Night Terror (7 page)

Cates closed the door and Richard allowed himself to be ushered to a chair. As he sat, forearms resting on his thighs, waiting for Doctor Cates to speak, he felt like a small child awaiting a parent’s verdict.

“Is Audrey going to be all right?” he asked.

Cates gave Richard the same diagnosis he had recited for Audrey.

“What are you going to do?” asked Richard.

“I suspect more than anything that her aunt did Audrey a grave disservice by suppressing her past. Audrey has never had a chance to face her traumas and deal with them in her own way.”

“Tara loves Audrey like she was her own child.”

“I’m sure that’s true, Mister Bock, but I believe that the stress from the loss of your son and the anniversary of that loss has worked its way into Audrey’s subconscious. That and her memories that have never been allowed to surface are responsible for these night terrors and visions.”

“What can I do?”

“Be supportive. But not so supportive that you allow her to convince herself that her hallucinations are real. I’m going to prescribe Halcion, a mild sedative that works well in these cases. See that she takes it, and have my assistant set up another appointment for next week.”

“All right.” Richard assumed that the interview was over and he rose, shaking Cates’s outstretched hand.

“Audrey believes that she was able to communicate with her aunt telepathically. Or at least she could hear her and see her aunt at a distance, through the walls of a house. Were you aware of that?” asked Cates.

Richard frowned. “She never told me that. Is that bad?”

Cates shook his head. “Not necessarily. Her memories are distorted. She doesn’t really know
what
she recalls. More than likely that is just her mind’s way of dealing with the jumble, of trying to make sense of what’s left of her past. Audrey’s problems didn’t begin with your son’s disappearance, Mister Bock.”

“I know,” said Richard. “I’ll make sure she takes the medicine.”

15

THE RIDE HOME FROM CATES’S OFFICE
was as silent as the ride down, and all that time Audrey struggled under a heavy sense of depression. Things were stirring in the farthest reaches of her head that had lain dormant for years, like a storm brewing just over the horizon with only a distant black thunderhead to announce its arrival. On the one hand, she was certain that Richard was right. She did need Cates, did need
someone
to help her through this terrible time. On the other hand, her fear of reopening old unremembered wounds was so great she had trouble catching her breath.

They were almost home and she pictured herself there, using the image to try to relax, yet each
thwock
of the tires on the broken asphalt increased her feeling of despair. She adjusted her sunglasses, leaning back in the seat of the Camry as Richard eased the car around a sharp curve. Suddenly her throat tightened and the muscles in her legs cramped. She rubbed her hands together as though trying to feel the realness of her own body. Her palms were soaked in sweat.

Their driveway lay over the hill ahead and around a sharp bend. The landscape on both sides here opened into a low mountain meadow bordered by rusted barbed-wire fences. To Audrey’s right, a stone wall disappeared into the tree line beside an unnamed creek. The forest was filled with
the old rock relics, remnants of a time when the entire Northeast was treeless farmland.

There was no reason for her to be experiencing the apprehension that beset her. Nothing except her loss. And yet she knew that was not it. She had a sense of being in two places at once, both inside the roomy, light confines of the moving car and yet locked within some dark, dank place that chilled her skin and sent waves of revulsion racing through her.

Audrey lifted her sunglasses onto her head and ran shaky fingers through her hair, struggling desperately to understand what was happening to her. Richard glanced over with an expression like a father reassuring a small child.

“It’s all right, honey,” he said. “We’ll work through this.”

She forced a half-smile, covering her fear.

“I love you. That’s what’s important,” he said.

He gently squeezed her thigh and she slid her hand over his, praying for it to steady her.

“I want our baby back,” she said, doing everything she could to block the strange thoughts from her mind, to still the terror drifting over her. The sense of disorientation was nauseating. It was all she could do to carry on the conversation.

“I want him back too,” said Richard. “We’ve done everything we could. So, we deal with it.”

“I can’t deal with this,” she gasped.

Against her will she drifted away. She no longer heard the thrum of the tires or the hum of the engine. Her ears were attuned to a strange humming sound like a giant fan, distant and ominous. Superimposed over the view through
the windshield, like fog slipping over a windowsill, she saw darkness.

She could barely breathe. With an effort of will, she focused on the dashboard as it fluctuated from a foggy gray mass to a hazy plastic that she reached out and touched. It felt wonderfully solid beneath her fingertips. She chanced a glance out the window. They were almost to the hill. A half-mile and they’d be home. To their right lay thick woodland. A big old rambling farmhouse and barn moldered in a wide expanse of fallow fields on their left. Although she must have driven this road a thousand times, Audrey had never really looked at it before.

The house was clapboard-sided, with steep gables. Black shingles were patched with odd-colored remnants. The paint was weathered and a half-dozen different coats peeked through the blisters. One porch post along the side of the house didn’t quite reach the roof, leaving the entrance smiling gap-toothed, like a wooden jack-o’-lantern. The ancient structure meandered away from the road, winding back ninety feet, a square snake, built of boxes. It attached to the old barn like a chain to an anchor. The barn itself was sided with unstained cedar shingles, mildewed to the color of dark storm clouds. Broken windows peered out of the second floor of the barn, like black eyes, and, incongruously, a new satellite television dish capped the roof.

The window eyes of the house proper were unbroken, but displayed the same look of shabbiness, dust, and abandon. Here and there an old green shade drooped ominously, as though someone had ripped it from its mooring. Grass grew tall around the perimeter of the property, punctuated by the empty gravel driveway that ran past the porch to the barn. Except for the antenna, the place appeared abandoned, but it wasn’t.

Audrey remembered seeing a big tractor-trailer parked there when she and Richard had last passed the place on the way into Arcos, and she was suddenly certain someone was watching her. She sank back, hiding behind the low dash, scrunching deep into the seat cushions. Her body tensed so that her toes crushed flat in the bottom of her sneakers. Her fingernails dug painfully into her palms. She couldn’t breathe without whimpering.

“What the?…” sputtered Richard, hitting the brakes.

Audrey slapped at him. She grabbed the wheel and kicked out with her left foot toward the accelerator pedal at the same time.

“Get out of here,” she rasped through a dry mouth, nodding ahead toward the hill. To the turnoff to their house. To safety.

“Go!” she screamed.

Richard bore down on the gas. The front end lifted and the Camry leapt ahead like a race horse bursting from the gate. As the house vanished behind them, Audrey’s feelings of fear and dread slowly receded. Her arms and then her stomach began to relax, then finally her legs and feet as well.

But the knowledge that the decrepit old structure was now behind her, was unsettling.

Richard and Audrey stared at the white plastic bottle sitting ominously alone in the center of the kitchen table.

Halcion.

“I don’t need medicine,” she said.

“You need something,” muttered Richard. “You should have seen yourself in the car.”

She knew he thought she was going crazy. She had to admit that maybe she was. She wanted with all her heart to believe that Zach was alive. But was this about Zach? Or was it about something so terrible from her own past that Tara had been forced to bury the memory of it to keep her from going totally insane?

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“You don’t have anything to be sorry for,” he said, coming around to sit beside her and place his arm around her shoulders. “I just want you to get better.”

“I’m not crazy, Richard,” she whispered.

“No one said you were. No one is ever going to say that.”

“But you think I’m imagining things.”

He stiffened against her. “Doctor Cates said it’s just stress. The medicine will help.”

When she sighed, it felt as though she had shrunk physically, as though all the air inside her and her sense of self were leaking out at the same time.

“What if I’m not imagining things?”

“Audrey, people don’t see things like what you see, not in the real world. It’s just stress. You’ve been under a lot of pressure.”

“But what if it isn’t stress?” she shouted. He drew back and she stared at him with frightened eyes. “What if it’s real? What if Zach’s locked up in some dark basement?”

“Do you really believe that? Is that what the thing in the car was about? Honey, the police interviewed all the neighbors. The old man who owns that house was out of town, remember?”

She nodded. She and Richard had followed every interview, read every report. Listened to the police discussing what
they
thought had happened, when they believed she and Richard were out of earshot. The general idea was that Zach was long gone, far away. Certainly not locked up in a basement next door. And she knew it was true. What she was thinking was crazy. She had to get hold of herself or else the next step Richard suggested might not be just a visit to the doctor. The next diagnosis might call for more than just medicine. She didn’t even want to think about that. About being locked away somewhere in some small room.

“Honey,” he said soothingly, “it isn’t real. You need to take one of the pills and see if they help.”

She nodded, her hands tight on the table. She was shaking. She saw fear in his eyes now as well as concern.

“I just want it to stop,” she sobbed.

Richard hurried to the sink, returning with a glass of water. He opened the medicine bottle and dropped one of the pills into his palm. She could see him wondering if he should reach for another, but he closed the cap and held out both hands to her.

“This will make it stop,” he said.

She stared at the pill and the glass. “And if it doesn’t?”

“If it doesn’t, then we’ll do something else. We’ll get through this. Whatever it takes, Aud. For as long as it takes. I’ll be here.”

“Promise?”

He nodded and she saw the determination in his eyes.

She took the pill, chasing it with the entire glass of water.

16

VIRGIL AND DORIS’S HOUSE
was a comfortable 1940s two-story number with tall gables and a widow’s walk over the front porch. He and Doris used to sit out there on summer nights, listening to the crickets and waving at neighbors passing by on the sidewalk. The house was a block off of Main Street, so it was farther from the lake, but sometimes you could get a cool breeze wafting over the water after sundown. Tall maple trees and high hedges separated most of the homes in this part of town, but many of the backyards were undivided, so that a couple who happened to be barbecuing up the street might end up with unexpected guests.

Virgil eased around a Honda Civic and a pickup truck in the driveway. Candlelight flickered in the bedroom window and he glanced around the neighborhood to see if anyone else had noticed. A few cars moved up and down the street, but no curious crowd gathered.

Reaching across the seat, he grabbed the bag of finger sandwiches he’d picked up from Patty’s Bake Shop. He could hear women talking excitedly through the open window and he hoped to God nobody happened by for a walk while they were in the middle of the damned thing.

He really felt like putting his foot down this time. Of all the people he didn’t care to have in his house, Babs topped the list. Virgil had known Babs ever since she’d moved to
town ten years ago. Hell, it was impossible not to know Babs. She was constantly out on the street in her flowing robes or bandanas or some other ridiculous garb, regaling anyone who’d listen to her with half-baked ideas about how to save the world. Babs was into multivitamins, pyramids, crystals, aromatherapy, Buddhism, and who knew what else. It wouldn’t have surprised Virgil to learn that she sacrificed chickens in her basement, and he didn’t want her preying on Doris.

Doris had always been gullible. Pastor Donnelly had spoken to her a couple of times over the years about getting involved in what he called “heathen affairs.” But Doris had stuck to mostly mundane pursuits: buying horoscope books, reading Shirley MacLaine. It wasn’t until recently, after the disease, that she’d started getting serious. Virgil suspected that Doris was a little worried that maybe Pastor Donnelly didn’t have all the answers and she was spreading her eggs around to different baskets.

“Let her do what the hell she wants,” he muttered under his breath, closing the front door quietly behind him.

Opening the bag, he got down a serving dish from the cupboard, arranging the tuna- and chicken-salad sandwiches in what he thought was a nice pattern. He poured a large bag of chips into a bowl and placed the sandwiches and the bowl on a TV tray and carried them upstairs. He was hoping that Doris’s visitors might coerce her into eating a bite. Maybe something good would come of the night after all.

There were candles on the floor in the downstairs hall and candles on each of the stair treads. He followed their wavering shadows up to the bedroom. The women were seated around the bed like biddies at a quilting bee, all of them staring solicitously at Doris and talking at once. Babs had on what looked like a sheet and she had a towel wrapped around her head like a turban. Virgil set the tray on a bedside table.

“Sit, sit,” said Babs, pulling Virgil down into the chair beside her, at the head of the bed. He glanced around at what had to be one hundred candles of different shapes and sizes. They were on the windowsills, on the dresser, on the lamp table alongside the food tray, and on the threshold of
the open door leading onto the side porch. One or more of them must have been scented, because the small room was immersed in the smell of jasmine.

“We’ll eat later,” whispered Babs, leaning uncomfortably close to Virgil’s ear. “Doris is anxious to speak to the other side. She wants to get on with the sitting.”

“The what?”

Babs gave Virgil an indulgent smile. “The sitting, dear. No one has called them séances in a hundred years, except Doris.”

Doris chuckled.

“Is this really what you want?” asked Virgil.

“Yes,” said Doris.

“All right,” said Virgil, glancing around self-consciously. He knew each of the women present. Knew their husbands and families. Figured most if not all of them had voted for him. “What do I do?”

Babs got up and turned off the overhead fixture and the two bedside lamps. She reseated herself beside Virgil in the warm glow of the candle flames and slipped her palm into his. “Take Doris’s hand,” she said.

Virgil did as he was told and the group formed a circle of clasped hands. For a long time nothing happened. He glanced expectantly around and found that everyone else was peeking just as expectantly at Babs. Babs stared straight ahead, toward the wall with the framed picture of Doris on Salisbury Beach. Virgil had taken the photograph on their honeymoon, on the one day it didn’t rain. It was a faded black-and-white, and although it held a lot of memories for him, he couldn’t imagine Babs caring about it one way or the other.

After ten minutes of enduring cautionary glances from Doris, Virgil was about to ask if they could move things along when Babs’s hand clinched his hand so hard a sharp pain shot up Virgil’s arm. He turned to her and was shocked by what he saw.

Babs’s cheeks were tight. Her eyes were rolled back in her head and the veins in her neck stood out like vines growing around an oak stump. Her hand quivered in his. Her breath rasped in her throat, panting through tight lips. As Almira Couvineau leaned across the bed toward them, Virgil smelled toilet water and brandy.

“Spirit?” she said, in her husky tobacco voice. “Are you there?”

“Who calls me?”

Virgil was shocked by the heavy masculine voice that emanated from Babs’s lips.

“We call you in the name of our friend Doris Milche,” said Almira.

Babs’s chest heaved. “Why have you called me?”

Of course he was just imagining it. But the candles seemed to have dimmed.

“I want to know if I’m welcome… on your side,” said Doris.

Babs seemed to flinch, and all the women gave Doris a funny look as though she’d broken some rule of the game.

“There is no welcome,” growled the heavy voice out of Babs’s throat. “If you come, you come.”

Virgil glared at Babs. Nice. Way to make Doris feel better. Why couldn’t she use a Sally Field voice and talk about Elysian fields and harps and the throne of God instead of frightening the shit out of her?

“But what about heaven?” asked Doris.

Silence. The women glanced nervously at one another, waiting.

“This is not heaven,” said the voice.

“They’re lost souls, Doris!” hissed Almira. “These spirits haven’t passed over yet, for Christ’s sake.”

Virgil felt like Babs could have done a better job of indoctrinating the trainees before their first session. He wondered what the hell Doris had thought was going to happen.

“Well, then, I don’t know what to ask,” said Doris, frowning.

“Spirit,” said Beckie Rossig, “can you tell me if my husband’s cheating on me?”

A gasp came from somewhere. Virgil stared at Beckie, but she wouldn’t meet his eyes. If nothing else, the entertainment value had picked up a notch. Virgil was about to tell Beckie that
he
could answer that question, but thought better of it.

“You can’t ask questions like that!” hissed Almira.

“Well, I don’t know why not,” said Beckie. “No one else was asking.”

“Because we’re here for Doris,” said Claudia Hermman, shaking her head. “Doris, you go ahead.”

Babs’s palm was becoming clammy. Virgil really wanted to slip his hand away and wipe it on his pants, but he didn’t dare break the circle with Doris and the others watching.

“Now I don’t know if this was a good idea or not,” said Doris, catching Virgil’s eye.

He smiled, trying to look encouraging.

The candles flickered. A breeze—far too cold for the season—stirred the curtains. A low rumbling started in Babs’s chest, bubbling up her throat until it flowed from her mouth in a growl. “There is another here who would speak.”

“Speak, spirit,” said Almira.

“Who’s there?”

Virgil glanced over at Babs, wondering again how she did the voices. It seemed like she switched from a professional wrestler to an adolescent boy in midstride.

“Answer!” said Almira, nodding feverishly around the table. All the women besides Babs quickly announced their presence. Then they turned expectantly to Virgil.

“Sheriff Milche here,” said Virgil, feeling even sillier than before.

“I’m Timmy Merrill.”

The marrow melted out of Virgil’s bones. He didn’t know whether to slap Babs or to just stand up and walk out. A more tasteless joke he couldn’t imagine, but the women were staring at Babs spellbound and, God help him, something in the voice gripped Virgil as well. He didn’t know what to do or to say.

“I’m scared,” said the voice. For a second after the words died away, silence hung in the room like an ax over their heads. All the women continued staring at Virgil.

“What are you scared of?” asked Virgil at last. And what the hell was there for spirits to be scared of? Virgil shook his head, wondering if ghosts told people stories.

“I miss my folks,” said the voice.

“They miss you too,” said Virgil, playing along for Doris’s sake. But he wanted to end this. It disgusted him. He hadn’t had a lot of respect for Babs before. But
this.
This was too much.

“It’s cold here. And dark.”

Now that was just some more of what Doris needed to hear.

“My bike got thrown in the creek.”

Virgil’s skin went suddenly colder than the breeze, and he was sure that the candles were dimmer. No one had ever found Timmy Merrill’s bike. It was assumed that the kidnapper kept it. He moved his head, trying to make contact with Babs’s eyes, to figure out what kind of game she was playing at, but they were still rolled up in her head.

“Where, Timmy?” asked Virgil. “Where were you?”

Silence.

Babs’s chest was really heaving, and Virgil could have sworn that the candlelight was growing dimmer. It was like Babs was sucking in part of the light.

“The old bridge. Down behind Haylands Mills.”

Virgil couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Had anyone ever searched there? Probably not. It was miles from the Merrill home. How in the world could Babs have ever thought of that spot? And how did she do those damned voices? Glancing at each of the women, he knew they expected him to play along to the end, even though the game was starting to give him the jitters. “Where are you, boy? What happened to you?”

“It hurt,” said the voice. “It hurt bad.”

There was the sound of genuine pain and betrayal in the voice. Just the way a young boy might sound who had been put in the position Virgil figured Timmy Merrill probably had. Babs was starting to make him as nervous as he was angry.

“What did, son? Who hurt you?”

Silence again.

More gasps from Babs. She wasn’t looking too good. Her cheeks weren’t red anymore; in fact, they were getting kind of pale.

“I don’t know,” said the voice. “It’s dark here. And I’m scared.”

All the women looked terrified now, but Virgil couldn’t figure out how to end the farce. He couldn’t very well tell the spirit to shut up. The women would have it all over town that he’d missed a chance to solve a terrible crime.

“Tell me what happened,” said Virgil, frowning.

“I was riding my bike. Something hit me. When I woke up I was in a car and I was taped in.”

“Taped?”

“Yeah. It’s awful dark here.”

“Did you see who it was?”

“No. There was tape on my eyes. It was dark. It’s always dark.”

“Where did they take you? Do you remember?”

“I think it’s a basement.”

Virgil could hear Cooder, reciting over and over in his head,
Bad things, Virg. I seen bad things.
Was it even remotely possible that Cooder’s ramblings had anything to do with this? How? Virgil didn’t think Cooder’s house even had a basement, and no one in their right mind would let Cooder into theirs.

He shook his head. The stress of the two cases and Doris, and now this, was driving him crazy.

“I’m having trouble holding him,” said Babs in her own voice. Her hand shook in Virgil’s. She sounded weak as a kitten. “Come back, Timmy. We’re here for you. Don’t be afraid. We’re here.”

Virgil was twisted. On the one hand, he didn’t believe in any of this bunkum. Everybody in town knew that Timmy had disappeared on his bike. On the other hand, the voice coming out of Babs’s face frightened him. He couldn’t for the life of him figure out how she was doing it.

“It’s cold here,” said the voice. But this time it sounded far away. “And there’s so many of us.”

“Who are the others?” asked Doris.

Silence.

“Do you know the others?” asked Babs.

“I can’t see them. I just feel them.”

The fear in the voice chilled Virgil. He imagined himself in total darkness, surrounded by people he didn’t know, in some cold, tight space.

“I can’t stay,” said the voice, farther away than before.

“Timmy,” said Babs. “We’re here for you. Is there anything else you want to tell us?”