by Lauren Algeo
It sounded more like a challenge than a question.
‘If you want to go charging in there blind, be my guest,’ Brewer replied evenly. ‘Personally, I’m going to find out exactly what’s going on then make a decision about intervening.’
Mitch’s head snapped up. ‘Are you saying you might not even go in there?’ he demanded. ‘You think someone is going to die and you’re not even going to try and stop it?’
‘If it means getting us both killed as well, then no!’ Brewer couldn’t contain his anger any longer. ‘You’ve got no idea how dangerous this situation is.’
‘I know you’re a sick bastard if you don’t try and help!’ Mitch spat.
‘Well you’re a fucking waste of space and I don’t know why I let you come with me!’ It was childish but Brewer couldn’t help it – this kid infuriated him.
‘Fine.’ Mitch stomped off in the direction of the gym. ‘I’ll deal with this myself.’
Brewer stood his ground and watched Mitch’s tense back as he marched up to the building and through the entrance. The kid wasn’t his responsibility. His cockiness would evaporate when the hiker turned on him. Brewer would like to see how he dealt with one in his mind.
She started whispering again moments later. ‘See, there she is on the treadmill, just like I said.’ There was a sinister urgency in her voice. ‘It’s the perfect time.’
Brewer’s anger gave way to worry. This was going to happen now and Mitch was stropping around inside somewhere with no clue what he was doing. He’d probably stumble across the girl and start yelling at her about hikers like some crazed loon. If he found the girl, he was only going to make it ten times worse. For now, the hiker was only focussing on one target but if he angered her enough she could take it out on the whole place.
Reluctantly, he began to jog towards the entrance. The hiker’s whispering was incessant. From what he could pick up, the girl was hiding in the changing rooms and waiting for her friend to come in. There was no way Brewer could go in there without causing uproar, he would have to loiter outside. It might look as though he was waiting for a wife or daughter to come out.
‘Take another peek,’ the hiker insisted. ‘Is she still out there?’ A pause. ‘She can’t have gone far; she must be in the sauna. I wonder how hot it gets?’
There was an awful snigger in his mind. It sounded like the plan was evolving. The fact that the hiker was improvising made him extremely nervous. The ones he’d encountered previously usually had a meticulous plan. They could cause as much chaos as was necessary then leave without a trace. This hiker had no concrete plan; just how was she going to murder this girl? Would she let the vessel live afterwards or kill them both? None of this felt right – it was too spontaneous. The Grand would never have allowed this rebellion.
Brewer snuck past reception while the woman behind the desk was dealing with a customer. The centre was fairly quiet and he walked along an empty corridor to the changing rooms. The male and female ones were next door to each other so he took up a position by the notice board opposite and pretended to read the adverts pinned there.
He kept one eye on the door with the silhouette of a woman on. If the girl could look out to the gym there had to be another exit at the back, presumably leading to the pool. He decided to go through the men’s room to check. He pushed open the door and was hit by a strong smell of chlorine and disinfectant. He sensed someone immediately to his left.
‘I thought you weren’t intervening?’ Mitch was standing by the mirrors looking lost.
‘I thought you were going to put a stop to it yourself?’
‘I, uhh… I’m not sure where they are,’ Mitch admitted. ‘I couldn’t find that girl anywhere out there.’
‘That’s because she’s on the other side of this wall.’ Brewer gestured to the solid brick dividing the changing rooms. ‘If you’d stuck with me, you would have known that.’
Mitch had the decency to keep his thoughts to himself for once. ‘What now?’
‘We need to find out what’s through the other doors,’ Brewer said.
They walked past the various cubicles and a shower area. The changing rooms were silent and only one of the cubicles had a closed door. The majority of the lockers in the bank along the wall were wide open. Mitch’s trainers squeaked loudly on the damp tiles.
‘Wait.’ Brewer grabbed his arm. ‘They’re on the move.’
‘I told you she was in the sauna,’ the hiker whispered. ‘You should go in after her. She won’t see you coming through the steam until it’s too late.’
‘The sauna.’ Brewer walked briskly out of the changing rooms to the pool area.
There were a few people doing lengths in the swimming pool and a lifeguard lounging in a chair by the deep end.
‘It’s over there.’ Mitch pointed to a sign to the right of the lifeguard.
Brewer felt his heart sink. Two fully clothed men could not just walk casually around the pool and go into the sauna. The lifeguard would be on them in a second. He was already staring at them with mild curiosity.
‘Quick, back in the changing room,’ Brewer said.
‘What? The girl is that way!’ Mitch protested.
‘I know but we’re being watched. We’ll have to find another way around.’
Mitch finally registered the lifeguard, and an audience of two elderly women, who were leaning against the side in the shallow end of the pool. They disappeared swiftly back into the wet shower room.
‘There has to be another way to get to it,’ Brewer said. ‘We just have to…’
The sentence died on his lips. ‘It’s too late,’ he whispered. ‘She’s there.’
‘What!’ Mitch screeched.
Brewer listened with mounting horror as the hiker’s glee intensified. He tried to relay as much as he could to Mitch but all the words were running together.
‘She doesn’t know it’s you… quick, there’s no one else in there with her… that’s it… just slip inside the steam…’ There was a high-pitched giggle. ‘Her eyes are closed! It’s perfect; just reach out and grab her.’
‘We have to stop her!’ Mitch cried desperately.
Brewer shook his head. ‘We don’t know where the hiker is. If we intervene, other people will get hurt.’
‘But she’s going to die!’
It was hopeless. They could try and go round the pool, and maybe Mitch could take out the lifeguard while Brewer got the girl. But that would only direct the heat their way. If the hiker didn’t turn on them then the lifeguard would call the police and they’d get arrested instead. If this girl was a target then she was going to die regardless of what they did.
His eyes settled on something on the wall of the changing room. As a measure of defiance, he ran over and hit the fire alarm. Mitch gave him a nod of gratitude that he was at least trying something. A loud ringing began to wail through the building. People would start clambering out of the pool and the commotion might snap the girl out of the hiker’s grasp.
Brewer tried to listen over the deafening alarm. He had failed – the hiker’s voice never faltered. She was too focussed on what the girl was doing to be distracted by the siren. Perhaps she couldn’t even hear it from wherever she was.
‘That’s it… tighter. Squeeze as hard as you can. Make her sorry for what she’s done to you.’
‘What’s going on?’ Mitch tugged at his shoulder.
People were beginning to filter down to the changing rooms and two men ran past them looking flustered. The building would be evacuated in minutes but the girl would be gone by then.
‘I, um.’ He didn’t know how to tell Mitch what was happening on the other side of the pool. ‘I think she’s strangling her.’
Mitch’s eyes widened in shock. He bolted for the pool exit before Brewer could grab him. It was hard to hear the hiker now; there was too much noise. The lifeguard was blowing his whistle and shouting for people to leave their belongings.
‘Stop running!’ he kept yel
ling, although clearly people weren’t listening.
Brewer strode to the side of the pool in time to see Mitch darting past the lifeguard and through to the saunas. He would be too late; the hiker’s voice was calm and cold now.
‘See. She’ll never betray you again. Doesn’t that feel better?’ It was difficult to make out the words as her voice softened. ‘I’d like to help you make him just as sorry but there isn’t time. I have to leave now.’
Then she said three words that made Brewer’s heart leap into his throat and his legs buckle beneath him.
‘Father is coming.’
Chapter 5
Father. The word resounded in Brewer’s head and he clutched onto his mug as if he was drowning and it was his only lifeline.
‘Scott?’ A worried voice swam through his thoughts. ‘Are you still with me?’
He looked up from the cup and into Mitch’s scared eyes. The last half an hour had been a blur. He vaguely remembered Mitch looming over him and dragging him to his feet. Then it was dark for a moment. Had he fainted? He recalled being yanked out of the leisure centre and into the cold February air, which had woken him up a little. His feet had moved mechanically to wherever Mitch propelled him. The bitter taste in his mouth told him that he’d thrown up somewhere along the route to the diner they were now sitting in.
Mitch had put a steaming mug of coffee on the table in front of him and Brewer had clung on tightly. He realised now that the porcelain between his white, bloodless fingertips was cold.
‘I’m ok.’ Even as he said the words he knew he wasn’t.
Father was coming.
‘We have to get out of here.’ His voice rose in panic and he shoved his chair backwards in an attempt to get to his feet. ‘We have to leave the state right now!’
His legs were shaking badly and wouldn’t support him.
‘Steady.’ Mitch put a firm hand on his shoulder to keep him seated. ‘We’re not going anywhere until you’ve recovered from whatever the hell just went down!’
Brewer realised that Mitch looked just as terrified as he felt. He’d potentially seen a young girl’s dead body in the sauna.
‘I’m sorry,’ Brewer whispered through his dry lips. ‘Was the girl still there?’
‘Yes. She was lying on the floor next to the other girl’s body. Screaming and crying. I didn’t know what to do. The lifeguard was shouting after me.’ He looked down in shame. ‘I just turned and ran. I left them both in there.’
‘You did the right thing.’
‘Then I got back to the pool and saw you collapsed on the floor,’ Mitch said. ‘I thought that thing had, you know. I thought it was going to come for me next.’
‘Thank you for getting me out of there.’ It was the first time Brewer had been grateful to have the kid with him.
‘That’s ok,’ Mitch shrugged. ‘I wasn’t exactly going to leave you in there.’ He rubbed dramatically at his arms. ‘It was tough though! You nearly puked on my trainers and were dead on your feet!’ He grimaced at his poor choice of words.
Brewer could only imagine how the girl in the sauna had looked. Sweat covering her body, her face and neck swollen, her eyes lifeless.
‘So what the hell happened?’ Mitch asked.
Brewer shook his head. He didn’t know. What was happening here? Father. The word made him want to throw up again. It was impossible; the Grand was dead. He’d heard Georgie draw him into her mind as she leapt from that window. He’d seen the old man’s body slump lifelessly to the floor and omit that awful buzzing noise. He’d even stabbed the Grand afterwards, just to be sure. He’d left Georgie’s knife buried in his chest and the wound hadn’t self-healed. The hikers had all been dead.
Yet Father was coming. Did that mean the Grand had somehow recovered after he was gone? If so, then that meant Georgie’s death had been for nothing. Bile rose in his throat again and he forced it back down.
‘Well?’ Mitch demanded.
Brewer took a shaky breath and forced his lips around the name he’d hoped never to have to utter again. ‘The Grand. He’s coming here.’
‘But you said he was dead?’ Mitch frowned. ‘You said you killed him.’
‘We thought we did.’ Brewer squeezed his eyes shut as the image of Georgie smashing through the window flashed to the front of his mind. ‘Somehow he’s back.’
‘So what does that mean?’
‘It means everything is a million times worse!’ Brewer snapped angrily. ‘Do you have any idea what we went through to get to him the first time?’
‘No, I don’t!’ Mitch shouted back. ‘Because you won’t tell me.’
They glared at each other across the plastic-topped table. There were only two other customers in the diner and they were pointedly ignoring the two men yelling in the corner. The waitress at the counter kept darting little looks their way but didn’t come over to offer them fresh drinks.
Brewer’s head was pounding and he couldn’t think straight. This would be an ideal time to get on a plane and go home. Put thousands of miles between himself and the Grand and forget hikers ever existed. He could hole up in the countryside somewhere and wait for his life to be over.
Instead, he pushed his mug of cold coffee away. ‘Take me to the nearest pub,’ he sighed wearily. ‘We’re going to need something a lot stronger for this.’
Twenty minutes and two shots of Jack Daniels later, Brewer was ready to talk.
Mitch had found a dingy little place a few streets away. The floor was sticky and the tables were filthy but it had alcohol. They’d sat down at a booth in the corner and Brewer had waved to the bartender to keep the drinks coming. Screw the budget. Mitch had only asked for a coke and was sipping it slowly.
‘You’d have liked her,’ Brewer said, toying with the empty glass in front of him. ‘Georgie was a lot like you.’
‘Young and good looking?’ Mitch gave a rueful smile.
‘Headstrong. I saved her from a hiker and then I couldn’t get rid of her.’ He told Mitch about pulling Georgie back from the train but left out the part about her being a prostitute. Strangers didn’t need to know everything about her.
‘After that we started hunting hikers together and tried to find ways to kill them. She even made a bomb, you know!’ He snorted a laugh. ‘An amateur, dirty bomb from stuff she found around the flat. It didn’t work, even though it was a good idea. She was stronger than me as well. I don’t know if it was her age, but her ability to hear them was more powerful. She could sense a hiker even when it wasn’t talking to a vessel.’
‘How did she manage that?’ Mitch asked.
‘Beats me. Not even she could really explain it. She said it was like a pressure and she just knew one was there. Anyway, we came up with the plan to use a virus to kill a hiker from the inside, which she told you about. It worked so we decided to go after the Grand. Well, I decided to…’ He paused, remembering how Georgie had begged to go with him. ‘I was going to do it alone but she wore me down. I should have left her at the flat…’
His voice broke as he spoke the words he hadn’t yet admitted out loud. ‘It was all my fault.’
‘I don’t believe that,’ Mitch said gently. ‘If she was as stubborn as you say then there’s no way she would have stayed at home. I know I wouldn’t.’
Brewer nodded and held back the tears that were threatening to spill down his cheeks. He recounted the night at the Grand’s house as quickly as he could. Explaining that there had been a hiker there, Celiah, who had picked up their thoughts without them ever knowing she was in their heads.
‘I guess hikers can have gifts too,’ he said. ‘And Georgie’s was no match for Celiah’s.’
He told Mitch about the Grand’s overwhelming power and how all of his blocking techniques were completely useless against him. Then he told him how Georgie had died. How she’d sacrificed herself. There was a long silence after he finished speaking.
‘She was very brave,’ Mitch said finally. ‘I don’t know if I wou
ld have had the strength to do what she did.’
‘She really was special.’
In a way, it was cathartic to talk about what happened. Brewer felt as though a crushing weight had been lifted from his shoulders. On the downside, there was still a lead-like fear in the pit of his stomach.
‘Now you know why I’m so freaked out by what that hiker said. Until an hour ago I was sure the Grand was gone. I still don’t know how the hell he could’ve gotten up again after what happened. He was dead.’
Brewer’s throat was dry and he needed more alcohol. The bartender was serving another customer so he picked up his glass and walked over to the bar to wait. His legs still felt weak however he was more in control of his body. He got a couple more shots of JD and took them back to the table. He plonked a double measure in front of Mitch.
‘Thanks,’ Mitch said.
The kid didn’t touch it though and Brewer wondered if he was tea-total.
‘I wasn’t kidding about getting out of the state,’ Brewer said as he slipped back into the booth. ‘I’m nowhere near ready to encounter the Grand again yet. We should leave tomorrow morning.’
Mitch burst out laughing. ‘You’re crazy! We can’t just leave.’
‘I’m deadly serious.’
The smile froze on Mitch’s face when he saw the determination in Brewer’s eyes.
‘But… I can’t just go,’ he stuttered. ‘I’ve got family here… and a job. My friends.’
‘It’s up to you,’ Brewer said. ‘I’ll be out of here tomorrow, so you can either come with me or stay.’
He could almost see the internal turmoil as Mitch weighed up his options. Did he drop his entire life to go along with someone he’d only met yesterday? A man who hunts things that kill people? If it were him, he’d run a mile. Go on living his life with his head buried firmly in the sand. He hadn’t exactly warmed to Mitch yet but with the state he was in at the moment, he needed someone with him.
‘It’s not forever,’ Brewer said to help him along. ‘I have to go back to the UK in about 11 weeks. You could always come along for a bit then go home.’
‘I guess I could do that,’ Mitch said. ‘Maybe I can take a two-week break from work and see how it goes? What am I going to tell my family about where I’m going?’