Night Terror

by Chandler McGrew

  “You’re insane,” she whispered.

  “All geniuses are considered mad,” said Tara. “You won’t think so when Zach becomes a phenomenon. You have no idea of what I intend to accomplish. If the fools in the government hadn’t pulled their support, I’d have managed to prove my theories long before now. All I needed was someone with more juice. Someone like Zach. You can’t conceive of the potential he may have.”

  Virgil tried to edge forward without taking a step.

  “If you think I’m joking about the machine or about Adler, Sheriff, then by all means come closer,” said Tara.

  Audrey shook her head at Virgil, but mostly she was watching Cooder and the dog. She thought she understood now what he was saying before, about talking to animals. She tried to distract Tara. “You’re not going to let any of us out of here alive.”

  Tara frowned. “I don’t want to kill you.”

  “But you will.”

  Tara’s eyes flicked about the room. “I have to keep up my research.”

  “Tara, your research has been killing people for years!”

  “People die. It happens. Science progresses.”

  “Distract her,” whispered Virgil out of the corner of his mouth.

  Audrey could see him tensing, but he was too far from Tara. Even if Cooder could control the dog, by the time Virgil reached Tara it would be too late. Audrey put her hand on his chest and he glanced at her as though she’d betrayed him.

  “Wait,” she whispered.

  “She’s going to do it, Audrey.”

  Audrey tried to make contact with Zach, but the pain was blocking him. He couldn’t concentrate and she couldn’t get through. Tara was insane. Her machine didn’t make telepathy easier. It made it impossible.

  Cooder’s breathing seemed to have slowed to nothing. He grunted and Adler did a funny prance with his front paws. Audrey saw the look of surprise in Tara’s face.

  “So you were blocking your ability too, 79B! How did you manage to best the machine? Are you really that strong? Well, we’ll see. My new machine is much better than the old one. Adler! Sit!” The dog settled but kept moving his head from side to side as though searching for an invisible mosquito. “I always suspected you were hiding more ability than you were revealing, 79B. Pity they released you while I was out of the country. I came close to getting you back a couple of times, but you always seemed to slip away.”

  “I felt you coming.”

  Tara nodded. “What do you remember about our sessions?”

  “I seen bad things.”

  “Indeed. Like this?”

  Tara flicked a switch on the machine and the room was bathed in swirling lights. Audrey felt herself losing her footing again, floating. The lights stimulated other lights inside her mind, and she knew that somehow Tara had tripped another switch in her subconscious. She didn’t remember the lights, but she dimly recalled the pain that followed on their heels. The agony she had experienced in her garden was nothing compared to what she experienced now.

  “What are you doing?” she shrieked.

  “Stimulating the optic nerve and increasing Zach’s pain level just a notch. The lights disrupt your ability to focus on things around you, forcing you to focus inward,” shouted Tara. “Remember when I used this technique on Paula?”

  Audrey did. She also remembered that she had had to hide the fact that she felt Paula’s pain. Because she knew that if Tara found out, then Audrey would be placed in the machine as well. She remembered her own fear of discovery after Paula warned her of Tara’s evil. “Tara must never find out! Tara must never know that you can do what I do!” That warning had pounded through Audrey’s skull, and somehow she had acted as though the lights and pain had no effect on her. She struggled to do that now, but it wasn’t Paula in the chair, it was Zach. It was her son suffering the agony, and the thought of it tore her heart.

  Shut it out!

  Suddenly Zach’s voice was in her mind.

  You have to not feel it.

  How do you do that, Zach?

  The pain raged over her. She felt beaten down by it. She wanted to die. Only she couldn’t. She had to save him.

  But there was nothing she could do. It took all of her strength just to keep from blacking out. In the distance she could hear Virgil asking if she was all right, feel him holding her upright, hear Tara speaking calmly. “Make your way through the pain. There is a place in your mind that understands. Don’t be afraid. Reach out. I know you can do it.”

  Blinded by agony, Audrey stumbled toward the sound of Tara’s voice.

  65

  ZACH SHUDDERED as more pain shook him. He had never experienced anything like it in his short life. But as it worsened, he noticed that he seemed to be able to slide slightly to one side inside his own brain, and the further he slid, the less the pain touched him.

  In the short time that Tara had been fiddling with her equipment, his mind had traveled every hallway in this new underground complex, examined every room. He had raced through the building like a ghost and he knew that if he could get out of the wheelchair and get a running start, he could get away from Tara. But now his mother and the sheriff and the man called Cooder were in the basement, too, and Zach knew that Tara was going to kill all of them. That was a lock that he could not pick. There had to be another way. He slipped further aside from the pain and looked out through the mask again.

  Cooder was barely able to stand in the middle of the floor. The sheriff was holding him up. His mother had jerked away from them and was reaching blindly toward Tara. But Zach knew that she would never get there.

  I have to do something! But what?

  The brightly colored wires attracted his attention again, and he began to explore them, following them to the inside of the machine. It wasn’t anything like a lock or a pistol, but he sensed its workings nonetheless and he began to understand the underlying sense of it immediately. In fact, he understood the mechanics of it far better than his aunt.

  As Tara regarded Audrey, Zach reached out with everything he had, willing a tweak here, an adjustment there. This was more than moving tumblers in a lock, a lot more. Even so, it required a light breath rather than a push. And he felt stronger by the minute. He seemed to be drawing power from somewhere. He felt almost as though someone was lifting him up, and he realized that he was no longer just drawing comfort from being in contact with his mother, he was taking strength from her too.

  You can do it, sweetheart.

  When Zach reached a nexus point in the machine, he flipped a series of digital switches and Tara jerked.

  “What are you doing?” she screamed, turning on Zach. “Stop that!”

  As she turned toward him, swinging the pistol in his direction, Zach shorted another circuit and Tara jerked again. As she did so, the lights stopped flashing and the pain died along with them.

  Zach?

  I’m all right, Mom.

  It sounded almost like a different boy. The fear was still there, but it was held at bay and there was a growing confidence behind it.

  But Tara didn’t have the look of someone who knew she was beaten. She just looked confused. “He’s inside my machine,” she gasped.

  Audrey took another step toward Tara, her fists clinched.

  “Adler!” shouted Tara.

  The dog started to lunge but stopped, balancing on its toes, its eyes suddenly blank. Tara glanced immediately at Cooder.

  “You!” she shouted.

  “Good dog,” said Cooder as Adler trotted over to sit quietly at his feet. He reached out a shaky hand and patted the Doberman on the head. The dog jerked as though it had been shocked, but then settled back.

  Virgil was eyeing the shotgun on the floor.

  “Now what?” said Audrey, glancing from Tara to Zach.

  “Take one more step and find out.”

  “For your own good,” said Audrey. “Please don’t do that!”

  “For my own good?” said Tara, glancing at Zach and slidi
ng her hand down the panel onto another row of dials. “You may be inside my machine, nephew. But this is a lot of machine for a little boy.” She looked at Audrey again. “I have different amperages here, Audrey. A million different combinations of pain. He can’t possibly override them all. Do you think Zach will be so successful with the real pain? It killed your brother and sister, but that took three days because I never turned it up over thirty percent. If I spin this dial, Zach will get hit with pain you can’t even imagine. And you’ll get it too, Audrey. Want to test it?”

  Audrey shook her head.

  “Zach,” said Tara loudly. “Nod if you hear me.”

  Zach nodded.

  “Smart boy,” said Tara. “Too smart to play games. Do you understand what’s happening here? Do you understand the word standoff?”

  Zach nodded slowly.

  “Let me show you the cards I’m holding,” said Tara, spinning a dial on the machine.

  Zach felt just a touch of pain from a different direction than before, radiating from another part of the machine, a part he had not explored. It struck like lightning, somewhere near his middle. As though someone had poked him just above his belly with the pointed end of a pencil. Hard.

  “No,” said Audrey, holding her own stomach. “Please don’t.”

  Zach knew he had to find a way out, now! But it wasn’t the machine he needed to control. It was a person who wanted to kill him and his mother and everyone else. But why? In frustration he reached out for Tara to try to find the answer, sliding into her mind just as he had slid into the lock, into the pistol, into the machine.

  “No!” Tara shrieked. “Get out of my head!” She clawed at her temples with both hands, as Zach slipped deeper into her brain.

  There were terrible pictures inside Tara’s mind, but not the feeling of horror that Zach expected to go with them. Instead the images seemed to be regarded as necessary, even useful. And there were even worse things than the images, memories that his aunt had buried deep in her past. He trundled through her brain like a small child discovering the weird treasures inside a dusty but very dangerous attic.

  “Get out of there!” shrieked Tara, stumbling back toward the wall.

  You wanted to see what I could do.

  “You have no right to be inside my mind!”

  Audrey reached out as well.

  You wanted to get inside my son’s head. Now he’s inside yours. Are you happy?

  But Zach had not yet learned how to control Tara’s body. She managed to twist one of the dials as far as it would go, and Zach felt himself being forced out of her head by his own pain. And through Zach, the agony attacked Audrey and Cooder. Roaring fire raged through them all, searing their flesh, melting their nerves like plastic in an oven. Even their blood pulsed with pain. It wasn’t as though the agony radiated from an arm, a leg, or a wounded torso. There was no body to attach it to. It started in the center of their minds and flowed out like lava. And as it raced through them, an object began to form in what had become their collective consciousness. They all saw it clearly, at the same time. White. Rectangular. Familiar.

  Another door.

  What’s in there? Is there more pain? Or less? There can’t be anymore. But what if there is? We can’t stand anymore.

  Three nonexistent hands reached out for the imaginary knob and jerked the door open. And there was nothing inside.

  What is this place?

  And then, ever so slowly, Audrey and Cooder began to remember.

  This is where we hid our real selves, said Cooder, echoing Audrey’s thoughts.

  Yes, she whispered, feeling the power swelling within. This was where she had hidden away her power so that Tara could never find it and use it against her. This was where she and Cooder had locked away their talents and had forced themselves to forget that this door had ever existed for them. Cooder must have done the same thing in order to save his own life, only some of his talents had seeped through his door. That was why he could talk to animals. And enough had eventually slipped through Audrey’s to allow her to find Zach again. Thank God.

  Tara had no idea, thought Audrey. Zach is powerful because of me, not in spite of me. I was the strong sister. But I locked the door, even from her. Now it’s open again all the way. I am more telepathic than Paula was. More telepathic than Tara could ever have imagined. And the machine did work. It’s done something to all of us.

  Audrey sensed Cooder’s mind, bumbling along to the same answer.

  It made us all stronger.

  She knew he was right. Tara had accomplished exactly what she had claimed to be trying to do. Only it was going to cost her dearly.

  Audrey reached out with a tendril of herself and entered Tara’s mind.

  “No!” shrieked Tara again, pounding at her forehead as Audrey spoke telepathically to her.

  I used to go inside Paula’s mind. But she warned me never to do it to you, Tara.

  “Get out!” Tara screamed, falling back against the machine.

  Audrey opened her eyes and stared at Tara, and Tara slammed away from the machine, back against the wall. She hung there like a doll on a rack, her hands still covering her face.

  You have a lot of doors in here, Tara.

  “Get out!”

  You should have left my son alone.

  Tara took a step forward but crashed back against the wall again.

  She’ll kill us if we let her go, Mom.

  I know that, Zach.

  What should we do?

  Audrey stared at Tara, deciding. Every last vestige of pity, of remorse, of feeling for the woman who had saved her was gone.

  Close the open doors and open the closed ones. You know how to do it. It’s just like a lock.

  “No! Please!” screamed Tara. “You don’t know what you’re doing.”

  Neither did you.

  To Audrey it was as though a rushing torrent flowed through her, through Cooder, through Zach, and into Tara. But she knew that Zach was controlling it somehow. Just as he’d manipulated the lock in the basement, just as he’d figured out the workings of the machine, he’d intuited how to open the doors in Tara’s mind.

  For a split second, as Audrey stared into Tara’s terrified eyes, she saw the woman she thought she had known, and a tiny mote of pity touched Audrey. She could see down the long corridor in Tara’s mind that echoed her own, with the familiar doors on either side. What horrors were concealed by Tara’s rigid control over her mind? What could this monstrous woman possibly fear?

  At first the images made no sense to Audrey: Tara as a tiny child, weeping with anger and frustration. A figure in a lab coat, sneering. A patient on a gurney, flatlining. And through it all, the most intense feelings of self-pity and disgust, shame and fear.

  Failure. Tara was afraid of failure.

  Then, one by one, the echoes began. The sound of the doors slamming shut seemed so real. When the last one closed, Tara’s head slumped and she slid down the wall to the floor, where she crumpled, feet splayed.

  Babbling.

  66

  PERKINS MENTAL HEALTH INSTITUTE hadn’t seen so many cars since its grand opening. The front of the building exuded a holiday spirit as red and blue lights raced across its bleak facade. The four survivors sat in Virgil’s cruiser as Virgil finished talking to the state trooper in charge.

  “I’ll make a full report tomorrow, I promise,” said Virgil, watching as Tara was rolled to a waiting ambulance on a gurney.

  “There’s more bodies down there, you know,” said the cop. “One of the rooms was kind of a crude morgue, and I mean crude. That’s where the smell was coming from.” He glanced into the backseat at Audrey and Zach, then whispered, “That and the kid on the examining table.”

  Virgil sighed. “Call my office. They may be able to help you identify at least one of the bodies.”

  The trooper nodded and waved as they pulled away.

  Virgil drove in silence for a while, watching in the rearview as Audrey smothered Za
ch in hugs. Virgil felt good. The best he’d felt in months. He thought for the first time that maybe, just maybe, life might be worth living after Doris was gone. But he’d make that decision when the time came.

  He glanced over his shoulder at Audrey. “You want to tell me exactly what happened to me in there?”

  Audrey shrugged. “I’m not sure, but I think Tara finally got her wish. She amplified Cooder’s and Zach’s and my abilities so much that a part of the pain we were experiencing was transmitted to you.”

  “A part?” said Virgil, shuddering. He’d felt like a freight train had hit him. The next thing he knew, he was coming to on the floor and Tara was up against the wall, gibbering madly even though no one was touching her.

  Audrey nodded. “Cooder and I had some experience controlling the pain and Zach seems to do it naturally. You had no defense.”

  “And what happened to Tara?”

  Audrey glanced at Cooder in the front passenger seat. He seemed distant again, lost somewhere inside. But his eyes were at peace now. “Tara got everything turned back on her. Everything the three of us had. You can’t imagine.”

  “I don’t think I want to,” said Virgil. “You want to go right to the hospital?”

  “Oh, my God!” said Audrey. “I didn’t even think.”

  “Dad’s asleep,” said Zach.

  They all stared at him and he shrugged. “He’s all right. He’s just sleeping.”

  Audrey glanced at Virgil and laughed. “You don’t believe him?”

  “I believe him. I believe him.”

  “Doris is real sick though,” said Zach, and an icy knife sliced through Virgil’s heart.

  “What?”

  “She says you shouldn’t worry. She says you’ll be together soon enough.”

  Virgil flipped on the siren and flashers, flooring the accelerator pedal and throwing them all back in their seats.

  “I don’t think you’re going to make it,” said Zach, leaning into Audrey.

  “Hush, honey!” said Audrey, hugging him tighter. But glancing in the rearview, Virgil saw the boy staring into his mother’s eyes and shaking his head.