Night Terror (26 page)

44

RICHARD HAD JUST STEPPED OUT
onto the porch in search of Audrey when the moon caught her back as she crept out of the underbrush and into the saddle high above. His first thought was that he was seeing the mysterious visitor who had left her tracks on the lawn, but then he recognized Audrey’s bright red blouse and shock of golden hair.

“Audrey!” he shouted, leaping out onto the lawn, standing on tiptoe to see over the brush. “Audrey! Come back!”

She ignored him, disappearing into the trees like a frightened deer.

Richard shook his head. Of course she was headed for the Coonts place. Where else would she be going? And what was she going to do when she got there? Virgil had told them to leave Merle Coonts alone, to let
him
run the investigation. He’d take care of it if Merle was guilty of trespassing or worse. Richard had told Virgil he was sure it wasn’t Merle Coonts. The tracks were too small. He didn’t know whose tracks they’d been. But they didn’t belong to a man as big as Virgil assured him Merle Coonts was.

“Jesus, Audrey,” he muttered, racing to their car. He wasn’t going to catch her by scrambling up that slope, but he could cut her off before she got to the house.

He slammed the car door and then fumbled for his keys, shaking so badly he had to use both hands to insert them in the ignition. He gripped the wheel for a moment, listening
to the powerful
thrum
of the engine, catching his breath, trying to slow his pounding heart. He backed down the drive so fast he almost lost control as he whipped out onto the road, burning rubber when the tires hit the pavement. The car nearly went airborne cresting the hill and as soon as he spotted the farm ahead he glanced at the fields, searching for Audrey. He had to slow to a crawl then, staring out over the rusted barbed-wire fence into the tall grass, trying to make out the distant shadows along the tree line.

There she was, looking like a ghost floating through the moonlight. The sight of her, alone in the wide-open darkness, touched the deepest pain in Richard’s soul. She’d been alone like that for over a year, in darkness. Searching for their son. And he hadn’t been there for her. He’d held it all in. He’d hidden in the goddamned basement and let her hurt.

He glanced up and down the road, but there was hardly any shoulder here, only deep drainage ditches on both sides of the road. He had no choice but to pull into Merle Coonts’s driveway and park behind the semi, the tail of the Camry just barely off the road. Every light was out in the house now and he hoped that no one inside had heard his arrival. With any luck he could grab Audrey, help her to the car, and go home with no one the wiser.

He ran around the front of the dark house to where he could see the field again, but he couldn’t make her out where he thought she would be. He tried to move silently through the tall grass alongside the house, heading toward the barn, but he kept stumbling on the uneven ground.

A movement against the trees might have been Audrey, but he couldn’t be sure. The moon had slipped behind a cloud and the night was even darker than before. He wanted desperately to call out to her, to let her know he was here, but she might not even hear him if she was having another one of her night terrors, and he didn’t want to alarm anyone in the house. He took two more steps out in the direction of the open field, still glancing toward the corner of the barn.

45

BY THE TIME VIRGIL
got to Babs’s house, Ken and Irv were out front of the hardware store, and two or three other people were chattering noisily at them. Flickering lights shone through the curtains and Virgil couldn’t help but think of the gas cans and the forest of candles in Babs’s living room.

“Tell me what happened, Ken,” said Virgil, pulling the bigger man away from the group.

“He carried three of those gas cans into Babs’s house,” said Ken, nodding as though that was exactly what he knew Mac had intended all along.

“Carried them from where?” said Virgil, searching for Mac’s car.

“Out of his car,” said Ken, pointing around the corner to where a blue Ford sedan sat parked beside the stop sign.

Virgil stared at the car in disbelief. He had no proof, but at that moment he was absolutely certain that it was the same car that had followed him, the same sedan that had damn near killed him. The thought that Mac might have been driving made no sense whatsoever. But the thought that Mac had just carried three gas cans into Babs’s house didn’t make much sense either.

“How long ago?” he asked.

“Maybe ten minutes.”

“Stay here,” said Virgil loudly, glancing around to make certain none of the gathering crowd got any other ideas.

Whatever was going on here, it wasn’t good. And Virgil
really
didn’t like the fact that Babs had warned him about bad things, just like Cooder. That wasn’t quite the way she’d put it, but he couldn’t get Cooder’s words out of his skull. They kept beating around in there like the words to a song.

Virgil had called Birch on the radio before leaving home. He could already hear the siren of the approaching cruiser behind him. As Virgil climbed Babs’s stoop, he unsnapped the strap on his pistol. Gas fumes stung his nostrils and his mouth went dry. He pictured himself pulling the trigger of the pistol, flames shooting from the barrel, catching the fumes. He could imagine the roar of exploding gasoline.

Sweet Jesus.

He rapped on the door but there was no answer.

“Babs?”

Still nothing. But the smell of gasoline was stronger right in front of the door. He wondered how thick the fumes would have to be before the candles in Babs’s living room blew the place to kingdom come. Adrenaline raced through his veins like steam through a heat pipe. His hand shook as he gripped the doorknob.

“Babs?” he said again, opening the unlocked door.

The fumes hit him directly in the face and he grimaced. The scene that confronted him reminded him of something he’d seen before. A movie. Or a film clip, maybe.

In what seemed slow motion, he drew his pistol and aimed it at Mac’s back. Mac had his own pistol pointed directly at Babs, who was calmly dousing herself with gasoline. Her hair clung to her head and she squinted, coughing and gagging, but still she poured the remains of the can over herself. As Virgil’s eyes flashed from her to Mac, he noticed that Mac’s suit was soaked as well.

“Oh, my God,” said Virgil as Mac turned full toward him.

“Hi, Virg,” said Mac. His voice was so calm, his demeanor so collected, that for a moment Virgil was sure he was dreaming.

“What are you doing, Mac?” said Virgil, keeping his voice controlled, his face calm and reassuring. He noticed puddles of gasoline on the tabletop, so near the spluttering candles he couldn’t believe they hadn’t caught. Maybe it
was all a joke. Maybe it was water in the cans. But the overwhelming odor of the fumes put the lie to that idea. He was grasping at straws and if he didn’t do something, those straws were going to go up like a Roman candle.

Mac shrugged. “Babs and I are going to join the others. It’s our time now.”

His calm words conveyed a horror to Virgil that Mac’s eyes didn’t reflect.

“Mac,” said Virgil, easing a step forward, still aiming the pistol at his friend, “you need to put the gun down and step out onto the front porch with me.”

He glanced back at the open door, hoping the fresh air would waft away some of the fumes. He couldn’t believe that the vapors hadn’t reached the candles yet, or built up enough to explode the three of them out to hell and gone, but he knew that it was only a matter of seconds before they did.

Mac shook his head. “We
want
to go,” he said, glancing at Babs for confirmation.

Babs looked at Virgil, shaking her head. “There’s nothing you can do now, Virg,” she said. “You need to get yourself back outside before you get hurt.”

“Babs,” said Virgil. “I want you to stand up slowly and move toward the door.”

“He won’t let me,” she said, nodding toward Mac, who still wore the same nonexpression. “He’ll shoot me if I move.”

“Stand up,” said Virg.

Babs shrugged, easing the gas can onto the soaking sofa. She started to stand and Mac’s attention instantly riveted on her again. He pointed his pistol directly into her face.

“Mac!” said Virgil, aiming his own pistol at the center of Mac’s back. “Put the gun down. You have no reason to do this. Snap out of it. You don’t even know this woman!”

But Babs was shaking her head. “Yes, he does,” she said quietly. “Mac and I spent time in hell together.”

“What?” said Virgil, his attention wavering.

Babs was staring directly into Mac’s eyes now. “Remember, Mac? Remember Perkins?”

Virgil was stunned. “You were in Perkins, Mac?”

But Mac didn’t hear. His attention was still riveted on
Babs. “We’re all going to be together now, Babs,” he whispered. “And everything is going to be all right again. Don’t you feel it?”

Surprising Virgil, Babs nodded and reached out to place a consoling hand on Mac’s shoulders, his pistol almost resting against her nose. “Yes, Mac,” she said gently. “Yes. It’s going to be all right now. All the bad dreams are going to end. You’ve been having the dreams too. Haven’t you?”

Mac nodded, a touch of sadness creeping across the otherworldly calmness of his face. “I don’t want to see them anymore,” he said.

“Mac,” said Virgil. “It was you in the car. You following me. Wasn’t it?”

Mac turned to face him and for the first time Virgil saw emotion in his friend’s eyes, sadness. He nodded slowly.

“Why, Mac? You almost killed me.”

“I’m sorry, Virg,” said Mac, blinking. “I’m awful sorry.”

Virgil sensed that he was almost breaking through. That he was close to reaching Mac, to taking control of the situation. But the candlelight was still reflected in puddles of gas.

Babs glanced around Mac toward Virgil. “You need to get outside now.”

Virgil shook his head. “I’m not going without both of you.”

But it all happened too fast. The fumes didn’t explode as Virgil had expected. Instead, all in the space of one gasp, flames licked outward from the candles, following an invisible path of gas through the air, leaping onto Mac’s suit. Then, as he stumbled forward, the flames blasted out and engulfed Babs. From there they raced along the floor to the sofa, leapt up the walls, and arched across the ceiling. Virgil’s body was assaulted by a fierce wave of searing heat and his mind, unable to accept the entirety of what he was witnessing, locked onto details.

Babs’s face melted like plastic as she fell backward onto the flaming sofa, her eyes bulging from sockets where the lids had been seared away. Her hair turned into the tip of a giant candle flame as her head writhed in eerie silence from side to side.

Mac, now a human torch, slapping at his chest and face
ineffectually—as though he had changed his mind at the last instant—then falling to the floor and disappearing in the engulfing flames and smoke.

And the candles.

Melting as one, as though a giant magnifying glass had focused the sun upon them. Puddling onto the round table that was already immersed in flame.

Hands on his shoulders.

Dragging him backward out the door and down the porch steps as the fire reached out the doorway, grasping at him.

Sirens in his ears.

Women screaming.

People running.

Someone shouting at him.

“What?” he said, unable to take his eyes off the front of the house where the flames were already lapping at the eaves. The heat was more intense than he could have imagined. Of course, if you dumped a few cans of high-test in a living room, that was likely to happen. If he hadn’t opened the door when he had, it probably would have blown the damned house to kingdom come.

It was Birch who’d slipped inside the inferno to save him, and he tried to focus on Birch’s face. Birch stared at him wide-eyed, tossing glances over Virgil’s shoulder at the spreading blaze.

“What the hell happened, Virg?”

“Ken was right,” muttered Virgil. “Mac was crazy. He brought the gas back here, doused himself and Babs, and set it alight.”

Well, that wasn’t exactly the truth. Mac hadn’t
lit
the fire. The candles had. But no way it was an accident.

“Wow,” said Birch.

“Virgil!” shouted Marg, grabbing him by both biceps. She was winded as he’d ever seen her. Must have run the half-block from the hospital. “My lord, are you all right? I stuck my head out when I heard Birch’s siren and the next thing I knew the house went up. What happened? Is Babs all right?”

“No.”

“Oh, God.”

Virgil nodded. “Come here, Marg,” he said, dragging her aside and motioning for Birch to make sure they had some privacy. The first fire truck had just screeched to a stop next to his cruiser, men were dragging hoses out, and the chief was starting in Virgil’s direction when Birch cut him off.

“What happened?” asked Marg, staring over Virgil’s shoulder at the roof where shingles were beginning to smolder. The house was going up like a tinderbox, the gasoline turning the wood blaze into a raging firestorm. They had to back even farther away, out into the street.

“When I opened the front door, Mac had a gun on Babs and was forcing her to pour gasoline over herself. He’d already soaked himself.”

“Holy shit.”

“Yeah. The candles caught the fumes and the place went up like a bonfire.”

“Babs never had a chance to get out?”

“Mac had a gun on her the whole time.”

“That’s just crazy. What the hell did he do that for?”

“It was weird. Mac goes to Crane’s and buys four gas cans. He fills up the cans, comes back to Babs’s house, and douses both of them in gasoline. He’s calm as a cucumber when I open the door, and Babs is sitting there pouring gasoline on herself like she’s taking a warm shower. Mac kept saying they were going to join the
others
and Babs said they’d both been in Perkins. Does that ring a bell?”

“Babs worked at Perkins for a while in the eighties. I thought you knew that. I didn’t know Mac worked there.”

“Evidently he wasn’t an employee.”

“Oh. I didn’t know that. You think maybe he had a grudge against Babs?”

Virgil shook his head. “It didn’t sound like that. It was more like they were old friends. Why would Babs sit there like that?” He stared at the grass, watching the fiery light play across it. “He acted so damned calm. Like it didn’t bother him at all that he was about to murder Babs or that he was fixing to… burn himself up like that. Could he have been hypnotized?”

Marg shook her head. “That’s pretty thin, Virgil. Hypnosis takes a lot of effort. Not everyone succumbs to it and,
even if they do, the theory is that they won’t do anything they wouldn’t do awake. You might convince Babs to sit still for it if she didn’t realize it was gasoline. I guess you could hypnotize her into believing it was holy water or something being poured over her head. But it’s hard for me to believe you could get someone to kill someone else, if it wasn’t really their idea. You think both of them were hypnotized?”

“Babs seemed clear-headed enough. She didn’t want to move because she was afraid Mac would shoot her. How stupid is that? She knew he was about to torch both of them.”

But Babs acted more like she was fulfilling a prophecy. She’d told Doris she was going to die and she had. Was seeing her prediction come to pass worth letting herself be burned to death?

“People have strange reactions under stress.”

“What if
Mac
didn’t know what he was doing?”

“What do you mean?”

“Couldn’t a hypnotist convince
him
that it wasn’t gasoline? Mac didn’t
light
the fire. All he did was force Babs to pour gas over herself. What if he thought it was something else?”

“What?”

“I don’t know! I’m just trying to come up with a theory here.”

“Pretty wild theory, Virg. Sounds to me like Mac was a little looney all these years and he had fixated on Babs, whom he remembered from his days in the institution. He wouldn’t be the first guy to crack like that.”

“Maybe. Anyway, stay back and don’t get hurt,” he said, heading toward Birch and the fire chief, who was shouting instructions at volunteer firemen hanging safety tape around the front yard. The first hoses were just beginning to spray. But Babs’s house was already a lost cause and everyone present knew it. Her candles were gone. Her cards were gone. Her weird curtains and her fake-fur sofa were gone. Everything that had made Babs St. Clair who she was, was disappearing with her, spiraling heavenward in the rushing black smoke. Virgil stared at the roiling ebony fumes, lit against the sky by the flames fingering their way
out from under the eaves and bursting through the melted windows.