by Lauren Algeo
Brewer shut the door and waited while Ellen fetched a chair from the front porch to prop against it, to keep the hiker trapped inside.
‘Where’s the man?’ Ellen asked as soon as the door was secure.
Brewer hadn’t given him a second thought since Ellen had gone after the hiker. They quickly searched the house and found the man slumped in an armchair in the living room. There was an empty bottle of whisky on the floor next to him and another half-full bottle in his limp hand. Ellen rushed to his side and carefully pried the bottle from his fingers. She checked his neck for a pulse.
‘He’s still alive!’ she cried. ‘We need to call an ambulance.’
Brewer’s eyes scanned the room; surely the hiker wasn’t just trying to kill this man with alcohol? His gaze settled on several, unopened bottles of strong painkillers on the coffee table. They’d got there before the hiker could make him take those too. Either that, or the man had passed out too early, and the hiker had been moving closer to the house to see what had happened when they’d come across him.
‘We can’t call anyone,’ Brewer said. ‘We’ve only got a small window of time before the Warfarin kills that hiker. The guy’s only drunk so we can let him sleep it off for a bit.’
Ellen hovered uncertainly by the man. He was about late sixties, with white hair and a snowy beard. He was dressed in a brown jumper and dark trousers with bare feet poking out of the bottom.
‘Ok,’ she agreed reluctantly. ‘We’ll call one when we leave, if he needs it.’
‘Hello?’ Mitch called from the hallway.
‘In here,’ Ellen shouted back.
‘Jesus!’ Mitch exclaimed when he walked into the room and caught sight of Brewer’s face. ‘You look like you went ten rounds with Mike Tyson!’
‘You should see the other guy.’ Brewer spied a small mirror above the mantelpiece and he went to check out his reflection.
He had to admit that it looked bad. There was a long, deep scratch across his left cheek from the branch, which had dribbled blood down to his jaw. There was dirt and grime all over his face and in his hair from the tussle on the ground, along with several red patches from knocks to the head that he hadn’t registered at the time. The neck of his jumper had been stretched and revealed the swelling of a fresh bruise on his collarbone. He looked broken.
He turned back to Ellen and Mitch and gave them a brief smile. ‘That’s nothing, I’ll be as good as new in no time.’
Ellen stepped close and ran her fingertips gently across his cheek, under the gash there. ‘We should get this cleaned up.’
He prised her hands from his face, even though he wanted nothing more than to let them stay there. ‘Later,’ he said. ‘We need to deal with the hiker first.’
‘Where is it?’ Mitch looked around fearfully.
‘In the closet,’ Ellen said. ‘I shot him.’
Brewer gave her a harsh look. ‘You shouldn’t have done what you did. You could’ve gotten yourself killed!’ He didn’t want to add how much she’d scared him too.
Ellen glared back at him defiantly, the soft expression from a moment ago temporarily hardened. ‘You wouldn’t have done it any differently if you were a good marksman. I saw the hiker and I knew I could bring it down.’
‘It’s the part after that I was worried about,’ he said. ‘He nearly got away… and something else happened.’
He quickly ran through his fight with the hiker and how he had managed to get some information to the Master. Ellen’s face paled as Brewer spoke. She hadn’t considered what the hiker would do after he was shot.
‘I’m sorry,’ her voice was full of shame.
‘It’s my fault too,’ Brewer shrugged. ‘I couldn’t stop him getting into my memories while trying to restrain him.’
‘But you should never had been in that position!’ Ellen cried, clearly angry with herself. ‘I did that to you. I forced you to take him on.’
‘It doesn’t matter now,’ Brewer said. ‘I’ve messed up plenty of times before, it’s done.’
Ellen continued to ball her hands into fists with internal annoyance and he knew she’d beat herself up over this for a very long time.
‘So, what do you think the hiker told this Master guy?’ Mitch asked.
‘I’m not sure exactly,’ Brewer admitted. ‘He was rooting around in there for a little while.’
He didn’t want to tell them about the hiker claiming he had sent the Master ‘everything’. He’d omitted it from his recap of events. He was sure that was impossible anyway. The hiker could only have been connected to the Master for a short spell before he’d interrupted him with that kick. He couldn’t have relayed that much information in such a brief time. Just what he had told him was a mystery though.
‘Hopefully not too much, there wasn’t the time,’ he said. ‘Our names and faces perhaps. This location. Maybe what we’ve been up to lately.’
‘Not much at all then.’ Mitch’s face looked tense.
‘Well, we can go and find out for sure.’ Brewer headed back towards the cupboard in the hallway.
In there were the answers to all his questions.
Chapter 25
The hiker put up no resistance when Brewer dragged him from the cupboard and into the living room. He laid him on the burgundy rug in the centre of the floor. The hiker lifted his head weakly but couldn’t seem to focus on them, and he let it drop back down heavily.
‘He’s lethargic already,’ Brewer noted. ‘The venom will be making him nauseous too.’
They all gathered round to stare down at the hiker.
‘He looks even worse than you,’ Mitch cried gleefully.
‘I told you.’
‘How long do we have?’ Ellen asked.
‘Less than two hours,’ Brewer said. ‘Maybe only an hour and a half.’
Mitch nodded towards the unconscious man in the corner. ‘Let’s hope he stays out of it for that long.’
‘With the amount he’s drunk, I’d guess he’ll be asleep for hours yet,’ Brewer said.
There was a battered, two-seater sofa and another armchair framing the rug. Ellen and Mitch perched on the tan coloured sofa but Brewer stayed standing. He reached down and untangled the skipping rope from around the hiker’s neck. It didn’t look like he was going anywhere and they needed to hear any answers clearly.
He started the questioning simply, as he had done with Tabitha. ‘What is your name?’
The hiker’s eyes were half-closed but he lifted them to Brewer’s face. ‘I know what you’ve given me will result in my death.’ His voice was raspy from the earlier strangulation. ‘Therefore you will not be getting any answers from me.’
‘I intend to keep trying,’ Brewer said.
The hiker held out for the next forty minutes, ignoring his questions and refusing to respond, then the confusion took over. He was now so weak that he barely moved and he made no effort whatsoever to get into their minds again. Not that he would have had the energy to relay anything else he learnt to the Master if he had.
‘What’s your name?’ Brewer began his loop of questions for the fiftieth time.
‘Joseph.’ The reply was a faint sigh from the hiker’s lips.
Brewer stopped his endless pacing around the living room and turned to look at him. Ellen sat up straighter on the sofa and Mitch hopped to his feet.
‘Did you hear that?’ he said excitedly.
Brewer motioned for him to sit back down then stepped closer to the hiker himself.
‘Where are you from?’ he asked loudly.
There was a brief pause then another whispered word. ‘Tennessee.’
Ellen gripped Mitch’s arm in anticipation; it was working.
Brewer hunched down beside the hiker’s head. ‘Is that where your father is?’
The hiker’s head twitched a nod.
‘Is he there now?’
There was no response. Something about the hiker’s face seemed off. His eyes were fully closed and Brewer re
ached out to gently pry open his right eyelid. He jumped back in alarm as a tear of blood trickled out. Ellen gasped out loud as she saw it.
‘Holy shit!’ Mitch shouted. ‘Is he crying blood?’
‘Yes.’ Brewer watched the dark red drop trail down the hiker’s cheek. ‘The Warfarin’s thinned his blood so much that he’s bleeding from the inside.’
He peeled back the hiker’s top lip and saw red-stained teeth nestled in bloody gums.
‘We don’t have that long left.’ He shifted his legs into a kneeling position. ‘Who is the Master?’ he asked.
‘Our father.’ A bubble of blood formed on the hiker’s bottom lip.
‘Has he always lived here? Or did he come from somewhere else?’
‘Always here. Very old.’
‘How old?’ Brewer had never found out exactly how old the Grand had been. Was this Master even older?
‘Ancient.’ Maybe this hiker didn’t know either.
‘Where does he live?’ He needed to make sure the hiker was certain of that fact.
‘Tennessee,’ he repeated.
His voice was weak and another blood bubble burst from his mouth. Brewer noticed a thin stream of blood from his earlobes too. It was blending into the burgundy rug underneath his head. Brewer asked Ellen to fetch him a towel and she did so without a word. She came back with a navy hand towel, which he propped under the hiker’s head to soak up the blood.
‘How many of you are there?’ he asked.
Confusion seemed to take over the hiker. ‘Brothers and sisters. Pain.’
‘How many?’
‘How many?’ the hiker repeated his words. His voice was getting fainter and blood was streaming down his chin.
Brewer hurriedly changed his tactic. ‘What did you tell the Master?’
‘What I… saw.’
‘Which was?’ he pushed.
‘What I saw, nothing more.’
It was no good. His responses were barely audible now and didn’t make much sense. He tried to prop the hiker’s head up higher to keep him awake.
‘Did you tell him who we are?’ He was getting desperate now. He needed to know exactly how much danger they were in.
‘Yes.’ This time he heard the hiker’s reply in his mind.
One glance at Ellen’s wide eyes told him that she had too. Mitch looked between them, puzzled.
‘What did…?’ he started.
‘Shh!’ Ellen hissed. ‘We can hear him in here.’ She tapped the side of her head.
Brewer wet his lips. ‘Did you tell him where we are?’
‘Yes.’ There was a wheeze in his head that sounded almost like a laugh. ‘He knows… what you did.’
‘What?’ Brewer demanded. ‘What do you mean?’
The hiker stayed stubbornly silent.
‘Do you mean about us killing your siblings?’
There was a sudden sharp stab of pain that tore through Brewer’s brain. His hands flew up and clamped to the sides of his head.
‘Oww!’ Ellen cried from behind him. She was clutching at her ears too.
It only lasted for an instant but it was agony. Brewer bit his lip to hold in his own cry of pain. The brutal feeling disappeared almost as soon as it began and he looked around, bewildered.
‘Are you ok?’ he asked Ellen.
‘What the hell was that?’ she asked.
Brewer didn’t answer straightaway. Instead, he reached out and checked the hiker’s pulse with trembling fingers. It was very weak but still there. The hiker was lying completely motionless, with his legs splayed and his eyes screwed tightly closed. His face was so pale and the numerous blood tracks so dark they looked black in the light.
‘He’s still alive, just,’ Brewer said. ‘I don’t think he’ll be regaining consciousness though.’ He turned to meet Ellen’s gaze. ‘I think what we just felt was him losing brain function while he was trying to speak to us.’
‘You mean he’s now brain dead?’ she asked quietly.
‘I believe so.’ He gave a grim smile. ‘Hurt like a bastard, didn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ she shuddered. ‘I thought my brain was going to explode.’
‘I’ve never felt anything like that before. It was completely different to the death sound that omitted from the Grand.’
They stared at the hiker in silence for the next ten minutes. They watched as his heart failed and he died, bloody and mute. His face twisted into an eternal grimace of pain.
‘Well, at least we know Warfarin works too,’ Mitch shrugged.
‘We should move on from here sharpish.’ Brewer got shakily to his feet and stretched his cramped muscles.
‘You think the Master will be coming?’ Ellen asked.
‘Probably not himself, he’ll send some hikers to find us first.’ Brewer went to the kitchen and had a long drink of water from the tap. Knowing that the Master now knew who they were filled him with icy fear. He’d never wanted to put Ellen and Mitch in this much danger. There was nothing he could do about it though.
He walked back to the living room. Ellen had covered the hiker’s face with the stained towel. The unconscious man in the corner hadn’t so much as shifted position since they’d arrived.
‘Should we bury the hiker somewhere?’ Ellen was chewing nervously on her bottom lip.
‘We can put him in the woods but there isn’t time to bury him,’ Brewer replied. ‘We need to keep moving.’
He and Mitch carried the hiker out to the dark woods beyond the garden. He was heavy and flopped to the ground with a loud smack when they laid him down by a thick tree trunk. Brewer half-heartedly pushed some leaves over his torso but it was too dark to see much. In the light of day, the body would be pretty obvious. He hoped the man from the house wouldn’t find it for a while. He would be confused enough when he eventually woke up.
They went back to the house and gathered up their stuff then walked to the car. Ellen took the driving seat this time. Brewer had to tidy away the packets of Warfarin that were strewn over the passenger seat before he got in.
‘How much did you use?’ he asked.
‘A load of the pinks ones and some of the blue ones,’ she said. ‘I’m not sure exactly, I was in a panic.’
‘She flew up to the car, banged on the windows and started yelling at me to get the pills,’ Mitch said.
‘I had to tip them into one of my folded up t-shirts then stamp on them to crush them down as small as possible,’ Ellen said. ‘We had to pour two half-drunk bottles of water together to make a full one too, to mix the pill powder in.’
Brewer had wondered what had taken her so long when he’d been left to try and restrain the hiker.
‘You did well,’ he said.
He quickly counted the empty pill packets. ‘You used 88mg. That’s less than we thought we’d need, maybe the added venom tipped it over the edge quicker. Although, hiker’s bodies do seem to succumb to these things quite rapidly.’
‘We’ve still got enough to use on one more hiker then,’ Ellen said.
She put the car in gear and began to drive slowly along the dark road. ‘Where are we heading?’
‘We should keep going in the same direction. I think I saw Indiana coming up soon on the signs.’ Brewer opened one of the atlases and turned on the car interior light to check.
His eyes wandered across the Pennsylvania state line and into West Virginia. They snaked south through Kentucky then came to rest on Tennessee. The Master was only three states away.
‘I think you two should drop me off in Indiana and then head back home,’ he said as casually as he could.
Ellen braked sharply and whipped round to face him. ‘What?’
‘Are you crazy!’ Mitch half-yelled.
‘This just got a hell of a lot more serious with the Master’s involvement,’ Brewer said patiently. ‘I think it’s time you went back to the safety of your towns.’
‘The Master already knows our faces,’ Ellen said through gritted teeth. She looked furi
ous with him. ‘I’m sure he’d keep trying to find us wherever we go. I can’t believe you would even suggest going on alone after everything we’ve been through! Everything that’s happened between us!’
She glanced away, embarrassed, and it dawned on him that she was taking this as a personal rejection.
‘I’m just trying to keep you safe,’ he said softly and put a hand on her arm, which she promptly shrugged off.
‘I don’t need your protection,’ she said. ‘I’m staying with you.’
‘I’m not leaving either,’ Mitch cut in, ‘we’re in this together.’
‘Besides, you need our help,’ Ellen added. ‘It took teamwork to bring down the last two hikers.’
Brewer was too tired to argue with them. He closed his mouth but made a silent vow that he would never let anything happen to them. He couldn’t have another death on his conscience – Georgie’s had been too much to bear.
His tentative feelings for Ellen complicated matters further. Just like earlier in the night, when she’d run head on into danger, he hadn’t been able to think rationally. His mind had been consumed with worry for her wellbeing. He wouldn’t be strong enough around the hikers if he were constantly concerned about her safety.
‘We’ll get to Indiana and see how we feel,’ he said quietly.
The car stayed deathly silent in response.
Chapter 26
The Master was angrier than he’d been in years. He’d already smashed everything in reach of the armchair with his walking stick. Another of his children was dead. This time a son, Joseph, who’d been a valued killer during his forty-five years. Those spiteful people had murdered him.
He sat and seethed in his chair, feeling the blood pump furiously through his veins. He wanted them dead. No, that wasn’t enough. He needed them to suffer first, as they had made his children suffer. They should be tortured until they begged for the mercy of death. Only then would that begin to make up for what they had done.
He thought of the older man in particular. His thin face swam to the front of his mind.
‘Scott Brewer.’ The words tasted bitter on his lips and he struggled to wrap his tongue around them through his rage.