Nightmare City (12 page)

“I’m sitting beside your hospital bed. I’m holding your hand just like this. I’m talking to you. The doctors said that if I talked to you, you might be able to hear me.”

“I do hear you,” he said. “I mean . . . I don’t think . . . I don’t think this is what you’re really saying exactly. I think a lot of this conversation is me talking to myself in my own mind. But I hear the sound of your voice and . . . I can feel you’re there. And I’m glad you’re there, Lisa. You’ve always been a good friend.”

Lisa tried to smile, but her mouth trembled down quickly in a deep frown. The lenses of her glasses grew misty. And a thought flashed through Tom’s mind, a new thought, one he’d never had before. It was a thought he could barely believe, but there it was anyway. He thought that maybe Lisa
liked him—really liked him, not just as a friend, but as more than that. Funny, all that time they’d spent together in the
Sentinel’s
office, and he’d never noticed it before. Until this moment, he’d been thinking about Marie so much, yearning for Marie so much, that it never crossed his mind.

Lisa’s grip tightened on his hand. “Tom,” she said softly. “Listen to me. The doctors say . . .”

She faltered. He answered her grip with his own. “Go on.”

“The doctors say if they lose you again, if your heart stops beating again, they doubt they’ll be able to revive you. They doubt you’ll be strong enough to make it back. And you’ve got to make it back, Tommy! You’ve got to. I don’t think I could . . . I don’t think your mother could survive if she lost you like she lost Burt.”

“Right. Right.” Tom took a deep breath, braced himself. “What are my chances?” he asked her. “Did the doctors say? What are the chances I’ll come out of this coma alive?”

“They said . . .” Lisa’s voice broke. A single tear spilled from behind her misted lenses, rolled down her freckled cheek. “They said they didn’t know. They said it was fifty-fifty. It could go either way.”

Tom made a noise:
whew
. “Fifty-fifty,” he repeated. “And if I die again, I’m done for. So I only have one more chance, and if the malevolents get me this time . . .”

Lisa only nodded, unable to speak.

Tom swallowed hard. “Fifty-fifty. One chance. Live or die. Man, that’s scary. I’m scared, Lisa. I’m seventeen. I’m not ready to die. But I don’t know if I’ve got the courage to . . .”

“Shh! Shh!” She put a finger to his lips, silencing him. Then she pulled her hand away to wipe her cheek dry. “You have plenty of courage. All you need. More.”

“I don’t know, I don’t know,” said Tom. “I was never the hero type. Not like Burt.”

“Yes, you are,” Lisa told him, crying harder. “You’re just as brave as Burt ever was. Just in a different way, that’s all. That’s . . .” She couldn’t finish. She bowed her head.

Tom looked at her, looked at the top of her head, the part in her hair where a line of white scalp peeked through the wavy red. He didn’t know why, but the sight of it made her seem fragile to him somehow. Which was funny, seeing as he was the one in the coma, on the brink of death! But he was sorry now that he’d shown her his fear, sorry he’d made her cry. Even if she couldn’t really see it sitting there in the hospital next to his bed, he wanted to give her strength, to send his strength to her, his courage to her.

“Okay,” he said. “Okay. Fifty-fifty. It’s better than nothing, right? I’ll take my chances. But what do I do? How do I find my way out of here? How do I get out of this coma and get back to you?”

It was a long moment before Lisa could lift her head, could speak again. Then she said, “I’m not sure, but I can tell you what I think.”

Tom knew that the information she was giving him was really information coming from the depths of his own mind. But he needed to hear it. He needed to hear it spoken out loud. He said, “Go on.”

“I think there’s something holding you here, something that won’t let you leave.”

“Okay. Like what?”

“I don’t know. Believe me, if I knew I would tell you. But there’s something, something that wants to keep you in the dark, that wants to keep you in this coma, that maybe even . . . even wants you to die.”

“Whoa.” He swallowed hard. “Whoa,” he said again. “How do I find it, then? How do I get rid of it?”

“Well, whatever it is,” Lisa said, “it must be here somewhere. It must be something inside your own mind. Something you know but can’t get to somehow.”

“You mean, like, something I’ve forgotten. Or something I’m blocking out.”

“That’s right. I think . . . ,” Lisa went on—and Tom could tell she was working it out as she spoke. “I think maybe if you could find out what happened to you, find out who shot you—who shot you and why—then you
could break the barrier, break through and face the truth and wake up.”

Her damp eyes gazed into his with so much feeling that Tom looked away, embarrassed. He looked down at the table.

“That’s got to be it, Tom,” Lisa said. “Find the truth. The truth is always the way, even when it’s scary, even when it’s hard. It’s like the Bible says, you know. Find the truth—and the truth will set you free.”

Tom felt a fresh energy go through him, a fresh fire of inspiration. He raised his eyes to hers. They looked at each other for a long moment, and Tom had the strangest feeling that he had never really seen Lisa before. Sure, he’d seen her face. He’d seen her goofy sense of humor and her insecurity about her looks. He’d seen her courage in trying to deal with her parents’ divorce and with the fact that she and her mom didn’t have much money anymore, even though they used to be rich. He’d seen her—but he’d never seen her like this, never seen the sweet whole of her, the way he was seeing her now, here in his imagination. It was a sight that filled him up in a way he couldn’t have described.

Slowly, she drew her hand away from him.

A new bout of fear went through him. “Don’t,” he whispered before he could stop himself. “Don’t leave me.”

“I have to, Tom.” She stood up. “This isn’t something I can do with you.” She tried to smile. “I’m just the editor,
right? I can send you out on a story, but you’ve got to find the answers on your own.”

He looked up at her. He tried his best to smile. “Man! This imagination—it can be a pretty scary place, you know? I don’t want to be alone in here.”

“Oh, Tommy,” said Lisa. “You’re not alone!” Quickly, she reached behind her neck and undid the clasp of her gold necklace. She drew it off her throat and pressed it into his hand. Tom looked down and saw the gold cross gleaming in his palm. “You’re not alone, Tommy,” Lisa said again. “Just find the truth. And the truth will set you free.”

Tom closed his fist around her necklace and held it fast.

The next time he looked up, Lisa was gone.

15.

T
he moments passed. The house was silent around him. The fog gathered in the backyard. Tom knew his time was running out and yet second after second, he sat where he was, staring at his closed fist.

Find the
truth, and the truth will set you free
.

All right. Good advice. But how did he do it? How could he find the truth? Where did he begin?

Come on
, he told himself.
You’re the steely-eyed, big-brained reporter. Figure it out, bro
.

He shook his fist as he went on gazing down at it. To find the whole truth, he needed to know who shot him—who shot him, and why. And hey, how hard could it be to get that information? He had been shot in the chest, after all. The person who shot him must have been standing right in front of him. He must have seen the person at the time it happened. He must already know who it was. So, as Lisa said, the answer must be here somewhere, somewhere inside his mind. But where?

Well, his memory, that’s where.

Being in a coma and all, being trapped inside his own imagination, there were obviously things he couldn’t remember. So to find those things, somehow he had to get from here, from his imagination, to his memory. But where was that?

Go to the monastery, Tom. That’s where the answers are
.

He almost heard Marie’s gentle voice speak the words. Marie had told him to go to the monastery. That must be the way, and yet . . .

And yet, it didn’t make sense to him. The way to his memory should be through the things he remembered. But he didn’t remember being in the monastery. He didn’t remember that at all.

There was something else, too. The man in the computer. The Lying Man who had told him that the monsters
were gone and it was safe to go out into the hall. The Lying Man had told him to go to the monastery, too. The Lying Man had also told him that’s where the answers were. Now, okay, maybe the Lying Man had told him the truth about the monastery just to trick him into leaving his bedroom. But Tom had a feeling that the Lying Man never told the truth, not really. Tom had the feeling that everything the Lying Man said was either an outright lie or some other kind of deception.

As he thought about that, an image came into his mind. It was the image of Marie, sitting right here, right in the kitchen, at this very table. He remembered the way she reacted when he wanted to answer his phone. The way she tried to stop him when he wanted to go downstairs to see his brother on TV. Why would she do that? Why would she try to stop him from seeing Burt? Why didn’t she want him to answer the phone?

It’s not that he didn’t trust Marie, he told himself. That would be crazy. Why wouldn’t he trust her? It was just that . . . well, he didn’t want to do anything the Lying Man told him to do, that’s all. That’s all.

So where did that leave him?

The seconds passed. He went on sitting there, gripping the necklace, shaking his fist as he thought it through. And a fresh idea came to him. He wanted to get from here to
his memory, right? So where was the borderline between the two territories? The border of his memory must be marked by the things he
almost
remembered but couldn’t remember completely. If he could find his way to something he
almost
remembered but couldn’t quite bring back, then he knew he could find his way from there to the rest of it, the things he had forgotten completely or had blocked out.

What do I almost remember?
he asked himself.

The answer came to him at once. The woman in the white blouse. The woman who had called him on the phone and tried to talk to him through the static. She was the one who had called him back from the brink of death, trying to reach him, trying to tell him something. He knew who she was—sort of—but he could not quite place her, could not quite call her identity to mind.

But he knew where to find her, didn’t he? He knew where to start at least. She had told him herself.

The office of the
Sentinel
in the basement of the school. He had written her address down on a piece of paper there. That was where the memory trail began. If he could find that address, he could find the woman in the white blouse. If he could find her, he knew somehow that he could find his way back to the rest of it, to everything.

Tom let out a long, unsteady sigh and opened his fist. His hand was empty. Lisa’s necklace was gone. He didn’t
mind. He knew Lisa herself was still there, still nearby, sitting by his bed, praying for him, waiting for him.

You’re not alone, Tommy
.

He looked up. Looked out the window. The fog was now rolling in across the far edges of the backyard. Already, the hedges that marked the Laughlins’ property had vanished beneath a pillowy whiteness. Already, Tom could see hulking, limping shadows moving in that whiteness. The malevolents. Coming back for him.

He stood up, the chair scraping the floor beneath him. He had to go. He had to find his memory, find the truth. He had to get to the school, to the
Sentinel
’s office.

And that meant he had to leave the house and go out into the fog.

16.

H
e felt the fear flare inside him as he moved down the hall to the stairs. But he felt something else, too: the old pulse of curiosity, the old fever for the answers. As he passed the front door, he glanced out the sidelight. He glimpsed the thickening sheets of mist covering the front lawn. Pretty frightening—but there was no point in dwelling on it. He turned away and dashed up the stairs, taking two at a time.

Into his bedroom. The baseball bat—the Louisville Slugger Warrior—was back in his closet, as if he’d never removed it. He reached in and felt the cool of the aluminum against his hand. It made him feel a little better to grip the bat and bring it out. He was going to need a weapon out there. The Warrior wasn’t much, but it was all he had.

He went to the computer table. Collected his phone and his keys. He started back to the bedroom door—and as he did, there was a soft sound behind him. A brief electronic sizzle, almost like a whisper. Tom stopped in his tracks. He knew where the sound was coming from. The computer. He glanced over his shoulder at it. The little whisper of sound came again, and at the same time there was the faintest hint of light in the depths of the monitor, the faintest appearance of a shape, a silhouetted figure.

Something was in there. Someone. Trying to get out. Trying to talk to him.

The Lying Man.

Tom stood where he was a moment. He was tempted to wait, tempted to listen. It was just that this place—his house, his empty house—was so lonely now. And he was afraid, afraid of going outside. The musical, soothing sound of the Lying Man’s voice would be some sort of company, some sort of comfort, even if it told him lies.

It cost Tom a measure of will to turn away, but he did
turn away. Lies were of no use to him now. Before the computer could make another noise, he hurried out the door, carrying his baseball bat with him.

Back down the hall. Back down the stairs. Back to the front door. He pulled it open.

A heaviness came into his belly; a darkness came into his heart. The forward wall of the marine layer had now crept up over the edge of the driveway and was tumbling steadily toward him. He couldn’t see the malevolents in the depths of the whiteness yet, but he knew they were there. Close. Getting closer.