The Hunter Inside

by David McGowan

  Hold on, boys, Sandy thought, Mommy’s coming.

  David raised his head at her voice. But she hadn’t spoken; only thought. Can they hear my thoughts? she wondered, and reached out to her boys inside her mind. I’m here. I’m here. I’m coming, Mommy’s coming.

  David looked at the brute that stood five feet away from him and hid his face in Sean’s shoulder once more.

  Be strong, Sandy thought. I’m here. No response inside her mind.

  Sandy opened her eyes. She was back outside the intimidating building, the rain so strong it stung her wrinkled cheeks.

  She had to get inside.

  A metal fence stood, six feet tall, around the building. The gates stretched up about eight feet, and on them was a sign that read ‘Danger of collapsing masonry. Do not enter’. It hadn’t been there earlier, when she’d had the dream. Now, it was another obstacle in her way. Admittedly, nothing like the obstacle that stood in the way of her getting the boys back, but she would have to climb the slippery metal fence.

  It’ll be good practice for when you get inside, she thought, and grabbed the top of the gate with both hands, jumping slightly to reach. She pulled herself up, wincing as she felt a stab of pain course through her back.

  She was already exhausted, and she hadn’t even yet started her battle.

  Just getting to the building, to the place where her children were, had left her drained. Her stress levels had risen to proportions that she had never before experienced, and she felt her heart pounding against the top of the metal fence as she rested, halfway to overcoming the first obstacle that stood in her way. She pulled her left leg up with great effort, groaning as she did so and struggling to maintain balance as she teetered on top of the fence. She looked down at the broken concrete slabs beneath her, shaped like shards of glass and just as deadly, she thought, if she were to fall. She would have over six feet to travel to the ground, and she expected a broken leg as her hand slipped without warning on the wet metal and she tumbled down to the other side.

  Sandy Myers made a muffled cry of ‘Gnnf’ as she landed on her right knee. A bolt of pain surged up to her thigh, and she grabbed her knee with both hands, sure for more than a moment that her kneecap had split. She’d seen a man crash his motorcycle once. He had landed with a sickening cry as his kneecap split. His screams had brought people out of their houses and she had made a wish on the spot that it never happened to her.

  As she allowed a minute to pass, Sandy rubbed her knee with both hands, attempting to massage the pain out through her skin. Her whole body ached and her eyes fluttered, before a series of half a dozen sneezes left both her eyes streaming. She wiped a hand across her eyes, blinking furiously to disperse the clouds of mini fireworks that ignited before her, as her head spun and she tried to clear her vision. The storm had gotten inside her, and her condition was weakening as Shimasou’s got stronger. She tried to stand; fresh spasms of pain making her stumble and fall back to her knees, and resorted to crawling toward the arched doorway of the building.

  It was impossible. How would she be able to get to them on the third floor if she couldn’t even stand? How would she deflect the wrath of Shimasou away from the children? If her charge to the building had been foolish rather than heroic and Shimasou snuffed out her flame of life as easily as it had erased her parents, then she would only be making her children’s lives worse, and she knew those lives would not have long to run if she failed.

  She reached the arched doorway and used both hands to draw herself up into a standing position. She looked inside the building, leaning against the curve of the arch and shielding her ears from the roar of the wind, which thundered around the building and off the walls. Inside was practically black. The glow of the moon through the clouds did not cast much light into the building, and Sandy tripped and fell a second time as she stepped across the threshold without noticing the six-inch concrete step, sending fresh pain through her knee and up her thigh. Now she was part of the thundering world inside the building. The wind rattled and swayed her, biting at her like a pack of hungry hyenas bringing down its prey.

  She got to her feet once more. The wind screamed angrily at her, furious that it had not gotten what it wanted. She fought against it, suppressing an urge to scream back at the wind in the same way as she fought against the voice in her head that she knew was not hers and that taunted her with whispers of They’re already gone. They’re already gone. You’re too late. You’re too late. They’re already gone.

  Sandy’s head whirled as she tilted it back and looked up at the roof. It swayed back and forth, up and down. Her eyes adjusted and she squinted at the ledge. Still pitch black. She could not see any shadows; she could not hear any movement.

  Just the wind rattling and screaming around her and the voice inside her head whispering to her that she was too late. Too late.

  Droplets of rain continued to fall through the hole in the roof and hit Sandy’s upturned face, driven and swirled around by the wind and attacking her from every angle.

  I’ve got to get to them, she thought. It’s not too late. It’s not.

  She walked across the floor, looking hard to prevent herself from falling over anything, and shielding her eyes from the newspaper scraps that dashed and hurried all around her, turned into missiles by the ferocious wind.

  She knew there were to be no more letters. Tonight would decide that once and for all. One way or the other.

  She reached the far wall of the building and again looked up. Above her were stairs, hanging by a thread it seemed. Without extending her arms (she knew she couldn’t reach as there was maybe eleven foot between her and the ragged stairs), Sandy again squinted and looked around for something she could stand on. In the corner she saw a rusted filing cabinet, four feet high, and checked that it was empty before dragging it into position underneath the stairs and clambering on top of it, ignoring the dull throb of her injured knee.

  The wind was less strong near the walls, and Sandy reached upwards, resisting it as it bit at her ankles. With the help of the filing cabinet, she grasped the splintered edges of the wooden stairs and began to pull, unsure if it would hold her weight.

  Inside her head, the voice continued to whisper.

  40

  ‘Come on then, let’s get moving,’ Todd Mayhew said with detectable anxiousness in his voice. ‘Where’s the car?’

  ‘It’s just at the end of the block,’ O’Neill replied.

  ‘The block?’

  ‘Yeah, the block of rooms.’

  ‘Oh, right. Well, what are we waiting for?’ The old man’s sentiments were backed up in the actions of the restless Joe Myers, who stood next to Mayhew and carried on skipping about like he couldn’t hold it much longer. He really had to go.

  They were all ready. Except for Bill Arnold. A strong sense of foreboding had manifested itself inside his mind and he questioned whether this was what he really wanted to do. A harassing voice that sounded a lot like his own whispered continuously within the confines of his head, warning him against following Sandy to wherever it was that she had gone. The other three men looked at him with fixed stares and he reluctantly stood, following them out into the storm, dragging his feet along and feeling like he were wearing diver’s boots.

  Is that my own voice? he thought. He had reckoned he would be ready to stop running and fight, but now that it came right down to fight and die or do nothing and die, he had mixed feelings. He didn’t know why the voice inside his head kept murmuring warnings, but the more it spoke; the more he listened, getting into Joe Myers’ Suzuki feeling doubtful, and only as a means of getting out of the storm.

  He had to get out of the storm.

  With the doors of the vehicle closed, the storm was held at bay. O’Neill took the driver’s seat; figuring that Joe Myers probably wouldn’t be able to remember the way due to the shock he had been in during the journey to the motel. He had left the keys in the ignition of the vehicle and had gotten away with it. Maybe in Brook
lyn he wouldn’t have been so lucky.

  All four men remained silent as O’Neill started the engine and pulled away from the motel. The jeep’s wipers moved rhythmically back and forth as he drove, the force of the rain ensuring that the window remained hazy, even when Joe Myers reached across from his position next to O’Neill and flicked a switch that made the wipers go at supersonic speed.

  O’Neill drove slower than he would have liked, fearing that the wind might flip the jeep over or up on its side.

  Mayhew feared the same. He looked anxiously over the shoulder of O’Neill, feeling nothing in his stomach as they hit bumps in the road but a hole that was without gravity. He seemed to be forever looking for Sandy Myers, and he knew this time they would have to find her. He also had a feeling that this time they would. But if they didn’t…

  Bill Arnold looked at his hands. Rough, like construction worker’s hands. They looked like somebody else’s hands. Something was happening inside his head, and he tried to snap out of the tunnel vision in which he found himself. His mind tried to drift away to somewhere that was not Atlantic Beach, or so it seemed, as he wrestled to keep his eyes from shutting.

  One moment he was with the others inside the Suzuki, the next he was standing outside a crumbling building, and could feel the rain penetrating through his skin, acid-like in the pain it caused. It was this pain that helped him snap out of what Mayhew thought was an exhausted slumber, and by the time they pulled up next to the phone booth he was fully alert.

  ‘You walked all this way through the storm?’ Mayhew asked O’Neill. He was incredulous and O’Neill again felt exposed.

  As though he were somehow wrong. But what else could he have done? If he hadn’t then he would not have found Joe Myers. But then Sandy would be with them. The possibilities tortured his mind, the fact of one canceling out the other giving him no comfort, and he got out of the Suzuki. The other three men did likewise, Mayhew and Myers at the same instant, Arnold half a second later, holding on to each other as they made it to the booth and crammed themselves inside.

  ‘Wait,’ O’Neill said, as the combined weight of the other three men crushed the air out of his lungs. ‘I need to look, and I can’t do that with you three on top of me.’

  ‘Well, I’m going back to the car,’ Mayhew said, and stepped back out into the storm.

  ‘I think I’ll join you,’ Bill Arnold said, as he too moved out of the booth and into the storm. Both men held on to each other’s arms as they hurried back to the vehicle and jumped inside.

  Joe Myers remained, anxious to know any and every detail concerning his family. He watched as O’Neill searched, first looking around the phone itself, and then scrabbling down on the floor, forcing Joe to step backwards and into an instant soaking.

  The paper wasn’t there. That much was obvious to Joe, even if the cop continued to grope around, searching almost blindly due to the weak light that was cast by the small bulb behind the synthetic panel. But what did that mean? What did it mean for his family?

  O’Neill straightened and looked at the expectant face of Joe Myers, who was unable to see O’Neill’s face due to his back being towards the light. Through the shadow that obscured Joe’s face, O’Neill saw tension. He glanced across at the two men in the Suzuki. Mayhew had started the engine and it hummed, a backdrop harmonizing with the whipping roar of the wind. He looked back at Joe Myers. ‘It’s gone, Joe. I’m sorry.’ He raised a hand to his forehead and wiped away droplets of rain.

  ‘So, what now?’ Joe asked. He needed hope. He was not yet ready to give up. Maybe the cop was, but he wasn’t. There must be other ways, and they had to find them. For Joe Myers, there could only be one way for this thing to finish.

  ‘I don’t know, Joe,’ O’Neill said, and turned in the direction of the idling vehicle after hearing the horn sound. Mayhew shrugged his shoulders at O’Neill in a what’s-going-on fashion. O’Neill turned back without returning the gesture.

  ‘What about Melissa? Do you think she might have any idea where Sandy could be?’

  ‘If there’s no other way then we’ll have to try. When I saw her she seemed to know less than me, but…’ He trailed off, unsure of how to finish his sentence. What can Melissa tell us? He thought. She isn’t even a part of all this, not really. He felt in his pocket and withdrew a handful of change before offering it to O’Neill.

  O’Neill felt in his own pocket for the paper with Melissa Dahlia’s name and phone number, relieved to locate it straight away and withdrawing it before picking up the receiver and taking some of the change that Joe offered. He dialed the number carefully, watching Joe as he listened to Melissa’s phone ringing at the other end of the line.

  ‘Hello.’ Melissa Dahlia sounded weary and anxious to the Special Agent. Her greeting had been said more as a question than a way of answering the telephone, and O’Neill wasted no time.

  ‘Melissa, this is Special Agent O’Neill. I’m with Joe Myers. We’re worried about Sandy and we need to know where she might be. Do you have any idea, for any reason, of where she could have gone or been taken by somebody? Any reason at all?’

  Melissa paused and thought for more than a moment. She had questions of her own, and she was pretty sure that once she told the Special Agent that she had absolutely no idea where Sandy could be he would hang up the phone and she would be unable to ask her questions. But by the tone in his voice and the urgency of the way he asked a question containing almost half a dozen questions, she knew that his were probably more urgent than her own.

  ‘I…don’t…know,’ she said, dragging her words out as she continued to rack her brains for any clue she may have missed.

  ‘Please, Melissa, think,’ O’Neill said. He had nearly reached the dead-end that he dreaded so much, and if that were the case, then it was not just the man in front of him whose family had been condemned. It might be him and everyone else with him. It probably would be.

  ‘I don’t know. Are you in Atlantic Beach?’

  ‘Yeah, that’s right, Atlantic Beach,’ O’Neill replied.

  There was silence on the other end of the line, as Melissa Dahlia struggled to think where Sandy could be.

  ‘I…I’m sorry Special Agent, but I have no idea.’

  O’Neill detected from her voice that she was about to cry, but he did not have time to counsel her. They would have to think of something else.

  ‘Okay. I’ve gotta go, Melissa. Sorry,’ O’Neill said and hung up. The less Melissa knew, the better. If she never had to know, then better for everyone. But taking the time now to try and explain it to her would probably mean that she, and everybody else, would have to know. For the sake of one curious mind, O’Neill was not willing to risk the sanity and existence of the minds of the rest of the world.

  They still had plenty to do, and figuring out how to find Sandy was the first step to saving, ultimately, Melissa’s life.

  And the storm was growing.

  ‘Come on, Joe,’ O’Neill said. He grabbed Joe’s arm and ran, head down, towards the Suzuki that sat waiting for them. Myers followed, exhausted in the face of the storm. Wind whipped around his head, and faint whisperings, like children’s voices, mixed into the wind with a haunting quality that made him grab hold of O’Neill’s arm as though his own hand was the jaw of a vice.

  Within seconds they arrived at the vehicle and scrambled inside. Both men wheezed, and O’Neill rubbed his arm where Myers had gripped him. He would have a bruise there tomorrow – if tomorrow ever came. Myers could well have broken a bone; such was the force of his grip.

  ‘What happened?’ Mayhew asked.

  ‘The number wasn’t there,’ O’Neill said, and Todd Mayhew squeezed his eyes tightly shut.

  ‘Who did you call then?’ Mayhew asked.

  ‘I called Melissa to see if she had any idea where Sandy might…’ He was cut off before he could finish his sentence, as Arnold spoke over him.

  ‘I know where it is,’ he said, causing Mayhew and O’Neill to turn
their heads and stare at him, speechless.

  ‘What?’ O’Neill asked after a second, as Mayhew uttered ‘How?’ simultaneously.

  ‘I can see it when I close my eyes,’ Arnold replied. ‘It’s showing me. Just drive. Drive along the front. I’ll tell you when we get there.’

  They wouldn’t be able to see much though, through the rain that came down so heavily it wrapped a cloak around the vehicle. That didn’t seem to matter anyway, because Bill Arnold had closed his eyes.

  From his position next to Arnold, Joe Myers stared at the second tallest man in his company. All three men noted the detachment that had again come over Bill Arnold.

  Mayhew wondered if he had been in a slumber on the way to the phone booth. Or if there was something else, something to do with Shimasou, that was responsible for his statement and glazed expression.

  ‘Just drive,’ Arnold repeated. He gestured with his hand, pointing past the phone booth, without opening his eyes, in the direction O’Neill had gone before stumbling across the distraught Joe Myers earlier.

  O’Neill pulled away from the curb.

  41

  Too late. Too late.

  No. Sandy heaved with all her might and found herself on the landing above the splintered edges of the first set of stairs. She gripped onto the edge as the floor lurched, almost slipping back off her fragile perch, and feeling a fresh sting of pain, a sensation of heat in her palm, as a splinter of wood embedded itself an inch into her flesh, severing what a palmist would call her life line.

  The floor held, just, and Sandy crawled round one hundred and eighty degrees so that she was facing her next challenge. Five feet away were the beginnings of the next flight of stairs. The struts were intact, but a third of the steps were missing, exposing a gaping hole that overlooked Sandy’s current position. She would have to make it across that hole, and if she fell, she knew she did not stand much chance of surviving. It would be a fall of twenty feet if she didn’t find the ledge above the hole. She would fall through the floor she now crawled across, and maybe take the floor above with her.