Night Terrors Read Online Free PDF Page A

strapped on her gloves and the pads for the tops of her feet. She had taken three years of karate and reached blackbelt very quickly. And then she quit. But she still incorporated the kicks and punches she’d learned into her workout routine. Like the knives and baseball bats stashed throughout her apartment, self-defense lessons and the constant workouts made her feel like she would be ready if the Shadow Man ever found her again, if he finally came to finish the job and kill her.
    She hit the punching bag and it helped a little in a therapeutic kind of way, but no matter how hard she worked out she couldn’t keep her mind from drifting back to her nightmare about Jen.
    Tara had always had psychic feelings as far back as she could remember. She grew up in a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio. It was a nice neighborhood with Victorian homes lining the streets. Her father, Ben, had been in the insurance industry and he’d done pretty well with investments in his spare time. Tara’s mother, Cynthia (but her dad called her Cindy), volunteered at the animal shelter and took part-time work from time to time to keep herself busy.
    Tara had lived with her parents until she was sixteen years old, until her parents were murdered.
    Tara had been an only child. Her parents always told her she was a gift from God; they had tried to have children for years and finally Tara had come along. She was always treated special by them, as only children sometimes are, but they never spoiled her.
    She’d had nightmares ever since she could remember. She would wake up screaming and her mother and father would rush into her bedroom. They would try to calm her down, but eventually they would have to leave the light on for her so she could sleep. Or sometimes her mother would curl up in bed with her and hold her until she fell back asleep.
    The nightmares were usually the same. There would be someone lurking in the darkness, and that shadowy person wanted to kill her; she was sure of that. And then she would run and she could hear the person chasing her, breathing hard, his footfalls pounding the ground. He would catch up to her, getting closer and closer. Sometimes she saw the person. She could tell he was male and muscular, but that was about all. He was always hidden in shadows; she could never remember any facial features, almost like he was a silhouette. And eventually she began to refer to him in her mind as the Shadow Man. Sometimes the Shadow Man had a knife in his hand, sometimes he had an ax. He never said anything to her; he never screamed at her or threatened her. He just chased her and chased her. And she knew that if he caught her he was going to kill her. He was going to hold her down and carve her up very slowly.
    She would wake up hyperventilating and sweaty. She was afraid that if he killed her in her dream, she would die in her sleep.
    When Tara was twelve years old she began to sleepwalk. That’s when her parents decided that maybe she needed some professional help. They took her to see a therapist, Dr. Kuehner, who diagnosed her with night terrors. The doctor was a nice woman, but she couldn’t help Tara. They tried talking about things, they tried hypnosis, even sleeping aids, but nothing took the nightmares away.
    “Why do you think this Shadow Man is after you?” Dr. Kuehner asked Tara many times. Tara had told Dr. Kuehner everything she knew about the man that chased her in her dreams, the man who was trying to catch her and kill her, but she had no idea why he was after her; she just knew that he was real, and that he was out there somewhere looking for her. Dr. Kuehner explained that this person in her dreams was just a figment of her imagination, something her mind had made up to mask other feelings. But Tara told her she wasn’t trying to mask anything – other than the nightmares there was nothing wrong in her life.
    When Tara turned thirteen her nightmares didn’t get any better, they got worse. And at the same time her