Night Terror (3 page)

5

TWO HOURS BEFORE MONDAY’S
dreary dawn, a lone delivery truck passed in front of Cartland Memorial Hospital in downtown Arcos. Tires hissed on pavement still wet from a late-night rain. A freight train moaned in the distance, heading for Montreal. A cigarette sizzled to its death in a glittering puddle, as a tall orderly with buckteeth turned to pass back through the sliding glass doors into the emergency room.

Two hallways over Audrey lay on her bed, sound asleep yet covered in a sheen of cool perspiration. The only sound in the room was Richard’s light snore as he dozed in his chair. Then the curtain stirred against the window frame when a light breeze slipped down across the mountains. The open page of a book on the bedside table fluttered in reply. In the corridor outside, the soft padding of a nurse’s shoes reached a low crescendo and died away.

Audrey’s sudden shriek pierced the hospital quiet like a gunshot in church. Clutching at the sweat-soaked sheets that snared her, she bolted into a sitting position.

“The smell!” she gasped, gagging for breath. “The smell!”

She ripped at her head and face with frantic fingers, trying to strip the skin away from her skull.

Richard jerked upright in his chair, fighting his way out of the well of sleep. He wiped his eyes and squinted, then
rushed to Audrey’s side, grabbing her hands. The nurse’s rubber soles sounded again.

The light from the lamp struggled to frighten away the demons of darkness, but they hung in the room like smoke. Weird shadows flittered—angular and harsh—as Audrey twisted on the bed. She shivered and Richard pulled her toward him, but she pushed him away.

“No!” she shrieked. “Let me go!”

He released her and she recoiled against the metal headboard. The nurse poked her head through the door.

“Get Doctor Burton!” shouted Richard, and the nurse disappeared.

Audrey reached toward her face again and he slid onto the bed, holding her tightly, binding her arms in his own. “It’s all right, honey,” he said. “There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

“No!” she screamed again. She rocked back and forth so hard the metal headboard rattled against the wall.

“Audrey!” said Richard, shaking her shoulders. “Audrey! Wake up! It’s a bad dream.”

He couldn’t stand to see her so frightened. She seemed as terrified of his embrace as she was of the demons in her head. When she shoved him away again, he let her lurch out of bed. Then he raced in front of her, blocking her path. The door opened and Doctor Burton pushed in past the nurse. Burton wasn’t much bigger than Audrey, but she was twenty years older, with gray hair and deep-set green eyes. She peered at Audrey over the top of thicklensed bifocals, holding out her hand to Richard to freeze him in place.

“Audrey,” she said calmly. “It’s Doctor Burton. Can you hear me?”

The nurse leaned past Richard. “Are you going to prescribe a sedative, Doctor?”

Burton shook her head, never taking her attention off of Audrey. “It’s Doctor Burton, Audrey. Can you hear me?” Burton reached out and laid both hands on Audrey’s shoulders.

“I hear you!” Audrey shouted. “She’s got him! I have to go to him! She’s going to kill him!”

“Who’s got him, Audrey? Has who?”

“She does! She has Zach!”

Burton brought her face closer to Audrey’s. “Relax, Audrey. I want you to take a deep breath. Will you do that for me? Take a deep breath.”

Audrey complied petulantly.

“Another,” said Doctor Burton.

Audrey took another breath but stamped her foot like a small child, her face set, her eyes still glazed.

“That’s good,” said Burton, stroking Audrey’s hair. “Can you see me?”

“I can see you!” screamed Audrey, stamping her foot again and trying to shake away from Burton, who held her shoulders lightly but firmly. “I have to go to him! He needs me!”

“You don’t have to go anywhere,” said Burton in a calm voice. “You’re here in the hospital, Audrey. Here with Richard and me. Do you see Richard? Look at Richard.”

She turned Audrey to face Richard and waited until Audrey nodded.

“We’re here in a nice room and there’s no one else here. I want you to go back to bed. Will you go to bed now?”

Audrey seemed confused, but when Burton asked her again, she nodded, and Burton led her slowly back to the bed, crooning softly that everything was all right. She placed Audrey back into it one limb at a time, as though Audrey were a mannequin. Then Burton raised the stainless side rail.

“Why is she like this?” asked Richard, hurrying to the other side of the bed. “Why would she listen to you and not to me?”

Burton shrugged, stroking Audrey’s hair. “It’s called a night terror.
Favor Nocturnus.
To tell you the truth, we really have no idea what’s going on inside
there.”
She nodded toward the point where her fingers massaged Audrey’s temple. “The next time she might listen to you and not to me. Or to no one at all.” She inspected the bright red welts where Audrey’s fingernails had scratched her skin. Richard told her how they had occurred, and Burton shook her head again. “There’s no telling what she thought she was doing,” she said.

Audrey swayed from side to side, still staring into space.

“I don’t get it,” said Richard. “Her eyes are wide open.”

“She probably won’t even remember any of it when she wakes up.”

“This is just like the one she had before,” said Richard. He wanted answers, but he was afraid there weren’t any. Doctor Burton had run enough tests on Audrey over the past twenty-four hours to find out something, surely. But she offered little hope as far as Richard was concerned.

“Honestly, Richard, we just don’t know much about night terrors. All you can do is hold her. Talk to her. Try to comfort her.”

“Talking to her when she’s like this is like carrying on conversations with two different people.”

“There’s nothing wrong with her physically. My guess is that her pain episode was trauma-induced stress. I’d like Audrey to see a colleague of mine, Doctor Cates.”

“A psychologist?”

“Psychiatrist.”

“Audrey won’t see him. I tried to get her to see
you
Saturday morning and she refused.”

“You need to urge her to see him, Richard. This isn’t going to get better without professional help and there’s nothing more that I can do. I’m going to release her this morning.”

“Can’t you give her something?”

Burton shook her head. “I’m not a psychiatrist, Richard. I might be doing more harm than good.”

“Audrey already has a psychiatrist.”

Burton’s eyebrows rose. “Oh? She never mentioned it.”

“Her aunt Tara. But she hasn’t treated Audrey in years. Audrey had a horrible childhood. It took a lot of therapy for her to work through it.”

Doctor Burton nodded slowly before speaking. “I’m no specialist. But that might be what this is about. I really think it would be best if Audrey saw Doctor Cates. Being treated by a family member is highly unconventional.”

“I’ll talk to her.”

Audrey reached toward her face again, but Richard snatched her hand. She was panting again too. Richard eyed Burton.

“All right,” said Burton, pressing the nurse’s buzzer. “I’ll give her something so she can sleep tonight.”

6

VIRGIL HAD AN UNDER-SHERIFF
, a captain, and twelve deputies below him, scattered all over the county, but he had let it be known early in his first term that he was an
active
police officer. Unlike his predecessors, Virgil passed on most of the managerial and political tasks to his staff, preferring to work more closely with his deputies and to be seen around the jurisdiction he represented. He knew every inch of Ouachita County, every backroad, every logging trail, every hidden driveway. A day never went faster for Virgil than one spent cruising the countryside. But lately he found excuses to go out on patrol even more often and to stay out longer.

Now, with his first coffee still sloshing in his gut, he pulled the cruiser over on the shoulder along a deserted stretch of farm-to-market lane. Hitching up his gunbelt, he climbed the steep slope to a rusted wrought-iron fence winding through the woods around a cluster of gravestones. The little family cemetery sat back far enough from the road for solitude, and the view of the mountaintops over the trees was distant and peaceful. Many of the markers were so old the engraving had been worn away by time. Rosie Merrill’s was not. To Virgil, it looked as fresh as an auto accident. He strode to the foot of her grave and bowed his head.

The morning was cool, filtered through thin wisps of
mist, and the surrounding woods seemed dreamlike and indistinct. But something other than the everpresent guilt he felt when passing this place had drawn his eye through the trees to the old graveyard. He could have sworn he’d seen movement in the forest. His first thought was that it was Tom Merrill, come to visit Rosie’s grave, but there were no other cars parked on the shoulder. Virgil wondered then if maybe he hadn’t stumbled on someone vandalizing the graves.

He inspected the entire acre and a half of the cemetery, but other than one pickup that passed on the road below, the day was silent as death. And although gravestones had fallen or been pushed over in the past, there didn’t seem to be any recent damage. There were no footprints other than his own in the dew-laden grass.

The more he studied the cemetery and the undulating waves of mist, the more he noticed how unusually quiet it was, even for a graveyard. Virgil had been a hunter since he was a child. The woods were seldom perfectly still. There should have been birds calling at the very least, insects buzzing. It was as though the forest itself were listening.

He spun slowly around, three hundred and sixty degrees, studying the trees. He supposed he was just getting hinky in his old age. That had to be it. Just nerves. He’d never been nervous alone in the woods before. He turned back to the gravestones and laughed at himself. He was acting like some kid in the cemetery on a dare. He shook it off and headed back down the hill through the graves. But he couldn’t help but stop in front of Rosie’s grave, couldn’t pass her without notice like she was a stranger. And as he stood there, head bowed, one hand gripping the other, he was overcome by grief and guilt just as he knew he would be, swept up as he always was in the loneliness of this place where Rosie was now spending eternity. This was Rosie’s world forever, a silent, misty place, and, for Virgil, it seemed filled with unanswered questions and silent accusations.

“I’m sorry, Rosie. I’m real sorry.”

He began to sob. He leaned against a battered oak tree and wondered how tears could feel so good and still sting like hell coming out.

He hadn’t cried on his earlier visits, but he’d always made a habit of talking to Rosie. He wanted to believe that she could hear him, but mostly he spoke to himself, because this was a sacred place and he had long ago made a pact with whatever inhabited this hallowed ground. Whether they were the ghosts of the dead or merely the memories of the living, he didn’t care. This was a consecrated space to Virgil, a place in his life that he shared with no one. Not even Doris knew about his visits here, although he knew that Doris would have understood his need to come here better than anyone.

“I wanted to find him for you, Rosie. Find him and the man who did it. I’ve done everything I could. And now there’s Doris to worry about. I guess it’s just getting too much for me. And there haven’t been any new clues since the last time I talked to you.” He twisted the toe of his boot into the grass alongside the grave. “I got other problems now.”

He turned and hurried to the cruiser without looking back, glad to be away from the reproachful faces he imagined in the shadowed trees. Hurrying to the cruiser, he was soothed by the throaty sound of the big engine carrying him far away, into sunlight. Into warmth. A couple miles farther up the road, he eased the car around a tractor and waved absentmindedly at the farmer driving the machine, but although the man’s face was vivid in Virgil’s memory, the fellow’s name wouldn’t come to him.

Once upon a time he’d had a mind and a memory like a steel trap. He’d known half the people in the county, memorized every state law, every county and town ordinance. Once upon a time he could spot a man breaking the law almost before the misdemeanor was committed. Once upon a time he’d been in on most of the major busts in the county. But for the past six months, Virgil hadn’t issued so much as a warning.

Doris was dying.

Doctor Burton had referred her to a specialist, who referred her to more specialists in Boston. Somehow the doctors had diagnosed her cancer too late. Then, to try to rectify their mistake, they’d recommended chemo and radiation. But by that time, all the oncologists could promise
was that the treatment might extend Doris’s life by a couple of months. A couple of months of weak, nauseous, pain-filled hell. In and out of the hospital. On her back most of the time. Doris wouldn’t have it. She wanted to do things her way. Always had. And Virgil couldn’t argue with her.

But at least the quacks had been decent enough to refer her to a pain treatment center in New Jersey. The doctors there put her on a new, more powerful drug regimen, and the effect had been wonderful and terrible at the same time. Wonderful because the drugs masked the reality of her disease at first. She could function again, in a limited way, at least in the beginning, and, even now, the pain that had driven her screaming to the hospital in the first place was mostly controlled. The sight of Doris, doubled over in bed, screaming, had been more than he had thought he could bear. But he had learned a lot since then about what he could bear.

Doris had already worked her way through the denial steps. She didn’t shriek at Virgil anymore or break down and bawl on the pillow beside him. She just smiled and nodded stoically and told him that everything was going to be all right, that she was at peace. And she wouldn’t let him tell the kids.

Burt and Carole had their own busy lives out on the far coast. They called regularly and got home every year or so. It had been a hard decision, not seeing them one last time, but by the time Doris had accepted her fate, she didn’t want either of the kids to see what the disease had done to her. Virgil wasn’t sure that was the right way to handle things, but Doris was convinced that they would accept her decision in the end and that everything would be all right. Only everything wasn’t going to be all right, because
Virgil
wasn’t at peace. He hadn’t planned for this. He couldn’t eat. He couldn’t sleep.

For thirty-eight years he’d been madly in love with Doris. He’d never once raised his voice in her presence, and he certainly couldn’t even bring himself to argue with her. And all along, he’d known that one day they would part. Because, unlike Doris, Virgil didn’t really believe in the hereafter. Virgil thought that anything he couldn’t see and touch was bunkum. Of course, he never said that in front of Doris.

Well, only once. And that was right after they were married. Doris gave him a haughty, down-your-nose look. She’d dragged him off to the Congregational Church and plopped him down into a pew beside her, and his butt had warmed that same seat every Sunday for the past thirty-eight years until Doris had gotten too ill to go. Even though his church membership had undoubtedly brought him a lot of votes over the years, Virgil had resented being a hypocrite all that time. But he hated the thought of losing Doris a hell of a lot worse.

So Virgil had always had a plan. Well, not a plan, really. What he’d had was a thought, a hope. Someone else might have called it a prayer. Virgil had always figured on going before Doris. Because there was no way he could live without her.

Now he was scared shitless she was going to die before he did.

Doris had tried to talk to him about her
passing on
, but whenever she started conversation down that path, Virgil raised his voice on some other subject, and he kept raising it, louder and louder, pacing around and waving his hands, until Doris couldn’t get a word in edgewise. She’d shoot him one of her
Oh, for Pete’s sake, Virgil
looks and sigh and wait until he had wound down enough to shut up.

“All right, Virgil,” she’d say. “All right. We won’t talk about it right now, honeypie.”

He’d drop down beside her on the bed then, and hold her and pretend that everything was going to be all right. But it wasn’t going to be all right. She was getting weaker by the day. She was losing a lot of weight and her eyes were sinking into her head, and more and more the pain was getting stronger than the drugs.

People stopped by the house nearly every day with soup and home remedies. Doris kept telling
them
she’d beat this thing. But Virgil could see the worry in their friends’ eyes. See the blame. Why aren’t you doing more? they were thinking. All he could do was grit his teeth and turn away. Why
wasn’t
he doing more? He was the goddamned sheriff for Gawd’s sake.

He had pictured a hundred different ways of killing himself, but his children kept intruding on his thoughts. He saw
them standing over his and Doris’s graves, crying their eyes out, and he punished himself even more for what he would be doing to them, but he also knew that in the end that wouldn’t matter to him. All that would matter would be the fact that he wouldn’t have to face that empty house. He’d rather blow his brains out.

But not yet.

Not while Doris still needed him. He had to be strong for her. They’d made it through almost forty years of living together. That was why nowadays he didn’t want to leave her alone in the morning and he was afraid to go home at night, afraid of what he might find. Why he sat for long hours after midnight staring at two case files he knew he was never going to solve.

With an effort, he dragged himself out of the darkness in his mind. This had always been one of his favorite parts of the county. Farmland gave way to foothills and only occasional homes dotted the roadside. Thick stands of maples fell into dense underbrush on either side of the road. Even with the sun clearing the sky of the few remaining clouds, the thick trees turned the day to soft twilight. Branches laced the road with crisscrossed shadow fingers. Virgil glanced to his left when a deer stuck its head out of the puckerbrush and he damn near ran over Cooder Reese.

“Shit!” Virgil jerked the wheel hard, pumping the brakes. Tires squealed and gravel flew. He was a hundred yards down the road before he could throw the cruiser into a looping turn and power back up the hill, his heart pounding in his chest. All that time Cooder stood frozen, one foot on the grass and one on the road.

Virgil whipped over onto the shoulder and took a moment turning off the ignition, waiting for his hands to stop shaking. He glared at Cooder, but he knew that wouldn’t make any difference. Cooder gave Virgil the same sort of lopsided sneer he gave everybody, only Virgil knew there was no meanness in it. No contempt. Cooder wasn’t like that. Cooder wasn’t quite like anyone else except Cooder.

Virgil climbed out of the car and crossed the road with a purposeful stride. No one approached from either direction. The only time anyone was likely to travel this road was early morning or late afternoon, going to or from a mill
job, maybe a housewife taking the scenic route into Arcos to shop.

“Where you heading, Cooder?” Virgil crossed his arms and locked his feet into a solid stance. He knew it would be a minute before Cooder answered. Things got into Cooder’s head and then things had a way of working their way back out. But it took a while.

Cooder’s T-shirt was greasy. His blue jeans looked as though they had been smeared with mud, or something far worse. But his blond hair looked freshly washed and combed, and though his expression made it seem as though he was concentrating, his eyes were dull, focused a million miles away.

“Walkin’,” said Cooder.

“Yeah,” said Virgil, spitting onto the pavement. “Why don’t you and I move out of the road a little.” Virgil walked over to stand on the grass and after a minute Cooder followed.

“Long time,” said Cooder. His placid, dark brown eyes with their long-distance stare never left Virgil. A person who looked into Cooder’s eyes long enough could get lost in them. A lot of girls had, back in the sixties, before the acid and heaven knew what else had turned Cooder into something not quite there.