Night Terrors (12 page)

And she saw why he was after this young woman, why she was so important to him, and the terror and fear chilled her to her soul.

How could God let a creature like the one in front of her ever be born?

After he loaded the gun, the man pointed it at her.

“I need something from you,” he said.

It was dark now. The sun had slipped below the horizon in the west and there was only a dark blue line to show that there had ever been daylight. The rest of the sky was black, the clear night sky glittering with the light of ancient stars and the bloated Harvest moon.

Miss Helen’s house was a dark shape in the night.

A moment later there was a flash of light from inside her house, and the sound of thunder from a gunshot rumbled.

It was dark inside Tara’s apartment as she slept on the couch. She hadn’t turned on the light over the stove before she fell asleep, but at least she’d left the TV on. The TV with its reliable flickering lightshow, an ever-watching sentinel that kept the monsters pushed back into the shadows.

Tara barely moved a muscle as she slept. Her body needed the rest, the chance to rebuild and heal. And for a moment there was peace from the dreams.

But then the dreams came.

Tara fidgeted in her sleep. She turned over on the couch and her arm fell down beside her towards the floor, her hand clenched in a tight fist inches above the wood floorboards. Her fingers relaxed and her hand opened up.

Six bullets from a revolver slipped out of her hand and dropped down to the floor making a loud clattering sound as they hit the wood.

Tara jumped awake, sitting bolt-upright on the couch. Her eyes were wide with fear. She lunged for the lamp next to the couch and her fingers found the switch in the flickering light from the TV. She twisted the little knob and heard the distinctive click from the lamp.

The room was bathed in soft light.

She looked down at the floor.

There were no bullets on the floor. It had only been a dream.

She sat back down and buried her face in her hands. She felt like crying. She felt like sobbing. There was a sense of loss in her. Someone else had died. Someone else had lost their life as this killer worked his way through his victims to get to her.

All for her. All because of her.

She glanced at the coffee table, making sure that there wasn’t a new piece of paper there with a new set of hurried sketches and scratches, and new numbers and puzzling words written at the edges.

It was just the same sketch as before – the revolver and the six bullets.

And now she knew what it had meant – it
had
been a clue. But what kind of clue was that? How could she have prevented someone’s murder with that kind of clue? It wasn’t fair.

She looked back down at the floor where she’d heard the bullets from her dream land. There were no bullets on the floor, but there
was
something there – Agent David Woods’ business card; it had fallen off of her stomach and fluttered down to the floor during her nap.

She picked it up and stared at it. Should she call him? Could he even help her?

Tara hurried into her kitchen. She turned on the light over the stove and opened her refrigerator. She took a sip of her bottled water, but it wasn’t quenching her thirst. She wanted something more. She wanted some wine. She searched her refrigerator and cabinets, but she didn’t have any kind of alcohol in her apartment.

She would go get some. Yeah, that’s what she’d do.

She left the light on over the stove and she left the lamp in the living room on, but she turned off the TV. She slipped her socked feet into her sneakers, grabbed her purse and car keys, and marched to the front door.

She needed to get out of her apartment for a while. Maybe a drive in her hulking Jeep would do the trick.

She turned her porch light on and slipped out into the night and then closed and locked her front door. She hesitated for just a moment before walking out to her Jeep, looking at Steve’s apartment. She wanted to go over there and knock on his door. She wanted to talk to someone, be around someone else right now.

But he wasn’t home. His pickup truck was gone.

He probably didn’t want to see her now anyway.

She hurried out to her Jeep Cherokee and climbed inside. She jammed the key into the ignition, twisted it, and the Jeep roared to life. It was obnoxiously loud; she wasn’t a mechanic, but she was pretty sure that there was something wrong with the muffler.

She backed out of her parking spot and turned her headlights on, then shifted into drive and headed towards the entranceway to her apartment complex.

Tara didn’t see the man hidden in the bushes watching her leave.

The man stepped out of the brush after he was sure Tara was gone. He had long hair and his face seemed to be all scraggly beard and wild eyes. He wore many layers of clothing and reeked like a garbage dumpster. He touched the giant homemade cross that hung from his neck with his grimy hands.

Tara went to Publix, a supermarket not too far from her apartment complex.

She pushed her cart down the nearly empty aisles and discovered that besides her craving for alcohol, she was hungry. The food in the deli looked good. She usually stuck to a sensible diet, but tonight she felt like splurging, perhaps gorging on decadent food and spirits, maybe some exotic cheeses and crackers to go with the wine.

Like a death row inmate’s last meal.

Where had that thought come from? She drop-kicked it out of her mind, knocking it back to whatever morbid place it had crawled out of.

“Help you with something?” the deli worker asked.

“Do you have smoked cheddar cheese?”

“Of course, ma’am.”

The deli worker went to work on her orders of extravagant cheeses and salamis. She would get some crackers and horseradish sauce, some green olives. She’d have her own little hors-doeuvre party.

How pathetic.

That’s how it is when you’re alone.

She pushed her shopping cart to the other side of the store and bought two bottles of wine. They were a little expensive, so maybe they would be good. At least they would drown away the voices in her head, the visions in her mind, and maybe even the nightmares that waited for her when she slept.

Tara pulled into her apartment complex and shut off the rumbling engine. Steve’s pickup truck was still gone. She had hoped he would be home when she got back. She’d decided that she would bring one of the bottles of wine and her overpriced selection of cheeses and crackers over to share with him.

But maybe it was good he wasn’t home. She probably would’ve just chickened out again.

Tara got out of her Jeep and grabbed her bags of groceries from the back seat and headed for her front door.

She didn’t even realize something was wrong until she got to her front door.

Her front porch light wasn’t on.

She
always
left the front porch light on when she left.

Maybe it had burned out.

She set the grocery bags down by her feet and found her house key on the key ring. And then she jerked around like a frightened cat as a breeze rustled through the trees and brush at the other end of the parking area; the stand of woods looked like a black silhouette against the dark sky, the tops of the trees dancing back and forth in the wind. She had a sudden feeling that someone was watching her from the trees.

She turned back to her door and opened it, ready to bolt inside to safety, but then she froze in mid-step. She was greeted by a wall of pitch black darkness.

I know I left the lights on.

She hesitated at the threshold to her apartment for a moment but then the feeling of someone watching her from the trees forced her into action. She reached inside the doorway and groped along the wall, still not wanting to step all the way inside. She finally found the light switch that turned on a seldom used ceiling light just inside the doorway.

But the light didn’t come on.

She tried the switch again and again.

Still nothing.

She hesitated for a moment, not sure what to do. Maybe the power was out. She glanced around at the other apartments and saw that some of them had lights burning inside. Comforting, safe lights.

Maybe just
her
power was out.

Maybe Steve’s power was out, too. His lights were off, even his front porch light. But he was gone – he probably didn’t leave his lights on when he went out; he probably wasn’t scared of the dark like she was.

She had just left her lights off, that’s all. She had been in a big hurry to race to the store for some wine and she had just forgotten to leave a few lights on when she left. And now all she needed to do was go inside and turn them on. It was that simple.

She couldn’t stand out here all night. She needed to do
something
.

Tara went back to her Jeep to grab a flashlight, keeping an eye on the woods as she approached her vehicle. She always kept a flashlight in her Jeep, usually two of them. She kept flashlights inside her apartment, too – one underneath the kitchen sink, one in the bathroom, and one in the nightstand next to her bed. She was never far away from flashlights or extra batteries. She couldn’t be in the darkness. She couldn’t wake up in the middle of the night during a power outage and not have a light.

She checked to make sure that the flashlight worked and she walked back to her front door. She thought about asking her other neighbor for help, the older man who kept to himself, but then she decided not to. That would really make her feel pathetic and weak.

She
needed
to do this on her own. Maybe one of the breakers had blown. The breaker box was in the laundry room beyond the kitchen, set in the wall a few feet away from the back door that led out to her small backyard. She just needed to make it that far.

Tara entered her home. She left the bags of groceries on the front porch area and the wind rustled the plastic bags which sounded eerily similar to someone creeping through the brush. She thought about downing a portion of the wine to get her courage up, but she scolded herself for the thought.

Just get this over with.

She took a few steps into her apartment. Maybe just the front porch light and the ceiling light inside the doorway had gone out. Maybe they were on the same breaker.

As she took another step deeper into the darkness of her apartment, she was even more certain that she had left the lamp on next to the couch and the light on over the stove. She always did.

The power had to be out.

She told herself that she should head right to the laundry room and check the breakers. But the laundry room was farther away, hidden away in the deep and seemingly impenetrable darkness beyond the kitchen. She shined her flashlight beam into the kitchen and created eerie, darting shadows that danced across her laundry room door. She trained her flashlight beam back on the lamp next to the couch – it was a lot closer.

Step by step, she forced her legs to move closer to the couch, a mere eight steps or so, that was all. She could see the couch in the glow of her flashlight beam. She imagined some pale creature with sharp teeth jumping up from beside the couch and hissing at her. She pushed the thought from her mind and shined her light beam on the lamp next to the couch.

She twisted the little knob of the lamp with one hand as she held the flashlight with the other. The little knob clicked and clicked as she twisted, but the light never came on.

“Shit,” she muttered. She knew she would have to check the breaker box in the laundry room now. And if it wasn’t the breaker box, then the power must be out.

If the power was out, she wasn’t sure she could stay here. She could imagine herself on the couch with an army of half-burnt candles in front of her and three or four flashlights within easy reach, maybe two empty bottles of wine and warm cheeses and crackers. Maybe she could do it. Maybe she could try.

First check the breakers, and then take it from there.

Tara backed up a step away from the lamp and turned around; she pointed her flashlight at the kitchen at the other end of the living room. She was about to begin her journey into the kitchen when something stopped her. She saw the green digital numbers of the clock on her stove. She panned the flashlight beam to the TV and saw that the light on the cable box was still on. The power
couldn’t
be out.

But why weren’t any of her lights working?

She started to walk towards the kitchen and she bumped her leg against the corner of the coffee table. She hadn’t remembered the coffee table being so close to the couch before. But things changed in the darkness, things weren’t where you remembered them being, like they moved around slightly by themselves when you weren’t looking. When her leg brushed by the table, she heard a slight clinking sound, like fragile glass bumping against each other.

Just then her flashlight started to flicker and go out.

She smacked it in her hand and a moan escaped her throat. “No, not now, please …”

And a split second later, the front door slammed shut.

Tara nearly cried out with terror.

The flashlight came back on for a moment and she shined it around the living room, trying to point the light beam everywhere at once with her trembling hand, trying to see if a killer was materializing out of the shadows and running towards her. But there was no one inside the apartment with her.

She pointed the flashlight beam down at the coffee table where she’d heard the clinking noise and she saw the biggest salad bowl she owned sitting in the middle of the table right on top of the drawing of the revolver and bullets which was still face-up. Inside the bowl were dozens of light bulbs of various sizes – every light bulb from her home.

The flashlight went out again, plunging her into darkness.

She slapped at it again, unaware of the cries of terror mewling from her own throat.