Nightmare City

The rain started at eight and didn't stop until dawn. It drummed against the windows of my office like someone trying to get in, and I told myself it was because I was out of whiskey, not because it had been three days since anyone hired me.

Then the door opened, and she walked in like she owned the building, and I knew I was going to need a lot more whiskey.

She was thirty, maybe younger, with dark hair and a face that belonged on a movie screen. The coat she wore cost more than my car, and the way she looked at my desk—really looked at it, the way you look at something broken that you know you could fix if you cared—told me she was used to getting what she wanted.

"Mr. Callahan?" she said. Her voice was calm and precise, like a surgeon's instrument.

"That depends on who's asking."

"I'm Victoria Sterling." She paused, watching my face for a reaction I didn't give her. "My husband died six months ago. And since then, things have been going missing from my house."

"Like what?"

"Jewelry. First. Then keys. Then, three nights ago, the combination to my safe." She sat down in the chair opposite my desk without being invited. "I hired a private investigator. He followed someone into my house while I was sleeping and found nothing. No intruder. No broken windows. Just—objects moving from one place to another. And when I wake up, I sometimes can't remember how I got from the bedroom to the bathroom. Or why my hands are dirty."

"You think you're sleepwalking."

"I think someone is in my house when I'm not aware of them being there. And I think you're the only person in Los Angeles who will take the case seriously."

I should have said no. I was broke, functionally alcoholic, and officially banned from carrying a gun by the LAPD after the Martinez incident. But the Martinez incident had happened three months ago and the whiskey hadn't helped with that either, so I took the case.

The first thing I noticed was that Victoria's house was too clean. Not minimalist clean—creepy clean. Every surface was wiped. Every object was exactly where it belonged. The only sign of human habitation was a half-finished crossword puzzle on the coffee table and a glass of water on the nightstand that was always full.

"I drink a lot of water," she said when I asked about it.

I started watching the house at night from the car across the street. On the second night, I saw her come out of the front door at 2:17 AM, walk down the steps in her robe, stand in the driveway for exactly four minutes, and come back inside. She didn't look left or right. She didn't fumble with the key. She moved with the mechanical precision of something that wasn't entirely conscious.

On the third night, I went inside.

I had a master key—Victoria gave it to me—and I locked myself in the basement. The house had a full basement with concrete floors and a single window that looked out onto the garden. I sat in the dark with a .38 on my lap and waited.

At 2:17 AM, I heard footsteps on the stairs. Light, measured, unhurried. Someone was coming down.

I raised the gun.

The figure that descended into the basement was not Victoria Sterling. It was a man—tall, bald, wearing a dark suit—and he carried a small leather bag. He moved to the far corner of the basement, set the bag down, and opened it. Inside were jewelry, keys, and three small bottles filled with a yellowish liquid.

He took out a notebook and wrote something in it, then closed the bag and carried it upstairs. I waited ten minutes before following him.

I tracked him to a clinic on Sunset Boulevard. The sign on the building read: Dr. Emil Voss, M.D. — Psychiatry. The waiting room was empty except for a woman reading a magazine and a young man with a nervous tic in his jaw who I later learned was called "Whisper" Marcone.

Dr. Voss was German—old European, with wire-rimmed glasses and hands that looked like they had never done anything physical in their life. He smiled when I walked into his office without an appointment.

"Mr. Callahan," he said. "Victoria's investigator. I wondered when you'd show up."

"You know what's happening in her house."

"I know a great many things. Sit down."

I didn't sit. "What are those bottles in the basement?"

"Pharmaceutical preparations. For treatment."

"Treating who?"

He smiled again. The smile didn't reach his eyes. "Mr. Callahan, would you like to hear about the war? The part they didn't put in your discharge papers?"

I felt something cold move through my chest. "What do you know about my discharge?"

"I know about the incident in Hurtgen Forest. I know you saw things that would make a priest quit the church. And I know that three months after you came back, you couldn't look at a mirror without flinching." He leaned forward. "I specialize in conditions that have names in other languages. Shell shock. Combat fatigue. In Germany, we had a word for it that doesn't translate. We didn't call it a disease. We called it a weakness of the soul."

I put my hand on my gun. "Get to the point."

"The point is, Mr. Callahan, you are exactly the kind of man we need. Your trauma makes you resistant to standard催眠 techniques. Your mind has built walls that most patients would kill to have. We want to study those walls. And in return, we will help you find whatever it is that keeps you sitting in that office, staring at the wall, waiting for a case that will never come."

"Get out."

He stood. "The offer stands. But you should know—someone is already inside Victoria's walls. And they're very good at what they do."

He was right. On the fourth night, I watched from the car as Dr. Voss himself entered Victoria's house at 1:00 AM. He was carrying the same kind of leather bag I had seen in the basement.

I followed him inside.

The house was dark except for a single light in Victoria's bedroom. I pushed the door open and found her sitting on the edge of her bed, perfectly still, her eyes open but not seeing. Dr. Voss stood behind her, his hands resting lightly on her shoulders.

"Miss Sterling," he said in a voice I had never heard him use—softer, warmer, like a priest conducting a private mass. "Close your eyes. Tell me what you see."

Her voice, when she answered, was flat and mechanical. "I see a room. With mirrors. And people in the mirrors who are living lives that aren't mine. I see a man selling stocks. I see a child running through wheat. I see an old woman on a porch."

"And how does it feel?"

"Good."

"It's supposed to feel good, Miss Sterling. That's why you let us in. That's why you bring the other guests."

I stepped into the room. "Victoria. Can you hear me?"

Her head turned slowly toward me. Her eyes focused on my face with an effort that looked painful. "Jack?"

"Who are these people, Victoria? What is Dr. Voss doing to you?"

She looked back at Voss. He was watching me with the cold amusement of a scientist observing an experiment go off course.

"Mr. Callahan," he said quietly. "I suggest you leave."

I didn't leave. I pulled my badge—old, dusty, mostly symbolic—and held it up. "LAPD. Step away from the patient."

Voss smiled. "You're not police anymore, Mr. Callahan. And even if you were, this is a licensed medical practice."

He placed both hands on Victoria's temples. I moved to intervene, but something happened that I didn't expect: Victoria's eyes rolled back in her head, and she began to speak. Not in her voice—in someone else's.

"You shouldn't be here," she said, and the voice was male, older, with a German accent. "This one is already taken."

I staggered back as if I'd been hit. Voss lowered his hands. Victoria blinked, focused on me, and for a moment I saw something real in her eyes—fear. Real fear, not the practiced calm of a rich widow.

"Jack," she whispered. "Run."

I ran. Not because I was afraid. Because for the first time in three months, I felt something that wasn't whiskey and regret. I felt purpose.

Over the next three days, I put together everything I had: the basement bottles, Voss's clinic, Whisper Marcone's record of nine similar cases in ten years, all ending in "suicide" or "accident." I took it all to Rizzoli, my old contact at Homicide.

He looked at the files, then at me. "Callahan, this is either the best work you've ever done or the most elaborate psychotic break. I can't tell which."

"Can you file it?"

"I can try. But if Voss has connections—"

"Everyone has connections in this town. The question is whether you want to use yours."

He filed it. The raids happened at 6 AM on a Monday. Voss's clinic was shut down, his files seized, his patients interviewed. Nine people came forward with similar stories. The bottles contained a combination of hyoscine and scopolamine—drugs that can induce suggestibility, create vivid hallucinations, and fragment memory.

Voss was charged with nine counts of unlawful imprisonment and four counts of fraud. His sentence would have been lengthy.

But Victoria Sterling disappeared before the trial.

I found out from Rizzoli. "She was the key witness," he said. "Without her, the case falls apart. And she's gone. House is empty. No forwarding address. Credit cards stopped."

I drove to her house one last time. The rooms were empty, except for a single envelope on the kitchen table. Inside was a photograph of Victoria and her dead husband, on the back of which she had written:

Jack—I'm not running. I'm waking up. The dream was easier. Thank you for reminding me what hard feels like. Don't look for me. Live your life.

I threw the whiskey away that week. I got a real job—legitimate work, from a man who ran a car dealership and knew what it meant to be burned once. I don't think about Victoria every day. But sometimes, when it rains and the city smells like wet asphalt and old neon, I close my eyes and I see a woman in a room full of mirrors, living someone else's dream, and I wonder if she ever managed to find her own.

© 2026 - Authored by Z R ZHANG ( EL9507135 -- パスポート番号[ちゅうごく] 중국 여권 번호 Номер паспорта หมายเลขหนังสือเดินทาง Passnummerرقم جواز السفر CHN Passport)
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