Night Terrors

by Mark Lukens

  “I’m ready to try,” she told him.

  2.

  Tara got comfortable on the couch, nestled into it, her head resting on a pillow against the arm. Her legs were stretched out, her muscles relaxed, her eyes closed, her breathing deep and even.

  Agent Woods sat in the recliner and watched Tara. He had taken out a small tape recorder and he had his small notebook open on the coffee table next to the recorder with a pen on top of the paper.

  “Okay, Tara,” he said in a soft voice. “You’re perfectly safe here. I just want you to remember that. Always keep that in the back of your mind. No matter what happens, the killer can’t get to you right now. I won’t let that happen.”

  Tara nodded, and inside she felt a warm feeling of security. She believed the agent’s words, she felt safe and protected. She finally felt like she could reach her mind out into the darkness and search safely. She had always been afraid of reaching out, letting her powers go. She’d always been afraid of what she would see and feel. But the terrible images came to her in her dreams whether she wanted them to or not, so she might as well try to reach out.

  “Just let your mind open up,” Agent Woods continued in a soft, soothing voice. “Just say anything, any impression that comes to you, even if it doesn’t seem to make any sense.”

  Tara nodded, and she imagined a blob of energy, almost like a giant bubble of water floating in the darkness, glowing with different colors, constantly changing. The ball of energy drifted out from her body, breaking away from her, stretching out into the darkness, breaking free from her, seeking the darkness, searching for the killer, searching for his signal. She watched as the blob of energy faded away into the darkness, travelling farther and farther away, becoming smaller and smaller until it was gone.

  And then she saw herself standing alone in the freezing darkness. It was a suffocating darkness, closing in around her, squeezing the breath out of her. She knew she had found his realm – The Shadow Man.

  “I think I feel him,” Tara whispered. “He’s trying to block me. He’s strong and he’s blocking me out, but I can still feel him.”

  Agent Woods leaned forward. “That’s good,” he said in a low voice. “Go ahead and reach out. Don’t be afraid. I’m right here and I won’t let anything happen to you.”

  Tara nodded.

  “He’s so close,” she said. “Very close to me. He can see me. Feel me. He feels like he has total control over me.”

  In her mind, Tara walked forward into the darkness, venturing deeper and deeper into the freezing blackness. And then she saw a slash of bright light ahead of her. The light was knifing through the darkness, almost like the light was cutting a slit through it.

  “Can you see him?” Agent Woods asked, and his voice sounded so far away now. “Can you describe him at all?”

  “He’s slick,” Tara answered. “He thinks he’s so slick. Slippery. Pitch black. Like a living shadow.”

  Agent Woods jotted down the words in his notebook as quickly as Tara said them.

  “You’re doing great, Tara. Don’t be afraid. Remember, you’re in a safe place right now.”

  The white light was brighter in the darkness, and the tear in the blackness was getting bigger. And now Tara could see movement inside that light. She could see the killer’s hands; they were sheathed in a shiny black material. And they were reaching out from the light towards her. She wanted to run. She could feel the panic building up inside of her as she let her mind probe further into that white light, further into the diseased mind of the killer.

  “He’s on a journey,” Tara said as she twitched on the couch. “On a … a path. He’s looking for things. Collecting things. For some kind of … of ritual or something. Everything has to be a certain way. Everything has to be perfect. But there’s something important that he still needs – the key to it all.”

  Agent Woods was perched on the edge of his seat, watching Tara. “That’s it. Let it out. Let it flow out.”

  “He’s powerful,” Tara moaned.

  In her mind she was still in the cold darkness, in front of the blinding white light that was being ripped open in the wall of black in front of her. And the white light had a buzzing noise to it, like static. And now the latex-sheathed hands were closer to her.

  She tried to run, but the gloved hands grabbed on to her, the fingers sinking into the flesh of her bare arms. His grip was so strong … she couldn’t get away.

  “He’s getting stronger!” Tara yelled from the couch as she thrashed back and forth. “One by one, he takes their power and their energy. He’s becoming stronger with every one that he takes. He’s evolving! Becoming … becoming a …”

  Tara sat straight up on the couch, screaming out the next words. “…becoming a god!!”

  3.

  Tara sat on the edge of the couch, her eyes wide open, breathing hard. She was about to jump to her feet and run, but then she realized where she was – in her own living room. She saw Agent Woods in the recliner. He looked worried.

  “You’re okay,” he said, and she could see the concern in his dark eyes. “You’re perfectly safe.”

  Tara nodded. She was safe. But for a moment she hadn’t felt safe at all. She had felt exposed and naked in front of the killer.

  “What did you see?” he asked her.

  “He’s so strong.” Tara shook her head and hugged her arms like she was cold. And she was cold. It felt like she’d really been trapped in that cold darkness for a few moments. She swore she could still feel his slick hands on her skin, gripping her.

  “He’s much more powerful than I ever imagined,” Tara added softly and then she was quiet for a moment.

  Agent Woods didn’t say anything. He gave her a chance to calm down.

  “He thinks he’s smarter than everyone else,” Tara finally said. “Superior to everyone else. He thinks he can do whatever he wants right under everyone’s noses.”

  Agent Woods stood up and gave her a half-smile. “You did great. That’s enough for tonight. We can try again later.”

  He clicked off his tape recorder and dropped it down inside his pants pocket. He got up and went to the kitchen for the rest of the wine. He brought back the bottle and another wine glass. He poured Tara half a glass and himself half a glass.

  Tara drank down her glass of wine quickly and then nestled back into the couch. She closed her eyes, letting the exhaustion and the buzz from the wine overtake her. It was a welcome feeling, and she let it come.

  “Go ahead and lie down,” Agent Woods told her as he picked up his glass of wine and sat back down in the recliner. He sipped the wine.

  Tara got more comfortable, but she opened her eyes and watched him.

  “Agent Woods?”

  “Please … call me David.”

  “David. Is there a Mrs. Woods?” Normally Tara wouldn’t ask such a bold question, but the wine had crashed through her inhibitions.

  “No,” he answered. “Married to the job as they say.”

  Tara couldn’t help smiling a little.

  “What about you?” he asked Tara. “How come you don’t have a boyfriend or a husband here protecting you?”

  “My boyfriend left a year ago,” Tara answered and she could hear a slight slur in her words – either from the alcohol or exhaustion, or maybe both.

  “I find it difficult to imagine anyone leaving you.”

  Tara felt a slight tingle in her insides. Was he flirting with her? She couldn’t be sure. “I broke his nose,” she said.

  An awkward silence.

  Great, Tara. Just when things are getting somewhere, you know just what to say to ruin it.

  “Maybe I was wrong,” he said with a slight chuckle like he meant it as a joke.

  At least she hoped he meant it as a joke.

  “It was my sleepwalking,” Tara said in a groggy voice. “I’ve been sleepwalking my whole life. He got tired of finding me in the bathtub in the middle of the night. Or under the bed. Or outside.”


  Tara couldn’t believe she was telling Agent Woods about her night terrors. It was normally a taboo subject with her, definitely not something she discussed with a stranger.

  “It became embarrassing for him,” Tara continued. “He drew the line when I began attacking him in my sleep. I broke his nose one night. He left the next day.”

  “What a loser,” Agent Woods said.

  Tara smiled and nearly laughed.

  “What about you?” she said. “You seem kind of young to be an FBI agent.”

  “I completed high school a year early. And then I did two years in a junior college. But from the time I was a boy, I knew what I wanted to be – an FBI agent. I never had a doubt. I applied after college and I was the dedicated person they were looking for. They look for singularly focused candidates – and that was me.”

  “What about a partner?” Tara asked. She felt like she was close to drifting off to sleep now. She didn’t even have the TV on and the apartment was dark now except for the light over the stove. “Don’t FBI agents usually work in teams?”

  Agent Woods chuckled. “You’ve been watching too much TV and movies.” But then he became serious. “I’ve had partners before, still work with them sometimes. But we often work alone now. It’s a new reality with the economy and cutbacks.”

  Tara nodded. She was almost out now, but she woke with a slight start and opened her eyes.

  Agent Woods was still sitting in the recliner.

  “Could you stay for a while?” she asked and then felt a little silly asking him. There were probably a million things he needed to do. “I mean, if you want to.”

  He nodded and told her that he would stay for a while.

  Tara fell into a deep sleep.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  1.

  Tara awoke with a start. She sat up quickly and her head swam with pain. She closed her eyes and touched her forehead gingerly. She winced as a wave of nausea washed over her.

  She opened her eyes and looked down at her body. She was on her couch. She was fully dressed. And there was a blanket over her legs – a blanket from the top of her bedroom closet.

  Tara got to her feet in a panic, suddenly remembering that she’d fallen asleep with Agent Woods in her apartment; he had been sitting in the recliner, watching her.

  But he wasn’t in the chair now.

  She stumbled to the front window and thought off-handedly that at some point she must’ve kicked off her sneakers because she only had her socks on.

  Or had Agent Woods taken her sneakers off for her?

  David. He had asked her to call him David.

  She pried the plastic blinds apart and peeked out the window as the sunlight stabbed at her eyeballs. After a few seconds of adjustment she could see that Agent Woods’ plain sedan was gone. Her hulking brown Jeep sat by itself in the parking lot, two empty spaces on each side of the vehicle like the other cars didn’t want to be near it.

  She let the blinds pop back into place. She looked back at the couch and the blanket she had tossed down to the floor – the blanket from her closet.

  Oh God! He was in my bedroom. Was he snooping around?

  He was an FBI agent. It was in his nature to snoop around.

  She went into her bedroom and looked at her bed, which was still neatly made – she hardly slept in it these days. The nightlight was still plugged in near the bed, but she wanted to make sure that the rope tied to the bed leg wasn’t visible – the rope she used to tie around her ankle to keep herself from sleepwalking. She could see part of the rope tied to the leg, but the rest was tucked under the bed.

  But she didn’t think an FBI agent would miss that little detail.

  A blush of embarrassment washed over her. What did he think about a piece of rope tied to her bed leg? What did he think she was in to?

  Well, she couldn’t do anything about it now.

  Right now, she was very thirsty. And hungry. And she needed a shower.

  She went back to the living room and was about to walk past her coffee table, but she stopped and stared down at it. The drawing of the revolver and six bullets wasn’t there anymore – she had tucked that away into an office drawer last night as Agent Woods began reinstalling her light bulbs. The wine bottle and two wine glasses weren’t there anymore, either.

  She glanced at the kitchen and saw them by the sink – he had taken them back to the kitchen for her and rinsed them out.

  But the coffee table wasn’t empty - there was something on the table. A piece of copy paper folded in half with a familiar object on top of it – an object that made her think of Lorie, a small canister of pepper spray.

  She picked up the paper and opened it. It was a note from Agent Woods.

  It read: Good morning, Tara. Hope you slept well. Had some things to do, but I will get back in touch with you soon. Please stay inside and lock your doors. Left some pepper spray with you. Call me if anything happens. David.

  She set the paper back down on the coffee table and wondered for a moment where he’d gotten it from. Her office was the only place she kept this kind of paper for the printer.

  So, he’d been in her office, too. Had he checked out her entire apartment while she slept?

  2.

  During her shower, Tara thought back to last night, wondering why she had spilled her guts to this man (David) about her night terrors and her last boyfriend.

  And now Agent Woods was gone.

  He’d run away from her in the middle of the night as fast as he could; that’s what had happened.

  Tara put on a pair of faded jeans, a blue shirt, and her sneakers. She felt less vulnerable having her sneakers on, like she was prepared – prepared to fight, or prepared to run.

  She washed two aspirins down with a bottle of water and then made a grilled cheese sandwich and a small side salad of romaine lettuce, tomatoes, black olives, onions, and cucumbers topped with oil and vinegar. She was starving and she ate all of it.

  She wanted to go to the gym and work out on the punching bags, but her headache wasn’t going to allow her to do that today. Besides, Agent Woods had told her to stay inside.

  After she cleaned up the dishes in the kitchen and straightened up the living room, she called Lorie.

  Lorie answered after three rings. Lorie talked about how things were going with her and Mike up at his house in the woods. Everything sounded like it was going perfect for her.

  “So, how are you doing?” Lorie finally asked.

  Tara told Lorie about finding the bowl of light bulbs in her house.

  “Somebody was in here,” she told Lorie. “There wasn’t any sign of forced entry, Agent Woods checked for that, but somebody was in my apartment.”

  “Oh my God! You shouldn’t even be there right now.”

  “Agent Woods gave me some pepper spray and told me to call him if anything happens.”

  “I don’t like this,” Lorie said. “I’m going to call my uncle.”

  “No,” Tara snapped. She remembered what that was like and she wasn’t going through that again. “Agent Woods is working on this. He can do this.”

  3.

  Lorie paced back and forth across Mike’s kitchen with her cell phone up to her ear.

  Mike sat at the kitchen table with his IPad tablet in front of him; but he kept sneaking peaks at Lorie, watching her pace back and forth and yell into the phone.

  She caught Mike’s look and smiled at him to let him know everything was okay, but then she opened the sliding glass door that led out to a wood deck that wrapped around the second story of the house. She slipped outside and closed the door. She walked over to the railing and spoke in a softer voice as she stared out at the seemingly endless woods.

  “Why don’t you get out of there, Tara? Come up here for a while. You can stay with us for the week. Mike won’t mind.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “He’ll be okay with it after I explain everything to him.”

  “I really don’t want everyone k
nowing my business.”

  “Mike won’t mind, I swear.” Lorie glanced at the sliding glass door to see if Mike was watching her through the glass.

  He wasn’t.

  “Yeah, right,” Tara said. “I’m sure Mike wants your crazy friend coming up there and hanging around.”

  “Yes. He wants what I want. Just come up here and let this FBI guy of yours handle this. It’s his job.”

  Tara didn’t answer.

  “At least think about it,” Lorie begged.

  “I will.” A pause from Tara. “Listen, Lorie. I want you to do something for me. I want you to stay up there for a little while. Could you do that?”

  “Yeah. We’re going to be up here for at least the next three or four days. I took some vacation days.”

  “Okay. Good.”

  “I love you, Tara. You know that. I’m just worried about you.”

  “I love you, too. I’ll be okay. I promise.”

  4.

  A few hours later, Tara sat on the couch in front of the TV. There was some kind of reality show on, but she wasn’t really watching it. Her mind was wandering. She had the small canister of pepper spray in her hand, twirling it around by the little chain attached to it.

  She had called Agent Woods’ phone several times, but he didn’t answer. She left one message, letting him know that everything was okay and that she was all right. But the message sounded lame and she didn’t leave any more messages after that.

  She couldn’t sit inside her apartment anymore.

  She got up and paced back and forth across her living room. She needed to get out of her house. She needed to do something.

  “Hell with it,” Tara mumbled and walked straight for the front door.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  1.

  Tara stood in front of Steve’s front door and fought the urge to run back to her apartment. She rang the doorbell and then knocked on the door. Steve’s dark blue pickup truck was parked in front of his apartment so she assumed he was home.