Night Terror Read online

  His baby sister’s death had been on his mind since Doris got sick. He never knew why her death had been so hard on him. But it had. Maybe it was because she was the first child he ever knew that died. But she was gone forever just like the rest.

  He swallowed a large lump and stared directly into the sun, trying to burn some faith into himself. The idea that he could somehow be suddenly reformed reminded him of the story of Saul of Tarsus, going blind on the highway. But no revelation came to him. No angel was standing in the middle of the highway.

  13

  AUDREY CROSSED HER ARMS and stared at Richard without comment. He was standing in the middle of the kitchen floor with his back straight as a broomstick. He had his fists on his belt and that determined look on his face that had made Audrey laugh a thousand times in the past.

  She wasn’t laughing now.

  “You’re going to see Doctor Cates,” said Richard. “He made a special opening for you this morning and we’re going to be late.”

  No reply.

  “Doctor Burton recommended him.”

  Still nothing.

  “You’re going.”

  “Am I?”

  Richard let out a long breath, deflating. “Honey, please go. You hardly slept last night, even after Doctor Burton gave you the sedative. Please…”

  Audrey softened a little too. Her lips eased off her teeth and her nostrils stopped flaring like a mad bull. She sat down at the table and toyed with a napkin.

  Richard dropped into the chair next to her. “Audrey. Please. Either go see Doctor Cates or call Tara. She’s worried about you.”

  Audrey stared at him. “You called her?”

  Richard shrugged. “I was worried. I just told her about the night terrors. Audrey, she wants to help.”

  Audrey shook her head. “I’m not ready to see Tara again.”

  “She loves you. You two should make up.”

  “I know.”

  “So you’ll see her?”

  “No.”

  “Then it’s Cates.”

  She turned back to the tabletop, squeezing the napkin in white-knuckled fists. “Can’t you just leave it alone? Please?”

  Richard placed his hand gently on her arm. “No, Aud. I can’t. You don’t know what it’s like for me when you have one of these things. I’m afraid you’re going to hurt yourself. Honey, you hid from me in the closet.”

  He gave her a look that said it all. People had looked at her like that before, when she was younger, before Tara taught her to control the images, when she’d scream and run and hide for no reason people could see. It was terrible to see that look on Richard’s face. She had to turn away.

  “Maybe later…”

  “Not later, honey. You have an appointment with Doctor Cates.”

  “But not today. I’m not ready.”

  “Aud,” he said, ever so quietly. “Aud, look at me.”

  She glanced shyly at him.

  “Aud, I can’t go on like this. We can’t. I’m asking you. I’m begging you. Come with me to Doctor Cates’s office.”

  She bit her lip. Her fingers tapped restlessly on the table-top. When she spoke she turned away again, staring out across the backyard. “I’m afraid, Richard.”

  He wrapped his arm around her shoulders and drew her close. She rested her head against him. “I know that. I’m afraid too. But Doctor Cates just wants to help.”

  “What if he can’t help?”

  She felt him draw a deep breath against her, and there was a powerful decisiveness in his voice now. “Then there’s always Tara.”

  Audrey shook her head just as decisively.

  “Why not Tara?” asked Richard. “I don’t understand why you two fought so much when she was here. You never fought before.”

  Audrey sighed loudly. She and Richard had argued when she had asked Tara to leave, a week after Zach’s disappearance. There’d been a nasty scene, with Richard trying to referee while two of Sheriff Milche’s deputies stood in the corner looking like they wanted to be anywhere but in Audrey’s living room. Richard couldn’t understand then why Audrey felt smothered in Tara’s presence, frightened of the solace that Tara offered, and she didn’t know how she was going to explain it now. She had trouble understanding it herself.

  “I can’t breathe around Tara,” she said. “You weren’t there all those years during our sessions. You don’t know what it’s like for me. I can’t do that right now. I can’t.”

  Richard shook his head. “All she ever wanted to do was help you.”

  “I know that,” she said, trying to control her rising defensive anger. “But she does it by controlling me. Controlling what I think, what I remember. You don’t understand!”

  “I’m trying to. All I want to do is help too. Don’t shut me out.”

  “I’m not shutting you out. But please don’t ask me to see Tara right now.”

  Tara was too close to her pain. Too close to her past. In Audrey’s mind, that was almost like being a part of it. At least this Doctor Cates was a stranger. A nobody.

  “Then you’ll have to see Doctor Cates. We can’t go on like this.”

  She closed her eyes, surrendering. “All right.”

  “You’ll see him? This morning?”

  She nodded.

  He kissed her gently on the forehead. “It’s going to be okay. I promise.”

  But she shook her head. “Even if he fixes the night terrors,” she whispered. “It won’t be okay.”

  14

  DOCTOR CATES’S OFFICE was located in a new business park in South Portland, set back amid tall maple trees and gleaming lawns. Audrey studied the landscaping. Lots of perennials—delphiniums and asters—and shrubs bordered with bark mulch. Here and there an ornamental mountain ash broke up the monotony. It wasn’t her style but it was pretty and would be economical for a business to maintain.

  She stared at the two stories of glass and then over at Richard. He tried to smile but his face was strained. They had spoken little in the hour and a half they’d been driving, staring straight ahead, and their uneasy silence continued as Richard searched the registry in the lobby and led them down a wide airy hallway to Doctor Cates’s door. It took every ounce of Audrey’s stamina to follow him inside, to wait quietly in the chair while Richard checked them in at the desk, to smile as the doctor’s young female assistant appeared and introduced herself, leading Audrey away from Richard like a lamb to slaughter.

  Doctor Cates turned out to be a tall, birdlike man. His salt-and-pepper hair haloed a shiny bald dome and friendly eyes shone through thick glasses. His dark-paneled walls were covered with diplomas and awards, and the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves overflowed with volumes with titles as long as their spines.

  Audrey sat in a comfortable armchair and Doctor Cates faced her in another. There was no desk in the room, although she did note the obligatory leather lounge chair. She wondered if anyone ever really used it.

  Cates smiled, reading her thoughts. “Actually, my profession frowns on relics like that. But strangely enough, some people really do prefer to recline there to talk. I think they don’t feel they’re getting their money’s worth from a shrink unless they get to lie on a couch.”

  Audrey laughed nervously. She wished that Richard were beside her and not out in the waiting room. She didn’t know what she was supposed to say.

  I’m going crazy. That would be a start.

  But she couldn’t bring herself to admit it.

  “You’ve been depressed since your son’s disappearance?” asked Cates.

  Audrey nodded. She noticed that Cates had no pen or paper.

  “Bad dreams?” asked Cates, steepling his long fingers and staring through them.

  “They aren’t just dreams. I have them when I’m awake too.”

  “What do you think they are?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “They seem real?”

  “They are real,” she said, fidgeting.

  “Tell me ab
out them.”

  “I don’t know what to tell you.”

  “Just tell me whatever comes to mind. What happens? Do you remember anything about the dreams clearly?”

  Cates wasn’t going to be able to help. No one could help. Because they weren’t dreams. With each passing moment she believed that more and more. If she was crazy, it was a horrible craziness beyond fixing with psychiatry. She was slipping over that deep end where she truly believed what she saw in her madness.

  “I see Zach and he needs me.”

  “Your son Zach?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s always a little boy? In the dreams?” asked Cates.

  She started to say yes, then remembered the first waking seizure. “It’s Zach. But once there was a little girl mixed up in there too.”

  “Who’s the little girl?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t recognize her?”

  “I don’t see her. I hear her feet, running. Sometimes I hear her voice, crying. That seems familiar. I know I should know her. But I can’t get a clear picture of her somehow. There’s something horrible about her.”

  “Horrible how?”

  “I think something terrible happened to her.”

  “But you don’t know what?”

  She shook her head.

  “Are she and Zach together?”

  She closed her eyes for a moment, concentrating, trying to remember. “No. I don’t think so. Some of it seems to be memory and some of it is happening now.”

  “While you’re watching.”

  “Yes.”

  “You believe you’re witnessing actual events when that happens?”

  “I know how that sounds.”

  “Don’t worry how it sounds. I’m not here to judge you. I’m here to help.”

  “When it happens, sometimes there’s pain. A lot of pain. I see Zach and he’s in this terrible dark place that I really can’t see but I can imagine. I know it’s underground, like a basement or a cave.”

  “And how do you feel after? Once you’ve awakened.”

  “I’m not always asleep,” she reminded him. She told him about the vision in the window and the one in the fountain, and he frowned. “I don’t even remember the ones when I’m sleeping. I wouldn’t call those visions. I’m not sure what happens then.”

  “Hallucinations can be extremely convincing, Audrey.”

  She shook her head. “They weren’t hallucinations.”

  “Didn’t they seem at all dreamlike? Unfocused? Weren’t you disoriented?”

  She didn’t want to admit that she was. To admit that would be to deny Zach. “No. I could feel Zach’s fear. I could smell the dampness all around him.”

  “Smell it?”

  “Yes. I could smell the odor of mildew and his own scent. A mother knows that smell.”

  He nodded. “Actually, olfactory hallucinations are uncommon, but they’re not unheard of. What do you think they mean?”

  Audrey glanced around the room. Even here, right now, the vision of Zach held captive threatened to creep over her. Doctor Cates’s eyes narrowed behind the Coke bottle glasses.

  “You want me to say I think my son is alive.”

  “Do you?”

  She stared into the thick lenses, seeing both his clear eyes and the rows of books reflected behind her. It seemed like some sort of message: Here I am, eminent doctor with my knowing expression and my years of study, I can help you. Only he couldn’t. No more than Tara could.

  “What did you want?” he said, breaking her train of thought.

  “What?”

  “A boy or a girl?” he said, smiling again.

  “It didn’t matter.”

  “What about Richard?”

  “A boy, I suppose.”

  “You suppose?”

  “I don’t recall him ever saying one way or the other. He and Zach loved being together. They were so different in some ways and alike in others.”

  “Had you ever experienced dreams or… visions… like these before Zach’s disappearance?”

  She frowned. “No,” she said. Not like these.

  “Tell me about some of the dreams.”

  “They were about my childhood.”

  Cates wiggled his fingers. “What about your childhood?”

  “I didn’t have a happy childhood.”

  “Did you come from a dysfunctional family?”

  She laughed dryly.

  “You find the question amusing?” asked Cates.

  “I find the term inadequate.”

  Cates nodded, his eyes narrowing like a cat’s. “Tell me about your mother.”

  “I don’t remember her.” But the question about her mother bothered her more than the others.

  “No memories at all?”

  “No.”

  “How can that be?”

  “It was all erased.”

  “Erased?”

  “My aunt helped me to forget.”

  “Your aunt? How did she do that?”

  “Hypnotherapy.”

  “Hypnotherapy is usually utilized to help someone remember. Your aunt is a psychologist?”

  “Psychiatrist.”

  “Why didn’t you go to her for help?”

  “She’s retired,” said Audrey. She wasn’t here to discuss her relationship with Tara.

  Cates frowned. “Do you remember anything at all of your childhood? There must be something.”

  “Flashes. Images that probably aren’t real. I remember hiding in darkness.”

  Cates nodded to himself. His lenses were prisms now—reflecting the low light of the Tiffany lamps, in rainbow colors— making him seem buglike. “What were you hiding from?”

  “I’ve never talked to anyone about my childhood,” said Audrey, shaking her head. “I honestly don’t remember much before I moved in with Tara.”

  “Your aunt?”

  Audrey nodded.

  “How did you end up with your aunt?”

  “She took me.”

  “Took you?”

  “I was ten when she came and got me.”

  “She got a court order?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “But she must have.”

  “Must she?”

  “The state wouldn’t allow someone to just take a child from their parents.”

  “Well, she did.”

  “Your aunt knew you were in danger and she came to get you?”

  Audrey nodded again, frowning. There was something else tugging at her mind, something that she was missing. There was so much missing. For years it had seemed like a blessing, having only to deal with the filmy remains of her past, the occasional nightmare, the fleeting image or sound that recalled unknown terrors and might send a quick shiver up her spine and be gone. Tara would explain to her again and again that yes, the dreams were horrible, but she was getting better, that if she only knew how terrible it had been before, she would know just how much better she was. And the dreams had faded over the years until they were nothing but simple nightmares that Audrey had trained herself to deal with.

  “Why didn’t your aunt contact the authorities when she came to get you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Did you tell her what was happening to you?”

  Audrey frowned. “I don’t think so,” she said.

  “But if you didn’t tell her, then how did she know you were in danger?”

  Audrey’s voice quavered. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore, all right?”

  Cates ignored her. “Tell me about the night she came and got you.”

  Of all the places she was afraid Cates might take her, Audrey really didn’t want to go there. But once he’d conjured up the memory, she was unable to stop the flow of images. They slipped over and around her, flooded her senses with flickering pictures of that long-ago night.

  “I had just gone to bed,” she whispered. “But I knew she was coming….”

  “Your
aunt? How?”

  “I just knew. I kept hearing her voice in my head. Telling me to be ready. That she was coming to take me away. It sounded like she was talking to herself, only I could hear her. I was frightened, because I knew if I was caught it would be bad.”

  “Did she visit you often?”

  Audrey tried to remember. She didn’t recall any visits. Not ever.

  So how did I recognize her voice? How did I know who it was speaking inside my head? She felt herself being cast adrift, sinking deep into that long-ago night. The sensation was so much like the feeling of slipping into the depths of darkness in her fountain that she tucked her hands between her thighs to warm them.

  “I heard a car door closing a long way away. But I knew it was her. I could feel her.”

  “Feel her?”

  Audrey ignored the question. “I lay there with my eyes closed and I could see her creeping across the lawn in the moonlight. She was dressed in blue jeans and a T-shirt and white tennis shoes and she had a baseball cap pulled down over her eyes.”

  “You must have remembered that. You couldn’t see it with your eyes closed.”

  Audrey frowned. “The memory is weird. It just ends there like a movie that’s cut off in midscene.”

  “And that’s all you remember? Your aunt came to save you, but you don’t remember from what?”

  The memory faded and Audrey was ever so glad to be back in the light of Cates’s office. “It was a long time ago. I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

  But the unknown something kept scratching at her mind. That memory wasn’t right. Part of the healing forgetfulness she and Tara had forged, had wiped away something in that terrible night—something that wanted badly to be remembered.

  Cates tried several different tacks, but Audrey wouldn’t open up again. Finally he glanced at his watch and sighed.

  “Mrs. Bock,” he said, “you’re suffering from stress-related anxiety and depression. The causes? Your son’s disappearance. Your history of childhood abuse. Issues that you have never fully dealt with that are now building up and coming back to haunt you. It’s also possible that you’re suffering either from a mild form of bipolar disorder or even a very slight case of schizophrenia, but we won’t know that without further work together. My suggestion for now is relaxation, and I’m going to prescribe a sedative to help you do that. I would also like to schedule you for regular appointments for a while, to try to get these issues out where you can deal with them. What do you say?”