Night Terror - Softcover

Chandler McGrew is the author of four critically acclaimed suspense novels, Cold Heart’, Night Terror’, In Shadows’ and The Darkening’. Self-reportedly, he writes ten to twelve hours a day fuelled by liberal doses of coffee, Pepsi, and the occasional dollop of single-malt scotch to take the edge off’. Born in Texas, he lived for almost a decade in Alaska where his first novel, Cold Heart’, is set. He now lives in quiet seclusion in the mountains of Maine, a proud husband and father with what he describes as four remarkable women’ in his life--Rene, Keni, Mandi, and Charli. McGrew didn’t start writing professionally until he was in his forties, and is an avid follower of other art forms, including painting which preceded his writing, and photography. He also holds the rank of Shodan in Kyokushin Karate, and is trained in Aikido! His writing career did not bring immediate success. He penned fourteen novels over eight years, which went unpublished, and reckoned to have received over three hundred rejection letters during that period from agents and editors. Then, having signed with Irene Kraas, the last of five agents he had worked through, he finally broke through and became the highly successful novelist he is known as today. McGrew generously credits Kraas with guiding him through the tricky learning curve of working with professional editors at large publishing houses, and for helping build his career, along with a later agent, Peter Rubie, whom he regards as arguably the best all-rounder in the business. McGrew’s novels are peopled with characters who might be regarded as next door neighbors, but that doesn’t prevent the developments of gripping plots that The Denver Post’, in referring to one of them, described as playing on the primal fears that cause most adults to lose sleep’. He has an uncanny knack of both touching readers and frightening them at the same time, whilst providing a thrilling and addictive read.

Chapter 1

Silence hung over the darkened house like a shroud. Outside the window, the moon peered bleakly through the skeletal pines. Gray-black clouds scudded across the sky, rats deserting a sinking ship.

Audrey Bock screamed.

Her shriek resounded in the confines of the bedroom, and then away down the hall, like the caterwaul of a hell-bent train. Her husband, Richard, bolted upright, fumbling for the lamp. The alarm clock clattered to the floor.

Audrey screamed again. Beneath the fury of her gut-wrenching cry, other sounds struggled toward the surface in Richard's consciousness. His fingernails scratching the tabletop. A thin breeze fluttering the curtains.

The light finally flicked on as Audrey screamed yet again.

She sat with her back pressed stiff against the headboard, staring straight ahead through unfocused blue eyes, her knees tucked tightly to her chest. Her short blond hair was tousled and her hands flapped wildly in front of her face, warding off some unseen menace.

Richard clutched her, following her gaze across the harsh shadows of their bedroom, into the empty hallway, barely lit by the bathroom night-light.

"Let him go!" she cried.

Richard shook her gently. "Honey, there's nobody there. It's just a bad dream. Wake up."

"She's got him!" Audrey shrieked, so loudly that Richard winced. "She's got him!"

"Honey, it's a nightmare. Wake up!"

"Leave him alone! Leave my baby alone!"

Richard tugged her back as she struggled feebly in his arms. "Audrey!"

"She's got him," she said in a voice suddenly far too calm. It seemed as though she'd taken a step back from whatever it was in her mind. As though her pounding heart had abruptly stilled, not because the terror was over, but because it had become too great to bear.

"You're asleep. You've got to wake up."

"She's going to kill him," she whispered, her words digging into his heart. "She's got my baby."

Richard couldn't understand how she could have her eyes wide open and still be sound asleep. This was nothing like the nightmares that had plagued her since Zach's disappearance. This was something different, more sinister. He couldn't reach her through the barricade of sleep, if she was asleep at all.

Without warning, her panic returned. "I've got to go!" She fought him, stronger this time, but still unable to break free.

He couldn't stand to see her this way. It summoned buried feelings of inadequacy and guilt. He stared at the ceiling, praying to find a revelation there, but none appeared.

"Honey, if you don't wake up I'm going to put you in the shower." He wasn't sure that was such a good idea--he seemed to recall something about not shocking someone in the middle of a nightmare, or was that sleepwalking?--but he didn't know what else to do. Perhaps just the threat would work.

"Don't touch him!" she screamed. This time she broke free of his grasp, wobbling beside the bed, gesturing toward the shadows in the hall.

Richard slid across the bed, standing to wrap her in his arms again. Lifting her easily, he carried her out into the hall. Audrey pawed at the empty air, the terrible vision following her through the house. Richard lowered her gently into the tub, and she cringed in the far corner, quivering, as though the icy water had already been turned on.

"Audrey, please wake up," he pleaded.

Just as he feared, she gave no sign of hearing him. He turned on the tap, expecting another cry as the cold water struck her, but her silence was worse. She quailed in the farthest corner of the tub. The water plastered her hair to her head. Her chin rested between her knees and she shivered so violently her teeth chattered, but still she stared straight ahead at the nightmare visible only to her.

Richard knelt beside the tub, spray soaking his pajamas, stroking soggy hair out of her face. "Aud, it's a dream. It's just a bad dream. You have to wake up."

"It isn't a dream." Her voice was flat and mechanical again.

He lightly slapped her cheek. "It is."

She turned to glare into his eyes, and for the first time he thought she could see him, but the terrified expression that slowly slipped across her features told him she still wasn't back in the here and now.

"She's here!" she screamed.

He gripped her shoulders and shook her, barely feeling the icy spray on his back. "No one's here, Aud."

"She's got him." Her tone was hesitant again. Confused. Her emotional roller coaster frightened him as much as the crazy dream or his inability to reach her. What in the world could be going on inside her head? It was as if some mad scientist were alternately injecting her with uppers and downers, to test her reaction to the drugs. But he sensed a growing awareness of her surroundings in her eyes, in the way she jerked when the water hit her in the face again as he moved.

"Wake up, honey," he said. "You're almost awake. Come on. Stand up."

"I am standing up."

"No, you're not. Come on."

He lifted her to her feet, and she wrapped her arms around him, collapsing into his soaking embrace. They huddled together beneath the frigid shower for several minutes, until her breathing eased and her heart slowed again. She shook against him, sobbing into his shoulder.

"I want him back," she whimpered.

"I want him back, too, Aud." He held her at arm's length, peering into her eyes. "Are you with me now?"

She gave him a curious look.

"Are you awake?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Good. Let's get you dried off."

She stood compliantly as he removed her dripping nightgown and toweled her dry. Then he kicked off his own sodden pajamas and dried himself, tossing towels and pajamas into a damp pile in the corner.

"Let's go back to bed," he said, exhausted.

But she stood as still as a zombie and he realized that wherever she was, she still wasn't completely back yet. He lifted her again--like a child, because she wasn't much larger than one--and speaking calmly to her all the time, carried her ever so gently back to bed.

Chapter 2

Outside the old red-brick courthouse with its one lit window, Arcos, Maine lay sleeping Friday night away. A freshening breeze stirred maples, oaks, birches, and balsams, wafting the scent of manure into town from outlying farms that were renewing their fertile black soil for spring. The easternmost reaches of the White Mountains shadowed the moon, and only starlight shimmered on the lakes and ponds that made the area a mecca for summer tourists. Arcos, seat of Ouachita County, lay at the foot of the slopes, as though ready to slide down into the water of Lake Arcos, hidden by a low ridge just behind the building. Flatlanders were always asking "Where's the lake?" and locals would point toward their backyards and say "right through there."

Inside the building, Sheriff Virgil Milche ran his fingers through his hair and gnawed on his monthly cigar, finally stubbing out the fat butt in a pristine ashtray on the windowsill to his left. Virgil's full head of ash-gray hair matched his eyes, and his face was fluted with sun-browned wrinkles. Although he was shorter than every deputy on the force, he was powerfully built with thick arms and broad shoulders.

His amber-shaded desk lamp gave the entire office a cozy feeling to which the rattling radiator in the corner contributed. But even this late in the season, with the warmth from the ancient heater threatening to put him to sleep, Virgil couldn't shake a chill. As he stared at the twin manila file folders on his otherwise bare desk, he heard the door open but didn't bother looking up. Deputy Birch was the only other officer on duty in Arcos that night.

"Want me to pick you up something to eat, Sheriff?"

Virgil shook his head, scraping at a small brown stain on one of the folders, residue from some long-forgotten fly he'd done in. Names were taped on the front of each file in plastic labels.

Timothy Merrill.

Zachary Bock.

Doodles of knives and pistols covered the flat manila space around the names. Virgil filled in a tiny bare spot beneath the second a in Zachary with a fountain pen.

"Virg?" Most times Birch was unfailingly correct, and he was one of the cops Virgil had never had to discipline. Not once. But alone in the office at night, Virgil didn't stand on protocol, and besides, Birch was more than just a deputy. Even though he was one of the least senior men on the force and thirty years Virgil's junior, he'd become a friend.

Birch padded closer to the desk. Virgil concentrated on not coloring outside the lines.

"Virg, are you all right?"

Virgil glanced up, wondering why Birch had never done anything about his hair. It was cut short enough to be regulation, but it always looked as though he'd accidentally dropped the blow-dryer in the tub with him. "What?"

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah, fine."

"Doris doing all right today?"

Virgil's eyes dropped back to the files. "Yeah. She's okay."

"Why don't you go home?"

"Later. What did you need, Birch?"

"Nothing, Virg. You just looked like maybe you didn't feel too good."

"I'm fine."

"Okay, then. I'll put those files away for you, if you like."

Out of the corner of his eye, Virgil saw Birch's hand reaching, and he slapped down on the files a little harder than he had intended. When he looked up into Birch's eyes again, he saw surprise.

"Sorry," said Virgil, taking a deep breath. "I'll take car...