Cold Heart (34 page)

Chandler McGrew was born and raised in Texas and lived for a number of years in Alaska. He now resides in the mountains of Maine, with his wife, Irene, daughters, Amanda and Charli, and a dog and cat, all of dubious disposition.

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Chandler McGrew's newest thriller

NIGHT TERROR

Coming soon
wherever Bantam Books are sold

S
ILENCE HUNG OVER THE
darkened house like a shroud. Outside the window, the moon peered through skeletal pines. Gray-black clouds scudded across the sky, rats leaving a sinking ship.

Audrey Bock screamed.

The agonizingly long shriek resounded in the confines of her bedroom, and then away down the hall, like the caterwaul of a hellbent train.

Her husband, Richard, bolted upright, fumbled for the lamp. Something clattered to the floor.

Audrey screamed again, a wail of abject terror. Beneath the fury of her gut-wrenching cry, like sand shifting beneath a wave on a deserted beach, other sounds struggled toward the surface.

Richard cursed.

His fingers clawed at the bedside table.

A thin breeze fluttered the curtains.

The light finally flicked on as Audrey screamed yet again.

She stared straight ahead through unfocused blue eyes. Her back pressed stiff against the headboard. Her knees tucked tightly to her chest. Her short blond hair was tousled. Her hands flapped wildly in front of her face, warding off some unseen menace.

Richard clutched her, following her gaze across the harsh shadows of the bedroom, into the hallway, barely lit by the bathroom night-light.

“Let him go!” Audrey shrieked.

“Honey, there's nobody there.” Richard shook her gently. “It's a dream, Aud. Wake up. ”

“She's got him, Richard!” Audrey cried, so loudly that Richard winced. “She's got him!”

“Honey, it's a bad dream. Wake up!”

“Leave him alone! Leave my baby alone!”

“Audrey!”

She clawed at the sheets, but Richard tugged her back as she struggled feebly in his arms.

“She's got him,” she said, in a voice suddenly far too calm.

“You're asleep. You've got to wake up.”

“She's going to kill him. She's got my baby!”

Richard couldn't understand how Audrey could have her eyes wide open and still be sound asleep. This was nothing like one of her nightmares.

“I've got to go!” She fought him. Stronger this time, but still unable to break free.

“Honey, if you don't wake up I'm going to put you in the shower.” He wasn't sure that was such a good idea, but he didn't know what else to do. Perhaps just the threat would work.

“Don't touch him!” she screamed. This time she broke free. She stood beside the bed, wobbling, gesturing into the hallway.

Richard slid across the bed and wrapped her in his arms again. She was a head shorter than he was and weighed barely ninety-five pounds. He lifted her easily and carried her into the bathroom.

The vision followed them through the house, focused directly in front of Audrey's eyes. She clawed at the empty air. Richard lowered her gently into the tub and she cringed in the far corner, quivering, as though the icy water had already been turned on.

He stared into her eyes and fear surged through him. “Audrey, please.”

He'd seen eyes like those before.

Eyes of madness.

He remembered his mother's screams. Remembered her begging him to save her from the demons that he could not see. He remembered other eyes as well. Tara's patients. And the inmates at the institution in which his mother spent her final days. Richard was more afraid of madness than of almost any other terror on earth.

Almost.

He turned on the tap, expecting another cry from Audrey as the cold water struck her.

But her silence was worse.

She quailed in the farthest corner of the tub. The water plastered her hair to her head. Her chin rested between her knees and she shivered so violently her teeth chattered.

But still she stared straight ahead at the evil visible only to her.

Richard knelt beside her, spray soaking his pajamas. He stroked soggy hair out of her face. “Aud, it's a dream. It's just a bad dream. You have to wake up.”

“It isn't a dream.” Her voice was mechanical, inflectionless.

He lightly slapped her cheek. “It is.”

She looked into his eyes and for the first time he thought that she could see him.

“She's here!”

He gripped her shoulders and shook her. “No one's here, Aud.”

“She's got him.” Her tone was hesitant now. Confused. Her emotions were mercurial, unstable.

“Wake up, honey,” Richard said. “You're almost awake. Come on. Stand up.”

“I am standing up.”

“No, you're not. Come on.”

He lifted her to her feet and she wrapped her arms around him and fell into his soaking embrace. They huddled together beneath the icy spray for several minutes. Until her breathing eased and her heart slowed.

“I want him back. I need to help him,” she whimpered.

“I want him back too, Aud.” He held her at arm's length and looked into her eyes. “Are you with me now?”

She gave him a curious look.

“Are you awake?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Good. Let's get you dried off.”

She stood compliantly as he removed her dripping nightgown and toweled her dry. Then he kicked off his own sodden pajamas and dried himself.

“Let's go back to bed,” he said, exhausted.

But she stood as still as a zombie and he realized that wherever she was, she wasn't completely back yet. He lifted her like a small child, speaking calmly to her all the time, and carried her back to bed.

Audrey awakened to the smell of frying bacon.

She stretched languorously, shocked by the feel of linen against her bare skin. She lifted the sheets and stared at her nude body. She had gone to bed in a nightie. No question about that. And that was the last thing she remembered.

She grabbed her robe out of the closet and followed the smell of breakfast into the kitchen. Richard was a great cook when he wanted to be. Better than she was.

Richard glanced up from the electric griddle as she entered.

“How do you feel?” he asked.

“Sleepy. What time is it?”

He glanced at his watch. “Nine-thirty.”

“Why'd you let me sleep so late?”

“It's Saturday. Besides, after last night I thought you needed your rest.”

She took the coffee that he offered and dropped into a chair. “I slept like a log. But I woke up with nothing on.”

“You don't remember anything?”

“Remember what? Did we have a wild night?”

“You had the worst nightmare you've ever had.”

“Really?”

He set his coffee cup beside the griddle. “I had to put you in the shower to wake you up. That's why you were sleeping nude.”

“You're kidding.”

“I'm not kidding. It was awful. I couldn't get through to you. You just kept staring into space and screaming.”

“Screaming?” She couldn't believe it. She was tired. As though the deep sleep she had gotten had done her body no good. But she didn't remember waking in the night. And she certainly didn't remember a shower.

“You kept shouting for
her
to let him go.”

Neither of them questioned who the
him
was. Neither of them needed to mention that today was the first anniversary of Zach's disappearance.

“I can't believe I didn't wake up in the shower.”

“You sort of woke up, after a while. You talked to me, but it was like you were speaking through a wall. I carried you back to bed and you finally went to sleep again.”

“That was it?”

“You woke me a couple of times and I thought you were going to do it again. I talked to you and you went back to sleep. But you were stiff as a board all night.”

“I'm sorry.”

“There's nothing to be sorry about. I wish I could have done something.”

“You did something by being there.”

He slid a plate of bacon and eggs in front of her and she picked at it.

“Maybe you should call Tara,” he said.

“No.” Tara was the last person she wanted to call. Tara understood why Audrey chose not to see her anymore. Being around Tara or speaking to her reminded Audrey of just how much besides Zach she had lost.

“Then call Doctor Burton.”

“I don't need a doctor.”

“You need something.”

“What about you?”

“I'm okay.” He carried the griddle to the sink and stood staring out into the backyard.

“I'm getting better,” she whispered. And she believed that. She hadn't been weeping every day, standing in the front window staring out across the lawn. She hadn't awakened in the middle of the night to go tuck Zach in in what? Six months?

She could see Richard working his way up to saying something and she knew what it would be. She just didn't know how he would phrase it this time.

“I don't want another baby,” she said.

His neck reddened.

“You can't replace my son,” she said softly.

Richard turned slowly to face her. “Audrey, having another child doesn't mean we're replacing Zach.”

“Then what the hell does it mean?”

She shoveled bits of egg around on the plate, staring at the pattern in the yolk. The fork felt strange in her hand. Soft. Her entire body felt weird.

What was that?

A panic attack?

She willed her breathing to slow, concentrating on her pulse.

Richard sat down in the chair next to her. “I loved Zach just as much as you did.”

She glanced up and saw that he had already realized his mistake.

Her voice was a heavy stone, poised to crush both of them. “I still love him.”

“So do I, Audrey.”

“Then why didn't you say so?”

“I only meant that we have to go on living.”

“I'm living. You're living.”

“No, we're not. We're just frozen in time. Waiting. Audrey, we've done all we could do.”

“He's out there, somewhere,” she whispered, barely able to breathe. “He needs me and I can't find him. Someone took my son.”

“Our son.”

“I want him back.”

“I want him back, too, Aud. But we have to face the fact that we may never get Zach back. There hasn't been one call. No one saw him taken. He could be anywhere.”

She dropped the fork onto her plate. The handle was bent.

“Why didn't they call?” she asked. “Why didn't we get a ransom note?”

“You know why, Aud. The police told you why. Zach wasn't kidnaped for ransom.”

“No!”

“Honey, calm down.”

She stared out through the open back door. “The bastard stole my son right here. From our home.” That burned. The fact that Zach had been taken from a place where he should have been safer than anywhere else in the world. When both she and Richard were home. It inflamed her guilt and her rage. But it also angered her that Richard was right. They had done everything there was to be done.

They had contacted the Oxford County Sheriff's Department immediately. The police and game wardens searched the area with dogs for days. She and Richard had run through the woods with the searchers, shouting Zach's name, searching for him beneath every deadfall pine, in every dry gully. The woods surrounding the house were deep Maine forest and the farm to market roads spiderwebbed the mountains.

The sheriff sent out a File 6 Missing Persons Report by teletype to all law enforcement agencies, including the NCIC, the National Crime Information Center. Audrey and Richard had placed ads in local newspapers, paid for spots on radio stations, put professionally printed posters in stores and gas stations. They had even spent most of their savings hiring a private investigator out of Boston.

All in vain.

There were no clues.

Zach had wandered into the front yard to play while Audrey worked in her back garden and ten minutes later he was gone.

How dare Richard think of another child?

“He's alive,” she said.

Richard didn't respond.

“He's alive,” she repeated.

Audrey stood now, staring out the back door into her garden.

She hadn't set foot in the backyard since the day of Zach's disappearance. Her perennials had survived but they were coming back wild and uncultivated and the areas that would normally be planted already with young annuals were filling with spring weeds. She hated seeing it like that.

Audrey's garden was an extension of herself. Tara had explained the rudiments to her, bought horticulture books for her to study—until Audrey outgrew her teacher and began to instruct Tara. Audrey found solace and rebirth in the nurturing of plants. She had transferred a lot of those feelings to her love for Richard and Zach. But there was something different about her love for gardening. When her hands were immersed in the soil her mind emptied and all her training took over. For that brief period of time all that existed for her was the tiny ecosystem that she had created.

The garden called to her now. She longed to smell the rich soil. To feel her fingers working through the damp earth. To hear the sound of crickets and birds.

But when she rested her hand on the doorknob, it felt frigid to the touch. Hostile. As though her garden dreaded her return as much as she feared returning to it.

So what do I do?

Spend the rest of my life inside this house?

Until I'm pacing from room to room in an old housecoat like some hag out of Dickens?

Until I turn into a bodiless spirit, living on memories and rage?

Still the door would not open.

An odd tingling tickled the very back of her mind.

Why should I be afraid of my own garden?

But it wasn't just her garden she feared.

It was the door itself.

It wasn't the place.

But the passing into the place.

It was that irretrievable step from the past year into this new one.

A year without Zach.

Last year Zach had been with her.

This year he wouldn't be.

She glanced around the kitchen. Sunlight glinted on the blue countertops and white vinyl floor. The dishes were washed and stacked. The laundry was dried and put away. The house was spotless. There was nothing more to be done inside. No more living to be accomplished. If she remained in the house it would not be to live but to die.

She clamped down hard on the knob and opened the door. Without hesitating on the stoop, she strode out into the backyard.