Night Terror Read online

  Virgil had never understood who had decided that Cooder could make it on his own. Every few years he managed to do something that required the state to lock him up again. Nothing terrible, mostly like the time he climbed up on the water tower and stayed there for two days lookin’, until four volunteer firemen risked life and limb to clamber up and get him down. But within a month or two he’d showed up on the streets again and Virgil had given up arguing with the state assholes.

  “Long time,” agreed Virgil. “Where you going, Cooder?”

  Another wait.

  “Walkin’,” said Cooder at last.

  The wind shifted. Virgil got a whiff and took a quick step back. Cooder smelled like the inside of a portable toilet.

  “Walking where?” asked Virgil, though he knew it was useless. Cooder probably had no idea where he was headed. Or maybe he just wasn’t going to give out the information. No way of telling.

  “Walkin’.”

  Virgil stared back down the road, behind the cruiser. Cooder lived on the highway outside of Crowley, miles of quiet country lane away. He had a small house that his mother had left to him and he got by on social security and state aid. Virgil wondered for the thousandth time if there really was anything going on in Cooder’s head.

  “You want to be careful, Cooder. You can’t be walking in the middle of the road like that. You’re going to get your ass run over. You understand me?”

  Another span of time.

  Then a nod.

  Virgil glanced at his watch. Going on ten-thirty already. Where the hell had the morning gone? “You had anything to eat today, Cooder?”

  A slow frown signaled deep thought. “No.”

  “Right,” muttered Virgil. He trotted back over to the cruiser. Leaning across the front seat, he pulled a sandwich out of the brown bag lunch he’d made for himself that morning, and brought it back to Cooder. Cooder accepted it as though it were his due and began chewing noisily.

  “You’re welcome,” said Virgil.

  Cooder nodded his thanks.

  Virgil stared at him thoughtfully. He couldn’t help the poor bastard. He couldn’t help Rosie. How the hell was he going to help Doris or himself?

  “Stay out of the road, Cooder,” said Virgil as he climbed back into the cruiser and started the motor. Reaching for the gear-shift lever, he noticed Cooder waving the remains of the sandwich at him. Virgil rolled down his window.

  When Cooder spoke, his voice was deep and resonant, like a country preacher laying some old friend to rest.

  “Bad things, Virg.”

  Virgil’s skin tingled as though lightning had struck. It wasn’t so much what Cooder had said. It was the way he said it. Like some kind of pronouncement from God. Like a revelation. “What bad things, Cooder?”

  Cooder took another hefty bite of the sandwich, chewing until he’d swallowed every last bit. But his eyes never left Virgil’s, and Virgil couldn’t look away.

  Cooder wiped his lips with his tongue.

  “I seen bad things, Virg.”

  “Jesus,” muttered Virgil. No one he knew had carried on a meaningful conversation with Cooder Reese in over twenty years. But Cooder’s voice and his words wouldn’t let Virgil go.

  “What bad things?” asked Virgil.

  “Walkin’, ” said Cooder.

  “Walkin’,” repeated Virgil.

  Cooder shoved the last of the sandwich into his mouth, and Virgil figured that he’d better stick around at least long enough to find out whether or not he needed to perform the Heimlich maneuver on the crazy bastard. Cooder chewed like a slow old milk cow, but there was no enjoyment in his eyes. They seemed even more distant than usual.

  “Tell me what the hell you’re talking about, Cooder, or I’m driving on out of here,” said Virgil. “And you stay out of the road or I’ll have one of the boys bring you in.” He wasn’t going to do it himself. No way. Let one of the young stallions ride twenty miles with Cooder smelling up their backseat. Cooder continued staring off down the road behind the cruiser, squinting as he worked his jaw slowly from side to side, chomping on an imaginary sandwich now.

  “Bad things,” muttered Cooder. Without further ado, he spun on his heel, and putting one ratty boot in front of the other, started his endless hike once again, headed in the same direction as Virgil’s cruiser.

  Virgil sat for a moment, watching Cooder’s back. Cooder’s blond hair glistened each time he passed from shadow to sunlight.

  “How come you don’t have any gray hair?” whispered Virgil, running his fingers through his own scalp. “ ’Cause you got nothing to worry about?”

  Bad things, Virg.

  I seen bad things.

  “Shit,” said Virgil, shifting into drive.

  7

  THE ARGUMENT STARTED BEFORE AUDREY and Richard were out of the hospital parking lot, and it didn’t end when Richard stalked off into their living room and turned on the television. But at least by then it seemed to have reached that stage of silent disagreement that married couples all understand. They weren’t so much mad at each other. They were both angry at themselves because neither of them could bend.

  Richard insisted that she see either Tara or the shrink Doctor Burton had recommended. Audrey was adamant against doing either. She hated the vague memory of her endless sessions with Tara. But she was equally afraid of another doctor opening the doors that she and Tara had worked so hard to close. And the last thing she wanted was for Tara to know that she was having visions or night terrors or whatever the hell they were. Tara would want her to come back, to stay with her, and surrender herself to the ordeal of closing those doors in her mind again. Audrey hated even the thought of the long sessions with Tara, although she couldn’t explain why to Richard and, in fact, she didn’t really remember why. Tara had never hurt her, she was sure of that. Never forced her to do anything she didn’t want to do. It was just something about giving up control—if only for that briefest of times—that touched a raw nerve with Audrey.

  All that was left to her of her childhood was unfocused flashes of horrible images, faceless monsters she sensed had performed terrible deeds that she couldn’t quite remember. Under Tara’s care, those old visions had gradually become fewer and less intense. There were months during her twelfth year when Audrey thought she was free of them forever. But then, without warning, they returned to savage her nights or torture the imagined safety of her days. Then she and Tara had to begin the endless sessions yet again. By the time Audrey met and fell in love with Richard, she thought she and Tara had the doors closed forever, her mind under control. The hateful images hadn’t completely disappeared, but she no longer awakened in the night bathed in sweat. And when they came in the daylight, she could stare off into the distance and wait for them to pass without running screaming to Tara. Tara had taught her self-hypnosis so she’d have a weapon of her own against her mental demons, even if that weapon seemed to be losing its power lately.

  The sound of a basketball game buzzed into the kitchen from the living room. Richard was a devoted fan, the type that followed pro, college, and high school ball, and in a pinch might stop to watch kids playing on the street, shouting encouragement from his car. Leaning over the kitchen sink, Audrey stared across the width of the backyard. The sun had lowered a little. A bright reflection glinted on the window in front of her. It obscured her view and she squinted. An errant shadow fell on the glass and with it came the terrible sense of despair that she had been fighting since her attack returned full force.

  She cocked her head to make the reflection disappear, but no matter which way she turned, the image remained. In fact, it grew more and more distinct, until it was as clear as the image on a movie screen. She gasped, splashing both fists into the dishwater.

  Zach peered through the glass, as if he were searching through a darkness that she could not see. She stared lovingly at his brown hair and dark eyes, but his face was marred by an expression of fear. He mouthed words but there was no sound.
Instead, Audrey heard her own heart hammering in her chest.

  His face was fuller, less rounded with baby fat, and his eyes were shinier and quicker than she remembered. His hair was cut shorter as well. He had grown in the intervening months and she took heart from the vision. Would she hallucinate an older Zach?

  She traced the outlines of his face lovingly with soapy fingers, and he tilted his head as though accepting her caress. It was like touching the most fragile of blossoms. She wanted to feel his skin. Wanted the sense of human warmth to make the image real, but she was terrified of having the vision fade away beneath her tender touch.

  She leaned so close to the window that her stomach pressed painfully into the countertop. Her nose brushed the glass. Their eyes met and the boy’s eyes focused. Shock flashed across his face and hers. He panted heavily, as though he had been running, and perspiration glinted on his brow.

  “Where are you?” Audrey whispered, tracing the outline of his face over and over in dishwashing detergent.

  But even as she spoke, the image faded, shrank away from her. First there was a shadow on the glass, then a dusky hint, then daylight again, warming her garden. She recalled Tara crooning to her over and over years before. “It isn’t real, Audrey. It’s all just a dream.”

  “Honey,” said Richard, shocking her with his presence so close behind her. She stiffened when his hands gripped her hips, pulling her back from the window. “I thought I heard you say something. Are you all right?”

  There was nothing in the wet glass now but warm golden afternoon and a thin trickle of soapsuds. Richard wrapped his arms around her and drew her tightly to him.

  “What is it, hon?” he whispered in her ear.

  She closed her eyes, praying she wasn’t going mad.

  “Just woolgathering,” she whispered.

  8

  AT ONE TIME VIRGIL HAD ENJOYED making the occasional meal for Doris and himself. Now it was a duty and the satisfaction he got from it was minimal because the ritual forced him to concentrate on the food and that caused him to realize just how little she ate. He stirred the bowl of chicken noodle soup before bringing the spoon to his lips. Just right—Doris hated food that was too hot. He set the bowl on the wooden tray along with crackers, napkin, a glass of cold milk, and the weekly paper, and stared at his handiwork.

  Even as thin as it was, the spread looked pretty darn appetizing. But he didn’t kid himself. He’d be happy to get Doris to eat half the soup and maybe take a few sips of milk. If he was lucky, he might finagle her into nibbling on one of the saltines.

  He carried the tray into the bedroom, preparing himself for the thousandth time for the smell of sickness that waited like a wall, just inside the door. He could never quite figure the odor out. It wasn’t antiseptic exactly, although Doris insisted on keeping a can of Pine-Sol beside the bed to spray on her tissues before tossing them into the trash. And it wasn’t any kind of bodily odor. Doris would never have stood for that. It was just the smell of a person living in a room for too long without really living. Somehow the house and Doris’s disease had meshed and Virgil knew that smell would never go away, no matter how much Pine-Sol the new owners sprayed after he and Doris were gone.

  The bedroom itself rebelled against the dying it encompassed. Warm sunlight shone through the windows, reflecting off the dark wood floor and yellowing the curtains and old floral wallpaper. Fresh flowers in a tall vase by the door to the side porch needed watering, and Virgil reminded himself to bring a pitcher back from the kitchen.

  Doris sat propped against thick pillows, wearing her old cotton nightshirt that seemed two sizes too big for her now. Her face was drained and her eyes were sunken, like black marbles in china cups. Her hair, always immaculate, was tucked back into a tight white bun, but it was thin and dull. Bony hands rested on either side of her like a pair of daddy longlegs. She looked eighty, not fifty-nine.

  “Lunch,” said Virgil, resting the tray on the bedside table and reaching for the remote. But Doris grabbed his hand.

  “I’m watching this,” she said, never taking her eyes off the set.

  Virgil frowned.

  A black woman in a bright orange shift sat facing the camera. She flipped tarot cards on the table in front of her and read someone’s fortune in a fake Caribbean accent. A man off camera sounded amazed by the things the cards said about him. A toll number flashed at the bottom of the screen, along with a notice in tiny print that readings were done for entertainment purposes only.

  “Why do you watch this bunk?” muttered Virgil.

  Doris gave him a haughty shake of her head. Her thin neck looked as though it might snap. Virgil wanted desperately to look away, but guilt glued his eyes to her.

  “You should watch, Virgil,” said Doris. “Madame Zola has some real insights.”

  “You haven’t been giving them your credit card number again, have you?”

  “Not since you had your little tantrum.”

  Virgil didn’t think he’d had a tantrum. He’d merely mentioned that they had bills to pay and spending dollars like there was no tomorrow on a television fortune-teller seemed silly to him. Doris had made him feel terrible by being contrite. It wasn’t as though she had any hobbies, and most of her friends worked, so she was alone all day in front of the damned TV set. But the thought of a con artist taking her in galled Virgil.

  “If you want to spend money on a fortune-teller, then spend ahead,” he said. “You know I never meant to hurt your feelings.”

  “You didn’t hurt my feelings. You were right. It was silly of me to waste money on a TV card-reader.”

  He stared at her, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

  “Babs is coming by Tuesday night,” she said.

  Thump.

  He slipped the napkin into her nightshirt top and placed a pillow on either side of her to hold the tray. Then he fed her the soup until she put her hands in front of her mouth to stop him. Her body quivered with every breath. She seemed fragile enough to shatter. Virgil suddenly pictured himself alone in this bed, holding his pistol in his lap.

  “Tuesday,” she said.

  “That’s tomorrow,” he reminded her.

  “We’re going to hold a séance.”

  “A what?”

  “You know. A séance. We’re going to contact the other side.”

  He almost asked her the other side of what, but he was even more afraid of arguing with Doris these days than he had been in the past. Now, an argument would seem less of a breaking of some unspoken vow and more a potential murder weapon.

  “Fine,” he said.

  “This is important.”

  “Why?”

  “Because pretty soon I’ll be over there.”

  “I saw Cooder today.”

  “Virgil, I will be. We need to talk about it.”

  “I damned near ran over him.”

  “I want to know what it’s really like.”

  “He made me nervous.”

  Doris stared at him for a moment, then sighed. “Why on earth would Cooder Reese scare anyone? He’s never been a danger to anyone other than himself. Has he?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Then why were you nervous?”

  He stared at the old inlaid headboard, trying to read something in the pattern of light and dark wood. Doris’s mother had given them the bedroom suite as a wedding present. A lot of living had gone on in this room. Two kids had been conceived in this bed. The whole family had crowded in together on stormy nights, and Virgil remembered time after time carrying one or the other child back to bed sound asleep when he’d come in after a late-night patrol. Wedding suits and funeral suits had made their way out of the old dresser against the wall, and he had watched in the mirror of the matching vanity as Doris went from shy young girl to confident woman to beautiful matron.

  Now it hurt to look into her eyes.

  “I don’t know. He said he’d seen bad things.”

  “Well, I can believe that.
”

  “It wasn’t so much what he said but the way he said it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Nothing,” he said, screwing up his lips. “It was just one of those funny things that gives you goose bumps. You know what I mean?”

  “I want you to come to the séance.”

  “I’ll probably be on patrol.”

  “Virgil. I want you to come.”

  He nodded, picking up the tray, wiping her chin gently with the napkin.

  “Eight o’clock tomorrow night,” she said, moving her mouth back and forth across the cloth. “We’ll have it right here in the bedroom. Make some sandwiches.”

  “Sure.”

  He carried the tray back into the kitchen and washed the bowl and spoon, setting them in the strainer. What kind of sandwiches did you make for a séance? He pictured a bunch of old crones with snarled hair, sitting around waving wands over a boiling cauldron, but he was pretty sure that was something he’d dredged up from high school English class. Still, with Babs in charge, there was no telling.

  The phone rang and he snatched it before it could ring again.

  “Virgil,” he said.

  “Hi, Virg.”

  He smiled when he heard Marg’s voice. He hadn’t seen her in a couple of weeks, and he knew she was wondering why. Marg was his first cousin and his best friend. For fifty years they’d managed to make time for each other almost daily.

  “Hi, Marg. How’s things?”

  “Missed you a lot lately.”

  “I been pretty busy.”

  “Yeah. I’m sure. Are you okay?”

  “Good as can be expected.”

  “That’s what I’m worried about. How’s Doris holding up?”

  “Not so good.”

  “Pain?”

  “The pain isn’t bad. But she’s lost a lot more weight.”

  “You knew that was going to happen.” Marg was head of the nursing staff at Cartland Memorial, just around the corner. Virgil had been forced to ask Marg about Doris’s disease, after he realized that he’d blocked out most of what the specialists had told him. She hadn’t pulled any punches.