Night Terror

by Chandler McGrew

  “Take them out,” said Ed.

  The headlights grew brighter, and now she could hear the car approaching. Ed fired the rifle. Then Frank and Passenger opened up, and suddenly Lucy noticed lights approaching from the other direction. She thought she heard the tinny sound of bullets striking the car around her, the whine of ricochets bouncing off the asphalt. But that might have been only her imagination. She began to worm her way out from under the car.

  Passenger was prone in the ditch, firing a rifle at the car that had stopped two hundred yards up the road. The big guy had his back to her, firing in the other direction. She rolled as quietly as possible down the incline, coming to rest on her side in the bottom of the ditch, gasping for air.

  “Fuck!” shouted the big man. He was waving at Passenger and shouting for him to get her as she stumbled toward the barbed-wire fence.

  Passenger took two lumbering steps toward her and fell flat on his face, blood oozing from his forehead and chest like bubbles in hot spaghetti sauce. Now Lucy could hear the bullets whizzing around her, and she dropped to the ground again, pressing her body into the dry grass, trying to belly-crawl under the sagging lower strand of wire as Ed cursed and crouched beside the car again.

  “Get her, Frank!” he screamed over the tumult. “She’s getting away!”

  “Get her yourself!” shouted Frank, pumping out round after round. The night was alive with muzzle flashes.

  A barb caught on her plastic bindings, and as she shifted and twisted, the rusted metal sliced into her wrist. She cursed under her breath but kept shoving herself along with her bare feet until she was clear, struggling to her knees, stumbling to her feet, heading toward the dark shape of the copse of trees in the distance, running like she had never run before, her heart pounding, lungs stretching to bursting, afraid to glance over her shoulder lest Ed be there and drag her back to the car.

  Behind her she heard someone shouting, but she had reached the trees before she realized that the voice calling her name didn’t sound like gravel at all.

  Dylan

  DYLAN BARNES HAD JUST AWAKENED NAKED in the foyer of his house with that weird sense of dislocation he got every time it happened. Now he moved stealthily into the living room. The barest golden moonlight stroked the floor. Deathly silence surrounded him. It was the silence that had awakened him to begin with. He’d been sleepwalking again. And like every time before, when he’d awakened, he’d known he was not alone.

  Someone or some thing was in the house with him.

  He centered himself, concentrating on that space in his head where the air from both nostrils came together. He could feel every drop of perspiration on his body, smell it in the air. Tuning his ears to the night, he finally discovered sounds in the silence. He could hear the light breeze outside whooshing around and through the eaves, the faint call of an owl, the refrigerator humming in the kitchen. A sudden noise behind him stilled his breathing, but it was just a creak in the old house.

  He was standing zenkutsu dacht—his left leg extended in front of him, knee bent, his right leg behind—as he performed a slow, controlled gedan bari. His left fist now protected his groin and left side, his right was chambered, tucked in close beneath his right underarm.

  Dylan’s fingers were long and delicate, but his knuckles were permanently swollen from years of practice on the hand boards, and the knife edge of his palm was a line of callouses, as were the balls and heels of both feet. At five foot eight, one hundred eighty pounds, Dylan Barnes was as close to being a perfect kyokushin karate machine as one was likely to find in the state of Maine, especially in a town the size of Needland.

  He flipped on the light and searched the room as he had every other room in the cottage. There was no one behind the sofa or his recliner, no one hiding behind the drapes. He noticed for the thousandth time that the room needed a good cleaning, but so did the whole house. Magazines littered the floor, and he didn’t want to look into the coffee cup on the bookshelf beside him. Realizing he was now spotlighted through the window, he flipped the light off again.

  He was headed back down the hallway to his bedroom, when the hair on the back of his neck stood on end. A wisp of air slithered between his bare legs, foul and dank, a breath squeezed out of the lungs of a corpse. With a brief buzzing sound like a short in the wiring, all the lights went out.

  He spun, flowing automatically into kumite dacht—the fighting stance—his hands swirling in the fanlike stow block. He was blind, but his other senses were peaked. He tried to place an assailant’s position by the movement of air currents, listening so intently, he thought he could hear cockroaches crawling in the walls. He sniffed, catching a hint of the odor again, fetid and rank, with an almost mechanical tinge to it. He had the sudden image in his head of rotting machines, but what kind of machine did that?

  His pupils adjusted slowly to the moonlight. There were ominous shadows in the hallway, but he put a name to them one by one. The bookshelf along the right wall. The phone table opposite it. The open door to the attic.

  Why was that door open?

  The attic was nothing but bare joists and extremely dusty, blown-in insulation. He had been up there only one time in the eight years he and Ronnie had owned the house.

  There was a rusted sliding latch on the cheap panel door, and it was always locked. He slid slowly around the bookshelf, his hands still stow-blocked, ready to swing in any direction like swords. His center was tensed, but the rest of his body was relaxed, fluid.

  The gift.

  The thought was in and out of his head so fast, he barely had time to realize it had happened. It seemed so irrelevant to whatever was happening that he wrote it off as just one more bit of evidence of his growing instability.

  By the time he reached the door to the attic he was microscopically readjusting his stance with each step, and his hands with each movement. He knew he could put his hand through the plaster beside him, crush the old wooden lath beneath, and quite possibly break the two-by-four stud beyond. But he could just as easily direct that power at a moving target, a temple, a knee, or a throat. He stepped into the doorway and stared up into the pitch-black stairwell. His mind screamed at him to close the door, slam the latch back into place, run down the hallway, out the front door. Just keep on running.

  Instead, he placed his foot on the first step.

  Shadows gripped his leg as though he had stepped into a deep pool of black liquid. There was a strange chill to it, something beyond the temperature of the darkness alone. He kept climbing, his left arm above him, jodan uke, protecting his head. His hands stayed open, shuto, so he could attack with the knife edge or grapple with an opponent.

  As he raised his head slowly above the level of the ceiling joists, he prayed that whatever had happened to the downstairs lights hadn’t affected the wiring in the attic. The house was ancient. Maybe it was just one blown fuse. Somewhere above him hung the pull chain for the single attic fixture. He circled his arm around but felt nothing. He would have to go up another step or two in order to reach it. His hand was shaking, and he breathed deeply, forcing it to stop. Finally his fingers found the light cord and he tugged. The light flashed on and—for just an instant—the darkness seemed unwilling to die, as though it were not being overwhelmed by the electrical light, but instead was slinking away like a wounded animal.

  He turned slowly on the top step, sweat tickling the notch between his buttocks. He eyed every corner, every nook.

  Slowly the sense of presence receded, the emptiness mocking him. He stepped carefully across the bare joists, searching for anything that might have awakened him, that might have caused the smell. There were rat droppings on the insulation, and he made a note to buy poison, but there was nowhere for anyone to hide. The house was empty except for him. Still, he backed down the stairs, and he left the light on.

  In the hallway he slammed the door, ramming the bolt into place with a finality he didn’t feel. His fingers wouldn’t seem to leave the latch, as tho
ugh there were some clue embedded in its ancient paint-encrusted steel that he could decipher if just given time. Finally he stumbled exhausted back to bed, lying atop the sheets, staring at the ceiling.

  Just sleepwalking and a nightmare to boot. That was normal enough.

  Only it wasn’t normal.

  Normal people didn’t go to bed in one room and wake up in another. Normal people didn’t imagine spooks in their house all the time, and he had been imagining them for almost two years now. He wondered how in the world he’d made it through the past months without being locked up.

  He sighed. Karate, of course. After Ronnie’s death he’d concentrated completely on his small dojo in Needland, working out there for as many as fourteen hours a day. Training students. Instructing his assistant, Amy, in the finer points of the art, since she was preparing for her nidan test, her second-degree black belt.

  But it wasn’t just the presence that kept him awake nights. It was the dreams as well. The dreams that he could never quite remember, although he knew they were about Ronnie. And now between the sleepwalking and the dreams, he was getting terribly close to losing his mind.

  Satan

  THE LITTLE MAN WAS BARELY FIVE and a half feet tall, with a broad chest and narrow hips, and his limp was more than just pronounced. It was a swinging gait with a wild leg that barreled around beside him, causing him to half turn with each step, his shoulders moving stiffly, his gray eyes fierce. His face beneath the snarl had the rough, weathered skin of a seaman, or a ditchdigger. He looked to be forty, maybe even fifty, but the limp made him seem older. His knee-length coat was a new camel hair, the belt swung loose at his waist, and his hands were jammed deeply into the pockets. The temperature hung well below freezing and snow had started to fall.

  He saw only three people from the time he turned the corner off Elm until he reached the next crossing at Willow. Everyone in Manchester, New Hampshire, was either at work at three o’clock or else safely ensconced in their warm living rooms, behind high brick or stone facades, and mullioned windows with heavy drapes.

  As he neared the house with a bright blue door and tightly drawn shades, he slowed, glancing into the empty garage. He nodded to himself as he hobbled up the drive, slipping through the gate into the backyard. The homeowner always used the front entrance, but the rear walk was kept shoveled.

  He cursed, gripping the iron railing on the back stoop tightly, throwing himself up each granite step. Fumbling in his coat pocket, he withdrew what appeared to be a brass cigarette case. When he opened it, a number of sharp, wiry-looking tools bristled from it, and he inserted one into the lock. As he jiggled the pick, he began to hum “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” under his breath. Finally he twisted the knob, and leaned against the door, coaxing it open silently.

  Closing the door behind him, he stalked into the kitchen, shaking some of the cold out of his bones with a stiff, shivering motion. He found the downstairs bath and the living room before locating the small bedroom that had been converted into an office. Two tall bookshelves framed a narrow window that was half blocked by a computer monitor, keyboard, and stacks of computer manuals. He dropped into the chair, and reaching down to the tower case, booted up the computer. Tapping his fingers absently on the table, he watched intently as the machine went through its setup routine. He flipped idly from program to program, file to file.

  “Mmm,” he muttered between the last two verses of the song. His eyes raced back and forth across the screen, and he frowned, nodding to himself. He clicked the mouse several times, switching programs again, his frown darkening as graphic images suddenly popped up on the color monitor. One in particular caught his attention, and he stared at it for some time, shaking his head.

  He removed a mini CD from his pocket and placed it in the drive drawer. Then he keyed the machine to run E:in-stall. The computer chirped contentedly as it loaded the program, and he felt a pang of sympathy for the machine, watching it performing a lobotomy on itself. But the machine had one more service to perform.

  When the installation was complete, the computer gave a satisfied little peep, and he removed the disk from the drive. He slid down to the floor, groaning as he set his neck into a more comfortable position before pulling the computer out from under the table. Then he used a small battery-powered screwdriver to expertly remove the cover.

  He placed his hand on the case to dispel any static, and then found one of the auxiliary power supply lines. Reaching into yet another pocket, he removed a box the size of a deck of cards and screwed it into an open bay beside the hard disk. He plugged the power feed into a matching slot in the black box and replaced the cover on the case. Then he very carefully slid the machine back into its original location and turned it off.

  Wiping any surface he might have touched, he passed back through the house the way he had come. Then—with one last quick glance around the kitchen—he exited the house, stopping at the gate to make certain no one was on the street or peering out of neighboring windows. Then he hobbled quickly back to Elm, where he climbed into his old Ford van and waited.

  At twenty-five minutes after three Gregor Oskand passed the van without giving it a second glance, turning onto his home street in a mindless rage. His office manager—a woman he loathed even more than he loathed every other woman—had reprimanded him for being lazy and late, and she had done it in front of the entire staff. He couldn’t storm out of the office because his current chances for other employment were nil, so he had seethed all day, until he was finally able to slip out at a quarter to five.

  By the time he pulled into his driveway his anger was slowly rechanneling itself. Instead of imagining his office manager bent over a table with her pants down, he now envisioned a very young boy, and the heat in his belly had started to drift lower. He tossed his overcoat onto a chair as he headed for his office. Across the living room he noticed a wet spot on the floor, staining the salmon-colored carpet. He waddled straight to the dark area, feeling his erection wither. His knees shook as he listened for movement inside the house.

  “Is someone here?” he croaked, hating the sound of his squeaky voice.

  It might be snow he’d tracked in yesterday, but because he was fastidious about the house, that wasn’t likely. He squatted down on his enormous haunches and touched the spot. It felt cool but not cold, and he wondered what temperature it would be if it were, in fact, from the day before.

  He hurried to the kitchen and chose a large razor-sharp butcher knife from his chef’s rack. He was certain he could never stab anyone, not even in self-defense, but hopefully, it would scare the hell out of an intruder.

  There was no one in the bath. Ditto for the office, the upstairs closets, and bedrooms. When he lowered himself ponderously to the floor, inspected beneath his bed, and found no one there, he breathed a sigh of relief. He fought his jellylike three-hundred-pound frame back to an erect position and caught his breath. It must have been old snow after all.

  The tension washed out of him, and suddenly he remembered what he had been doing before he saw the spot. He stroked himself as he descended the stairs slowly, imagining his collection of photos. He sat down at the console, one hand on the power button, the other still on his crotch, and clicked on the machine. As the computer hummed, Gregor closed his eyes, counting the seconds. When he reopened his eyes, he was surprised to find not his familiar screen saver, but text in a very large font, running the width of the screen. He read it slowly, goose bumps crawling up his arms.

  REAP THE WHIRLWIND, ASSHOLE,read the monitor. The message was signed Satan.

  Gregor didn’t feel the blast that separated his torso from his lower body or the compression that shoved his skull so far into the plasterboard wall, the coroner had to pry it out with a loose board. He didn’t see the left bookshelf disintegrate into toothpicks and paper snow, or his monitor launch itself across the neighbor’s yard and into their bedroom window.

  And he certainly didn’t hear an old Ford van crank up two b
locks away.

  Published by

  Dell Publishing

  a division of

  Random House, Inc.

  New York, New York

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or re used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  David W. Richards

  www.nightterrors.org.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law. For information address: Dell Publishing, New York, New York.

  Dell® is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the

  colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-48882-4

  March 2003

  v3.0