The Biker (Nightmare Hall) (17 page)

But after that …

In the leather jacket, the helmet, the face shield, the voice muffled by the roar of the engine,
anyone
could have been driving the bike after that first time. Anyone!

Echo slowed her steps. Was it possible? Could someone have pretended to be Pruitt? Why?

Marilyn knew Pruitt.

I wouldn’t have recognized her voice, Echo thought, not over the roar of the bike. Anyone could have been talking to me, anyone at all.

But Pruitt had
admitted
he was the Mad Biker. Had threatened her, scared her half out of her wits because of it.

Echo’s heart beat faster as she stumbled through the chill, gray fog. Could Marilyn and Pruitt be working together? Was the Mad Biker actually
two
people? Marilyn, with her scarred, stiff, arms and legs, couldn’t maneuver that bike in a million years. But Pruitt could. He had no scars, no pain.

A twig snapped somewhere behind Echo.

Her heart stopped. Her head swiveled around. She swept the flashlight in an arc, exploring the misty darkness behind her.

Nothing. She saw nothing but fog, wrapping itself around her like a wet wool blanket.

She turned and stepped onto the bridge, hurried across it. It creaked and groaned ominously, as it always did. But she made it across, once narrowly escaping a sudden tumble through a good-sized hole that hadn’t been there when she came across the last time.

Tired of wrestling with her new, bizarre information, Echo concentrated on the cave instead. What if she was wrong? What if the cave was still empty, the way the police had found it? Was being out here alone, in the blackness of night, in the wet, clammy fog, her flashlight of very little use, as she slipped and stumbled up this stupid hill, just a waste of time?

Before Echo even entered the cave, she knew no one was in it. She sensed it, could feel it in her bones.

She was right. Inside the cave, she swept the light from side to side.

The bike was there, leaning against one wall.

The tools were there, the changes of clothing, two stacks of books, a few cans of food, and three or four extra tires laying beside the bike.

Echo exhaled deeply. Now what? Here it was, right in front of her. But she wasn’t quite sure what to do with it.

She knew this much, though. This time, she had to do it right. No leaving the bike, or any other evidence that she found linking Pruitt to the biking episodes, here in the cave. It came with her when she left. She had no idea how she would manage that. She only knew that it was essential.

Painfully aware of time rushing by, and afraid the fog would thicken into an impenetrable soup, keeping her prisoner on this side of the bridge, Echo began hurriedly searching the cave. She wasn’t sure what she was looking for. Something to link Pruitt to the bike. He was the one who had ridden it. He had to be. She’d worry about Marilyn later.

She found the first helpful thing on the floor of the cave, without much searching at all. Books, three of them, with Aaron Pruitt’s name on the frontispieces.

But he could always say she’d stolen the books from his room or some such nonsense. She needed more.

She found it. A driver’s license was hidden in the middle of one of the books. It was a motorcycle license, with Pruitt’s picture staring up at her. It struck her as she picked it up and fingered it that it hadn’t been very well hidden.

But then, Pruitt had been so arrogant about the police never coming into this place again, she was surprised anything was hidden at all.

Were the books and the motorcycle license enough?

Chilled clear through and jumping with nervousness each time she heard a sound outside, Echo kept searching.

Then she found the most valuable piece of evidence hidden in the crevasse where she had sought refuge from Pruitt that first night. It was wrapped in plastic to keep it safe from the steady overhead drip-drip of water.

It was an audio tape labeled, DIARY OF REVENGE.

Echo couldn’t believe her luck. There was no time to listen to the tape now, but unless she was seriously mistaken, it was Pruitt recording his marauding adventures on the motorcycle. A death-by-death description, no doubt. For Marilyn, waiting in her room, so that she would be in on every gory detail? Or to satisfy Pruitt’s own monumental ego?

She wondered if her name was mentioned on the tape. Probably. But she’d already faced up to the fact that she wasn’t going to get out of this mess without consequences. It didn’t seem to matter now.

He just couldn’t stand not bragging about it, she thought, pocketing the tape. And the chances were excellent that he hadn’t bothered to disguise his voice on the tape. Even if he had, a voice analysis machine would take care of that.

Echo turned to stare at the bike. It looked ten times larger and heavier than it ever had before.

I cannot ride that, she thought, feeling sick. It weighs a ton. Even if I could get it started, I’d never be able to steer it. I’ll never be able to get it over that bridge. Probably drive it right off the bridge into that deep, cold water.

She knew she had no choice. How else was she going to get the bike to the police? She wasn’t leaving it here a second time. This time, it was coming with her.

Keys, keys, she needed the keys to the bike. She would take it and the books and the tape and go straight to the police station. And pray like mad that she didn’t run into anyone along the way. Anyone … meaning Pruitt.

The keys were hanging from the handlebars, along with the helmet.

Afraid that her hair would mix in with any hairs from Pruitt’s head and destroy evidence, Echo left the helmet hanging where it was. If I drive off the bridge, she thought, climbing on the bike’s black leather seat, that helmet won’t do me any good, anyway.

Dumping the three books with Pruitt’s name in them in the rear basket, and pocketing the driver’s license, Echo placed the key in the ignition and turned it.

Nothing happened.

She tried repeatedly to start the bike. Turned the ignition key. Jumped on the pedal the way she’d seen Pruitt do, turned the handlebars, copying him.

Nothing.

Nothing happened, not even a chug or a gurgle.

She tried again and again, but she couldn’t start the bike.

Nearing tears, she gave up, deciding she had no choice. She would have to push the bike back to campus. She was going to get it back to campus if it killed her.

She pushed up the kick stand and grabbed the handlebars and push-pulled the heavy bike out of the cave into the fog.

She could see almost nothing.

She couldn’t hold the flashlight in her hand and grip the handlebars at the same time, and she didn’t know how to turn on the bike’s light without power from the engine.

The only thing she had going for her was that she knew the terrain of the hill pretty well by now and knew which spots to avoid.

If she couldn’t make it all the way back to campus with the bike, she could at least hide it somewhere else, somewhere Pruitt wouldn’t think of looking, until she could browbeat the police into taking a look at it.

Breathing hard, sweating profusely, the muscles in the back of her neck and her shoulders screaming in anger, Echo slowly, slowly, made her way down the hill.

She was almost to the bridge when she heard something.

She stopped. The bike wanted to keep going and tugged violently at her hands until she thought her arms were going to pull out of their sockets, but she held it back.

“What was that?” she whispered, peering into the fog-smoked darkness.

When she first saw the figure, hurrying toward her from the other end of the bridge, she told herself it wasn’t real. It didn’t
look
real. It looked, in the swirling mist, more like a ghost, amorphous, with no solid limbs or torso.

But it was real, Echo realized as it approached the middle of the bridge. The figure was tall and thin and she could hear, faintly, the sharp hammering of heels on the wooden floor of the bridge. High heels? No. The figure was masculine. Not high heels, boots. The heels of boots on the wooden bridge, that was the sound she heard.

Pruitt.

He hadn’t ditched the boots, after all. He’d only hidden them.

Although she knew he couldn’t possibly see her yet, he was headed straight toward her. Toward the cave. Coming to check on his bike?

Echo glanced frantically toward her left. Nothing there but dirt and grass. Her head flew to the right. Bushes. Short, stubby, thick, at the end of the bridge. But dangerously close to the edge of the riverbank.

The boot heels pounded closer. Any second now, Pruitt would appear out of the fog and see her standing there with his beloved bike.

The bushes would provide some protection. If the bike didn’t slip and go crashing over the edge of the riverbank.

There was no time to think about it, no time to analyze. There was only time to jump behind the bushes and tug the bike in after her. It slid into the bushes and fell heavily on her left ankle. She had to slap a hand over her mouth to keep from screaming in pain.

If she could just stay hidden until he’d crossed the bridge and climbed the hill, that would give her time to grab the bike and race across to campus.
If
he didn’t see her when he stepped off the bridge.

But he didn’t step off the bridge.

Echo lay behind the bush on the damp ground, hardly breathing, shaking and shivering, her ankle throbbing, so lost in terror that it was several minutes before she realized that the sound of the footsteps had ceased.

Pruitt had stopped. He was no longer advancing across the bridge.

Where
was
he?

Cautiously, carefully, Echo pulled herself to a sitting position and peeked through the branches of the bush. She could see nothing. The fog was too thick, the night too dark, the middle of the bridge too far away.

She straightened up further, kneeling, craning her neck to see. Poked her head out dangerously far, in an effort to discover what was happening. She had to know where Pruitt was.

Then, as if it were anxious to do her bidding, the fog cleared for a moment, and she saw him. Standing in the middle of the bridge, facing away from the water, leaning against the railing. As if … as if he were waiting for her. Waiting for
someone,
anyway.

Then she saw the second figure, approaching Pruitt from his end of the bridge. He hadn’t been waiting for her, after all, but someone else …

Who?

The second figure was feminine. Echo could tell that much by the way it walked.

Marilyn?

Marilyn! Echo thought, sinking back down on her heels. Oh, God, now she had the two of them to contend with. Even if Pruitt continued across the bridge and went on up the hill, Marilyn wouldn’t. The climb would be too much for her. She’d wait at the foot of the bridge.

Right … beside … Echo’s … hiding place!

Echo straightened up again. As she did, the second figure moved slightly, closer to Pruitt. But it moved too smoothly, too easily, to be Marilyn. Marilyn Sexton had never moved that fluidly in all the time Echo had known her.

Then the figure raised its right arm, in a familiar gesture. It was holding something … a stick? A baseball bat? Yes, a baseball bat, held high on one shoulder in what looked like a threat.

One person Echo knew on campus had made a practice of demonstrating different tennis swings to the girls in the whirlpool room. A former championship player undone by a severe case of tennis elbow, Delores Jean Cutter took pride in showing off the form that had won her many awards in the past. At least, she had on those days when her arm wasn’t stiff and painful. She was particularly adept at a powerful backhand swing.

And it looked to Echo, watching from her bushes, like a backhand swing with a baseball bat was about to be delivered to Pruitt.

Echo would have known that stance anywhere.

The figure was the right height and weight.

Not the right height and weight for Marilyn Sexton. The right height and weight for former tennis player Delores Jean Cutter.

Deejay.

Deejay turned suddenly, facing Echo’s end of the bridge, and began to shout.

“I know you’re there, Echo!” Deejay yelled. “I’ve been watching you. You’re in the bushes at the end of the bridge, and you’ve got the bike. Bring it here. It’s mine, and I want it.”

Echo stayed where she was.

“Echo!” Louder this time. Angry. “Pruitt here has about two more minutes to live. Don’t you want to save your boyfriend?”

Boyfriend?

“He’s a dead man, Echo! And if you’re not here within thirty seconds, you’re dead, too.”

Echo stood up. Picked up the bike. Hauled it out of the bushes. Stood at the far end of the bridge, holding onto the handlebars.

Deejay waved an arm, signaling to her to keep coming.

Echo sat on the seat. Turned the key.

And this time the engine roared to life.

She squeezed the accelerator on the handlebars.

The bike took off, flying across the bridge straight toward the pair standing in the middle.

W
HEN SHE JUMPED ASTRIDE
the bike, Echo had no plan. She couldn’t make a plan when she had no idea what was going on. All she wanted to do was get across the bridge, away from Deejay and Pruitt and whatever new horrors they were up to.

She clutched the handlebars, kept her foot pressed down on the bike’s pedal and fought to steer the monstrous machine away from the metal railing on both sides of the bridge.

She might have made it if Deejay hadn’t been armed with a baseball bat.

Deejay’s timing was perfect. She waited patiently, bat poised in the air, while a white-faced Pruitt cowered against the railing.

When Echo, valiantly trying to steer the bike around the two, was less than a foot away, Deejay swung, using her famous backhand.

The bat caught Echo just beneath the ribs. The blow lifted her up off the bike and out into the fog. Had she landed on the metal part of the bridge, she would have been knocked unconscious. Instead, she dropped with a thud to the wooden walkway, and although it groaned a protest at the impact of her weight, it softened her landing.