Night Terror Read Free Page B

pair of robins performed a mating dance on the lawn near her storage shed. One year ago she had been right over there, down on her knees in the dirt. A sudden, inexplicable sense of doom had overcome her, and she had risen to her feet and raced to the front of the house, calling Zach’s name. On the grass at the edge of the lawn, where theground dipped into the roadside drainage ditch, lay his bat. His baseball was never recovered.
    She faked a confident stride over to her shed and found her tool bucket just inside the door. Toting it to the center of her garden, she slipped on her kneepads and knelt. The familiar position and the smell of damp earth slowly revitalized her. Removing her garden claw from the bucket, she scratched at the weeds that were making inroads into her carefully planted perennials. She stared at the tines of the tool as they traced finger patterns in the dark soil, as though the implement were guided by someone else’s hand.
    What am I doing here? How could I possibly come back to this place?
    She bore down on the tool, burying it deeply, yanking it along. The rasping sound grated on her ears. She was here because she
had
to be, because if she
didn’t
come out here and do this, then Zach’s kidnapper would have won. He would have taken her son and her life. Wasn’t Richard trying to beat Zach’s kidnapper too? Beat him by burying himself in his work every day? Beat him by having another child?
    Audrey couldn’t bear that thought.
    Even if another baby wasn’t a betrayal of Zach, how could she possibly consider having another child? How would she ever keep him safe? She and Zach had been impossibly close, even for a mother and son. She always sensed when he needed her, when he awakened in the night. He never had to call—she was always there when he needed her.
    Only that one time had she arrived too late.
    She could picture it as though it was yesterday, Zach cavorting around her, more full of life than any nine-year-old should be, shouting and tumbling, grass stains on his T-shirt, sunlight glinting in his eyes. The yard barely contained his exuberance. One year ago today. The thought plunged into her, a knife to the heart. Zach would be ten now.
    She tried to envision another life growing inside her. Tried to recall the feel of a tiny heart, beating in rhythm with her own. Suddenly the memory of another child flashed through her mind and she blinked in astonishment.
    The image was gone as quickly as it appeared, but its shadow hung just behind her eyes, a picture of
herself at
the age of nine or ten. Bright blue eyes and a cockeyed smile. She was holding a small doll in her hands as though in offering. Only she didn’t remember the doll.
    Just as suddenly, another unfamiliar vision rolled across the screen of her mind, whirling past on fast forward. People and places she didn’t remember, but people who stirred violent emotions nonetheless. The images aroused sadness, fear, and anger, and with these emotions came agony.
    Jagged pain slashed through her abdomen, blazing outward in fingers of golden fire. Her teeth chattered as she clutched her belly. Her hands shook where they grasped her light cotton blouse. She struggled to get to her feet, but her kneepads merely dug deeper into the soft loam. The agony electrified every nerve ending in her body, sparked her synapses like strands of flickering lights on a Christmas tree. Minutes later, when the pain finally drained away, she knelt limply in the garden, clutching her arms tightly about her. Never in her life had she experienced such pain, not even during childbirth. And it had struck so suddenly, out of the blue. As she began to take note of her surroundings again, she noticed that her vision was still off. The day seemed dimmer, out of focus.
    Just as her muscles began to relax, another wave of flame crashed down upon her. The agony was a chemical explosion that erupted inside her body, burning its way out through her skin. She glanced