by Matt Hilton
At the edge of the anvil rock she again peered down. The waves crashed against the foot of an almost sheer slope a hundred feet tall at least. Her uncanny dread of the open sea was suddenly pushed aside by the thought of toppling to her death from this height, rolling and flailing all the way down as her bones splintered against the jagged protrusions. She backed away, looking for an escape route but her options was to retrace her climb down the fissure or take the faintly marked trail down the crag she’d followed that first time. Climbing up the fissure had been accomplished in desperation, going down would be worse, because if the madman caught her in that bottleneck she’d have nowhere to hide. She jogged for the trail, knowing full well she could meet him coming up, but hoped to discover an alternative way down the rear of the crag where she might give him the slip.
Hope faltered when she was midway down, hearing the clatter of loose stone beneath his boots. She cast around for a hiding place, spotted a gap between two columns of stone and lunged for it. Encumbered by the laptop, she had only one free hand, and it wasn’t enough to catch her balance. Her heels skidded out from under her and she went down hard on her backside…beneath her the stone crumbled, and she began to slide, picking up momentum on a natural funnel that threatened to pitch her over the cliff. She was still seventy feet above sea level and wouldn’t survive the drop.
Digging in her heels didn’t slow her, and the pitch of the dry flume was growing steeper. She tried rolling on her side, but only abused her elbow wrapped around the computer. She let it go, tried to grasp at rocks she flashed past. Her palms were skinned in seconds. She cried out…the pitching sea beckoned her.
At the end of the channel foliage had crowned the edge of the cliff, sustained by the rain from the flume and the build up of silt and earth it had carried there over millennia. It was mainly tough grasses and small stunted bushes. Leah scrabbled for handfuls of grass as she slid the last few feet, and each was snatched from their tenuous grasps on the land, their tiny networks of roots barely enough to keep them stable under heavier winds. Her feet slid out into space, and Leah screamed. Her clutching left hand caught something sturdier and she held on for dear life, feeling the muscles in her arm tearing under the strain and a sickening popping sensation in her armpit. She clung there, feet kicking for purchase against open air, striving to turn against her own elbow to reach with her right arm. It was self-torture, but better than falling. She got her other fingers around a prickly branch, and hung there a moment, gasping, her brain reeling with visions of what might have been, what might still happen if she lacked the strength to hold on.
Her strained left arm couldn’t support her, and her right was failing too. She cried out, while kicking for a toehold on the cliff. Loosened stones clattered as they bounced off protrusions of rock further down. Their splashes as they hit the sea were promises of the final splash she’d make as she plunged beneath its surface, never to rise again. Panic rose like a fearsome beast within her: gritting her teeth to a point she felt they’d crack, she pulled higher on the bush. She got her elbow over the edge, and twisted to bring up her opposite knee. Five feet above her, the laptop had come to rest: she paid it no attention, even if she could reach it, it would only encumber her climb. Dust sifted from under it, and it began sliding again, its nearest sharp corner aimed directly at her face. It was going to hit her! She released her left hand to swat it aside, and all of her weight was on her right. The bush ripped loose, and she jerked a few inches before her hand spasmed open in reaction and she began to pitch backwards. Her mouth opened in a silent scream, just as a figure burst from the bushes to her left and grabbed her flailing left arm and the collar of her jacket. Her scream found voice as she was dragged onto the cliff edge. Suddenly the thought of falling was preferable to what the madman had in store for her.
38
The instant he released her, Leah scrambled away, then rolled onto her backside to place her feet between them, so she could at least kick him in defence. She was crammed among prickly bramble, but paid the stabbing of a thousand thorns no mind. Gasping she threw out her hands to ward him off and stared up into the face of…
‘Ben?’
The slightly built youth peered at her through reddened eyes. Groaning in discomfort he was buckled at the waist, rubbing at his arms, wringing his hands. The effort to haul her bodily to safety must have been colossal: it was a miracle he’d found the strength to drag her back on to the cliff.
‘Ben?’ Leah asked again, her voice barely above a whisper. ‘Thank God you’re here…we, uh…Jenna feared the worst.’
At mention of his girlfriend he stood sharply, glancing around at the nearest bushes and the taller rocks forming the crag above.
‘Where is Jenna?’ he demanded.
‘Safe,’ Leah told him, but she wasn’t going to lie. ‘She’s safe for now. She was with Haley last time I saw her, they ran back towards the beach.’
‘We got split up! I have to go to her,’ he announced and turned to hurry down the narrow trail at the edge of the cliff.
‘Wait!’ Leah rose painfully from the ground, yanking loose of the clinging tendrils. Ben had halted, but was caught in indecision. He shifted from one foot to the other, wanting only to race after Jenna. ‘Are you hurt?’ Leah asked.
‘I nearly pulled my arms out of their sockets saving you!’ His face flushed and tears streamed down his cheeks. ‘But I’m not hurt. That maniac with the axe…my God! Tell me he didn’t get anyone else.’
It struck Leah that Ben must be ignorant to the subsequent killings of Annie, Pete and Dominic, or of the maniac’s attempt to flush them from the cabin with flames, but now wasn’t the time to burden him.
‘He chased me here,’ Leah warned. ‘I lost track of him, so he could be nearby. We have to be very careful going down.’
He nodded, and then began casting around.
‘What are you doing, Ben?’
‘Looking for a rock I can use to smash his head with.’ Ben’s steel had returned. He hefted a couple of stones, but was dissatisfied with their weight. His gaze alighted on something: Leah’s laptop. Miraculously it was still balanced at the lip of the dry flume. Gingerly he approached and scooped it up. ‘Here,’ he said, handing it over. ‘If you see him use that to bash his face in.’
‘It’s all it’s good for at the moment,’ Leah concurred as they set off along the trail. It descended rapidly, following a series of stepping-stones and patches of bare red dirt through the gorse and brambles that grew at the foot of the crag. She weighed the laptop as a weapon and decided it was better than nothing, seeing as she couldn’t use it to communicate with the outside world. She looked at Ben sharper than before. ‘Ben, do you have a mobile with you?’
‘Yeah. It’s why I came all the way up here. I thought I might get a signal and be able to call for help.’
‘Did it work?’
Without slowing he said, ‘I couldn’t speak with anyone, but I managed to send a text. Whether or not it gets a reply, I won’t know now that we’re back in a dead zone.’
‘Who did you text? The police?’
He halted in his tracks, turned and faced her. ‘My dad.’
Before Leah could question his motive, she realised he didn’t expect his father to personally race to their rescue, but he’d take an urgent message from his son seriously and rally a response from the local emergency services. ‘Good thinking,’ she said, giving him a brief hug, and this time his face flushed for a different reason. He pulled away.
‘We have to get outta here,’ he announced. ‘I have to find Jenna.’
‘Give me your mobile,’ she said.
He frowned at the order.
‘I’ll go back up there,’ she said, pointing up the crag. ‘I’ll try to keep the madman distracted while you sneak past, and I’ll keep sending texts for help.’
‘We’ll be safer if we stick together,’ he argued. ‘C’mon, let’s get moving.’
‘It’s me the lunatic’s fixated on,
I can distract him while you get by and find Jenna.’
‘But what if he gets you?’
She wagged the laptop up and down, feeling its heft. ‘I’m not totally at his mercy.’
He shook his head, thinking her chance of defending herself against a shotgun or axe was nil, but he dug in his pocket and brought out his phone. Leah didn’t take any offence as he handed it over with a pursed mouth and downcast eyes. She grasped his shoulder. ‘Be careful,’ she said.
‘You too, Leah.’ Ben turned and rushed away, lost in seconds beyond a jutting boulder.
He was a brave kid, Leah thought, as she began her climb back up the trail. A lot could be learned from his fortitude; she’d been running scared, and not only since she’d become fixated upon by the bogus McBride, but for a long time before it. She’d run from her responsibility to deliver a follow up book to her debut hit in a timely manner; had run from Pete when really he wasn’t at total fault for the breakdown of their relationship; had run to Shattered Rock thinking she could hide from her own insecurities; had run when innocent people were dying all around her for her sake. Well no bloody more! Though she was still moving away from her pursuer, it was with the intention of calling for assistance to stop the mad bastard. As she climbed, she tucked the laptop under her armpit, while already keying a message to the emergency services on the mobile, glad to see the red cross disappear and the SOS symbol blink on in the top corner of the screen. A few metres higher up the slope and she was certain it would send without a problem.
From below she heard a cry of alarm, a brief scuffle, and a sickening thud. Without further thought, she shoved the mobile in a crack between two boulders, then hurtled down the path where Ben had recently disappeared. She swerved around the jutting boulder and was reminded how perilously close she was to the edge of the cliff, but it didn’t slow her. More protruding rocks blocked her view to the front, but she again heard movement, and another solid thud. Without slowing, she hauled the laptop overhead, and flew around the final obstruction and came upon the scene she’d dreaded finding.
Ben lay across the trail, blood dripping from his nose and mouth, as the madman brought up the stock of his shotgun to beat the kid’s head a third time. Ben was oblivious to his impending doom, already dazed and slipping into a dark place. The youth was no further threat to his abuser, but the fact seemed to have escaped the man who’d decided nobody but him would leave Shattered Rock alive.
‘Get away from him!’ Leah’s shriek broke the killer’s immediate resolve, and he halted, the shotgun stock raised as he snapped around to face her. Leah hurtled towards him, her arms unfurling.
With disdain he batted aside the laptop with the stock of his gun, but was forced to take more action when Leah didn’t slow. She went for his eyes with her nails as she crashed into him. He swiped her aside with the gun, then released it with one hand so he could grasp her hair. He made a fist so she couldn’t escape, and shook her: his strength was shocking! But Leah’s blood was up and she wasn’t for giving in too easily. She punched at his face, causing him to rear back, and then drove a knee between his legs. He groaned, and sank down a few inches, but didn’t release her.
‘Try raping anyone now you sick bastard!’ she screamed, and again kneed him in the groin, clawing at the same time at his face. ‘Is that what you planned for me: my rape and murder? The same way you raped and murdered Mary Jayne?’
He roared in agony and rage, dropping the shotgun to free up his other hand. Open, it slapped across her face, and Leah almost blacked out at the shock. It was no love tap, but delivered with the entire palm of his callused hand, and it felt as if a wooden plank had slammed her. While she tried to shake lucidity back into her mind, he shook her the opposite direction, then threw her down at his feet. He kicked her in the gut.
‘Yes, I wanted some private time with you,’ he snarled, ‘but I’ve suddenly gone off the idea, bitch. You’re gonnae die, then I’m gonnae finish off every last one of those other wee shites.’
Leah’s head swam, and her belly felt as if there was molten lava at its core. She vomited a string of bile. The killer reached to retrieve his shotgun, broke it open and checked the load. He snapped it shut, began to level the barrel. Ben, who’d gone unnoticed those last few seconds had regained some fight. He threw himself at the madman’s knees, got his arms around both and pushed with all his might. The shotgun blasted, but the pellets missed Leah, striking the rocks behind her instead. Immediately the killer used the gun to beat Ben between the shoulder blades, and the boy sunk down again, crying out in pain…and then Leah was there.
She’d grabbed up her laptop again, and swung it as she launched at the older man. It smashed against the side of his head, and he staggered at the blow. Encumbered by Ben’s arms around his legs, he stumbled, even as Leah swiped at him again. He got an elbow up, but she battered it aside, and the man went sideways. Underfoot the narrow path crumbled, and a section of it collapsed under his boot as he stamped to catch his balance. His eyes widened in realisation, then grew diamond hard, and he grabbed Leah’s jacket as he tumbled over the cliff, yanking her into space with him.
39
Time slowed in her perception, so that the drop to the seething ocean felt like an eternity. In reality it was fifty-or-so feet from the cliff edge to the tallest swells, and the fall would have taken seconds at most, but terror had a way of prolonging its effect. Conversely, Leah had little time to think, or even to scream, as she pinwheeled downward, drawn in the killer’s wake by his grasp on her jacket.
He hit the sea first, with Leah only a split-second after. Somehow their tumble had turned them over twice, and Leah was fortunate that she hit the water feet first. It didn’t matter; the impact with the sea was as if a giant had clapped its hands around her, slamming every ounce of air from her lungs, forcing the blood into her skull almost to bursting point. The giant’s hands dragged her under, and swept her deep, trailing a plume of bubbles and her weak cry of horror. She flipped, barrel-rolled sideways, caught in the undertow of the waves crashing to froth on the cliff face. Towed by the current she bounced over rocks jagged from a blanket of limpets. The embrace of the water dulled the impacts, but not enough to save her the pain when her skull cracked mercilessly against a rock. Flashes both light and dark exploded in her vision, and Leah’s mouth opened involuntarily in another cry. Salt water rushed in, and her throat sealed tight. Blackness flooded her thoughts, and some abstract corner of Leah’s mind welcomed it. Another part rebelled, and she thrashed for the surface.
She’d no concept of up or down, any sense of it continuously thwarted by the rolling action of the under current. Neither did she have any idea how deeply she was submerged, or if she was facing land or the open ocean. She grabbed at handfuls of water, but there was no hint of climbing, and again she was rolled over, and her spine rapped painfully off stone. Her fingers found gravel, and she left behind skin on the sharpest limpets. The surging waves lifted her, and momentarily the blackness was replaced by steel-grey brightness, and then instantly by churning bubbles as she plunged under again. She must have gasped for air, because a dulled wail erupted from her open throat, and this time murky water invaded her.
She was drowning. She’d heard that of all the unnatural ways to die, drowning was one of the kindest. That wasn’t true in her experience. This was horrifying.
Bubbles swarmed around her again.
The bubbles were from her last gasps at life. They churned, and the water turned murkier as sand kicked up, the air bubbles phosphorous against the darker wash covering her.
Sand?
She didn’t know it at that moment, but the waves stirred the seabed where it sloped up to a shallow cove hidden at the base of the cliff. She’d been pushed shoreward and Leah was submerged in less than two feet of water. She reached through the thrashing spume at something dim overhead, clutching for any lifeline. Her grip was tenuous, on something slimy, but she hauled up and gasped for life as her mouth broke the surf
ace.
Instantly she knew that her handhold was on one who was no saviour at all. The killer had also been washed to shore with her, and she’d no idea if he was insensible, drowned, or ready to continue their fight. She found out in a second. He lurched towards her, trying to push her back under water with two hands on her face.
All of those sleepless nights she’d endured after jolting in breathless panic from nightmare…they hadn’t been the illogical terror of her subconscious, it was almost as if the frightening dreams had been premonitions, warnings of her impending doom.
She’d been destined to die at this desolate spot, and instead of running away, she’d run directly to it.
No! Instead of premonitions of her death, what if those dreams had been intended to guide her to another fate? Perhaps it was no coincidence she’d fled alone to Shattered Rock and stumbled across Mary Jayne’s resting place. Even if it took her final breath, her destiny was to stop the monster!
Leah kicked, and rolled with her tormentor, and she straddled him.
She planted her knees either side of his chest, her hands forcing him down, one at his throat, the other entwined in his hair, crushing his skull into the gritty sand and pebbles while the surf crashed over them. He slapped at her arms, then dug his fingernails into her wrists, but she was relentless. Her heels dug trenches in the sea floor as he made one last effort to rise up, but his strength failed and his arms drifted loose, spreading to each side. There were no more bubbles. There was no air left in his lungs. Water filled his open mouth.
Leah collapsed, shuddering for breath, aching from the effort of holding him under. Blackness swarmed through her mind again, and this time she didn’t fight the moment of tranquility that settled over her as she flopped face down alongside him. Perhaps drowning was a kindness after all. She surged up, shedding brine, and stood gasping over the corpse of the murderer. He’d killed Mary Jayne Kenner all those years earlier, and also Rob, Dominic, Annie and Mr McBride. Through the machinations of his murderous actions, her Pete had also died. The bastard didn’t deserve any kindness!