The Hunter Inside (18 page)

She had seen it. She had
watched it stalking the man from a distance where the man being watched could
not know it was there. Her desire to run to him and warn him of its presence
was outweighed by the fear she had of being killed herself. She did not want to
leave her boys without a mother, so she had kept her distance and stayed quiet.

Maybe she would be able to
run. Maybe it would forget her and she could get away. But wherever she went it
was always there. Wherever she ran to was always where the thing was.

Now, she slowly straightens
from the bent position that has allowed her to regain her breath, and looks
around.

It’s not here
.

Maybe now her chance of
escape has come.

She steps out of the trees
and into the garden of a house she does not recognize. As she wonders where she
is a man half walks, half runs past her and enters the house without pausing to
look behind him to where she stands motionless, shocked by his sudden arrival.

It is the same man who was
being stalked by the thing earlier and now, as she turns and looks down the
road she sees the large, lumbering figure approaching.

What should she do? If it
was the other way around, what would she want the man to do for her? She knows
that she would want to be warned that she was in danger, and so she follows the
man through the door of the house as it swings backwards and forwards with the
wind.

In front of her, the man
runs up the stairs and enters a room on the left. She follows him to the room
and sees that it is a bedroom. He turns to face her and, despite her thinking
it is impossible for him not to see her, he walks straight past her, a smell of
alcohol wafting from him as he goes.

Sandy follows him from the
room, wondering why he has not seen her, and watches as he begins to walk down
the stairs before calling out, ‘Paul.’ The man does not turn, and Sandy is
surprised – not just at his failure to acknowledge her, but at the fact that
she knows his name. She is certain that she has never seen this man before, but
here she is, standing behind him trying to warn him that a madman has entered
his house. For a second time she calls out his name, as he feels around on a
table at the bottom of the stairs. It is only then that he seems to hear her
and turns, starting back up the stairs towards her.

‘Listen, you’ve gotta get
out of here now,’ she cries to the man as he continues to advance towards her
muttering ‘Shit, shit, shit’ to himself as he passes her. Then she sees the
figure, crouching behind the sofa in the lounge, and she realizes there is
nothing she can do for the man.

As she watches, the thing
takes out a large knife from a bag on the floor next to it. She is halfway up
the stairs, and now the man is coming back down them. But this time she is in
his way, and despite the dull light inside the house, he will have to stop. But
he comes down the stairs, and he walks straight through her.

Like she is a ghost.

It is a dream after all,
she thinks to herself, relieved and expecting to wake at any moment.

Behind the sofa the figure
is getting ready to pounce, holding the knife and poised to strike at the man
when he reaches the sofa.

As Sandy watches, the man
walks towards the sofa and the thing leaps forward. Sandy cries out to warn
him, but suddenly she has no voice as everything goes into slow motion.

Why haven’t I woken up?

The man dodges to the side,
foiling the first blow, but the thing strikes a second, more accurate blow that
sees the knife penetrate deep into the throat of the man, who falls to the
floor under the weight of his attacker. Blood oozes down the man’s chest, as
the large figure repeatedly stabs him all over his torso, growling viciously as
he drains the blood and life from his defenseless victim.

She can do nothing but
scream and scream, hoping to wake herself up from this nightmare. The figure
continues to plunge the knife into the lifeless body repeatedly and Sandy
continues to watch, screaming louder and louder and…

‘Sandy, Sandy, fucking
hell, Sandy. You’re gonna wake the street. Relax; it’s just a dream, just a
dream.’

The voice was Melissa’s,
and as Sandy slowly opened her eyes she could smell her own perspiration as it
dripped from her body. Halfway between being awake and dreaming, it almost felt
like the dream was trying to pull her back in.

Melissa herself had no less
than a feeling of terror as she looked at Sandy’s face, covered in beads of
perspiration that rolled down and across her cheeks like tears before
disappearing towards the large patch of sweat that had become visible beneath
the prostrate Sandy Myers.

Her face was a contortion
of terror, as she grasped at her surroundings for a sense of reality and calm,
and Melissa herself was terrified by the look of helplessness that was etched
onto her normally smiling face.

‘Jesus Sandy, what’s going
on here? There is something going on isn’t there?’ She could hold back her
question no longer. She was now certain that something was very wrong in the
private life of her friend if she were having dreams so tortured as this.

‘It’s okay. It’s okay. Just
a nightmare,’ Sandy mumbled weakly, trying to buy a little time to regain her
composure as the dream began to fade and she started to feel more secure in her
unfamiliar surroundings.

‘Sorry Melissa. I just had
a bad dream, that’s all. I didn’t mean to scare you. You go back to bed, okay?
I’m fine.’

‘Jeez, you really did give
me one hell of a fright screaming like that, Sandy.’

It was obvious to Melissa
that her friend was holding something back, but she did not want to push her on
what she felt may be a serious matter. If she pushed too hard then Sandy may
clam up completely; she may even drive her away, and that was the last thing
she wanted.

‘I guess I must be missing
Joe,’ Sandy said, promoting a truth as her cover against scaring Melissa to
death with the actuality of her situation.

‘Well, you just go back to
sleep and you can ring him as soon as you wake in the morning. Oh, and no more
screaming the house down Sandy Carson, okay?’ Melissa pointed a finger at Sandy
in a playful manner, forcing herself to sound jolly as she stung her friend’s
nerves by saying her maiden name; the name
it
used.

‘Err, yeah okay,’ Sandy
managed to say through teeth that were clenched with the fear of going back to
sleep. ‘Goodnight ‘Liss, I’ll see you in the morning.’

‘Goodnight Sandy,’ Melissa
put a comforting hand across the tangled bed sheets and patted Sandy’s legs,
before turning and leaving the room. The door closed with a low creak.

Sandy pulled the covers up
further, until only her face showed above the edge. She knew she would not be
sleeping tonight; the dream had put pay to that. Her night would be one of
restlessness and fear, as she wondered whether the dream actually
was
a
dream, a premonition, or whether the events that she saw had already happened.

*

Ten kilometers away, the thing that Sandy Myers dreamt
about knew the answer to her question. He had shared the events with her and
had seen her standing on the stairs of the house as he took the life of Paul
Wayans. It was all a part of the process; he shared with them what their fate
was going to be and they shared, or gave, their life to him when he decided it
was time. The answer to her question was that the events were past, and the
future held something very different for Sandy Carson.

For Sandy Carson the future
held more than just a bit part. She amused him with her screams. She was weak,
and he was getting stronger all the time. It would be easy now; he felt that he
could take on the whole of this world and win and he was almost ready. There
were just a few things left to do. He must get back to his hideout in Atlantic
Beach and keep tabs on his next victim, Arnold.

He had left through the
rear of Wayans’ house and had taken a car parked nearby. It always amazed him
the things he took from his victims. On this occasion it was not merely how to
drive a car but how to steal one.

Wayans must have been some
kid!

He made quick progress
towards Atlantic Beach. The roads were quiet, and the few cars that he did
encounter did not see anything amiss when he passed them, as he slouched in his
seat to disguise his extraordinary size. For the motorists that advanced
towards him the darkness was enough to veil his face from their view. He felt
better and better the closer he got to Atlantic Beach, and hugely strong by the
time he arrived there. He could now keep an eye on Arnold.

Arnold was a bigger man
than Wayans, but that didn’t worry him. He knew that Arnold would stand and
fight when the time came; his fear would ensure that he faced up to his
stalker.

As for Carson, she would be
even easier than Arnold. He had begun the process of bringing her to him by
showing her the death of Wayans in her dream.

His dream.

When the time came she
would be where he wanted her to be. He had ways of making sure of this.

Thursday was a new day and
he would be ready to complete the facile task of taking the life of Arnold.

Less than two kilometers away,
Bill Arnold slept in his motel room. While the early hours of Thursday morning
had left Sandy feeling as vulnerable as she had felt when she was at home, Bill
slept soundly – unaware his death was being planned within twenty-five minutes
walking distance of where he lay.

He dreamed of playing in
the Superbowl and scoring the winning touchdown. The last thing he had on his
mind was the thing that stalked him.

But pretty soon Bill Arnold
would be facing up to his fears. Thursday was a new day.

For everyone.

Special Agent Sam O’Neill turned the
corner of the quiet street in Stamford to be confronted by a large police
presence. As he made his way towards the area that was cordoned off by luminous
yellow police tape that fluttered in the cool breeze, O’Neill began to wish
that his feet would hurry up. He could never get to a crime scene quickly
enough, especially when the crime scene promised links to another crime. The
news had been given to him by Hoskins via his cell phone; the victim had been
butchered in much the same way as John Riley had, and he was eager to take in
the crime scene at first hand and make up his own mind on the similarities
between the two cases.

O’Neill hurried inside the
house after ducking under the tape that surrounded its perimeter.

‘Okay, what have we got?’
His tone was brisk as he tried to take control of the situation quickly and
decisively. This was the Special Agent Sam O’Neill show, and he was going to
pull all the strings. He was determined that he would not be pulling any
punches in his efforts to put an end to the cases set before him, whether they
were linked to one another or not.

‘The body’s in the kitchen,
Boss,’ Hoskins offered, and moved obligingly to one side to allow O’Neill to
pass. O’Neill made his way towards the kitchen, noting the state that the
lounge was in and needing nobody, not even Hoskins, to tell him that the lounge
area was where the crime had been perpetrated.

‘How did he die? Who was
he? Do we have any clues as to the perpetrator? Are there any signs of forced
entry to the property?’ O’Neill’s voice boomed out before he paused and took
out a small notebook to begin making a record.

Hoskins delightedly took
the chance to offer the breaking news on the case, saying, ‘Well Boss, first
thing is this. There are signs that the perpetrator watched the victim from a
distance across the garden. Even more strangely though, we’ve found another
similar
spot where the long grass is trampled that suggests somebody watched the killer
watching Wayans.’

‘What did you say?’ O’Neill
was shocked. This couldn’t be Wayans, not after he’d asked for twenty-four hour
surveillance of Wayans and Wayans’ property. Not after he’d been so certain
that Wayans had been involved in the murder of John Riley.

‘I said there are two spots
in the garden…’ Hoskins began, only to be cut off by an impatient O’Neill.
‘After that, about the victim.’

‘He’s in the kitchen, Boss.
Name’s Paul Wayans. Lived alone. A retired salesman who lost his wife a couple
of years ago.’

‘Five years ago,’ O’Neill
interrupted before continuing, more to himself than Hoskins, ‘bank robbery.
Shit, this can’t be him.’

‘It’s him, Boss. Trust me.
Knifed to death just like John Riley was. Take a look for yourself.’ Hoskins
held open the kitchen door for O’Neill as he simultaneously handed him a pair
of latex gloves. O’Neill took the gloves and stepped into the kitchen. He could
not believe his eyes. He’d seen some things in his career, and the murder of
Riley had almost shocked him, but this was even more brutal, and for the first
time in his long career, Sam O’Neill was actually shocked at the viciousness of
the attack.

The face of the victim was
obscured by the thick and matted blood that had poured across it, meaning that
O’Neill would have to take Hoskins’ word for the fact that it was Wayans who
lay, mutilated in the most extreme kind of overkill, in the blood soaked
kitchen.