Free Night Terror by Chandler McGrew Page A

up the memory, she was unable to stop the flow of images. They slipped over and around her, flooded her senses with flickering pictures of that long-ago night.
    “I had just gone to bed,” she whispered. “But I knew she was coming….”
    “Your aunt? How?”
    “I just knew. I kept hearing her voice in my head. Telling me to be ready. That she was coming to take me away. It sounded like she was talking to herself, only I could hear her. I was frightened, because I knew if I was caught it would be bad.”
    “Did she visit you often?”
    Audrey tried to remember. She didn’t recall any visits. Not ever.
    So how did I recognize her voice? How did I know whoit was speaking inside my head? She felt herself being cast adrift, sinking deep into that long-ago night. The sensation was so much like the feeling of slipping into the depths of darkness in her fountain that she tucked her hands between her thighs to warm them.
    “I heard a car door closing a long way away. But I knew it was her. I could feel her.”
    “Feel her?”
    Audrey ignored the question. “I lay there with my eyes closed and I could see her creeping across the lawn in the moonlight. She was dressed in blue jeans and a T-shirt and white tennis shoes and she had a baseball cap pulled down over her eyes.”
    “You must have remembered
that.
You couldn’t see it with your eyes closed.”
    Audrey frowned. “The memory is weird. It just ends there like a movie that’s cut off in midscene.”
    “And that’s all you remember? Your aunt came to save you, but you don’t remember from what?”
    The memory faded and Audrey was ever so glad to be back in the light of Cates’s office. “It was a long time ago. I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”
    But the unknown something kept scratching at her mind. That memory wasn’t right. Part of the healing forgetfulness she and Tara had forged, had wiped away something in that terrible night—something that wanted badly to be remembered.
    Cates tried several different tacks, but Audrey wouldn’t open up again. Finally he glanced at his watch and sighed.
    “Mrs. Bock,” he said, “you’re suffering from stress-related anxiety and depression. The causes? Your son’s disappearance. Your history of childhood abuse. Issues that you have never fully dealt with that are now building up and coming back to haunt you. It’s also possible that you’re suffering either from a mild form of bipolar disorder or even a very slight case of schizophrenia, but we won’t know that without further work together. My suggestion for now is relaxation, and I’m going to prescribe a sedative to help you do that. I would also like to schedule you for regular appointments for a while, to try to get these issues out where you can deal with them. What do you say?”
    What could she say? That she didn’t want
him
to deal with them? That she and Tara had spent years burying them so that she wouldn’t have to face them? But they weren’t going away, and she felt an increasing urgency to do something,
anything.
More than just the need to help herself before it became too late for her and Richard. A tiny voice inside her head kept insisting that she wasn’t crazy. That Zach was alive. And if there was even the slightest chance that that was true, she knew instinctively that to help him she had to find the answer within her own head. She needed Doctor Cates.
    She nodded and Cates smiled, taking her hand and walking her to the waiting room, where Richard waited nervously.
    “Would you mind if I speak to your husband privately, Mrs. Bock?” asked Cates, taking Richard’s arm. Audrey frowned but shook her head and took a seat.
    Cates closed the door and Richard allowed himself to be ushered to a chair. As he sat, forearms resting on his thighs, waiting for Doctor Cates to speak, he felt like a small child awaiting a parent’s verdict.
    “Is Audrey going to be all right?” he asked.
    Cates gave Richard the same diagnosis he had