NIGHTMARE CITY


By ANDREW KLAVAN

Thomas Nelson

Copyright © 2013 Andrew Klavan
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-59554-797-2


CHAPTER 1

Tom was in heaven when the phone rang. At least, hethought it was heaven. He had never been there before,and the look of the place surprised him. It wasn't whathe was expecting at all.

Then again Tom had never really thought about heavenmuch. When he had, he'd pictured it as a place in the skywhere dead people with newly issued angel wings sat onclouds and—whatever—played the harp or something. This,though—this heaven he was in now—this was just a sortof park, an expansive lawn with walkways curving throughit and fountains spouting here and there and vast, majestictemple-like buildings with marble columns and peakedfacades. There were no clouds to sit on. There were no cloudsat all. A sky of perfect, unbroken blue covered and surroundedeverything.

As for the people—the people strolling on the pathsor sitting on the benches or standing amid the columns ofthe temples—they were also not what Tom expected. Nowings for one thing. No harps either. Just ordinary men andwomen in all the various shapes and colors people come in.Dressed not in spotless robes but in casual clothes, slacksand skirts, shirts and blouses. And when Tom looked atthem more closely, they didn't seem as happy or as sereneas he would have expected people in heaven to look. Somelooked downright lost or fretful, worried or even sad. Oneman in particular caught Tom's eye: a lanky young guy inhis twenties or so with long, dirty blond hair and a thin,hungry-looking face; sunken cheeks and darkly ringed eyes.He was standing in front of one of the Greek temples, turningnervously this way and that as if he didn't know where hewas or how to get home.

Tom's curiosity began to kick in—that eager electricpulse that compelled him to know more, to search for thetruth, to solve the puzzle. He could never resist it. Eventhough he only worked for a high school paper, he was a realreporter nevertheless. It was his nature. It was who he was.Whenever there was a mystery, he didn't just want to solveit, he needed to. And this was a mystery: What sort of heavenincluded fear and loneliness?

He had to find someone who could give him someanswers—and it suddenly occurred to him that, since thiswas heaven, he knew just the person to look for.

He took a step forward toward the park—and then thephone began to ring.

And suddenly, heaven was gone.

CHAPTER 2

Tom opened his eyes and he was in his bed at home. Adream. Heaven was a dream. Well, yeah. What else wasit going to be? It wasn't like he was dead or anything.

The phone rang again—his cell, playing the openingguitar riff from the classic Merle Haggard song "The Fightin'Side of Me." Dazed, Tom followed the sound to find thephone. It was on his computer table, jumping and rattlingaround as it rang. He reached out and grabbed it, looked atit to see who was calling. Number blocked, said the wordson the readout screen. Which meant it was probably LisaMcKay, his editor at the Sentinel. What time is it, anyway?he wondered. What did she want from him this early on aSaturday morning?

Tom answered. "Yeah."

The phone crackled against his ear. Static—loud static—awash of white sound, like the sound of the ocean in aseashell. Something about that noise raised goose bumps onTom's arm, though he couldn't have said exactly why. It wasjust that the static sounded strangely far away. It echoed, asif it were coming to him up out of a deep well. It made Tomfeel as if he were listening to a noise from a foreign, alienplace, another planet or something like that. Weird.

"Hello?" he said more loudly.

Nothing. No answer. Just that weird, white, alien noise.And then—wait—there was something. There was someoneon the line. A voice—a woman's voice—talking beneath therattle and hiss.

"I need to talk to you. It's very important ..."

The words, like the static, seemed to come to him fromacross a great distance. Tom just barely caught those twophrases. After that the words were unintelligible. But thewoman was still talking and her tone was insistent, urgent,as if she was desperate to be heard.

"Hello? You've got a bad connection," said Tom loudly."You're breaking up. I can't hear you."

The woman on the other end tried again. She wasn'tshouting or anything, just talking in a very firm, insistenttone, trying to get through to him. Tom listened intently.He thought he recognized her voice, but he couldn't quiteplace it. He thought he heard the word please. He thought heheard the phrase "You have to ..." But aside from that, thewords were washed away by that ceaseless, distant, echoingstatic. It was frustrating.

"I can't hear you ...," Tom began to say again—butthen it stopped. All of it stopped. The voice. The static. Itwas all gone and the phone was silent. There were a couple ofbeeps on the line. Tom lowered the phone from his ear andchecked the readout: Connection lost.

For a minute he tried to figure out who it had been,whose voice he had heard. It was so familiar. He had beenthis close to recognizing her ... But no, he just couldn'tget it.

He shrugged and put the phone back on the computertable. Whoever it was, she'd call back, for sure. She soundedlike she really wanted to talk to him.

Tom sat up in bed, tossing the comforter aside. Heshook his head to clear it. Weird call. Weird noise. Wokehim up out of that great dream, too. What was it? Oh yeah,he remembered: heaven. He sat there, looking around atthe room. It was funny, he actually felt a little disappointedto be back from his dream, to be here again. It had beena nice dream, a restful place. And now the memories of itwere breaking up in his mind, the images trailing away likesmoke in the wind. He could barely remember what it hadbeen like, and he was sorry to see it go.

He got up. Went to the dresser, started pulling out someclothes, dropping himself into them: sweatpants and aTigers 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 worktablewere all crowded together. Just about every space onthe blue wall was covered with some picture or decoration orsomething. There was his unusually long American flag. Hispennant for the Tigers, the school's football team. Anotherpennant for the Los Angeles Dodgers, even though, let's behonest, they were going to stink this year. There was a pictureof his brother, Burt, looking all brave and noble andcool in his army uniform. And a bulletin board with somesnapshots of Tom and his mom and Burt and some of Tom'sfriends. Then there were a couple of framed copies of theSentinel. There was the issue that had his first front-pagestory on it: "Governor Visits Springland High." And therewas another—the one with the big story—the biggest storyand the one that started all the trouble for him. The bannerheadline was huge: "Sources: Tiger Champs Used Drugs."

Tom left his bedroom and went down the hall to thebathroom—but he paused for a moment at the top of thestairway. He stood listening. His mom's bedroom door wasopen and he could see her room was empty, her bed all madeup. But he didn't hear her moving around downstairs. Thatwas kind of odd, actually. It was after eight. Normally thistime of the morning on a weekend, Mom would be rattlingaround the kitchen or vacuuming, doing the housework shedidn't have time to do during the week. But the house wastotally quiet below. Not a noise to be heard.

Tom continued into the bathroom, trying to explain theodd silence to himself. Maybe they'd run out of eggs andMom had ducked out to the store for a minute to do theshopping. Or maybe she'd gotten up late and was just goingdown to the bottom of the driveway to get the newspaper.

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

He toweled the shaving cream off his face and took alook at himself in the mirror. He didn't like his looks much.He didn't think his face looked brave or noble or cool likehis 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, hisblue 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 anyoneelse who looked at him recognized a young man who knewhow to go after what he wanted, a young man who could noteasily be turned away.

He came out of the bathroom, went downstairs, thumpinghalf the way down, creating the satisfying thunder of abuffalo stampede, then leaping the rest of the way, his handson the banisters, his sneakers hitting the floor so hard whenhe landed that the light fixture in the foyer ceiling rattled.Now he was sure his mom wasn't here, because normallywhen he came down the stairs like that, she'd call out tohim with some snarky remark like, "Hark, I hear the pitter-patterof 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 frontdoor, looking past the gold star decoration on the glass.Well, that's weird, he thought. A puzzle. His mom's Civic wasin the driveway. So she hadn't gone to the store. So wherewas she?

Tom was about to turn away when his sharp eye noticedsomething else, too. The newspaper was there, outside, lyingat the end of the driveway where the delivery guy had tossedit. That really was strange. His mom was the only one inthe house who read the paper. Tom got the sports scores offhis phone and checked the rest of the news online. But hismom—the first thing she did every morning—the secondshe came downstairs, before she started making breakfast,before she did anything—was bring in the paper so shecould 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 silencethat goes down deep. It made Tom feel sure that the housewas empty.

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

Tom lived in Springland, California. It was a small beachtown north of L.A. Usually the weather was just about perfecthere—clear skies, sixty-five degrees in winter, eighty insummer, seventy in between. Today, though—though it waslate April—it was cold and damp. The marine layer—thefog—had come in off the water, and come in thick. To hisright, Tom could see past the Colliers' driveway next door,and after that there was nothing but a wall of drifting whitemist. Same to his left: he could see the Roths' driveway andthe 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 thatsometimes here. It would totally shroud the place in themorning, then burn off by noon and give way to a clear,warm Southern California day. No, it wasn't the fog thatmade 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, heturned 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. Nobirds singing on an April morning. What was that about?Must've just been some sort of coincidence, all the birds stoppingat once, a bird coffee break or something, but then ...where was the noise from the freeway? The freeway wasn'teven a quarter of a mile away. Normally Tom didn't hear itbecause he was so used to the constant whoosh of traffic thatit just sort of faded into the background of his mind. But itwas 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 alot of fear: he was sure there was a reasonable explanationfor all this. But a definite chill went through him, a finger ofice reaching up out of his inner darkness and touching himon the spine. No bird noise? No freeway noise? And no oneon the street? What was this? Normally there'd be someonearound. Stand here long enough and you'd see Mrs. Rothwalking her dog or Mr. Collier taking out last night's garbage.A car driving past. Or old lady Brown—Mrs. Brown'smom, who lived with the Browns—looking out at him fromthe window in the gable upstairs. That was pretty much allshe did all day: look out her upstairs window at the neighborhood,at anyone who was passing. But the gable windowwas dark. There was no one there. There was no one anywhereas far as Tom could see.

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

Tom gave a snort of a laugh. Imagination kicking intooverdrive, that's all it was. "Silliness," as his mother wouldcall it. And in this case, she'd be right. He was creeping himselfout with silly thoughts. His reporter's mind looking fora puzzle where there was none. The marine layer was thickthis morning, that's all. The fog muffled the noise—birdnoise, freeway noise, all the noise. And as for the rest, it wasa quiet street. It was Saturday. People were sleeping in. Therewas 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 niggledat him. He could never let a question go until he had theanswer. 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? Eitherthat or she took a walk. But nah, I'm going with aliens. That'sgotta be it.

Tom was smiling to himself—smiling at himself—ashe stepped back into the house. Smiling, he shut the doorbehind him. Smiling, he tossed the newspaper onto thefront hall table: whap.

Then he stopped smiling.

He heard something. He heard a voice. It wasn't hismother. It was a man talking. It was coming from inside thehouse.

Tom was still a little spooked by the idea that had cometo him outside—the idea that there had been somethingmoving around in the fog. His heart beat a little quicker ashe walked down the hall toward the sound of the voice. Withevery step he took, the voice grew louder, more distinct. Hestarted to be able to make out some of the words the manwas saying.

"... your mission ... what you have to do ... remember ..."

Tom came to the end of the hall and stepped into thekitchen. That sharp eye of his—and that sharp, questioningmind—saw immediately that his mom hadn't been in herethis morning. She hadn't been in here at all. The lights wereout. There were no dishes in the sink. There was nothing cookingon the stove. No trace of food on the counter. The placelooked as it always did after Mom cleaned it for the last timeat night and before she used it first thing in the morning.

Where is she?

Then he noticed something else. The voice—the man'svoice—was coming from the basement.

"... the game is the point ... play the bigger game ...," theman was saying in a firm, even tone. Then there was somethingTom couldn't make out because the basement door inthe kitchen was closed and the voice was muffled. Then heheard, "... that's the mission ..."


(Continues...)

Excerpted from NIGHTMARE CITY by ANDREW KLAVAN. Copyright © 2013 Andrew Klavan. Excerpted by permission of Thomas Nelson.
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