Night Terrors (3 page)

He wants it that way
, a voice in her mind whispered.

Tara closed her eyes for a moment, trying to catch her breath. She was dressed in her usual bedtime clothes – pajama bottoms and an oversized T-shirt. She never wore anything too revealing to bed anymore ever since she was a teenager and she’d woken up three blocks from her house in her underwear after a sleepwalking incident.

She crawled out of the bathtub. There was light coming from some other place in her apartment, but the bathroom was dark, and she couldn’t be in the darkness. She turned on the bathroom light and caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror, her dark hair was disheveled and her blue eyes were haunted by the images she had just seen in her dreams. Her eyes darted for a moment to the thick, four inch long scar on the side of her neck. She turned away from the mirror and hurried out of the bathroom into her living room.

She went to the spare bedroom which was around the corner from the guest bathroom she had just woken up in – the light was coming from this room which she used as her office. Along one wall was her desk with the computer on top and two battered filing cabinets next to it. Two bookcases crammed with books took up another wall, and in the corner between the desk and bookcases was her art easel.

Scattered on the floor were three sheets of drawing paper.

She picked one of them up, then another, and then the last one. They were quick sketches of Jen. She had drawn them in her sleep. She did this every once in a while when she had a terrible nightmare or vision, but it had been a while since she’d had a night terror this bad – years.

She studied the sketches, the lines were quick and heavy, not too much detail, but Tara could see the terror in Jen’s eyes, her hands held up in defense. But Jen had not been able to defend herself against this monster.

Tara wanted to shove the papers away in a drawer, maybe even tear them up and throw them away. She didn’t want these reminders that she’d seen the murder of a seventeen year old girl that she could do nothing about, nothing to help her. But something stopped her. At the edges of each drawing were a few numbers and a word: a number three on one drawing, a number five on the next, and one word on the last one – Run.

What did this word and these numbers mean? She tried to remember if they had anything to do with the dream – but she couldn’t remember. But they had to mean something.

Run. Maybe something was telling her to run. Hadn’t that been what she’d been doing during her night terror – running away? Running to her bathroom and hiding in the tub? Jen had been running away from the killer, maybe that’s what the word had to do with it. But Tara felt that the word was targeted towards her, that it was
meant
for her.

And the numbers: a three and a five. What did they have to do with anything?

After a dejected sigh, Tara set the sketches on her desk and left the room. She turned off the light and closed the door. She hurried to the front door and checked to make sure the deadbolt was engaged. She checked the windows. Everything was locked – she was safe.

But she didn’t
feel
safe. She still couldn’t push away the feeling of dread that had washed over her. A girl had been murdered tonight and there was nothing she could do about it. A sudden sadness and helplessness nearly overwhelmed her.

And the worst thing was that she felt like she
knew
this killer, like she’d seen him before.

I’ve felt him in my dreams before; I’ve seen horrible things through his eyes before.

Tara grabbed a bottle of water out of the refrigerator and drank half of it down – she was so thirsty. She stood in front of the open door of the refrigerator with the bottle of water in her hand. A tingly feeling of fear danced across her skin on spidery legs; it was the feeling that someone was in the apartment with her, watching her from some shadowy corner, about to whisper her name from the darkness.

She spun around when the weight of the feeling became too much.

No one there.

Of course there wasn’t.

She was alone in her apartment.

She closed the refrigerator door and left the light on over the stove. She went to her bedroom with its trusty nightlight still shining from the outlet near the nightstand. She sat down on the edge of her bed and took a deep breath. She reached underneath her bed and pulled out a length of rope that was tied to one of the legs. She tied the other end around her left ankle. She hadn’t had to tie her leg to the bed in a long time, at least two years. But she couldn’t risk another sleepwalking episode.

She lay down and stared up at the ceiling. This girl she’d seen in her dream, Jen, was dead by now, she was sure of that. She felt like crying. What good were her visions of a murder if it was already too late to help? There wasn’t anything she could do to help this girl now. She could call the police, but she had no idea where this girl lived, or if she even lived here in Tampa. And she had learned her lesson about contacting the police and trying to help them. They all thought she was a fake. Or they thought she was crazy.

Tara looked at the alarm clock on the table next to her – eleven thirty. She looked back up at the ceiling.

“Jen,” she whispered and closed her eyes. But she knew it would be a long time before she would be able to fall back asleep.

By eleven thirty p.m. there were cop cars and an ambulance parked in front of Jen’s house, some of the vehicles were parked on the lawn. A plain detective’s car pulled up and parked. Detective Ronald Perry, a tough and weathered fifty-two year old man, stepped out of the car. He had short-cropped silver hair and his facial features, which used to look like they’d been chiseled from granite, had now started to become jowly. His belly had gotten a little bigger over the last ten years, but his ice-blue eyes never missed a thing. His movements were slow and methodical, yet it seemed like he could move like lightning if he needed to. His dark suit was a little rumpled, his tie loosened.

Perry walked up to the front door of the house where Detective Jackson, a gigantic man, waited. Jackson chewed on a wad of bubble gum, his jaw muscles bunching up underneath his dark skin as he chewed. Jackson used to be a linebacker for the Miami Hurricanes in his younger days, but he never made it to the NFL. While in college, he got a liberal arts degree. And even though he was proud of his degree, he had always dreamed of being a cop. He joined the academy, and then started off as a traffic cop. He worked his way up to a homicide detective in record time.

Jackson watched Perry approach. Jackson already had a pair of blue nitrile gloves on and he handed a pair to Perry.

“She’s upstairs,” Jackson told Perry. “In her bedroom. We found the other one in the backyard by the pool.” Jackson hesitated just a second and then added: “You’re not going to believe this one.”

Perry looked at Jackson with heavy-lidded eyes that could stare right through a person, eyes that had seen every kind of depravity of human behavior over the years.

“Have the parents been contacted yet?” Perry asked as he stuffed his large hands into the gloves.

“Just reached them,” Jackson answered. “They’re on their way here.”

Perry turned to a police officer who stood near the front door. “You let us know when the parents get here,” he told the officer. “Don’t let them go upstairs.”

“Yes sir,” the police officer said.

Perry and Jackson entered the house. Perry followed Jackson up the stairs and down a hall to a bedroom, a girl’s bedroom – Jennifer McGrath’s bedroom. And there was Jennifer; her body was slumped down between the bed and an overturned end table, the lamp and alarm clock pulled down to the floor. Her back was against the wall and her legs splayed out in front of her like she’d been sitting upright against the wall and then slid over to one side. Her clothes were still on her body and they didn’t look disturbed. Her hair was a little messy and her eyes were wide open in her pale face. Her face and body weren’t marred at all, no injuries on her except for the hole in her throat which was about the size of a dime with a ring of dried blood around it.

Perry squatted down beside Jen’s body and studied it for a moment. “Not much blood from the wound,” he muttered.

“The M.E. said most of her blood is gone.”

Perry looked up at Jackson.

“He thinks some kind of pump was used on her,” Jackson continued. “The killer collected the blood and took it with him.”

Perry looked back at Jen’s very pale body. “No signs of any other injuries?”

“No obvious injuries so far.”

“What about the other one?” Perry asked. He stood up and stared at Jackson with his milky blue eyes. “The one in the backyard. Was the blood pumped out?”

“No,” Jackson answered, chewing on his gum. “This is where it starts getting a little weird.”

In the backyard, on the pool deck, Perry and Jackson stood over Kevin’s body which was sprawled face-down in front of the sliding glass door in a pool of blood. There were splashes of blood all over the patio stones. There were smears of blood on the sliding glass doors. Kevin’s hands were coated in blood.

“ID in his wallet says Kevin Getz,” Jackson said. “I’m guessing he was Jennifer McGrath’s boyfriend. He’s got a deep slash across his throat. Cut through his arteries, windpipe, vocal chords. Everything. Looks like he was beating on the sliding glass door.” Jackson nodded at the smears of blood all over the glass. “Maybe he was trying to get inside.”

Perry shook his head in disbelief. “So this nutcase drains the blood out of the girl and keeps it, but he slashes this guy’s throat and lets him bleed out all over the place.”

“There’s some other stuff around the side of the house.”

Perry followed Jackson past the pool. They walked through an open wooden gate and then they continued along a path between the house and some shrubs. Beyond the shrubs was a stand of woods between this house and the next one a quarter mile away.

They stopped where a set of construction lights had already been set up by police officers. The lights shined down on the ground where a collection of small kitchen utensils and butter knives, house and car keys, phones, and other items from the house were piled up by the door that led into the kitchen. The kitchen door was ajar, just like it had been found by the police officers.

“What the hell?” Perry said and looked at Jackson.

“It’s like the killer was in the house earlier and set things up. He dismantled the phones and removed any house and car keys.”

“And the knives,” Perry nodded down at a group of butter knives, forks, and even a potato peeler. “Like he was removing anything that could be used as a weapon.”

“Some of the knives are missing,” Jackson said. “All of the big kitchen knives from a wood block are gone. They’re not out here with the other kitchen stuff and we haven’t found them anywhere inside the house.”

“He might have used one of them on the boy.”

“Yeah,” Jackson agreed. “But why would he take all of the big knives with him and leave all of this other stuff behind?”

Perry shrugged. “You get any prints off this stuff?”

Jackson shook his head. “They’re still working on it, but nothing so far. He probably wore gloves.”

“Who called this in?”

“Anonymous tip from a throwaway cell phone.”

Perry glanced at the woods for a second, and for that moment he felt like he could feel the killer watching them from the darkness. He thought about sending some cops into the woods.

A police officer rushed around the front corner of the house and ran up to Perry and Jackson. “The girl’s parents just pulled up.”

Perry and Jackson rushed out to the front yard. Perry saw Mr. and Mrs. McGrath bolt from their car, running towards their house. Police officers blocked their way, trying to hold them back. Mr. and Mrs. McGrath had left their car running, the headlights on, the car doors wide open.

“Get the hell out of my way!” the father yelled. “Where’s my daughter? I want to see Jen!”

“Oh God, please tell me she’s okay,” the mother begged. “Please tell me she’s still alive.”

Perry joined the two officers in holding Mr. McGrath back and Jackson approached the mother. Jackson was a very large man, and usually an imposing one, but he could also show deep emotions with just a look. Mrs. McGrath stared into his dark eyes and more tears spilled from hers, her chin quivered as she tried to speak, but there were no words. She could only shake her head no. Jackson laid a hand on her shoulder and whispered into her ear. She collapsed against Jackson and sank to her knees as she retched out silent sobs.

Jen’s father rushed over to his wife and his body folded in on itself as he collapsed beside his wife, both of them held each other and cried.

Across the street, deep in the palmetto brush and pine trees, the Shadow Man watched the collection of police cars and emergency vehicles. He smiled at their confusion, at the way they scurried around like ants on pointless little missions. They could keep on scurrying but they would never find him. They would never catch him. He was too slick for them. He would always be one step ahead of them.

One step ahead of everybody.

He lifted up his duffel bag and threw it over his shoulder. It was a little heavier now that it had a container of the girl’s blood inside. He turned and walked away, deeper into the brush and darkness.

It was time to collect the next item for the ritual.

Tara managed to get a few more hours of sleep, but it was a restless sleep filled with twisted dreams. She didn’t have any more nightmares of Jen’s murder, but she could feel an evil weight trying to smother her in the dreams.

It was him – the Shadow Man. He’s found me again. He’s come to kill me.

She finally gave up on sleep and got up at five-thirty in the morning. She untied the rope from around her ankle and went to her bathroom to take a quick shower.

Inside the bathroom, she locked the door and undressed. She had a clear shower curtain over the bathtub – she hated being behind the solid shower curtain, jumping at every noise, peeking out every few seconds, so she bought a clear one. She kept a baseball bat beside her toilet, leaning against the vanity, and there was a knife in one of the drawers.