Night Terror

by Chandler McGrew

  18

  AS THE NIGHT WORE ON toward dawn, dew began to glisten on the blades of tall grass, reflecting blue starlight. Silver-lined clouds scudded across the moon, sending predatory shadows creeping through the forest all around. A lone cricket chirruped in the underbrush. A woman slipped into the alders like a breath of wind. No twig snapped beneath her bare feet. No branch rustled against her cotton skirt. Every step was measured and sure. Graceful as a deer or a wolf. But furtive as a weasel on the prowl.

  She reached the top of the saddle in the hills and studied the Bock house sitting silent below, a thin light visible in the kitchen window. The bedroom was dark.

  The woman surveyed the area. The road in front of the house was empty, as it was most times of the day or night. Nothing moved in the yard. She saw no one in the trees, but still she waited, uncertain. She didn’t expect anyone to be awake at this hour, but she was stealthy by nature.

  An owl hooted in the distance, a forlorn sound, full of portent. The woman carefully negotiated the steep slope, winding through the brush, stopping at the edge of the garden. She glanced at the fountain that sat still now, reflecting the intermittent starlight.

  Then she slipped silently across the lawn like a mouse across a kitchen floor, hating the openness. She knelt beneath the bedroom window, her knees dug into the damp grass, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the deeper darkness. Then ever so slowly she raised them to the windowsill, peering into the dim confines of the house.

  Richard had his arm draped across Audrey. She slept quietly beneath the sheet, curled with her back tight against him, facing the window. One faint ray from the hall lit her face in sharp relief, like a Rembrandt painting. Her hair was pulled back, and, wrapped in the embrace of sleep, she seemed childlike and unafraid. The woman could not pull her eyes away. She needed to remember every shadow, every texture, every pore. Her fingers tightened on the sill, as though she were about to burrow her way through the wall itself.

  As the moon peeked from behind a cloud, it shone at a soft angle on the woman’s face, erasing the wrinkles from her brow. In that instant, someone coming upon her in the backyard might have taken her for Audrey. Then the moon was gone again and age returned, along with grief. She glanced quickly around the bedroom.

  Through the glass she heard a gasp and she jerked herself to her feet, scurrying across the backyard, ducking into the brush. Audrey’s shrieks tightened the muscles of the woman’s back as she rushed through the bracken to the top of the hill, turning just as the bedroom light flicked on.

  She shouldn’t have come. She knew better. But she couldn’t stay away. It drove her mad being so close, being almost able to touch. She stood beside a tall spruce, invisible in the half-light, watching as first one and then two faces appeared at the window. They glanced in her direction, but she didn’t budge and the searching eyes moved on. Then the back-porch light came on, sending long shadows racing across the lawn toward her. When Richard stepped out onto the back stoop in his bathrobe, the woman melted away into the forest.

  The grass was cool beneath Richard’s bare feet. He glanced around, but of course no one was in the yard. He was groggy from lack of sleep and trying to fight down his anger at Audrey for another night shattered. He didn’t know how much more he could take. But as he approached the window, he saw the fear in Audrey’s face and his irritation melted. He waved at her and smiled, glancing around in what he hoped didn’t appear to be a comic rendition of a man on guard. She lifted the window and leaned out.

  “I saw a face,” she said.

  He nodded.

  “I did,” she insisted. “I woke up and she was staring right at me.”

  “She?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did she look like?” asked Richard.

  Audrey bit her lip.

  “Audrey?”

  “Light hair. Gray, maybe. She was there and then she was gone.”

  “Peeking in our bedroom window?” said Richard, trying desperately not to sound condescending. Audrey sounded confused, almost as though there was more she wanted to say but was afraid to.

  “I saw what I saw, Richard!”

  He moved closer to the window, glancing once more around the entire backyard, taking in the garden and the dark forest beyond. “There’s no one here now, Audrey. I’ll walk around the house just to be sure.”

  “Be careful,” she said, closing the window and clicking the latch.

  Sure. I’ll be on the lookout for some crazy gray-haired woman who might be lurking in the shadows. But he nodded at Audrey and walked dutifully around the house anyway. When he reached the front yard he halted. His eyes roved across the lawn toward the mailbox and suddenly a pang tore at his heart. He’d stood in this same spot a year before.

  He’d rushed out of the house when he heard Audrey shriek, and ended up here, listening to her cries disappearing through the trees, trying to make sense of them, to tell where the hell she was or what she was doing. He knew instinctively it had to do with Zach. Only Zach could have caused such terror in her cries. Finally he’d found her when she broke out of the woods again, running up and down the gravel lane, Zach’s bat clutched to her breast, out of breath, but still shrieking Zach’s name. He’d caught up to her and held her, trying to get sense out of her. What had she seen? Where was Zach? When he began to understand that she hadn’t seen anything, that she’d found the bat on the front lawn, some of the panic had eased and Richard had allowed himself a hint of hope. Maybe Zach had wandered into the woods. He was a boy. Boys did things like that. Only why wasn’t he answering?

  But Audrey’s initial reaction had been the correct one. Someone had taken their son. And Zach wasn’t coming back. Richard had finally accepted that.

  He pulled himself away from that dark place in his mind and continued his halfhearted search. If a woman had been hanging around the house, she’d hiked in. There was no car down the road or in the drive. He’d completed his circle and started up the back stoop toward the open kitchen door when a glint on the grass froze him in place.

  It had to be a trick of the light, but, from this angle, footprints shone like quicksilver where moonlight caressed the flattened turf. Richard cocked his head, trying to get a better perspective. He could make out five, maybe six clear imprints crossing the lawn directly toward their bedroom window.

  He stepped slowly back down onto the lawn, never taking his eyes off the ephemeral tracks. The closer he approached, the more tenuous they seemed. He knelt beside the clearest example and touched the flattened grass with his fingertips. He couldn’t believe it. Somebody had walked across the lawn. Someone with small feet, like a woman.

  He stood and stared into the dark forest, squinting. The longer he watched the motionless woods, the less sure he became. He glanced back down at the flattened grass and wondered if he wasn’t letting his mind run away with him. For all he knew, Audrey had made the tracks the day she had her last seizure in the garden. Lord knew how she might have run around on the lawn. He really wanted to believe that.

  But then why were there no other tracks? Why wasn’t the lawn covered with them? When he glanced back down at the tracks he noticed that the dew on the standing grass glistened, while the footprints seemed smudged dry. Was it possible that he was starting to imagine things? The tracks seemed so real.

  He turned back toward the window. Audrey stared raptly at him and he smiled at her, wiping the tracks away with his foot and heading back into the house.

  19

  VIRGIL CLIMBED THE STAIRS toward the bedroom, too exhausted to keep his eyes open. He knew his lack of sleep and the fact that he wasn’t eating good were wearing him down. With any luck, his lifestyle would take care of him long before he had to worry about another way out.

  He placed his gunbelt on the side table in the hall beside the phone, where it had slept for thirty years, and tiptoed into the bedroom. To his surprise, Doris was wide-awake, watching television. A revival meeting was on and a preacher with a
n impossible head of wavy red hair was exhorting his viewers to send money so that he could continue in his mission. Virgil sat wearily on the bed, resting his head against the headboard and taking Doris’s thin hand in his own. He closed his eyes and wished himself back twenty years before leaning down to kiss her cheek.

  “You found Timmy Merrill’s bike, didn’t you?” she said.

  “Now, how did you know that?”

  She managed a chuckle as thin as her hand. “I’ve known you for thirty-eight years, Virgil Milche. Do you think you can keep secrets from me?”

  He smiled. “Never have.”

  “That’s right.”

  “It was there. Back in the brush. Gonna search the woods tomorrow.”

  “You won’t find anything else.”

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “Didn’t you listen? Timmy said the bike was just dropped there. He isn’t there. He’s in some old basement.” She shuddered. “Poor, poor boy.”

  “I heard what Babs said.”

  “What Timmy said.”

  “Whatever.”

  “But you don’t believe it. How in the world could you not? None so blind, Virgil.”

  “I guess so.”

  She sighed, turning back to the television. In a minute her features softened again. She didn’t even have the energy anymore to stay annoyed with him for more than a second or two. “You remember the week after we were married?”

  He frowned. It had rained until he thought the second Flood was coming. He could never forget that. They’d planned the trip for over a year, saved like a couple of pack rats, and then the day they arrived the heavens opened.

  “I was lying here thinking about those days,” she said.

  “About the rain?”

  “About our first nights together. I was so scared I wouldn’t please you. I’d never been with a man before.”

  He squeezed her hand gently. “You always pleased me.”

  She smiled and a light twinkle burned through the dullness in her eyes. “I figure you didn’t mind all that rain, then.”

  He chuckled. “Now that I recall, I asked for and got some extra time off when we got back.”

  “You sure did. But I didn’t get any.”

  They laughed together.

  “Sometimes I know things,” she said quietly.

  “I wish I did.”

  “You do. You just don’t know you know them.”

  “This conversation is getting strange.”

  “Uh-huh. You’re not going to find that boy out there in the woods and you know it.”

  “Because Babs said so.”

  “I talked to her on the phone awhile ago. She was pretty upset.”

  “What about?”

  “I’m not sure. She said ever since she left here Timmy Merrill’s been preying on her mind. But it wasn’t only that. I think she’s in a bad way somehow.”

  “I don’t want Babs St. Clair calling and worrying you with her personal nightmares.”

  “She sounded scared, Virgil.”

  “So she called you? What did she think you were going to do for her?”

  “Lend her moral support, maybe. Convince her that my husband isn’t going to lay down and die just because I am. A lot of people depend on you, Virgil. They’re going to need you when I’m passed on.”

  “Don’t say that!”

  “Promise me you’ll stay on the case.”

  He sighed loudly. “I am on the case.”

  “Good.”

  “What do you expect me to do now?”

  “Find those boys.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain, Virgil.”

  “I’m coming to bed,” he said, unbuttoning his uniform. “I need a good night’s sleep.”

  “Good. I’m tired too.”

  He got up and helped her down into a better sleeping position, kissing her brow again. “You need anything in the night, you just poke me.”

  But she was already asleep.

  20

  RICHARD RESTED HIS ARM on the car window and enjoyed the cool, wet morning air. Daylight was just rising over the distant hills, warming the sky but not the black-green rolling landscape. The wind was redolent with evergreen, and now and then he detected the smell of wood smoke.

  Wood smoke in early June. Only in Maine.

  He stared at the run-down farmhouse as he passed, thinking of Audrey’s attack in the car, her sudden fear of the rickety old place. But no evil power emanated from it. No darkness overcame him, no sudden terror attack.

  It did look dank and ghoulish though. If he were going to write a modern gothic novel, he might well use the house in it. A rusted tractor-trailer sat beside it like an ornery old watchdog, and he slowed, reading the sign on the side.

  Merle Coonts Trucking.

  And below that, in smaller lettering, with a cartoon picture of a smiling truck:

  We Haul Anything!

  Strange how you never noticed details. Until that moment he’d had no idea of his neighbor’s name, although he must have passed the truck a hundred times. When he thought of it, he realized that he didn’t know any of their neighbors at all. The closest one to their house was nearly an eighth of a mile up the road in the other direction.

  Turning onto Route 26 into Arcos, he honked at Bill McDab standing out front of the greenhouses that bore his name. Farther up the road he pulled into the Arcos Steak House parking lot, stared up at the sign, and smiled. The restaurant was Richard’s biggest success story. He’d convinced Sam, the owner, to switch from the haute cuisine that had been slowly putting him out of business to more family-oriented fare. The steak house turned into a local institution overnight. Sam had become Richard’s best friend and now it was Richard’s policy to stop in for breakfast every morning.

  Richard dropped into the booth that Bev kept cleared for him and glanced around at the chattering customers. The sound of clinking cups and saucers from the kitchen and the fast-moving waitresses gave the room an efficient air that would slow a little for the more relaxed lunch crowd.

  Sam waddled through the louvered kitchen doors and dropped into the other side of the booth, handing Richard a coffee. Sam was in his seventies and, with each passing year, his growing success had revealed itself in his girth.

  “How you been, buddy?” asked Sam in a husky voice.

  “Good.”

  “And Aud?”

  “She’s good,” said Richard. But he knew that Sam caught the hesitation in his voice. They’d known each other way too long.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing probably. She’s just having bad dreams.”

  “You can’t blame her for that.”

  “We’re going through a hard time. That’s all.”

  Sam nodded. “I used to love seeing you three come in together.”

  The word three lit up pictures in Richard’s mind that he didn’t care to look at right then. “Audrey just hangs around the house. She doesn’t garden. She doesn’t read the way she used to. And she was writing another book, before. Now, I don’t even know what she’s done with the manuscript.”

  “She talked about it so much I thought it was already finished.”

  “It might be, for all I know. Whenever I ask her about it she says she’s still working on it, but I know she’s not.”

  “Maybe you just need to get her out of the house. Why don’t the two of you go on a vacation?”

  “I’ve suggested that. She won’t go. She doesn’t want to leave. Just in case.”

  “How about you? Are you still waiting for the call?”

  “I guess I am, a little.”

  “You’re looking better than you were six months ago.”

  “I’m doing all right, Sam. It’s not something you just get over.”

  “No. Did I ever tell you about my boy?”

  “I didn’t know you had a son.”

  “I don’t talk about Tony much anymore. It still hur
ts too much.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “He’d be fifty now.”

  Richard didn’t know what to say.

  “He was killed in Vietnam,” said Sam. “I used to keep all his pictures on top of the TV. But after we got word of what happened, I started going a little crazy. So did my wife. It was like we were worshiping those photos. You know what I mean?”

  Richard glanced away, nodding.

  “I began to sit in his room for hours on end,” said Sam. “Sometimes I didn’t even realize I’d gone in there or how long I stayed. My wife and I started drifting apart and we’d always been so close.”

  “What did you do?”

  Sam took a long, deep breath, rubbing his jowls with one hand. “One day while Aggie was shopping, I took all the pictures and put them in a trunk in the attic. Then I packed Tony’s stuff—his record albums, books, clothes, everything—and gave them to relatives with kids. When Aggie got home, I thought she was going to have a nervous breakdown. I won’t kid you, it was bad. Real bad. And she didn’t speak to me for days. Then it started to get a little better and a little better and finally we were all right.”

  “Like before.”

  “No. I can’t say that. We were never like before. But we still loved each other, and did until the day she died.”

  They sipped their coffee in silence.

  “You know,” said Sam, at last, “sometimes I can still see all of Tony’s stuff. It’s like there’s this shrine in my head. I try not to go there or I get lost. That’s silly, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah,” whispered Richard.

  “No breakfast?” said Sam, glancing at the empty table.

  “Not hungry,” said Richard, rising.

  Sam placed a fat hand over Richard’s. “You two are too good for each other. Don’t let this kill you and Audrey.”

  “I’m trying not to.”

  “Whatever help she needs, you get it for her, hear?”

  “I will.”

  “You need anything, any money, whatever, you just call. Understand?”