Night Terrors

by Mark Lukens

  She opened the door and let the maid in, and then she thought that she was definitely going to go down to the bar in a few hours and get those drinks. Yes, she’d made up her mind – she needed something to take the edge off of this constant tension.

  5.

  Agent Woods finished his fast food meal and took it to the garbage can (rather than throw it down on the passenger floorboard) while Tara talked to her aunt as she paced back and forth beside his car. Agent Woods used this opportunity to collect the trash on the passenger floorboard and throw it away so he could give Tara more legroom.

  When Tara hung up the phone with her aunt, Woods was already sitting in the driver’s seat with the photo of Steve in his hands. He studied the picture: Steve in the chair, the tape over his mouth, the fear in his wide eyes.

  Tara looked out the window at the long afternoon shadows. It was getting a little cooler with a nice breeze blowing through the palm trees that surrounded the fast food restaurant.

  “Look at this?” Agent Woods said.

  Tara turned to look at him. He was picking at the corner of the photograph like the backing on it was coming loose. He picked at it with his short fingernails. Tara almost offered to help pull the backing off – but her fingernails were just as short as Woods’ nails.

  He’d peeled it away enough to pull the backing off, which looked to have been carefully glued to the back of the photograph. He pulled at it slowly, careful not to rip it. After he pulled it free from the photo, he just stared at the other side of the white backing for a moment in the dwindling light.

  “What is it?” Tara asked him.

  “Looks like a map.”

  Woods handed the backing to Tara. The backing was a little flimsy and sticky from whatever kind of glue had been used to seal it to the back of the photo, but the crude drawing done in black pen was easily seen – it showed Highway 60, which led out of Tampa towards Polk County. And near the county border, a line was drawn from Highway 60, running north, and the name of the road was written down in tiny, neat handwriting. And off of this road was a smaller road with a small star drawn at the end of it.

  She looked at Woods.

  “The killer drew us a map,” he said and started the car.

  Tara had saved photos of her drawings on her phone, and she pulled up the sketch of the house she’d drawn last night in her sleep. This was the house Steve was in, she was sure of it. But why would Jeremy draw a map for her? To get her there? How could he have been so sure she would find it?

  As Woods sped down the road, heading towards Highway 60, Tara began to have her first feelings of doubt about Agent Woods.

  “Are you going to call for some kind of backup?” Tara asked as they turned west onto Highway 60, heading for the more remote area of Hillsborough County.

  “Not yet,” Woods answered. “Not until I’m sure I have him. If he’s there, then I’ll have every cop in the county there.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  1.

  Woods drove down a narrow road crowded on both sides with brush and trees. The road had ruts and holes, and his car felt like it was going to shake apart. A cloud of dust followed the car, the dust glowing red from the tail lights. The sun dropped slowly towards the horizon and the shadows grew longer.

  Tara looked down at the photo of Steve tied to the chair. She could feel that they were very close to him now.

  Woods slowed his car down to a crawl after passing a stand of woods that stretched on for half a mile. They saw a house among a sea of weeds and brush, set back from the road beyond a sagging chain link fence. The house looked just like the one in Tara’s drawing.

  The whole acreage of property around the house was fenced in and the gates in front were closed and chained shut. Beyond the gates there was no discernable driveway, and there were no vehicles parked among the overgrown shrubs and grass that they could see.

  Woods continued down the road another half mile. He drove past three empty lots until he came to a piece of land with a rusted doublewide trailer sitting in the middle of it. There were two old pickup trucks parked in the front. He turned around in that driveway and then idled back down the road with his headlights off. He pulled into the empty lot next to the house and his car crunched slowly over the brush and weeds until he parked next to the chain link fence that surrounded the house. The brush and shrubs were so high against the chain link fence that it concealed their car from the house.

  Agent Woods shut his car off.

  They sat there for a long moment. They listened to the sounds of dusk; the insects buzzing, a dog barking in the distance, someone using a chain saw a mile away, but they didn’t hear any noises coming from the house beyond the fence. They didn’t see any movement in the brush around them.

  Woods took the keys out of the ignition and then he popped off the plastic cover from the dome light in the ceiling and yanked out the little light bulb. He got out and pocketed the car keys, trying to be as quiet as possible. He leaned back into the car and stared at Tara.

  “Stay here for a minute. I’m going to see if I can find an opening in the fence.”

  Tara nodded.

  Agent Woods closed the door almost all the way and then he was off and running through the knee-high weeds and grasses. A moment later he was just a shadow moving among the gloom, and then she didn’t see him anymore.

  Tara made herself wait in the passenger seat a moment longer, watching out the windshield, before she turned around and looked in the back seat. There was a small suitcase on the rear floorboard behind the driver’s seat and a full garbage bag behind her seat. She glanced back to make sure Woods wasn’t coming back and then she crawled halfway into the back to inspect the garbage bag. It wasn’t tied and she pulled it open a little bit. The garbage bag was full of clothes that looked like they needed to be washed.

  And then she saw something among the dirty clothing, a small plastic baggie with an item inside that she recognized. She reached her hand into the pile of dirty clothes and plucked the little baggie out carefully with two fingers of her hand like she was touching something disgusting.

  Inside the baggie was a smashed light bulb – it was the same light bulb from her house. The same light bulb that Agent Woods said he was going to try and get a fingerprint from. But he hadn’t turned it in for analysis – he’d left it here in this garbage bag of dirty clothes. He had lied to her.

  Tara jumped when her cell phone rang and vibrated. She nearly screamed.

  She plopped back down into the passenger seat and checked her phone.

  It was Lorie calling.

  “Hello,” Tara breathed into the phone as she scanned the brush in the evening gloom, looking for Woods.

  “Tara,” Lorie nearly squealed into her ear. “Listen to me very carefully. Where are you right now?”

  A gigantic hand of fear began to tighten around Tara’s heart, squeezing her lungs. Her skin felt tingly and her mouth went dry in an instant. Something was wrong. She was used to Lorie’s melodramatics, but this was way beyond that. Lorie was scared.

  “I’m with Agent Woods,” Tara told her. “In his car. The killer took Steve out of his apartment and -”

  “None of that’s important. Is Agent Woods with you right now? Is he in the car with you?”

  Tara looked out at the early evening murk, searching for Woods, but there was no sign of him.

  “No, not right now,” she told Lorie. “Why? What’s wrong?”

  “You need to get out of that car right now. Wherever you are, you need to run. You need to get away from Woods as fast as you can.”

  “What?” Tara asked. She could feel the breath leaving her lungs in a rush. But she’d already known something was very wrong a few seconds before Lorie called. The crushed light bulb in the back of Woods’ car had been the evidence that she’d needed.

  “Agent Woods is not who he says he is,” Lorie said.

  2.

  Tara felt like she’d been slapped. A shock ran through her bod
y and she was instantly tense, her skin tingling even more now. She gripped her cell phone tighter.

  “I called my uncle,” Lorie continued quickly. “I asked him to check Agent David Woods out. He looked him up and there is no Agent David Woods. At least not anymore. He’s been dead for two years now.”

  “Dead?” Tara said and her voice sounded so far away to her own ears.

  “He was murdered in Pennsylvania.”

  A small burst of static interrupted Lorie’s voice.

  “Where are … right now?” Lorie asked as the static blurred some of her words.

  Tara was about to answer but a loud knocking on the passenger window startled her and she nearly screamed. She clicked the hang-up button on her cell phone without thinking about it.

  Woods opened the passenger door and stared down at her with his dark eyes.

  “Who were you talking to?” he asked as he stood in between the open car door and the night, like he was blocking her from getting out of the car.

  “It … it was just … Lorie. Nothing important really.”

  “I found a way inside the fence.”

  Woods backed up to let Tara get out of the car and he stood in the knee-high grass waiting for her.

  Tara wondered for a moment if she should tell him she wanted to wait in the car. She wondered why he wasn’t demanding that she stay in the car. Wouldn’t a real FBI agent tell her to stay here where it was safe? But he was patiently waiting for her to get out and follow him.

  And she couldn’t demand to stay in the car now. It would look too suspicious to him.

  “Maybe we should wait for some backup,” Tara said to him in a low voice. “Maybe you should call this in now.”

  For a moment Woods stared at her like he might suspect something.

  “No,” Woods finally whispered. “We don’t have the time. I don’t want to wait and take a chance on Steve getting hurt. And I need to know they are in that house before I call it in.”

  Tara thought of Steve.

  Steve had been the bait all along. Tara could see it all now. Jeremy had found out about the dead agent – the real David Woods, maybe even murdered him two years ago, and then he took his identity. What better way to get close to her, to worm his way into her life. He must’ve recruited the Reverend, forced him to spy on her, and found out she’d been to the café with Steve. And then he killed the poor Reverend once he didn’t need him anymore. He had taken Steve and lured her out here to this house in the middle of nowhere.

  How come she hadn’t seen it coming?

  Because he was too powerful. Even now, this close to him, she could feel his dark power practically crushing her. And now that they were alone in this isolated place, he would have time to do anything he wanted.

  Was Steve already dead now because his purpose had been served? If he was still alive she couldn’t abandon him now. She had to find out if he was still alive and then she had to find a way to hurt Woods.

  She thought about the gun tucked away in Woods’ holster inside his suit coat. If she could just get to that …

  She forced the idea out of her mind – she had to be careful with her thoughts around him.

  Tara got out of the car and stood on legs that were a little unsteady at first, but they were getting stronger by the second. She was very scared, but there was another feeling building inside of her, a feeling so alien to her that she almost didn’t recognize it at first.

  Anger.

  Jeremy was standing right in front of her, a half-brother who had tried to kill her when she was a baby, the same person who had murdered her parents, butchered them and took them away from her. He had set all of this up to get her out here. And she’d gone along with all of it. And now she suddenly wanted revenge, and she didn’t want another person to die because of her.

  She couldn’t let Jeremy kill her. What would he do next? Who would he go after next? What was he going to do after his ritual was complete? She had to try and stop his killing spree now.

  Tara grabbed her cell phone and her purse, about to take it with her, but Woods stopped her.

  “Leave your phone here. I don’t want a call coming in while we’re near the house.”

  Tara thought about arguing, but she didn’t. Right now the only thing she had going for her was the element of surprise. He didn’t know yet that she knew.

  Or did he? her mind whispered.

  She had to believe that he didn’t know yet. She needed to use any power she had to keep him pushed away and keep the shiny black fingers of his mind from probing her and discovering that she knew the truth.

  Tara set her cell phone down in the center console and then she stood back up and looked at Woods.

  There was one other small advantage she still might have. She had something else in her pocket that she could use – the pepper spray that Woods had given her.

  3.

  Tara followed Woods through the field of weeds. They walked carefully, but the dry snapping of the dry grass sounded so loud in the darkness. Woods showed her the tear in the chain link fence which was about fifty feet down from his sedan. It looked like Woods may have pulled the piece of fence out more, creating a bigger hole for them to squeeze through.

  He waited for her, gesturing at her to crawl through.

  Tara bent down and squeezed her body through the tear in the fence. She felt the sharp metal burrs of the edge of the chain link tugging at the back of her shirt. For one moment she started to panic, feeling like she was stuck there in the slit in the fence – helpless in front of Woods. But then the fabric of her shirt tore free and she was inside the fence, crawling among the thick and prickly grass and weeds. At least the soil and the brush were dry.

  She got to her feet quickly and turned to watch Woods crawl through the hole. He was much bigger than she was, but he seemed to have an easier time pushing his way through the tear in the fence. She thought about kicking him in the chin while he crawled through, kicking at him like a kicker punting a football. With the strength she’d built up from her years of self-defense training, she was fairly certain she could knock him out, perhaps even kill him if her kick landed precisely.

  But it was too late. Woods was through the hole and on his feet in a flash. He was much quicker and more agile than she had suspected. He must be hiding a very strong and athletic body underneath his dark suit.

  “We’ll walk to the house,” he whispered at her. “When we get there, I want you to wait outside. But before I go inside, I want you to try and reach out to Steve, maybe you can tell exactly where he is.” Woods stood very close to her in the encroaching darkness. “And reach out to the killer.”

  Tara nodded and looked across the sea of brownish-green grass and weeds at the dark house in the distance.

  She walked towards the house, pushing her legs through the brush that seemed to grab at her legs like millions of tiny little demon hands trying to drag her down into the earth. The dry, scraping sound seemed so loud. Woods walked right behind her, but he seemed to barely make a sound as he walked.

  They were at the side of the house, their backs against the rough stucco; the paint was faded and stained with mildew. They stood by a large section of wall that was between two dark windows – the only windows on this side of the home. Neither one of them peeked in through the windows.

  It was decision time for Tara. She had to do something soon. If Woods got her inside the house it might be too late.

  She glanced at the rear and the front of the house and she noticed what looked like piles of junk near the back of the house, and another pile near the corner by the front of the house. But this side wall of the house they were leaning against was virtually free of junk – except for one thing only a few feet away from her, within easy reach, one thing that she could use: a shovel.

  But looking at the shovel gave her the creeps. Why was that shovel here? Was it going to be used later to bury Steve? And to bury her somewhere among this dry brush?

  She had to do somet
hing right now.

  Tara dropped her hand down by her pants, rubbing her hands on her jeans like she was rubbing off the dirt and stickers from the weeds and grasses they had just waded through. She slipped her right hand down into her pocket and plucked out the small canister of pepper spray, palming it, hiding it in her hand.

  “What’s wrong?” Woods hissed at her. He had his gun out, clenched in his hand. “What is it?” he asked again.

  “I can feel Steve,” Tara whispered as she clutched her pepper spray, keeping it out of Woods’ sight. “I know where he is in the house.”

  Woods nodded. “Okay. Where is he?”

  “You should know, you son of a bitch!” Tara yelled and aimed the can of pepper spray at him. She pressed the button and for a split second she wondered if Woods had given her an empty can of pepper spray, knowing that she might try and use it on him.

  But the spray came out in a steady stream and hit him right in the eyes.

  Woods howled and dropped his gun. He brought his fists up to his eyes, trying to knuckle out the burning liquid from his eyes.

  Tara didn’t hesitate – she grabbed the shovel that was leaning against the side of the house and she swung it at Woods like a baseball bat.

  He never saw it coming. The flat part of the shovel hit him right in the side of the head – if she had turned the blade to its sharp edge, it probably would’ve killed him immediately. The blow knocked Woods to the ground; he fell like a dead weight and made a loud crashing sound, and then his arms and legs splayed out limply. He was motionless.

  Tara spotted the gun on the ground. She picked it up and aimed it down at Woods with trembling hands.

  But Woods wasn’t moving. He didn’t even seem to be breathing. And now she could see blood pouring out of the side of his head and along the hairline of his forehead. The blood looked almost black in the night.