“It’s a true story,” Vince said.
Tom didn’t really believe Vince, but he sort of did believe him at the same time. Anyway, he started to get scared—really scared that he might go to bed and the hook guy would come into his room and steal him.
Finally, Burt came back with the popcorn.
“Hey, Burt,” said Vince, with a big grin. “I’ve been telling your brother all about the hook.”
Burt carefully set the bowl of popcorn down on the table by the sofa. Then he walked over and gave Vince a slap on the back of the head. It was a friendly slap—but not that friendly. Hard enough—whack!—so that Vince cried out.
“Ow! Hey! What’s that for?”
“Don’t lie to him,” said Burt.
“Aw, I was just giving him a hard time,” said Vince, rubbing the spot on his head where Burt had thwacked him.
“You can give him a hard time all you want. You can tease him. You can make fun of him. He’s my little brother. That’s what he’s here for. But don’t ever lie to him. It’s not allowed.”
Even though he was just a little kid, Tom had somehow understood this—understood why Burt made this rule. He and Burt didn’t have a father. Their father had left before Tom was born. Tom had never even seen the man. Mom was a great mom. She worked hard to pay for their house and for food and everything. She was an assistant at a law firm—a paralegal—and sometimes she had to stay up with her papers long into the night to get all her work done. But she still found time to be Mom, to make breakfast, to make sure her sons got to school, to help them with their homework and all that. There was nothing wrong with Mom, it was just . . .
It was just that without a father, Tom felt that there was no one in his life who would tell him the truth, no matter what. There were just some things Mom wouldn’t say to him, some things she was too nice to say or too embarrassed to say. She would never say, for instance, You are acting like a complete and total idiot, even if he was. She would never say, If that bully bothers you again, slug him one in the cake-hole. She would never tell him what girls were really thinking about. Stuff like that.
But Burt would tell him those things. No matter what the subject was, no matter what the problem was, Burt would tell it to him straight, as much as he knew and as much as he thought Tom could understand. It wasn’t that Burt was always right. Sometimes he didn’t know the answers. Sometimes he got the answers wrong. But Tom knew Burt would never lie to him intentionally, never say anything he didn’t believe. That was the rule.
And that was the memory that came back to Tom as he stood hesitating on the border of the garden, as he stood looking out over the green grass and the bright flowers and the majestic Greek temples. He heard the phone ringing behind him, ringing and ringing, threatening to draw him back into a world of pain and fear.
Why had he remembered that night of the sleepover? Why did it make him hesitate to step into the garden?
The answer came to him.
No matter how peaceful this garden seemed, he was here because the man in the computer had lied to him, had tricked him, had talked him into going back out into the hall where the malevolent monsters were waiting.
But Burt—Burt had told him to fight. Burt’s voice had shouted to him from the television set, telling him not to give in to the monsters, not to despair—that despair was never an option. Burt had urged him to find the baseball bat—the Warrior—and make a stand against the creatures who wanted to destroy him.
And Burt never lied.
Tom gazed longingly at this mysterious parkland that seemed to him like heaven. His heart yearned for its beauty and its peace. The phone ringing insistently behind him sounded irritating and discordant. He knew that if he turned back to answer it, he would step right back into a nightmare.
But he knew—he knew in his heart—that Burt would want him to go back. Go back and fight—go back and figure out what was going on—get to the bottom of things, get to the truth of the matter.
Tom was a reporter, after all. Finding the truth was his business. Finding the truth—even when it was painful, even when it went against his own inclinations and desires. Even when it made everyone in school hate him.
He took one last yearning look around him. The green lawn. The white temples. The golden light. He wanted to go into the park. He wanted to go to heaven.
But he heard the phone singing its song in the distance behind him. He summoned all the willpower he had and turned back to answer it.
12.
Tom blinked, confused. Where was he?
He looked around him. His eyes passed over the framed newspaper stories, the sports pennants, the long flag from Burt’s coffin. He was in his bedroom at home.
A dream, he thought. Heaven was a dream.
He heard the guitar riff, the Haggard song, his phone ringing. He twisted until he could see the phone on his computer table. It jumped and rattled around as it rang.
A dream, he thought again. It was all just . . .
No. Wait. He sat up in bed quickly, tossing the comforter aside. He remembered. The heavenly park. This empty house. The fog outside. The monsters.
This was no dream. This was real—bizarre but totally real. And it was all happening again!
He reached out quickly and grabbed the phone. Checked the readout to see who was calling.
Number blocked.
Right. Just like before. He remembered that, too. The phone vibrated in his hand as it rang again. He answered.
He knew what he would hear before he heard it. There it was. That static. Weird white noise coming from an alien and frightening place far away. He listened intently. Next there would be a voice. The voice of that ghostly woman in the white blouse . . .
It began, “I need to talk to you. It’s important.”
He could hear her a little better this time, a little more clearly than he’d heard her before.
“Where are you?” he said, trying to keep his own voice steady and clear. “I need to find you. I need to know where you are.”
“My address is . . .” Then the static overwhelmed her. Her voice was swept under the crackle and hiss.
“What’s your address?” Tom shouted. “Say it again.”
The woman tried again, calling to him from beneath the static. Her voice was now so dim that Tom’s face contorted with the effort to make out her words.
“. . . school . . . you left my address . . .”
“At school?” Tom said, straining to hear her. “I left your address at school?”
Yes. That was right. He wasn’t sure how he knew, but he knew. Her address was at the office of the Sentinel. He had scribbled it on a pad there.
“Please . . . please . . . you have to . . . ,” the woman called to him—and then, as he knew they would, the two beeps came. He pulled the phone away from his ear and looked at the readout.
Connection lost.
This time Tom didn’t hesitate. He leapt out of bed. He rushed to his dresser. He pulled on his sweatpants and the Tigers sweatshirt as fast as he could.
A familiar feeling of excitement was coursing through him: the feeling he got when a news story began to come together, when things began to make sense. This was what he loved about working on the Sentinel: finding the answers. And he was beginning to find them now. He was beginning to figure this crazy thing out, beginning to understand what was happening.
And he knew what he had to do next.
He didn’t bother to stop in the bathroom this time. It didn’t matter whether he shaved or not. None of that ordinary stuff mattered anymore. He just had to get to the basement as fast as he could. It was a matter of life and death.
He stampeded down the stairs into the front hall. He paused at the door only a moment to look out through the sidelight. The lawn and the driveway were clear again. No fog. He could see all the way down to the end of the driveway. The newspaper was lying there near the street, just as it had been the first time. And the mist was beginning to gather in t
he street as it had before, too. Soon, he knew, the fog would move in. It would become thick again. And it would bring the malevolents with it.
He didn’t have a lot of time. He had to hurry.
He ran down the hall to the kitchen, to the basement door. As he pulled the door open, he half expected to hear Burt’s voice again, shouting from the TV screen.
This is your mission!
But no. It was different this time. The basement was silent. Tom understood. Burt had called to him before because he wanted to get him to come down, to see what was on television, to face a truth his mind didn’t want to face. Burt had reached out to him from an impossible distance and done the best he could to get his message across the gulf between them.
But this time Tom didn’t need that help. This time he was ready to face the truth on his own. He was scared—he was very scared—but he was ready.
He went down the stairs.
He came into the family room. Saw the TV with its dark screen. The silent speakers. Fighting down the anxiety that tightened his throat, he moved to the easy chairs. There was the remote lying on the seat of the nearest chair. He picked it up. Pointed it at the TV. Pressed the Power button.
It was time to face the facts.
For a moment, the TV stayed dark. The silence went on for such a long time that Tom began to think he had gotten it wrong, that he would have to look for the truth elsewhere. Another silent second passed, and then another. Tom started to turn away.
Then a voice startled him by shouting over the speakers, “Dr. Leonard to the ER—stat!”
There it was. Just like before. Only different. The voice was calling for Dr. Leonard this time, not Dr. Cooper. Tom got it. Dr. Cooper was just a character in the TV show Mom liked. Dr. Leonard was real. Tom had seen The Cooper Practice on the screen before because he wasn’t ready to face reality. Now he was. At least he hoped he was.
The TV came on. The nurses and aides and doctors were crowding around the gurney as they rolled it up the corridor to the emergency operating room.
“Single GSW to the chest!”
“His pulse is falling fast!”
“Clear Trauma One.”
They rolled the gurney down the hall and came to an alcove hidden behind a curtain. One of the aides tore the curtain aside, and the gurney was rushed through into the emergency operating room.
“Where’s Dr. Leonard?”
“Here I am. What have we got?”
“Single GSW to the chest. We’re losing him.”
“Get him onto the operating table. On my count of three.”
The people around the gurney leaned in as the doctor counted off.
“One, two—three.”
Tom’s pulse sped up as he watched them lift the body—the body hidden behind their bodies—from the gurney onto the operating table. He knew what was going to happen next, of course. He knew what he was going to see.
The crowd around the operating table broke apart—and there he was. Tom stood in the basement and stared helplessly as he saw himself on the television set. He saw himself lying unconscious on the operating table, his torso covered in blood. The doctors and nurses darted here and there around him. One nurse sliced Tom’s shirt off with a small knife, and another began to clean his wound. A third worked a tube into his throat so he would be able to breathe. Once again it made Tom gag as he stood there watching it happen on the screen. He felt his legs go weak beneath him as he watched. He sank down slowly into the easy chair behind him. Leaning forward on the edge of his seat, he went on staring at the scene.
But the next moment was so difficult for him to watch that he had to narrow his eyes until they were almost shut—make the images less clear, less devastating. Even so, he could hardly bear the sight of the doctor laying the blade of the scalpel against his bare skin. He let out a groan as he watched the blade slice into his flesh, the red blood flowing out from underneath the flashing steel.
Sitting in the armchair, Tom flinched with pain. He bent forward and grabbed his chest. It was as if he could actually feel them cutting him open, could feel them tearing his flesh apart to get at the bullet lodged inside him. The scene on the television set—the television set itself—the basement family room—everything—seemed to tumble and spin around him. Reality seemed to retreat into murky darkness. Tom felt himself fading away until his consciousness became a dwindling point of light surrounded by a vaster and vaster emptiness—an emptiness like space itself.
He blinked and shook his head fiercely, fighting his way back to full awareness. He forced himself to stare through the murk of his mind, to see the TV clearly again. Even if it meant he had to watch himself being cut open, he had to know what had happened. He had to know the truth.
But now—thankfully!—he saw that the scene had changed. The operating room was gone. Tom saw himself lying in a bed now. A number of tubes ran out of his body, out of his arm and out from under the blankets. Fluid dripped into him from a bag of some sort. A monitor was beeping by his head. A respirator was pumping air into him. He was lying in a hospital room now. Unconscious. Still.
The camera slowly drew back so that Tom could see more of the room. He saw a small wooden chair beside his bed. He saw a woman sitting there.
As he watched, Tom let out a soft groan of surprise and pain and longing.
The woman in the chair was his mom.
The sight of his mother sitting in the hospital room beside him made Tom’s heart feel tight and small. She was sitting bent forward, her head bowed, her elbows on her knees, her hands clasped in front of her as if she was in prayer. She was rocking herself back and forth, back and forth at the edge of the mattress on which Tom lay motionless. She wasn’t crying, but when she raised her eyes to look at her unconscious son, the expression on her face was awful to see. It was a look of such wasted grief that Tom wanted to jam his hand through the television screen so he could touch her, comfort her. He hadn’t seen his mom look so bad since . . . well, since the army officers had come to tell her that Burt had been killed in action. He wanted to call out to her, to say, I’m here, Mom. I’m not that figure on the bed. I’m right here.
But he didn’t. He knew she wouldn’t hear him. She was there, in that reality. And he was here, in this one.
So he just sat there, watching helplessly—which was so painful to him that he felt a powerful urge to close his eyes and turn away. But he understood that if he did that, the television would turn itself off. That’s what had happened before. The scenes on TV were just projections from his own mind. The set had gone dark before because he hadn’t been ready to face the whole truth. If he refused to face it now, there would be darkness again and he didn’t know if the TV would ever come back on.
He had to force himself to go on watching. It was like forcing himself to ask a source difficult questions during an interview. It could be awkward, even painful, but sometimes he had to do it. The only difference now was that he was the source—the source as well as the reporter. Watching the TV was like interviewing his own brain. He had to force himself to want the truth more than he wanted to escape the pain of knowing.
Whatever happens, he thought, whatever the truth turns out to be, it’s better to know than not to know. There’s no other way to live.
So he leaned forward in his chair and concentrated as hard as he could. He suffered through the pain of watching his mother as she wrung her hands and rocked herself, as she stared at him where he lay on the bed motionless as a corpse.
Now a new figure entered the scene. It was a man in blue scrubs—those pajama-like outfits doctors wear. He was a man in his thirties with black hair. He had bland features and pale, almost pasty skin. He wore glasses with heavy frames and blinked rapidly behind them, which made him look very young and sort of helpless. Tom knew somehow that this was the surgeon who had cut him open: Dr. Leonard.
Tom’s mother got quickly to her feet. Tom’s throat grew tight as he saw the look of terror deep in her eyes. She searched t
he doctor’s face for news, trying to guess what he was going to say before he said it.
“Mrs. Harding?” the doctor said.
“Yes,” Mom answered. Her voice was hoarse, almost a whisper. “What’s happening to my son? Is he going to be all right? Is he going to . . . ?”
She couldn’t say the word—the word die. But Tom knew that’s what she was asking. She went on searching the doctor’s face for the answer. And Tom stared at the scene on the television, waiting for the answer, too. Was he going to die? Was that what was happening to him? Was that why nothing made sense around him? Was he dying—or already dead and in some limbo waiting for God to decide whether he should go to heaven or hell? Marie had told him no, he wasn’t dead, but maybe she had gotten it wrong. Maybe . . .
“Your son is alive, but . . . ,” Dr. Leonard said. He hesitated, and Tom’s mother reached out convulsively and gripped his arm.
“But what? Tell me.”
“He’s lost a lot of blood,” the doctor went on, “and I’m afraid he’s fallen into a coma.”
For a second, Tom’s mother seemed unable to understand. She slowly shook her head, narrowing her eyes.
“A coma? I don’t . . . For how long? Will he come back? Will he wake up?”
“I don’t know,” said Dr. Leonard. “Mrs. Harding, please sit down.”
He gestured toward her chair. Mrs. Harding sank back into it. The doctor pulled up another chair and sat down beside her. Her eyes never left his face. She went on staring at him, openmouthed.
“Mrs. Harding,” Dr. Leonard went on gently. “Your son was wounded very badly. The bullet nicked his superior vena cava—one of his major blood vessels—and punctured his lung . . .”
Tom’s mother made an awful noise and covered her mouth with both hands.
“While he was on the operating table,” Dr. Leonard said, “his heart stopped . . .”