Night Terrors Read online

  She brought the food and drinks back up to the hotel room.

  Tara still hadn’t woken up yet.

  And Katie wasn’t going to wake her up. She remembered how much the night terrors drained Tara when she was younger, and she knew that the thing she needed the most right now was sleep, a deep sleep with no dreams.

  Tara woke up around eight-thirty.

  Aunt Katie warmed up her breakfast for her in the microwave. Tara picked at her food, barely eating, but she drank the juice, milk, and a cup of coffee.

  After Tara took a shower and changed her clothes, Aunt Katie showed her the drawing she’d created in the middle of the night. She had considered keeping it from her, keeping her away from whatever Jeremy was pointing her towards, but she had decided that after today there would never be any more secrets between them again. Tara was the only family she had left, and she didn’t want to drive her away.

  Tara stared at the drawing. It was a quick sketch of an old house that looked like it might be in the middle of the brush or woods. And in one corner of the paper was a number – an eight. She had traced over the number again and again, nearly etching it into the paper. And there was one word at the bottom of the page, and again she had rewritten it so many times that it was practically carved into the paper. The word was Woods.

  Woods. What did that mean? The woods? Was the house located in the woods? Did it have something to do with Agent Woods?

  She didn’t know.

  “You drew that in your sleep,” Aunt Katie told her. “I watched you do it.”

  “Yeah,” Tara said. “I’ve been doing that a lot lately.”

  “I stayed awake to make sure you didn’t get up and leave.”

  Tara nodded. This was a familiar and nostalgic feeling for her – Aunt Katie watching over her through the night. She missed that feeling of security more than she had realized.

  “Thanks,” Tara told her.

  “Tara, listen to me.” Aunt Katie sat down right in front of Tara at the small table. She grabbed one of Tara’s hands in both of hers and locked eyes with her. “This is serious business. There’s a killer in this city, and I think he’s looking for you. And I think it’s Jeremy.”

  Tara didn’t say anything.

  “You can’t fight him,” Aunt Katie continued. “Why don’t you come back with me to Boston? I already bought a ticket for you.”

  For a moment the idea of getting on a plane and escaping appealed to her. But she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t let one more person die because Jeremy was looking for her. She couldn’t let one more person become a sacrifice.

  Tara sighed and squeezed her aunt’s hand. “I love you. I wish I could come back with you, but I can’t.”

  Aunt Katie was about to argue but she could see it was no use.

  Tara got up and grabbed her drawing tablet and cell phone. She dialed Agent Woods’ number and listened to the ringing on the other end. He finally answered after five rings. “I’ve got something to show you,” she said. “Meet me at my apartment in an hour and a half.”

  She hung up the phone and looked at her aunt who was already shaking her head no, already begging Tara with her eyes not to go back out there in that world with a monster looking for her. Stay here in this hotel room with me where it’s safe, her eyes said.

  But Tara had to go.

  “Please, Aunt Katie,” Tara said as she went to the door, “just stay here in the hotel room. Don’t go anywhere. And don’t open the door for anyone. I’ll call you later.”

  They hugged and Tara left.

  2.

  Tara pulled into her parking space and shut off her rumbling Jeep. She glanced over at Steve’s apartment and saw that his blue pickup was parked a few spaces down from hers.

  She got out of her Jeep with her drawing tablet tucked under her arm and hurried to the front door where Agent Woods was already waiting for her. Again, she could imagine Steve watching out his window and wondering about her relationship with Agent Woods. She was going to have to come clean with Steve, tell him the truth about what was going on, tell him the truth about her night terrors, and tell him the truth about a half-brother she never knew she had, a half-brother who was searching for her to finish the job he had started with her parents. If Steve couldn’t accept all of that, then he just wasn’t the right guy for her, and it would be better to know that now than later.

  “I found this under your door mat,” Agent Woods said.

  He handed Tara a white envelope with some writing on it. “I didn’t open it,” he added quickly.

  Tara smiled and looked down at the envelope. True to his word, the envelope was still sealed. Printed on the front in careful, neat letters were the words: From Steve. To Tara.

  “Someone’s got a crush on you?” Agent Woods asked. He sounded like an adult teasing a child.

  “Come on inside,” she told him, ignoring his comment. “I’ve got something I want you to see. And something I need to tell you.”

  3.

  Over cups of coffee, Tara gave Agent Woods a brief history of her life, filling in the previously missing details about her half-brother. She told him more about her night terrors, how she not only walked in her sleep and caused boyfriends to run away in the middle of the night, but also about how she had developed a new habit of drawing in her sleep.

  She collected the drawings from her office and laid them out on the coffee table for Woods to study. And she tore out her most recent drawing from the tablet and laid it down next to the others.

  Agent Woods stared at the drawings for a few minutes. Then he looked at her. “Why didn’t you show me these before?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. I drew these while the murders were happening so they really couldn’t have helped.”

  Agent Woods studied the drawings again.

  “You drew all of these while the murders were happening?” he asked.

  “I drew these while Jen was being murdered,” Tara said and pointed at the sketches of Jen. “And this one with the gun and bullets I drew while Greg was being murdered.”

  “Like you saw a clue to the next murder.”

  “Yeah,” Tara said, “but I didn’t know what it meant at the time,” she added defensively.

  “So what’s this one?” he asked, pointing at her most recent drawing of the house among the overgrown brush.

  “I don’t know. I drew that one last night in my sleep. Maybe it’s the place where the next murder will take place.”

  “But I’m assuming you don’t know where this place is.”

  “No. I’ve never seen it before.”

  “But maybe you’re seeing it through the killer’s eyes.”

  Jeremy’s eyes, Tara thought. “Or he’s sending these images to me on purpose,” she told Agent Woods. “Playing with me for some reason. I mean if he can get in and out of my apartment any time he wants to, then why didn’t he just come in here and kill me?”

  Agent Woods shook his head; he didn’t have an answer to her question. He turned his attention back to the drawings. “What about these words and these numbers around the edges? What do they mean?”

  “I don’t know. They could be random thoughts that I’m picking up.” But Tara didn’t believe that.

  And neither did Agent Woods. “They have to mean something.” He took out his little notepad and wrote down the numbers in a list: three, five, two, nine and eight. And then he wrote down the words scribbled on the drawings right underneath the numbers: Run, Pine, Trinity, and Woods.

  He showed her his notebook. “None of this means anything to you?”

  “No, I’ve been looking at them for days.”

  “What about Woods? Is that supposed to be me?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Maybe if we scramble the words up. I mean Woods and Pine seem to go together. They both have something to do with trees. And then there’s the word, Trinity. Could mean three of something. Or it could mean the Holy Trinity. It could have something to do
with the number three. And then there’s the word Run …” he let his words trail off – he didn’t really seem to have any idea of what they could mean.

  “What about my half-brother?” Tara asked him, changing the subject. “Can you see if he’s still in a mental institution in Indiana? Or find out when he got out?”

  “You really think this killer is your half-brother?”

  Tara stared at him and nodded. She was sure.

  “I can try to get some kind of warrant from the field office in Indianapolis, get some people working on it up there. It might take a little while.”

  Tara walked away from the coffee table. She saw the envelope from Steve on the counter. She didn’t really want to open it in front of Agent Woods, but there was something bothering her about it.

  “You should get your door locks changed,” Agent Woods suggested as he pulled out his cell phone.

  “I don’t think it will matter,” Tara answered as she stared at the white envelope. She’d felt something strange when she had held the envelope in her hand earlier, a flash of something dark. And now a pit of dread was beginning to form in her stomach like she’d just overlooked some kind of major clue, something that she’d missed that was going to come back to haunt her very soon.

  “Do you mind if I take pictures of these drawings?” Agent Woods asked as he aimed his cell phone at the first of the drawings laid out on the coffee table. It seemed like he was going to take the pictures whether she gave him permission or not.

  “Go ahead,” Tara said and her voice sounded far away to her own ears.

  Something happened to Steve, her mind whispered as she walked over and picked up the envelope.

  Now that the envelope was back in her hands, it felt funny. It felt a little damp, like it had been outside in the humidity for a little while. She could feel something inside the envelope, but it didn’t feel like a folded piece of paper a letter would be written on. And it didn’t feel like a greeting card.

  It felt like a photograph.

  She wondered why Steve would send her something in an envelope. He didn’t seem like that kind of person; he didn’t seem like the kind of man who would hide behind a letter. Maybe it was just a note telling her that he’d had a great time on their “date” the other day.

  She tore the envelope open as Agent Woods snapped the last photo of her drawings.

  Tara stopped breathing for a moment as she stared down at the Polaroid photo she’d pulled out of the envelope – it was the only thing inside the envelope, nothing else except the photo.

  “Agent Woods … you need to see this,” she finally breathed out.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  1.

  Agent Woods stuffed his cell phone back inside his suit coat pocket and rushed over to Tara who stood very still by the kitchen counter, the shredded white envelope on the floor at her feet, a photograph clutched in her hands.

  She shoved the photograph at Woods.

  He looked at it. It was a photo of a man seated in a simple wooden chair in a bare room. His arms were behind him and the chair like they were tied behind his back and there was a strip of gray duct tape sealing his mouth shut.

  Agent Woods looked at Tara.

  “It’s Steve,” she said.

  “You know him?”

  “Yes,” she gestured towards the kitchen wall. “He’s my next door neighbor.”

  She walked away into the living room. “Oh God, Jeremy’s got him and it’s all my fault.”

  Agent Woods hurried over to Tara. “Okay, calm down for a minute. Let’s think about this. Why would Jeremy kidnap this guy Steve? Why do you think this is your fault?”

  “Steve and I walked down to the café for a coffee yesterday.”

  He stared at her. “I told you to stay inside.”

  “Yeah, and I called you all day. I didn’t want to be alone, okay?” After she said the words they sounded childish and pathetic to her own ears and she regretted saying them right away.

  “I was … busy with …” Again, Agent Woods let his words trail off.

  “You told me to call you if anything was wrong.”

  Agent Woods inhaled a breath and let it out slowly. He nodded. “I’m sorry I didn’t answer your call,” he said. “I listened to your messages. Everything seemed to be okay so I didn’t call back. I was at Miss Helen’s house, looking over the evidence.”

  Tara shook her head, suddenly feeling guilty again. “No, it’s not your fault. You told me to stay inside and I just wanted to talk to someone, be with someone …”

  Agent Woods surprised Tara by laying a gentle hand on her shoulder. He stared at her with his dark eyes. “This isn’t your fault. Okay?”

  Tara nodded.

  Agent Woods removed his hand from Tara’s shoulder and hurried towards the front door. “Come on, let’s go.”

  “Where?” she asked, but she grabbed her keys and followed him to the front door.

  “Next door. If he was taken, there has to be some kind of clues left behind.”

  2.

  They stood in front of Steve’s front door as Agent Woods pounded on it with the edge of his fist. “Steve! Open up. I’m Agent David Woods with the FBI!”

  Tara glanced at Steve’s pickup truck. Since it was still parked here, it would mean that Steve had to have been taken sometime last night or this morning. The Polaroid photo looked like it had been taken in the daytime, which made Tara believe he’d been taken this morning.

  Tara thought of the photo of Steve tied to the chair and she cringed inside, thinking of what he must be going through right now.

  If he’s still alive. If he still has all of his body parts in the right places.

  She tried to ignore the voice in her mind as she turned back around and watched Agent Woods beat on the front door. She wondered why she hadn’t seen a vision of Steve’s abduction in her dreams last night. Why had she drawn the house in the woods instead of Steve tied to the chair?

  Because Jeremy is playing with me again, giving me another impossible clue to decipher.

  “He’s not in there,” Agent Woods said, snapping Tara’s attention back to him.

  Agent Woods jiggled the door handle. It was locked.

  He looked at her. “Let’s go check around back.”

  3.

  The back of Tara’s four-unit apartment building looked out onto the large pond that was surrounded by brush, tall grasses, and trees.

  Agent Woods hurried around the corner and inspected two of the windows at the back of Steve’s apartment, pulling at the screens on both of them, but they didn’t budge. He walked over to the only door back – a set of sliding glass doors with a concrete pad in front of it meant for patio furniture.

  They peeked in through the glass doors, cupping their hands around the sides of their faces so they could see through the glass. The vertical blinds were drawn halfway open and Tara saw an empty dining room area with what looked like the living room beyond it in the gloom. To the right of the dining area was an archway that led to the kitchen.

  Agent Woods startled Tara by pounding on the glass door. She pulled her face away from the reverberating glass.

  He slipped his fingers into the grooved door handle set in the metal frame and pulled. The door slid open easily. He looked at Tara.

  “You’re allowed to do that?” she asked.

  “I won’t tell if you won’t.”

  He didn’t wait for an answer. He pulled his .45 out from his shoulder holster and entered the house like a tentative cat.

  Tara hesitated for a moment, she looked around. No one could see them back here – it was all marsh and trees and palmetto plants, and each apartment had a small section of wooden privacy fencing that ran down about halfway towards the pond.

  She followed Agent Woods inside Steve’s apartment.

  He stood in the middle of the tile floor where a dining room table was supposed to go. There was a fancy chandelier light hanging down low from the ceiling on a gold chain. B
ut there was no dining room table and chairs to go underneath the light. Cardboard boxes were stacked up against the wall in the living room.

  Tara hurried over to the boxes and read the words scrawled on them in black Magic Marker: kitchen, bedroom, living room, books, misc.

  He hadn’t even finished unpacking all of his stuff yet.

  Agent Woods was right behind her as she studied the boxes. He darted past her and checked out the bedrooms. She followed him as he darted down the short hallway.

  She was right behind him as he inspected both bedrooms and the bathrooms. There was no furniture in either bedroom; one of the bedrooms was completely empty, and the other bedroom had a sleeping bag laid out on the floor next to a cheap alarm clock. Eight well-worn paperback books were stacked up near the temporary bed and a few clothes were hung in the closet. Tara was tempted to go check out the clothes and the books, but she restrained herself.

  “Don’t touch anything,” Agent Woods said like he was reading her mind.

  Agent Woods had been very quick with his search and then he left the bedroom.

  Tara felt strange being alone in Steve’s home. The apartment looked so empty, so lonely. She tried to open her mind, let herself reach out, but it was like she was running up against a block wall – like Jeremy already knew she was here and he was blocking her, blindfolding her, smothering her senses. It felt claustrophobic if she concentrated on it too long, and she could already feel her breathing quickening as she struggled to draw in breaths in this stale, empty room. And then she found herself focusing on her breathing and trying to prevent a panic attack.

  “In here!” she heard Agent Woods call out to her from another room.

  She rushed out of the bedroom, through the living room, and found Woods in the kitchen. There was a small cardboard box on the counter, it was opened, and the words Kitchen Stuff were written on the side in black marker. There was a frying pan on the stove and a few dishes on the counter next to a carton of eggs and a green pepper and onion waiting to be chopped. On the tile floor was a broken bowl and a splash of raw eggs that had been scrambled.