly felt… well, he felt as miserable as the Lying Man’s description of him. He felt worthless. Weak. As if life weren’t even worth living.

So maybe the Lying Man wasn’t such a liar after all.

Tom slowly lifted his head. He looked down the hall, peered into the shadows in the direction of the Lying Man’s voice. But he couldn’t see him anymore. The Lying Man seemed to have vanished into the darkness.

And then, suddenly—suddenly the man was standing right beside him. He was murmuring quietly into Tom’s ear.

“You see, Tom, it’s as I said. I just want for you what you want for yourself. And you know what that is, don’t you?”

“No,” said Tom weakly.

“Yes, you do,” said the Lying Man. “You know what you really want.” He chuckled softly. “Death, Tom. That’s it, isn’t it? You don’t want to come out of this coma at all, do you? Why should you? Your life isn’t worth living. Of course you want to die. You want to die.”

Horrified, Tom turned to him quickly. The Lying Man smiled, his expression seemingly full of kindness. But his eyes! His eyes were dancing with the raging electric power of his absolute wickedness.

“And now,” said the Lying Man, “we’re both going to get what we want!”

The next moment he was gone—all of him was gone, that is, except his laughter. His laughter continued to trail back to Tom out of the shadows, fading only slowly.

And as the laughter faded, a new noise replaced it. Soft at first. A steady, rhythmic pounding. It was coming from upstairs.

Tom listened. The thudding went on. It grew louder. Now and then it was punctuated by high, hollow shrieks that drifted like ghostly echoes down the stairs, down the hall, to where Tom stood.

The malevolents!

Tom’s eyes widened as he lifted his gaze to the ceiling.

Moment by moment, the pounding upstairs became more insistent. The shrieks became wilder, more ravenous.

Of course. He had forgotten. The Lying Man was the master of the malevolents. The Lying Man was the King of Death. He had kept Tom here, delayed him, stalled him with his talk while the fog climbed up the hill outside, while the malevolents advanced on the school.

And Tom, heartbroken and confused, weak with sorrow, had listened to him. Had stood here. Had given the malevolents the time they needed to make their approach.

And now they were here. Pounding on the windows. Shrieking for entry.

Hungry for Tom’s life.

23.

The pounding grew steadily louder. Those strange echoing shrieks grew louder. And now there were other noises. A crack. A spatter.

Glass breaking. The windows were giving way.

Fear flowed into Tom like electricity, jolting him out of his weakness, jolting him out of his sorrowing daze.

He heard the Lying Man whisper in his mind:

I want for you what you want for yourself. Death. You want to die .

Was it true? He was so confused now, so unhappy, so incredibly weary of fighting his way through this nightmare, that he didn’t know what was true anymore or whom to trust. But he wanted to know. He still had that—that curiosity to know the truth that drove him on, that wouldn’t let him give up.

You want to die , the Lying Man insisted.

And Tom thought: No. No, I don’t. Not yet, at least .

He was still a reporter, after all. He couldn’t die before he learned the rest of the story.

He hesitated another moment. He heard the malevolents trying to break in upstairs. He thought of their poisonous claws, their ravenous teeth. He remembered the lanky man with blond hair who had been dragged away screaming into the fog. He had cut his wrists, Lisa said. He had given in to despair. He really had wanted to die.

That’s not me , Tom thought, fighting down the voice of the Lying Man. That’s not going to be me .

He gripped his bat tightly and started to run.

He dashed through the darkness of the halls. Whispers trailed past him like wind. Shadows dashed by on every side of him. Memories. The haunting memories he had wanted to leave behind. Pulling at him. Calling to him.

He reached the bottom of the stairway. Looked up into the dim, gray light above. Not much light—just the light leaking down the hall from the lobby windows—but enough to make his way by. The pounding up there continued. The shrieking continued. They would break through soon. He had to hurry.

He started up, taking the stairs two and three at a time.

It was not fast enough.

As he reached the top of the flight, he heard a tremendous shattering noise. He peered down the hall, through the shadows, into the brighter light of the lobby. He saw that two of the windows had already broken, their shards and splinters glittering on the floor in the gray light. Now, even as he watched, thunder crashed and lightning flickered and another window exploded and then another. The wind brought the rain lashing in through the openings. More lightning. More thunder. And then the fog tumbled into the corridor.

And the malevolents came with it.

Lit by the flickering blasts of light, the monsters climbed through the broken windows, fighting with one another to be the first in. They tore at one another’s rotting piebald flesh with their toxic claws. The jagged broken glass tore at them, too. They screamed—and their horrible screams were lost beneath the wild, raging thunder. But nothing slowed them down. Nothing stopped them. As the mist hissed into the school, as the wind-whipped rain drenched the glass-strewn floor, as the thunder and lightning rocked the school and lit the corridor, the malevolents tumbled through the windows, staggering across the hall, sniffing the air and eyeing the darkness, searching for their prey.

There was no chance of getting past them. No chance of fighting so many. Tom had to find another way out.

He turned and looked away from the lobby, down the other hall. At the rear of the school, there were doors leading onto the athletic fields. Maybe there was still a chance he could reach them before the fog surrounded the school entirely. He could cross the fields and climb the fence and make his way to town, to Pinewood Lane, to Karen Lee.

Panting, terrified, he left the lobby of monsters behind and took off down the hall to the back of the school at top speed. Yet, even now, even in his fear, he was aware of the heaviness and confusion inside him.

Look at yourself, Tom. Really look at yourself for a change. Look at your life. You’ve lost your brother. You’ve lost your friends. You’ve spent years pining for a girl who despises you…

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