He bundled some spare shirts into a leather attaché case he discovered in the living room, as well as the bottle of cologne. He expected that he would stink more as the hours progressed and the cologne would help disguise the odour.
He left the apartment and headed back past the courthouse he’d noted earlier, following signs to the Amtrak station. As he walked he checked out the other pedestrians and was glad to note that his bruised features didn’t attract as much as a glance, so was confident his disguise was working.
There were more murals decorating the walls as he’d approached the train station. One of them depicted a buffalo draped in the Stars and Stripes, and Samuel paused to study it. He thought that, should the mural become animated and the animal rear up on its hind legs, they’d share a similar body shape. He liked the analogy he conjured from the notion: that he was akin to a wild beast that symbolised power to so many people. He’d offered the buffalo a nod of respect then went on.
After everything he’d done to effect a new persona, he felt a sense of anticlimax when he wasn’t given as much as a cursory glance by the bored teller who sold him tickets for the next train west.
He found a bench where he could wait for his train.
Other passengers avoided him. It was as though an invisible bubble surrounded him, with an impenetrable wall that no one would attempt to pierce. He didn’t know if this was an effect of the cologne he’d doused his body in, or if they sensed some imperceptible warning he must radiate. He was happy with either, because he had no desire for company other than that of Jay Walker.
Soon his train arrived and he found a seat at the rear of the lattermost carriage. No one sat next to him, or in those chairs adjacent, and he hoped things would stay like that all the way to Holbrook.
35
Jay was back in the box.
Her hands were free and she scrabbled at the metal sheets entombing her, fingernails ripping down to the cuticle and leaving red slashes on the tin. Though she was in shadow, the smears of blood were vivid, lit by an internal light. They mocked her, flashing like the fiery eyes of demons. Jay screamed but nothing issued from her constricted throat. She was too thirsty to make a sound.
Last time she was able to hook her fingers around the top end of the corrugated sheet and slide it but now it resisted her efforts. There was no way she could budge it, and the knowledge made her more frantic.
Though her world had been silent, she thought she could hear the steady tread of boots approaching her prison. She stopped struggling. Her stomach felt like it had lifted into the hollow at the back of her mouth. She did not dare guess who was out there. She didn’t have to. The wizard from behind the curtain was there waiting for her; ready to reveal his true face, and his true intent.
A keening noise filtered from above.
A scream?
Was Nicole being attacked again?
The sound of boots in thick sand retreated.
Jay began tearing at the metal again, and when she next looked she’d rubbed her fingertips down to the bone.
The red was more livid than ever, gouts of blood splashed from one end of her coffin to the other, dripping from the tin sheeting to splatter on her face. She shook her head side to side, blinking it off her lashes. She looked again. Two particular smears were in her line of vision.
They blinked.
She recognised those demonic eyes peering back at her.
Samuel Logan wasn’t outside, he was right there with her, watching from within her nightmare.
Jay screamed, and this time there was a hoarse, tearing sound that ripped painfully from her throat.
She kicked and writhed, then fell sideways into a chasm that had opened without warning…
She sat up, the scream from her nightmare caught in her throat. For a long heartbeat afterwards she sat blinking in the dark as tendrils of the dream refused to relax their grip and tried to tug her back into their embrace. A mild panic caught her and she struggled to extricate herself from the sheets, finding them damp with perspiration and wound tightly around her legs. She yanked them free and then swung her feet off the bed and dug her toes into the rug on the hardwood floor, seeking contact with something firm and in the real world. She lowered her head into her hands and pushed the matted hair back from her brow.
There was faint light leaking from around the shutters, enough for her to make out the unfamiliar shape of furniture, and she heard the rush of a breeze through treetops outside. She was a long way from the box in the Arizona desert, yet its hold on her still sent a tremor through her body. She lowered her hands, expecting to find the glistening nubs of bones protruding from her fingertips, but they were whole and undamaged. They trembled, though.
She stood up quickly and moved for the door, pulling her nightdress down to cover her slick thighs. She snatched a robe off a hook. Not that she was cold, but she remembered now where she was and couldn’t wander about in a state of undress. She pulled it on as she went out of the bedroom, tying the belt loosely around her hips. Immediately to the left of her room was the one where Nicole slept. She stood alongside the jamb, bent to lay an ear against the door. There was nothing to hint that Nicole shared the dream that she’d just experienced, but then, she realised, Nicole’s must be much worse. She crept away without disturbing her friend, to retrieve her clothing from where she’d laid it on a chair. Dressed appropriately, she left her room and closed the door behind her.
Her recent terror was subsiding now, but not her intense thirst. She wondered if there would ever be a time when she would feel sated. The floorboards creaked softly under her feet, and self-consciously she glanced at the room further along where her mother and father slept. No one stirred, but she was careful to regulate her footing and avoid the boards most likely to squeak underfoot: it was bad enough that her sleep had been disturbed without her waking the entire hotel.
She turned, seeking a way down.
Like most structures here in Holbrook, the Tipi Hotel was built primarily of wood and cladding, albeit in a different fashion from its neighbours. Whereas most of the other hotels here were the familiar split level type, serviced by external stairs and walkways, the Tipi reminded her more of a Gothic mansion. In keeping with its style it had internal stairways so she had no fear of being seen by anyone lurking in the grounds. Around her she could hear the subtle movement of the timber joists contracting as the hotel settled for the night, and from a room on her left drifted the muted strains of music from a TV. From further away came the sound of vehicles on the highway. The hotel was built on land set back from the road, concealed by tall fir trees that had been imported from some distant corner of the US to offer insulation, but always the background noise of the highway was there. Sometimes it was just a hum, a lullaby to help send you to sleep, but tonight the traffic noise was carried on a stiff breeze, tumultuous and noisy.
She heard all those things but she did not hear the man who was suddenly standing beside her.
Jay’s hand went to her throat, and she caught the yelp of surprise before it escaped.
She recognised the form standing there and relaxed: he was too tall to be the man from her nightmare.
‘Is everything OK, Jay?’
She nodded up at Joe Hunter. She realised now that he had been sitting in a chair in the hallway in order to have a view of her room, as well as being positioned to guard access up the stairs. He was holding a matt black pistol down by his thigh.