Night Terror (27 page)

Go with God, Babs. I hope you make it over there where you want to be.

Virgil gave the chief all the information he could, instructed Birch to maintain crowd control and contact Mac’s and Babs’s next of kin, and then marched down the street to where he saw Ken and Irv watching the show, still out in front of the hardware store. Ken stepped out of the milling crowd to greet him.

“Virg! Holy shit! You were almost toast!”

“No, Ken. I’m all right.”

“That was close! I saw Birch drag you off the porch. The flames looked like they were licking your face!”

“Really wasn’t that close, Ken.”

“Babs?”

Virgil shook his head.

“Shit,” said Ken.

“Yeah, look, Ken. You said that when Mac came in he seemed out of it?”

“Yeah. It was like he was really preoccupied. Hell, I guess he would be if he was gonna go out and kill himself and somebody else. He’s dead, isn’t he?”

“Yeah. He’s dead.”

“What did you see in there, Virg? What happened?”

“I’d rather not say right now. Not while there’s an ongoing investigation.”

“Sure. I understand.”

“Was there anyone else around that looked suspicious?”

“Well, I don’t know what you mean, suspicious, Virg. There was that woman.”

“What woman?”

Ken frowned. “She was driving a light SUV, a Ford I think. She parked beside Mac when he was putting the cans in his car and they talked for a minute or two, I guess. I couldn’t see much of her because Mac’s car was in the way.”

“What did she look like?”

“Like I say, I couldn’t see much. She had short gray hair. I remember that.”

“How old?”

“Late forties maybe. Good-looking.”

“That’s all you remember?”

“Did you see her, Irv?” said Ken.

Irv shook his head. “I remember her car. There was a big Doberman inside.”

“Yeah,” said Ken. “That’s right. I forgot the dog.”

“How long ago did she leave?” asked Virgil.

“An hour, hour and a half, maybe,” said Irv, glancing at Ken, who nodded. “That was about how long ago Mac left. I guess he was going to get the gas. It took him a long time now that I think about it. But he wasn’t right. Right, Virg? Maybe he was building up his nerve.”

“Do you think the woman had something to do with the fire?” asked Ken, glancing toward the holocaust Babs’s house had become.

“See which way she went?” asked Virgil, ignoring Ken’s question.

Both men shook their heads. “Didn’t see her pull back out,” said Ken. “One minute she was there. The next she and Mac were gone. We had customers.”

“Thanks,” said Virgil, heading back toward the fire.

Most of the crowd had now gathered on the sidewalk across the street from the house. Two more fire trucks had arrived and arcs of water gushed through the sky above the raging flames, but the building was already crumbling in on itself. It occurred to Virgil that Mac must have soaked the entire downstairs in gasoline before drenching himself and Babs.

Virgil couldn’t figure out how anyone could possibly convince a man to do that to himself or to anyone else. He imagined himself, cloaked in flames, his skin crackling, nerves screaming, muscles refusing to obey him as the intense heat turned them from flesh to charred meat.

God, what a way to go.

Birch was leaning on the open door of his cruiser, radio mike in one hand. “You think Mac was a closet psycho?” asked Birch as Virgil stopped alongside him.

“Maybe he wasn’t in control of himself.”

“I’d say that was obvious.”

He spotted Carl Robison, editor of the paper, trying to bust his way through the cordon. Virgil gave a hand signal
to one of his deputies and Carl was politely shepherded away. Time enough to deal with Carl later.

“I meant, maybe someone
made
him do what he did,” he said. “Why did he have to buy gas cans at the hardware store
here
if he was planning on driving up and killing Babs all along?”

“You can’t figure out a nut’s head. It was probably spur of the moment. You know something I don’t, Virg?”

“All I know is there’s more to this than meets the eye. Find out from Marg where they moved the old records for Perkins Mental Health Institute. Then find out what I need to do to get to see them. If I need a court order, start working on it.”

Birch frowned. “Perkins?”

“Evidently Mac was a patient a few years ago.”

“So he did have mental problems.”

“I think maybe he had more after he got out than when he went in,” said Virgil. “Just see what it takes to get into the records.”

“You’re not telling me something, Virg.”

“I don’t know anything to tell you yet.”

“All right. Where you gonna be?”

“Home. Doris isn’t good.”

“Want me to call you in the morning, then?”

“No,” said Virgil at last. “Call me as soon as you find out about the records. I don’t care what time it is.”

He glanced at the blue sedan and Birch followed his eyes.

“It’s rented,” said Birch, and Virgil nodded.

46

COODER HAD NO IDEA
how long he had lain splayed against the slope, his cheek pressed into the ground, grass clutched in either fist, the tinkling sound of water dribbling through the corrugated pipe beside him. He was breathing in jerky gasps, tears welled in his eyes, and salty snot dripped down his lip.

She was back.

So close he could feel her. He felt like the rat, cornered in a dark hidey-hole, quivering, waiting for a giant hand to drag him out into the light.

The headlights had raced around the curve in the distance like the flickering flame on a dynamite fuse, and he’d barely dropped down the slope again in time, to avoid being caught in their glare. As the car approached, his mind had exploded with images of light and darkness. Visions of half-seen faces. Men and women in hospital gowns. And a pain that was as terrible as anything he could remember, that began somewhere deep within him and spun outward in burning spiderwebs. The car had passed numerous times, slowing, then speeding up, like a shark, trolling for prey.

“Try!”

The remembered command echoed down the dusty tunnels of his mind in a shrill woman’s voice. Vaguely he could feel his body convulsing, held in place by strong straps, his
neck stretching to the breaking point as his back arched violently upward.

“Try!”

The pain again, searing through his skin. He could smell smoke. But was he imagining it or was his brain really burning? What did she want?

He wanted to forget the woman’s voice. To forget everything and blank out completely. But the pain forced him to remain. He burrowed away from it in his mind, trying to find sanctuary, but all that accomplished was to bring him closer to his memories of the woman.

The Severely Disturbed Ward.

Cooder wasn’t certain how he had ended up in that section. He hadn’t been assigned there in the beginning. But the hallway was indelibly registered in his brain.

That door there was where Crazy Feeble lived.

Crazy Feeble was what the attendants called the old man with the leering grin and one bad eye who was allowed into the television room only once a week and by himself. Crazy Feeble had been in Perkins since the day it opened. He’d killed his wife and six kids with a butcher knife, and then cut them up into bite-sized pieces, and burned them in the fireplace. That was before Cooder was born. But everyone was still plenty afraid of Crazy Feeble. There were lots of people to be afraid of at Perkins, like the guys in the
special
activities room where some of them were allowed to socialize, but only under heavy supervision. Cooder always thought of that group as the Mixed Nuts.

The memory of the woman’s voice echoed in his head.

“What did you feel?”

He shook his head. He could see her now, standing in front of him. Was she really there? He shook against the slope, grasping at the grass. At anything that was real. She wasn’t there. He knew it. But she was so close inside his mind. The memory so strong he couldn’t shove her away. “Scared.”

“You felt more than that. What happened?”

“Nothing.”

“Come with me.”

“No.”

The memory woman moved her lips but he didn’t hear her words.

Instead he remembered his body responding to commands he hadn’t given. She was moving him just like he’d moved the crow… and the rat.

She walked away down the corridor and he followed complacently along like a faithful hound. She stopped in front of another of the white doors. Cooder knew that when this memory had actually happened, he had walked on through, but now he stopped. He couldn’t make himself take the next fateful step. He knew that on the other side of that metal threshold was horror and even worse, pain. He knew then that once he had been different. Like other people. Something on the other side of that door had changed him forever. Something buried within the terrible flashes and visions that had haunted him ever since Perkins, had made him what he was now. It wasn’t the loss that horrified him. Cooder was perfectly happy with who he was.

It was the fear that the woman was here to finish what she had started.

Try!

The command rattled in his brain, insistent.

He was wracked with terror at the thought of passing through the door, but finally the memory took over and his slippered foot stepped forward, entering a place as clean and bright as morning sunlight. A place that smelled like death.

Faces passed before his unmoving eyes. In the corner he saw cages filled with rats, their tiny eyes peering at him through the wire mesh. But one face became more and more prevalent until it swelled to the width of his vision.

Doctor Beals. So close he could smell the tangy sweetness of her toothpaste.

Try!

“Try what?” he screamed. His voice rang against the tinny sides of this place.

“Try to see inside their heads! The same way you do with the birds! I know you can do it! Do you want me to use the machine again?”

“No! Please!”

He couldn’t fight her. Couldn’t move. She strapped the blinding mask over his head. Connected wires to his body. The wires and the mask were where the spiderwebs came from.

Blind panic surged through him. His breath was ragged, his heart raced, never knowing when the agony would strike. And then it did. Gut-wrenching. Breath-stealing. Mind-shattering pain.

“Try!”

He knew that he could do what she wanted. He had done it before often enough when he thought he wasn’t being watched. All he had to do was relax and let it happen. But he also knew that if he did he would die, because then she would use the mask more and more, turn the machine up higher and higher until the pain killed him.

So he hid it away. Screamed that it was impossible. Cried over and over that he didn’t know why the animals liked him. And eventually she would take the mask off and talk to him, and sometime during that talk he would begin to forget again. And each time there was less and less for him to forget.

That was what this was about. The machine. The little boy. The woman in the car. Doctor Beals. He opened his eyes and listened to the night. In the distance, an owl hooted. The water still trickled beside him. He rolled over onto his back and stared at the cloud-dusted stars overhead.

Why didn’t she kill me? She killed the others.

Like so many things in his life, the other deaths were something that Cooder just
knew.
The way he had known that she was coming back. The way he knew that the bad things he had seen were returning and people were going to start dying again.

Another car drove slowly by and Cooder recoiled in fear until he realized that it wasn’t Tara. It was the other woman’s husband. He listened as the car parked somewhere across the road and then a door slammed. Now all was quiet. He allowed himself to relax again, just a little.

But now, in the distance, he sensed Doctor Beals returning.

47

AUDREY HAD NEVER EXPERIENCED
such a powerful sense of awareness before. The night seemed electrically alive, her mind filled to bursting with sights and sounds and smells. It was as though she had been statically charged with some otherworldly energy and all her senses were magnified, acute.

The closer she got to the farmhouse, the stronger her sense of Zach’s presence became. It wasn’t a dream. It wasn’t a night terror. And it wasn’t a hallucination. She could feel him and she knew that he could feel her as well. She could hear him inside her head, jabbering at her, excited the way any child would be to be with his mother after more than a year apart. It was almost as though she were already holding him in her arms, hugging him tight against her breast.

I’m coming, honey! I’m coming!

She knew that he heard her as clearly as though she had spoken aloud because he answered her. She stumbled on a root and scolded herself. If you’re going to walk in two worlds you’d better pay attention to both.

When she spotted the two figures alongside the house, she froze. Richard she recognized immediately as he rounded the corner. The other man had to be Merle Coonts. He was hiding in the shadows alongside the house, watching Richard. He hadn’t spotted Audrey, though, and she eased stealthily
back along the tree line to fade into the shadows, continuing her advance toward the barn. Now she was almost parallel with the rear of the old building and Merle was slipping along the house, away from her, toward the unsuspecting Richard.

Should she shout a warning? But that would give her away and she knew that Richard wasn’t here to help her. He was here to take her home. But what were Merle Coonts’s intentions? He wasn’t making his presence known. What if he hurt Richard? What if he killed him?

She hugged the deep shadows along the tree line, studying the two men. Richard wasn’t trying to conceal himself. Merle, on the other hand, moved like a fat old weasel, taking cover in every patch of darkness along his path. She couldn’t tell if he was armed, but he was a lot bigger than Richard.

Just when she had decided to call out, Zach’s voice pleaded with her again to come and rescue him. And it dawned on her that if Merle Coonts was here, then Zach was alone with her mother! She had to find him, and Richard wouldn’t help her. He’d
stop
her!

She stared across the fifty yards of open field toward the back of the old barn. A large sliding door was open just a crack. That must have been where Merle had snuck out. She eased along the trees a little farther until the corner of the barn obscured her from Richard and Merle, then she ran, not stopping until she hit the back of the barn, gasping for breath. But she couldn’t stop now. She eyed the barn door, listening to Zach in her head.

Just a minute, honey. Just one minute!

She edged up the sloping ground to the corner of the barn and peered around into the gloom. There was Merle, crouched like a cat.

“Richard!” she screamed at the top of her lungs. “Look out! Merle is hiding beside the bulkhead!”

Then she ran. Stumbling back down the slope, grabbing the old door, whipping herself inside. She was winded and her heart pummeled her ribs. The barn basement was dark as pitch. It smelled of damp concrete and ancient, dust-dry hay and mildewed wood. She wished she’d had the foresight to bring a flashlight.

I’m lost, Zach. In the dark.

Look for the big suitcase. In the back.

His voice, echoing in her mind, was as heady as strong whiskey and teasingly close. Almost like a real voice, getting louder as she drew near.

Suitcase?
It’s how we get upstairs.
I don’t understand, Zach.
Look in the back! Against the wall!

She couldn’t make out anything in the darkness, so she’d have to follow the foundation blindly to the rear. She swallowed a dry lump in her throat and stepped gingerly along the side wall, into the deeper darkness hidden there, her hands bumping over the splintery barn boards, sliding her feet along the cement floor. Sooner or later she had to bump into the first corner, and then she could work her way to the back and find the suitcase.

When Audrey screamed, Richard spotted Merle immediately. The big man thought he was being cunning but his clumsiness was almost laughable. He was hunched over beside a large lilac bush as though he could hide his huge bulk there. Only it wasn’t funny. Why was he being sneaky at all? Why didn’t he just come right out and say “Hey, what are you people doing on my property in the middle of the night?”

Richard thought again of the footprints in the grass. They were too small to have been Merle Coonts’s tracks, but
someone
had made them. He’d wanted to believe that the possibility they might really have a Peeping Tom didn’t have anything to do with Audrey’s dreams, with her night terrors. He wanted to believe that
that
was just imagination. Only maybe Audrey wasn’t imagining things. Someone with small feet had been outside their bedroom window, someone who had passed over the same cut in the hills that Audrey had just climbed through, and this was the only house in the area. What if Audrey wasn’t just having bad dreams or hallucinations? What if Zach really was here? Was it possible? Could he really be alive?

Richard didn’t want to go back to wondering every
minute if some miracle would happen, if the phone would ring or a knock would come at the door, wondering if he would wake up and discover that it had all been just a terrible dream. He didn’t want to let his heart start beating faster in his chest at the thought of his son. He’d been there so many times and every time he had awakened, only to discover that the dream was a nightmare.

But Merle Coonts was hiding
something.

And where the hell was Audrey?

He’d lost her in the shadows again, and now the moon had slipped behind a cloud. The field was barely lit by the faint starlight, and Richard wondered again why not one light was on in the house. Why were all the lights out if Merle was wide-awake and dressed?

Merle seemed to think the shadows made him invisible. He kept edging closer, sliding clumsily along the wall of the barn. Richard sized him up, wondering what was going to happen. He hadn’t been in a fight since grade school, and he knew he was dangerously out of shape. But maybe Merle was too. He didn’t see a gun and he figured if Merle had one on him he probably wouldn’t be hiding like that. No, Merle was planning on jumping him when he got close.

He’s going to attack me without warning. Why?

Suddenly Richard was absolutely certain that Audrey had been right all along. He didn’t understand how she knew or how Merle had pulled it off. But somehow this bastard had taken their son. He could only pray that
all
of Audrey’s premonitions were correct, that Zach was still alive. Wild rage welled up inside him.

I can take you, you son of a bitch. If you’ve hurt my son, I’ll do more than take you.

He strode along the side of the house as though he had no idea that Merle was lurking in the shadows. When the bigger man leapt out in front of him, Richard surprised himself as much as Merle by rushing forward, gripping Merle by both shoulders, and powering him to the ground. Suddenly, with his hands grasping the man’s flesh, he
knew
that Merle Coonts
had
taken Zach.

“What have you done with Zach, you bastard?” he screamed, slamming his fist into Merle’s jowly face. “Where’s my son?”