Night Terror (38 page)

65

ZACH SHUDDERED
as more pain shook him. He had never experienced anything like it in his short life. But as it worsened, he noticed that he seemed to be able to
slide
slightly to one side inside his own brain, and the further he slid, the less the pain touched him.

In the short time that Tara had been fiddling with her equipment, his mind had traveled every hallway in this new underground complex, examined every room. He had raced through the building like a ghost and he knew that if he could get out of the wheelchair and get a running start, he could get away from Tara. But now his mother and the sheriff and the man called Cooder were in the basement, too, and Zach knew that Tara was going to kill all of them. That was a lock that he could not pick. There had to be another way. He slipped further aside from the pain and looked out
through
the mask again.

Cooder was barely able to stand in the middle of the floor. The sheriff was holding him up. His mother had jerked away from them and was reaching blindly toward Tara. But Zach knew that she would never get there.

I have to do something! But what?

The brightly colored wires attracted his attention again, and he began to explore them, following them to the inside of the machine. It wasn’t anything like a lock or a pistol, but he sensed its workings nonetheless and he began to understand
the underlying
sense
of it immediately. In fact, he understood the mechanics of it far better than his aunt.

As Tara regarded Audrey, Zach reached out with everything he had, willing a tweak here, an adjustment there. This was more than moving tumblers in a lock, a lot more. Even so, it required a light breath rather than a push. And he felt stronger by the minute. He seemed to be drawing power from somewhere. He felt almost as though someone was lifting him up, and he realized that he was no longer just drawing comfort from being in contact with his mother, he was taking strength from her too.

You can do it, sweetheart.

When Zach reached a nexus point in the machine, he flipped a series of digital switches and Tara jerked.

“What are you doing?” she screamed, turning on Zach. “Stop that!”

As she turned toward him, swinging the pistol in his direction, Zach shorted another circuit and Tara jerked again. As she did so, the lights stopped flashing and the pain died along with them.

Zach?

I’m all right, Mom.

It sounded almost like a different boy. The fear was still there, but it was held at bay and there was a growing confidence behind it.

But Tara didn’t have the look of someone who knew she was beaten. She just looked confused. “He’s inside my machine,” she gasped.

Audrey took another step toward Tara, her fists clinched.

“Adler!” shouted Tara.

The dog started to lunge but stopped, balancing on its toes, its eyes suddenly blank. Tara glanced immediately at Cooder.

“You!” she shouted.

“Good dog,” said Cooder as Adler trotted over to sit quietly at his feet. He reached out a shaky hand and patted the Doberman on the head. The dog jerked as though it had been shocked, but then settled back.

Virgil was eyeing the shotgun on the floor.

“Now what?” said Audrey, glancing from Tara to Zach.

“Take one more step and find out.”

“For your own good,” said Audrey. “Please don’t do that!”

“For
my
own good?” said Tara, glancing at Zach and sliding her hand down the panel onto another row of dials. “You may be inside my machine, nephew. But this is a
lot
of machine for a little boy.” She looked at Audrey again. “I have different amperages here, Audrey. A million different combinations of pain. He can’t possibly override them all. Do you think Zach will be so successful with the
real
pain? It killed your brother and sister, but that took three days because I never turned it up over thirty percent. If I spin this dial, Zach will get hit with pain you can’t even imagine. And you’ll get it too, Audrey. Want to test it?”

Audrey shook her head.

“Zach,” said Tara loudly. “Nod if you hear me.”

Zach nodded.

“Smart boy,” said Tara. “Too smart to play games. Do you understand what’s happening here? Do you understand the word
standoff?”

Zach nodded slowly.

“Let me show you the cards
I’m
holding,” said Tara, spinning a dial on the machine.

Zach felt just a touch of pain from a different direction than before, radiating from another part of the machine, a part he had not explored. It struck like lightning, somewhere near his middle. As though someone had poked him just above his belly with the pointed end of a pencil. Hard.

“No,” said Audrey, holding her own stomach. “Please don’t.”

Zach knew he had to find a way out, now! But it wasn’t the machine he needed to control. It was a person who wanted to kill him and his mother and everyone else. But why? In frustration he reached out for Tara to try to find the answer, sliding into her mind just as he had slid into the lock, into the pistol, into the machine.

“No!” Tara shrieked. “Get out of my head!” She clawed at her temples with both hands, as Zach slipped deeper into her brain.

There were terrible pictures inside Tara’s mind, but not the feeling of horror that Zach expected to go with them.
Instead the images seemed to be regarded as necessary, even useful. And there were even worse things than the images, memories that his aunt had buried deep in her past. He trundled through her brain like a small child discovering the weird treasures inside a dusty but very dangerous attic.

“Get out of there!” shrieked Tara, stumbling back toward the wall.

You wanted to see what I could do.

“You have no right to be inside my mind!”

Audrey reached out as well.

You wanted to get inside my son’s head. Now he’s inside yours. Are you happy?

But Zach had not yet learned how to control Tara’s body. She managed to twist one of the dials as far as it would go, and Zach felt himself being forced out of her head by his own pain. And through Zach, the agony attacked Audrey and Cooder. Roaring fire raged through them all, searing their flesh, melting their nerves like plastic in an oven. Even their blood pulsed with pain. It wasn’t as though the agony radiated from an arm, a leg, or a wounded torso. There
was
no body to attach it to. It started in the center of their minds and flowed out like lava. And as it raced through them, an object began to form in what had become their collective consciousness. They all saw it clearly, at the same time. White. Rectangular. Familiar.

Another door.

What’s in there? Is there more pain? Or less? There can’t be anymore. But what if there is? We can’t stand anymore.

Three nonexistent hands reached out for the imaginary knob and jerked the door open. And there was nothing inside.

What is this place?

And then, ever so slowly, Audrey and Cooder began to remember.

This is where we hid our real selves
, said Cooder, echoing Audrey’s thoughts.

Yes
, she whispered, feeling the power swelling within. This was where she had hidden away her power so that Tara could never find it and use it against her. This was where she and Cooder had locked away their talents and had forced themselves to forget that this door had
ever existed for them. Cooder must have done the same thing in order to save his own life, only some of his talents had seeped through his door. That was why he could talk to animals. And enough had eventually slipped through Audrey’s to allow her to find Zach again. Thank God.

Tara had no idea
, thought Audrey.
Zach is powerful because of me, not in spite of me. I was the strong sister. But I locked the door, even from her. Now it’s open again all the way. I am more telepathic than Paula was. More telepathic than Tara could ever have imagined. And the machine did work. It’s done something to all of us.

Audrey sensed Cooder’s mind, bumbling along to the same answer.

It made us all stronger.

She knew he was right. Tara
had
accomplished exactly what she had claimed to be trying to do. Only it was going to cost her dearly.

Audrey reached out with a tendril of herself and entered Tara’s mind.

“No!” shrieked Tara again, pounding at her forehead as Audrey spoke telepathically to her.

I used to go inside Paula’s mind. But she warned me never to do it to you, Tara.

“Get out!” Tara screamed, falling back against the machine.

Audrey opened her eyes and stared at Tara, and Tara slammed away from the machine, back against the wall. She hung there like a doll on a rack, her hands still covering her face.

You have a lot of doors in here, Tara.

“Get out!”

You should have left my son alone.

Tara took a step forward but crashed back against the wall again.

She’ll kill us if we let her go, Mom.

I know that, Zach.

What should we do?

Audrey stared at Tara, deciding. Every last vestige of pity, of remorse, of feeling for the woman who had
saved
her was gone.

Close the open doors and open the closed ones. You know how to do it. It’s just like a lock.

“No! Please!” screamed Tara. “You don’t know what you’re doing.”

Neither did you.

To Audrey it was as though a rushing torrent flowed through her, through Cooder, through Zach, and into Tara. But she knew that Zach was controlling it somehow. Just as he’d manipulated the lock in the basement, just as he’d figured out the workings of the machine, he’d intuited how to open the doors in Tara’s mind.

For a split second, as Audrey stared into Tara’s terrified eyes, she saw the woman she thought she had known, and a tiny mote of pity touched Audrey. She could see down the long corridor in Tara’s mind that echoed her own, with the familiar doors on either side. What horrors were concealed by Tara’s rigid control over her mind? What could this monstrous woman possibly fear?

At first the images made no sense to Audrey: Tara as a tiny child, weeping with anger and frustration. A figure in a lab coat, sneering. A patient on a gurney, flatlining. And through it all, the most intense feelings of self-pity and disgust, shame and fear.

Failure. Tara was afraid of failure.

Then, one by one, the echoes began. The sound of the doors slamming shut seemed so real. When the last one closed, Tara’s head slumped and she slid down the wall to the floor, where she crumpled, feet splayed.

Babbling.

66

PERKINS MENTAL HEALTH INSTITUTE
hadn’t seen so many cars since its grand opening. The front of the building exuded a holiday spirit as red and blue lights raced across its bleak facade. The four survivors sat in Virgil’s cruiser as Virgil finished talking to the state trooper in charge.

“I’ll make a full report tomorrow, I promise,” said Virgil, watching as Tara was rolled to a waiting ambulance on a gurney.

“There’s more bodies down there, you know,” said the cop. “One of the rooms was kind of a crude morgue, and I mean
crude.
That’s where the smell was coming from.” He glanced into the backseat at Audrey and Zach, then whispered, “That and the kid on the examining table.”

Virgil sighed. “Call my office. They may be able to help you identify at least one of the bodies.”

The trooper nodded and waved as they pulled away.

Virgil drove in silence for a while, watching in the rearview as Audrey smothered Zach in hugs. Virgil felt good. The best he’d felt in months. He thought for the first time that maybe, just maybe, life might be worth living after Doris was gone. But he’d make that decision when the time came.

He glanced over his shoulder at Audrey. “You want to tell me exactly what happened to me in there?”

Audrey shrugged. “I’m not sure, but I think Tara finally
got her wish. She amplified Cooder’s and Zach’s and my abilities so much that a part of the pain we were experiencing was transmitted to you.”

“A part?” said Virgil, shuddering. He’d felt like a freight train had hit him. The next thing he knew, he was coming to on the floor and Tara was up against the wall, gibbering madly even though no one was touching her.

Audrey nodded. “Cooder and I had some experience controlling the pain and Zach seems to do it naturally. You had no defense.”

“And what happened to Tara?”

Audrey glanced at Cooder in the front passenger seat. He seemed distant again, lost somewhere inside. But his eyes were at peace now. “Tara got everything turned back on her. Everything the three of us had. You can’t imagine.”

“I don’t think I want to,” said Virgil. “You want to go right to the hospital?”

“Oh, my God!” said Audrey. “I didn’t even think.”

“Dad’s asleep,” said Zach.

They all stared at him and he shrugged. “He’s all right. He’s just sleeping.”

Audrey glanced at Virgil and laughed. “You don’t believe him?”

“I believe him. I believe him.”

“Doris is real sick though,” said Zach, and an icy knife sliced through Virgil’s heart.

“What?”

“She says you shouldn’t worry. She says you’ll be together soon enough.”

Virgil flipped on the siren and flashers, flooring the accelerator pedal and throwing them all back in their seats.

“I don’t think you’re going to make it,” said Zach, leaning into Audrey.

“Hush, honey!” said Audrey, hugging him tighter. But glancing in the rearview, Virgil saw the boy staring into his mother’s eyes and shaking his head.

By the time they hit the outskirts of Arcos, Virgil had bottomed out the cruiser three times, sending sparks flying and bouncing Cooder’s head off the roof. Audrey and Zach were pressed into the corner in the backseat as they rounded the last turn on two wheels. Virgil whipped into
his driveway and exited the car at a run. Audrey, Cooder, and Zach followed him silently into the house.

Marg met Virgil at the top of the stairs, shaking her head.

“No!” he screamed, shoving past her. “Doris! Doris!”

He stumbled into the bedroom and dropped onto his knees on the floor, stroking her cheek and holding her hand. She couldn’t be gone. She was still so warm. But his fingers couldn’t find a pulse. “Doris. Oh, Jesus. I should have been here. I should have stayed.”

Marg leaned in the door. “She was peaceful, Virgil. She went easy. There wasn’t any pain. I promise.”

He stared at Marg, trying to make sense of her words. Reality dropped on his shoulders like a stone.

Doris’s gone. I’m alone.

He leaned over and kissed her gently, and it dawned on him that this was the last time he would ever kiss her. He stroked her hair, so thin.

“I love you, sweetheart,” he choked. “I’ll always love you.”

The room seemed shiny, even the bedspread glistening through his tears, and he sniffled loudly. Doris had always been his first thought upon awakening and his last before going to sleep. Now she was gone and he would never hear her laughter again, never feel her warm breath against the nape of his neck in the middle of the night, never see her eyes light up in mirth or anger.

“I can’t live without her,” he whispered, thinking instantly of his pistol.

Somewhere in the distance, he thought he heard a commotion, but his focus was on the glow still lighting Doris’s face. There seemed to be a real gleam to it that was fading. He wanted to catch it as it went.

“No, Zach!”

The sound of small feet pattering up the stairs caught Virgil’s attention and he waved at Marg to stop the boy, but Zach slid under her fat arms and slipped around to Virgil’s side of the bed. Virgil wondered if it was a good thing to be having the boy seeing Doris like that. Dead. There, he’d thought it. But then it occurred to him that Zach Bock had seen far worse tonight.

Virgil wiped his face on the back of his sleeve and sniffled loudly. He felt a small hand on his shoulder and he almost laughed.

He’s consoling me. After all he’s been through, this kid wants to make me feel better.

“She says you shouldn’t be sad,” said Zach.

“Is that right?” said Virgil, stroking Doris’s hair back into place.

“Did you have a cat?”

“What?”

“She said not to be sad. Kitty’s with her.”

Virgil’s jaw dropped and he turned to face Zach. He took the boy by the shoulders, trying to look inside the kid’s head through his eyeballs.

“Tell me what she said about Kitty.”

Zach frowned. “She says Kitty thinks it’s funny you can’t see her. You never could find her. Was she a bad cat?”

Virgil smiled. “Kitty was my kid sister. She died when she was seven.”

“That’s a funny name.”

“I gave it to her.”

Audrey peeked in past Marg, who stared at Zach in disbelief.

Virgil pulled Zach up close, staring at him wonderingly “Babs said that people could only talk to souls who hadn’t crossed over to heaven yet. She said nobody could really talk to heaven.”

Audrey smiled. “Babs didn’t know my son.”

“She misses you, but she says to wait,” said Zach.

Virgil closed his eyes and leaned until his forehead touched Zach’s. The boy stood motionless until Virgil pulled away.

“Tell her I will, then,” he said.

Zach shrugged. “She heard you,” he said.

The crowd had left and the cemetery was empty except for Virgil, Cooder, Audrey, and Zach. The grave diggers stood patiently beside the tent, tactfully staring off into the distant trees and acting as though they were ignoring the conversations around them altogether. A light rain had fallen earlier in the
day and now the sun glimmered in the droplets on the grass. Zach fidgeted in his new suit and tight-fitting shoes. Audrey stroked his hair and beamed at him as though he were a newborn.

Cooder looked resplendent in a new suit of his own that Virgil had insisted on purchasing for him. He had also insisted that Cooder avail himself of his shower and then he drove him to the local barbershop for a shave and a haircut. Ralph, the barber, had given Virgil a look, but kept his mouth shut through the entire procedure—which was completely out of character for Ralph.

“I want to thank you all for coming,” said Virgil as they walked toward their cars.

“We wanted to,” said Audrey.

Cooder and Zach nodded.

“Richard would have been here if he could,” said Audrey.

Virgil nodded. “Doc Burton says he’ll be fine in a few weeks.”

“We all will,” said Audrey, hugging Zach.

“I don’t know what I would have done without you the last few days,” said Virgil.

Audrey had dragged Zach along and Marg had practically taken over for Virgil. Arranging the funeral, orchestrating the people who would bring food afterward, setting up times for people to sit with Doris, making sure that Virgil was eating and sleeping. Marg and Audrey were becoming fast friends and Zach liked Marg too. He called her Mama because she told him her real name was Mama Cass. Zach had no idea what she was talking about, but he thought she was funny.

Audrey gave Virgil a funny look. “Richard and I have been talking. I’m going back to school.”

Virgil smiled. “Let me guess… to be a shrink?”

She laughed. “No. I’m going to study horticulture.”

“That’s perfect for you,” he said, patting Zach on the head. “This boy needs some nurturing.”

She glanced at Zach and nodded.

“Thank you again, for everything. And I don’t want any of you to be strangers from now on,” said Virgil, shaking hands all around. “You need a lift, Cooder?”

“Walkin’.”

Virgil chuckled. “Of course.”

“What about the other boy?” said Audrey.

“The one on the table we don’t know yet, but we think we’ve identified one of the older… you know,” said Virgil.

“Bodies,” said Zach.

Virgil nodded. “It was Timmy Merrill. Apparently he had some talent that interested Tara. It was my friend Mac that took him. God knows how many others he kidnapped for her.” Who better to find new victims for Tara’s research than a private investigator? Mac had contacts everywhere. But that was for the troopers to handle. Virgil had given them all the information he had and backed off. He just didn’t have the heart for that one.

“It wasn’t his fault,” said Audrey, touching Virgil’s arm.

“I keep telling myself that. I want to forget what he did.”

Audrey sighed, shaking her head. “Don’t,” she said. “Remember the good things about your friend, instead. Babs told me to always remember the good times.”

Virgil smiled. “She was a nice lady. I’m sorry I didn’t get to know her better.”

“She was another one that Tara missed.”

Virgil frowned. “She might have missed Babs’s talents. But Babs had the misfortune of working closely enough with her to get dragged into Tara’s web. The best I can figure is that sometime while she was working at Perkins, Babs stumbled across Tara’s lab, and Tara hit her up with her drugs and hypnosis, never knowing that she was throwing away one of her best subjects until it was too late. If that hadn’t happened and Babs hadn’t dragged me into this, maybe the whole thing would never have unraveled. Or worse. Maybe it would have come undone just enough to get your family killed.”

“Babs thought everything happened for a reason,” said Audrey, matching Virgil’s frown. “Now she’s dead.”

“It’s over, Audrey. Babs is at peace. I know it. Go home, love your family, and get better. If you need anything, ever, you just call me. And you stop by and say hi, you hear?”

“Sure,” said Audrey. But she watched his face, reading something there. “What?” she said.

Virgil shook his head. “I was just wondering… Why’d she do it? It doesn’t make sense to me. Why did she want to
enhance people’s abilities so much she was willing to kill them to do it?”

Audrey frowned. “I don’t believe that’s what she wanted.”

“But she said…”

“I know what she said. But what she wanted was what she got. Tara always got what she wanted.”

“You mean a pile of corpses?” said Virgil, glancing quickly at Zach who was ignoring the conversation, shadowboxing with Cooder.

Audrey nodded. “A pile of dead adepts. Tara couldn’t stand the fact that they had powers that she didn’t.”

Virgil shook his head, stopping to pat Zach on the shoulder by way of saying good-bye.

Virgil slipped the cruiser into gear and let the car drive itself. But he knew where it was heading and he wasn’t at all surprised to see a truck sitting where he usually parked the cruiser. He put on his hat, closed the car door quietly and climbed the hill, trying not to disturb Tom Merrill. But Tom knew he was coming. Virgil could see it in the way his shoulders straightened. Tom didn’t turn to speak though, and Virgil didn’t intrude on his privacy. He knew what it was like to be caught crying.

Tom spoke without turning, choking out some of his words. “I know you come up here a lot yourself, Virg. I’ve seen you. I never stopped while you were here. It didn’t seem right. I mean, I didn’t want you to feel like I knew. Like I blamed you or anything.”

“I know, Tom.”

“The troopers just called me today and told me they found Timmy in the basement up there in Perkins.”

“Yes. I’m sorry.”

“So it was the Beals woman that took him. The woman in the papers.”

“Yes.”

“And she tortured him.”

“We don’t know that, Tom.”

“No,” he said. “No. That’s right. It might not have happened like that. Right?”

“Right.”

Tom took a long deep breath. “I’m going to have him buried right here. Beside his mother. Think he’d like that?”

“I think he’d like that a lot.”

Virgil stared at the dark splotches of shadows in the trees, where specters had always waited for him. Today the shadows were empty. A whippoorwill called in the distance and a light breeze stirred the grass. The woods seemed alive. Timmy wasn’t waiting anymore. He wasn’t haunting this place, hoping for someone to find him so he could rest.