Nightmare City Read Free

morning.
    Where is she?
    Then he noticed something else. The voice—the man’s voice—was coming from the basement.
    “. . . the game is the point . . . play the bigger game . . . ,” the man was saying in a firm, even tone. Then there was something Tom couldn’t make out because the basement door in the kitchen was closed and the voice was muffled. Then he heard, “. . . that’s the mission . . .”
    Tom hadn’t realized he’d been holding his breath, but it came out of him now. Everything suddenly fell into placewith satisfying certainty. Tom and his brother, Burt, had fixed half the basement up into a family room two summers ago. Most Southern California houses didn’t have a basement at all, so they’d wanted to take full advantage of theirs. They’d paneled the walls and laid carpet down over the stone floors. They’d set up an entertainment center complete with a flatscreen, a couple of humongous speakers, two game consoles, and a laptop control center—some of which Tom had paid for himself with money he made that summer busing tables at California Pizza Kitchen. They’d even put in a small refrigerator so they wouldn’t have to run up and down the stairs for sodas and snacks in the middle of a football game or a Call of Duty shoot-out.
    Mom didn’t go down into the basement much except to do the laundry in the other half of the space. She said she couldn’t even figure out how to turn the TV on. But that was a typically Mom-like exaggeration. She could turn it on when she wanted to. So, obviously, that was the answer. Obviously she’d gone down to the basement this morning and was watching TV for some reason. Maybe there was a big news story breaking and she wanted to find out about it before she made breakfast.
    Tom stepped into the kitchen, pulled open the basement door—and froze stock-still, his heart pounding hard in his chest.
    “This is what you have to do,” said the voice from the basement, quiet but firm. “Do you hear me? This is the point of everything. There’s no getting around this.”
    Tom’s mouth went dry, his satisfying certainty gone as quickly as it had come. That was not the television. He could hear the man clearly now and he recognized the voice right away. He’d have known that voice anywhere. It was Burt’s voice. It was his brother.
    Now Tom was scared again, and not just a little scared this time. This time he was really scared.
    Because his brother, Burt, went on talking quietly in the basement. And his brother, Burt, had been dead these six months past.

3.
    A s Tom started down the stairs, his mind was searching for answers again. His brother’s voice must be coming from a video—sure, that’s what it was—some old vid of Burt that Mom was watching. That made sense. Mom was sad about Burt getting shot in Afghanistan. They were both sad—incredibly sad—how could they not be? Burt had been the coolest guy in the universe. Brave, honest, humble, funny. He’d been there for Mom whenever she neededhim. He’d been Tom’s best friend and his guide through life. So yeah, they were sad. And so Mom, feeling sad, had gone downstairs and pulled up one of their old video files of Burt so she could see his face again, hear his voice.
    That’s why she hadn’t picked up the paper. That’s why she wasn’t making breakfast or vacuuming or whatever. She was down in the basement, feeling sad and watching a vid of Burt. That made perfect sense.
    It did make sense—but Tom knew it wasn’t true. In the months since Burt had been killed by a Taliban sniper, he himself had watched every video they had of him. Burt clowning around. Burt teasing Mom. Burt wrestling with him and so on. There was nothing on any of those videos like what he was hearing now: Burt’s voice barking out with so much intensity, so much urgency.
    “This is your mission, do you understand me?!”
    Like he was talking to his fellow soldiers. Like he was giving them a pep talk before they set out