The red-light numbers on the pulse monitor rose rapidly as Tom’s heart began to pound in his aching chest. The Lying Man looked down at him from what seemed a great height.
“Believe me, your death is the best thing for everyone,” he said in his calm, hypnotic, soothing voice. “You had no business coming back.”
Tom remembered everything in that moment. The empty house. The fog in the streets. The malevolents reaching for him with their long claws, trying to tear him apart. It wasn’t a dream. It wasn’t a dream at all. It was real.
And the Lying Man was real. The King of Death had come back to claim him. Tom peered up through the darkness until the Lying Man’s face became clear above him: Dr. Cameron.
“I didn’t want to take this risk,” he told Tom serenely. “I hoped you’d have the good sense to die when you were supposed to. I thought you were dead when I left you at the monastery. But you just don’t know when to quit, Tom. So I’ll have to help you. This won’t take long. And the way I do it, it won’t even leave a trace. After all, I’m a doctor. And I’ll tell them: your lungs just couldn’t heal . . .”
Tom tried to shout for help, but his voice was too weak—and Dr. Cameron was way too fast. The big man moved like a panther. He yanked the pillow out from under Tom’s head—and in the same motion, in the same second—brought it down over Tom’s face.
The doctor was strong—and Tom had no strength in him at all. The pillow pressed down, pinning him to the bed. It closed off his nose and mouth, cut off his air completely. He felt his lungs working helplessly in his aching chest. He couldn’t draw breath. He was suffocating.
He tried to fight, to get out from under, but it was no use. He reached up and tried to push Dr. Cameron’s hands away, but the man’s arms were immensely powerful, locked into position, like stone pillars, unmovable. With every second Tom tried to push them away, he lost strength. A dizziness began to swim around him. He felt he was sinking into unconsciousness. He knew that this time he would never return.
He stopped fighting, stopped trying to push at Cameron’s hands. Instead, he dropped his arms, reached across himself. Felt for the bandage on the inside of his elbow. As the airless heat beneath the pillow closed over him like a sprung trap, as his consciousness began to swim and spin away, he tore the bandage off his own skin. Felt for the end of the tube, for the needle embedded in his flesh.
He ripped the needle out of himself and blindly plunged it into Cameron’s body.
Through the muffling pillow, Tom heard the doctor cry out in pain. He felt the man’s hold on the pillow loosen. With all the strength he had, Tom twisted his body away from him, out from under the pillow. He rolled over onto his side, taking a great, welcome gasp of air.
And then he slid off the edge of the bed and tumbled to the floor.
It was a long drop, and he hit hard. He took the jolt on his shoulder, but he felt it in his chest, a jarring, rattling pain. He coughed, trying to catch his breath. The room filled with a high-pitched alarm as the heart monitor wire was torn off his finger and the monitor flatlined, its red numbers dropping to zero as if Tom had died.
Tom had not died. Not yet. But now Dr. Cameron cursed and came at him once again.
Tom caught a glimpse of the man striding around the bed, charging through the shadows. The heart monitor continued its high-pitched scream, and Tom wished he had the breath to echo it.
Dr. Cameron swiftly turned the corner of the bed. Tom rolled over again. He hit the table under the window. Ignoring the pain in his chest, he reached up and grabbed the table’s edge. He pulled himself up on it and reached for the flower vase with his free hand.
Dr. Cameron grabbed him, his fingers digging into his shoulder. Tom was shocked at the power of the man’s grip. Dr. Cameron started to force him down to the floor.
Tom wrapped his hand around the flower vase and brought it crashing into the side of Dr. Cameron’s head.
Dr. Cameron shouted as the vase shattered, as the broken edge of it sliced into his cheek. Blinded and in pain, he reared back, rose up, clutching at his own eyes.
At the same moment, the door of the room opened. A nurse came rushing in, flipping on the light.
She had heard the alarm—the heart monitor. She had seen the readout at the nursing station down the hall. She had seen the numbers drop. She’d come rushing in to make sure Tom was all right. As the room was flooded with light, she saw Dr. Cameron staggering backward, clutching at his bleeding face.
“Doctor?” she said. “Are you all right?”
Over the endless scream of the monitor’s alarm, Tom heard Dr. Cameron shout, “Get out of my way!” Propped against the table, he saw the bleeding doctor stumble toward the nurse and shove her aside as he headed for the door.
Coughing, Tom slid down to the floor. He stared up at the ceiling. He heard Dr. Cameron’s footsteps running away down the hall. And yet he thought he could still hear him nearby, speaking into his ear.
No, it wasn’t Dr. Cameron. It was the Lying Man.
You just don’t know when to quit, Tom, he said.
Tom closed his eyes and smiled weakly. “I’ll never quit,” he whispered.