The Hunter Inside (39 page)

‘The number wasn’t there,’ O’Neill
said, and Todd Mayhew squeezed his eyes tightly shut.

‘Who did you call then?’ Mayhew asked.

‘I called Melissa to see if she had
any idea where Sandy might…’ He was cut off before he could finish his
sentence, as Arnold spoke over him.

‘I know where it is,’ he said, causing
Mayhew and O’Neill to turn their heads and stare at him, speechless.

‘What?’ O’Neill asked after a second,
as Mayhew uttered ‘How?’ simultaneously.

‘I can see it when I close my eyes,’
Arnold replied. ‘It’s showing me. Just drive. Drive along the front. I’ll tell
you when we get there.’

They wouldn’t be able to see much
though, through the rain that came down so heavily it wrapped a cloak around
the vehicle. That didn’t seem to matter anyway, because Bill Arnold had closed
his eyes.

From his position next to Arnold, Joe
Myers stared at the second tallest man in his company. All three men noted the
detachment that had again come over Bill Arnold.

Mayhew wondered if he
had
been
in a slumber on the way to the phone booth. Or if there was something else,
something to do with Shimasou, that was responsible for his statement and
glazed expression.

‘Just drive,’ Arnold repeated. He
gestured with his hand, pointing past the phone booth, without opening his
eyes, in the direction O’Neill had gone before stumbling across the distraught
Joe Myers earlier.

O’Neill pulled away from the curb.

Too late. Too late.

No
. Sandy heaved with all her might and
found herself on the landing above the splintered edges of the first set of
stairs. She gripped onto the edge as the floor lurched, almost slipping back
off her fragile perch, and feeling a fresh sting of pain, a sensation of heat
in her palm, as a splinter of wood embedded itself an inch into her flesh,
severing what a palmist would call her life line.

The floor held, just, and Sandy
crawled round one hundred and eighty degrees so that she was facing her next
challenge. Five feet away were the beginnings of the next flight of stairs. The
struts were intact, but a third of the steps were missing, exposing a gaping
hole that overlooked Sandy’s current position. She would have to make it across
that hole, and if she fell, she knew she did not stand much chance of
surviving. It would be a fall of twenty feet if she didn’t find the ledge above
the hole. She would fall through the floor she now crawled across, and maybe
take the floor above with her.

You’ve got to make it
, she thought to herself,
willing her remaining strength to get her through this test and carry her to
Sean and David. They were relying on her. Maybe they could see her when they
closed their eyes. Sandy allowed her own eyelids to close momentarily. She
could not see them, not any more. What she saw was the storm, beating down in
front of her, emptying the dark clouds above and threatening to overwhelm the
landscape around. She wondered if Atlantic Beach had ever experienced a storm
like this one as she looked up the wooden steps in front of her. The thunder of
earlier was now a constant growl, emanating from above her and making her bones
vibrate.

The hole began after the third step,
and Sandy estimated that four or five of the wooden steps were missing,
scattered below and experiencing the spinning wind, struggling to get a grip
and remain still, in the same way that she had struggled to keep a grip a
moment before as she had felt blood trickling down over her wrist.

If she could get across the hole she
thought that the remaining part of the staircase would probably hold. The
wooden strut that held it looked pretty solid, stretching down to the floor
below, and directly behind the hole was a window, empty of glass like the ones
on the front of the building, that she could grip the ledge of, maybe even sit
on and shuffle across. Then she wouldn’t have to risk the floor collapsing
under her weight if the struts were riddled with termites. She would be one
obstacle away from her boys.

One obstacle away from Shimasou.

The sound of the wind howled through
the building, the creaking of the stairs as they swayed testing the struts that
remained intact. Rain, straight rain, poured through the hole in the roof, the
wind pushing and swirling and reaching for Sandy as she edged out over the
first two stairs towards the hole in front of her. She gripped the ledge of the
window next to the hole, using her left hand due to the pain that pulsed
through her right.

Be strong
, she told herself.
There’s not
far. Not far to go now. Come on
.
You can do this, Sandy.

She slid her left foot across the edge
of the hole, attempting to reach a position from where she would be able to sit
on the concrete ledge and skate across, away from the danger of the hole in the
stairs in front of her.

Suddenly, the floor beneath her
creaked loudly, and the first few steps fell away as the strut that held them
collapsed, sending debris crashing to the floor below. Sandy threw herself
across the window ledge, bent in two, and found herself hanging out of the
window headfirst, clinging on with both hands despite the pain in her right
hand, which matched the strength of the rain that now began to sting her cheeks
again. She gasped, winded from her sudden meeting with the thick concrete
ledge, the wet, cold stone against her midriff.

Behind her, she knew that the floor
had gone. She also knew that there was not enough room to turn around while
holding onto the ledge, so she edged across on her stomach until she felt her
left foot scrape against the rough, broken splinters that began the landing on
which she hoped she would be safe from falling if she could get across the
final two stairs.

Sandy bit her lip as she released her
left hand from its grip on the slippery ledge. Using her right hand to support
herself was dicey, but it was the only way she would be able to see what she
was doing with her left hand, and it was the only way of getting off the ledge
and moving closer to Sean and David.

She was halfway there, and she was
determined that nothing would stop her. The challenge of the building, she
knew, was nothing compared to the challenge of Shimasou, but her desire was to
first of all see the boys. She needed to know that they were all right. Then,
she knew, she could fight it.

For her boys, she could fight it. She
doesn’t know where the others are. Her husband is one of those others, but she
thinks solely about the two boys. The two boys are everything. Reaching them is
the only thing she wants to do. The only thing she
has
to do. She has to
reach them.

Shimasou continued to watch.

Sandy gripped the edge of the top
stair and placed her knee on the wood carefully, testing it with her weight. It
held, and she pushed with her right hand, screaming out in pain as she again
threw herself forward onto the landing, half expecting it to give under her
sudden weight. It didn’t, and she rolled away from the edge of the stairs. She
paused, lying on her back and looking up at the ceiling directly above her. Two
more flights of stairs stood between her and reaching the boys, and as she
looked towards the top, she saw that this was the most dangerous part of her climb.

Looking out towards the roof of the
building she saw that it was only twenty feet above her. That meant that there
was maybe thirty feet below her, and the staircase had another large hole at
the top that was very near to the strut holding it in place. She would have to
get halfway up the stairs in front of her and then pull herself up onto the
flight of stairs above to get past this difficulty, and even then the strut
could give way and send her crashing to almost certain death.

The wind at the top of the building
was much stronger, and Sandy rested for a moment, closing her eyes. Nothing but
the storm a couple of feet away from her. Then the voice whispered again.
Arnold
.
She knew what it meant: when she closed her eyes she was seeing where Bill
Arnold was.
The storm so close must mean that he’s in a car
, she
thought.
They must be coming, but they can’t see through the storm
.

She stood, placing one hand against
the wall at the side of her for support. The walls were slick, slimy almost,
and when she had steeled herself against the gusts of wind that seemed to mock
her stability, she began her first tentative moves towards getting into
position to reach up and grab the stairs above. She knelt and crawled, on her
hands and knees, out over the first two steps. Her breath was rapid, and she
felt pain throughout her body, from the pain in her right palm, to the ache
stabbing her right knee. Through a dull throb that niggled at her back, up to
her neck, stiff with the chill of the wind, and back down through her left
side, her muscles almost ready to seize up and leave her in agony with cramp.
To her head, woozy with the influence of Shimasou and aching with the cold she
had begun to develop due to the storm.

But she carried on. For her boys, she
carried on. Even as her head whirled with what seemed to be half a dozen voices
that included those of her parents, she reached forwards, towards the hole
above her. Towards her life.

Even as the floor began to creak
loudly ahead of her and she heard the wooden strut that held up the stairs
begin to crack and disintegrate, she reached up. She reached up not with
strength, but with love. Her strength was gone, and now it was love that must
carry her through.

Sandy screamed as the floor below
collapsed, holding onto the stairs above her with one hand as she listened to
the sound of floor falling onto floor, each in turn giving way as she clung
onto the thought of reaching her boys. She closed her eyes tightly, grinding
her teeth as she tried desperately to reach up with her wounded right hand,
towards the remaining stairs. The rest of them were gone, she knew that. They
had collapsed with a roar and a rumble, and she did not have to look down to
know that she was now hanging forty feet above the wreckage of the staircase.
But she held on. With love she held on. Her right hand found its grip and she
hung, fifteen feet away from life, forty feet away from death.

*

It was almost complete, and
now nothing would be able to overcome its strength. It stood and looked over
the edge of the ledge at Sandy Carson, desperately hanging on, looking down at
the struts that jutted out of the debris below. She was right where the huge
figure wanted her to be. She was in the palm of its huge hand. Her light could
be extinguished, allowing
its
light to grow brighter. Soon the light of
Shimasou would be bright enough to dazzle the whole world. Then the darkness
would be released, and Shimasou would be complete.

And there is nothing that her ball of
hope can do, not any more. Soon there will
be
no love, only darkness. Darkness
and my strength. My strength and my being unleashed on the minds of the weak
and the strong.

No,
a voice whispered back. It was her,
defiant even as she hung, helpless. Waiting for death.

You are too late, Sandy Carson. I will
succeed and you will bow. Everyone will bow before me.

I will beat you. We will beat you. For
my sons and for the world, we will beat you.

You don’t know how, Sandy Carson. You
don’t know how to beat me.

We know, and we will beat you.

From below came a piercing cry. Joe
Myers looked up at his wife, hanging by her fingertips.

Sandy did not answer her husband’s
exclamation. She knew that any movement might send her tumbling to her death,
and she continued to grip tightly to the edge of the devastated staircase, low
creaks mimicking the wind that populated the building. She squeezed her eyes
even tighter, sending tears rolling down her face, dropping to the rubble
below, undetectable in the swirling rain.

Joe Myers stood, looking up at his
wife as she hung, so close to death, and so far out of his reach. Tears began
to roll down his face.
The children must be up there too
, he thought,
and put his hands together.

He looked around the building,
shielding his eyes as he did so. It was almost completely destroyed. Paper and
dust swirled around a huge mound of debris, and rain came through a hole in the
roof, soaking the four men as they stood, open-mouthed, staring up at Sandy.

Joe wondered if now was the time to
pray. He wondered how any god could allow somebody to be in that situation and
not give them a helping hand. They were good people. A loving family. But they
had been shattered by Shimasou. Joe Myers knew that things would probably never
be the same again, and they still had to get through
this
. It was a
situation that he never imagined himself being in, and the presence of a
killer, coupled with the condition of the building, sent him into shock. He
still wanted to protect his wife and his family, but he knew there was no way
in the world that he would be able to get to them now. So he stood, looking up
and shielding his eyes, willing Sandy to hang on and wondering how they were
going to get them down when all of this was finally over.