Nightmare Academy Read online

  BAM! The door opened and it was Marcy, all right, her face red, panting, shrieking and giggling. “It's a raid!” She slammed the door shut, then grabbed a chair to prop against it. “I can't believe it! This is so exciting!”

  “Who is it?”

  “Alex and all the boys!”

  Oh, great! "Where are they?”

  “They're raiding the boys' dorm!”

  The crash of a breaking window! Angry screams!

  “Where's Mrs. Meeks?”

  “I don't know!”

  “Well, what about Mr. Stern?”

  “I don't know.”

  “Leave the lights off.”

  Well, Elijah figured, with everybody having such a good time down there, I'll never get another opportunity like this one.

  He continued up the hill, keeping the lights of the mansion off his left shoulder, trying to circle it until he found something. So far, he'd found plenty of loose rocks, tangled brush, and low tree limbs, but no break in the forest.

  Then he saw something different—very vague in the dark, but different. The amber glow from one of the mansion's yard lights was reaching far back into the forest, suggesting a long, narrow opening, a possible road. He paused a moment to study it.

  Then he heard something and quit breathing.

  He heard it again. A low, close-to-the-ground snuffing, then a snorting. Some bushes rustled. Some twigs snapped.

  Whatever it was, it sounded big.

  Elisha and Marcy sat in their darkened room, peering out the window through small, cautious cracks in the curtain. There were voices out there, some whooping and hollering, some angry enough to kill. The voices were mostly male, but she could hear some females, too, some laughing, some screaming and swearing. Vague shadows were running in the dark, coming, going, chasing, brawling. Suddenly, startlingly two raced by just outside the window, one pursuing the other, feet pounding the sod and breath chugging. The one doing the chasing caught up with his quarry, and with a violent jerk, ripping his clothes, dashed him to the ground.

  “Okay okay, I give,” came a voice, muffled against the ground.

  But blows followed, fist against flesh, and grunts of deep, guttural pain.

  Marcy gasped.

  Elisha was reviewing in her mind the building exits and escape routes. “We may have to get out of here.”

  Bears are usually afraid of people, so Elijah tried hollering. “YAAA! GO ON! GET OUT OF HERE!”

  The thing replied with a deep growl that filled the forest. More branches and twigs were snapping, each sound a little closer. Now he could hear and even feel the heavy thumping of huge feet.

  “Guess this one isn't afraid,” Elijah considered, but when a huge, furry form came charging his way, he was quite certain. He ran for all he was worth, widening the trail he'd made coming up, breaking out of the woods and into the field with a clear, new insight: “Okay, one thing's true around here.”

  Outside the dorm window, the rioting shadows began to retreat into the dark, their time of mischief over. A moment later, except for the soft whimper of a pulverized young man struggling to his feet, it was quiet.

  “Is it over?” Marcy asked.

  “Looks like it,” said Elisha, feeling relieved.

  “That was scary.”

  “Has this happened before?”

  “No. Not like this. We've played some jokes on each other, but this was mean.” Her frightened eyes widened in the dark and she gave a little gasp. “What if they'd come in here?”

  Already, the thought had more than crossed Elisha's mind. “Good question, Marcy. What if they'd come in here?”

  “They . . . they wouldn't have done anything, would they?”

  Elisha looked out the window, still afraid she might see shadows lingering and sneaking about. “When there's no right or wrong, why shouldn't they do something if they feel like it?”

  Marcy had no answer.

  Across the field, a tiny light began blinking. A flashlight, most likely near dorm B. The blinking continued as the light waved back and forth, shining, then obscured behind something, then shining again. There was a pattern to it. Elisha had seen this signal before: the letters E, E, S.

  Elijah! He was trying to signal her, using their hailing code, their initials! “Marcy! Do we still have that flashlight?” Every room was issued a flashlight, and now they could put it to good use.

  Marcy groped about in the dark until she found their official KM flashlight where she'd left it, on top of the dresser. She joined Elisha at the window, handed her the flashlight, then knelt there, silent and spellbound as Elisha signaled back, ducking the flashlight in and out from behind the curtain to create her signals.

  “Who are you talking to?” Marcy asked in a hushed voice. “Is this a code? Where'd you learn to do this?”

  “Later,” said Elisha.

  “When there's no right or wrong,

  why shouldn't they do something

  if they feel like it?”

  Elijah, safe in his room, got her message: “DORM D RAIDED. WE ARE OK. HOW ARE YOU?”

  He signaled back, using the curtain to make the flashlight blink. “OK. MAY HAVE FOUND ROAD. STOPPED BY BEAR.”

  There was a significant hesitation before Elisha answered, “REAL BEAR?”

  “REAL BIG BEAR. SCARY.”

  “STILL NEED BACK DOOR. DAMAGE HERE. FIGHTS.”

  Elijah could hear Alex and his guys laughing and reliving the raid out in the hall. Freshly stolen KMs were jingling. “TOM CRUISE BEATEN. KMS TAKEN. ALEX WAS LEADER. BE CAREFUL.”

  “YOU TOO. I MISS MOM AND DAD.”

  Mom and Dad. Elijah knew he would have missed them anyway, but this place only made their love all the more precious. He signaled back, “WE WILL SEE THEM AGAIN. LETS MAKE THEM PROUD.”

  “LY.” Their code for “Love you.”

  “LY.”

  As Elijah put away his flashlight, a chilling thought crossed his mind: What if we can't get out of here?

  Nate and Sarah rented a high-performance, single-engine airplane and flew themselves to Borland, Colorado, in less time than it would have taken to fly commercially Joe Pike, owner of a local hunting and fishing resort, met them at the airstrip in his SUV

  “I've been checking around,” he said as he loaded their gear into the back of his rig. “It's like I told you on the phone. Sure, a lot of people remember the government having some kind of camp or something way up in Cougar Gulch, but that was a few years ago.”

  “We need to talk to those people,” said Nate.

  “And we need to see that camp,” said Sarah.

  An hour later, Pike eased to a stop at the end of an obscure, seldom-used access road. Nate and Sarah climbed out and looked in all directions, enjoying the scenery regardless of their serious mission. This was the great outdoors at its best: green, tree-covered mountains rising steeply on all sides of the valley, their jagged, snow-frosted summits stark against a deep blue, cloud-laced sky; the valley itself, stretched out like a green hammock between the peaks, garnished with young trees, a sparkling stream, and rust-red outcroppings of rock.

  “This way,” said Pike.

  They followed him over a berm of earth that blocked the road and into an open meadow where all the trees were young, only a few feet tall.

  Pike stopped. “This is it.”

  They waited for a clue that he was joking, but it didn't come.

  Nate walked several yards into the meadow, looking about. “There used to be a campus here? A whole academy?”

  Pike pointed to a mound to their left. “There's some rubble over there, what's left of a foundation.” He pointed ahead. “And there used to be a large meeting hall right over there. You can still see the base for the fireplace.”

  Nate walked far ahead and stooped down to pick up some broken brick from the remains of an old chimney. Carefully scanning the ground, he could see a vague, rectangular shape under the grass, wildflowers, and young trees.

  Sarah took
out the brochure they'd gotten from the former runaway named Tyler, and compared the photograph on the front with the terrain she was seeing now. The photo couldn't capture all the mountainous background, but it included enough. In the photo, behind a large hall, was the very same rocky outcropping and steep-sided valley she was seeing right now from where she stood.

  “What happened to it?” Nate asked. “It couldn't have just rotted away, not in so short a time.”

  Pike shrugged. “Near as anyone can tell, the government came in and tore it all down, and then they replanted the area. And they did it quick.” He surveyed the open field that was once a campus. “Yeah, if you hadn't lived here and hunted here and seen it for yourself, you'd never know there was such a thing.”

  They returned to Borland, a former mining town trying to put on a new face for tourists. There were tackle shops, Joe Pike's Borland Resort, a mine tour, trout ponds, and a tourist center that offered snowmobiling in the winter and river rafting in the summer.

  “What happened to it?” Nate asked.

  “It couldn't have just rotted away,

  not in so short a time”

  Joe treated them to lunch in his restaurant. “Sure. I can remember busloads of kids coming in for a few weeks at the academy. They'd stop in here for snacks and film and to use the restroom, but after that we never saw them. They'd spend all their time up there.”

  “And how many years was it here?” Sarah asked between bites of salad.

  Joe gave a strange, apologetic look. “Just one.”

  Both Nate and Sarah had to double-check, leaning over the table toward him. "Just one?"

  Steve Mackleberg, the owner of the local filling station, shed a little more light on it. “There was a work camp up there for several years, and then the government came in and fixed the whole place up like a YMCA camp. We saw the big yellow buses go by, full of kids, and then two weeks later we saw them all go by again, heading home. I'm not sure what they were doing up there. But you know, you ought to talk to Vicky Johnson, the hairdresser. She and Gus worked up there.”

  Vicky Johnson, a local lady who did hair, polished nails, and raised trout, talked while she cut a customer's hair in her one chair beauty shop. “My husband and I got on as assistant caretakers—you know, cutting the grass, sweeping the walks, hauling the garbage, whatever. We worked there for a month to get the place ready for the kids, and then kept it up for the two weeks while the kids were there.”

  “Just two weeks?” Nate asked.

  “And then they said thank you and ran us out of there. We got our paychecks, put a new roof on the house, and the next thing we knew, the academy wasn't there anymore. Your tax dollars at work.”

  “Where did the kids come from?” Sarah asked, ready to write down the answer.

  “Oh, all over the country. I know we had a few kids from Denver. The academy recruited kids in the high schools.”

  “Um . . . any particular schools?”

  “Oh, you'd have to talk to—what was her name, anyway? She was the recruiter, in charge of getting kids signed up.”

  Sarah looked at the back of the brochure again. “Suzanne Doming?”

  “No, no, it was something like Katy or Kathy . . .” With her scissors, she pointed out one of the many photographs and snapshots she had taped to the walls. “Well that's her right there, standing between me and Gus.” Sarah and Nate took a close able lesson and that, once each person had had time to search his or her heart, the solution to the whole problem would become clear to everyone. Mr. Booker didn't care to hear any whining about it and forbade anyone to talk about it, at least in his class. “This is your world,” he said. “You made the bed; you can sleep in it.” Mrs. Meeks and Mr. Stern weren't quite as detached; they just handed the whole problem back with the challenge, “This is your world and you know best. See what you can do and we'll back you.”

  “Where did the kids come from?”

  That evening, the music was playing as loud as ever in the recreation center, but half the video games were blurping, beeping, and roaring with no one there to hear them and the pool table was deserted. Most of the kids didn't want to leave their rooms for fear that what little possessions they had would not be there when they returned. The talk had gotten around and everyone expected trouble.

  It came. Only moments after Elijah had finished his report and hidden his radio, he heard a loud rapping on his window.

  “Elijah! Elijah!” It was his sister.

  He cracked the window open. “What are you doing here?”

  “You're going to be raided! Brett and a whole gang of kids are on their way over here right now!”

  Elijah heard a terrible crash at the end of the hall. “I think they've arrived.”

  “Don't let them find your radio!”

  “Don't worry.”

  “I'm going to get somebody in charge. We can't let this go on.”

  “Go for it.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I don't know—see if I can keep anybody from getting killed, I guess.”

  He could already hear a terrible tumult in the hallway. He quickly stepped outside his door, closed it behind him, and stood there, overwhelmed.

  There were no fun and games out here. A mob of guys, maybe two dozen strong, were muscling their way into the rooms, getting shoved back by the occupants, kicking the occupants. Two guys trying to push their way into room 13 were rammed backward by a chair in their gut, then tripped over two other guys wrestling and slugging on the floor. Alex was in the hall, taking on all comers with what appeared to be a chair leg. A drawer from a dresser came flying out of room 9, tumbling and spilling shirts and socks on the floor. Brett and a hulking buddy burst from room 10, bellowing in triumph as they stuffed KMs in their pockets, and immediately began trying to shove their way into room 8, right next door to Elijah. It was all happening so fast, so noisily. There were so many bodies running everywhere, banging, throwing, shoving, kicking, hitting. The hallway was filling with drawers, clothing, shoes, bars of soap, towels, anything that could be tossed, trashed, or spilled just to rile the owner. Another chair came flying into the hall, then three drawers, and then a mattress. By now there might have been five all-out fistfights going on, but the fighters were changing opponents so often it was hard to keep track.

  Three of Elijah's neighbors, from rooms 3, 4, and 5, were now in the hallway, visibly frightened as they stood near their doors watching a wave of violence come their way

  Elijah knew what to do in their case. He spread his arms toward them like a cop doing crowd control. “Guys, get out of here. It isn't worth it.”

  Shawn, a meek and mixed-up kid severely lacking in muscle, took Elijah's advice and fled out the far door. Jim, big enough to hold his own but too timid to try it, followed him. That left Warren, the neighborly kid Elijah'd gotten to know. Warren was angry, and stood his ground. “They're not taking my stuff.”

  Elijah turned just in time to see three guys coming their way, ready to challenge that. “Warren, it isn't worth it.”

  The guy in front, an obvious scrapper with a missing tooth and a face full of pimples, looked at Warren and announced, “Hey, I like those pants!”

  It took only microseconds for Elijah to think it through: three against one; if Warren runs, they'll chase him and get what they want. Three against two? Well, at least the odds were better.

  “It's worth it,” he concluded, and stepped into their path.

  8

  CRUSADES AND

  INQUISITIONS

  ELISHA WAS FURIOUS as she stormed across the field toward her own dorm building, rehearsing in her mind what argument—or wrestling hold—she would use to get that stupid, inept, irresponsible wimp-of-a-woman Mrs. Meeks to get off her relativistic rump and do something about all this! Whether Meeks was in her room or anywhere else, Elisha was going to find her, and no matter what cutesy, feel-good, we-are-the-world, global village glop Meeks might use to excuse all this nonsense, Elis
ha was going to get some action!

  Then Marcy came galloping by, screaming and giggling along with some other girls, including Charlene and Melinda. There was no question they were making a beeline for the trouble, and that instantly changed Elisha's plans. She did a 180 and headed back. “Marcy! Marcy, don't!”

  The girls didn't even turn around.

  Dorm A had become a battleground just like dorm B, only a few octaves higher. The hallway was a blizzard of clothing, pillows, combs, makeup, everything flying everywhere, including the frequent flash and tinkle of pilfered KMs. There were slap-clashes, tugs-of-war, shrieks, cursings, screams, and threats; girls were scratching, biting, kicking, pulling hair. Elisha went into the melee only deep enough to grab a fistful of Marcy's blouse and yank her out the door. “How dare you! Are you out of your mind?”

  Marcy was indignant over the interruption. “What's your problem?”

  “What's my problem? Don't you remember last night, how scary that was, how scared we were? Don't you remember saying 'Ooo, what if they'd come in here?'”

  Marcy's eyes seemed totally blank. “So?”

  Elisha wanted to slap her. “So kids got hurt last night! And they're getting hurt tonight! Stealing things and wrecking things, and fighting, it's wrong!”

  “No, it isn't. We're just getting back at them.”

  Just then, Melinda came running out the door with a brand-new Walkman in her hand. “Hey, Cher, you're missing out!”

  Again, Elisha was incredulous. “Melinda! What are you doing?

  You can't take that!”

  “Sure I can. I want it.”

  Elisha was trying to believe that a brain cell, just one tiny brain cell, might still be working behind those dead-as-a-dolly baby blue eyes. “Melinda, aren't you the one who was all upset because somebody stole your Walkman? Don't you remember how it felt to be ripped off?”

  “I feel good now,” Melinda answered.

  “We're just having fun,” said Marcy. “It isn't wrong if we're having fun.”