Night Terror (34 page)

The three of them marched single file up the tiny stairs,
wedging into the bathroom. A small vanity and sink took up one wall. The toilet was on the other and a built-in fiberglass tub at the far end butted against a small closet. The walls were decorated in a floral wallpaper and most of the floor was concrete painted pink. The section under the tub and toilet was raised, however, sheathed in bare plywood. Clean towels hung from wooden rods and two toothbrushes rested neatly in a clean glass on the vanity. The room was definitely cooler.

“You have your moments, Cooder,” said Virgil. “I’ll give you that.”

Cooder grinned like a stroked puppy.

Virgil stared at the sink. “Looks like your mother lived down here with Zach.”

Audrey nodded. “She was so pale. I don’t think she’s seen daylight in ages.”

Virgil dropped the hammer and crowbar and took the tools Cooder was carrying, instead. He began to chisel a square opening overhead. He had only been working for a couple of minutes—he hadn’t even been able to tear the thin paneling away from the lead yet—when his arms dropped to his sides, and his heart throbbed in his chest. Cooder took the tools out of Virgil’s hands and
his
blows reverberated in the cellar. He managed to peel away the plywood and went to work on the metal. When Cooder began to tire, Virgil took over again. They worked that way for half an hour before they were finally able to pull down a man-size square of the quarter-inch sheet of soft lead.

Virgil immediately began chiseling at the concrete.

When his hands sagged again, the ceiling was chipped and grooved, but nowhere had he gouged deeper than the width of his little finger into the hardened cement. Cooder took over again, but still only cornflake-sized chips flew from the ceiling. When he finally tired, Audrey slipped beside him and began hacking wildly over her head with the sharp end of the crowbar, but all that accomplished was to send a low-pitched ringing echoing around the room.

“How thick do you think it is?” she said at last, leaning on the crowbar, catching her breath.

“No way of telling,” said Virgil. “Unsupported ceiling
like that, might be six, eight inches or more and it’s probably steel reinforced.”

“Shit,” said Audrey, staring at the tiny bit of damage they had managed to cause.

Virgil sat down on the floor. The fire was barely audible down the hall, and he wondered again just how long they would be buried. Richard wasn’t going to survive long without medical attention, and even if the fire didn’t drain the air, he knew they couldn’t breathe in here much longer. To top it off, the temperature was steadily rising. It had to be near ninety even in the cooler bathroom. Virgil felt the walls of the cellar closing in on him.

“I have to get out of here,” said Audrey, mirroring Virgil’s thoughts. She didn’t raise her voice, but there was panic in it just below the surface.

“We will,” said Virgil. “We’re going to get out. Just give me a minute.”

“How?” she said.

“I don’t know yet.”

“A rat could get out,” said Cooder.

Virgil gave him a look he was certain Cooder had seen often enough before. “We’re not rats, Cooder.”

Cooder shrugged. “A rat could get out.”

“How would it get out?” asked Audrey.

“Audrey,” said Virgil. “Cooder … Cooder has some issues.”

“Through cracks in the walls… or the plumbing,” said Cooder.

“We can’t go through the plumbing,” said Audrey. “And the walls are stone or concrete. Just like the ceiling.”

“No,” said Virgil. “We can’t.” But he was rubbing his chin, musing. “The plumbing has to go through the wall or floor though. The concrete might be weaker there. At least there’d be a hole we could start with.” He stared at the plywood platform beneath the toilet and tub. “Pry that up,” he said, motioning Cooder to go to work with the crowbar.

They knocked the toilet off its stand and snapped the copper feed pipe. It pumped out about a gallon of water and then bled dry.

“No electricity. Pump’s off,” said Virgil.

The smell of raw sewage filled the room. Audrey backed into the doorway as Virgil and Cooder struggled with the flooring. The sound of groaning nails and rending lumber shrieked through the cellar. Virgil moved in beside Cooder and the two of them hacked and cranked at the ornery flooring. When Cooder shifted out of Virgil’s way to give him room, Audrey found herself staring directly into Cooder’s mesmerizing eyes.

“I’m Audrey Bock,” she said, realizing they’d never been introduced, offering her hand.

It disappeared in Cooder’s huge mitt. “Cooder.”

“You help the sheriff?” she said, still unable to take her eyes away. Cooder’s hands seemed impossibly warm and soft and she experienced a strange sensation of overpowering calm. Cooder appeared to realize the reaction he was causing. He smiled gently, but there seemed more to it than just a smile, as though he were discoursing with her on some level far below normal human communication. She knew that whatever was happening, it wasn’t about her telepathy. Cooder was touching her with something so basic it could only be understood as love. She felt wrapped inside a strong, safe place, the likes of which she had never experienced before. And without understanding how, she realized she knew things about Cooder he’d never told anyone.

Cooder frowned, ending the moment. “I seen bad things,” he whispered.

Audrey stood silent, trying to speak. Finally she nodded slowly. “I’ve seen bad things too, Cooder.”

“Sometimes I can feel things.”

“Things about other people?”

Audrey waited as Cooder struggled to form a response.

“Yeah. Sometimes.”

“What do you feel now?” she asked, glancing down at her hand still wrapped protectively in his.

Cooder’s frown turned hard and his eyes grew distant. “Scared.”

She felt it too, now, radiating through her. “Because of the fire?”

“No.”

“Because of my son.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I feel that too, Cooder. But I don’t know what to do. What am I going to do?”

Cooder couldn’t possibly have the answer to Audrey’s question, and yet she found herself listening with bated breath.

“Don’t ever let her know.”

“Tara?”

A nod. “Doctor Beals.”

“Don’t ever let her know what?”

“That you feel people.”

“What did she do to you?”

Tears welled in Cooder’s eyes and Audrey felt as though she were melting. For just an instant her fear for Zach faded and she experienced some of the horror she had been tormented with in her garden. The blindness. The pain radiating outward in all directions. But she knew that she was feeling not only her own pain, but some of Cooder’s as well.

“Don’t let her know,” he whispered.

“She hurt you like that and you still lied to her?”

A nod.

She stroked the whiskers on his cheek and he smiled.

“He’s okay,” he said.

“I want to believe that, but I can’t feel him anymore.”

Cooder placed a brawny hand over her tiny shoulder. “He’s okay.”

“Shit!” said Virgil.

He dragged part of the dismembered box that had been the platform past Audrey and Cooder, and tossed the pieces down the stairs, shaking his head.

“What is it?” asked Audrey.

“There’s a hole all right,” said Virgil. “But it’s barely big enough to get a rat through.” He gave Cooder a discouraged look and disappeared back into the bathroom just as the sound of the sledgehammer pounding on concrete rumbled through the room again.

“This isn’t going to work either!” shouted Virgil, throwing the hammer into the tub.

“There has to be a way out!” said Audrey, crowding back into the room. “There has to!”

Virgil was on his knees staring into a square hole in the
cement floor with the open toilet drain reeking in his face. He had busted the PVC pipe and dug out the loose soil around it, but the hole itself was barely wider than the plumbing and, with the dirt removed, the thickness of the concrete was revealed. It would take them days to break through with the tools they had on hand.

“There’s got to be a way out,” she repeated.

Virgil gave her a sheepish look, shrugging his shoulders.

“There’s got to be!” she shouted, slapping the closet door. She jerked it open so hard it ripped off its thin brass hinges, and she tossed the door into the tub atop the hammer.

The flashlight was still lying beside Virgil and the inside of the closet was a weakly lit maze of shadow. The rows of shelves were filled with towels and toiletries, but it was the plumbing behind them that caught Audrey’s eye.

The tub drain ran through a small hole in the floor just like the toilet, but the copper water line and a large plastic vent pipe passed through the rear wall at knee level. And rather than a small hole, whoever had poured the concrete had left a large square opening for the plumbing to enter, as though they weren’t exactly certain where it should be located inside the basement. The hole had been filled with urethane foam which looked like hardened lava. But Audrey knew it was much softer than that. She’d used foam just like it to plug holes in her storage shed.

“Let me see the light,” said Audrey.

“What have you got?” said Virgil, struggling to his feet.

“Shine it in here,” she said.

“I’ll be damned,” said Virgil, easing her out of his way and tossing towels and shelves aside. “Cooder! Hand me that crowbar!”

56

THE NIGHT WHIZZED BY
in a blur of stars, trees, and oncoming headlights.

Zach stared straight ahead from the backseat, but he kept a close watch on his aunt from the corner of his eye. Everything his grandmother had said was true. Tara really
was
a bad person, and she really had come to take him away. He could hear the dog panting lightly right beside his head. He had no doubt that the dog would rip his throat out if Tara ordered him to.

For over a year now, the woman who claimed to be his grandmother had told him that her evil sister was coming for him and his only salvation was for him to hide with her in the tiny cellar, coming out only in darkness to ride his bike. For over a year he had cried and pleaded for his freedom, for his mother and father, and the worst part of his captivity had been the understanding in the woman’s eyes. It would have been better if she’d been a terrible monster who laughed and beat him, or an evil witch, but she would just nod her head and say “I know. I know. It’s hard for you, my baby. I’m so sorry. But I can’t let you go. You have to try to understand.”

He had finally realized that the only way he was ever going to get out was on his own. That was when he began exploring with his mind. When he discovered that he could
see
inside of locks and machines. When he began to learn how to reach out and touch his mother.

He still wasn’t certain how he’d done those things. The lock on his room had come first. He had lain down on his bed and closed his eyes in exhaustion, prepared to sleep, when suddenly he felt as though he had gotten up and walked across the room.

Only he hadn’t.

When he opened his eyes he had the weirdest sensation of being in two places at once. He closed his eyes again and let his mind drift where it wanted to go. Inside the lock.

He instinctively understood the workings of the mechanism even though he couldn’t understand how he was inside it. Mental fingers reached out and pressed tiny pins here
—tumblers
, he reminded himself, his mother had called them
tumblers—
then there, then twisted the knob until he heard the distinctive click of the door opening.

But there were several doors between himself and freedom, and, once Merle discovered Zach’s new talent, Merle and the old woman were even more watchful. Zach had tried over and over again to get away. Merle removed the lock from Zach’s door and installed a latch. Then Zach learned to work the latch without touching it. So Merle screwed his door shut. That was harder. It took a lot more concentration to back the screws out of their tight holes in the wood and by the time Zach had completed the job the first time he was too exhausted to move and Merle had learned his lesson. After that
all
the doors between Zach and freedom were locked and either the woman or Merle stayed home, between Zach and the trunk. Zach could slip slyly around the underground complex all he wanted. But he could never get past them.

Then he had made contact with his mother or she had made contact with him, he wasn’t sure which, and he had known then that he was saved. No matter how long it took, he knew that his mother and father would come to get him. And they had.

But now that hope was dashed and he was alone in the speeding car with his aunt and the dog, and the night was big around him.

57

VIRGIL FELT LIKE A CIGAR
in a tube. He’d stripped off his gunbelt and his undershirt and he could feel dirt sliding down around his pants into his boxer shorts. He fought to stay calm. There was no turning back now. Audrey and Cooder couldn’t do the job by themselves. She wasn’t strong enough and Cooder was too big and too damned slow. Besides, he was the sheriff, the man in charge. He had to do it. Cooder had dug as far as he could. Now it was Virgil’s turn again. Still, the warning voice in his head screamed at him to get out of the tiny little hole.

Virgil and Cooder and Audrey had busted up the plywood toilet platform and torn the thin plywood into small but workable spades. Taking turns, they’d weaseled into the tiny closet and dug out the foam insulation, ripped the copper pipes out of their way, and begun to dig. Each in turn would shovel at the rough, tightly packed brown clay until a pile formed beneath their bellies. Then they would climb out of the closet and while they sat exhausted in the corner by the tub, fighting for a breath of fresh air, their replacement would shovel the pile out into the bathroom and slip inside the closet to take their place.

Once the hole was deep enough to slide the digger’s torso into it, things became even more interesting. Now they had to dig
up.
What that amounted to was lying on their backs, closing their eyes and scratching at the soil right in front of
their faces as chunks of packed dirt and grains of loose sand fell into their mouths, their noses, and sometimes covered their faces altogether. They twisted and snorted and coughed, but the hole was getting bigger. The trouble was that twice already Virgil or Cooder had been buried under large falls. Their digging partner had jerked them out by their feet, Audrey wiping their faces with a towel, while they sputtered and hacked and cursed. Now it was Virgil’s turn again and the hole was just large enough for him to stand in.

What if it collapses and buries me standing up? It’ll take time for them to dig in to my feet and even when they find them, no way they’ll bend me back through that hole if I’m locked into a cave-in. This is fucking crazy.

Weak light reflected into the hole from the flashlight. Inches above his head the clay became ever more gravelly. Good cave-in material.

He tried to guess just how far it might be to the surface, but he had no way of knowing how deep the low-ceilinged room might be buried. He could be a couple feet beneath the driveway or he might be eight feet down. Still, the gravel gave him some hope. How deep would they make gravel for a drive? Not too deep probably. Unless it wasn’t just the driveway. What if this was the natural soil? In that case, it could be yards.

“Give me the crowbar!” he shouted.

Was that voices overhead? He worried the sharp end of the bar up through the hard-packed gravel, dodging clods flying at his face, expecting at any second to be buried.

“See anything yet?” called Audrey. Her voice sounded hollow in the tiny opening.

Virgil’s sinuses were filled with the damp smell of earth and the leftover aroma of the septic tank still bleeding out of the toilet hole. The light flickered and yellowed.

“I think the flashlight’s dying,” said Audrey.

“Great,” muttered Virgil, giving the bar another hard shove.

It gave a little easier this time. He twisted the curved end, spinning the shaft.

“I think the bar’s broke the surface!” he called.

Cooder and Audrey hooted.

Now what do I do? It feels like two feet of gravel up
there. If the hole caves in diagonally that’s more than enough to bury me.

But there was nothing else to do. He ever so gently withdrew the bar to see if light from the fire might travel down the tiny shaft, but the soil filled in the hole as fast as he removed the crowbar. He took a deep breath and plunged the bar into the dirt once more, twisting and punching at the gravel with the chisel end. More and more soil broke away and then he hit the keystone. The rough gravel cascaded around him in a furious pounding roar. He clapped his hands over his face and held his breath. The entire cave-in was over in less than a second.

When he pulled his hands away, he was staring at starlit sky and low, fast-moving clouds tinted crimson by the fire. He could hear the blaze roaring behind and above him, but his back was pressed against the cold concrete wall and he was pinned up to his shoulders in a four-foot-wide pit that had opened somewhere in Merle Coonts’s driveway. The crowbar was gone.

He felt hands scrabbling around his feet; he was afraid they’d break his legs trying to drag him back down into the hole. He shouted down to them. “Audrey! Cooder! I’m out! Can you hear me?” Above the roar of the fire, it was impossible to tell if the muffled noises he heard were replies. Birch’s face appeared over the lip of the tiny crater.

“Sheriff? Jesus Christ! How the hell did you get down there?”

Birch leapt into the hole, shouting over his shoulder for help. He brushed off Virgil’s face and started digging with his bare hands around Virgil’s chest. “What the hell are you doing down here, Virg?”

Suddenly more faces appeared. Volunteer firemen in full gear with shovels. As each caught sight of Virgil, they froze for an instant.

“Dig!” shouted Birch, breaking the spell. But even so, all of his rescuers chattered as they dug.

“Sheriff, howdja get down here?”

“What the heck happened?”

“Just get me out!” shouted Virgil. “There’s more people down this hole. Bob! Get the paramedics over here! There’s a man with a bullet wound down there.”

“They’re coming,” said Birch, jerking at Virgil’s shoulders, trying to lift him out of the hole. But the soil had Virgil locked in place. Birch moved aside to let a couple of firemen work with their shovels. “When we couldn’t find you or the Bocks, we were afraid all of you were in the house when it went up. One of the firemen found a man shot to death at the back of the house. Damn, Virg. You gave us a hell of a scare.”

“The body must be Merle Coonts,” said Virgil. He’d made a mistake about Coonts. Merle wasn’t a bad guy after all. Or not the bad guy Virgil had thought he was. He’d kidnapped Zach Bock. But still, Virgil didn’t think under the circumstances he deserved to die for it.

When enough gravel was removed, Virgil clawed his way past the rescuers and out of the hole. He was instantly surrounded by more firemen and paramedics, all talking at once.

“You’ll all get the story! Right now I don’t have time. Get the rest of them out.”

Glancing around, he saw that someone had moved Merle’s truck and the Bocks’ Camry. Two fire trucks had taken their place and lines led from a pump truck out on the road. They’d be refilling it from the nearest pond when it ran out of water. Maybe it had already been refilled a couple of times. The barn was gone, just smoldering timbers. There was still a good deal of bright red fire evident in the house, even beneath the streams of water, but the flames had died enough that it wasn’t
too
uncomfortable standing as close as he was. The gray mist rising thickly into the night air was more steam than smoke. Virgil glanced at the trucks again and noticed they were all from outlying towns. Ouachita County had been hit pretty hard with fires in the past couple of hours. The Arcos trucks were probably still at Babs’s place.

He turned to Birch, who waited patiently beside him. “Put out an all-points bulletin. Tara Beals is now wanted for kidnapping and murder.”

“The boy?”

“The boy’s alive and she has him. Let the troopers know Tara is armed and extremely dangerous.”

“Okay, Sheriff,” said Birch, turning to go.

“Birch!” said Virgil, grabbing his arm. “Give me your shirt and your gunbelt.”

Birch stopped to do as he was told.

“My gunbelt’s in the cellar,” said Virgil. “And my shirt. Get ’em for me when you can.”

“Okay,” said Birch. He disappeared around the back of Merle’s truck and Virgil peered down into the crater as he slipped on the uniform shirt that was two sizes too big for him and tightened the belt to its last notch. Two firemen were pulling Audrey out. Virgil leaned down and took her hand, helping her to the top.

“Richard,” she said, glancing back into the hole.

“They’ll get him,” said Virgil, moving her away from the heat.

“State troopers will be on the way to Tara’s house in a few minutes,” Virgil told Audrey.

Audrey shook her head. “The police won’t find her.”

“Tara thinks you’re dead. She did all this”—he waved his hand at the fire—“as a cover-up. She’s crazy, Audrey. I’m sure she thinks no one’s even looking for her. More than likely she’ll go straight home.”

“Even so. They won’t find her.”

“Why are you so sure?”

“My mother kept Zach here for a year,” she said, nodding toward the hole. “Did you find him? And Tara is more expert at deception than anyone else in my family. She may be crazy, but she’s a hell of a lot smarter than you think.”

One of the paramedics disappeared into the hole. Another passed a medical case and flashlight down to him. Then Cooder stuck his head out and smiled. Virgil couldn’t help but smile back.

“Come on out, Cooder!” he shouted, motioning for one of the firemen to help Cooder up out of the hole. Cooder scrabbled to the top. Another paramedic disappeared and then they were passing Richard out. Firemen lifted him out of the hole and Audrey hurried to his side as they eased him onto a stretcher. A big paramedic checked his blood pressure and inspected the wound with a flashlight. Richard was conscious again, but that was a mixed blessing since he seemed to be feeling the pain more now, slitting his eyes, gritting his teeth.

“You’re going to be all right,” she said, glancing at the paramedic who gave her a thumbs-up.

Richard tried a nod but the effort hurt and he grimaced. “Where’s Zach?” He seemed to think that Zach should be there with them. His head bobbed.

Audrey frowned. “Tara’s got him.”

Richard let out what might have been a sigh but sounded more like a gasp, closing his eyes tightly. When Audrey took his hand he squeezed back and she could feel some of his pain. She hoped by doing so she might be taking some of it away, but she had no idea if her talent worked that way. Richard opened his eyes again slowly and Audrey saw both desperation and determination in them.

“Go get him,” he whispered. “Go get Zach!”

Virgil looked at her and shook his head. “I’m leaving in a minute to go join the troopers. Let us handle it, Audrey.”

“No!” rasped Richard, slapping the side of the stretcher. “The keys are in the car, Aud.”

Audrey nodded but Virgil grabbed her arm.

“I’m going,” she said, staring at his hand. He took a moment before releasing her.

“All right,” he said, frowning. “I’ll drive you.”

To their surprise, Cooder was already seated in the rear of Virgil’s cruiser, staring calmly out the window into the dark woods across the road.

“Cooder,” said Virgil as he slid into his seat and reached across to open the passenger door for Audrey, “you’ll have to get out. We’re leaving.”

Silence.

“Cooder?”

“Going with you, Virg.”

“Sure,” Virgil sighed, starting the car. “Why not?”