Night Terror (25 page)

40

ZACH PUSHED
and the door swung inward. He was pulled a step into the darkened room with it, sucking in his breath. His heart pounded in his ears and one foot tapped rapidly on the floor. The sound frightened him, until he pressed all his weight on the ball of that foot to stop it.

The barest razor of light cut the concrete floor, all else was clad in gloom. But he sensed no one else in the room. Some people he could detect even at a distance. Others had to be very near. But here there was no one. He bit his lip, reaching up along the paneling to his right to find the light switch. A lightbulb buzzed on overhead.

The room looked more like his mother’s closet than anything else. Men’s and women’s clothes hung from pipes along the concrete walls. Shoes, some still in boxes, lined the floor. Paperback books were stacked in one corner, collecting dust, and a double-wide dresser rested against the rear wall. He recognized a large, dusty photo album on the dresser. Dropping it onto the floor, he squatted down and opened it, glancing at the pictures in the shadowy light that seeped through the coats and plastic-covered dresses.

The photos were faded and warped. Some were black-and-white, which seemed positively ancient to him. Others he recognized as thick Polaroid prints, mostly out of focus. Almost all of them were of children. There were numerous group and single photos of one little boy and twin girls at
different ages. He flipped one last page and stared at the woman looking back at him out of an unknown past. She was twenty pounds heavier. Her face was broader, and her hair was thick and black, but she looked like his mother. He pressed his back against the dresser, cocking his head, checking the photo from every angle.

There were pictures of the children with the woman and pictures of her with some man he had never seen before. On the last page was a photograph of the man and woman and a third person, standing directly on the other side of the man.

The picture was ripped, the edges jagged, and someone had tried to peel the photo off the sticky backing but it had beaten their efforts. The third person’s head was missing and a shiver raced up Zach’s spine. When he ran his fingers across the photo, dark, violent images flooded his mind. It was almost as though he could get
inside
the picture the way he could slip inside a lock. But he didn’t understand the workings of the photo the way he understood mechanical things. He didn’t want to. He shoved the book away in disgust, leaving it open, still staring at the photo. Locked onto it like a video camera.

He’s showing me the book, thought Audrey. My God, they’re pictures of me and my sister and brother, and that must be Mother!

She could feel Zach intensely now, stronger than she had ever sensed him before, and she knew he sensed her as well. She wanted to wrap her arms around him, to hold him tight, and she knew he wanted to
be
in her arms just as bad. She felt his relief at finally making contact as much as she felt her own. But
her
relief was short-lived.

She watched as Zach’s finger pointed directly at the woman on the porch, and she felt a terrible blast of realization exploding from Zach’s mind into her own. A deep-welled fear that seemed ever so familiar now slipped over her heart.

Her mother was back. It
was
she who had taken Zach. Just as she had taken Craig. As she had taken Paula. And neither of them had ever returned once they were
gone.

Mother has him.

41

AUDREY OPENED HER EYES
slowly. When she realized she wasn’t breathing, she gasped until she choked and had to cough to catch her breath again. She was bathed in sweat and shaking badly. She knew where Zach was, regardless of what Richard or the sheriff or anyone else thought. And she was going to save him. Her mother was not going to destroy another life. Certainly not the life most precious to her above all others. But as much as she wanted to leap from the chair and race to Zach’s side, Audrey was still half-caught in her inner vision.

Without warning, her sense of closeness to Zach had been shorted out somehow. She had lost immediate contact with him, but she could still sense his presence nearby, like a radiant heat. She
knew
now, beyond question, that her terrible premonitions on passing by the old house next door had been real. That was where her mother had Zach. The bitch had stolen him right from under her nose and held him so close that Audrey could have
touched
him all that time! The rage in Audrey’s chest constricted the muscles of her heart.

She gazed at the saddle in the trees where a few stars were barely peeking through, and unseen hands lifted her to her feet. She moved like a sleepwalker, down off the porch and across the lawn. When she reached her garden, she paused, as though suddenly awakened, and glanced around.

Was the night quieter than before?

She peered upward at the saddle again. The moon formed bony shadows in the trees, creating an army of jagged skeletons. She stepped quickly through her garden, throwing herself into the alders on the slope. The rough brush scratched at her cotton blouse and nipped her bare arms. Cuts stung both hands, but the pain seemed distant, as though she were viewing the outer world through one of the long, dark tunnels in her head. She was forced to maintain her balance by grabbing the spiny branches, creating fresh wounds.

Halfway up the hill she stumbled upon the trail Richard had mentioned. She glanced both ways, but it seemed to run along the slope, not upward, so she crashed once more through the alders. When she emerged onto the trail yet again, she realized that it wove back and forth up the hill and she began to follow it.

She was winded by the time she reached the top. A stitch stung her side and she gripped her waist with both hands, ignoring the blood soaking into her blouse, but even that pain didn’t stop her. She stumbled along the narrow path between the giant spruce until the slope dropped away in front of her and the moon illuminated the valley beyond. One cold gray beam shone directly down on the Coonts farm. She couldn’t believe how close it was. If the hill had not been in the way, they would have been next-door neighbors.

She strode down the rough slope and out into the moonlit field with clinched fists, tightened jaw, and raspy breath. If she’d carried a sword, she would have looked like an avenging angel.

42

THE PHONE RINGING
was like a slap in the face. Virgil had dozed off and it took him a moment to remember where he was.

The TV was still on with no volume and Doris was lying on his arm, which was now sound asleep and throbbing. He tried to slide out from under her as gently as possible, placing her head on the pillow and waiting a second to assure that she was just asleep. He snatched the cordless phone out of its holder and stumbled into the hallway, closing the bedroom door behind him.

“Yeah?”

“Virgil? This is Ken over to Crane’s Hardware.”

Virgil glanced at his watch. It was almost eight.

“What’s up, Ken?” He tried to keep the irritation out of his voice but he wasn’t very good at it.

“Your deputy said to call you at home.”

“He did?” He’d have to have a talk with his deputy, whichever one it was. “What’s up, Ken?”

“Well, Birch thought it was nothing. Wouldn’t even come check. That’s why he finally suggested I call you.”

“And you figured that I wouldn’t think it was nothing?”

“I don’t know. Just strange, that’s all.”

“What’s strange, Ken?”

“Well, you know we’re staying open later this year. Trying something new for the summer.”

“Uh-huh.” Virgil figured he’d give Ken about two more sentences to come to the point.

“About thirty minutes ago your friend Mac comes in and buys four five-gallon gas cans.”

“Mac?”

What the devil was Mac doing in town tonight? And gas cans? It was a riddle all right. But it didn’t sound like an emergency to Virgil.

“I thought that was kind of funny,” said Ken.

“Did he say what he wanted with the cans?”

“No.”

“Is it illegal to buy gas cans?”

“No.”

“Is that all?”

“He looked strange, Virgil. Irv noticed it too, didn’t you, Irv?”

Virgil could hear muffled conversation in the background.

“Strange how, Ken?”

“Like he was on drugs or something. He never looked me in the eyes. Just stood at the counter, told me what he wanted, and signed the credit card slip. That was funny too. He almost left his credit card on the counter. I had to put it in his jacket pocket for him.”

“Did he look like he’d been drinking?” Mac had never had a drinking problem that Virgil knew of. He was just fumbling for answers.

“No,” said Ken. “He wasn’t wobbling or slurring his words or anything. He just seemed dazed, if you know what I mean.”

Ken and Irv chattered in his ear, but Virgil could only make out bits and pieces of the conversation.

“He’s back,” said Ken at last.

“At the store?” said Virgil.

“No. Irv says he’s parked out front of Babs St. Clair’s house and he’s getting out with the cans.”

Alarm bells went off in Virgil’s head.

“I’ll be right there!” he said, tossing the phone onto the side table in the hall.

43

ADLER GRINNED IN THE PASSENGER SEAT.
He loved riding

in the hills where the car dipped and rolled, and he leaned his agile body with it, feeling the power surging beneath his feet. Occasionally the headlights would illumine subtle movement in the trees that his master didn’t notice. Adler would raise his chin and peer into the darkness as the car whirred past in the night, and imagine himself racing through the damp stillness after the swift beast, trying to catch it before it could drop into hiding.

Tara shifted beside him and Adler glanced in his master’s direction. The dog immediately acquired some of his master’s agitation, swaying anxiously on
his
seat. Driving back and forth up the same stretch of road had the dog nervous, especially since Tara made whirling U-turns so frequently. When Tara sighed, it seemed to depressurize the car and the dog eased a little.

“You have to do what you have to do, Adler,” said Tara, fingering a small automatic pistol in her lap. “I keep putting off the inevitable. That isn’t like me.”

She glanced over and smiled and Adler relaxed even more. Dropping his head, he accepted a friendly pat.

“You okay, old sport?” said Tara.

Adler, of course, didn’t understand what Tara said, but he recognized the caring in her voice and responded to it by nudging Tara’s arm with his nose, begging for another pat.

Tara laughed and rewarded the dog with a good grinding behind the ears. But as she drew her hand away and returned her attention to the road ahead, her face hardened. “I’m doing what I have to do, Adler. I don’t have a choice. I can’t keep putting it off any longer, I guess.”

Adler rolled with another sharp curve and caught himself on the seat with sharp nails.

“I thought the doors would hold forever. I was wrong. It was Zach. When Zach disappeared, the stress must have been too much for Audrey. I should have seen it coming. But if Cates hadn’t started digging … then the St. Clair bitch had to start exhibiting real talent. It was just a comedy of errors. Who would have thought Audrey would talk to a psychic, for God’s sake? Audrey probably had as much to do with Babs’s starting to break through as Babs had to do with Audrey. What an unbelievable mess!”

Adler sensed anxiety growing in his master’s voice again and the animal grew restive, lifting first one leg, then the other, balancing on his skinny butt in the leather seat.

“I wish there was time to come up with an alternate solution. I’d like nothing better than to investigate the limits of Babs’s talents. But I can’t chance having either of them remember.”

Tara was nodding, speaking more to herself now than to Adler, although the dog could hear her slightest whisper. “Why couldn’t you leave it alone, Audrey? There was no danger for you. I would never have hurt you. Why couldn’t you just forget like you were trained to do?”

Adler whimpered gently, panting and offering his master his down-turned nose in obeisance. Tara stroked the dog’s neck again, the final decision gleaming in her eyes as her fingers returned to the pistol. She’d driven much farther up the road than before and, when she finally spotted a place to reverse direction, she put the car into a gut-wrenching turn, heading back for Richard and Audrey’s house.

“We do what we gotta do, Adler. Eh?”

The dog
woofed
and Tara smiled.