Nightmare Academy (5 page)

The Springfields looked at each other.

“I don't get it,” said Elisha.

“Believable denial,” said Nate.

“Exactly,” said Morgan. “If anything goes wrong, if the wrong people find out about this, the president can always say he told us not to get involved, that his administration had nothing to do with our investigation. Whoever sent the DVD did so without the president's direct knowledge, and he can say so.”

“Sounds shady to me,” said Elisha.

“It is. But it's obvious this whole operation has to be conducted with the same kind of caution, in the utmost secrecy.”

“Why?” Elijah asked.

“I don't know,” Morgan replied. “That's the rub. You're being asked to find out some things without knowing entirely why, or who knows why, or why such information is so important to . . . whomever.”

Sarah, in her gardening clothes, her blond hair tied in a scarf, shrugged her shoulders and said, “Sounds like a government project to me.”

“Believable denial,” said Nate.

“It does indeed.”

“So let's see what's on the disk,” Nate said.

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.

They 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.

“He sounds like a skeptical philosopher,” Elisha cracked. They all looked at her strangely, so she tried to explain. “You know: the ones who say nothing is true, that truth doesn't exist. If truth doesn't exist, then you can't know anything.”

“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.”

“Could you wind that back?” Elijah asked.

“Don't worry,” said Morgan, “there's more just like it.”

The kid kept going. “Terrible. Terrible. I kept falling, going up, never stopped and it hurt and I just didn't know.”

“Where was this?” his father asked.

“Bending down, couldn't reach i t . . . couldn't climb, either . . . had to go swimming . . . but the door wasn't there.”

His father said to someone off-camera, “Where in the world has he been? Who did this to him?”

Morgan interjected, “Listen to this.”

“Nightmare,” said Alvin Rogers.

Alvin's mother asked, “What?”

“Nightmare.” The boy began to tremble. “Nightmare 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.

“Turn . . . turn the camera off,” said his father while trying to hold the boy down.

The image shook, then blinked out.

Morgan pressed the stop button. “One month before this was recorded, Alvin Rogers was a fairly normal high school sophomore in Thousand Oaks, California. He was bright, did well in math and science, and stayed out of trouble. For whatever reason, maybe just for something crazy to do, he and a friend named Harold Carlson ran away from home and got as far as Seattle before disappearing altogether. Now Alvin has turned up crazy and Harold is still missing. I guess you can figure out what your assignment is going to be, if you want it.”

“Find out what happened to Alvin,” Nate responded.

“And what became of Harold,” Sarah added.

“And what the Nightmare Academy is,” Elijah said.

“And what the truth is behind the whole thing,” Elisha concluded.

Morgan nodded. “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.”

“And we don't even know what it is,” Elijah said. “Cool.”

Nate leafed through the documents spread out on the coffee table, reviewing each one and passing it along to the others. “We're going to have a lot to discuss.”

“Guess I'd better unsaddle the horses,” Elisha said, a hint of disappointment in her voice.

Seattle, Washington, is a beautiful city at night—a blanket of jewels mirrored in water—and when the sky is clear, the glimmering towers of downtown mingle with the stars.

But like every city, Seattle has its darkside—its troubled streets, its districts of decay that become gathering places for those who have nowhere else to go. In the cold glare of the streetlights, in the shadows of the alleys, the homeless, the lost, the destitute, and the runaways walk up and down the blocks, hands in pockets, eyes downward. They are lonely, but afraid of strangers, without shelter and hoping to find a lonely curb, porch, landing, or doorway to call their own for the night. Sometimes they cluster with other wanderers, either for company or simply because there is only one place available out of the rain.

This night, two wanderers apparently found each other while trying to stake a claim to a small stretch of concrete sidewalk and marble building that were still warm from the daytime sun. One was a boy about sixteen, dressed in ragged jeans, stocking cap, and tattered, oversized mackinaw. The other was a girl about the same age, with black, stringy hair, wearing a khaki jacket, jeans with holes in the knees, and a second-hand wool cap. Her only luxury was a pair of headphones, apparently her way of shutting out the outside world. They spoke little, but curled up against the exhaust-blackened marble of the old publishing firm, trying to share the same precious piece of ground without getting too close or too friendly.

Across the street and up half a block, in the doorway of a bygone brewery, a tired old vagrant relaxed on the concrete steps, his back against the bricks, just watching the never-stopping traffic. He coughed, pulled the collar of his old coat closer around his face, and spoke in a quiet voice, “Are you warm enough?”

Down the street, the girl heard the question through her headphones and called softly to the boy, “Dad wants to know if we're warm enough.”

“Plenty,” said the boy.

“We're fine,” she spoke to the air.

“Fine and bored,” the boy added. “Except for that panhandler, we haven't found anyone to talk to. Things were better last night.”

“Do you think we should try somewhere else?” Elisha asked.

The vagrant spoke into his collar, “How does it look to you, Sarah?”

At the other end of the block, in the back of a large van, Sarah sat before an impressive bench of electronic gear and radio receivers, monitoring the conversation, a headset to her ear. “We might try under the overpass again. The people at the youth shelter say a lot of runaway kids congregate there on the weekends after it gets late.”

Elisha passed the word along.

Elijah looked at his watch. “It's 11:07 and 40 seconds.”

Elisha smiled. Her brother was proud of his extremely accurate watch. “I think it's getting late.”

Nate responded, “Are you kids ready for another night under the overpass?”

Elisha made a face despite herself. “Working on it.” She told her brother, “They're talking about another night under the over­pass.”

“Well, hopefully we'll meet a different bunch,” Elijah offered, “somebody who might know something.”

“It's just hard to—Whoa, just a minute. Somebody's coming.”

Elijah tried to look without looking. He saw her, too. “I think she's looking at us.”

While Elijah and Elisha acted indifferent and preoccupied, Nate could see the woman they were referring to. She was a young and pretty redhead, and obviously not a runaway or vagrant; she was dressed casually, but dressed well in dark slacks, woolly red sweater, light jacket, and pricey running shoes.

“She's looking at us, all right,” Elisha reported.

“Hi,” said the woman, and Nate and Sarah could hear her voice over their kids' radios.

“Hi,” Elisha responded in the dull tone of a glum, leave-me-alone teenager.

The woman knelt down to Elisha's eye level, and offered a business card. “I'm Margaret Jones. I work with the Light of Day Youth Shelter, just a few blocks from here.” She looked toward Elijah. “Is he with you?”

Elisha shot her brother a sideways glance and shrugged. “I don't know. He's just sitting there and I'm sitting here.”

She addressed both of them. “Well, if you need a place to stay tonight, we have rooms. We'll give you a good hot meal, a shower if you like, and your own room with your own bed, no questions asked.”

Elijah asked, “What's the catch?”

“No catch. We're a charitable organization, we've been working the streets for nine years, and all we really want to do is get you off the street where you'll be safe and have some shelter.”

Elijah, staying in character, gave a cynical sneer. “You're not the Living Way Youth Shelter? We've already been there.”

The woman laughed apologetically and added, “No, no, we're somebody else, just a bunch of do-gooders, trying to help kids in trouble. You may like us, you may not, but at least you'll have a room for the night.” She held out another business card.

Elijah accepted it with a shrug, then read it out loud. “Margaret Jones, Light of Day Youth Shelter, 203 Miller Street. Shelter, rescue, counseling.”

Sarah entered the name and address on a laptop computer.