Andrew Klavan - Nightmare City

And then he slid off the edge of the bed and tumbled to the floor.

It was a long drop, and he hit hard. He took the jolt on his shoulder, but he felt it in his chest, a jarring, rattling pain. He coughed, trying to catch his breath. The room filled with a high-pitched alarm as the heart monitor wire was torn off his finger and the monitor flatlined, its red numbers dropping to zero as if Tom had died.

Tom had not died. Not yet. But now Dr. Cameron cursed and came at him once again.

Tom caught a glimpse of the man striding around the bed, charging through the shadows. The heart monitor continued its high-pitched scream, and Tom wished he had the breath to echo it.

Dr. Cameron swiftly turned the corner of the bed. Tom rolled over again. He hit the table under the window. Ignoring the pain in his chest, he reached up and grabbed the table’s edge. He pulled himself up on it and reached for the flower vase with his free hand.

Dr. Cameron grabbed him, his fingers digging into his shoulder. Tom was shocked at the power of the man’s grip. Dr. Cameron started to force him down to the floor.

Tom wrapped his hand around the flower vase and brought it crashing into the side of Dr. Cameron’s head.

Dr. Cameron shouted as the vase shattered, as the broken edge of it sliced into his cheek. Blinded and in pain, he reared back, rose up, clutching at his own eyes.

At the same moment, the door of the room opened. A nurse came rushing in, flipping on the light.

She had heard the alarm—the heart monitor. She had seen the readout at the nursing station down the hall. She had seen the numbers drop. She’d come rushing in to make sure Tom was all right. As the room was flooded with light, she saw Dr. Cameron staggering backward, clutching at his bleeding face.

“Doctor?” she said. “Are you all right?”

Over the endless scream of the monitor’s alarm, Tom heard Dr. Cameron shout, “Get out of my way!” Propped against the table, he saw the bleeding doctor stumble toward the nurse and shove her aside as he headed for the door.

Coughing, Tom slid down to the floor. He stared up at the ceiling. He heard Dr. Cameron’s footsteps running away down the hall. And yet he thought he could still hear him nearby, speaking into his ear.

No, it wasn’t Dr. Cameron. It was the Lying Man.

You just don’t know when to quit, Tom , he said.

Tom closed his eyes and smiled weakly. “I’ll never quit,” he whispered.

It was all the same,” said Tom, “but it was all different.”

He was in the living room of his house. He was sitting in the easy chair, a blanket over his legs. His mother and Lisa were sitting on the sofa across from him, directly beneath the wall of windows. Tom had been home from the hospital only a week. He still didn’t have a lot of strength. He could barely walk a few steps before he had to rest again.

He pointed at the windows. “That’s where the malevolents came through. They broke right through the glass. I ran past them to the stairs and got into my room. But the Lying Man talked me into leaving and then they got me. That was the second time my heart stopped. After that, Lisa came and we figured out together what was going on.”

“Glad I could help,” said Lisa with a quirky smile.

“What a strange dream,” said Tom’s mother.

“I don’t think it was a dream,” Tom told her. “Not exactly. I think it was all true somehow. It was just… I was just seeing it with my imagination, you know?”

Tom’s mom made a puzzled face, but Lisa said, “No, I get that. I believe that. Just because something happens in your imagination, that doesn’t mean it’s imaginary.”

Tom let out a startled laugh. “That’s just what you said when you came to the house. Almost those exact words. It was really helpful.”

“Really?” said Lisa. She preened herself comically, fluffing her hair, trying to hide the fact that she really was pleased. “That just shows you how wise I am even when I’m only in your mind.”

“You know, it does actually,” Tom said to her—and the way he said it made Lisa blush, which, in turn, gave Tom a great deal of pleasure.

“Personally,” Tom’s mother chimed in, “I find the real world dangerous enough without having to imagine anything. I really don’t know what I would have done if I had lost you…” Those last words were muffled in tears. She raised her hand to her overflowing eyes.

Lisa reached out and touched her arm. “Don’t worry,” she said. “Tom would never die when there was still a good story to tell.”

Tom laughed and coughed. “It was a good story, all right. It was a great story.”

It was. The fall of Dr. Cameron had been fast and hard. If anyone—any of the doctor’s friends on the police force or in the government—had been thinking of helping him or trying to cover up for him, they thought better of it when Tom’s follow-up story explaining who had supplied drugs to the Tigers hit first the Sentinel , and then—as Lisa’s bluff became reality—the front page of USA Today . Next, the big news sites on the Web had picked it up: “School Paper Busts Drug-Dealing Doc.” There had even been a couple of TV stories about it. Fox News and CNN had both interviewed Lisa, and both wanted to interview Tom when he was well enough. Given the publicity—and given Karen Lee’s testimony and the testimony from some of the Tigers players—and given Tom’s testimony about being shot and assaulted in his hospital room, Dr. Cameron had been charged with attempted murder and various counts of drug dealing. If he was convicted, he could go to prison for life. Coach Petrie was now under investigation as well. And rumor had it that the investigation was starting to spread out to others who had received drugs from the doctor, people with organized-crime connections that went beyond the state line.

There was no telling where it would end. It was a great story. And it had all started with Tom.

Tom’s mother’s eyes still glistened with tears, but she smiled. “It’s amazing,” she said. “I raised two heroes. Burt would risk everything to protect people, and Tom would risk everything to get to the truth.”

“Well,” Tom said, “the truth will set you free, right?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Lisa said with a laugh. “I don’t think it’s going to work out that way for Dr. Cameron.”

Tom’s mother got up from the sofa and came toward him. “I’m proud of both my boys,” she said, “but I’ll tell you, Lisa: having hero sons is not easy on a mom. Not easy at all.”

She came to where Tom sat and adjusted the blanket on his legs. She had put a mug full of chicken soup on the table beside him. She lifted it now and put it into his hands.

“Drink some of this,” she said, her eyes still wet and glistening. “You need to build up your strength.”

As Tom took the mug, he looked past his mother at Lisa. He rolled his eyes secretly and she lifted her shoulders in an amiable shrug. The truth was: Tom hated chicken soup. He hated having a blanket on his legs as if he were an old man. He wasn’t even cold. And he wasn’t particularly hungry either. He didn’t really want his mother fussing over him and worrying about him all the time.

But he lifted his cheek to her as she leaned down to kiss him. He said, “Thanks, Mom.” And he drank the soup.

There were some truths he would never tell.

1. Have you ever found yourself in a situation where nothing felt right: people close to you seemed to be missing, nothing seemed “normal”? How did you respond? What did you think was happening?

2. Tom feels like he’s won the lottery now that Marie seems to be interested in him—and he wants to believe everything she tells him. Do you think he was too trusting of her? Would you have been?