by Lauren Algeo
Three: the woman had recently inherited a lot of money from a relative.
I don’t know what that all means, without having access to the case, but it reeks of something sinister to me. Who even carries a knife to a club? It must have been concealed well for the murderer to get past the bouncers at the entrance with it. Either that, or they worked there themselves.
I’ve got a gut feeling that something is wrong; the whole thing is too suspicious. I’m not sure it hints at hiker activity but I’m going to pay a visit to the place tomorrow and check it out. If I do find a hiker I’ll just observe it for now. There’s some power in knowledge. Hopefully I’ll be able to learn more about them then maybe I’ll be able to stop them. Somehow.
3rd September 2009
I’m not sure how I can begin to explain today to you. It was one of the worst of my life. Up there with Karen’s funeral even. I saw a young girl die today. Oh god, it was awful. I couldn’t stop it.
I’m in a crappy hotel in Leeds right now. This is the furthest I’ve been from the flat since I bought it and I’ve never felt so scared and alone. This is not the way I planned to start my fortieth year on this earth.
It was my birthday yesterday. The big 4-0 but there was no celebration. I got a card through the post from Marcus, Trudy and Ella, and he tried to get me out for dinner and a drink but I declined. I’d found the story in Leeds and I wanted to research more then travel up here today. What a mistake that was.
The story had jumped out at me straightaway – a bus driver had driven a bus full of passengers directly into oncoming traffic. It was a straight A-road, he hadn’t swerved to avoid anything, he didn’t have a medical condition – there was no explanation for it. The driver and three of the passengers had died on impact, as well as the driver of the car they’d hit.
The thing that really got me was a comment from a witness. A passenger on the bus had heard the driver muttering to himself about how it ‘was time’ and getting ‘pay back’. That reminded me of my own encounter and what the hiker had said to me.
After finding nothing from the nightclub story a couple of weeks ago, I decided to embark on my first overnight trip and investigate further. To be honest, I got here full of bravado. Naïve thoughts of finding and killing a hiker swimming around my mind. Stupid now, I haven’t got the first clue how to go about it. They are even stronger than I first thought.
My investigation started well enough. I got into the hospital where the witness is being treated and interviewed him, pretending I was from a local newspaper. He was a horrible creep of a man. Just talking to him made me feel dirty. He had no sympathy for the people who’d died; he just wanted to extort money out of the bus company as compensation for his injuries. I confirmed what I’d read in the paper, about the bus driver ranting to himself, then got out of there as quickly as I could. The guy did say one interesting thing through the drivel though – that he swore the driver had swerved into that car on purpose.
I travelled to the scene of the accident to scout around and I picked up the sound of a hiker while I was walking about. It started faintly at first, just a light scratching in the back of my mind. The more I walked, the louder it got, until I could hear hushed words. It was another female hiker, only what she was whispering was different to the other two hikers. They had been pushing for other people to suffer, but this one only wanted to hurt the woman she was speaking to.
I hadn’t expected to hear the hiker so quickly after all my failed trips around London and it took me by surprise. The sound of her eager voice sent goose bumps crawling along my flesh. She was telling whoever her distraught victim was that the best way to punish her boyfriend for cheating on her was to kill herself.
I found them at a nearby block of flats. The poor recipient of the hiker’s incessant cajoling was a young girl. I could see her up on the roof of one of the buildings, teetering near the edge. Blind panic took over and I smashed my way into the building and sprinted up the stairs to the roof.
The girl didn’t even react to my sudden arrival. She was wavering in the wind and looked so young – her blond hair pulled into a ponytail and tears streaming down her cheeks. I started calling out to her and tried to grab her to get her away from the edge… but the hiker saw me.
For the first time since my own encounter, I had one of them forcing their way into my head. The female was fast and started ransacking through my memories. I caught sight of her on a roof a couple of buildings over. She had the same dark eyes as the male I’d seen. So black and full of hate. She had long, dark hair, a pale dress, and skin that was so white she looked like a ghost.
I didn’t know what to do. My whole body was paralysed and I couldn’t move from that spot. I tried to push her out of my head but nothing happened. Somehow that thing took hold of my body and I began lurching towards the ledge of the roof against my will. It sounds unbelievable – how can you be inside your head but have someone else controlling your movements – but I was literally her puppet.
I tried to call out for Karen to help me, like her memory had last time, but she either wasn’t there or I was too terrified to visualise it. I got closer to the edge, and actually thought I was going over, yet somehow I managed to physically push the hiker out of my mind.
There was no relief though – she turned her full attention back to the girl, who brought her arms out to the sides like they were wings and went over the edge. It was over in a second. I made a lunge for her only my fingers grabbed nothing but air. The worst part was the momentary silence before the sickening thud. The girl hadn’t made a sound on the way down. No scream.
God, she’d been so young. Maybe in her twenties, and her life was over in the blink of an eye. I heard the hiker laugh a second after it happened. She had just made this girl commit suicide and she was happy about it. What kind of sick monsters are they?
My brain’s completely scrambled. I haven’t even told you what the hiker said to me before I pushed her out of my head. I’ve not even begun to learn about them and everything’s already being thrown up in the air.
The Grand. I’m sure that was it. She said this was her reward for killing her target and I would die too. Then she told me that someone called ‘Grand’ would be pleased. Who the hell is that? Is he some sort of boss who’s in charge of the other hikers? She’d sounded as though she wanted to impress him when she mentioned his name.
The period immediately after the girl jumped is a bit of a blur. I vomited on the roof then somehow managed to run away from there on my shaky legs. In that moment, I was more terrified that someone would think I had pushed the girl off the roof. After all, I had smashed a glass panel to get into the building. I made it to a field a couple of miles away and just laid there, thinking, until it started to get dark, then I came back here.
I’ve got an awful feeling in my gut that this is far worse than I imagined. I don’t think these acts of violence are random attacks any more. That hiker said she had killed her target… I think they might be assassins, the most powerful ones possible. They can force people to do whatever they want. Kill for them, cause seemingly innocent accidents even commit suicide.
If they are some kind of super-assassins, how do they get these ‘targets’? Does someone order them to murder these people and cover it up with multiple deaths, like a staged bus crash? Could this Grand person be running the whole operation?
It makes my head spin. Hikers could be responsible for dozens of deaths, hundreds even. Nobody would know it was them. But why would they do it? For money… or power? I can’t shake the sound of the hiker laughing after that poor girl’s body hit the ground… I think it might be enjoyment.
17th September 2009
I’ve become a prisoner in the flat. I’ve barely left the place over the last couple of weeks. I stay indoors with the curtains closed and only go out to stock up on food and drink. Even those short trips down the road to the shops are tough. I’m so jittery at the moment, everything out there scares me – are peop
le walking too close? Are their eyes too dark? Wait, is that a faint scratching I can feel in the back of my mind?
I don’t want to feel like this but that girl’s suicide has really got to me. And the fact that I was so close to death up there myself. A couple more steps and I would have been plummeting to the concrete below. I underestimated how powerful they are. I’m too weak to try and help anyone right now; intervening almost got me killed too.
I’ve been busy moulding the armchair to the shape of my body. I pointedly ignore all the research books on the shelf and try not to look at the map on the wall. I turn the TV over every time the news comes on. Even the theme music sends chills down my spine. I don’t want to see anything about people dying in mysterious circumstances. Second-guess if every story has some element of hiker involvement. I’m no help to them.
I’ve spoken to Marcus a couple of times on the phone since I got back from Leeds. He wants to meet up although I’ve been putting him off. It kills me not to be able to talk to him about all this. We used to tell each other everything; there were no secrets between us. Now every other word I say to him is a lie. He asks what I’ve been up to; I say ‘you know, just taking each day as it comes. Dealing with my grief over Karen and seeing a counsellor. Trying to decide what I want to do with my life’. It’s all bullshit.
I hate feeling this scared and helpless. I never used to be like this, it’s just not me. I was always relatively fearless. I’d take the odd risk and seek adrenaline rushes in life. Now I just want to crawl under a rock and hide. I can barely remember the man I was when I started my police training fifteen-odd years ago.
I met Marcus on the first day at Hendon. He’d made some joke during an important speech and I hadn’t been able to stop myself from laughing. We’d both been given one of those ‘you need to take this seriously’ lectures but we were young and we didn’t care. We went out at the end of our first week and we’ve been best friends ever since.
We had our ups and downs over the years, you know, minor spats about girls and who had made the most arrests. Eventually we grew up a bit. We had long talks about where we wanted our careers and lives to go. He was there the night I met Karen.
Marcus was a real ladies man when we were younger, always on the pull and often seeing more than one girl at a time. I remember one night where he went for an early drink with one girl, then feigned being ill and went for dinner with another, then he decided that she was boring and came and met me and some other friends in a club, where he went home with a completely new girl.
Sorry, this isn’t painting a very good picture of him. We were in our mid-twenties at the time and we thought we were the bollocks. Marcus could always get the women, he’s got the classic blond hair, blue eyes, chiselled jaw and he spent a lot of time in the gym back then. I’m not exactly that good-looking in comparison – I suppose being tall and thin makes me seem a little gawky, but I could normally charm the women with witty conversation. Ha! I’m probably looking back at this through rose-tinted lenses and I actually just used to slur my words at very drunk girls and think we were having meaningful banter.
Marcus changed the moment he met Trudy at a party. He was instantly infatuated with her and she was the more aloof one for a change. He wasn’t used to having to chase girls. She didn’t go for any of his games and chat up techniques, and he just wanted her more. In the end, they started dating and were engaged within a year. I was already with Karen by then and she and Trudy got along brilliantly. It made me so happy that they became as close as Marcus and I are… Were. I guess we can never go back now.
Writing this all down is making me feel a little better. I’m not as alone as I’ve been telling myself. There are people who are there for me if I need them to be, that time just isn’t now. I need to get stronger. I have to go back out there and find more hikers. Only this time I’ll observe them without trying to intervene, no matter how hard it is. I can’t put myself in that much danger again.
If I’m going to find some way to eventually stop them, whether that’s by gathering enough evidence to give to the police or by my owns hands, I have to just watch for now. Track them. Hunt for a while before I move in for the kill.
20th October 2009
Male hiker. Looks fairly young, maybe early thirties, hard to tell. Very dark hair, I think, in this light, slightly unruly. Pale skin. He’s wearing a light shirt with black trousers. Didn’t get a good look at the female. Maybe black hair, or dark brown? Ariada?
Sorry for the ramblings above, I had to get some notes down before I forgot them. Today has been a crazy one. I’m currently huddled in a bus shelter near High Brooms, absolutely freezing. My fingers are numb from trying to write but I have to log everything. It’s nearly 3am however I don’t expect I’ll be getting any sleep, not outside in this weather.
I wasn’t even supposed to be here today. I got on a train this morning – well, yesterday morning now – with the intention of going to Reigate. There’s been a recent increase in deaths down there that I thought might indicate a hiker. I packed some spare clothes and layers in a rucksack and set off full of determination. Instead, the train engine decided to fail at High Brooms and everyone had to get off. I thought I’d walk around for a bit until the next train was due and what I found is unbelievable. Two hikers! Two of them together. One male and one female.
They were talking to each other, rather than a victim this time, but it was all done in their minds and I could somehow hear it. The female was angry. She was scolding the male just like a girlfriend or wife would. Is it too weird to think of them as a couple? Could hikers even be capable of having relationships?
She was telling him that he had failed the Grand. That the target hadn’t died and therefore he hadn’t fulfilled his duty. It was fascinating to listen to. The male seemed to sulk in response, moaning that it wasn’t his fault the target hadn’t been killed. They spoke in an almost archaic manner though. No shortening of words or any slang.
I followed them around the town until it started to get dark. Sometimes they got too far away from me and their voices faded to the light scratching sound again, but other times it was so clear it’s as if they were standing next to me. It went on like that for a little while then I heard him for the first time. The Grand himself!
Well, first I heard the female howling and this horrible, high-pitched buzzing noise. It hurt my ears and there didn’t seem to be any way to block it out. I was running, blindly sprinting through the dark, and I found them. The male was writhing on the ground, spasming in pain, and the female was crouching over him, trying to hold him still. In that moment they looked like an ordinary couple in trouble and I nearly rushed over to help them before I remembered what they were. I stayed in the shadows and watched them instead.
The buzzing noise got louder and louder. I’ve never heard anything like it in my life. The closest comparison I can use to describe it is microphone feedback, but that doesn’t come close to the intensity of it. It was vibrating through my entire body. I can’t even tell you if it was a real noise or if it was only inside my mind. That I was somehow picking up a little of what the male hiker was experiencing the full extent of.
My legs gave way and I ended up curled on the floor as it reached its crescendo. My nose and eyes were streaming, and at one point I thought my bladder was going to let go. Thankfully it didn’t, or I’d be very uncomfortable in wet jeans right now. A grown man pissing himself over a noise that might not even have been real – it sounds crazy but it was so painful I didn’t know if I’d be able to endure it all. It felt as though my head was in a vice that was getting steadily tighter. Even now, I can still feel the sensation of being squeezed to the point of crushing.
Eventually the noise stopped and the male went limp on the floor. I wasn’t sure if something had ruptured inside his brain and if he was dead. That was when I heard the Grand. His voice was barely a rasped whisper. He spoke a word that sounded like ‘Ariada’ and the female stopped whimpering over the m
ale’s body. I presume that was her name, if hikers even have them?
The Grand sounded so old and wheezy. I don’t know what I expected his voice to be like – booming and powerful maybe. There was a certain strength in his tone but that was not the voice of a young man. He asked Ariada if she knew why he had done what he had and she called him ‘Father’ in her response. He told her he would give her new instructions soon then he was gone and the world was silent again.
The female pressed her forehead to the male’s then she disappeared into the night. I was left alone in the darkness with the male. I’ll admit that the Grand’s voice had sent an icy terror through my veins. I wasn’t sure if he was somewhere nearby, watching. I imagined that I could feel his eyes boring into me. Even now, the fear is deep in my bones. I know I’m completely alone on this street but that doesn’t mean there isn’t someone watching through a dark window. I’ve just checked over my shoulder to be sure.
It makes me feel sick, only there’s nowhere I can go to escape the sensation. It’s far too late to get a room in a hotel or bed and breakfast, and there are no trains for a few hours yet. I’ve just got to tough it out and stop letting my imagination run away with me. There’s no one here. Surely the Grand is far away.
That makes me wonder about how powerful he is, if he can talk to the hikers from a great distance, and even kill one using just his mind. It’s no wonder the female was so angry with the male, if they knew death was a possible consequence for him failing his mission?
Going back to the male’s body – I waited for a while to make sure the female wouldn’t come back then I went over to get a closer look. I’ve seen a few dead bodies before – some victims of crimes and traffic accidents who were pretty badly injured – but there were no outward indications of trauma with the hiker. He just looked as though he was sleeping on the floor. It really must have been his brain function that was killed.