by Lauren Algeo
Brewer flinched at the mention of her name. It sounded strange to hear it from someone who hadn’t even met her. He kept forgetting she was the one who’d first emailed Striker25 about what they were up to, about their plan to kill the Grand. A fresh wave of pain washed over him and he found himself digging his right thumb hard into the bandage on his left wrist. He tried to keep his face neutral but his jaw had tensed considerably.
Mitch clearly wasn’t very good at reading people as he kept on talking. ‘I was sorry to hear about Georgie, she sounded cool in her message. What happened to her at that Grand’s place?’
Brewer hid behind his beer again. There was no way he was ready to talk about that yet, especially not with someone as seemingly insensitive as Mitch. He gulped a couple of mouthfuls then wiped the foam from his lips.
‘I think that’s a conversation for another time,’ he said evenly.
Mitch nodded and finally had the tact to change the subject. ‘Anyways, I can be your guide now. I know everywhere around here. I’ve lived here my whole life!’
‘Do you live with your parents?’ Brewer asked to keep the topic lighter.
It seemed to be the wrong question as Mitch’s face hardened. ‘Just my mum and my little brother.’
‘I see.’ Brewer struggled to think of something else to say. He could read people fairly well and obviously Mitch’s dad was a sore point.
The waitress saved him the trouble by appearing with their food. Mitch smothered his fries with ketchup and tucked straight in but Brewer picked at the edge of his sandwich. The mention of Georgie had killed his appetite, as the expression went. Her death was still too recent and the grief more raw compared to how he felt about Karen.
He’d become accustomed to the pain when he thought about his beautiful wife. Time had dulled that ache a little as he’d come to terms with it. There had been time during her fight with the brain tumour to consider the outcome. He hadn’t even begun to process his grief over Georgie’s sudden loss yet. She’d only been with him for a few months but she’d had a huge impact. She’d saved his life.
He forced her memory aside and nibbled at some fries while Mitch shovelled his in. It was time to get down to business.
‘I’ll level with you,’ Brewer said. ‘I’m a bit reluctant to work together on this.’
Mitch started to protest through a mouthful of food and Brewer held up a hand to stop him. ‘I know, I don’t know anything about you yet, and yes, you’re the reason I came over here in the first place, but I just need to get this off my chest before we go any further. I don’t think you realise just how dangerous hikers are yet. They kill people like that.’ He clicked his fingers to emphasise his point. ‘I have an advantage in that I can hear them and find out their next move, but you… you don’t have that safety net. You’re going into this thing completely blind.’
‘That’s bullshit!’ Mitch swallowed the last of his food, his eyes flashing angrily. ‘I’ve been doing the research. I know exactly what these things are capable of. People are dying, man!’ He slammed his fist on the table, drawing curious stares from other diners. ‘My friend was killed too, if you remember! I know I don’t have your experience with them but you have to at least give me the chance to try and help. You need me as much as I need you. Just give me a few days to try. If it doesn’t work out then we’ll go our separate ways, but give me a shot here?’
Brewer had forgotten that Mitch had lost someone too. His taxi driver friend had been involved in a head on collision that had killed him and his two passengers.
He nodded slowly. ‘Ok then. We’ll try it for a few days.’
‘Good.’ The anger evaporated from Mitch’s eyes and they flicked down to Brewer’s full plate. ‘Now, are you gonna eat that?’
Chapter 2
Brewer was powerless to move. All around him were black eyes, surrounding him, consuming him. There was laughter, a horrible, bitter rasp that echoed through his mind. Then she was running. Flying past him and he couldn’t stop her, couldn’t lift his arms to grab her. The glass shattered with a deafening scream.
‘No!’
He bolted upright in bed. The scream had come from his lips. He sat there panting, with sweat trickling down his back. The nightmare had been so vivid, more memory than dream.
He fumbled on the bedside table for the lamp switch, hoping that light would chase away the last fragments from his head. It didn’t. His heart was racing and he couldn’t seem to catch his breath. He looked down and saw the bedcovers were twisted around his legs. He reached down with trembling fingers and freed himself from the cotton prison.
It wasn’t the first time he’d dreamt of her since that night. In fact, it had been a regular occurrence over the last couple of weeks. Always the same dark eyes and the same evil laugh. The only part that changed was her. He never really got a good look as she raced by, but sometimes the hair whipping past his face was Georgie’s red shade, and other times it was Karen’s brown colour. The two women in his life he hadn’t been able to save.
Brewer struggled to his feet and padded barefoot across the room to the bathroom. He filled a glass with tap water and took a few sips before splashing his face with cold water in the sink. The cheap lighting above the mirror gave his reflection a green tinge. His eyes were hooded and his face was drawn. He turned away from the haunted apparition, cursing himself for still being alive.
He dried his face on the stiff, white towel over the rail and walked back to the bedroom. The motel room he’d booked was small and basic. It had two armchairs in the corner pointing towards an ancient TV, a queen-size bed, and a wardrobe alongside it. There was a small dressing table in the corner with a mirror, and tea and coffee making facilities, but no stool underneath. He’d been staying there for the last couple of nights to get a cheaper rate. It would do for sleeping in and that was all he needed.
He glanced at the bed and considered getting back in then dismissed the idea. Sleep wasn’t going to come again tonight. He picked up his watch from the bedside table to check the time. It was 3:24am; dawn was still a long way off.
He dug his laptop out of his bag and wandered over to the battered armchair nearest the TV. He picked up the remote control and turned on the set, flicking through the channels until he found a news station. It was a worldwide one and they were covering the economy crisis in Greece. He left the volume low and settled back into the chair with his computer propped on his legs.
The desktop loaded with the familiar photo of him and Karen and he stroked a finger over her smiling face before opening the internet browser. He was starting to think this whole trip had been a bad idea. America was simply too big for him. It was impossible to track the news properly across multiple states.
Even just focussing on Philadelphia was hard. A lot of the strange stories were turning out to be committed by local nutters with no hiker involvement, and others were too subtle to tell. He was struggling to get a handle on a decent process. By the time he’d found a story and started to research it, something else had happened to grab the headlines. He couldn’t move quick enough in the unfamiliar city. He didn’t know where the places mentioned in stories were and it wasted time having to work out the geography. That was where Mitch would come in.
They’d gone for a drink in the Irish pub after lunch earlier. He’d told Mitch about a few of his encounters with hikers, leaving out the ones involving Georgie for the time being. It felt strange to go over some of his experiences and theories again with someone new. Georgie had been a great audience but with Mitch it seemed as if he was only half-listening. As though he’d made his mind up and was only adding the ideas of Brewer’s that suited his own.
He cut in all the time with ‘facts’ he’d learnt from various blogs and forums. Like how mind-snatchers, as he called them, could add new memories to your own so people thought they were someone else. He used the example of a woman waking up from a coma and believing she was really a renowned musician. Apparently they could add ski
lls to people too and the previously music-illiterate woman could now read notes and play the piano to an exceptional standard.
Brewer had to bite his tongue on that one. He’d seen no evidence that hikers could do any such thing – why would they? They loved taking things away from people, not adding trivial hobbies for no reason. They were murderers, sadists in fact. Unless the woman then went on to kill an entire orchestra, Brewer didn’t believe a word. Mitch clearly did though. He spouted this nonsense as if it was gospel truth and Brewer couldn’t hide his frustration.
He gave up repeating the mantra that there was no evidence for any of these theories and resorted to sarcastic comments. He’d cut the meeting short after one drink in the pub and wandered around town on his own for a while to cool off. Mitch had been none-the-wiser and cheerily passed over his mobile number on a napkin for Brewer to call the next morning. He would just have to swallow his pride to work with him.
It’ll only be temporary, he told himself as he hunted for news websites. He just had to stick it out for the few days he’d agreed to. He could take advantage of Mitch’s local knowledge then move on.
To where, he didn’t know yet. There was no way of telling how many hikers were in the country, and no way of killing them all at once with the Grand already dead. This was going to be an uphill struggle from the start so it made sense to have someone as ignorant as Mitch adding to the misery. Like a punishment.
Brewer had a brief flashback of the nightmare and his body convulsed. The sweat on his skin had cooled now and he realised he was shivering. He put the laptop aside to fetch a jumper then settled back down to his research.
It was harder to know what he was looking for in the articles. The writing style was different to the UK; more sensationalist in some reports. He had to sift through everything looking for the tell tale glint of a hiker.
Two hours, and one strong cup of instant coffee later, he found one. Or he thought he had. Hidden halfway down a news homepage was a story about a young woman who had killed her fiancée and then herself. Her name was Beth Adams and she’d come home from work yesterday afternoon and stabbed her partner, Graham Landers, to death before slitting her own wrists. According to the report, the stabbing had been brutal, with her fiancée suffering multiple wounds.
The friends and family who had commented so far had expressed shock and disbelief at the scenario. The couple’s wedding was only three months away and apparently the bride-to-be had been ecstatic about it. One friend was quoted as saying she didn’t believe Beth would ever take her own life, not when she was looking forward to so much. By all accounts Graham was a devoted partner who’d never have done anything to provoke his usually placid wife. Of course, Brewer couldn’t vouch for that. Maybe Graham had been having an affair and Beth had attacked him in a fit of jealous rage?
There was one line in the article that led Brewer to believe that wasn’t the case. Graham had recently left a position with the US treasury to concentrate on starting his own business.
It wasn’t much to go on but it sounded the instinctive warning bells in Brewer’s head. The whole thing seemed too suspicious – a loved up woman killing her fiancée for no apparent reason? He needed to find out more.
He tried Googling Graham Landers however there wasn’t much on the first hit. He added his location and the US treasury and came up with a decent link. Graham’s position had been fairly classified, with minimal details on what his actual role was, something to do with government accounts. It all centred on money and that was one motive hikers exploited to the max. Anyone could have wanted Graham dead over money matters and using his wife to do it would be textbook hiker behaviour.
Brewer closed the laptop and rubbed tiredly at his temples. He’d need to act fast on this if the hiker was still in the area. The murders – he counted both deaths as such – had happened in Eddington, on the northern side of the state. It was too early to rouse Mitch, who probably slept until midday, but he could get himself ready then head to the kid’s house and collect him on the way.
This was his last paid night at the motel so he could check out then find another one wherever he ended up that evening. He’d packed light and could travel around with all his belongings in his rucksack, including the small laptop.
Brewer had a lukewarm shower then dressed in a pair of dark blue jeans, a black t-shirt, and a grey jumper. He only had his Doc Martens with him and one trench coat. He hadn’t wanted to lug extra layers around all the time.
He folded up his spare t-shirts and packed them in the bag, alongside his extra pants and socks. He took his toothbrush and comb from the bathroom but left the little bottles of shower gel and shaving foam, he could pick up new ones when he needed to. Perhaps the next motel room would come with free ones like the first place he’d stayed in.
He scanned around the room, only there was nothing else of his there. It was 7am and a slither of light was showing between the gap in the curtains. Now was as good a time as any to check out. He could have breakfast somewhere near Mitch’s place. Brewer hoisted his bag over one shoulder and opened the front door on a grey morning. Time to find his first American hiker.
Chapter 3
Mitch was taking forever. Brewer peered up and down the street then checked his watch again. After the diner yesterday he wasn’t really surprised but that had just been a meeting, this was important. Every minute they wasted, the further away the hiker could be getting.
He was standing in the shadow of a doorway across the road from Mitch’s place. He lived in an apartment in a block of about ten others. Brewer had caught the subway over to Hunting Park then phoned Mitch from a payphone to let him know they had a potential case. Mitch had sounded half-asleep when he’d answered his mobile but he’d soon perked up when Brewer mentioned the hiker. He’d given some swift directions to his block and said he’d have a shower and be right out. That had been nearly thirty minutes ago.
Going up to his apartment would prompt too many questions if his mum were home so Brewer could do nothing but wait for him again. He was itching to get going, yet dreading what they might find when they got there. He hadn’t heard the scratching of a hiker in his mind since that night. The Grand had overpowered him easily then, what if the same thing happened this time?
American hikers could be a completely different breed. What if they were stronger than the Grand himself and that’s why they’d survived his death? If that was the case then he really didn’t want to lead Mitch into this too. Potentially his first and last hiker experience.
Brewer’s blocking skills might have gotten rusty already. Worst of all, the hikers had something new to use against him. Georgie’s death was too close to the surface of his mind; he wouldn’t be able to hide her as well as he could conceal Karen. If they latched onto that, he was afraid his emotions would spill out and he’d be as easy to manipulate as a puppet.
‘Sorry, got caught up!’ Mitch sprinted across the road, interrupting his sombre chain of thoughts.
The kid was wearing a similar outfit to the day before but this time his t-shirt was black with a colourful, comic book style woman on. He was smiling broadly with no inkling of nervousness on his face.
Brewer gave him a once over. ‘No bag?’
‘Why would I need a bag?’ Mitch patted the pockets of his baggy jeans. ‘Got everything I need in here.’
Brewer gestured to his own rucksack, which had his entire current possessions in. ‘You might need a change of clothes if we stay somewhere, or extra layers if we’re out all night. A torch? Some food or drink?’
‘Nah,’ Mitch shrugged his shoulders nonchalantly. ‘I’m cool. I’ve got some cash.’
Don’t say I didn’t warn you, Brewer thought but didn’t say anything out loud.
‘Where are we heading then?’ Mitch asked. ‘You sounded pretty cryptic on the phone?’
Brewer shook his head. ‘I wasn’t being cryptic – I don’t really know where this place is so I was just giving you the vague dire
ction. It’s near Eddington? North-east apparently.’
‘I know it.’ Mitch started to walk down the road towards the subway. ‘We’ll need to change a couple of times and get the R7 train.’
Brewer fell instep beside him. ‘Do you know the area well?’
‘Never been! I just know where it is.’
At least it was slightly more than Brewer knew. He’d seen Eddington on the subway map but didn’t have a clue where to go from there. Apparently Philadelphia was trying to remind him of home, as the next two stops on the map were Croydon and Bristol. He couldn’t imagine they’d be anything like their namesakes in the UK though.
‘I can’t believe we’re finally going to get one of these things!’ Mitch was clearly excited. ‘What happened up there to give it away?’
Brewer gave him a brief summary of Beth and Graham’s tragic endings. Mitch had the decency to look horrified at the murder details. Who knew what he was expecting the hiker to have done.
‘You sure it was one of these hikers?’ he asked after a moment of silence.
‘Not one hundred percent,’ Brewer admitted. ‘I’ll know if a hiker’s in the area when we get there though.’
‘You’ll be able to hear it?’
‘Yes.’
Mitch gave him a curious sideways glance. ‘I know you told me already but I still don’t get it. How can you hear them?’
Brewer sighed and repeated the story he’d told Mitch in the pub about his own encounter with the hiker who’d tried to make him cause a fatal motorway crash. ‘Once a hiker has been inside your mind it leaves behind the ability to hear them,’ he reiterated. ‘I don’t know the exact science, the same way I don’t know how hikers can get inside your mind in the first place.’
‘It’s the government.’ Mitch lowered his voice even though there was no one within twenty feet of them. ‘They’re always watching and listening, and now they’ve found a way to get in our heads too.’