Night Terrors (23 page)

Woods lay in the dirt and grass near the house. Blood leaked out of the wound in his forehead, soaking into the ground.

He didn’t move as the sounds of struggle from inside the house invaded the night air. The sun was almost below the horizon now, blazing out with pinks and blues. And on the other horizon a full moon was already in the night sky, shining down on the horrors about to happen with a bright, blank face.

Jeremy dragged Tara down the hall to what used to be the large master bedroom. The bedroom was empty except for one wooden table in the middle of the room. Groups of different colored candles were collected in the corners in glass jars waiting to be lit. Strange symbols were painted on the walls around the room and a pentagram was painted in the middle of the table in dark red paint.

Or was it blood?

As Tara was dragged inside the room she saw a dark shape right next to the doorway and it took her mind a moment to understand what she was seeing. It looked like a man, but it took her foggy mind a few seconds to understand that the man was hung upside down, his feet tied together and attached to the metal ring in the ceiling.

She recognized the layers of the man’s clothing that hung down around him; she recognized the scraggly hair and beard. It was the Reverend, only he no longer had his wooden cross – that was tucked away in Woods’ car. The Reverend’s throat had been slashed and there was a pool of dark blood at the bottom of his head soaking into the floorboards.

“Our witness to the ritual,” Jeremy said with glee as he slammed Tara down onto the table like she was a straw doll.

She landed on the table top with a thump, and again her breath was driven from her body for a moment. She tried to inhale, but it didn’t seem like her lungs wanted to work. She heard her own breath wheezing as her lungs burned.

Before she even realized what Jeremy was doing, he had her right wrist tied to the table with a rope. She tried to fight back as he tied her other wrist, but he crushed a hammer fist down onto her forehead and she nearly blacked out.

Maybe it would be better to black out.

Tara pulled against the ropes, but they were tied to the legs of the table, her arms stretched out painfully. She lifted her head up a little, and through her blurry vision she saw Jeremy move down to the end of the table and start to tie her right ankle down to the table.

He watched her, smiling.

How had she not known it was him the whole time? How had he blocked her? Was he
that
powerful?

He grabbed her ankle and pulled her leg down so hard she thought he might have popped her hip out of its socket. He tied the rope around her ankle, the rope biting into her skin.

“I need to get the rest of the ingredients for the ritual out of my truck,” he told her. “Powerful ingredients for the ritual. Virgin blood mixed with the ashes of the beloved dead. My ceremonial mask. Oh wait until you see it, Tara. It’s taken me years to perfect.”

But then he stopped and smiled like a thought had just occurred to him.

“Wait a minute,” he said. “You’ve already seen my mask, haven’t you? In your dream.”

He tied her other ankle to the table, her body stretched out spread-eagle, her tendons and muscles burning with pain.

“You’ve only seen what I’ve wanted you to see.”

He stood beside the table and stared down at her in the semi-darkness, nearly a shadow himself hovering next to her.

“The moon is full and now we can begin the ritual. We’ll have all night.” He looked at the wall on the other side of the doorway like he was considering something. “Maybe we could use another witness.”

Woods got to his feet. His legs were so shaky and his mind was swimming on the edge of consciousness. His eyes burned and it was painful to even open them all the way.

What happened?

But then the memories came back to him in a flash as painful as his stinging eyes.

Tara had sprayed him with pepper spray – maybe the same pepper spray he had given her. And then she’d hit him with something. He saw the shovel on the ground in his blurry vision. She’d hit him with a shovel.

He brought a tentative hand up to his forehead and felt the warm blood. Even though it hurt, he touched the wound on the side of his forehead that ran into his hair. The skin was split and bleeding. It probably needed stitches, but it wasn’t life-threatening. He moved his hand down and felt the blood soaked on the side of his neck and the shoulder of his suit jacket.

Why had she attacked him? He tried to remember what she’d said. “You should know, you son of a bitch.” And then she’d sprayed him with the pepper spray and he went blind. And then he heard a whoosh of air, felt an explosion of pain, and then he was out.

For some reason she thought
he
was the killer. She’d found something out. Maybe her friend had said something to her on the phone. She had seemed different after that phone call.

Jeremy. He had set this up. But how? Had Jeremy somehow made Tara believe that
he
had something to do with all of this? Was that why she had attacked him?

Woods didn’t have time to worry about any of that. Right now he needed to get to Tara and Steve before it was too late – the killer had to be in the house with them at this moment.

But Steve was probably long dead. He’d only been the bait to get them here. Jeremy must have been the Reverend all along, pretending to be a homeless person so he could get close to Tara. Woods could see it all now.

He took a step towards the house and nearly dropped back down to his knees. He was so weak and shaky. Was it from blood loss? Or maybe a slight brain injury.

But he had to fight it.

His gun? He patted his suit coat, but it wasn’t in the shoulder holster. He had been holding it, he remembered. He must’ve dropped it. He glanced around at the ground with his watering eyes, but he didn’t see it anywhere.

Tara must’ve grabbed it.

He heard the sounds of struggle from inside the house. A crashing blow like someone had been body-slammed down onto a floor or a table.

Maybe Tara was still alive. Maybe he had a chance.

He rubbed his eyes again and nearly groaned with pain. He knew the stinging from the pepper spray would subside a little in a few minutes, but it would take hours for his eyes to completely recover. But he didn’t have hours. He might not even have minutes.

Woods wiped his eyes one more time as he turned the corner of the house to the front porch. He crept up the few wooden steps and made his way to the front door that looked like a yawning black mouth inviting him inside the belly of a giant monster.

He entered and stood just inside the wrecked living room for a moment, letting his watering eyes adjust as best as they could to the darker interior. But at least the light of the full moon shined in through the windows which had no curtains or drapes blocking them, and that helped him see a little better.

A thump crashed from somewhere in the house. And then Woods thought he heard someone talking. It was a man’s voice. The killer. Jeremy.

Woods hurried through the living room, passing the stacks of old junk and trash against the wall. He thought of looking for a weapon, but he wasn’t sure if he had time.

He came to the first doorway to a nearly empty room. But it was a room he recognized – he saw the overturned camera and tripod, and he saw the wood chair that Steve had been tied to in the photo – it was tipped over on its side near a corner.

Steve wasn’t in the room. He was probably already dead.

Something on the floor caught his attention, a dark object near the baseboard on the wall. He had almost missed it.

It was his gun.

He bent down and scooped it up while another wave of dizziness threatened to topple him. Tara had taken his gun, and now it was here on the floor. She must have been attacked, the gun knocked away from her. There was a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach now. Was he too late?

He stood up and wiped at his eyes again. The pain was subsiding just a little, but his eyes wouldn’t stop watering and it was hard to see through his blurry vision.

“Agent Woods?”

Woods heard the sound of Steve’s voice.

“Steve?” he said. “You’re okay?”

“Yeah, Tara got in here and untied me, but that crazy bastard’s got her now.”

Thank God Steve was okay, Woods thought. He held his gun in one hand, and wiped at his eyes with the other one, trying to see Steve in the darkness.

“Where are they?” Woods asked.

“They’re in the last room at the end of the hall.” Steve’s voice choked up a little. “He came out of nowhere and grabbed Tara. I didn’t know what to do. I should of …”

It sounded like Steve was going to cry.

“It’s okay,” Woods said. “I’ll get him.”

“Are you going to call for backup?” Steve asked with hope in his voice.

“They’re on their way,” Woods lied. “I want you to go back outside and wait for me there.”

Tara writhed on the wood table in the master bedroom. She pulled as hard as she could on the ropes but they were tied too tight and the rope was too strong; the more she struggled, the more the ropes bit into the flesh of her wrists and ankles. She glanced over at the dark figure hanging upside down against the wall beside the doorway – the man was just a black mass in the darkness now, and thankfully she couldn’t make out much detail anymore.

She looked around the room at some of the strange symbols painted on the walls. Were they demonic symbols or were they symbols her crazy half-brother had made up himself? Who knew?

He said he needed to get the rest of the ingredients for the ritual out of his truck. She hadn’t seen his truck – it must be parked behind the house or out in the brush somewhere. His pickup truck had been parked in front of his apartment when they were there earlier, but he must’ve circled back and got it while they were on the wild goose chase looking for the Reverend who was most likely already dead by then.

The ingredients for his ritual: virgin blood mixed with the ashes of a beloved dead person. She didn’t know where he’d gotten the ashes from, but she was sure the blood had been emptied from Jen’s body. And the other things he’d taken: Greg’s skin, and other things from past murders, the body parts sewn into his ceremonial mask.

But first Jeremy was going to get Woods’ body and string him up on the other side of the door and use him as another “witness.”

Oh God, she’d been wrong about Woods. She’d hit him with the shovel so hard he was probably dead, or at least still unconscious and helpless. Jeremy would go back to the first bedroom and get the gun and then he would go outside and put a bullet in Woods’ brain as he lay there unconscious. Or he might not even use the gun, not wanting to alert any neighbors with the sound; he might just beat Woods’ head to a bloody pulp with the shovel, finish the job she had started. Or use the shovel’s blade to chop Woods’ head off.

She squeezed her eyes shut. She didn’t want to think about that, but she couldn’t help it. She had caused all of this. She had played right into Jeremy’s trap the whole time.

But Lorie had told her that Agent David Woods was dead. He’d been murdered.

Lorie wouldn’t lie or make something up. It didn’t make sense.

So who
was
Woods?

It didn’t matter now. Once Jeremy finished Woods off, he would be back in here to begin this insane ritual of his. What was he going to do to her? There was nothing off-limits for him. She’d seen the terrible things in her dreams that he’d done: the drained blood, the skin peeled away from flesh, the body parts mutilated and hacked off.

Her breathing was getting quicker and quicker, a panic attack coming on. She wished she could hyperventilate and pass out. She didn’t want to die; she didn’t want to suffer hours or even days of torture in this abandoned house.

She heard a sound from down the hallway. It sounded like two men talking in hushed tones, like they didn’t want to be overheard. One of the men was Jeremy, she was sure of that. The other one had to be Woods. They didn’t sound like they were arguing or fighting.

Woods was awake and inside the house!

But why wasn’t Woods attacking Jeremy? Why wasn’t he killing Jeremy and trying to get to her? Was he a part of this somehow? The thought turned her stomach even more.

No, her mind screamed as the obvious answer came to her from the fog of her drowsy mind.

Woods doesn’t know that Steve is the killer!

She lifted her head up and screamed as loudly as she could, but her panic attack had driven the breath from her body and all that came out was a wheeze.

Come on,
she told herself.
Fight it! This is your last chance, your last hope.

She swallowed a lungful of air, and then she screamed as loudly as she ever had in her life.

“Woods!! Steve is the killer!! STEVE IS JEREMY!!”

As soon as Tara screamed from the other bedroom, Jeremy attacked.

Woods thought he may have heard the swing of the punch whistling through the air a split second before he was hit. And then he felt the blast of pain on the side of his face, the same side of his face that Tara had hit him with the shovel. He was rocked back, but he didn’t fall to the floor, and he didn’t drop his gun.

Why was Steve attacking him?

Woods heard Tara screaming from somewhere deeper in the house.

“Steve is the killer! Steve is Jeremey!!”

He tried to make sense of these thoughts through his pain-filled mind. But Steve had been tied to a chair. He’d seen it in the photograph. Steve had been taken from his apartment. He’d seen the dishes on the counter, the scrambled eggs on the floor.

But he didn’t have time to figure this out. Right now Steve was trying to kill him. He had to believe Tara’s words.

Tara kept on screaming, repeating the same words, and at least that meant she was still alive.

That meant he still had a chance to save her and to kill Jeremy.