Night Terror

by Chandler McGrew

  “I seen bad things, Virg,” said Cooder, from the backseat.

  Audrey glanced back at Cooder and her breath caught in her throat. She peered into his soft brown eyes and suddenly she knew where Zach was. She turned to stare out her window and realized immediately where they were. When she and Richard were dating they must have passed this way a thousand times, hardly giving the old run-down complex a passing glance. But now the place drew her like a magnet, pulling with a dark loathsome force so unsettling that she knew she was right.

  “She’s in there,” she whispered, pointing through the window.

  “Where?” said Virgil, slowing the car.

  “There!” she said, slapping at the windshield as a pair of cracked brick pillars supporting a heavy wrought-iron arch appeared just ahead. A black iron gate was secured with chain and a padlock. Long-dead ivy embraced the square columns, reaching upward toward the sign with bony brown fingers.

  PERKINS MENTAL HEALTH INSTITUTE

  “He’s in there,” she whispered, pointing through the gate.

  “Are you sure?” asked Virgil, staring at the heavy chain.

  “Yes,” whispered Audrey, unable to take her eyes off the sign.

  “Have you ever been here before?” asked Virgil, turning to study her face.

  Audrey’s brow furrowed. “I think so.”

  Cooder nodded vigorously to himself. “Bad things,” he muttered, slapping his thigh over and over. “Bad things.”

  Just then the trooper came back on the radio. “You’re right! There is something here. One of my men just found a hidden door down into another basement!”

  Virgil stared at Audrey, waiting. She shook her head.

  “Zach’s in there,” she said. But she wasn’t quite as certain as before. It felt right, but what if she was wrong? What if she was searching an empty building while Zach needed her somewhere else? She closed her eyes and reached out for him. A faint tingling at the base of her skull caused her to jerk and then she did sense him. Just the tiniest tug. But he was close. Real close.

  She nodded at Virgil.

  Virgil glanced in the mirror at Cooder and sighed. “Good enough for me,” he said, picking up the mike. “Pete, this is Virgil. I’m investigating over at Perkins.”

  “Perkins Mental Health?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why?”

  “I got a hunch she might be here.”

  “Just a hunch?”

  “Yep.”

  “You got any backup?”

  Virgil glanced at Audrey and Cooder. “No.”

  “All right. I’ll send a car over as soon as I can break somebody loose here. But it’s going to be a little while, so hang tight.”

  “Right,” said Virgil, knowing that he’d never keep Audrey in the car that long.

  “I seen bad things, Virg.” Cooder’s voice was shaky and he kept slapping his legs as though still trying to put out a fire there.

  “It’s all right, Cooder,” said Virgil. “Stop saying that, now. Okay?”

  Cooder nodded, clamping his jaw.

  Audrey glanced over her shoulder. Cooder’s face was twisted and his eyes had a hunted look as he stared through the gate and up the pitted drive. The building itself was obscured in shadow and gloom, but the dark windows reflected the moon and stars, peering out into the night like the glittering multiple eyes of some alien creature of prey.

  “I have to find my son, Cooder,” said Audrey. “I have to go in there. But there’s no reason for you to go.”

  “I’ll go,” he said at last.

  Virgil eased the cruiser up against the gates and gave it just enough gas to slowly rend the old iron from its hinges. As it clattered noisily to the pavement, he rolled right over it. The drive wound through widely spaced oaks surrounded by grass that had once been manicured but now grew in tufts like a radiation victim’s hair. The asphalt was covered with dry leaves and scarred with potholes.

  Apparently no one had considered that maybe a building that looked like a prison might be bad for patients. The windows were tall and heavily barred. The walls were built of massive limestone blocks, and the front doors were faded green metal with thick, wire-webbed glass. Up close, the hulking monstrosity glared down at them like a giant square-sided troll.

  Audrey jumped out of the car and ran toward the entrance. Virgil shouted at her, but he had to open the rear door for Cooder, and he took the time to open the trunk and grab his shotgun. On second thought, he reached back into the car and snatched his phone out of its holder. By the time he caught up with Audrey and Cooder, Audrey was shaking the heavy doors furiously.

  “I can’t get in!” she shrieked.

  Virgil pulled her aside. But he and Cooder had no more luck against the heavy deadbolts.

  “How did Tara get in?” asked Virgil. “Assuming she’s here.”

  “She’d have a key,” said Audrey.

  Virgil nodded thoughtfully. “But where’s her car?”

  He took off around the front of the building and Cooder and Audrey fell in behind him, moving at a slow trot. As they passed each pitch-black window, Audrey felt her stomach tighten. Although she knew it was only their own starlit reflections passing in the dusty glass, she seemed to be glimpsing faded specters from another horrific time. The faces were hard, brows furrowed, mouths down-turned, eyes deep-set and empty. The building seemed to inhale the present and exhale the past.

  Dry grass crackled beneath their feet, and in the distance a siren wailed. It wasn’t that far to Tara’s and Audrey wondered if that was one of the cops, the backup Virgil had requested. Virgil twisted his head in that direction, then shook it as the wail drew farther and farther away. At the corner of the building Virgil stopped and peeked around, waving back to them to halt, but then he disappeared and they hurried after.

  Tara’s car wasn’t in the side parking area either.

  Over the distant trees the lights of Augusta were clearly visible, and Perkins’ three stories of stone and glass and iron were lit in their feeble glow. Audrey pressed close against the cold limestone, the sheer sides of the building reaching toward the veil of night overhead. She had the sudden fear that Tara was on the parapet high above, about to drop boulders or boiling oil.

  She glanced over her shoulder at Cooder. He looked for all the world like a small boy about to cry. As Virgil continued on to the far corner, she stopped and turned to face Cooder.

  “Don’t do this,” she said. “I don’t want you to go in there.”

  “Got to,” said Cooder.

  “Why?”

  Hardly any hesitation this time. “To get your boy.”

  “We can do it,” she said, nodding toward Virgil.

  Cooder shook his head ever so slowly and, when he spoke, the certainty in his voice terrified Audrey. “You’d get in. But you wouldn’t get out.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I been remembering things.”

  “Like what?”

  He leaned down close to her face and she ignored his heavy odor. “They used to let me play with birds.”

  She frowned. “I don’t understand, Cooder.”

  “But it wasn’t just birds. I used to play with mice too. And dogs.” He closed his eyes for a second. “Dogs know a lot, but they’re harder than birds.” He kept nodding as though reassuring himself that he knew what he thought he knew. “Dogs are hard. But when you can do them, you learn a lot that way.” When he focused on her again, there was more confidence in his face.

  “Come on, then,” she said, still not understanding. She couldn’t leave him here in the dark alone, and she didn’t have time to walk him back to the car.

  Just ahead she spotted another paved drive—the service entrance—as the rear of the building came into view. An attached two-story brick unit had two raised garage doors— evidently for unloading delivery trucks—and a set of concrete stairs led to a cement walkway with a painted iron rail. Virgil was already climbing the stairs as Cooder and Audrey ra
ced to catch up. They all stopped in front of another wide metal door with wire mesh reinforcing its one window. When the door wouldn’t open, Virgil kicked it. The sound echoed inside the large structure like a penny on a snare drum.

  “Damn!” he said, slapping the glass. “I guess I’ll have to shoot through the glass and open the lock.”

  “Do it!” said Audrey.

  “I didn’t want her to know we were here,” said Virgil. “But I guess my hysterics already took care of that.”

  “Trust me, she knows,” said Audrey, and Cooder nodded.

  Virgil racked the shotgun and aimed it at the lower corner of the window. When he pulled the trigger the roar of the big gun slapped against the cold bricks like a giant hand. A hole the size of a fist appeared in the corner of the pane and spiderweb cracks radiated outward. Virgil smashed at the glass with the butt of the shotgun and the pane bowed inward but held. Another hard elbow strike and he was able to push his hand through and unbolt the lock.

  “Well,” he said, muscling the door aside and aiming his flashlight down the long corridor. “Everyone and his brother knows we’re here now.”

  59

  ZACH FOLLOWED ALONG down the endless corridors, meekly holding Tara’s hand, as though accepting his fate. But inside, his ten-year-old mind raced.

  This is just another basement. I almost got out of the other one. I can get out of this one too. If I have enough time.

  The thought of time sent a sinking feeling through his tummy down into his crotch. He had only begun to become accustomed to being separated from his mom and dad the first time when it looked as though he was going to be rescued, and now he was lost again. It had taken so long before anyone found him and he was absolutely sure he didn’t have that kind of time now.

  I will get away. I will!

  Every now and then a picture of Tara aiming the gun at his dad and pulling the trigger would flash in front of Zach’s mind and the sinking feeling would be worse than ever. He’d done everything he could, but it had happened so fast! He wasn’t sure if his dad was dead or alive. He thought he was alive. It felt like he was alive. But he just wasn’t sure, and the not knowing ate at him. But he couldn’t think about that right now. He had to think about getting away somehow.

  But Tara stopped in front of an open door into a darkened room and as the lights flicked on and he followed her into her lab, the last of his self-confidence melted. This wasn’t a cellar that was made to look like anyone’s house. There was no bedroom for him here with its hard iron bunk. No wide-open old barn in which to ride a bicycle. This looked more like a doctor’s office, and like most ten-year-old boys, Zach had a healthy fear of such places. Doctors’ offices were filled with antiseptic and bright lights and shiny steel instruments designed for unknown and frightful purposes. But at least his mother had always accompanied him to the doctor, and he’d had a sense that, no matter how terrible the place might appear, the doctor had his best interest at heart.

  Here there was no such reassurance and the shiny instruments and odd devices in glass jars filled him with apprehension. He tried to stare blankly ahead but his eyes betrayed him, searching the cabinets, exploring the strange machines with their dark displays and endless switches and buttons. The far end of the room was unlighted, hidden in gloom, and he instinctively shied away from it, knowing without being told that that was where they were headed.

  Tara gave Zach and the dog a meaningful glance, warning the boy not to move. Waiting until Zach nodded, she strode purposefully about, plugging in equipment, rolling out an oddly constructed wheelchair, chattering to herself. She looked like an elf, gaily preparing the workshop for Santa’s arrival. Her eyes were alight with anticipation and that, more than anything, gave Zach an even worse case of the creeps.

  He had no idea what all the equipment did, but he knew that it was all there for him. And he knew Tara wasn’t going to give him the time he needed to figure out how to escape. In desperation he closed his eyes and reached out again.

  60

  AUDREY STUMBLED DOWN THE CENTER of the corridor.

  She was disoriented, two places at once again, no longer only in the upper reaches of the old building. Without warning, a part of her was thrown into what appeared to be Tara’s research lab. She tried to focus on the room in her head, blanking out the space around her, feeling her own feet catching on the tiles of the corridor floor.

  Help me!

  Zach’s voice exploded in her mind.

  I can’t get out! She’s going to hurt me!

  Audrey tried to scream, to warn Zach, to threaten Tara, to tell her to leave her son alone or else, but she could barely breathe. Instead she heard Tara, speaking calmly, as though reciting from a laundry list.

  “Alcohol swabs, Dexedrine, adrenaline too. Eppie, just in case, check the voltage settings.”

  What’s she doing?

  Was that her own thought or Zach’s?

  Agonizingly slowly, the small, bright room superimposed itself over the dark corridor she was in. Tara stepped from behind a large green instrument panel, and Audrey felt her own knees buckling. Tara seemed to be studying Audrey’s face, but Audrey knew that she was really looking at Zach.

  “Be still,” said Tara. “This won’t hurt.”

  Tara receded as Zach tried to back away, but Audrey felt the wall strike her in the back and then she was struggling weakly with a much larger Tara. She was there with Zach. She could feel Tara’s bulk jerking her along, feel a tearing pain in Zach’s elbow. She screamed again, but this time she heard it, and so did Tara.

  And then she realized that Zach had screamed with her voice.

  “How did you do that?” gasped Tara, releasing her grip and taking a step back.

  Zach shook his head, confused.

  Tara lost only a moment in reflection, boxing in Zach before he could take advantage of her momentary incredulity to run. Her strong arms lifted him off his feet, tossing him into the wheelchair. He fought like a cat, slapping and scratching, but soon enough she had him lashed down with thick leather straps.

  “Audrey!” Virgil’s voice barely reached her, but she struggled to hold onto it. She knew that she had to take control of her own body again. She couldn’t save Zach by entering his mind. She had to find his body. But it was so hard to be so achingly close and to let go. “Audrey! Snap out of it!”

  “She’s hooking him up to the machine!” she gasped.

  “What machine?” asked Virgil.

  Audrey shook her head. “It’s all wires and dials and… and pain.”

  “Yeah,” said Cooder, his eyes gleaming in the flashlight’s glow.

  “You saw it too?” said Virgil, glancing at Cooder.

  “I seen…”

  “I know, Cooder,” said Virgil. “I know. Just tell us how to get there.”

  “This way,” said Cooder. “Got to go by the Mixed Nuts.”

  61

  LITTLE ENOUGH WAS LEFT of Tara’s once formidable lab complex after the cutbacks, after the fools ended her funding and forced her to make her research even more clandestine. But she had salvaged what she could. All of her lab equipment—that had been the most important thing. And some of the original security system had been simple enough to maintain. She was proud of having taught herself the workings of the electrical and some of the electronics systems in the undergound complex. She scrutinized Virgil, Cooder, and Audrey’s progress now on closed circuit cameras overhead. It riled her that Audrey didn’t need technology like that to find her son. How had she missed Audrey’s talents? How could Audrey have hidden them all these years? No matter. Everything had worked out for the best after all. Now Audrey would feel the machine like the others.

  Tara had known psi existed, even before the government imbeciles admitted that they did. She knew because her mother had it. Her mother had made a good living forecasting the future for wealthy men who were willing to pay handsomely for advice and discretion. But unlike her mother or her sister Martha, Tara never ex
hibited any strange talents whatsoever, and Tara grew up ashamed at failing a test she didn’t really understand. By the time she’d reached the eighth grade, she had thrown herself into the study of the paranormal. If Tara didn’t have it, then she meant to understand and own it.

  She wasn’t one of the world’s most proficient hypnotists by accident. She had learned at an early age how to control people’s minds without psi, simply by the persuasion of the spoken word. Little things at first. Like getting her way with her parents when her sister couldn’t, or manipulating them into blaming and punishing her twin for something she had done.

  Tara had used her sister as a child and then, when her sister had children who had interesting powers, Tara had controlled her sister’s mind, forcing her to give up the children without a fight, without a word to anyone. Looking back on those years, she often wished she had done things differently, that she had found some way to study Martha as well. But by the time Martha’s children were old enough to exhibit their abilities, Tara’s manipulations of Martha’s mind had left her a burned-out husk. Craig and Paula, on the other hand, had been powerful telepaths, perfect for Tara’s needs.

  But Audrey had hidden her powers completely. Tara had been convinced that it was a twin thing, that, like she and Martha, only one twin could be born with psi powers. How had she been fooled so easily?

  Tara stared at Zach, trussed like a chicken. Then she glanced over her head at the monitors again, watching as Audrey rounded a corner.

  How did Zach imitate his mother’s scream? And why did Audrey stumble just at that moment? Was Audrey’s telepathy so powerful that she was able to insinuate herself into her son’s mind and body? Wouldn’t it be informative to give Zach the added incentive of reaching out to his mother? Trying to save each other’s lives might be just the push they needed to expand their capabilities. Was the mother-child bond the key she’d been searching for all these years? Was it even stronger than the sibling bond?

  Tara’s hand rested on the rheostat connected to a series of impulse stimulators within the machine. Her eyes followed the path of the red wires leading to the mask covering Zach’s skull. Pain was an unfortunate yet essential aspect of her research and Tara knew more about administering pain than any person alive. She had never had two talents such as Audrey and Zach to work with at the same time—since Paula’s talents developed well after Craig was dead—and certainly never two so intimately connected. Interesting, indeed.