Night Terrors (26 page)

They parked in front of the house and the headlights shined right on the front porch. The front door was ajar. They sat in the car for a moment, letting the engine run, looking for any movement from inside the house.

On the way to the house Perry told Jackson that he hadn’t called this one in – they would be here on their own with no search warrant and no backup. He gave Jackson a brief report of what his niece had told him about Tara’s next door neighbor being the killer and what he’d tried to do to Tara. If everything Tara said was true, then he would call it in; but he wasn’t going to waste manpower, or worse, be embarrassed, if Tara was bullshitting about all of this.

Jackson was cool with all of that.

Perry knew he would be.

They got out of the car at the same time, both with flashlights in their hands. Jackson had turned the car off, but he left the headlights on.

They walked up to the front door and Jackson pulled his gun out and aimed it at the front door along with his flashlight. Perry kept his gun holstered as he banged on the front door with the butt of his flashlight and the door creaked open a little more from his pounding.

“Police!” he said in a loud voice and waited for a response or any kind of sound from inside the house.

Nothing.

Perry had to be careful here. Lorie told him that the place was abandoned, but if Tara wasn’t telling the truth, then Perry and Jackson could get in a lot of trouble entering someone’s home without a warrant. Of course, if something like that were to happen, then there were always ways around it. But Perry liked things simple and he wanted to be careful.

As he beat on the front door again, it opened up all the way.

Perry took a few steps inside the house, shining his flashlight along the stacks of junk piled up against the far wall – the house looked vacant.

“Hello?” Perry called out. Jackson was right behind him, covering him. “We’ve received a report of gunshots and we want to know if anyone’s hurt. The front door was wide open and we’re coming in.”

There were still no sounds in the dark house. The light from the headlights of their car provided enough light in the living room, but Perry knew that the farther they ventured into the house, the darker it would become.

Perry was feeling reasonably sure that no one was here, and he began to believe Lorie’s story more and more by the minute. He marched through the living room into a dining room that had more garbage and trash littered across the floor. He went down a wide hallway, Jackson two steps behind him.

They came to the first room on the left and Perry entered with Jackson right behind him. Even though the living room, dining room, and kitchen were cluttered with unwanted junk and garbage, this room was clean, nearly empty except for a knocked-over camera and tripod and an overturned wooden chair.

Perry glanced at Jackson. This room gave him the creeps, someone had set up a camera to take a picture of someone in a wooden chair at the other end of the room – Perry could only think of one scenario for that kind of photograph.

He inspected the overturned chair more closely, but he didn’t touch anything. He pulled out a pair of latex gloves and pulled them onto his hands, snapping them in place.

Near the overturned chair he saw something on the wood floor; a few pieces of duct tape that looked like they had been pasted over someone’s mouth. He shined his flashlight beam down at the tape, and he could even see the slight impression of someone’s mouth in the middle of the tape.

“Duct tape over here,” Perry said.

Jackson nodded, but he kept glancing back at the bedroom door, his flashlight beam trained on the far side of the hallway.

Perry shined his light on the overturned chair, and then he panned his light slowly around the room again.

“No rope,” Perry said. “We’ve got duct tape like someone was tied to the chair, but no rope. I don’t see any tape or marks on the chair.”

Perry took his phone out and snapped a photo of the duct tape and the chair. And then a small object in the corner of the room caught his eye. He stepped over to the corner and stared down at the small canister of pepper spray.

“Pepper spray,” Perry muttered as he took a photograph of this item with his phone. Then he looked at Jackson. “Let’s check out the rest of the rooms.”

They checked out the next bedroom directly across the hall from the room they’d just been in. Perry walked across the room towards the shattered window. Bits of broken glass winked back at him when he shined his light on the floor. He panned the light up the wall beside the broken window.

“Bullet hole,” Perry said to Jackson who waited near the door, his gun still clenched in his gigantic hand.

They did a quick check of the hall bathroom – nothing much there.

It was beginning to sound like Tara’s story was true. And if that was the case, then the worst was still waiting for them at the end of the hall in the master bedroom.

Perry could smell the dead body before they even opened the door. He entered and saw the hanging man beside the door. He backed away so he could let Jackson inside. They stood beside each other and stared at the dead man.

The hanging man was dressed in layers of filthy clothing; he looked like he might’ve been a street person. The man had been hung by his ankles from an iron ring that was attached to a rafter in the ceiling – pieces of drywall were ripped away to expose the rafter. The man’s legs were tied together and his arms hung free, lying limply on the floor in the now-sticky dark blood pooled up underneath his head and slit throat. His mouth was wide open, and his eyes had a milky glaze over them.

Perry shined his flashlight around the room. Like the first bedroom, this one was nearly empty; except for the dead man, the only other things in the room was a wood table in the center of the room, and groups of unlit candles in the corners.

It was like the killer had purposely cleaned out these bedrooms, perhaps moving the junk and garbage either outside or to some of the other rooms. He wanted to set the first room up to take a picture of someone in a chair, and he wanted this room for his bizarre ritual.

Perry shined his light over the table slowly. Ropes were tied to each leg of the table. A pentagram was painted on the tabletop in dark red paint. Or maybe it was blood. The homeless man’s blood? Perry wondered. Jen’s blood? There were a number of squiggly-looking symbols inside the pentagram. And some of those same symbols, and others, had been painted on the walls around the bedroom in the same dark reddish-brown color.

The killer had planned on sacrificing Tara here for some reason.

Everything Lorie had told him was true, and Perry felt a pang of guilt as he stood in the room. He felt a little bad for doubting his niece’s word, but even more for doubting Tara so much. He’d always liked Tara; she’d always seemed nice and polite. But he had always doubted Tara’s psychic abilities – Perry just didn’t believe in that sort of thing, he couldn’t help it.

But it was all true. A killer had somehow lured Tara and Woods out to this abandoned house for a ritualistic killing (and Perry was sure the room with the chair and camera had something to do with that lure), and he had nearly succeeded in killing Tara – but Woods had saved his niece’s best friend.

“Let’s call it in,” Perry said to Jackson.

Soon this house would be crawling with cops, photographers, forensics, and coroners. This case would probably get filed away as the hangout of some kind of fringe satanic cult that had sacrificed a street person that no one would even care about. It would fall to the bottom of the list unless they caught this guy and proved that the same man had killed all of these people.

Perry
knew
this was the same killer who had murdered the two teenagers nearly a week ago. This was the same killer who had peeled a man’s skin off of his torso after hanging him in his own garage. Perry also believed this was the same killer who had shot Miss Helen in the forehead. He had taken blood from the first girl, skin from the second victim, and something from the third that Perry hadn’t figured out yet. He must’ve planned on using those items for this ritual, but the items weren’t here in the house.

The ritual hadn’t worked out like the killer had planned.

But this killer wasn’t going to give up – Perry was sure of that. This guy wanted Tara for some reason; he’d gone to an awful lot of trouble to get her out here and to set this whole thing up. He would do it again soon.

Perry dialed Lorie’s number. It rang a few times and then he was sent to a voicemail box that was already full.

Great.

He hung up the phone as Jackson called this in to the department. Jackson hung up his phone.

“They’re on their way.”

Perry nodded. “After we’re done here, I want that warrant for Steve’s apartment. I want to be there first thing in the morning.”

Jackson nodded. “I got Judge Whalen working on it. He’ll get it for us. Should be ready in a few hours.”

Perry nodded. He was going to take a look around the outside of the house while he still had a chance to be alone.

The next morning Tara woke up in the back of Woods’ unmarked sedan, choking back a scream. She’d been having a nightmare. No, not a nightmare, a night terror. She had walked in her sleep again. And this time Woods must have seen it. Oh God, her second night with him and she had already walked in her sleep.

She looked down at the backseat and the floorboards. The garbage bag of clothes was still behind the passenger seat and her body rested against it like it was a pillow. His tattered suitcase was down on the floorboard behind the driver’s seat.

Tara heard a thumping at the window behind her, someone pounding on the glass with a fist.

Woods must’ve woken up and noticed she was gone. He had come outside to look for her and found her in his car, curled up and hiding away from her nightmares.

It was time to turn around and face him.

Tara turned around and saw Jeremy on the other side of the window, he stared at her with his coal-black eyes and insane smile, the same smile he’d had when he was tying her down to the wooden table adorned with satanic symbols. He beat on the window again and she saw that his fists were covered in blood, and every time he beat on the window he left a smear of blood behind.

Woods jumped awake in the motel room. Tara wasn’t there. He called out for her and ran to the bathroom – she wasn’t in there.

She must be outside.

He hurried back to the door and looked for his car keys, but they were gone. He didn’t even waste time putting on a shirt or his shoes. He ran out the door and left it wide open. He ran out to his car and he saw Tara curled up in the backseat. Her body was twitching like she was in the throes of a nightmare at this very moment. He felt so bad for her; these night terrors had ruined her life.

He tried the back door. It was locked. He tried the passenger door. It was locked. All of the doors were locked.

Tara had his keys; he saw them clenched in her right fist. And there was something else clenched in her other fist, it looked like it might be a balled-up piece of paper.

“Tara! Wake up!”

He beat on the door window with the side of his fist.

“Come on, Tara, wake up! You’re having a bad dream!”

Out of the corner of his eye Woods saw that one of the doors to a downstairs motel room had creaked open, someone was curious about all the noise out here so early in the morning.

Tara jumped awake in the backseat of Woods’ sedan and she whirled around and stared at the window where she’d seen Jeremy beating on the window. But Jeremy wasn’t there. And there were no smears of blood on the glass from where he’d been pounding on the window – it had been a dream.

The pounding was coming from the other window.

She looked at the other window in front of her and saw Woods. He was shirtless and pounding on the glass. His eyes were wide with concern.

“Let me in, Tara!” he screamed at her.

Tara nodded, but she hadn’t made any kind of a move yet. She felt very tired, like she’d been running in her sleep all night.

“The doors are locked,” Woods said through the glass. “Unlock the door.”

Tara became suddenly aware of pain in her hands and fingers. She looked down at her hands and saw that they were both clenched into tight fists. She was holding something in each of her hands.

She opened her right hand slowly and saw the keys to Woods’ car. There were deep impressions in the flesh of her palms and fingers from the keys, and there were even a few drops of blood; the keys had opened up the small wound from the pencil she had snapped in half while drawing in her sleep a few days ago.

She unclenched her other fist and saw a balled-up piece of paper, and she immediately guessed what it might be – another drawing. But she knew that what was on this paper was for Woods and she couldn’t let herself see it.

“Tara, please open the door,” Woods said again.

He had stopped beating on the door now that she was awake.

He could see that she was terrified. When she’d talked to him about her night terrors, he thought he might know what to expect. But he hadn’t expected to see this kind of fear and vulnerability on her face right now. She looked so small and helpless, she looked so frightened.

And he wanted to help her.

An overweight man stood in the open doorway to his motel room, staring at Woods suspiciously.

Woods looked at the man. “Mind your own business.”

The man looked like he’d been slapped. He ducked back into his motel room and slammed the door shut.

Woods suspected that the man might be on the phone with the manager of the motel in the next few minutes. Or maybe even the cops.

He couldn’t have the cops here. He would face his punishment for impersonating an FBI agent when this was all over; he would do whatever jail time he was given with satisfaction and a smile on his face once he killed Jeremy and everyone else was out of danger.