In a world where nothing is as it seems, and never can be . . .
His mind told him, insisted, that he was running, putting one tattered, bleeding foot in front of the other-even though the ground did not move under his feet, turned when he did not, or inclined steeply upward though he saw no slope before him. He closed his eyes, but he could still see. He screamed, but he heard nothing. The pathway became a precipice and he tumbled headlong, falling through space. He was under water. He tried to swim; suddenly his groping arms were pulling him forward through hot, dry sand. The sky above was red like a sunset, the earth below an eye-buzzing purple-then green, then gray, then red as the sky turned green. Where he was, or why, or when, or who, or how, he could not know, could never know.
Mr. Morgan pressed a button on the remote control and the wide-screen television came to life. Upon seeing the very first image, the Springfields leaned forward in their seats, eyes riveted to the screen. Note and Sarah Springfield and their sixteen-year-old twins, Elijah and Elisha, were watching the mindless, blank-eyed behavior of Alvin Rogers. He was in hospital pajamas, standing in the center of the padded room and twitching nervously, looking at nothing, as a hospital nurse tried to start a conversation.
"Can you raise your arms for me?"
"I don't know."
"Don't you want to put on a fresh shirt?"
"I don't know."
"We'll get you changed, and then you can have some lunch. Would you like that?"
"I don't know."
The recording played on for several minutes, showing the nurse feeding him, Dr. Madison examining him, a therapist exercising him, and all of them trying to get through to the boy, trying to get him to acknowledge knowing something, knowing anything.
They all failed.
"Watch what happens next," said Morgan. A man and a woman entered the padded room, and the kid, crazy or not, fell into their arms and started crying.
"He knows who Mom and Dad are," said Sarah, getting a tear in her eye.
"So he knows something," said Nate.
"And immediately he started talking," said Morgan, "but check this out."
The recording cut to a later scene. Now the kid, frightened and agitated, was spilling a torrent of words to his folks as they sat on the floor beside his bed. "I, I come to see the sky, but it was upside down. And I run, but not swimming, just, you know, running, and climbing . . . scratch myself. It was dark, too, hurt my eyes." His father said to someone off-camera, "Where in the world has he been? Who did this to him?"
"Nightmare," said Alvin Rogers.
Alvin's mother asked, "What?"
"N-n-night-m-m-mare." The boy began to tremble. "N-n-night-m-m-mare Academy." His eyes grew wide as if looking into a hell only he could see — and no more words came, only a long, pitiful wail. He began to kick and struggle, trying to back away from whatever he was seeing.
The image shook, then blinked out. Morgan turned to the Springfields. "We'll put you in touch with a youth shelter in Seattle where the boys were last seen, and see if you can pick up their trail from there. I'll help you in any way I can, but remember, we're hunting for something that cannot know it's being hunted or it might disappear before we can find it."
"It's like a vacation getaway," said the kind, pretty youth worker as she slid the brochure across the table toward them. "No questions asked. We just want to get you off the street, give you a place to sort things out." The two bedraggled runaways, a boy and a girl, leafed through the brochure with interest. "The Knight-Moore Academy," the boy read.
He, like his sister, looked tired and dirty from many cold nights on the street.
"You'll have your own room, your own bed, three hot meals a day, plenty of fun and recreation, for as long as you need."
Elisha looked toward the doorway of the youth shelter, regarding the cold, concrete environment of the inner city that lay just beyond it. "Sign us up."
"When do we leave?" Elijah asked.
Sarah rechecked the frequencies and the power on the receiver. "The kids aren't transmitting," she said, her voice tight with fear. "We've lost contact."
"I take it this is the Knight-Moore Academy?" Elijah asked.
"This is the place," said Mr. Stern. "That's the library right there-you can check out books, CDs, videos, whatever you want. That building over there is the recreation hall. They've got pool tables, ping pong, foozball, video games, lots of stuff. That's the dining hall, three squares a day. We have four dorm buildings, A, B, C, and D. A and B are where you just came from, over there. A's for girls, B's for boys, so you're in B. Over on the other side there are two more: C's for girls, D's for boys. Don't get 'em mixed up."
The buildings looked new and freshly painted-basic white, with burgundy trim; all the lawns were neatly kept; the planting beds along the buildings, though small, were weeded and flowers were blooming. The scenery all around the place was spectacular: mountains, tall forests, even some snow-covered peaks in the distance.
"Where is this place?"
Stern just waved off the question. "In the mountains, up in the trees. Don't worry about it."
"So how did I get here?"
Stern made a face at that question. "Man, you'd better get tuned in. You rode the bus up here. Don't tell me you don't remember."
"I don't remember."
He only chuckled and sneered. "I can believe it. We get a lot of your kind in here, so strung out they don't remember anything. But don't worry about it."
Elijah had been eyeing one thing that looked a little out of place: At the far edge of the athletic field was a high stone wall with a big iron gate, and on the forested hill beyond that wall, surrounded by green lawns and lush gardens, stood an impressive mansion with ornate gables, complex corners, and tall windows. "What in the world is
that place?"
"You don't want to go there," said Stern.
"But what is it?"
"It's the headquarters for-oh, brother, not again!" Stern stopped, exasperated, looking at some garbage cans knocked over and rolled about, their contents strewn all over the grass and sidewalk. "This is getting serious!"
Elijah ventured, "Looks like you have some bears around here."
"You got that right. They're getting to be a real problem. Hey, by the way, get a clue: Don't go into the woods, okay? Just stay on the campus, stay right here on the grounds. Had a gal last summer, just about got her face torn off. It was terrible."
"It's like I'm having a nightmare," said Sarah, "and I can't wake up."
"Like we're going crazy," said Nate, staring at the building across the street.
Then Sarah almost whispered, "' I don't know.'"
"What don't you know?"
"No, no, the boy in the hospital. He kept saying 'I don't know' as if . . ."
Nate caught her meaning. ". . . as if all knowledge and logic were gone."
"As if he's been here. We're in another world, Nate. I know we followed the kids here last night . . . but now that isn't true anymore. It's as if someone's trying to erase my memory, maybe even my sanity."
They both fell silent. They were thinking. Nate finally commented, "Whoever they are, they're very good at what they do."
Sarah's voice tightened with fear. "And they have our kids."
Morgan spoke in a hushed, frantic voice. "Nate, these are powerful people, with spies everywhere! They know what they're doing . . . and they know you're tampering with it!" He drew a breath and spoke deliberately. "Your lives-and the lives of your children-are in grave danger!"
Elisha ran to the corner of the wall where the wall met the forest-thick forest, with huge trees, prickly branches, clinging underbrush, and enclosing darkness. Penetrating that nether world seemed impossible, but her brother had been here. He'd been up this hill, he'd encountered a bear. There had to be a way. She pressed into the brush, groping with her hands, pushing against limbs and branches with her body, pressing on with nothing to lose. The mansion was built by people and lived in by people, and people needed roads, phone lines, transportation. Somewhere beyond these trees there had to be a real world. Elijah may have seen it, and she was going to find it. She could see the lights from the mansion off her left shoulder, but still no gap in that stubborn stone wall. She kept climbing the hill, breaking and snapping through dry branches, stumbling on loose rocks, groping as if blind, guarding her face and eyes with her forearm.
Then, up ahead, she could see the branches of trees in the amber glow from one of the mansion's yard lights as if a clearing-such as a road-was allowing light from the mansion to penetrate the forest. All right! It might be the road her brother almost reached before-Oh, no. What was that?
Closer than she could believe, she heard a low, close-to-the-ground snuffing, then a snorting. Some bushes rustled. Some twigs snapped.
Oh, great. Remember, girl, what do you do, what do you do? Uh, yell, make some noise, scare it away.
Elijah said it didn't work.
The critter growled. She could hear the bushes rustling closer, the pounding of its big feet on the ground. She couldn't see where it was, but she could hear it, enough to run the opposite direction, crashing through limbs and brush, stumbling over fallen logs and rocks. A log tripped her, she went down, got to her feet, ran. All dark ahead of her, she couldn't see-Oof! She found the wall in the dark, her outstretched arms taking the impact. That thing was still out there, huffing and snorting, looking for her. She groped along the wall, trying to find any way she could climb it.
AWW! She dropped, as through a trapdoor, quicker than she could realize what was happening, slipping, sliding, dropping down a bizarre rabbit hole, her eyes useless in the total dark. She was just beginning to think this felt like a waterslide without the water when-Bump! She landed on a smooth floor, tumbling, sliding, squeaking to a stop.
It was quiet and totally dark. She'd escaped the bear, but where was she? It sounded like a room; she could hear the echoes of the walls in the air. But also, she could discern a steady, mechanical hum as if she were inside the belly of a huge machine.
A world where nothing is as it seems . . .
and never can be . . .
NIGHTMARE ACADEMY
