Nightmare (14 page)

Carrie opened the door wearing a bathrobe. Her eyes were
puffy, her cheeks moist and red. The sight of her this way stopped me in my tracks. I couldn't quite believe this was the same girl
I'd met yesterday.

"What's going on?" I asked as she stepped aside to let me in,
closing the door behind me.

Carrie walked around me to sit up at the head of her bed,
leaning back on pillows. I wasn't sure whether I was supposed
to join her by sitting down or what, so I stood awkwardly at the
foot of the bed, trying to ignore the pain all over my body and
wishing I'd taken up the doctor on his offer to prescribe some
quality painkillers. I had been thinking that I didn't want anything in my system that might dull my senses just now, but the
nagging pain turned out to be equally distracting.

"I've been having nightmares," Carrie said, her voice an emotional squeak. "For about a week now."

"What kind of nightmares?" I asked, more out of an impatient
desire to get to the point than to express sympathy.

"I'm in this empty, dark place ... and I'm lost ... I'm being
chased by a dark figure. It's so vivid, so real. Sometimes it's hard
to think during the day because it keeps coming back to me."

I glanced at my watch. "I'm sorry to hear that, but I don't
understand why you called me."

Carrie had been staring far away as she recalled her dream,
but now her weary eyes, filled with fear, came into focus.

She stood from the bed and walked so close to me that she
violated my personal space. I was about to take a step back when
she turned her back to me.

"When I got out of the shower this morning, I found this."
She tugged at the back of her bathrobe until the collar fell down
a few inches.

A small, dark black symbol was on her skin right at the spot
where her head met her neck.

My heart skipped a beat and then returned with a heavy thud
against my rib cage.

"It's not a tattoo," Carrie whispered, barely able to choke the
words out through sobs. "And it won't come off."

I had never seen anything like it. It was complex for such
a small mark, with intricate shapes extending in labyrinthine
directions, crisscrossing over one another like a very complicated
knot.

It was a long minute before I could think of something
to say.

"You're sure you have no idea how it got onto your neck?"

Carrie just shook her head, trembling with the effort of trying to keep calm. Finally she spun back around to look me in
the eye. "Is what happened to Jordin ... happening to me? Am I
going to disappear or be abducted or something?"

"I don't know," I answered honestly. All thoughts of my first
class had just been shoved far out of my mind. "Come here. Sit
down."

I guided her unsteadily to the edge of the bed, where we sat
down side by side. My mind was racing through possibilities,
scenarios, all thoughts centered around a forensic analysis of
what was happening here, and I couldn't stop glancing at the
mark on Carrie's neck.

"Do you think someone could have broken into your room in
the night and put that on you while you were asleep?" I asked.

She wiped the tears from her eyes. "I'm a really light sleeper.
I would have heard someone breaking the lock long before they
ever touched me. Besides, the door's fine." She pointed at the door I had walked through just minutes ago. It was true; the door and
the lock were perfectly intact, with no sign of tampering.

"Why didn't you tell me about this yesterday?" I asked, thinking of how she had been the one to first reveal to me thatJordin
was having nightmares the entire week before she disappeared.
Didn't Carrie think it might be relevant that she herself had been
having nightmares for a week?

"I don't know. I guess I didn't want to believe that Jordin's
nightmares and mine could be related."

I don't know why I felt compelled to do what I did next.
Instinct took over.

"I need to ask you something that may sound strange," I
said.

"All right."

I took a deep breath and blurted it out. "Have you ever been
to the Ghost Town amusement park?"

If Carrie was confused or annoyed by this question, she didn't
show it. She was still trying not to cry. "Some friends and I have
been wanting to go for weeks," she said in a small voice, "but we
haven't made it yet."

My mind continued to spin. "What about Jordin? Has she
ever been to Ghost Town?"

Carrie took a moment to think. "I don't know. She didn't
mention it if she had."

I shook my head, clearing it. "Never mind, it was just a hunch.
Okay, whatever's happening to you seems connected to whatever
happened to Jordin-I think that's safe to assume. But it doesn't
mean you're going to just up and vanish like she did."

Carrie didn't look any more reassured. I did something thoroughly out of character and put my hand on her shoulder. It was awkward, and I couldn't seem to relax it enough for it to
feel natural to me, but Carrie's reaction indicated that she drew
strength from the gesture.

"I'm going to figure this out, okay?" I said. "We're going to
find Jordin, and we're going to figure out what this thing on you
is. In the meantime, I want you to go to Health Services and have
a doctor check you out. Have them look at that ... mark ... on
your neck, and make sure it's not infected or anything." I stood
up and took out my cell phone. "If you don't mind, I'd like to
take a picture of it."

Carrie nodded and wordlessly pulled her hair up while I
quickly took a close-up shot of the ugly black marking on her
neck.

I had already opened the door to go when I turned back to
look at Carrie, another thought jumping to mind. She still sat on
the bed right where I'd left her, as if frozen and afraid to move.

"Do the words `the nightmare' mean anything to you?" I
asked.

Carrie looked up at me, fast. Her eyes were huge. "That's
what it says-the figure in my dream!" she whispered, her voice
quivering again. "Over and over! It says, `The nightmare-' "

" `-is coming,' " I finished with her, the two of us saying the
phrase in chorus.

Silence hung in the air between us, lingering with a thick,
indescribable dread.

Early that evening, after informing Derek of what had happened in Carrie's room, I went back to use a computer in the
library since my own had been destroyed. Besides, I was grateful for an opportunity to work without Derek's prying eyes watching. This particular search was something I just wasn't prepared
to discuss with him. Not yet.

I typed the words "The nightmare is coming" in the browser's
search pane, placing the entire phrase in quotes, and I was surprised to see several hundred entries pop up. I scanned through
a dozen of them rapidly, learning that most of them were written
by people who had visited Ghost Town amusement park. Their
stories were similar to mine, with strange specters appearing
to them at various random locations throughout the park and
saying the foreboding phrase. But no two experiences seemed to
be the same, and none of them matched mine.

Next I found a message board that was dedicated to the
phrase, and most of the people that posted there were collecting utterances of the words at the amusement park, chronicling
the times and locations that it happened. The consensus seemed
to be that it was all some kind of interactive experience meant to
excite fans and build curiosity about the amusement park. That
wasn't what I was hoping to find.

So I ran a search for the exact phrase "Ghost Town amusement park."

The park had its own website, of course. But after spending
a few minutes surfing through some of its features-a dedicated
page all about the Haunted House, a look at some fan-written
reviews of numerous attractions at the park-I found it didn't
contain any info that was all that helpful. I looked for a staff application page, wondering if Ghost Town was hiring new employees, thinking that might be a possible justification for Jordin's
appearance there. It made no sense to me that super-rich Jordin
Cole would get a summer job working at an amusement park, but I wasn't ready to consider any explanations yet that ventured
outside of what was natural.

Coming up dry, I decided to try a different tack. I typed some
new terms into the search bar: "Ghost Town," "funded," and
"owner."

Several news stories came up from about a year ago, announcing the forthcoming opening of Ghost Town in New York. I
clicked on the first one. It was an article from the Times.

The article identified the primary investor in Ghost Town to
be something called DHI, though it failed to explain just what
DHI was.

I typed the three-letter acronym into the search bar and several possibilities came up. There was the Door and Hardware
Institute. Definitely not that one. DHI Water and Environment.
Doubtful. There was an advertising firm, a hair loss clinic, a home
building conglomerate.

I was about to give up when at the bottom of the page I spotted
Durham Holdings International. The link gave no indication of
what kind of business Durham Holdings was, so I clicked on it.

Up came a snazzy website that described DHI as an international investment firm, with partners in industries of all kinds,
from around the world. I clicked a link labeled "Assets" and
scanned the long list of company names.

There it was. "Ghost Town LLC."

I spent the next half hour reading up on Durham Holdings
International, absorbing all that I could. I walked away knowing that the company had been started by one Howell Durham,
a world-renowned wild game hunter and venture capitalist, and
that his company's interests were extremely diverse but mostly
based around new product development. I was disappointed to discover that its corporate headquarters were in Copenhagen,
which eliminated any chance that I would be able to pay them a
visit. From a world away, DHI was virtually untouchable.

All the while, a nagging thought kept tugging at the back
of my mind.

What if I was making too much out of nothing? Did I really
see and hear what I thought I did that night at the Haunted
House? What if it was just a psychosomatic response?

The thought kept intruding on my research to the point that
I finally decided to give in. Abandoning the web, I stood to my
feet and exited the library.

I had to know.

Ghost Town was located out on Long Island, just east of
Queens. It'd be a trek, but I wouldn't be deterred by this; it was
only six in the evening when I jumped on the train and I knew
Ghost Town would be open much later than most amusement
parks. This place was one of a kind, and scaring patrons was
easier to do late at night than during the day, so its operation
hours stretched deep into the night.

The place wasn't quite as packed as I remembered it from the
other night. That was a Saturday; this was a Tuesday, and with
summer over, visitors seemed less enticed.

A taxi from the station dropped me at the entrance, and I
paid the thirty-five-dollar admission fee, though it pained me
to turn that money loose for the sake of confirming what had
probably just been a kooky coincidence. But I did it, and made
a straight path for the Haunted House.

My theory was simple. If I walked through the tour again and the events inside unfolded exactly as they had before, then that
meant the attraction was nothing but smoke and mirrors, and
my overactive imagination was seeing patterns and connections
to things in my own life that weren't really there.

If it played out differently, however, then ... then that thought
led to dark places I didn't hope to explore.

Despite the park's diminished attendance, the wait in line for
the Haunted House was almost as long as before. At the entrance,
I was admitted with a pair of teenagers who looked like they were
on a date. They screamed and held each other tight at all the
predictable places. I tried to ignore their over-the-top reactions,
focusing instead on watching the attraction's events unfold with
a clinical detachment.