Nightmare City by Andrew Klavan Read Free Book Online

this time as he heard her fading. “Why didn’t you wait for me in the driveway? Why didn’t—”
    But the phone beeped twice: Connection lost . She was gone.
    Tom cried out in frustration.
    “Tom . . . ,” Marie began to say. “Tom, listen to me. You have to listen—”
    But before she could finish, another voice interrupted her.
    “This is your mission! This is what I’ve been trying to tell you about all along . . . The Warrior . . . Do you remember the Warrior?”
    Burt! It was his brother’s voice! It was coming from the basement again. What was happening here? What was going on?
    Tom leapt up out of his chair. Marie jumped up, too, jumped up so quickly her chair fell over behind her, banging loudly against the floor.
    “Tom,” she whispered. “Don’t . . .”
    “That’s Burt,” he said. “Don’t you hear it? That’s Burt’s voice.”
    “It’s not. It can’t be. You know that. Burt is dead,” said Marie.
    “I heard him before. The same way. From down in the basement.”
    “Tom, listen to me, do not go down there.”
    Tom stood looking at her, uncertain. He licked his dry lips. He wanted to help her, to keep her safe. He wanted to do what she said. But it was Burt . . .
    “Marie, I don’t understand any of this,” he said. “Do youknow more than you’re telling me? Is there something you don’t want me to know?”
    “All I know is that you have to go to the monastery,” she answered urgently. “ That’s where the answers are. You have to find them. You can’t wait any longer. You have to go there now.”
    But Tom could hear Burt shouting again: “This is what I tried to teach you. This is what you have to do . . .”
    And then he said, “This is your mission, Tom.”
    Tom started. Did Burt just call him by name? From the TV? How was that possible? He had to know—he had to find out—where the voice was coming from.
    He looked helplessly at Marie. “I’ve got to look,” he said.
    He turned away from her. He went to the basement door.
    Marie called out behind him in a sharp tone of voice he’d never heard her use before. “Tom! Listen to me! Please! You don’t always have to know everything! You’ve got to stop this!”
    He looked at her. He saw the fear and frustration flashing in her eyes, her bowed mouth twisting in a strange and ugly way. But it didn’t matter. He heard Burt downstairs.
    “Remember the Warrior, Tom.”
    He had to go. He pulled open the door.
    Marie shouted at him: “Tom, I mean it! Don’t!”
    Tom flipped the light switch. He left Marie in the kitchen and thundered quickly down the stairs.
    He hit the basement floor and spun around the corner into the family room, moving fast. He saw the side of the television. He heard Burt’s voice coming from the speakers: “This is what you have to understand! This is what I have to get you to understand . . .”
    His brother sounded so present, so real—so alive!—that it made Tom hurt inside to hear him. He missed his brother so much it was like a physical pain.
    He needed to get around to the front of the TV. He needed to see Burt’s face, to see what he was doing on the video before the whole thing vanished again as it had earlier, before the voice went silent and Burt was gone.
    He took a quick step forward.
    “All along,” said Burt, “this was what I was trying . . .”
    And then, sure enough, the voice stopped, mid-sentence. And the next moment there was another voice: “Dr. Cooper to the ER—stat!”
    “No!” shouted Tom.
    He hadn’t been fast enough. There was that stupid doctor show again!
    And yes, there it was. As he got in front of the TV, he saw the same scene that had been on before.
    The nurse was shouting, “Single GSW to the chest! Clear Trauma One.”
    The doctors and nurses and aides were crowding aroundthe gurney, rolling the gurney frantically down the hospital hallway to the emergency operating room. The patient—the person lying wounded on the gurney—was obscured by the