Andrew Klavan - Nightmare City

Tom was in heaven when the phone rang. At least, he thought it was heaven. He had never been there before, and the look of the place surprised him. It wasnt what he was expecting at all.

Then again Tom had never really thought about heaven much. When he had, hed pictured it as a place in the sky where dead people with newly issued angel wings sat on clouds andwhateverplayed the harp or something. This, thoughthis heaven he was in nowthis was just a sort of park, an expansive lawn with walkways curving through it and fountains spouting here and there and vast, majestic temple-like buildings with marble columns and peaked facades. There were no clouds to sit on. There were no clouds at all. A sky of perfect, unbroken blue covered and surrounded everything.

As for the peoplethe people strolling on the paths or sitting on the benches or standing amid the columns of the templesthey were also not what Tom expected. No wings for one thing. No harps either. Just ordinary men and women in all the various shapes and colors people come in. Dressed not in spotless robes but in casual clothes, slacks and skirts, shirts and blouses. And when Tom looked at them more closely, they didnt seem as happy or as serene as he would have expected people in heaven to look. Some looked downright lost or fretful, worried or even sad. One man in particular caught Toms eye: a lanky young guy in his 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, turning nervously this way and that as if he didnt know where he was or how to get home.

Toms curiosity began to kick inthat eager electric pulse that compelled him to know more, to search for the truth, to solve the puzzle. He could never resist it. Even though he only worked for a high school paper, he was a real reporter nevertheless. It was his nature. It was who he was. Whenever there was a mystery, he didnt just want to solve it, he needed to. And this was a mystery: What sort of heaven included fear and loneliness?

He had to find someone who could give him some answersand it suddenly occurred to him that, since this was heaven, he knew just the person to look for.

He took a step forward toward the parkand then the phone began to ring.

And suddenly, heaven was gone.

Tom opened his eyes and he was in his bed at home. A dream. Heaven was a dream. Well, yeah. What else was it going to be? It wasnt like he was dead or anything.

The phone rang againhis cell, playing the opening guitar riff from the classic Merle Haggard song The Fightin Side of Me. Dazed, Tom followed the sound to find the phone. It was on his computer table, jumping and rattling around as it rang. He reached out and grabbed it, looked at it to see who was calling. Number blocked, said the words on the readout screen. Which meant it was probably Lisa McKay, his editor at the Sentinel. What time is it, anyway? he wondered. What did she want from him this early on a Saturday morning?

Tom answered. Yeah.

The phone crackled against his ear. Staticloud statica wash of white sound, like the sound of the ocean in a seashell. Something about that noise raised goose bumps on Toms arm, though he couldnt have said exactly why. It was just that the static sounded strangely far away. It echoed, as if it were coming to him up out of a deep well. It made Tom feel as if he were listening to a noise from a foreign, alien place, another planet or something like that. Weird.

Hello? he said more loudly.

Nothing. No answer. Just that weird, white, alien noise. And thenwaitthere was something. There was someone on the line. A voicea womans voicetalking beneath the rattle and hiss.

I need to talk to you. Its very important

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

Hello? Youve got a bad connection, said Tom loudly. Youre breaking up. I cant hear you.

The woman on the other end tried again. She wasnt shouting or anything, just talking in a very firm, insistent tone, trying to get through to him. Tom listened intently. He thought he recognized her voice, but he couldnt quite place it. He thought he heard the word please. He thought he heard the phrase You have to But aside from that, the words were washed away by that ceaseless, distant, echoing static. It was frustrating.

I cant hear you, Tom began to say againbut then it stopped. All of it stopped. The voice. The static. It was all gone and the phone was silent. There were a couple of beeps on the line. Tom lowered the phone from his ear and checked 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 been this close to recognizing her But no, he just couldnt get it.

He shrugged and put the phone back on the computer table. Whoever it was, shed call back, for sure. She sounded like she really wanted to talk to him.

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

He got up. Went to the dresser, started pulling out some clothes, dropping himself into them: sweatpants and a Tigers sweatshirt. He figured hed 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 schools football team. Another pennant for the Los Angeles Dodgers, even though, lets 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 Toms 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 anotherthe one with the big storythe 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 bathroombut he paused for a moment at the top of the stairway. He stood listening. His moms bedroom door was open and he could see her room was empty, her bed all made up. But he didnt 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 didnt have time to do during the week. But the house was totally quiet below. Not a noise to be heard.