Andrew Klavan - Nightmare City

Tom moved around the brightly lit family room until he could see the front of the TV. There on the screen, sure enough, was the doctor show in progress. It was the usual sort of scene: a bunch of doctors and nurses and aides crowded frantically around a gurney as they rolled it into the emergency room. Everybody shouting about a GSW—which meant a gunshot wound, as Tom knew from a Sentinel story he’d written about the Springland police. Tom couldn’t see the patient on the gurney, but he was sure it was someone on the brink of death. Patients were always on the brink of death on The Cooper Practice . Nothing new about that. Nothing strange at all.

But where had Mom gone off to after she turned the TV on?

Tom found the remote lying on one of the chairs. He picked it up and clicked the TV off.

“Mom?” he shouted.

But no—no answer here either. There was just the same silence as there was upstairs: that silence that made him feel the place was empty.

All right , he thought. Enough of this stupidity. Let’s find out what’s going on. Right now .

Tom jogged upstairs, taking the steps two at a time, pausing only to hit the light switch at the top. ( Electricity costs money , he could practically hear his mom say.)

He swung round the corner. Jogged down the hall. Up the stairs again. Back into his bedroom. He retrieved his cell phone from where it was still lying on the worktable. He hit the button to call up his speed-dial list.

“What?” Tom whispered aloud into the silent house.

The speed-dial list was empty.

All right. Must’ve accidentally erased the list. Or something. No big deal. He went into his contacts list.

Again Tom spoke out loud, more than a whisper this time: “What. Is. Going. On?”

His contacts list had been completely erased as well.

For a second, Tom actually considered the possibility he was still dreaming. Sure, why not? You see stuff like that in the movies, right? Guy has a scary dream, sees a monster. Then he thinks he wakes up; he thinks he’s safe. Then— Frang!— the monster leaps out at him, and it turns out he only dreamed he was waking up and he’s still in the nightmare. Maybe it was like that, Tom thought: he had dreamed he was in heaven and then…

But he looked up and his eyes traveled around the room, his room. His familiar room with everything where it ought to be. And he knew this was real, this was really happening. It was no dream.

Okay , he thought. Don’t panic. Think. You’re a reporter. Find the answer. Figure it out .

He knew his mom’s number by heart. She had told him once: The problem with speed dials and contacts lists is that you never need to memorize a phone number . And he had said: Why would you ever want to memorize a phone number? And she had said: Well, in case you’re lost somewhere without your phone . And he had replied sarcastically: Yeah, Mom. Like that’s gonna happen!

But all the same, Mom wasn’t a big worrier, so when she did worry, it stuck in his head. He’d memorized her number one day, just in case.

He dialed the number now.

As the phone started ringing against his ear, he moved back out of the room, back down the hall to the stairs. He was just starting down the stairs again as the ringing stopped.

And there—hallelujah!—there was Mom, her voice coming over the phone: “Tom?”

Tom rolled his eyes with relief. “Mom! There you are!”

“Tom, can you hear me?” Mom said.

“Yeah, I’m right here,” he said into the phone loudly. “Where are you?”

“Tom! Tom, are you hearing me?”

“Mom, I’m right here!” he shouted. “Can you hear me? I’m at home. Where are you?”

There was a pause. Then something awful happened, something that made Tom’s stomach go hollow with fear. He was just coming off the last stair into the front hall again when he heard Mom say, “Oh, Tom, please say you hear me! Please! Please…”

Tom opened his mouth to answer her, but only a whisper came out. “Mom?”

Mom was crying. He could hear it. She was crying hard. And that was bad. Mom almost never cried. Mom was a girl, and a very girly girl, but there was something really tough about her, too, something really strong. She cried when they buried Burt. She cried when the lieutenant colonel handed her the folded flag from Burt’s coffin, the overlong, coffin-sized flag that now hung on Tom’s bedroom wall. She cried then, sure. Tom cried, too. Everybody cried, even the lieutenant colonel. But that’s what it took—that’s how much it took to make Mom break down in tears. Other than that, it just didn’t happen.

Except that she was breaking down now on the phone.

“Tom, you have to hear me! You have to!” she said, her sobs almost overwhelming the words.

Tom practically shouted back at her, “I hear you, Mom! I’m right here! I’m right here! I can hear you! Where are you? What’s the matter?”

“Oh, Tom, please!” Mom cried, almost hysterical now—and Mom never got hysterical, never. “Please answer me!”

Tom clutched at his own hair in frustration. “Mom, where are you? What’s wrong? Tell me where you are! I hear you!”

And then there was a sound that made Tom’s heart squeeze tight in his chest. That double beep.

He looked at the readout on the phone: Connection lost .

“No!”

Tom shouted out loud in his frustration. Quickly, he pressed the Redial button. The phone sang out its series of tones and then began ringing again. It rang twice… three times…

“Come on!” Tom willed his mother to answer.

Where was she?

In the middle of the fourth ring, the ring broke off.

“Mom?” Tom said eagerly.

“You’ve reached Ann Harding’s cell phone. Please leave a message after the tone.”

Her voice mail!

The tone sounded. Tom started talking rapidly, urgently. “Mom, it’s me. Listen. Where are you? I heard you before but you couldn’t hear me. Everything’s so bizarre here. Call me back as soon as you get this! Okay?”

He hung up. His unsteady hand slowly fell to his side.

What. Is. Going. On?

Has to be an explanation , he thought. Has to be, has to be, has to be. There always is .

But that horrible, horrible sound of his mother’s frantic crying came back to him and he realized: even if there was an explanation, it wasn’t going to be good.

Tom stood there, thinking, trying to figure out what to do next. His eyes moved slowly around the front hall. His gaze traveled over the large photo portrait that hung on the wall—right next to the hall closet so it was the first thing you saw when you came in. It was a photo of the three of them: Mom, Burt, and Tom. A blowup of the portrait they’d had taken for the church directory. Mom was sitting in a chair. Burt was behind her to the right, wearing his uniform. Tom was in a jacket and tie behind her to the left. Each of the brothers had one hand on Mom’s shoulder. Tom’s glance moved past the framed photo to the small wooden cross that hung beside it—then onto the sidelight beside the door, to the pane that held the gold star sticker that marked this as the home of a family that had lost someone in the war.

Tom gazed absently at the star for a minute—and then the focus of his gaze shifted and he looked through the glass to the outside.

The marine layer had thickened out there. The fog had crept in closer to the house. The whiteness hunkered and swirled over the edge of the grass. The end of the driveway was misted over, almost invisible.

Tom stared out, trying to think. He saw the fog shift a little.

Someone was standing there!