Night Terror

by Chandler McGrew

  62

  AUDREY SCURRIED DOWN THE CORRIDOR ahead of the others. Virgil’s flashlight glow bounced around her, sending her shadow dancing ahead and lending the sterile old structure a ghoulish air. The dark hallway looked like someplace vampires might gather. She wondered if this was how the building had always appeared to its inhabitants, who had lived more in their minds than inside the white, tiled rooms.

  “This way,” whispered Cooder, just behind her, stopping her in her tracks.

  He was staring into a doorway she had missed in her haste, assuming it was just another cell. Virgil caught up and shone the light inside.

  “In there?” he said, frowning.

  Cooder took a deep breath and entered, Audrey just behind. Virgil took up the rear.

  “What the hell is this?” muttered Virgil, his words echoing in the cavernous room. The hills were lined in a cold gray light through the tall windows covering the far wall. Deep carpet covered the floor. Virgil studied the framed documents on the walls.

  “This building’s supposed to have been abandoned for years,” he muttered.

  Audrey ran her fingers across the massive oak desk, taking in the profusion of bookshelves, the Persian rug beneath the leather chair behind the desk. “She never left here. Not really. When it closed down, she stayed somehow.”

  Virgil shook his head. “How would she have gotten power? Funding?” He stared at the library surrounding them. “How could she have kept this a secret?”

  Audrey glanced around, feeling for Zach’s presence. He kept coming and going in her mind now like a throbbing pulse. “Tara’s resourceful,” she said, following the tug inside her head.

  “Hey! Let me go ahead,” shouted Virgil, as Audrey and Cooder disappeared through another door. But they didn’t stop until they’d reached the bottom of the stairs inside. When Virgil caught up, he shone the flashlight down the length of another set of stairs into the corridor beyond. No doors were in sight. The tunnel wound away in front of them like a subway line.

  “What the hell is this?” he said, glancing at Cooder.

  “I seen—”

  “Yeah, okay,” said Virgil, heading down the stairs. Cooder and Audrey followed side by side.

  Please help me! Zach screamed in Audrey’s mind. She could barely breathe. She wanted to race ahead. To get to him. But her sense of disorientation was growing, even worse than before. She had to pace herself until she could reach him, until the place in her mind and the place she was became one and she could act. By the time they found the elevator doors, she was stumbling again, clutching her temples. Virgil caught her as Cooder punched the red button. The doors hissed open immediately and light flared out around them.

  Audrey stepped into the elevator beside Cooder and Virgil, instinctively pushing the button marked S below the B for basement. The lift dropped quickly and then shuddered to a stop. When the doors opened, Virgil held Audrey and Cooder back while he shone the light up and down the dark corridor. Finally he motioned them out.

  “Not here,” said Cooder, remaining in the elevator.

  Audrey stayed as well, her brow furrowed, her eyes closed. Cooder was right. She could feel Zach stronger now, so close she could reach out and touch him. But he wasn’t here. This was a ruse.

  Virgil peered back into the elevator. “Then where the hell are they?”

  “Come back in,” said Audrey, nodding at the corridor behind him. “There’s no light here. Where she has Zach, the lights are on.”

  As the door buzzed shut again, Cooder turned and faced the back wall.

  “You know how to get there,” said Audrey, placing her hand on Cooder’s shoulder. “Don’t you?”

  “Bad things…”

  “Yeah. I know, Cooder. But you have to remember how to get there. You have to.”

  Cooder nodded slowly as he glanced around the tiny elevator, a curious expression lighting his face.

  “What are you hunting for?” said Virgil.

  “He was always looking up.”

  “Who?” said Audrey.

  Cooder shook his head. “The dog,” he said. “There’s a switch…”

  Virgil glanced at Audrey and shook his head. But Cooder ran his fingers underneath the safety rail until a metallic click sounded. Another mechanical whooshing sounded as the back wall of the elevator slid away.

  Another corridor appeared before them, this one dank and damp, lit unevenly by oddly spaced fluorescent fixtures. As they entered the hallway, their footsteps echoed away like rats skittering down a hole. The place had an underlying odor that set Audrey’s nerves on edge. Virgil must have noticed it too. He grabbed Cooder’s sleeve to stop him, then motioned a finger across his lips for silence. Replacing the flashlight in his belt holder, he put both hands on the shotgun. But staring down the length of the long corridor, Audrey knew the gun would not be enough.

  We aren’t hunting her, she thought. She’s playing with us. I can feel her. Watching.

  For the first time she glanced up and noticed the half-hidden camera peeking through a glass bubble in the ceiling tile. She tapped Virgil on the shoulder and pointed to it.

  Virgil frowned. “Nothing we can do about that now. If she’s looking, she’s looking.”

  Just then, a public address system crackled to life through hidden wall speakers. Audrey spun back toward Cooder. “Plug your ears!” she screamed. There were several metallic clicking noises, then Tara’s voice. “Egress. Exit.”

  Audrey felt the sudden dullness again, but it wasn’t nearly so confusing, so overwhelming as before. It seemed more like a natural sluggishness, like waking up slowly from a deep sleep. And she’d heard the words this time. She could control herself, take possession of her body again. She fought her way through the sludge, struggling to break out of the darkness back into the light of the corridor. She couldn’t let Tara do this to her. If she went under, they were all dead.

  63

  “WHAT THE HELL? ”said Virgil. The weird combination of words still echoed down the hall. He glanced from Audrey to Cooder. Their faces were blank. They looked more like statues than people and then he knew what had happened. They were hypnotized. Just like Mac.

  The public address system rattled again. “Kill the intruder. Take the gun away from him and kill him.”

  “Shit,” said Virgil.

  A new gleam of unquestioning obedience came on in Cooder’s eyes. Behind Audrey and Cooder, the door to the elevator was sliding shut. The loud click as it locked back into place sounded like a casket lid closing. Virgil backed away down the hall, pointing his shotgun at Cooder since he looked to be the only one who had heard the command. Cooder’s movements were jerky and unsure and his hands were spread like a 1930s movie monster. It would have been comic if his face hadn’t been stony, and if Virgil hadn’t been absolutely certain that Cooder would choke him to death with those same hands. Audrey was shaking her head and stamping her feet, and Cooder’s movements were slow and unwieldy, his face a mixture of concentration and confusion.

  “Stop, Cooder!” Virgil shouted, waving the gun in Cooder’s face.

  Cooder slapped at the shotgun barrel, his movements clumsy and slow. But he kept coming.

  “I’ll shoot him!” shouted Virgil, hoping the address system was two-way.

  No answer.

  “I’ll shoot both of them if I have to!”

  He thought he could wound Cooder. Shoot him in the leg, maybe. But he knew he couldn’t shoot Audrey. No way he could do that. And just how powerful were Tara’s commands? Would Cooder just keep coming, dragging himself down the hall on stumps? Cooder’d never hurt a fly in his life.

  Virgil backed farther and farther down the corridor until another corridor appeared. He peered down it at another long line of white doors. Tara was behind one of the doors around here and if he could get to her he could get her to bring Cooder and Audrey back around. Either that or he’d have to shoot Tara, too, and she wasn’t gonna like that idea. But which corridor?


  He backed across the intersection, picking up his pace, putting some distance between himself and Cooder. Audrey was twenty steps back. Virgil stopped beside the first door, and, twisting the handle, kicked it in. It was an empty, tile-lined room. But the smell of death that he had noticed upon first arriving in the cellar was doubly powerful here.

  “I’m coming for you, Tara!” he shouted in frustration. “And when I find you, I’m going to shoot you. You got that?”

  Cooder was almost across the intersection. Audrey hadn’t reached it yet. Virgil kicked in another door. Another empty room.

  “You turn these people off now! I know you can hear me!”

  Nothing.

  Cooder seemed to be walking faster now. Virgil aimed the shotgun at Cooder’s left leg, just below the knee, and continued backing up. “I’m going to shoot him!” he shouted.

  “One more step and I’m going to have to shoot you, boy,” he whispered sadly, his finger tight on the trigger.

  Now he had nowhere to run. Cooder was slow and he was unarmed, but sooner or later he was going to get in close and there was no way Virgil could allow him to get his hands on the gun or on his throat.

  God help me, I may have to kill him.

  64

  AUDREY COULD STILL SEE the corridor around her. There was no sickening sense of dislocation like before. She could control this trance, just as she had learned to control her self-hypnosis. The real power was in her own mind, not Tara’s, and she could hear Zach again like a siren, calling to her.

  Help me, Mommy!

  I’m coming, honey. I’m coming!

  But first she had to help Cooder, or Virgil was going to kill him.

  She fought down the last of the lethargy and stumbled down the corridor, catching Virgil’s eye to assure him she meant him no harm. Then she placed herself between the shotgun and Cooder, facing Cooder, focusing on his eyes.

  “Cooder!” she shouted. “Cooder, look at me! It’s Audrey! Look me in the eye.”

  Nothing. He was a stumbling zombie. Her mind raced. She tried to remember the words she had heard Tara calling just seconds before. The commands that had driven her and Cooder into a hypnotic trance. She remembered them immediately, because suddenly she realized their significance. How could she have been so blind?

  They were doors.

  “Exit!” she said.

  Nothing.

  “Egress!”

  Again nothing. Of course not. Tara wouldn’t implant just a word. What if it came up in conversation? She couldn’t have her subjects popping into and out of trances like a carnival sideshow. Audrey glanced quickly around, finally settling on the shotgun in Virgil’s hands. When she reached for it, he drew back a step.

  “Give it to me!” she shouted.

  Virgil shook his head, studying her eyes.

  “I’m not crazy!” she said. “I need to make a clicking noise.”

  Virgil frowned, then understanding hit him. He cocked the gun several times, shells rolling across the floor at his feet. The sound stopped Cooder in midstride.

  “Exit!”

  A dullness settled over Audrey and she realized her mistake, fighting slowly back to the surface.

  “Egress!” she coughed, as Virgil clicked the empty shotgun yet again.

  A light came on in Cooder’s eyes and Audrey nodded, patting him on the shoulder.

  “Do you see what she did to you?” she said.

  Cooder nodded, slowly, still focused inward.

  “Can you control it next time?” she asked.

  Cooder pondered that while Virgil hurriedly gathered up the errant shells, reloading the gun.

  “I think so,” said Cooder.

  Just then Audrey felt a flicker of pain starting in her abdomen, shooting out in all directions, and she knew that she was feeling what Zach was feeling. What Paula had felt. That was what the seizure in her garden had been about, the memories of Paula’s pain, and the pain Audrey had felt from her. The pain Audrey had hidden from Tara in order to save herself. She felt a sudden stab of guilt as she realized what she had done. She had allowed Paula to die, pretending all along that she felt nothing.

  The three of them had reached the final door at the end of the hall. Audrey twisted the doorknob and the door swung open soundlessly, wafting foul air into her face. The room was half in light and half in darkness, and the stench of decay was even heavier here. But the room looked as clean as the hallway. She stepped through the door and she sensed Cooder and Virgil following her inside.

  Zach was strapped into a wheelchair, backed against the far wall, his head covered with what looked like a heavily padded cotton cloth, his body connected to the hateful-looking machine by a hundred brightly colored wires. It was the same machine Tara had used on Paula and Craig and God knew how many other subjects. Tara stood over Zach like a vulture, Adler sitting on the floor at her side. Tara adjusted dials and switches on a machine the size of a large-screen television. Audrey noticed an examining table at the other end of the room where a small body lay covered beneath a sheet, and she wondered if that was where the smell was coming from.

  She eased silently forward, but Tara raised one gloved hand over her shoulder to let them know that she was aware of their presence. Audrey followed Tara’s pointing finger to the bank of closed circuit cameras overhead. As though for emphasis, Adler bared his teeth and growled.

  “You have to stop, Tara,” said Audrey. “Give me my son back. You haven’t hurt him yet.”

  “Hurt him?” said Tara, whirling. Her face radiated surprise. One hand remained on an ominous-looking dial. “It’s you who’ve hurt him. This boy has potential. I should have known! I should have gotten to him earlier.”

  “Please don’t,” said Audrey, easing forward.

  “If you take one more step, Adler will rip your throats out.”

  Audrey froze halfway across the room.

  Virgil raised the shotgun, aiming it directly at Tara. “Put both hands in the air, Doctor Beals!”

  Tara laughed, turning to stare ominously at Audrey, her hand on the machine.

  Audrey felt Cooder easing up close behind her, smelled him, sensed him the way fish sense each other in a school. She knew how fast his pulse was pounding, felt the sweat breaking out on his brow just like hers. She glanced at him as his eyes fell slowly from her and dropped onto the dog. As Audrey watched, Adler’s lips began to relax back over his teeth.

  Zach screamed danger signals into Audrey’s head. He knew the machine could kill. And the memory fragments that flooded Audrey’s brain said it could kill incredibly painfully. Still, she and Cooder slipped one step closer.

  “Put your hands in the air!” repeated Virgil, stepping around Audrey and Cooder.

  Tara faced them and chuckled.

  “You didn’t say Mother May I,” she said.

  “What’s the machine?” Virgil whispered to Audrey.

  Audrey was afraid shooting Tara might set the machine off. “It causes pain. Terrible pain.”

  “She’d do that to her own nephew?”

  Audrey didn’t bother to answer. “Let my son go, Tara.”

  “I can’t do that. He’s much too talented. As are you. You lied to me, Audrey. Now that I have the two of you, I can get back to my research.”

  “What research?”

  “Sheriff,” said Tara. “Put the shotgun down and lay your gunbelt on the floor.”

  “Afraid I can’t do that.”

  “Very well.”

  Tara twisted the dial a notch and Zach and Audrey screamed at the same time, Audrey taking a stumbling step forward before Cooder caught her. Tara eased off the power.

  “Set your shotgun on the floor, Sheriff, or Zach and Audrey will suffer more pain than you can imagine,” said Tara. “And they will surely die.”

  “Can she do that?” said Virgil, glancing at Audrey. When she nodded, he reluctantly did as he was told.

  Tara stared thoughtfully at Audrey. “Amazing. You felt more of Zach’s p
ain than any other subject ever has. This is going to be the crowning achievement of my career.”

  Tara reached atop the machine, withdrawing a pistol, aiming it at the three of them but glancing at Zach.

  “In Martha’s basement Zach managed to do something to my other pistol. He’s kinesthetic. Did you know that, Audrey?”

  Audrey nodded.

  “The low level of pain the machine is administering should keep that talent under control for now,” said Tara.

  Audrey could feel the pain, like a knife digging just its point into a thousand different locations on her body, so that was why she’d been having trouble contacting Zach. He was fighting the pain as well as his fear.

  Audrey shook her head. “You’re insane, Tara.”

  “No more than Galileo or Einstein.”

  “They didn’t torture children.”

  “Look,” said Tara, pointing toward a wide row of colored wires running down Zach’s leg. Audrey squinted as Tara flicked a light switch and bathed Zach in a fluorescent glow. Then she jerked aside the sheet covering his torso. The wires were attached to every portion of his body, now clothed only in a pair of jockey shorts. One heavy cable led up under the cloth covering his head. Audrey knew what lay beneath the cotton. The cable led to the mask, the metal monstrosity that had been haunting her dreams. It was all coming back to her now. Sensing the other’s pain each time a new victim was in the chair. Hiding her feelings because Paula had warned her—revealing them meant that she would be strapped into the mask. She remembered everything. Even the cloth was no longer an enigma. Tara draped the cotton over the mask and down across the victim’s torso to stanch the flow of blood. Sometimes the veins in the victim’s neck burst from the stress.