The Hunter Inside (37 page)

‘Yes. But why?’

‘Sometimes I can get some life out of
it. The battery’s fucked in that thing. It doesn’t know whether it’s full or empty.’

Mayhew handed the cell phone to
O’Neill. He looked at its blank screen for a moment, before pressing the power
button and holding it down, hoping desperately that he would get some power and
not just a beep followed instantly by the same blank screen as before. The beep
came and the phone stayed on. The battery on the display began to flash
immediately, but if he was quick he should be able to call Hoskins.

O’Neill accessed the address book of
the cell phone and scanned through, finding the name of Hoskins and pushing the
send button. As it began to ring at the other end of the line, he walked
towards the door of the motel room. Joe Myers flopped down onto the bed, head
in hands.

O’Neill turned the door handle with
his left hand, keeping the phone at his ear with the right. He took half a step
out of the door before retracting his foot and sticking his head out over the
threshold. The phone at the other end of the line rang six times before Hoskins
picked it up and said in a weary voice, ‘Hello.’

‘Hoskins, it’s me,’ O’Neill said,
expecting a thunderous response to hit him like a fifty foot wave hitting a
surfer and flipping him over and out of sight, obliterating him. He wasn’t
disappointed.

‘O’Neill, where are you? What’s going
on?’ Hoskins normally called him ‘chief’, or ‘boss’. The fact that he had
called him by his surname meant only one thing to O’Neill: mud was flying
around the office and, although he was not there, managing to stick firmly to
his character. It was a wave of plain impertinence from Hoskins that hit
O’Neill. He wouldn’t normally let it go, but he didn’t have the time to play
games right now. Neither did Hoskins, whether he knew it or not.

‘Hoskins, I don’t have the time right
now to…’ Hoskins cut him off mid-sentence.

‘But Lineker’s balls are bursting
here. He’s got officers out looking for
you
, and…’ This time it was
O’Neill who cut Hoskins off mid-sentence.

‘I need you to do me a favor. I need
you to find out some dates for me. But you gotta be quick because the battery
on my cell is almost flat. Okay?’ He didn’t want him to know about the
situation he was in. If he did, there would be a hundred agents flooding in
from every angle. That wouldn’t be good. There wasn’t enough time to organize
such a response, and brute force would not have much effect on Shimasou.
Between them he thought they could beat Shimasou. All they needed was the dates
of the murders and then they’d be meeting not one, but two ancient spirits. It
was something he didn’t expect Hoskins to be too impressed by. So it was the
battery he blamed, while the others listened to him and watched the back of his
head.

‘Okay, I’ll get you your dates. But I
don’t want you to forget this, Sam. I’m putting my balls on the line too.’ It
was a comment that surprised O’Neill; he didn’t expect
support
from
Hoskins, just compliance with his orders. And here he was, trying to make
friends with O’Neill. Things were getting weirder by the minute.

‘The dates are murder dates,’ he said.
‘Check a June Riley for me.’

‘Okay,’ Hoskins said, and O’Neill
listened to his clumsy, one-finger typing as he inputted June Riley’s name into
the database. ‘Just waiting for the match now, Boss.’

Ah, that was better.
Boss
was
much better. O’Neill turned to face Mayhew. He jammed his hand into his still
soaking pocket and withdrew the small, blue biro he had used to write Hoskins’
number down before walking through the ocean of rain to find a phone booth to
call, infuriatingly, Hoskins. Now, here he stood, in the motel room, calling
Hoskins.

Mayhew understood his intent and
grabbed a Sleep-Easy welcoming brochure from on top of the dresser. The back
page was almost fully blank, just the motel’s contact details covering the
bottom half of the page, and Mayhew scribbled the pen in the top-left hand
corner of the paper to make sure it was working okay. Then he wrote the name of
June Riley in block capital letters.

‘May 25
^th
1991,’ Hoskins
said from Brooklyn.

‘May 25
^th
1991,’ O’Neill
repeated. Mayhew wrote the date down hurriedly and O’Neill looked at Bill
Arnold.

Arnold nodded. ‘June 15
^th
1991.’

Special Agent O’Neill looked at the
pale, expressionless face of the man who may have lost his whole family to
Shimasou. He didn’t have the information he wanted, and it was just out of the
reach of O’Neill’s memory, but he hadn’t forgotten the names of the Carsons.

‘Next is Fred and Betty Carson. They
died on the same day, but I want to know who died first.’ The phone couldn’t
have much energy left now. It wouldn’t matter if he could find out in what
order they died. He knew that Riley had come before Wayans, and he pretty much
knew in what order Shimasou had taken the others. He just needed to know which
Carson was first. Then the cell phone could die and go to hell for all he
cared.

‘Okay,’ Hoskins said. ‘They died on May
18
^th
1991. Betty died first. It was estimated by the coroner that
there was somewhere between…’ Hoskins’ voice was abruptly gone. He never got to
finish his sentence, but O’Neill wasn’t too bothered about this. Not until he
looked up and saw the face of Todd Mayhew, that was.

‘What’s up?’ He asked.

‘Paul Wayans’ grandmother. You didn’t
find out her name.’

‘Shit, you’re right. I’ll have to call
back.’ O’Neill thrust both hands into his pockets.
The number
, he
thought.
What did I do with the number?
Nothing except the paper with
Melissa Dahlia’s address on. O’Neill slapped his forehead with the palm of his
hand.

‘What’s up?’ Bill Arnold asked.

‘I left the paper in the phone booth
when I saw Joe.’

‘Aww…shit,’ Mayhew moaned, allowing
his shoulders to slouch as if he had been punched in the stomach while off his
guard. He didn’t know what was wrong with O’Neill, but he didn’t seem to be
doing much right. His attempts at concealing his glare from the Special Agent
were unsuccessful, and O’Neill tried to defend himself.

‘It wasn’t my fault. Well, it was, but
it could have happened to anyone. If it’d been you that saw Joe running around
frantic, you might have done the same.’ He cast a guilt-ridden glance across at
Joe Myers. It was the fact that he didn’t have any change that had annoyed and
distracted him, making him leave the booth without picking up the slightly torn
piece of paper. Joe Myers now wore the expression of a haunted man, his pale
face nearly as white as the teenage goths O’Neill seemed to see everywhere
nowadays.

Though not in Atlantic Beach.

The minutes were ticking by, and now
they would have to go back to the phone booth, hoping that the raging wind had
not eaten up the paper in its fury. While Joe Myers’ whole family sat in the
grip of Shimasou, they might have blown their one chance of beating it.

He, O’Neill, might have blown it.

He figured they had little prospect of
guessing
the name of Paul Wayans’ grandmother. He lifted his chin in the
direction of the other three men, his jaw jutting out and spoke defiantly,
‘We’ll just have to go back and find it.’

Water ran over Sandy Myers’
skin like ants swarming across the bark of a redwood. It busied itself in
little streams that raced down her neck and across her back, meeting in what
seemed to Sandy like a million places, and forming a shivery blanket that she
found herself wrapped up in. The clothes she wore were no defense against the
hammer of the storm. She was like a contestant in a wet t-shirt competition,
her breasts outlined by the sodden blue cotton. The denim jeans that she wore
held the rain, doubling their weight and tightening against her skin.

The rain had not let up during her
fifteen-minute journey. In fact, it seemed to have gotten stronger, heavier,
surrounding her and trying to drive her into the ground. She had trouble seeing
further than ten feet in front of her, and the continual streaks of lightning
and cracks of thunder seemed to be inside, not outside, her head. She had
struggled onward, her journey a laborious, energy sapping slog, semi-relieved
at not needing to see too far ahead of herself; she knew where it was that she
was going.

Now she was here. The Atlantic Beach
Herald headquarters.

Sandy stood outside the four-story
building, looking up at the darkened, empty windows on its front.
I see
holes like eyes
, she thought to herself, remembering a line from a Stephen
King novel she had once read. What was it called?
Desperation
, that was
it. It was certainly a fitting title for her current situation.

The windows were large and dark. The
glass had been destroyed long ago, leaving them gaping at Sandy as she stood
looking up at them, a sense of foreboding warning her not to enter the old
redbrick building. She calculated quickly that there were nineteen of these windows
on the front of the building, sixteen on either side of the tower that stood
out slightly from the rest of the building, and three on the actual tower
itself that stretched up fifteen feet above the roof, looming over Sandy in a
way that made her think about the creature inside, looming over her terrified
children. Casting a shadow over her in the same way as Shimasou was casting a
shadow over her children.

She closed her eyes. Inside, water ran
down the walls of the building and the half-collapsed roof lurched precariously
in the howling wind. Through the hole in the roof the rain poured in, peeling
off what little paint was left on the walls. Shimasou stood, revealing to Sandy
its amazing height. The old wooden floorboards creaked under its weight as it
moved toward the children, and Sandy feared that the floor would give out,
sending them to certain death below. The floorboards too must be riddled with
termites taking a tasty meal, unaware of the drama that was soon to be played
out all around them. Sean and David gripped each other tighter, trying to melt
into one another and disappear to a place that was far away from Atlantic
Beach.

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.