The Hunter Inside (29 page)

This place must be damn
pricy
, he
thought,
and I look like a hobo.

There were only three
couples in the restaurant, sitting towards the opposite end of the room. None
of the six people had noticed his presence.

A noise behind him made him
turn, and he was met by a smiling and tuxedoed waiter.

‘Table for one sir?’ the
pristinely dressed waiter asked him, and he mumbled an answer in the
affirmative.

The waiter directed him to
a table, handing him a menu as he sat, and said, ‘You look like you could do
with a beer’.

‘Sure could,’ Bill
answered, ‘a Bud if you have one.’

He already felt more
relaxed, and a quick scan of the menu told him he need not have feared the
prices.

When the waiter returned,
with the Bud, he ordered a 20 oz. Porterhouse and relaxed, pushing any thoughts
of fear out of his mind.

He would enjoy his steak,
and then he would settle down in a nice bar and sink several more Bud’s.

Who knows
, he thought to himself,
maybe
I’ll run into Joanne the Beautiful and buy her a drink.

His surroundings were
stunning, he had not met any bloodthirsty maniacs, and the terror he had
arrived with had given way to a certain sense of calm.

By the time the steak
arrived, cooked to medium-rare perfection and surrounded by juicy onion rings,
he was just about ready to forget the danger had ever existed at all.

A second Bud washed the
steak down perfectly.

By the time he finished his
meal, the other couples had left the steak house.

‘Say, can you direct me to
a nice bar?’ he asked the waiter as he paid the bill.

‘Sure,’ the waiter replied,
‘I’ll write some directions down for you of a place that has Bud on draught.’

This day is getting better
all the time
,
he thought.

Bill Arnold was a man who
lived for now, not for the future. Although he knew this was a result of the
negative things that had happened to him in the past, he found himself
whistling as he left Steer’s, clutching the waiter’s neatly written directions,
and walked into the beginning of the storm.

But for Bill Arnold, this
day was only going to get worse.

Sandy’s head ached. It felt
as though she’d emptied the entire contents of a motel mini bar down her throat
and was paying for it now. This was not true, of course. She hadn’t had a drop
to drink for months; her life was too hectic. It was stress that caused her
headache, which had almost become a migraine when she ran the other car off the
road shortly after leaving Melissa’s house at Jones Beach.

As she had driven onwards, without
stopping, she had tried to compose herself. It was no good though; her heart
pounded as loudly as her aching head, and she had felt bad about not stopping.
She was normally a courteous driver. She had never once been in any kind of
accident, but today she could not stop. She could not stop. Not for anything.

As the other car had gotten smaller
and smaller in her rear-view mirror, she had seen a man jump out and wave his
fists at her. He had been barely visible due to the dust that mushroomed up
behind the back wheels of the Toyota, and within less than five seconds he had
disappeared from view as the car swept onwards and around the curve of the
potholed road.

Sandy had pushed on, struggling more
with her own emotions than she was with the car, determined to make it in one
piece and slowing down to a steady forty to improve her chances of doing so.

How far will I have to go?
Sandy had wondered.
Before
I get to the right place. Or will it be the wrong place?
That was something
she would have to chance.

She had known her excess speed
throughout the day would not help the car, and she managed to make it about
seven miles before she first saw the smoke that came from under the hood of the
vehicle.

‘Come on,’ she moaned aloud, ‘I need
you.’

The car seemed to hear her, for it
struggled onwards for a further two-and-a-half miles, before finally
spluttering to a halt at the side of the road.
Its
journey was over.

Sandy wondered if hers had barely
begun.

Now what am I going to do?
she wondered. She got out
of the car and looked around. The only thing that made any impression on her
(apart from the low sound of the Atlantic Ocean as it conducted its ongoing
pact with the moon) was a row of huge trees about thirty yards down the road
from where she stood. There were no houses, just the trees. They presented an
ominous shadow in the distance that was unrivaled. Even the Jones Beach tower hadn’t
made as much of an impression as the row of huge oaks. These menacing trees
were something she would have to face.
There could be anything behind those
trees
, she thought.

She would have to start walking
though; there was no doubt about it. There was no way she was going to wait
here and be a sitting duck for her demented and seemingly supernatural stalker.

It might take hours to reach Arnold,
but she knew nothing about cars. Both Joe and she had always been more
comfortable with a pen or pencil in their hand than a spanner. She would have
to walk.

Sandy made her way towards the line of
trees. The late afternoon had taken on a dull appearance and Sandy looked at
the sky, wondering if they were in for a storm later. She thought they probably
were. The wind was whipping up and the sun was out of sight behind a myriad of
huge rain-bearing clouds. The combination gave Sandy the feeling that it was
already much later in the evening.

She wished she had borrowed a jacket
from Melissa. The wind made the short hairs on her arms stand on end as she
walked briskly, trying now to reach the row of trees to gain shelter. They had
taken on a new dimension as she walked under their amazing canopy, an offer of
protection held out by their strong boughs. They cut a fatherly figure to the
forlorn Sandy Myers, and she stood with her back pressed against the huge trunk
of one as she surveyed her surroundings.

This is it
.
This is where Arnold was walking
in the dream. I’m here. I already made it.

Sandy wondered as she looked around
the lake, hoping to see that Arnold was still there. He wasn’t.

Maybe the car breaking down is a sign.
Maybe it
wants
me to be here
, Sandy thought. But that didn’t matter for now. What did
matter was finding the man she had seen in her dream but had never actually met
in real life. At the very least, she would be able to talk to him about this
thing, whatever it was. Maybe they could fight it together. Maybe he could help
her overcome it. Worst case scenario was that she would have someone to die with
when the time came. But even that seemed like a good thing to Sandy. Maybe she
was being trapped, but she decided to try and find the motel she had seen
earlier.

She would find Arnold.

If they did die together at the hands
of this thing then at least they would not be alone at the end. Her mother and
father had been together when they died, and that was the only tiny aspect of
the whole horrible and terrifying event that gave her any peace. They had not
been alone.

She began to walk away from the lake,
painfully aware of the contrast that its tranquility made with her own life. In
an ideal world, she would be able to stay here, sheltered from the storm with
her family around her, living out a tranquil existence of their own. Instead,
she had to fight for the chance of even seeing Joe, Sean and David again. By
finding someone else whose life and fate was in the clutches of this beast,
maybe she would have a chance. Maybe their strength would double through the
support they could give each other.

Maybe Arnold knows more about what
this thing is than I do,
Sandy
wondered to herself.

The protection of the lake now behind
her, Sandy followed her instinct. Earlier, she had not been able to make a cast
iron impression of the journey she now had to make; it had all been too much of
a blur, but with disorderly thoughts and clear vision she followed her feet and
found the Sleep-Easy Motel within ten minutes of leaving the lake.

The motel looked exactly as it had in
the dream. A long row of nondescript, yet brightly colored, buildings. The
dream was one she would never forget. She may not have long to remember. The
feeling of standing in a place she knew but had never been to before made her
uneasy.

But I have been here before. I helped
to deliver the letter.

For the first time, Sandy considered
the implications of the letter that had been delivered. She expected it held
the same message as the one she herself had received, and wondered whether or
not Arnold had yet received his letter.

If he has he might have ran
, she thought. She hoped
not. If he had seen as much as her then maybe he would be ready to stand and
fight this thing.

Maybe it killed
his
parents
, she
thought, taking no comfort or relief from the possibility. She hoped that he
was ready to fight.

Sandy walked towards the end door.
This time she was in full control of her own faculties, but her legs felt
unsteady, her heart beat like a jackhammer, and her head felt like a ship’s
foghorn was constantly sounding inside it. She felt a large injection of fear surging
through her body as each of the other doors passed by her unnoticed, her gaze
fixed upon the end, green door.

Possibility number one: Arnold will be
here and alive.

Possibility number two: He ran.

Possibility number three: I’m gonna
find his battered and blood-soaked body.

Possibility number four: I’m gonna
find his blood-soaked body and a knife sinking into
my
back.

She reached the door of the room. It
wasn’t ajar, which pleased Sandy. It was
always
ajar in the movies.
Maybe
the killer isn’t here.

She knocked on the door and waited,
listening to nothing but birdsong, the increasing whipping of the wind, and her
own garbled thoughts; and hoping that if the door opened, it would be Arnold
she would see and not a figure that was over ten feet tall driving a knife
towards her neck, as it had done to Wayans.

Nothing. Only birdsong. And wind. No
scraping, no footsteps. Not even any cars in the distance.

Sandy was all alone.

She peered through the window, trying
to see if anything was out of place in the room. The thick net curtain made it
difficult for her to see, and she looked towards the door, trying to see if the
envelope was still there. Standing on tiptoes and squinting down through the
glass, she saw that there was indeed an envelope lying behind the door of the
room. If there was any writing on it she couldn’t see it, but she was
ninety-nine percent sure that it would prove to be the same as the letter she
had received.

Arnold’s still around
, she thought. The
realization brought a smile to her lips. He must have gone somewhere else after
his walk earlier. She would wait out of sight behind the large bush at the end
of the block of motel rooms. She didn’t know why she felt the need to hide; she
was sure it knew her every move. But she hid nevertheless, and waited for
Arnold to come back to the motel room.

If he ever did.

The two men drove in
silence, O’Neill wondering just how on earth they were ever going to find Sandy
Myers. Mayhew was chewing over the same problem, and finding it very difficult
to swallow. On top of this, he also wondered how Sandy Myers had survived and
gotten away from the scene where Paul Wayans was murdered.

Maybe she’s stronger than we think
, he thought to himself. He
didn’t say it out loud, but kept on repeating it to himself, trying to ignore
the growing feeling of pressure that had begun to weigh on his bladder.

O’Neill’s secondary thoughts were
different. Everything that he could cross, he crossed.
I hope we get there
in time. I hope we get the chance to tell her how to beat this thing
.

Mayhew broke the silence, shifting
nervously in his seat. ‘Listen, Sam. I
really
need to pee. Can we stop?’
He held an apologetic expression in an attempt to keep the cop from blowing up
at him.

‘Aww…Come on Todd. We gotta make hay.’
O’Neill didn’t want to blow up, but he found it difficult to hide his
discontent and restrict his temper to just the admonishment, he was getting a
little pissed himself.

‘I know I have lousy timing. But we’ve
gotta talk this through anyway. We can’t go in there all guns blazing. If we do
we might let those two people down. And if we let them down…’ He trailed off,
safe in the knowledge that he didn’t need to continue his sentence for O’Neill
to grasp the implications of their failing.