Night Terrors

by Dennis Palumbo

  “And that helped?”

  “Yes, because he was right. Fear gives us the edge we need to stay alert, to recognize what’s coming. It helps focus our attention. It’s only a problem when it paralyzes us. Makes us feel impotent to act.”

  “Well, I’m there, Doc. Paralyzed and impotent. Sounds like a bad law firm.”

  She sighed. “But I guess you’re right about fear. I remember when I did my first three-way. With some guy and his skinny girlfriend. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m a big woman. I was afraid I’d roll over in the heat of the moment and squash the poor thing.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “True story.”

  “No doubt.”

  She summoned a wan smile. “C’mon, I figured we could use a little levity right about now.”

  “Good coping skill.”

  “Maybe. Unless it’s just empty bravado. Like whistling in the graveyard. ‘Cause I’m still scared shitless.”

  I took her hand, squeezed it hard.

  “You’re gonna come through this, Claire. At least if I have anything to do with it.”

  “Talk about empty bravado. Christ, now you sound like Agent Alcott.”

  “Well, if you’re gonna start insulting me…”

  But her smile had long since faded. She turned and stared once more at the somber, shuttered window.

  ***

  Ten minutes later, Claire Cobb and I were sitting together in the back seat of an SUV with tinted windows.

  Our driver, alone in the front seat, was Agent Green.

  We’d just pulled out of the motel parking lot, right behind Alcott and Reese in a nondescript sedan. Given the knot of traffic and the increasingly dense snowfall, soon their blurred rear lights were all that was visible through the driver’s windshield. Then they too seemed to vanish into the milk-white sheeting of the storm.

  “Weather’s gettin’ worse.” Agent Green hunched forward, steering with one hand, using the other to palm away a coating of fog from the windshield. “Bad break.”

  “Why am I not surprised?” Claire murmured.

  I spoke up quickly. “How far to the B&B?”

  “Figurin’ traffic and this new storm, I don’t see us reachin’ Sewickley in less than an hour.”

  As if to emphasize his point, Green slammed on the brakes, nearly rearending the hatchback that had slid into line in front of us.

  “Asshole never hear o’ runnin’ a yellow light? Damn!”

  Green pounded the wheel with his fist, then let out a long exhalation.

  Claire gave me a wry smile. “Gonna be a long goddam hour…”

  But she was wrong.

  I felt the other car pull up alongside us almost before I saw it. A dark-hued panel truck, the driver peering right in at us through his opened window.

  Opened window. In this weather—

  It was him. The coat, ski mask, and gloves.

  The gun.

  “Go!” I shouted at Green. “Get moving—!”

  “What? We’re jammed in. I can’t—”

  I turned and threw my arms around Claire, pushing us both down hard. Just below the shooter’s line of sight.

  The first shot blew out the front passenger side window. Loud as a thunderclap. Glass shattering, spraying.

  Claire’s screams echoed the lingering sound of the gunshot. Then rose louder, choked, gasping.

  Agent Green shoved the car into park, his other hand reaching into his jacket. He didn’t make it.

  Another shot boomed, more glass flew. And a scarlet streak edged the side of his skull. He cried out.

  Keeping Claire’s head down beneath the seat, I tried to raise myself up enough to see how badly Green had been hit. He slumped forward on the wheel, unmoving.

  Beneath me, I felt Claire’s whole body quivering. Heard her anguished, wracking sobs. Panic rising.

  Then another shot pierced the rear passenger window, whistling over our heads. Glass exploding. Shards slicing my hands and face.

  Claire was wheezing, hyperventilating. I bent and cradled her, ignoring the rivulets of blood spreading across my knuckles. Bracing for another gun shot.

  It didn’t come.

  Suddenly, Claire wriggled up from under me and squinted out the shattered window. Face smeared with tears, tattooed with an ugly bruise.

  “He’s not there!” Words coming in short gasps.

  I followed her gaze. The panel truck was still beside us, wedged in by the stalled, motionless traffic. As were we. But the driver’s seat was empty.

  Claire turned to me, her anguished look as fierce as it was stricken.

  “He’s coming! For me! I’ve gotta get away!”

  She began beating my head and arms with her fists, fully in the grip of a maddened, intolerable panic. I grabbed her wrists, held her.

  “Maybe he’s gone! Maybe—”

  Another shot boomed, piercing the rear window on our other side. Glass pelted us. Claire screamed, pulling free of my grasp.

  Disoriented, I swiveled around, trying to make out where he was. Behind the car? Closing in—?

  But all I could see was a whirling, roaring cascade of snow. All I could hear was the shrill honking of car horns.

  Then, abruptly, I felt Claire moving beside me. I turned back to her just as she bolted out of the seat and pushed open the door on her side. And ran.

  “Claire! No!!”

  Too late, I scrambled out after her. Frantically looking about me for some sign of the shooter.

  But I saw nothing. Heard nothing.

  Just kept running.

  In my haste, I slipped on the ice, losing my footing. By the time I righted myself, Claire had managed to put some distance between us.

  But not enough. I spotted her.

  She’d threaded her way through the stopped traffic, the choked snarl of cars in the intersection. Through the growing crowd of stunned, curious on-lookers and drivers climbing out of their own cars. Into a howling wind and blowing snowstorm, beyond which rose the high whine of approaching sirens.

  Then she was gone, slipping into a canyon of looming, dilapidated buildings. Disappearing into a maze of forlorn alleys, shuttered shops and single-lane side streets. Into the veins and arteries of the district’s broken, forgotten heart.

  I followed her.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  I’d just caught sight of her, moving haltingly down a narrow alley through the flying snow, when I heard the gunshot. Instinctively, I ducked my head, but kept running after her.

  Claire must have heard it, too. She hesitated for a brief moment, head swiveling back and forth, then turned and vanished around the corner of a deserted tobacco shop.

  I sped up, feet slipping on the soft accumulaton of new snow. Not daring to look up or around me, I arrived at the same corner. Expecting at any second to hear another shot. Feel the sudden, searing burn of a bullet.

  But there was only the wild sigh of the wind, the billowing whiteness of the storm. Where had the shot come from? Behind me, from the street? From one of the smudged windows overlooking the alley? A rooftop?

  I tried to think. The shooter must have seen Claire get out of the car. Then followed her into the clutch of old, semi-abandoned buildings. A perfect killing floor, emptied of everything but hurrying snow and an ominous, flooding darkness. Determined to finish what he’d started.

  I peered around the corner of the shop, down into another alley. Narrower, barely discernable in the dim glow of the streetlight at its other end. Claire had stumbled halfway down its length. I saw her curled on her side in the snow, free hand rubbing her knee.

  I almost called out to her, then realized that my shout might give the shooter a new fix on her location.

  Instead, I moved in a crouch down the alley toward her, at the same time glanci
ng from one side to the other.

  Looking for the movement of a shadow. The glint of a gun barrel. Anything.

  I tried to hurry, gasping in pain with every step.

  My sides ached from the exertion, my blood-smeared hands stung. I never felt so vulnerable, exposed.

  By the time I reached her, Claire had just managed to get up. Her eyes wide with terror. Her breathing quick, shallow. She practically swayed on her feet.

  Gripping her shoulders, I tried to steady her. Peering into her oblivious, panic-stricken face.

  I noticed that her glasses were gone. Probably lost in the snow when she fell. No time to look.

  But my gaze had spotted something. A dozen yards ahead, on the right. Cover.

  “C’mon!”

  Her legs started to buckle, so, dropping my hands to her waist, I half dragged, half carried her to the large, weather-battered trash dumpster. Wheels long rusted, lid piled high with a month’s undisturbed snow. It stood against the side of a squat, brick-and-mortar apartment building whose windows were barred and caked with ice.

  I pulled us down to the ground, crouching low and tight against the cold metal skin of the dumpster. Behind us, at the end of the alley, that lone streetlight. Our only way out, agonizingly far away.

  Claire’s sudden death grip on my arm drew my gaze back at her. She huddled, trembling, breathless. Paralyzed by engulfing, immeasurable fear.

  Suddenly, the sharp crack of a gunshot pierced the wail of the storm. A bullet pinged off the lip of the dumpster, just above our heads.

  He knew where we were.

  Claire began to weep uncontrollably, between sharp intakes of breath. I pulled us lower to the ground.

  Steeling myself, I risked leaning out and squinting down the alley’s length. Back the way we’d come.

  At first, I saw nothing.

  Then, a subtle movement. A blurred figure emerging from the hellish storm. Coming toward us.

  I drew myself back. My mind raced, trying to conceive of a plan. See any kind of move.

  We were unarmed. He wasn’t.

  We were huddled behind the alley’s only obvious cover, with at least twenty yards between us and the near corner, and the broader street beyond. And the streetlight on that corner, providing the only illumination, would reveal us to the shooter if we tried to move.

  We were trapped.

  Then, even as that thought registered, I knew that our pursuer must have realized the same thing. Which forced me, as though against my will, to risk another look.

  He was getting closer. Walking slowly, taking one measured step at a time in the soft snow. Ugly gun glinting in the dimness.

  He seemed unreal, other-worldly. In that same thick coat, ski mask, and gloves. Eyes invisible, shielded beneath his hat’s brim.

  Suddenly, inexplicably, I thought about Lyle Barnes. The missing FBI profiler. Had his night terrors been like this? Had he been visited in his tortured sleep by such implacable, seemingly unstoppable creatures? Silent. Masked. Nightmarish juggernaults stalking the sleeper’s pitiless, unending dreamscape…

  Christ! I involuntarily shook my head, as though to push such thoughts from my mind.

  Because this was real. The shooter, coming toward us out of the night and the storm, was real.

  And closer now. Perhaps twenty feet away. Holding the revolver with both hands. The hunt ended. His prey caught.

  I didn’t see a choice. I’d have to time it perfectly.

  Wait till he was almost upon us. Look for telltale signs. Like planting his feet. Bringing the gun to eye level.

  Then making my move, such as it was. Jumping him. Fighting for his weapon. Somehow…stopping him.

  He took another step closer.

  Pressure crowding my chest, I sank back, readied myself. Claire’s bandaged shoulder pressed next to mine.

  “Don’t move,” I whispered.

  But she just stared at me. Glassy eyed. Shivering with panic. With sheer, unyielding terror.

  That’s when it happened.

  Suddenly Claire was staring out at something. Just to her left. Her breath quick, serrated.

  I followed her gaze. A tall building across the alley, a hulking structure shadowed black against the night.

  Then I saw what she did. A fire escape. Old, rusted, hanging from iron struts embedded into the building’s bricks. The ladder had been left unhinged, its lower section extended, rungs reaching almost to the ground.

  “Claire, no!”

  She turned her eyes toward mine for just a moment.

  Enough for me to see their crazed determination. Their desperate, inconsolable fear.

  Another bullet sliced the air, burying itself in the bricks above us. As I instinctively ducked my head, Claire bolted from behind the dumpster and ran out into the alley. Stumbling blindly, hand outstretched, toward the bottom of the ladder.

  I hauled myself up, unthinkingly. Never taking my eyes off her as she grabbed the ladder’s sides and put a foot on the first rung.

  The sound of boots scraping the snow-scrabbled ground snapped my head around. Back toward the alley.

  The shooter stood calmly, having come even with the edge of the dumpster. Not five feet from me. Gun upraised. Aimed right at me. Pinned there.

  I looked across the alley at Claire, who was clumsily climbing up the ladder. She’d only reached the third rung, the effort nearly exhausting her.

  The shooter saw her, too. Head held perfectly still, profiled against the falling snow, watching. Just watching.

  While keeping his weapon pointed at me.

  Suddenly, Claire gave an anguished, terrified gasp. Her bandaged arm hindering her, she’d collapsed, a leg entwined between two rungs. Clinging desperately to the ladder. As its corroded metal groaned and swayed.

  It was then that the shooter finally swung his gun away from me. Toward her.

  Now or never.

  With a hoarse shout, I took two broad steps into the alley and hurtled myself at the shooter. Wrapping my arms around him, I let the momentum carry us both to the brick wall on the other side. We collided against it with a thudding, jarring impact.

  Intense pain exploded in my shoulders and neck, and for a moment I thought I might black out. Then, twisting violently, the shooter broke from my grasp. Staggered away, gun still held tight in his fist.

  Struggling to stay upright, I lurched toward him again. But he was ready this time. He swung his gun-hand in a clean, swift arc and clipped my jaw with the butt.

  I went down hard. Tasting blood, even as I fought to stay conscious…

  Then I saw him turn his gaze once more to Claire.

  I cried out, my voice a strangled, impotent cry against the storm. The darkness. The inevitable.

  The shooter raised his gun, supporting the butt with the palm of his steadying hand, and fired. Twice.

  I could only watch in horror as Claire Cobb, hanging helplessly on the lower section of the ladder, screamed in agony. Twin splotches of dark scarlett sprouted on her chest. Blood bubbling across the curve of her bandaged arm.

  For a long, awful moment she hung, suspended, in the same position on the ladder. Leg coiled awkwardly between the rungs. Free arm clutching the ladder’side.

  And then, as if only now realizing what had happened, she released her grip on the ladder.

  And fell.

  My heart stopped.

  Unthinking, choked with rage, I climbed to my feet. Stumbled toward her. Out into the open—

  The shooter turned back to me. Raised his gun a second time. For his second kill.

  I froze in mid-step. Looked at him. At the black ski mask that hid his face. At his shadowed, unseen eyes.

  When, from the far corner of the alley, I heard a familiar voice call out. Young, strong. Angry.

  “Drop it!
FBI!”

  It was Agent Green, standing unsteadily beneath the streetlight at the end of the alley, two-handing his service weapon. Pointed determinedly past where I stood, at the shooter.

  “I said, freeze, motherfucker!”

  Hesitating only a second, the killer suddenly crouched and fired at the agent.

  Wildly. Missing him.

  But the shots forced Green to hit the ground. Giving the shooter enough time to turn and start running at full speed back down the alley.

  Within moments, he’d vanished into the storm-threaded darkness. As if he’d never been.

  Rousing myself, I made my way to where Claire lay on the ground. Bending over her prone body, I cradled her head in my hands. Blood pooled thickly, spreading across her chest.

  Meanwhile, Agent Green had gotten to his feet and was coming up the alley toward Claire and me. His breathing labored, his head wound still bleeding freely, he stared in horror down at her.

  I cast him a warning look, then bent over her again.

  As I heard Green step a few feet away, and start talking into his cell. Calling for backup. An ambulance.

  Though I was sure he knew, as I did, that it was too late.

  I took her hand.

  “Claire…I’m so sorry…”

  Strangely, the panic had left her eyes. Replaced with a sad, disquieting calm.

  With supreme effort, her mouth moved. A half-smile.

  “Told ya, Doc…I knew. I knew it all along…”

  Then, lips still parted, she grew still. Eyes going dull, empty. In the bitter cold, the ceaselessly falling snow. And the close, impenetrable darkness.

  I lay her gently back down. On my hands and knees, I crawled a short distance away in the soft carpet of new snow. Head down, staring at the ground. At the crumbled cobblestones and cracked asphalt beneath the cold skin of smooth, translucent white.

  A whiteness marred by the blood dripping from my swollen mouth, oozing from my cut, throbbing hands. Each drop a reminder of what just happened. Of what I’d allowed to happen.