Night Terror (31 page)

“Come with me, Audrey,” she said. “It’s time for
you
to meet the machine.”

Audrey shook her head. “I’m not going. None of us are going.”

“I can only take the one,” said Tara. “More’s the pity. But I have no lab help nowadays. And since you’ve worked yourself out from under my conditioning and Zach has never been programmed, I can’t chance either of you getting away.” She studied Zach as though he were not her own nephew but a poor lamb that unfortunately needed to be slaughtered. “You seem to have some small talent that I missed, Audrey. You managed to find your offspring even when the whole world told you he was dead. That’s a bit of work I’d like to examine.”

It took Audrey a second to grasp her meaning and when she did the horror of it stilled her heart. She glanced at the pistol swinging slowly toward Zach. Tara wasn’t leaving any witnesses. Neither Zach nor Richard nor mother would be left to incriminate her.

“No!” Audrey screamed, reaching out ineffectually.

There was a metallic click inside the gun, but when Tara pulled the trigger nothing happened. She drew back the slide to check the chamber, shaking her head. She pulled the trigger again. Another dry fire and then another unexpected clicking sound.

Tara backed away a step, glancing at Zach who was focused like a laser on the pistol. She dropped the gun onto the floor as though it were on fire.

“You did that!” she said, as Zach’s attention slowly rose from the floor to her face. Tara moved before Zach could react, gripping his arm like a vise, shoving Audrey back onto the floor beside Richard. “Adler!” shouted Tara, waving at Audrey who was already starting to rise. The dog leapt in front of Audrey, its teeth glistening, the death threat in its throaty growl unmistakable.

“How did you do that?” said Tara, lifting Zach’s chin.

Zach shrugged, glancing at his mother who was shaking her head.

“I didn’t do anything.”

“Yes, you did. I felt it. What did you do to my pistol?”

“Nothing.”

“Adler! Ready!” The dog bared even more of his teeth and stiffened. Audrey crunched back against the wall beside Richard, her hands in front of her. “If I give the command, the dog will rip your mother to little pieces,” said Tara. “Now one more time, what did you do to my pistol?”

“I fixed it so it wouldn’t shoot.”

Tara’s eyes gleamed. “How did you do that?”

Zach shrugged again, still glancing at Audrey, who’s face was a mask of fear. “I just got inside it and fixed it, that’s all.”

Tara nodded. “Amazing! You could be the one I’ve been looking for all these years, Zachary.”

“No, Tara,” said Audrey. “Please. Take me.”

Tara didn’t even look back. “We have to go, Zach. Adler! Stay! Guard!”

The dog twisted his head back and forth, as though there were something in his ears. But he shook it off and held his position directly in front of Audrey.

“Zach. Come along,” said Tara, jerking his hand.

“No.” He planted his feet, leaning back hard against Tara’s tug.

“Tara, please! For the love of God!” whispered Audrey.

“Adler!” Tara pointed at Audrey and the dog growled ferociously, scratching the carpet with his paws and leaning menacingly closer to Audrey. “One more command, Zach, and Adler will kill your mother.”

Audrey shook her head. “All these years I never knew what kind of animal you were. You gave me memories of the wonderful aunt who had saved me from a horrible mother.” She glanced down at the pool of blood surrounding her mother on the floor, then back at Richard, who was barely conscious beside her. “It was you. All along. It was you.”

Tara dragged Zach out of the room and as she disappeared she screamed, “Adler! Now!”

The dog lunged at Audrey’s face, planting its paws on her chest. She slid sideways along the wall, over her mother, forgetting the pain, slapping frantically at the dog, praying it couldn’t plant its flashing fangs in her. Before she could stop it, the dog’s breath was hot on her throat, the scalpellike teeth just touching her skin like a promise, the growl
filling her ears, but for some reason the dog never clamped down. The two of them hung there in suspended animation, Audrey feeling the dog’s warm saliva dripping down onto her shoulder for what seemed hours.

“Adler!” shouted Tara from somewhere down the hall and the dog slid its cruel nails down across Audrey’s breast and raced out of the room.

Audrey climbed wearily to her feet and rushed out into the corridor just in time to hear the heavy metal door clang shut and the lock click into place.

Cooder drew back into himself when he realized that the dog, the boy, and Doctor Beals were approaching Doctor Beals’ car. He slipped back down the slope above the drainage ditch and tried to disappear like a worm into the dirt. Car doors slammed and he waited for Doctor Beals to drive away, but nothing happened. Finally curiosity got the better of him but, rather than climbing back up to the road again, he took a deep breath, pushed real hard, and peered through the dog’s eyes again.

The boy was sitting crossways in the backseat, staring straight ahead with a dazed look on his face, and Cooder realized that he—the dog—was growling at the kid. He concentrated hard and forced the dog to nuzzle the kid’s side instead, but the boy shoved him away.

So where was Doctor Beals?

Cooder forced the dog’s eyes to glance in every direction. Then he saw her, hurrying back around the corner of the house. She leapt into the car, slammed the door, and started the engine. The SUV rocketed away in a spray of gravel and a shriek of asphalt. Even before it rounded the bend, Cooder felt himself losing contact with the dog. He rested his head on the dirt and closed his eyes. She was gone. He was safe.

But she had the boy.

That thought rocked him like a blast of Arctic wind. No matter where the kid had been before, no matter what had happened to him, it was nothing to what would happen to him now. Doctor Beals had killed the man outside the house, and the old woman in the basement, and the boy’s
father. She had tried to kill the boy’s mother, but somehow the boy had stopped her from doing that.

For just an instant Cooder had felt as though he were making contact with the boy. But it was so hard just staying inside the dog’s head that he couldn’t let go. The boy had done something to the gun so that it wouldn’t fire.

How would a kid know how to do that? Like getting into a bird’s head, maybe? Cooder didn’t see how the inside of a bird could be anything like the inside of a gun, but he sensed that he and the kid shared something now. Something Doctor Beals wanted.

He shook his head, trying to clear it, bouncing his forehead off the gravel ditch side. Doctor Beals talked and the woman went stiff. The woman was trained like the dog. Hypnotized.

He shivered, knowing right then that somewhere inside his twisted skull, there was a word waiting for
him
, that when he heard it he would do anything Doctor Beals said. And he was afraid that the way things were going, she would tell him to kill himself. Because she was coming back for him. He knew it. Maybe not right now. Maybe not right away. But she was coming back. He’d seen enough to figure that out. As he climbed fearfully to the edge of the road, he began to notice a slight lightening in the night, a flickering against the tops of the trees behind the barn. Then, as he stood up on the road again, he saw the flames licking at the sides of the old barn, catching in the dry wood, racing like rabid squirrels up the walls.

He was caught up in the magic of wild fire, like a rat staring at a snake. He couldn’t take his eyes away. He was standing that way, one foot on the grass, the other on the road, when Virgil’s cruiser shrieked to a stop almost directly on top of him.

“Cooder!” Virgil screamed, jumping out of the car and racing to face Cooder.

“Hi, Virg,” said Cooder, glancing at Virgil, then back to the flames that were already tickling their way up toward the barn eaves, two stories above the ground.

“What are you doing here, Cooder?” said Virgil, shaking him by the shoulders and glancing across the road at the Bocks’ car. “Have you seen Audrey Bock or her husband?”

A space of time.

“I think so.”

“You
think
so?”

Cooder nodded. “Yeah. I saw them.”

“Where are they?” asked Virgil, praying for any answer other than the one he was afraid Cooder was going to give him.

“In there,” said Cooder, nodding toward the fire.

“Shit,” said Virgil, as the flames began to climb the steep cedar shingles. Down below they were fanning out, creeping along the base of the wall, working their way from the barn toward the house. But they didn’t seem to have reached any of the residences yet. Virgil grabbed a flashlight off the front seat and started across the road.

“You won’t find them,” said Cooder in that perpetually calm voice that drove Virgil right out of his gourd.

“Where are they, exactly, Cooder? I don’t have much time.”

Cooder shrugged. “I’ll show you.”

“Then show me.”

A space of time caused Virgil to shake Cooder by the shoulders again.

“The barn,” said Cooder, as though he’d just remembered.

Virgil stared at the wall of flame beginning to turn the barn to a pyre.

“If they’re in the barn, surely they’ll make their way back into the house to get out,” he said.

“Can’t,” said Cooder, shaking his head. “They’re in the basement.”

“The basement attaches to the house.”

Cooder just kept shaking his head. “Bad things, Virg.”

“Shit,” said Virgil at last. He waved for Cooder to hurry up and follow him. “Show me.”

Audrey kicked at the heavy door, jerking the handle so hard her wrists ached, but there was no opening it, no give whatsoever, and she could sense Zach slipping farther and farther away. It was infuriating having come so close, having held him in her arms, to surrender him now to the
woman who had been at the center of the insanity all along. It wasn’t going to happen!

Audrey tugged at the door, throwing her shoulder into it, ignoring the pain. But after several such attacks, she was out of breath, leaning against the cold metal, ransacking her brain for another way. She turned and raced back down the corridor, slamming open doors, exploring the subcellar room by room, stopping only long enough at the first door to ascertain that Richard was still breathing.

The layout seemed to follow the house above, for the most part. To her right lay the foundation. All of the rooms but one were to her left. What she could see of the old granite foundation had been undermined and shored up with solid concrete walls, although here and there—where the wall met the ceiling—a section of stone might show through. When she discovered Zach’s cell at the far end of the subbasement, she had to take a moment to catch her breath, shaken by the size of it, barely bigger than their bathroom at home, and the bleakness, with only a metal cot to break the barren walls.

He lived here for a year. In this hole. Mother did it. But it was because of Tara. Mother brought him here to protect him even though she hadn’t been able to protect any of her own children. Still, Audrey couldn’t forgive her, even in her madness, for the barren cell. She
could have
given him some semblance of a life. What was she thinking locking him away like a murderer in solitary confinement? Had her mind slipped so far over the edge that she didn’t even realize what that would be like for a small boy? And what about Coonts? Who the hell was he and why would
he
be a part of this?

She hurried out into the corridor again and backtracked to the small workroom next to the room in which Richard and her mother lay, intending to find something,
anything
, she could use to cut or batter their way out of the cellar. But just then, Richard stuck his head out into the hall. He was pale as death, kneeling, clutching the door frame for support, but he was conscious. Still alive. And she had left him in her panic to get to Zach. She raced to him, dropping beside him, easing him back against the wall.

“I blacked out,” he whispered.

She nodded. “Try not to talk. I’m going to get us out of here.”

He glanced past her toward the metal door.

“Locked,” said Audrey. “I have to find some way to bust out.”

Richard shook his head, glancing back into the room toward Martha’s body. “She must have a key.”

“Maybe Merle has it,” said Audrey. “And he’s outside.”

Richard shook his head again, but it was clear the effort cost him dearly. “She wouldn’t stay in a hole in the ground without being able to get out if something happened to Merle.” His voice was raspy and harsh but his reasoning was sound. Would her mother be crazy enough to chance being buried alive? Maybe. In her overpowering terror of Tara,
anything
might have been preferable to discovery. Still, it was the best chance they had.

Audrey tore his shirt aside and inspected the wound, grimacing at the blood, but the hole was small and oozing, not pumping. She thought that was a good sign. She reached behind him, feeling for an exit. The skin was unbroken.

“Need to stop the bleeding,” said Richard, glancing groggily at the wound.

Audrey ripped his shirt completely off, and biting her lip, stuffed part of it into the hole with her finger. Richard moaned and blacked out again. But he came around quickly, taking deep breaths through his teeth.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

“Had to stop it.”

“For everything.”

“It wasn’t your fault, Audrey. None of this was your fault.” He glanced back at her mother, but Audrey shook her head. “Have to check, Audrey. She might be just out of it.”

Audrey climbed to her feet and strode to her mother’s side. The old woman’s face looked peaceful, reminding Audrey of the photograph. She wondered how many times in her mother’s life she had looked like that. But she knew before she knelt to touch Martha’s throat, that she would find no pulse. Tara’s aim had been better the first time and Audrey wondered if Zach had had anything to do with her missing Richard’s heart.

“She’s dead,” she said.

“Check for a key.”