Paranoia (The Night Walkers) Read Online Free PDF Page A

Jeff died in the fire, Thor blamed me completely. He’d been furious ever since.
    Never mind the fact that Jeff had started the fire and was a psychopathic killer—no, it was clearly my fault.
    “Get off me, Cooper.” Thor shook his shoulder and the other guy dropped his arm. They both backed toward the other side of the parking lot.
    Cooper looked at me over his shoulder. “Sorry, man.”
    I got to my feet without a word, pressed the end of my sleeve against my bleeding cheek, and stumbled back to my car. Maybe today hadn’t been so great after all.
    Leaning against the car door, I watched Thor and his friend climb into the backseat of an already-running sedan. A girl sat in the driver’s seat. Her short blond hair shimmered almost white in the moonlight streaming through her window. Even from across the parking lot, she seemed afraid … or maybe upset. Her motions were jerky as she turned the wheel, and I could hear Thor and Cooper yelling at each other in the backseat.
    Not all that surprising that she seemed scared. I didn’t know anyone who would be comfortable driving around in a car with Thor bellowing in the backseat.
    By the time I got home, cleaned the many scrapes on my cheek, started the camcorder, and got into bed, I was exhausted. It was only an instant before I went into the white void that was my version of sleep. I hoped this Cooper guy made better choices in dreams than he did in friends.
    From the moment when I felt the odd vibration that normally signalled I was about to enter my Dreamer’s dream, I knew something was very wrong. Immediately, everything turned a solid, inky black. It was unlike any other dream I’d ever seen. It was deep and heavy … and it kept getting heavier. The gloom pressed in, closing so tight around me I couldn’t move. I could barely breathe …
    And I couldn’t escape.

three
    When I finally woke up and was released from the hellish dream back into reality, my head threatened to explode with every beat of my heart. Even the light coming through my closed eyelids was like a knife slicing through my brain. The blankets I’d slept in, my pillow … even my bed was gone, and I was sprawled out on something very hard and cold. Whatever it was, it was not helping my horrific headache. My body ached everywhere and my stomach churned in my gut. Something smelled horrible, like a dusty old urinal. I raised my arm and shaded my eyes as I tried to open them. Peeking out between my fingers, I saw—flannel. Red flannel … and then it moved.
    I sat straight up and my vision burst into violent white, like a light bulb had exploded behind my eyeballs. Then everything went dark, all but a pinpoint of glaring brightness in the center. Leaning back, I found what felt like a brick wall and rested against it, panting—and panicking.
    All around me was confusing noise: a loud printer, a phone ringing in the distance, metal on metal, footsteps. And then, so close I could reach out and touch them, many people breathing: heavy breathing, light breathing, a cough here, a sniff over there. Someone laughed an emotionless, empty chuckle, but it echoed around me, through me, and I couldn’t decide which direction it had come from.
    This time I took it slower, parting my eyelids just enough to peek through and see a small slice of the room.
    Everything around me was dingy white, with gray benches along all the walls. Other people sat or stood nearby—all men—and a few stared at me. I widened my eyelids a bit more and noticed the one detail that defined everything else. To my left, the white bricks I leaned against ended at a wall of gray bars.
    Jail.
    What the hell is going on?
    My mind flew into a frenzy, trying to force the bars I was staring at into any kind of logic. To make them fit into one of the boxes I had that could make any sense—but I knew there was only one possible explanation.
    Darkness had taken control.
    I heard the low chuckle again and this time I recognized it … and