The Hunter Inside (33 page)

Sandy nodded and rose from her seat.
Bill did the same. Both walked towards the door that separated them from the
storm, which continued to punish the roof of the bar, and Monty the bartender
looked up at them as they passed hurriedly.

‘See you again soon, I hope.’

Both raised a hand and Bill pulled
open the door, stepping aside to allow Sandy through and into the unknown. The
bar had felt like a safe haven to him, and he resolved that if he got through
whatever was going to happen unscathed, it would be the first place he would
go.

For Sandy, nowhere felt
safe.

*

‘Come on. Let’s get moving.
We don’t want to stay out here for too long.’ He was fussing as they half
walked, half ran towards the parking lot that now resembled an Olympic sized
swimming pool. She was alone, in a strange place, and being hunted by what she
thought was some sort of demon. She had nobody, except him, to look out for
her. That was what he wanted to do. By looking after her the danger to him
might, in some strange way, seem less. It didn’t appear as though the ball was
in their court, but he was pretty sure that whoever, or whatever, was stalking
them; demon or no demon, it was not choosing the weather.

The rain continued to fall
in sheets that were pushed across the parking lot by the wind, turning and
billowing as they stung anything in sight, and making Bill and Sandy gasp for
breath as they continued on through the storm towards the nearby motel.

By the time they paused
under the same eave that Sandy had earlier used for shelter, wisps of hair were
stuck to her face in a stream by the rain. Bill’s scalp showed through his
short hair, and a drip fell from the end of his nose every few seconds as he
stood, trembling under the wind’s power.

‘Looks okay,’ Bill said.
Sandy nodded. It did look okay. Maybe it looked
too
okay, if there could
be such a thing.

They walked towards the room, being
careful not to make a lot of noise on the wooden boards that served as a
walkway, separating the small rooms from the tangle of branches in which Sandy
had hidden while waiting for Bill to return earlier.

The irony of their tiptoeing towards
the room was not wasted on Sandy. It was somewhat akin to the irony of hiding
amongst the branches earlier; and she knew that they might as well have
tracking devices strapped to their bodies
.

It knows where we are.

Holding the key with both
hands, Bill managed to turn it and unlock the door. His heartbeat rang in his
ears above the wind. He looked at the frightened woman who stood drenched in
front of him and swung the door open quickly, holding his breath in an effort
to deal with the tension that made his heart skip a beat, as he waited to be
floored and set upon by whoever was hunting him.

Instead, he saw a white
envelope lying on the deep red rug behind the door and stooped to pick it up,
the small of his back complaining with a dull throb that felt like a groan.

Then it hit him.

A bolt of lightning flashed inside his
head and he saw a face hovering in front of his eyes as he touched the
envelope. He recoiled instantly, letting go of the envelope and almost knocking
Sandy off her feet as she attempted to prevent him from falling onto the wet
boards outside the room.

‘Bill? Are you okay?’

‘Err…yeah. Yeah, I’m okay,’
he mumbled. The face was gone from in front of his eyes, but it would never be
gone from the inside of his eyelids; whether he lived for one minute or a
hundred years. It was hideous.

‘What happened? Did it
speak to you?’ Sandy knew
something
had happened. She knew the reaction
as the same one she herself had experienced when she had seen the beast’s face
reflected in the glass at Melissa Dahlia’s home.

‘Shit, I saw it. I saw it
Sandy.’ Bill Arnold was pretty certain that he now believed Sandy’s assessment;
this
was
some sort of demon. The contents of the envelope could not make
him any more afraid than he already was. Picking it up was the problem, and
once he had managed to do so without any more flashes of light or hovering
faces in front of his eyes, he tore open the top without regard for patience or
care.

Sandy placed a hand on his
shoulder. ‘This isn’t going to be nice, Bill,’ she said, displaying a grimace
that showed only a single percent of the feelings she’d had when she had seen
the photograph.

He peered inside the
envelope before extracting the photograph. He ignored the piece of paper that
accompanied it, and looked at the photograph directly.

‘That’s…’ he trailed off. It was the
man from the police station. The man he had seen right here. Right here in
Atlantic Beach. ‘I saw this man when I arrived here. At the police station.
Damn, what was his name? I think it was Paul something…’ He trailed off as he
tried to pull the previously insignificant seeming piece of information from
somewhere near the back of the vault of his brain.

‘Wayans. His name was Paul
Wayans.’

‘How did you know that?’

‘The same way I knew your
name and you knew mine. The same way I knew that this envelope was sitting
waiting for you to come back from your walk.’ She pointed at the discarded
envelope as she spoke.
Now he’s got to believe me,
she thought.

‘I think I believe what you
said. But what are we supposed to do? I mean, look at the damage it does to the
people it kills.’ He held out the photograph.

‘I’ve already seen it,
remember? First hand.’ She didn’t want to see the man whose death had terrified
her in the dream, and whose corpse had made her weep when she had looked at the
same photograph. She shook her head.

‘I don’t know what we’re
supposed to do. Or how we’re supposed to beat it. But I know we can’t run
anymore, Bill. We’ve got to face it. I’m
ready
to face it.’

‘How can you be ready to
face this, Sandy? Jesus, how are we ever going to beat it?’ He asked the question
more to himself than her, and she remained silent. He walked into the room and
she followed, sitting down on the king-size bed next to him.

‘Bill, there’s nowhere left for us to
run. I have a family. They’re my everything, and if I don’t get back to them
then my life’s not worth living any more. Running didn’t do either of us any
good. There’s only one way.’

‘But…what was that?’ The
hairs on the back of his neck stood to attention.

‘What?’ Sandy replied,
realizing that if the killer barged into the room right now she was
not
ready
to stand and fight. Physically, she was certain she never would be. She
followed Bill’s gaze towards the door.

‘I heard a noise. Outside.
I heard footsteps. Where can we hide? Shit,
where can we hide?’

‘There’s no use in hiding,
Bill.’ The tone in his voice somehow matched the gut feeling that she had.

‘Sandy, go into the
bathroom. Quickly. We’ll listen from there.’ He felt under the bed for his gun.
He had placed it there so he could grab it quickly if anything happened in the
night. As he did so, Sandy ran into the bathroom. The footsteps were getting
louder now, and were headed in the direction of the room. He found the gun
where he had left it and fished blindly in his carryall for more bullets. He
didn’t know why he did this. He expected he would only get one shot at this
thing; and he was not certain one shot would be enough. He located the bullets
and grabbed half a dozen of the cold metal capsules before following Sandy into
the bathroom, dropping one on the way.

They sat on the tiled
floor, side by side, cramped together in a room only designed for one, waiting
to see what would happen next.

‘Damn it,’ Bill moaned, ‘we
left the door open when we came in.’

‘Should we try and lock
it?’

‘No, it’s too late. We’ll
just have to trust this thing.’ He raised the barrel of the gun slightly and
Sandy knew he was right. What good would a locked door be when this thing could
step in and out of their heads at will?

Both fell silent as they
waited and listened to its now very audible footsteps. Beads of perspiration
stood out on the forehead of Bill Arnold, and Sandy closed her eyes in the
already dark room. The switch for the light was outside the door, but neither
made a move to illuminate the room; it was too risky. The footsteps ceased
outside the door of the room. Sandy cowered as Bill raised the muzzle of the
gun, trying desperately to keep a steady grip, his hands slick and slippery on
the barrel and trigger. He released the safety catch as he heard the door
creak.

A tear rolled down the
cheek of Sandy Myers.
How did I ever think I could fight it?
she
thought.
How did I think I stood a chance?

Oh, shit. Oh, shit.
The trembling of Bill
Arnold’s hands increased as the footsteps got closer, moving across the room
towards the door behind which they tried to hide.
One shot, just one shot.
Better make it a good one, Bill.
He didn’t know what effect; if any, the
bullet would have on the creature that had begun to turn the door handle. But
he was determined to hit it square in the chest. At the very least he intended
to go out with a bang.

‘Cover your ears, Sandy,’ he
whispered.

She did as he asked,
turning her head to the side so that she looked away from both the door and the
muzzle of the gun.

The bathroom door began to
open slowly. Bill felt Sandy quivering against his shoulder, and squeezed the
trigger gently.
Wait for the right moment. Don’t panic. Don’t panic.

Light began to enter the
room in an arc that grew wider as the door opened further.
Wait. Wait,
Bill thought to himself as the light began to hit the prostrate figure of Sandy
Myers. Then a flash hit him like the one that had taken away his balance when
he had seen the beast’s face moments earlier. It was caused by the light,
catching the barrel of the gun as the door swung open fully. He blinked once,
twice, but the blue blotches that clouded his vision made it impossible for him
to get a clear view of the huge shadow that now loomed over him. He hesitated,
the gun wavering about wildly in his hands due to the grip of hysteria in which
he found himself.
Shoot it. Shoot it Bill,
a voice inside his head
screamed. It was a scream of pure fear over which he had no control. The gun
was something else he’d lost control of in that instant, as Sandy cowered
beside him and light stung his eyes What happened next was the thing both of
them least expected.

‘Don’t shoot. Don’t shoot.
Put the gun down, Bill. I’m a cop. I’m here to help.’

Bill blinked again as the
blotches began to fade and his eyes adjusted to the light in the room. Sandy
turned and blinked rapidly, herself trying to adjust, before they spoke
together, in the most relieved voice the big Special Agent had ever heard.

‘O’Neill?’

Bill Arnold placed the
sweat-soaked gun on the floor beside the bed. He sat down heavily, dizzy with
the events inside the small motel room. From being certain that his life was
about to be extinguished, he found himself uncertain on how to feel about
Special Agent O’Neill turning up. He’d said he was here to help, but the extent
of the help he’d given Paul Wayans had amounted to him signing his death
warrant. From the way Wayans had looked the previous day when he had seen him
being released from the police station (and had actually spoken to him),
O’Neill had given the killer a helping hand in breaking the spirit of the man.
He remembered the tension in the reception area of the police station, and the
shifty salute he had been given when driving past O’Neill.

The big cop didn’t look half as
confident now as he had then. He wondered why Wayans had been at the police
station. Did it have anything to do with his being hunted? If so, what did the
police know about their stalker? And what did they intend to do?

The fierce glare that had been present
the previous day had faded into an uncertain and nervous countenance, and Bill
Arnold decided that the cop was as frightened as he was.

From her position next to
Bill, Sandy looked up at O’Neill. He stood, looming over them such was his
size, and breathing as heavily as either of them were. It was ten years since
she had seen him, and she’d hoped the day would never come when she had to call
on him for his help again. This was for two reasons. The first was that she
knew seeing his face would bring it all back to her – her parents’ death. She
was right, but the image of her parents as she had seen them in the dream
earlier remained fresh in her mind. She saw it every time she blinked; hanging
onto the insides of her eyelids like some kind of visual leech, and the now
Special Agent’s presence did not make her feel any worse,
or
better.

True, she was thankful that it had
been O’Neill, and not the killer, who had opened the bathroom door of Bill
Arnold’s motel room. She was thankful to be still alive. But the second reason
that she wished never to have to ask for his help again was still the same.
When her parents had been murdered, O’Neill had not been able to catch the
person responsible for shattering her world. He had promised her; a young
woman, that the killer would not be left free to kill again.