The Nightmarys - By Dan Poblocki Page 0,29

the laugh turned into a cough, which went on for a long time. “Hold on … Water.” A few seconds later, he added, “Sorry about that. Not been feeling too good lately.”

Despite feeling baffled, Timothy smiled, but soon he felt tears coming. He didn’t even bother fighting them. “Ben, are you okay? Where are you?”

“Some hospital. They tell me I’ve been asleep for a while?”

“You could say that,” said Timothy. “How long have you been awake?”

“In and out for the past twelve hours, I think. Everything’s a blur.”

“Mom’s flying down. She should be there soon.”

“That’s what my doctors told me. But I really wanted to talk with someone I know … and love. My family. Dad must be on his way to work, but I thought I’d catch you before school. God, it’s so good to hear your voice.”

Questions flooded Timothy’s brain. Not only about the attack. He wanted to ask his big brother’s advice about finding order in chaos. The light in the darkness. Even though it sort of felt selfish, now might be his only chance for a while. If you were in my situation … “Are you in pain?” Timothy said instead.

Ben groaned. “They got me doped up pretty good. Attached to all sorts of tubes.”

“What do you remember?”

“Not much since before deployment. Weird. Most everything else is a big blank page. They say it’s going to take a long time to recover. Obviously an understatement. It’s like there’s a huge chunk of my life missing.”

Missing. The word made Timothy cringe. “I miss you,” he said.

“I was dreaming about you, little brother.”

“You were?”

Ben chuckled again. Or coughed. Timothy couldn’t tell which. “It was a nightmare. Really scary.”

“What was it about?”

“I was walking down a desert road,” said Ben, struggling. “Sand everywhere. You were there. Strange thing was, you were holding a grenade and smiling in a really weird way. Your smile just kept growing and growing until your mouth was bigger than your face.”

A horrible image. Timothy blinked it away. “That is weird,” he said.

Ben went on. “Then you held the grenade out to me. You wanted me to take it. And right before I did, I realized that you’d already pulled the pin.” Timothy felt his face flush. He felt dizzy now. Then, with his voice crackling, Ben added, “It’s your fault this happened to me. It’s your fault I’m dead.”

Timothy tried to speak but couldn’t.

Silence hissed from the other end of the line; then Ben began to laugh. The laughter turned harsh, sinking into a deep pitch as it grew louder and louder. It was no longer Ben’s voice. And it was no longer only in the phone. The laughter surrounded him, bouncing off the walls of the foyer, filling the entire house. Timothy crouched into a ball and covered his head to try to block it out.

Suddenly, a siren screamed. He fell against the wooden bench. Timothy looked at the receiver in his hand. A busy signal blared at him through the holes in the plastic. Then a tinny female voice shouted, “If you’d like to make a call, please hang up and try again. If you need help, please dial—”

A door slammed. Timothy dropped the phone and glanced upstairs. “H-hello?” he called. No one answered. Dizzy with fear, Timothy stood, replaced the phone on the cradle, and listened to the house’s overwhelming silence.

Outside, an engine sputtered. His bus was turning up Beech Nut Street. Timothy opened the front door and ran to catch it.

23.

A stranger sat behind Mr. Crane’s desk—a substitute. Mr. Crane was out sick.

Timothy snuck to his seat in the back of the classroom. The rest of the students slowly began to trickle in. Moments later, when the class was nearly full, a new girl with short black hair appeared in the doorway. No one seemed to notice her. She gave him the smallest, most hidden smile he’d ever witnessed. It was their secret now, one of many.

The bell rang, and the substitute teacher stood up and read from a piece of paper. “Please move to be with your partner, and work on your project.”

Timothy got up and sat down in the desk next to Abigail. “What’s wrong?” she said. “You look a little odd.”

“I wonder where Mr. Crane is.” He was still trying to recover from his frightful phone call. He kept remembering the sound of his brother’s laughter.

“After you left last night,” she said, shaking her head, “all hell broke loose at my house.”

“What do you mean?”

“My grandmother got