Nightmare City Part 17

He cast an appeal at the eyes looking down on him. The eyes were silent now. It didn't matter. He didn't need the eyes to tell him what he had to do. He already knew. He had to try.

He gathered himself for the attempt. If moving his hand had been hard, how much harder was it going to be to get his whole body moving? Another moment of focus, and then, grunting with the explosive effort, he rolled onto his stomach, blood spilling over his lips as he coughed and gasped for air.

He managed to lift his head, to lift his eyes and look out ahead of him. It was hard to see. Harder than ever. It was getting darker. And he was fading. And there was something else, too. What was that? Tom squinted. Stared.

Fog. Yes. Thick fog just beyond the edge of the chapel. The marine layer seemed to have moved in as he was lying there. The cottony white ma.s.s had pushed up across the mountain, swallowing the stunted, fire-charred trees until they were nothing but twisted black figures in the depths of the mist. It seemed to Tom the fog was full of such figures, and that they were almost more like hunched, hulking human shapes than like trees. It seemed to him these creatures hunkered in the depths of the fog were waiting for him to come toward them, pacing like zombies and waiting until they could get their claws on him and devour him. And the look of them, their eyes. They were so . . . so . . .

. . . malevolent, he thought.

He shook his head trying to clear it, but the fog-and the creatures hulking in the fog-remained. Sweat poured down into his eyes, making them sting. The rain made his hair feel heavy and damp.

He was losing strength fast. If he was going to move, he had to move now. Whatever was in that fog-trees or creatures-whatever-he was going to have to face them, get past them, get to that balcony of rock.

He started crawling. Well, crawling was too nice a word for it. Clutching his phone in his hand, he started dragging himself over the chapel floor, elbow and knee forward-drag-the other elbow and knee forward-drag. The effort made him cough again. The cough brought more blood up into his mouth. The blood spilled out, dripping down his chin.

He dragged himself elbow over elbow, inch by inch, toward the edge of the chapel floor. He tumbled off the edge into the dirt, and even though it was hardly any distance at all, he felt like he had fallen off a ten-story building. The landing jolted him and made him cough again. He spit blood, staining the earth.

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 s.h.i.+ft 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 b.u.t.ton.

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.

"h.e.l.lo?" said the operator. "Is anyone there? What's your emergency?"

Tom forced himself to speak.

"The monastery."

"What? What? h.e.l.lo?"

"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.

PART IV.

THE RETURN OF THE LYING MAN.

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 s.h.i.+eld 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 s.p.a.ce between them, the uncrossable s.p.a.ce. 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 b.u.t.ton 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 b.u.t.ton 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.

How had he gotten here? He looked down at himself. There were cords and tubes running in and out of him. There was a contraption attached to his index finger that ran to a machine on the nightstand beside his bed. The numbers on the machine glowed with a red light, showing his pulse rate. Standing beside the nightstand was a pole with a bag of fluid hanging on it. A tube ran out of the bag and down to a gauze bandage on his arm. Tom had been in the hospital once before when he'd had appendicitis, and he knew that under the bandage there was an unpleasantly large needle embedded in his flesh, carrying the fluid into his vein. As he continued to examine himself, he saw that his upper body was wrapped in bandages beneath his pajamas. He'd clearly been injured pretty badly.

He turned his head. On the opposite side of the room from the window, there was another bed. It was empty now, but there had been a man in it before, a lanky young man with long blond hair. Tom wasn't sure how he knew this, but he knew the man had cut his wrists for some reason, trying to kill himself. The young man had lingered for a while in a coma, but he hadn't made it through. He was gone.

Tom looked up at the ceiling. He tried to remember what had happened to him. There had been pain. Fog. Those weird monsters . . .

No, that couldn't be right. That didn't make sense. A dream.

Well, he was sure to find out the truth eventually. Finding out the truth was a habit with him-more of an obsession, really. The important thing for right now was that he was getting better. He could feel it. Weak as he was, he could feel the strength beginning to return to him. Soon he'd be on his feet again, back in his ordinary life. Life had been pretty rough these last six months, since Burt had died. But he thought maybe now it would start to get better. He would always miss Burt. But Burt was okay. Burt was good. He wasn't sure how he knew that either, but he did.

And for himself, after all the grief he'd felt, he knew now there'd be good times, too. He looked forward to being back in school. He could imagine himself sitting at his desk in the Sentinel's office again, joking around with Lisa. He could see Lisa's pale, freckled face framed by the tumbling red hair, the bright green eyes behind the round gla.s.ses. He smiled to himself, lying in the dark. He'd never actually realized until now how much he liked her-really liked her. And she liked him, too, didn't she? Funny, that had never occurred to him before. It was probably because he'd wasted too much time pining for . . .

Marie.

He stopped smiling.

Marie. Yes. All at once, he remembered. Marie flirting with him at school. Kissing him outside her house. Smiling at him at the dining room table as her father toasted him with an orange juice gla.s.s while the rainbows from the chandelier prisms danced around them. And then . . . and then Marie and Gordon in the gym and the things she had said when she didn't know Tom was listening. And then Dr. Cameron . . .

The rest came back to him in one sudden rush.

You'll be pulling a thread that will unravel relations.h.i.+ps throughout this town, throughout this state, even beyond that.

The burned-out monastery amid the blackened trees. Dr. Cameron standing at the chapel entrance, the gun in his hand.

This is what happens to people who can't keep their mouths shut.

The gunshot.

Tom opened his mouth, breathing hard. The memories fell into place like playing cards riffled by an invisible hand. Dr. Cameron had tried to murder him because he'd found out that he was the one selling drugs to the football team. His debt; his borrowing; his drug dealing; his gambling-the whole deal. He had the evidence-Karen Lee's story-recorded on his phone.

He realized he had to tell someone right away. He had to make the story public fast in order to protect Karen Lee from Dr. Cameron's retribution. And he had to tell the police as well.

He remembered his mother reaching for the Call b.u.t.ton by his bed-to summon the nurse. That's what he had to do. Summon the nurse. Have her call his mom. Lisa. The cops.

Fully awake now finally, he gingerly turned around on the mattress. He saw the tube with the Call b.u.t.ton dangling from a cord on the wall. His chest ached as he reached across himself with his free arm-the arm without the needle in it-as he reached for the b.u.t.ton.

But just then, the door swung open. A man stood in the doorway. His figure was silhouetted by the light from the hall, but Tom could see he was wearing the blue scrubs of a doctor. The man stepped forward and the door swung shut, covering the man in shadow.

Tom's fingers closed around the Call b.u.t.ton tube-but the very next moment, the tube was pulled from his fingers. The man in scrubs was standing directly over him.

"You never should have come back, Tom," he said. "You should have stayed in the monastery. You should have stayed dead."

Tom recognized the voice immediately: it was the Lying Man.

The red-light numbers on the pulse monitor rose rapidly as Tom's heart began to pound in his aching chest. The Lying Man looked down at him from what seemed a great height.

"Believe me, your death is the best thing for everyone," he said in his calm, hypnotic, soothing voice. "You had no business coming back."

Tom remembered everything in that moment. The empty house. The fog in the streets. The malevolents reaching for him with their long claws, trying to tear him apart. It wasn't a dream. It wasn't a dream at all. It was real.

And the Lying Man was real. The King of Death had come back to claim him. Tom peered up through the darkness until the Lying Man's face became clear above him: Dr. Cameron.

"I didn't want to take this risk," he told Tom serenely. "I hoped you'd have the good sense to die when you were supposed to. I thought you were dead when I left you at the monastery. But you just don't know when to quit, Tom. So I'll have to help you. This won't take long. And the way I do it, it won't even leave a trace. After all, I'm a doctor. And I'll tell them: your lungs just couldn't heal . . ."

Tom tried to shout for help, but his voice was too weak-and Dr. Cameron was way too fast. The big man moved like a panther. He yanked the pillow out from under Tom's head-and in the same motion, in the same second-brought it down over Tom's face.

The doctor was strong-and Tom had no strength in him at all. The pillow pressed down, pinning him to the bed. It closed off his nose and mouth, cut off his air completely. He felt his lungs working helplessly in his aching chest. He couldn't draw breath. He was suffocating.

He tried to fight, to get out from under, but it was no use. He reached up and tried to push Dr. Cameron's hands away, but the man's arms were immensely powerful, locked into position, like stone pillars, unmovable. With every second Tom tried to push them away, he lost strength. A dizziness began to swim around him. He felt he was sinking into unconsciousness. He knew that this time he would never return.

He stopped fighting, stopped trying to push at Cameron's hands. Instead, he dropped his arms, reached across himself. Felt for the bandage on the inside of his elbow. As the airless heat beneath the pillow closed over him like a sprung trap, as his consciousness began to swim and spin away, he tore the bandage off his own skin. Felt for the end of the tube, for the needle embedded in his flesh.

He ripped the needle out of himself and blindly plunged it into Cameron's body.

Through the m.u.f.fling pillow, Tom heard the doctor cry out in pain. He felt the man's hold on the pillow loosen. With all the strength he had, Tom twisted his body away from him, out from under the pillow. He rolled over onto his side, taking a great, welcome gasp of air.