Night Terror (36 page)

60

AUDREY STUMBLED DOWN THE CENTER
of the corridor.

She was disoriented, two places at once again, no longer only in the upper reaches of the old building. Without warning, a part of her was thrown into what appeared to be Tara’s research lab. She tried to focus on the room in her head, blanking out the space around her, feeling her own feet catching on the tiles of the corridor floor.

Help me!

Zach’s voice exploded in her mind.

I can’t get out! She’s going to hurt me!

Audrey tried to scream, to warn Zach, to threaten Tara, to tell her to leave her son alone or else, but she could barely breathe. Instead she heard Tara, speaking calmly, as though reciting from a laundry list.

“Alcohol swabs, Dexedrine, adrenaline too. Eppie, just in case, check the voltage settings.”

What’s she doing?

Was that her own thought or Zach’s?

Agonizingly slowly, the small, bright room superimposed itself over the dark corridor she was in. Tara stepped from behind a large green instrument panel, and Audrey felt her own knees buckling. Tara seemed to be studying Audrey’s face, but Audrey knew that she was really looking at Zach.

“Be still,” said Tara. “This won’t hurt.”

Tara receded as Zach tried to back away, but Audrey felt the wall strike her in the back and then she was struggling weakly with a much larger Tara. She was there with Zach. She could feel Tara’s bulk jerking her along, feel a tearing pain in Zach’s elbow. She screamed again, but this time she heard it, and so did Tara.

And then she realized that Zach had screamed with
her
voice.

“How did you do that?” gasped Tara, releasing her grip and taking a step back.

Zach shook his head, confused.

Tara lost only a moment in reflection, boxing in Zach before he could take advantage of her momentary incredulity to run. Her strong arms lifted him off his feet, tossing him into the wheelchair. He fought like a cat, slapping and scratching, but soon enough she had him lashed down with thick leather straps.

“Audrey!” Virgil’s voice barely reached her, but she struggled to hold onto it. She knew that she had to take control of her own body again. She couldn’t save Zach by entering his mind. She had to find his body. But it was so hard to be so achingly close and to let go. “Audrey! Snap out of it!”

“She’s hooking him up to the machine!” she gasped.

“What machine?” asked Virgil.

Audrey shook her head. “It’s all wires and dials and… and pain.”

“Yeah,” said Cooder, his eyes gleaming in the flashlight’s glow.

“You saw it too?” said Virgil, glancing at Cooder.

“I seen…”

“I know, Cooder,” said Virgil. “I know. Just tell us how to get there.”

“This way,” said Cooder. “Got to go by the Mixed Nuts.”

61

LITTLE ENOUGH WAS LEFT
of Tara’s once formidable lab complex after the cutbacks, after the fools ended her funding and forced her to make her research even more clandestine. But she had salvaged what she could. All of her lab equipment—that had been the most important thing. And some of the original security system had been simple enough to maintain. She was proud of having taught herself the workings of the electrical and some of the electronics systems in the undergound complex. She scrutinized Virgil, Cooder, and Audrey’s progress now on closed circuit cameras overhead. It riled her that Audrey didn’t
need
technology like that to find her son. How had she missed Audrey’s talents? How could Audrey have hidden them all these years? No matter. Everything had worked out for the best after all. Now Audrey would feel the machine like the others.

Tara had known psi existed, even before the government imbeciles admitted that they did. She knew because her mother had it. Her mother had made a good living forecasting the future for wealthy men who were willing to pay handsomely for advice and discretion. But unlike her mother or her sister Martha, Tara never exhibited any strange talents whatsoever, and Tara grew up ashamed at failing a test she didn’t really understand. By the time she’d reached the eighth grade, she had thrown herself into the
study of the paranormal. If Tara didn’t
have
it, then she meant to understand and
own
it.

She wasn’t one of the world’s most proficient hypnotists by accident. She had learned at an early age how to control people’s minds without psi, simply by the persuasion of the spoken word. Little things at first. Like getting her way with her parents when her sister couldn’t, or manipulating them into blaming and punishing her twin for something
she
had done.

Tara had used her sister as a child and then, when her sister had children who had interesting powers, Tara had controlled her sister’s mind, forcing her to give up the children without a fight, without a word to anyone. Looking back on those years, she often wished she had done things differently, that she had found some way to study Martha as well. But by the time Martha’s children were old enough to exhibit their abilities, Tara’s manipulations of Martha’s mind had left her a burned-out husk. Craig and Paula, on the other hand, had been powerful telepaths, perfect for Tara’s needs.

But Audrey had hidden her powers completely. Tara had been convinced that it was a twin thing, that, like she and Martha, only one twin could be born with psi powers. How had she been fooled so easily?

Tara stared at Zach, trussed like a chicken. Then she glanced over her head at the monitors again, watching as Audrey rounded a corner.

How did Zach imitate his mother’s scream? And why did Audrey stumble just at that moment? Was Audrey’s telepathy so powerful that she was able to insinuate herself into her son’s mind
and
body? Wouldn’t it be informative to give Zach the added incentive of reaching out to his mother? Trying to save each other’s lives might be just the push they needed to expand their capabilities. Was the mother-child bond the key she’d been searching for all these years? Was it even stronger than the sibling bond?

Tara’s hand rested on the rheostat connected to a series of impulse stimulators within the machine. Her eyes followed the path of the red wires leading to the mask covering Zach’s skull. Pain was an unfortunate yet essential aspect of her research and Tara knew more about administering
pain than any person alive. She had never had two talents such as Audrey and Zach to work with at the same time—since Paula’s talents developed well after Craig was dead—and certainly never two so intimately connected. Interesting, indeed.

62

AUDREY SCURRIED DOWN THE CORRIDOR
ahead of the others. Virgil’s flashlight glow bounced around her, sending her shadow dancing ahead and lending the sterile old structure a ghoulish air. The dark hallway looked like someplace vampires might gather. She wondered if this was how the building had always appeared to its inhabitants, who had lived more in their minds than inside the white, tiled rooms.

“This way,” whispered Cooder, just behind her, stopping her in her tracks.

He was staring into a doorway she had missed in her haste, assuming it was just another cell. Virgil caught up and shone the light inside.

“In there?” he said, frowning.

Cooder took a deep breath and entered, Audrey just behind. Virgil took up the rear.

“What the hell is this?” muttered Virgil, his words echoing in the cavernous room. The hills were lined in a cold gray light through the tall windows covering the far wall. Deep carpet covered the floor. Virgil studied the framed documents on the walls.

“This building’s supposed to have been abandoned for years,” he muttered.

Audrey ran her fingers across the massive oak desk, taking in the profusion of bookshelves, the Persian rug beneath
the leather chair behind the desk. “She never left here. Not really. When it closed down, she stayed somehow.”

Virgil shook his head. “How would she have gotten power? Funding?” He stared at the library surrounding them. “How could she have kept this a secret?”

Audrey glanced around, feeling for Zach’s presence. He kept coming and going in her mind now like a throbbing pulse. “Tara’s resourceful,” she said, following the tug inside her head.

“Hey! Let me go ahead,” shouted Virgil, as Audrey and Cooder disappeared through another door. But they didn’t stop until they’d reached the bottom of the stairs inside. When Virgil caught up, he shone the flashlight down the length of another set of stairs into the corridor beyond. No doors were in sight. The tunnel wound away in front of them like a subway line.

“What the hell is this?” he said, glancing at Cooder.

“I seen—”

“Yeah, okay,” said Virgil, heading down the stairs. Cooder and Audrey followed side by side.

Please help me!
Zach screamed in Audrey’s mind. She could barely breathe. She wanted to race ahead. To get to him. But her sense of disorientation was growing, even worse than before. She had to pace herself until she could reach him, until the place in her mind and the place she
was
became one and she could act. By the time they found the elevator doors, she was stumbling again, clutching her temples. Virgil caught her as Cooder punched the red button. The doors hissed open immediately and light flared out around them.

Audrey stepped into the elevator beside Cooder and Virgil, instinctively pushing the button marked
S
below the
B
for basement. The lift dropped quickly and then shuddered to a stop. When the doors opened, Virgil held Audrey and Cooder back while he shone the light up and down the dark corridor. Finally he motioned them out.

“Not here,” said Cooder, remaining in the elevator.

Audrey stayed as well, her brow furrowed, her eyes closed. Cooder was right. She could feel Zach stronger now, so close she could reach out and touch him. But he wasn’t here. This was a ruse.

Virgil peered back into the elevator. “Then where the hell are they?”

“Come back in,” said Audrey, nodding at the corridor behind him. “There’s no light here. Where she has Zach, the lights are on.”

As the door buzzed shut again, Cooder turned and faced the back wall.

“You know how to get there,” said Audrey, placing her hand on Cooder’s shoulder. “Don’t you?”

“Bad things…”

“Yeah. I know, Cooder. But you have to remember how to get there. You have to.”

Cooder nodded slowly as he glanced around the tiny elevator, a curious expression lighting his face.

“What are you hunting for?” said Virgil.

“He was always looking up.”

“Who?” said Audrey.

Cooder shook his head. “The dog,” he said. “There’s a switch…”

Virgil glanced at Audrey and shook his head. But Cooder ran his fingers underneath the safety rail until a metallic click sounded. Another mechanical
whooshing
sounded as the back wall of the elevator slid away.

Another corridor appeared before them, this one dank and damp, lit unevenly by oddly spaced fluorescent fixtures. As they entered the hallway, their footsteps echoed away like rats skittering down a hole. The place had an underlying odor that set Audrey’s nerves on edge. Virgil must have noticed it too. He grabbed Cooder’s sleeve to stop him, then motioned a finger across his lips for silence. Replacing the flashlight in his belt holder, he put both hands on the shotgun. But staring down the length of the long corridor, Audrey knew the gun would not be enough.

We aren’t hunting her, she thought. She’s playing with us. I can feel her. Watching.

For the first time she glanced up and noticed the half-hidden camera peeking through a glass bubble in the ceiling tile. She tapped Virgil on the shoulder and pointed to it.

Virgil frowned. “Nothing we can do about that now. If she’s looking, she’s looking.”

Just then, a public address system crackled to life through
hidden wall speakers. Audrey spun back toward Cooder. “Plug your ears!” she screamed. There were several metallic clicking noises, then Tara’s voice. “Egress. Exit.”

Audrey felt the sudden dullness again, but it wasn’t nearly so confusing, so overwhelming as before. It seemed more like a natural sluggishness, like waking up slowly from a deep sleep. And she’d heard the words this time. She could control herself, take possession of her body again. She fought her way through the sludge, struggling to break out of the darkness back into the light of the corridor. She couldn’t let Tara do this to her. If she went under, they were all dead.