Andrew Klavan - Nightmare City

He rolled over onto his back, exhausted. The rain fell onto his face. The blood gurgled in his throat so that he thought he would strangle on it. With a groan, he rolled over onto his belly again and kept dragging himself through the dirt—right into the fog.

But a strange thing happened now. The fog began to dissolve around him. With every yard of ground Tom crawled, a yard of fog dissipated into a mere drizzle, and the front of the marine layer seemed to recede. The creatures inside the fog fell back with it. Where they had stood, the twisted trees began to appear more clearly on every side of him. Still hanging on to his phone, Tom dragged himself another yard and another, and the mist and its malevolent creatures continued to dissolve around him, the main body of the fog and the things within continued to fall back like an army in retreat. There was the shelf of rock up ahead, now visible as the fog vanished. There were the lights of the town sparkling through the mist in the gathering night below. It took every ounce of his failing will and failing strength to shift his arm and leg forward one more time, to dig his elbow into the ground and brace his knee against the surface and push and push and push himself forward another few inches, another half a foot, but he did it, and then he started the process all over again. The sweat and rain mingled on his forehead. The breath wheezed and whistled in his closing throat. He thought of nothing, focused on nothing but moving his body through the dirt, beneath the blackened trees, and through the light, cold rain that fell on him as the fog dissolved.

Now—to his astonishment—his hand touched the cold rock. He saw the white of it beneath his face. He lifted his eyes and saw the cliff. There was no more fog at all, no more trees over him or in front of him. There was nothing but the open sky. His phone was still gripped in his sweaty, dirty hand. He brought it slowly up in front of his face.

No service .

The same message on the readout as before. No signal at all.

But then the message winked out. In its place, there was a bar, a single bar. He had a signal. A low signal. But maybe it was enough.

He coughed blood. He moved his shaky thumb over the dial pad. It hovered over the Redial button.

Don’t make a mistake , he thought. You won’t get another chance .

He brought his thumb down hard. He heard the tones playing through the speaker.

One bar , he thought. It has to be enough .

It was. Far away, he heard the phone ringing. He willed himself to lift the phone to his ear.

“Nine-one-one,” a woman’s voice said. “What’s your emergency?”

Tom opened his mouth to answer—and nothing came out but blood. He didn’t have the breath to form the words.

“Hello?” said the operator. “Is anyone there? What’s your emergency?”

Tom forced himself to speak.

“The monastery.”

“What? What? Hello?”

“The Santa Maria Monastery,” whispered Tom. “I’ve been shot. I’m dying. Help me.”

His hand and face fell to the rock together and he lost consciousness.

The garden was dark now. The people were gone. The white temples, the green lawns, the vivid flower gardens—all the colors seemed somehow to have drained out of them. They were all draped in shadow. They looked like the abandoned scenery of a stage set, covered in canvas after the show has ended.

Tom stood at the edge of the place he had thought was heaven. He lingered there as the twilight fell. As the scene grew darker around him, he saw that a new scene began to come into view beyond the garden’s far border. A light began breaking through the distant gloaming, a white radiance rising like the dawn. It seemed as if the garden had somehow blocked this light from his vision before and that now, as the temples and the paths and flowers faded, the hidden brilliance was revealed.

The light grew brighter as the garden shaded over into nothingness—brighter and brighter until Tom could barely look at it directly. Holding up his hand to shield his eyes, he squinted into the whiteness. There’s something in there , he thought. There were shapes dimly visible, rising and falling in a jagged skyline. A whole city, it seemed, was hidden in this radiance, vast and majestic towers and palaces rising obscurely in the depths of the light.

As Tom stood staring, trying to make out the details of the scene, a figure—a man—emerged from the glare and came toward him. He stepped to the edge of the visible and stopped. He was just a small shape against the bright skyline. But Tom knew him. Tom would have known him anywhere.

His heart in his throat, his eyes filling, Tom stood and gazed at the man across the vast space between them, the uncrossable space. He ached to go to him and see his face and hear his voice. But this was not that time.

The figure seemed to gaze back at him as the rising light began to engulf him. Then, very slowly, he lifted his right arm and set his hand against his forehead in a crisp military salute.

A single tear overflowed Tom’s eye and ran down his cheek. The distant light grew brighter and brighter. It was soon so bright that the saluting figure was obscured by its glare. And yet the light grew brighter still until finally it overcame the man completely. He seemed to vanish into it.

And there was nothing but the light.

With that, Tom opened his eyes and saw his mother. She was sleeping in a chair beside his hospital bed. She was leaning far forward, resting her head on her arms, resting her arms on the edge of his mattress.

Tom lifted his hand and touched her hair gently.

The gesture woke her at once. She raised her face, confused at first. She looked around for a moment and then seemed to remember where she was. Then she saw him.

“Tom?” she said, her voice breaking. “Tom!”

His mouth moved as he tried to whisper an answer.

Frantic, his mother reached for the plastic tube that hung beside his bed—the tube that held the Call button that would summon a nurse. The tube slipped through her trembling fingers twice before she could get ahold of it. Then she got it, pressed the button quickly—and let it drop.

She seized hold of Tom’s hand with both her hands. She brought his hand to her face and started kissing it again and again. She was weeping.

Tom’s eyes fluttered shut again. He did not have the strength to keep them open. His mother pressed his hand against her cheek and he felt her tears on the back of it. He heard her sobbing his name again and again.

His eyes closed, he smiled. He didn’t remember everything that happened, but he had a sure and certain understanding that he had found his way. Through the fog, through his memory, through his sorrow, out of his coma, back to his life.

And he was going to live.

The next time Tom woke, it was night and he was alone. At first, a thrill of fear went through him. He wasn’t sure why. What are you afraid of? he asked himself. In answer, images flashed through his mind: empty rooms, fog-shrouded streets, hunkering, malevolent zombies with their outstretched claws…

Like something out of a horror movie. He couldn’t make sense of it. I must’ve had a bad dream , he thought.

He looked around him. He was in a hospital room just as he had been before. His mother was gone now and the lights were out. The room was dark. As his eyes adjusted, Tom could see there was a TV hanging on the wall in front of him. There was a window on the wall to his left. Under the window was a small, low table with a vase of carnations on it.