The Hunter Inside (10 page)

Despite his long day, that
was where Joe had wanted to take Sandy when he arrived home, but his desire
quickly vanished as he realized there was something wrong. ‘What’s going on?’
he yelled as he heard footsteps approaching the door.

The footsteps were Sandy’s.
She rushed to open the door, feeling as though the precarious grip that she had
on her emotions was about to be wrenched from her.

She was right.

No sooner had she managed
to remove the chain from the door and pull it open, than she collapsed into the
arms of her bewildered husband, tears streaming down her cheeks as she buried
her face in his shoulder and tried to cope with the convulsive sobs that racked
her body.

‘What’s going on, Sandy?
Where are the boys?’ He held the same huge amount of love for his sons as
Sandy. They came first and they were the first things that he worried about.
Not a minute passed of the day when he was not thinking about them. He knew
that in Sandy’s eyes he came second to the boys, a close second but second all
the same, and now, as he watched his wife’s tears turning a patch of his deep
blue shirt even deeper, his panic was audible in the questions that he asked
her.

‘Martha… Martha’s
t..t…taken them,’ Sandy managed to answer through her sobs. Martha was the
mother of a friend of the twins. ‘I c.. called earlier and asked her to p… pick
them up from school.’

‘Why? What’s going on
Sandy? Are you ill?’ The look on the face of his wife was tearing him apart. It
was one of despair mixed with shock, fear and desperation. If he had been able
to think about anything but finding out what was wrong, he might have been
tempted to turn and look over his shoulder to make sure there was not a
Tyrannosaurus Rex standing in the doorway, such was the look upon her face. It
was a look he had never seen on the face of anybody before; not even in the
schoolbooks that showed pictures of war, children running naked down a street
to escape murderous soldiers. His wife’s look suggested she had witnessed the
destruction that an atomic bomb could cause, but the house still stood.

Her sobbing decreased and
she was able to gain a millimeter of control that in turn allowed her to speak
more regularly. ‘Joe, I need to speak to you. I’m sorry Joe, I should have told
you before - but I was afraid.’ The speed of her deliverance increased as she
spoke, and she was forced to pause in order to prevent herself from losing
control for a second time.

‘What are you talking about
Sandy? What’s going on?’ His stomach was beginning to feel light with dread, as
if an army of ants had invaded his body and were removing his internal organs,
one by one.

‘I should have told you
Joe. I should have told you before we were married.’ Her gaze looked right
through him, and he could see that she was in another space and time. She was
reliving something in her mind’s eye, and it didn’t seem to Joe as though she
were going to tell him before they were dead - never mind before they were
married. She was torn apart by the vision inside her mind, something which was
reflected in the mixture of fear, anger, sorrow, loss and desperation that
adorned her normally placid features.

He was forced to raise his
voice as he said, ‘For fuck’s sake, will you please tell me what’s going on here?’
His outburst had the desired effect of bringing her focus back to the room in
which she stood. Her husband rarely swore. When he did it meant that he was
just about ready to crack and Sandy didn’t want this; she knew she couldn’t
stay around and place their lives in danger.

‘I have to tell you
something, and you must listen to every word. It’s about my parents.’ A tear
escaped her left eye as she said this, and Joe took hold of her hands. He
couldn’t bear to see his wife like this and be powerless to do anything.

‘It’s about how they died,
Joe. It’s about how they were murdered.’

‘Murdered? What do you
mean, murdered?’ Joe Myers felt like a train had hit him. The word ‘murdered’
resounded in his mind like a shrill whistle and he mumbled, ‘But you told me…’
His words trailed off as a look of betrayal came over his features.

‘Joe, I know what I told
you. But it wasn’t the truth. They were murdered.’ Fresh tears wet her cheeks,
which had taken on a red tinge from the bucketfuls she had already cried. She
had hoped she would never have to tell him this. She had wondered how he would
take such news, and her worst fears were confirmed in the confused and hurt
look on his face.

‘But, why did you lie to
me? What happened? Who killed them?’

There were so many questions
that he needed to be answered all at once. He realized that this must be a hard
thing for her to tell him, but he couldn’t prevent the questions from spilling
out of his mouth.

Consumed by the past, they
were forced to take their eyes away from the present. Joe could not help his
selfish need to have his questions answered. Sandy had had ten years to get
used to the deaths of her parents, and the sudden revelation made Joe put his
own hurt feelings first. He had to find a way to deal with this news and to get
over the feeling of betrayal that came with this revelation from his wife; he
thought they didn’t have
any
secrets from one another.

He scanned his memory,
remembering the day that they first spoke about her parents. They had been
dating for three months. She was almost twenty and he had just turned
twenty-one. It had been after a night at the movies. He couldn’t quite remember
what it was they had seen; it was dreadful they both agreed, but afterwards
they had driven to a secluded lover’s lane near to the cinema. It had looked
like a parking lot – a full parking lot - and this had amused Sandy; she had
laughed about people having one-track minds.

It was that great time in a
relationship, the getting-to-know-you stage, and everything she told him had a
magical effect upon his life and his outlooks. Every small new thing he found
out about her gave him a feeling that layers of strength had already began to
build between them, and he already knew that he was in love with her and wanted
to marry her.

On that night she had told
him how her parents had been killed one year before. She said they were drowned
in a boating accident. Now, he was wondering what other surprises she may have
in store. His creased expression reflected the turmoil that he felt, and he
couldn’t help but reach out the hand he had moved away a moment before when
confronted with this news.

‘You’ve got to tell me
everything,’ he pleaded with her and sat down exhaustedly on the sofa.

‘I will Joe. I’m sorry. I
didn’t lie to you for any bad purpose. I did it to protect you.’

‘I don’t understand. What
were you trying to protect me
from
?’

‘The man who killed my parents is
trying to kill me too.’ The certainty with which she imparted this sent a
shiver down the spine of Joe Myers. She was deadly serious, and he had not
known her to be paranoid before. It didn’t make sense to him though. ‘Sandy,
Sandy, you’ve got to start at the beginning.’

‘When I was nearly eighteen
my mom received a letter. I didn’t know about it at first - she kept it from
me. It was only later that I found out.’

She wept harder as she said
the last part of her sentence, and Joe moved closer to her on the sofa,
determined to be strong for her. She continued, ‘Only after they died.’

‘But what does the letter
have to do with their deaths? I don’t get this Sandy.’

‘It wasn’t just one, Joe.
They received thirty before they were killed. They all carried threats, written
in scrawled handwriting. Looked like a child had done it. Well, they must have
decided it was some sort of prank so they kept it from me. They never went to
the police, Joe. They just packed the letters away neatly and tried to carry on
like nothing was wrong. I guess they were trying to protect me - like I was
trying to protect you.

‘It was obvious that there
was something wrong though. I could tell, and I even asked them a couple of
times - but they would never say anything. They acted as though they didn’t
know what I was talking about. I was thinking of all kinds of different
possibilities for their sudden change of personality. I even thought maybe my
father was having an affair. Can you believe that, Joe? I thought my father was
having an affair.’ She laughed an incredulous laugh that could not mask the
true horror of the situation in which she found herself.

Joe Myers had his own
struggles. The look on his wife’s face was something he had only ever seen in
movies before, normally just before that particular character is carted off to
a mental asylum. He knew what kind of a strain she had been under recently, and
he found himself questioning internally whether what his wife was telling him
was true, or some kind of deluded fantasy.

Surely she wouldn’t have
been able to keep something like that a secret for all those years? Surely she
would have told him well before now if this were true? But still, here she was,
telling him this, and he must believe his wife, right?

‘My mom got more and more
edgy as time wore on, all the time putting a false-front on her emotions. But I
could see the cracks. I could see something was wrong just by looking at her
face. But they just continued to ignore it. I guess they must have been hoping
for the best or something. Well, hope is fickle…’ Her voice held a note of
defiance as her cynicism asserted itself, and this was something Joe grasped as
a good thing. He was trying to hang on to his own hope for the sake of his
family, and this was the first sign of fighting spirit he had seen from his
wife since he had arrived home what now seemed like ten hours ago.

‘Why do you think you’re in
danger now though, Sandy? After ten years, why only now? Tell me what happened
to them’. He felt he could force the issue - her new defiant tone might help
her to get through what it was that she had to say.

Her gaze took on the same
distant one as earlier as she reconstructed every moment in her mind, taking
the same steps she had taken ten years earlier. ‘One night we were sat
together, the three of us. We had the TV on and we were all laughing at
something that was on, I forget what it was. When we heard the noise, all three
of us jumped out of our skin, it was like…well, it was like a scraping sound,
but I had never heard anything like it before. I’ll never forget the way my
mother looked at my father. It was like she knew, like she knew he had come for
her.’

She was totally immersed in
what she was saying. This made Joe anxious. He felt that if he stood up and
walked out of the room, she wouldn’t look up, but would just go on recounting
the details of her parent’s death. It was as if she had retreated into her own
mind to a situation that she could step back into at any time. The horror of
what she was about to tell him had installed in her brain a virtual reality
game that she now took part in, oblivious to her actual surroundings.

‘Who had come, Sandy?’ His
wife ignored the question, as she continued to pass the seconds individually -
as they happened that night.

‘Both of my parents stood
up, but neither seemed to know what it was they were going to do. They looked
at each other as though they were trying to have a conversation through
telepathy and I sat and watched. My father wanted to go and check; to face
whatever was out there, and my mom didn’t want to let him go alone. They told
me to stay inside and lock the door after they went out. I told them that was
stupid and asked why they would want me to lock them out of the house. It
didn’t make any sense. But they made me promise. They said that if I heard
anything I should stay inside and call the police. Then they went outside, my
father first and then my mom. I locked the door, Joe, I locked the door.’

Sandy looked up, tears
streaming down her face and dripping from her chin. ‘She screamed, Joe. I was
too afraid to move. I was too afraid to break my promise. My mom screamed and I
couldn’t do anything. I didn’t hear one single sound from my father. Not one
single sound. I waited and a minute must have passed. Then I heard it again;
that noise. They were gone.

‘I couldn’t go outside. It
would have been me too. Do you see?’ Her issues of guilt showed starkly her
vulnerability, and Joe was resolved to believe her and protect her from anyone
or anything that threatened her life.

‘Yes. I see. It’s okay
babe.’ He was crying a little himself now, despite his reluctance to do so. He
wanted to be a pillar - to support his wife through anything. He wanted to be
strong and keep his emotions under control for her sake. But seeing her in this
state made it impossible for him to stay fully in control of himself. It was as
though two strong hands wrung out his eyeballs and he didn’t know how to handle
her pain - but they were one and he had to hold her, grasp her pain and share
it with her. He would do anything to lessen her burden.

‘I sat inside the house
wondering what I could do.’ Her recollections were punctuated by long sniffles
that made it hard for her to catch her breath. ‘I kept on hearing that scraping
sound. It went on for twenty minutes, but I was so scared I couldn’t move. I
couldn’t do anything to help them, but somehow I knew they were already gone. I
had a feeling in the pit of my stomach that I still can’t explain; but I knew
they were gone. Eventually the noise stopped.’