22.

The anger went off in Tom like an explosion, a red rage that blasted out of his core and spread all through him. He had just seen Marie—remembered Marie—revealing her disdain for him, dashing his heart to the ground. And now here was the laughing, conniving, insinuating, threatening, and terrifying Lying Man. And Tom had had enough.

He cocked the bat over his shoulder. He wanted to pound the Lying Man’s laughter back into his throat.

But where was he? A moment ago his shadowy presence had been standing right in front of him. That lean, dark face with its smart, bright eyes—that face that somehow sent a chill up his spine—had been smiling at him from no more than a few feet away. And now . . .

Now the laughter came again from a distance. And Tom saw the Lying Man—the shadow of the Lying Man—halfway down the hall.

Furious, he cocked the bat even farther over his shoulder and stepped forward.

“What do you want?” he shouted. “Come on, you coward! What do you want? Stop trying to mess with my mind! Stop playing head games with me! Just come on and say it! What do you want?”

Tom advanced another step, but the Lying Man didn’t back away. He didn’t seem afraid at all. He stood in a relaxed posture, his eyes glinting in the darkness. Just as before, something about him, something about his half-seen features, sent an icy shiver up Tom’s spine. Angry as he was, he felt it. For all the Lying Man’s easy laughter, for all the soothing calm of his voice, there was just something terrifying about this guy.

The Lying Man’s laughter trailed off into a low chuckle. “I told you, Tom,” he said in a tone full of friendship and sympathy. “I only want for you what you want for yourself. I mean, you wanted the truth, right? Well, now you have it. Now you see. The truth is that Marie doesn’t really like you very much at all. All that love you felt for her? All that tenderness and yearning all these years. Marie just thought it was—what was her word?—creepy. When she pretended to like and admire you, she was playing with you, my friend. She was playing with you so she could control you, like a puppet on a string—convince you to do whatever she wanted.”

Tom came another step closer, brandishing the bat, breathing hard. But he could feel the anger—and the strength—draining out of him. The Lying Man wasn’t lying now, was he? He wasn’t lying about Marie. That was the truth about her, all right. And just hearing it spoken out loud filled Tom with sorrow—a heartbroken grief that sapped his energy.

The Lying Man seemed to sense this. Rather than retreating from him in fear, he took a casual step toward him. Tom could now see his smile, his teeth gleaming gray in the shadows. For some reason he couldn’t name, the sight made his gorge rise into his throat, made him feel he might be sick.

“I know it’s painful for you, Tom,” said the Lying Man sympathetically. “But better to find out now, right? Better to find out before you make a fool of yourself. Or, that is, before you make a bigger fool of yourself than you already have. You see? I’ve helped you, Tom. I’ve helped you find the truth you were looking for. And here you threaten me with that bat of yours. Where’s the sense in that? Why should you be angry at me?”

Tom had no answer. The tide of his sorrow rose within him and the tide of his strength and anger continued to recede. He stopped advancing on the Lying Man. The bat drooped and settled onto his shoulder.

The Lying Man seized the moment and took another easy step toward him. The lean face and its arch features became clearer in the dark—and though Tom felt even more nauseated, somehow he couldn’t look away.

“You know what this reminds me of?” the Lying Man said. “Do you remember, Tom, when you wrote that story about the football team? Do you remember how everyone got angry at you? And why? All you’d done was tell the truth. You told the truth and they didn’t want to hear it, so instead of facing it squarely, they got angry at you. They got angry at the messenger because they didn’t want to hear the message. Isn’t that exactly what you’re doing to me now? I’ve shown you a truth you didn’t want to know, and now instead of confronting it bravely like a man, you’re yelling at me and threatening me! It’s a kind of cowardice really, isn’t it?” He laughed again, clearly unafraid.

Tom let the bat drop off his shoulders. He let the head of it sink to the floor. What was he going to do? Brain the guy with it? For what? Talking? Telling the truth about Marie? No. The Lying Man was right. That was just cowardice. There was no point taking his anger out on him. That wouldn’t change a thing.

He let a long stream of breath come sighing out of him. He just felt tired now. Exhausted, in fact. Totally played out.

Marie, he thought miserably.

“Oh, don’t be too hard on her, Tom,” said the Lying Man. It was as if he could hear Tom thinking! “After all, you’re not so pure of heart either, are you?”

Tom stood powerless as he watched the Lying Man come another step closer, as the Lying Man moved smoothly into a patch of deeper shadow that nearly obscured him from Tom’s view.

“That’s part of the truth, too, isn’t it?” he said in his serene and reasonable voice. “What Marie said about you. About your motives for writing that story. She has a point, doesn’t she? You were upset you couldn’t be on the team. And you were jealous of Gordon, weren’t you?”

Tom lowered his chin, looked at the floor. “Sometimes,” he muttered. He wished it wasn’t so, but it was.

“And you did want to steal Marie away from him.”

Tom shook his head weakly. That wasn’t why he wrote the story. It was never his reason.

“Are you sure?” said the Lying Man, as if Tom had spoken these words aloud. “Are you absolutely sure those weren’t your motives? Are you sure you’re not just as much a liar as Marie is? I mean, look at yourself, Tom. Really look at yourself for a change. Look at your life. You’ve lost your brother. You’ve lost your friends. You’ve spent years pining for a girl who despises you. And as for who you are . . . well, you like to think of yourself as a courageous seeker after truth, I know. But I sort of suspect you’re just an envious little person trying to use your newspaper to take vengeance on people who are more successful than you are.”

Tom stood slumped, unable to find the energy even to answer. Was it true? Was that really his life? Was that really himself? Right then, right after seeing Marie, right after hearing what she said about him and feeling his heart break inside him, he certainly felt . . . well, he felt as miserable as the Lying Man’s description of him. He felt worthless. Weak. As if life weren’t even worth living.

So maybe the Lying Man wasn’t such a liar after all.

Tom slowly lifted his head. He looked down the hall, peered into the shadows in the direction of the Lying Man’s voice. But he couldn’t see him anymore. The Lying Man seemed to have vanished into the darkness.

And then, suddenly—suddenly the man was standing right beside him. He was murmuring quietly into Tom’s ear.

“You see, Tom, it’s as I said. I just want for you what you want for yourself. And you know what that is, don’t you?”

“No,” said Tom weakly.

“Yes, you do,” said the Lying Man. “You know what you really want.” He chuckled softly. “Death, Tom. That’s it, isn’t it? You don’t want to come out of this coma at all, do you? Why should you? Your life isn’t worth living. Of course you want to die. You want to die.”

Horrified, Tom turned to him quickly. The Lying Man smiled, his expression seemingly full of kindness. But his eyes! His eyes were dancing with the raging electric power of his absolute wickedness.

“And now,” said the Lying Man, “we’re both going to get what we want!”

The next moment he was gone—all of him was gone, that is, except his laughter. His laughter continued to trail back to Tom out of the shadows, fading only slowly.

And as the laughter faded, a new noise replaced it. Soft at first. A steady, rhythmic pounding. It was coming from upstairs.

Tom listened. The thudding went on. It grew louder. Now and then it was punctuated by high, hollow shrieks that drifted like ghostly echoes down the stairs, down the hall, to where Tom stood.

The malevolents!

Tom’s eyes widened as he lifted his gaze to the ceiling.

Moment by moment, the pounding upstairs became more insistent. The shrieks became wilder, more ravenous.

Of course. He had forgotten. The Lying Man was the master of the malevolents. The Lying Man was the King of Death. He had kept Tom here, delayed him, stalled him with his talk while the fog climbed up the hill outside, while the malevolents advanced on the school.

And Tom, heartbroken and confused, weak with sorrow, had listened to him. Had stood here. Had given the malevolents the time they needed to make their approach.

And now they were here. Pounding on the windows. Shrieking for entry.

Hungry for Tom’s life.