Nightmare City (2 page)

He got up. Went to the dresser, started pulling out some clothes, dropping himself into them: sweatpants and a Tigers sweatshirt. He figured he’d go for a run after breakfast, maybe hit the gym at the Y.

His room was small. The bed, the dresser, and the worktable were all crowded together. Just about every space on the blue wall was covered with some picture or decoration or something. There was his unusually long American flag. His pennant for the Tigers, the school’s football team. Another pennant for the Los Angeles Dodgers, even though, let’s be honest, they were going to stink this year. There was a picture of his brother, Burt, looking all brave and noble and cool in his army uniform. And a bulletin board with some snapshots of Tom and his mom and Burt and some of Tom’s friends. Then there were a couple of framed copies of the
Sentinel
. There was the issue that had his first front-page story on it: “Governor Visits Springland High.” And there was another—the one with the big story—the biggest story
and the one that started all the trouble for him. The banner headline was huge: “Sources: Tiger Champs Used Drugs.”

Tom left his bedroom and went down the hall to the bathroom—but he paused for a moment at the top of the stairway. He stood listening. His mom’s bedroom door was open and he could see her room was empty, her bed all made up. But he didn’t hear her moving around downstairs. That was kind of odd, actually. It was after eight. Normally this time of the morning on a weekend, Mom would be rattling around the kitchen or vacuuming, doing the housework she didn’t have time to do during the week. But the house was totally quiet below. Not a noise to be heard.

Tom continued into the bathroom, trying to explain the odd silence to himself. Maybe they’d run out of eggs and Mom had ducked out to the store for a minute to do the shopping. Or maybe she’d gotten up late and was just going down to the bottom of the driveway to get the newspaper.

Whatever. He washed up and shaved and stopped thinking about it. He was wondering instead if the Dodgers had won last night—for a change—and trying to remember who the starting pitcher had been.

He toweled the shaving cream off his face and took a look at himself in the mirror. He didn’t like his looks much. He didn’t think his face looked brave or noble or cool like his brother Burt’s face. But then maybe, like a lot of people,
he couldn’t see himself as others saw him. The fact was, when he used his fingers to brush his black hair back, his blue eyes shone out intense, smart, steely and unwavering. His features were narrow and sharp, serious and purposeful. He didn’t see it himself—he couldn’t see it—but anyone else who looked at him recognized a young man who knew how to go after what he wanted, a young man who could not easily be turned away.

He came out of the bathroom, went downstairs, thumping half the way down, creating the satisfying thunder of a buffalo stampede, then leaping the rest of the way, his hands on the banisters, his sneakers hitting the floor so hard when he landed that the light fixture in the foyer ceiling rattled. Now he was sure his mom wasn’t here, because normally when he came down the stairs like that, she’d call out to him with some snarky remark like, “Hark, I hear the pitterpatter of little feet.” Or something. But there was nothing. No noise in the house at all. Just silence.

He glanced out through the sidelight next to the front door, looking past the gold star decoration on the glass.
Well, that’s weird
, he thought. A puzzle. His mom’s Civic was in the driveway. So she hadn’t gone to the store. So where was she?

Tom was about to turn away when his sharp eye noticed something else, too. The newspaper was there, outside, lying
at the end of the driveway where the delivery guy had tossed it. That really
was
strange. His mom was the only one in the house who read the paper. Tom got the sports scores off his phone and checked the rest of the news online. But his mom—the first thing she did every morning—the second she came downstairs, before she started making breakfast, before she did anything—was bring in the paper so she could read it while she drank her coffee.

So yeah—a puzzle: Where was she?

“Mom?” he called.

Just the silence in answer. And it was that kind of silence that goes down deep. It made Tom feel sure that the house was empty.

He opened the door and stepped out. He went down the driveway, the gravel crunching under his feet. Bent down to pick up the paper. Straightened—and again, he paused. And again, it was strange . . . Like, really strange.

Tom lived in Springland, California. It was a small beach town north of L.A. Usually the weather was just about perfect here—clear skies, sixty-five degrees in winter, eighty in summer, seventy in between. Today, though—though it was late April—it was cold and damp. The marine layer—the fog—had come in off the water, and come in thick. To his right, Tom could see past the Colliers’ driveway next door, and after that there was nothing but a wall of drifting white
mist. Same to his left: he could see the Roths’ driveway and the Browns’ across the street—and then nothing but fog, slowly swirling in the early morning breeze.

But that’s not what was so strange. The fog was like that sometimes here. It would totally shroud the place in the morning, then burn off by noon and give way to a clear, warm Southern California day. No, it wasn’t the fog that made Tom pause.

It was the silence. Deep silence. Just like in the house. It made Tom feel like the entire neighborhood was empty. Which was crazy.

Alert, that pulse of curiosity beginning to rise in him, he turned his head slowly from side to side, looking, listening. Something was missing here. What was it?

It came to him. Birds. There were no birds singing. No birds singing on an April morning. What was that about? Must’ve just been some sort of coincidence, all the birds stopping at once, a bird coffee break or something, but then . . . where was the noise from the freeway? The freeway wasn’t even a quarter of a mile away. Normally Tom didn’t hear it because he was so used to the constant
whoosh
of traffic that it just sort of faded into the background of his mind. But it was always audible. He could always hear it if he listened. And yet, he was listening now—and he didn’t hear it at all.

Something new rose beneath his curiosity: fear. Not a
lot of fear: he was sure there was a reasonable explanation for all this. But a definite chill went through him, a finger of ice reaching up out of his inner darkness and touching him on the spine. No bird noise? No freeway noise? And no one on the street? What was this? Normally there’d be someone around. Stand here long enough and you’d see Mrs. Roth walking her dog or Mr. Collier taking out last night’s garbage. A car driving past. Or old lady Brown—Mrs. Brown’s mom, who lived with the Browns—looking out at him from the window in the gable upstairs. That was pretty much all she did all day: look out her upstairs window at the neighborhood, at anyone who was passing. But the gable window was dark. There was no one there. There was no one anywhere as far as Tom could see.

Still feeling that little chill of fear, Tom turned again and looked into the thick fog. A thought went through his head. It was a really unpleasant thought. He suddenly had the idea that something was moving in there, moving unseen in the depths of the mist. He had the idea that whatever it was—whatever was moving in the fog—was coming toward him, shuffling slowly toward him so that any minute now it would break out of the swirling whiteness and he would see it . . .

Tom gave a snort of a laugh. Imagination kicking into overdrive, that’s all it was. “Silliness,” as his mother would
call it. And in this case, she’d be right. He was creeping himself out with silly thoughts. His reporter’s mind looking for a puzzle where there was none. The marine layer was thick this morning, that’s all. The fog muffled the noise—bird noise, freeway noise, all the noise. And as for the rest, it was a quiet street. It was Saturday. People were sleeping in. There was nothing strange about any of it.

You’re being kind of an idiot
, Tom told himself.

He started back up the path with the paper in his hand.

So where was his mother, then? The question niggled at him. He could never let a question go until he had the answer. Still, he tried to shake it off.

She was probably abducted by aliens
, he told himself.
That has to be the most reasonable explanation, right? Either that or she took a walk. But nah, I’m going with aliens. That’s gotta be it
.

Tom was smiling to himself—smiling at himself—as he stepped back into the house. Smiling, he shut the door behind him. Smiling, he tossed the newspaper onto the front hall table:
whap
.

Then he stopped smiling.

He heard something. He heard a voice. It wasn’t his mother. It was a man talking. It was coming from inside the house.

Tom was still a little spooked by the idea that had come
to him outside—the idea that there had been something moving around in the fog. His heart beat a little quicker as he walked down the hall toward the sound of the voice. With every step he took, the voice grew louder, more distinct. He started to be able to make out some of the words the man was saying.

“. . . your mission . . . what you have to do . . . remember . . .”

Tom came to the end of the hall and stepped into the kitchen. That sharp eye of his—and that sharp, questioning mind—saw immediately that his mom hadn’t been in here this morning. She hadn’t been in here at all. The lights were out. There were no dishes in the sink. There was nothing cooking on the stove. No trace of food on the counter. The place looked as it always did after Mom cleaned it for the last time at night and before she used it first thing in the morning.

Where is she?

Then he noticed something else. The voice—the man’s voice—was coming from the basement.

“. . . the game is the point . . . play the bigger game . . . ,” the man was saying in a firm, even tone. Then there was something Tom couldn’t make out because the basement door in the kitchen was closed and the voice was muffled. Then he heard, “. . . that’s the mission . . .”

Tom hadn’t realized he’d been holding his breath, but it came out of him now. Everything suddenly fell into place
with satisfying certainty. Tom and his brother, Burt, had fixed half the basement up into a family room two summers ago. Most Southern California houses didn’t have a basement at all, so they’d wanted to take full advantage of theirs. They’d paneled the walls and laid carpet down over the stone floors. They’d set up an entertainment center complete with a flatscreen, a couple of humongous speakers, two game consoles, and a laptop control center—some of which Tom had paid for himself with money he made that summer busing tables at California Pizza Kitchen. They’d even put in a small refrigerator so they wouldn’t have to run up and down the stairs for sodas and snacks in the middle of a football game or a
Call of Duty
shoot-out.

Mom didn’t go down into the basement much except to do the laundry in the other half of the space. She said she couldn’t even figure out how to turn the TV on. But that was a typically Mom-like exaggeration. She could turn it on when she wanted to. So, obviously, that was the answer. Obviously she’d gone down to the basement this morning and was watching TV for some reason. Maybe there was a big news story breaking and she wanted to find out about it before she made breakfast.

Tom stepped into the kitchen, pulled open the basement door—and froze stock-still, his heart pounding hard in his chest.

“This is what you have to do,” said the voice from the basement, quiet but firm. “Do you hear me? This is the point of everything. There’s no getting around this.”

Tom’s mouth went dry, his satisfying certainty gone as quickly as it had come. That was not the television. He could hear the man clearly now and he recognized the voice right away. He’d have known that voice anywhere. It was Burt’s voice. It was his brother.

Now Tom was scared again, and not just a little scared this time. This time he was
really
scared.

Because his brother, Burt, went on talking quietly in the basement. And his brother, Burt, had been dead these six months past.

3.

A
s Tom started down the stairs, his mind was searching for answers again. His brother’s voice must be coming from a video—sure, that’s what it was—some old vid of Burt that Mom was watching. That made sense. Mom was sad about Burt getting shot in Afghanistan. They were both sad—incredibly sad—how could they not be? Burt had been the coolest guy in the universe. Brave, honest, humble, funny. He’d been there for Mom whenever she needed
him. He’d been Tom’s best friend and his guide through life. So yeah, they were sad. And so Mom, feeling sad, had gone downstairs and pulled up one of their old video files of Burt so she could see his face again, hear his voice.

That’s why she hadn’t picked up the paper. That’s why she wasn’t making breakfast or vacuuming or whatever. She was down in the basement, feeling sad and watching a vid of Burt. That made perfect sense.

It did make sense—but Tom knew it wasn’t true. In the months since Burt had been killed by a Taliban sniper, he himself had watched every video they had of him. Burt clowning around. Burt teasing Mom. Burt wrestling with him and so on. There was nothing on any of those videos like what he was hearing now: Burt’s voice barking out with so much intensity, so much urgency.

“This is your mission, do you understand me?!”

Like he was talking to his fellow soldiers. Like he was giving them a pep talk before they set out into the wilds of the Hindu Kush. They had no video of Burt like that.

Tom licked his dry lips. He flicked the light switch on the wall. The basement lights went on below him. He couldn’t see much down there—just a little section of stone floor at the foot of the stairs. You had to turn the corner before you came into the family room where all the equipment was.

Anything could be waiting around that corner
, he thought.
But then he forced himself to stop thinking that.
Don’t wimp out on me, Harding
. What could be down there? This wasn’t a horror movie. This was real life.