Night Terrors (7 page)

He took another look around the room, and then left. He walked back down the hall to the next empty bedroom. The only thing in this room was a wood chair at the far end, it sat facing the door.

Everything was ready.

It was almost time.

He had waited so long for this. And soon it was finally going to happen.

He entered the nearly empty bedroom, crossed the wood floor and sat down in the plain wooden chair. He rested there for a moment, waiting for night to fall, waiting for the moon to rise. But the moon wouldn’t be quite full tonight, not yet, not for a few more nights. A full moon was another critical element to the ritual. You had to be very careful, it was a dangerous ritual – the most dangerous of all rituals – and everything had to be followed to the letter, every detail perfect, no instructions misinterpreted.

When night came, he would go find the man he’d seen in his dreams lately, a man who had the same gift he had – the same gift Jen had possessed before she died. The man would be able to sense him when he got near, he would be able to tell something was wrong, but by then it would be too late. The Shadow Man would already be a step ahead of him. He had already scouted the man’s property, and he knew the perfect time to strike.

The Shadow Man needed something from this man tonight. He had to take something from him, another ingredient in the recipe for the ceremony.

He closed his eyes.

He smiled.

Everything was working out perfectly.

And why shouldn’t it? This was destiny. Higher powers at work. Gods and angels and demons conspiring with each other, making everything come together.

Tara sat in front of her easel with the large drawing pad on it. She was trying to work, she had a lot that she needed to get done, but she was distracted. And the distraction was coming from her kitchen.

She tried to get back to work. She was still working on the series of illustrations for the children’s book. She sketched a little more and then tore up the piece of paper. Nothing was coming out right. No matter what she drew, it just didn’t seem right.

She sighed and got up.

She went to the kitchen and stared at the distraction on the kitchen counter: a plate of cupcakes.

After Lorie dropped her off earlier, Tara went to the store and bought the ingredients for cupcakes. They were chocolate cupcakes and she bought creamy white frosting to spread on top. She even bought a package of brightly-colored sprinkles. She got home and followed the directions on the package. Even though these weren’t homemade cupcakes, she was sure they would be tasty.

And now she stared at the plate of cupcakes.

She grabbed her car keys off the counter and stuffed them down into her pants pocket – they had her house key on them – and then she grabbed the plate of cupcakes and marched to her front door.

She unlocked her door and stepped out onto the front porch that led out to the walkway in front of the parking area. She glanced up at the early evening sky where baby pinks and blues were turning purple on the horizon as night slowly crept over the world. She didn’t close the door all the way; she just stood there for a moment. Steve’s blue pickup truck was parked in front of his apartment so she knew he was home.

She was going to walk next door to Steve’s apartment. She was going to knock on his front door with confidence. She was going to smile and welcome him to the neighborhood with a plate of (nearly) homemade cupcakes.

But she didn’t make a move towards Steve’s apartment. Instead, she turned around and ducked back inside. She closed her door and locked it. She took the plate of cupcakes back to the counter and set it down.

“This is stupid,” she grumbled.

She picked up one of the cupcakes and took a big bite.

As Tara went back inside with the plate of cupcakes, she didn’t notice the sedan parked at the far end of the parking area. It was a dark sedan, a common car, only a few years old, and it blended in with other cars easily.

The man in the car watched Tara stand there for a moment with the plate of cupcakes in her hand. And then he watched her go back inside.

He watched the front door of her apartment for a long time.

After starting his car, he put it in drive and left the parking area. He’d be coming back soon to visit her.

Tara managed to get some more work done that evening. She had only eaten one of the cupcakes and she left the others on a plate next to the stove. Maybe she would change her mind tomorrow about giving them to Steve.

But she didn’t think so. Why even bother? What if she brought the cupcakes to him and they hit it off? What if he asked her out? What if they went out on a few dates? What if they really started to like each other? Maybe it would start off okay. A few more dates maybe. But eventually she would have to tell him about her night terrors. She could just picture herself explaining to Steve that sometimes she walked in her sleep, and there might come a night when she might accidentally beat the shit out of him in the middle of her sleep. I hope you’re okay with that.

Yeah, right.

After she finished two more drawings she called it a night. She changed into her flannel, non-sexy pajamas and settled down on her couch in front of the TV. The TV was one of the things she’d spent some money on – and a comfortable couch. Many nights she fell asleep in front of the TV, it seemed to calm her nerves as she watched some kind of reality show about rescuing bars or buying storage units or fixing up houses, and then she would drift off to sleep in the safety of the flickering TV light.

And soon she was asleep.

It was time.

The Shadow Man watched the trailer from the darkness of night. There had been a German Shepard on guard, but he had already taken care of that problem. The rundown doublewide trailer sat under a canopy of giant oak tree branches. Next to the trailer was a huge garage used for fixing up cars. A floodlight spilled light down onto the garage, but left the trailer mostly in darkness. Between the trailer and the garage were a few hulks of rusted-out cars along with other vehicle parts and stacks of tires. Five other cars and trucks were parked in the weedy lawn, some of them possibly repaired or waiting for repairs, one of the trucks was undoubtedly the man’s own vehicle. Even with all of the vehicles, the Shadow Man knew that the man was alone in the trailer. Two deep ruts etched into the grass served as the driveway; the ruts ran from the gate where the killer stood to the doublewide trailer and the garage in the distance.

The killer moved through the darkness like a living shadow, creeping closer and closer to the trailer, and then he slipped around the corner to the back door.

Greg had a sudden jolt of alarm as he sat in front of his TV. He wasn’t sure where the feeling had come from, but he was suddenly on-edge and nervous. He could tell something wasn’t right. He felt like someone was watching him and it gave him a crawling sensation on his skin. A rush of blood flooded his muscles. His heart started pounding in his chest so hard he could feel the rush of blood thumping in his ears.

He sat up a little straighter and looked around his cluttered and messy trailer. He realized he hadn’t heard Bo, his German Shepard, bark for quite a while. He got up from his recliner and felt a little light-headed as he went to the front door and opened it.

Greg stood at the front door of his trailer, the door wide open. He whistled for Bo, but his dog didn’t come running and he didn’t hear anything out in the dark. Damn dog, he thought. Bo wasn’t the greatest watchdog in the world, but he looked mean, and if people saw him they usually thought twice about entering his yard.

Greg walked down the three wooden steps from the trailer to the weedy ground. He took a few steps out towards his truck and looked around. It was dark out here, with the only light coming from the floodlight over the garage door. His porch light had apparently burned out. He wondered if he had any light bulbs in the house.

“Come on, Bo!” he shouted, but he still didn’t see the dog anywhere. “Dinner time!” he yelled, hoping that would coax him out of the darkness, but it didn’t. Bo was probably out at the other end of the five acre property, probably chewing on the fence and trying to get out. He’d gotten out a few times before, but the neighbors always brought him back. All the neighbors around here knew that Bo was just a big ol’ pussycat.

Still, something didn’t feel right to him. Greg had learned to trust his gut instincts over the years – they had kept him out of trouble from time to time. One time a few years back he had sudden urge to pull over on the side of the road, which he did, and then he watched an eighteen wheeler run a red light at the next intersection a few seconds later. He remembered that his hands had been shaking and he’d been sweating. True fear. He’d sat on the side of the road for a few moments until he was calm enough to drive again.

And now that true fear was back. His hands trembled and he could feel a cold sweat on his back, dripping down his spine.

He thought he should go check the large double gates on his chain link fence to make sure they were locked. He even took a few steps out into the darkness towards the gates, but then he stopped as the fear tingled along the nerve endings just under his skin. The gates were closed and the chain was locked, he was sure of that. It was a nightly ritual for him.

Instead of checking the gates, he walked back to his doublewide and climbed the steps and went back inside. He closed the door and locked it. He didn’t usually worry about locking his front door because he always kept the gates locked and Bo was always roaming around, but for some reason he wanted the door locked tonight.

The TV was blaring a cop show as Greg walked from the front door to the kitchen. He felt a little better now that he was back inside his house with the door locked. He tried to shrug off the feeling of fear as he walked into the kitchen. He didn’t feel like cooking so he poured himself a bowl of cereal, except he used a salad bowl instead of a cereal bowl. Not good for his waistline, he was sure, but he’d given up on dieting years ago. He was always going to have a pot belly. He’d even quit drinking beer a few years ago, but his belly refused to cooperate.

He added milk and a spoon to the cereal and took it from the kitchen back to the living room. He planned on plopping down in his recliner in front of the TV and watch some Law and Order re-runs and munch on his cereal. Maybe fall asleep in his chair.

And he would keep his cordless phone close by tonight. But then he thought that maybe getting his shotgun out of the hall closet would be a better idea.

Greg stopped in his tracks about halfway to his lumpy recliner.

Static blared from the TV.

And static blared in his mind. It was the strongest feeling he’d ever had in his life – much stronger than when he’d pulled over onto the side of the road and watched the eighteen-wheeler run the intersection. A shockwave of fear ran through his mind. There was no denying it now, there was no shrugging it off as imagination, he was certain now that he was in grave danger.

He didn’t know exactly what kind of danger, but he knew it was imminent.

The cereal bowl slipped from his hands which seemed to have lost their strength for a moment. The plastic bowl crashed down to his laminate wood floor and then bounced up and finally settled upside down a few feet away from him after the milk and cereal had sprayed out across the floor.

Like the spray your blood will make,
a voice whispered in his mind. But the scariest thing was that it didn’t seem to be his own voice. It was like someone else had just whispered into his ear (and he even looked around to see if anyone else was right behind him), but the voice had been in his mind.

Greg knew he didn’t have much time – there was only one thing he could do to save himself. He ran through the living room for the hallway. He was still wearing his work boots (still wearing his work clothes for that matter, grease stains and all), and his boots thundered across the floor.

He reached the hall closet and tore the door open.

Someone’s in the house!
his mind screamed at him.

He searched through coats and boots and other odds and ends stuffed into the hall closet, but he couldn’t find the shotgun.

“Where the fuck is it?”

It had to be in here. This is the only place he ever kept it.

But it wasn’t in the closet.

“Looking for this?” Greg heard a man whisper from behind him.

Greg turned around and he didn’t even have a split second to react before he saw the butt of his shotgun arcing down at his face, he didn’t even have time to put his hands up in defense.

There was an instant flash of pain and then the world went black. Greg was out.

Tara slept on the couch as the TV’s flickering light washed over her. The rest of the apartment was in darkness.

From the darkness came a whisper.

“Please help me.”

Tara’s face twitched, her eyes closed tighter.

“Tara,” the voice whispered. It was a man’s voice and it seemed closer to her now. “Tara, help me.”

Tara opened her eyes and she was face-to-face with Greg. Blood matted his hair and stained one whole side of his face. His eyes bulged with unknowable fear.

“Please, Tara. You have to help me. The Shadow Man’s here.”

Suddenly, the man was dragged away from Tara, pulled by his feet into the far shadows of the living room. His mouth was open in a silent scream. He tried to claw at the floor, but he couldn’t stop the invisible force that was dragging him back into the darkness. Three of his fingernails popped off as he left claw marks in the wood floor.

Tara jumped up on her couch, her legs tucked up underneath her body, her eyes wide open. “No!” she shouted at the darkness.

She fumbled with the lamp next to the couch and tried to wrap her fingers around the switch, nearly knocking it over before she finally twisted the knob.

The light. The blessed light.