Night Terrors (8 page)

She looked around at her living room in the soft glow of the lamp, but there was no blood-soaked man huddled in the corner.

Greg,
her mind whispered.
His name was Greg.

Tara let out a long breath and closed her eyes for a moment. But then she opened them – afraid that the horrible image of the man might come back if she kept her eyes shut too long.

She looked back down at the floor where he had been dragged away. But there were no claw marks on the floorboards, no broken-off fingernails, no trail of blood from his body.

Tara got up on shaky legs and hurried into the kitchen. She turned on the light over the stove and then opened the refrigerator to grab a bottle of water. She was so thirsty – she drank half of the water down. Her hands were still shaking from the nightmare, but she was beginning to calm down a little.

Something on the coffee table in front of the couch caught her attention. She hadn’t noticed it when she’d been on the couch even though it was right in front of her.

She set the bottle of water on the counter and walked back into the living room on legs that still felt a little unsteady. She stared down at the coffee table. There was a sheet of paper on the table and two pencils. One of the pencils was snapped in half.

She looked down at her right hand and saw a cut on the inside of one of her fingers. It was just a small cut, it had barely bled, it didn’t hurt and she hadn’t even noticed it until now.

Tara looked back at the paper and two pencils bathed in the flickering light from the TV and soft glow from the lamp beside the couch. She couldn’t remember bringing the paper and pencils out of her office.

She’d been sleepwalking again.

And she’d been drawing in her sleep again.

She sat down on the couch and stared at the paper which was face-down. Her night terrors were getting worse. The Shadow Man was back and he was out there killing people, and she could feel him in her dreams. And the Shadow Man knew that she could see him. The Shadow Man wanted her to see through his eyes, he wanted to show her the things he was doing.

And she knew that the Shadow Man would be coming for her soon. She could feel it.

Tara picked up the paper and turned it over.

On the paper was a quick sketch of a gun; it was a revolver with its cylinder open and six bullets spilled out of it. The drawing was quick and rough, like the sketches she had made of Jen. She could see where she’d pressed down so hard on a part of the drawing that she must’ve broken the pencil there. She saw a dark spot on the paper that could be a drop of her own blood.

A gun and bullets. What did that mean? Was that what was used to kill Greg?

No, Greg wasn’t killed by a gun. His death had been much worse than that.

Tara stared at the drawing and she believed that this was a clue to the next murder. The Shadow Man was giving her clues now, daring her to piece them together, daring her to find him before he found her.

But she didn’t want to find the Shadow Man. She just wanted to stay away from him.

At the edges of the paper she noticed two numbers: a two and a nine. At the top of the page was one word: Pine. And scrawled at the bottom of the drawing was another word: Trinity.

What did these words and numbers mean? Were they associated with the gun and bullets somehow? What would Pine or Trinity have to do with a gun? Or the numbers, two and nine.

She laid the paper down on the coffee table, face-down again, and a shudder rippled through her muscles.

She had always been afraid of giving in to her visions, giving in to her telepathic power completely. She’d always been afraid of where it would lead to. But if she was going to stay alive, and if she had any chance of keeping anybody else alive, then she needed to try and open herself up to her ability. She needed to see what this killer was doing. Normally, after a sleepwalking episode, she would sleep in her bed with the rope tied around her ankle, but she felt like she needed to let herself sleepwalk now; she needed to let herself draw sketches in her sleep if that’s what it took. She needed to see where all of this was going to lead to.

She needed to see through the Shadow Man’s eyes. She needed to see the horrible things he wanted to show her.

Because her life depended on it – she was sure of that now.

It was nearly noon when Detective Perry and Detective Jackson drove onto Greg’s property through the open gate in the chain link fence. Two sheriff’s cars and a paramedic’s vehicle were already parked on the lawn in front of a doublewide trailer that looked like it was barely held together by rust and spit. Near the trailer was a large, free-standing metal garage that reminded Perry of a Quonset hut from his days in the Marines. The cars, trailer, and garage were all nestled underneath massive oak trees with heavy branches that didn’t look like they’d be able to make it through the next round of summer storms.

Perry had gotten the call about an hour earlier. He was still working on the Jennifer McGrath case and this one had some similar characteristics to that murder. The call about this murder had come into the station as another anonymous tip from another throwaway cell phone.

The killer wanted them to see this.

Detective Jackson had ridden with Perry and then wished he hadn’t – Perry drove way too fast. Even if they were just going to lunch, Perry had to speed. For someone who moved and spoke so slow and methodically, his driving was a direct contrast. But the drive here had been worse than ever, and Jackson had gripped the armrest so hard he’d nearly left a permanent impression in it.

They both got out of the car after Perry parked beside a sheriff’s car and then they walked towards the trailer which had its front door wide open. As they got closer they saw a sheriff fill the doorway, waiting patiently for them to approach.

“I’m Sheriff Tully,” the older man said and extended a hand after Perry and Jackson climbed the three steps into Greg’s trailer.

Perry gave the sheriff’s hand a brief squeeze and nodded at him. “Detective Perry.”

Jackson already had his nitrile gloves on, but he shook the sheriff’s hand anyway and smiled at him, giving him a warmer greeting than Perry. “I’m Detective Jackson.”

The Sheriff nodded and gave them a tight smile. “Well, we got an anonymous tip about a murder here. We found the owner’s dog at the far edge of the property, near the fence. Dead.”

Perry ignored the sheriff and he walked across the living room towards an overturned plastic bowl and a mess on the floor.

The sheriff ambled over to Perry. “Over there’s some spilled cereal and milk.”

Perry nodded at the sheriff. He could see what it was.

The sheriff moved with methodical slowness around Greg’s lumpy recliner and walked to the hall where the closet door was still wide open. Jackson thought Perry was slow and methodical with his movements and speech, but this sheriff was even worse; at least Perry’s actions seemed functional and not a waste of motion.

There were shoes and some clothing pulled out of the hall closet, but there were also some blood splatters on the wall and a big puddle of blood on the floor.

“This is just how we found it,” the sheriff told them. “It appears that the owner of the property dragged some things out of the closet like he was looking for something. Then it looks like he was hit with this shotgun.”

Detective Perry was growing a little impatient with the sheriff’s play-by-play of the murder scene. “Where’s the body?”

Jackson looked down at the shotgun with the blood-stained stock.

The sheriff noticed Jackson looking at the weapon. “That’s the homeowner’s shotgun,” the sheriff said, ignoring Perry’s question. “We checked the serial numbers and it’s registered to him. But whoever killed him used the gun to knock him out, not to kill him.” He shook his head. “Bizarre.”

Jackson nodded as Perry sighed impatiently.

The sheriff pointed down at the linoleum floor in the hallway where a wide streak of dried dark blood led right to the back door which was ajar. “Looks like he was dragged outside through that door. Must’ve been a strong fella to drag this big man’s body out of here.”

Perry stared at the sheriff with his pale blue, heavy-lidded eyes and asked again: “Where’s the body?”

“Out in the garage,” the sheriff said. “I’ve never seen anything like it. Hawkins threw up when he saw it.”

Sheriff Tully remained inside the trailer while Perry and Jackson followed the drag marks through the grass to the side door of the garage; the main garage door out front was still pulled down and locked with a padlock. Before entering, they stopped and looked down at the concrete pad outside the doorway; it was stained with blood. They let the side door close behind them after they were inside and the putrid, coppery smell hit them right away. No one else was in the garage right now and that’s how Perry wanted it.

No one else except Greg.

A police photographer from the sheriff’s department had taken some photos earlier and he was waiting outside by his car. But Perry would call their own photographers and forensics experts from the Tampa Police Department to take more photos and gather evidence.

Right now he wanted to study the scene with Jackson and no one else.

Greg hung from the rafters in the middle of the empty garage. There were no vehicles in the garage. Perry didn’t know if the killer had emptied the garage, or it just happened to be that way. At the far end of the garage was a row of counters and cabinets overflowing with tools and car parts. Along the sides of the walls were jacks, spare tires and rims, and other leftover parts and tools.

The ropes that Greg was strung up by were tied several times around his wrists and then looped around the exposed rafters above and then tied off to the sides of the metal walls, tied tightly around exposed metal studs. His bare feet hung only a few inches from the concrete floor. His body swayed back and forth gently and the ropes creaked in the silence. He had a severe wound to the left side of his face; his forehead was caved in a little from the butt of the shotgun. Dark blood was matted in the wound and in his hair. The whole left side of his face was stained with blood that had dripped down the left side of his body. He was gagged with a rag stuffed into his mouth with several lengths of rope tied around his head to hold the rag in place.

Greg was naked. And the skin from his entire torso, from right under his arm pits down to his waistline, had been removed. It hadn’t been a precision job, Perry could tell that just by looking at the sawed marks in the victim’s red muscle and fat. But it didn’t look like it had been a rush job, either. Greg hadn’t been tortured; this had just been a job to the killer, like someone skinning an animal after a hunt. Only, judging from the gag in his mouth, Perry guessed that this animal may have still been alive at the time.

Blood-stained tools were scattered on the concrete floor around the massive pool of blood that Greg hung over. There was a box cutter, a pair of large scissors, a pair of rusty shears, and various pairs of pliers. In the bloody puddle under Greg’s feet were globs of fat and pieces of muscle that had been cut off during the removal of his skin.

The skin from Greg’s torso wasn’t anywhere in the garage.

“He’s taking things,” Jackson said as he stared at the body. He chewed on his wad of bubblegum and his jaw muscles clenched and relaxed as he chewed. “Blood from the first victim. Skin from this one.”

Perry nodded and sighed. He stared down at the assortment of tools in the pool of blood.

“Where are the knives he used?”

Jackson didn’t answer. He stared at the pliers, scissors, and the box cutter.

“There’s a box cutter,” Perry said, “but he didn’t use that to flay the skin off of the body.”

Jackson looked at the saw marks on the man’s muscle and fat, evidence of the knives that had been used.

“Why would he take the knives he used to skin this guy, but leave the other tools and shotgun behind?” Perry wondered aloud.

Jackson didn’t have an answer for him.

Tara’s heart jumped when she heard the knock at her front door. She was at her easel, finishing up the last of the illustrations for the children’s book. She had the radio on – she liked to listen to music when she worked, something soft and easy that eventually faded into background noise.

The knock sounded again.

Who was at her door?

Tara felt the instant prickling on her skin, the instant tension in her muscles, the instant buzzing of panic in her mind.

She got up and hurried out of her office and then raced across the living room. She pried the blinds apart and peeked out the window near the front door and she just caught a glimpse of Steve walking back to his apartment.

Tara rushed to the front door and fumbled with the deadbolt, and then the lock on the door handle. She finally got the door open and ran outside onto the concrete walkway. Steve was almost back to his apartment door.

Steve heard her come outside and he turned back to her and smiled. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bother you.”

“It’s not a bother,” Tara said, even though she wasn’t quite sure what she was saying was no bother to her. That hadn’t come out right and she wished she could start over.

Steve walked back towards her at a leisurely pace, a smile still on his face. Tara noted again that he was a very good-looking man. He wore a pair of old faded jeans that hung perfectly on him and a Polo shirt that revealed more of his toned body than she had seen before.

Stop it! Stop staring at him like that.

“I was just wondering if you had a cup of sugar I could borrow,” Steve said.

Tara didn’t say anything. She couldn’t seem to find her voice for a moment.

“I was going to make some tea …” Steve continued but then he let his words trail off.

“I’m sorry,” Tara finally said. “I don’t … I don’t have any sugar. I used it all.”

Steve smiled even wider. “Thanks, anyway.”

“I’m sorry,” Tara said again and she smiled. She felt like she was smiling dumb.
Stop smiling,
she told herself. But she couldn’t seem to stop.