Nightmare City

EPILOGUE: WHEN IT WAS OVER

It was all the same,” said Tom, “but it was all different.”

He was in the living room of his house. He was sitting in the easy chair, a blanket over his legs. His mother and Lisa were sitting on the sofa across from him, directly beneath the wall of windows. Tom had been home from the hospital only a week. He still didn’t have a lot of strength. He could barely walk a few steps before he had to rest again.

He pointed at the windows. “That’s where the malevolents came through. They broke right through the glass. I ran past them to the stairs and got into my room. But the Lying Man talked me into leaving and then they got me. That was the second time my heart stopped. After that, Lisa came and we figured out together what was going on.”

“Glad I could help,” said Lisa with a quirky smile.

“What a strange dream,” said Tom’s mother.

“I don’t think it was a dream,” Tom told her. “Not exactly. I think it was all true somehow. It was just… I was just seeing it with my imagination, you know?”

Tom’s mom made a puzzled face, but Lisa said, “No, I get that. I believe that. Just because something happens in your imagination, that doesn’t mean it’s imaginary.”

Tom let out a startled laugh. “That’s just what you said when you came to the house. Almost those exact words. It was really helpful.”

“Really?” said Lisa. She preened herself comically, fluffing her hair, trying to hide the fact that she really was pleased. “That just shows you how wise I am even when I’m only in your mind.”

“You know, it does actually,” Tom said to her—and the way he said it made Lisa blush, which, in turn, gave Tom a great deal of pleasure.

“Personally,” Tom’s mother chimed in, “I find the real world dangerous enough without having to imagine anything. I really don’t know what I would have done if I had lost you…” Those last words were muffled in tears. She raised her hand to her overflowing eyes.

Lisa reached out and touched her arm. “Don’t worry,” she said. “Tom would never die when there was still a good story to tell.”

Tom laughed and coughed. “It was a good story, all right. It was a great story.”

It was. The fall of Dr. Cameron had been fast and hard. If anyone—any of the doctor’s friends on the police force or in the government—had been thinking of helping him or trying to cover up for him, they thought better of it when Tom’s follow-up story explaining who had supplied drugs to the Tigers hit first the Sentinel, and then—as Lisa’s bluff became reality—the front page of USA Today. Next, the big news sites on the Web had picked it up: “School Paper Busts Drug-Dealing Doc.” There had even been a couple of TV stories about it. Fox News and CNN had both interviewed Lisa, and both wanted to interview Tom when he was well enough. Given the publicity—and given Karen Lee’s testimony and the testimony from some of the Tigers players—and given Tom’s testimony about being shot and assaulted in his hospital room, Dr. Cameron had been charged with attempted murder and various counts of drug dealing. If he was convicted, he could go to prison for life. Coach Petrie was now under investigation as well. And rumor had it that the investigation was starting to spread out to others who had received drugs from the doctor, people with organized-crime connections that went beyond the state line.

There was no telling where it would end. It was a great story. And it had all started with Tom.

Tom’s mother’s eyes still glistened with tears, but she smiled. “It’s amazing,” she said. “I raised two heroes. Burt would risk everything to protect people, and Tom would risk everything to get to the truth.”

“Well,” Tom said, “the truth will set you free, right?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Lisa said with a laugh. “I don’t think it’s going to work out that way for Dr. Cameron.”

Tom’s mother got up from the sofa and came toward him. “I’m proud of both my boys,” she said, “but I’ll tell you, Lisa: having hero sons is not easy on a mom. Not easy at all.”

She came to where Tom sat and adjusted the blanket on his legs. She had put a mug full of chicken soup on the table beside him. She lifted it now and put it into his hands.

“Drink some of this,” she said, her eyes still wet and glistening. “You need to build up your strength.”

As Tom took the mug, he looked past his mother at Lisa. He rolled his eyes secretly and she lifted her shoulders in an amiable shrug. The truth was: Tom hated chicken soup. He hated having a blanket on his legs as if he were an old man. He wasn’t even cold. And he wasn’t particularly hungry either. He didn’t really want his mother fussing over him and worrying about him all the time.

But he lifted his cheek to her as she leaned down to kiss him. He said, “Thanks, Mom.” And he drank the soup.

There were some truths he would never tell.