Guilt (18 page)

The slope gave me trouble now, though. My legs didn't shift in time to balance over the new angle of the terrain. I fell forward, managing to swing myself to the side as I went down and catching myself with my palms. But from there my body kept going, picking up speed as I rolled down the hill.

I nearly reached the bottom before my limbs managed to stop my tumble. I looked up. Kain started his own descent down the slope.

I had no time to recover myself. Crawling a few feet until I could push myself back up, I headed straight to the back door.

Just as I expected (though despite my wildest hopes) the door was locked. I looked back. Kain lost his footing on the hill, as well, but he didn't roll. He stumbled and rose back up, only resumed the chase.

I had to break the full length window in the door to get inside. Perhaps, with luck, the forced entry would set off a security alarm. Looking around for a projectile, I centered on a rock from the landscaping that lined the exterior wall. Holding the deceptively heavy rock between my legs, I squatted to add thrust to my throw.

It hit the door and shattered the pane, but the glass didn't break away from the frame. Kain was only a few yards away now, so without weighing the consequences, I threw my body against the window. The glass fragments gave, as I passed through.

I landed on the shards, knees first, and the left side of my body slid along the tile of the hallway. Damage to my face and skull were avoided because I covered my head with my arms, but the glass tore at my underarm and leg, and I felt needle-like jabs along my abdomen. The real throbbing came from my rib cage, where something pierced me to the bone.

I didn't pause to rest or register the pain. Kain's shadow darkened the door, so I dragged my self up and pushed onward. Glass fragments fell from my clothing and hair.

"Claire," Kain said with menace from a short distance away, "This pain you're inflicting on yourself is only making me more excited. Don't do this to yourself." I don't know why his words made me look back at him, but I did, and I saw the sneer on his face as he added, "Let me do it."

Kain didn't come after me at full speed now. He must have figured that he had me trapped at this point, in the empty building. He walked towards me at a fast clip, sure that he would catch me soon enough.

I continued to run as fast as I could, but my injuries didn't allow me to gain any space between us. While my legs managed to do little more than drag my feet past classroom doors, my hands managed to find the shard of glass that protruded from my chest. I grabbed it through the thick folds of my sweater and pulled it out. The action caused my pain to increase tenfold, and I screamed in shock. The adrenaline from my initial fear was waning fast.

Damn it. No alarm, no guard. I didn't know what my next move would be. Kain could take me at any time without much effort. Still, I didn't want to die. With tears streaming down my face, I kept going.

I couldn't remember my way around. The place looked foreign within the dark windowless passage. With no real landmark to situate myself, my retreat was aimless.

The echo of Kain's laughter started to resound through the hall. I couldn't resist looking back once more, to determine his distance. Instead of continuing his advancement towards me, he leaned up against a locker with his arms crossed over his chest. The amused derision on his face made it clear that he enjoyed watching me flee like a lame deer. He was toying with me. He was the cat, I the mouse.

I turned and kept going. In the distance I saw the end of the hallway. Dead end. He knew it was a dead end. He wanted to watch me crumple and cower in the knowledge that I was trapped.

I noticed something. The doors were different along this section. They weren't the regular metal classroom doors with small observation windows. These ones were large wooden double doors.

I knew where I was.

If Kain thought that this was the end of the chase, he was wrong. My hope started to flicker back to life. A chance still existed.

Letting Kain think that he had the best of me, I stumbled along the wall next to the row of doors. The very last set were only a few steps away when I heard the shuffling of footsteps resume behind me. Kain sauntered towards me, a look of triumph brightening his face through the dim light.

I stopped by the door, hunched over in fatigue, and took a deep breath, letting the oxygen fill my lungs and sweep into every muscle of my weary body. The wound at my side retaliated against the pull caused by the inhalation, but I needed it to calm me and prepare me for my next move.

Kain slowly gained on me, taking his time, enjoying my fear. It gave him power.

The disgust of his pleasure made me rise up and sneer at him in turn. Then, I reached towards the door handle and rotated it. Thank God it wasn't locked. Pulling the door open, I charged inside and shut it behind me.

The muffled sound of Kain's rage sent a shiver through me, and set me back in motion. I ran through the rows of seats in the massive auditorium, and towards the stage. Having spent the last two and a half years of my teenage life here, I knew this place well.

Darkness felt even more tangible in this cavernous room, with only the red lights of the exit signs to negate the blackness, but I knew there were stairs on each side of the stage. I climbed them, and dove for the refuge of the curtains just as a forced thud accompanied the sudden faint light of the opened door. The light fled just as quickly. Kain was inside.

"Claire," he yelled towards nowhere in particular. The acoustics carried his voice throughout the room. "We were having fun up until now. But I'm starting to get tired of this." He paused. "You don't want to piss me off."

I sought out the inner curtains and the backdrops hoping to submerge myself within them. While crawling towards the depths of the stage's wings, I bumped into something. It crashed to the ground, taking more of the same objects with it. Music stands from a recent concert fell like dominos, alerting Kain to my position.

Giving up all hopes of stealth, I rose to my feet and headed for the ladder that led to the catwalks. It was exactly where I knew it would be. I ascended, rising above the stage, knowing my next course of action.

Before I reached the top, I heard the clatter of music stands being tossed below. He wasn't far from me, so I had to move as noiselessly as possible onto the scaffolding. Once firmly on the platform, I inched my way to the other side of the stage.

I recalled from my former years that there was a small cubby that led to an air duct over the stage. The entrance was meant for maintenance workers only, but we stagehands crept in there often as a form of defiance.

The duct led from the stage, through the ceiling and down to the air vent in the technician's box. I'd slinked through it many times, even during a performance, on account of a bet. If I could make it to the box, I should be able to escape out the door that led to the main hallway. Perhaps, from there, I could find a fire alarm and activate it. A little more elusion, and I might make it out of this alive.

The cubby seemed tighter than I remembered, but I managed to squeeze through. The aluminum walls and base of the duct felt flimsy and wanted to make noises akin to thunder as I put my weight inside of it. The distance to the technician's box spanned the length of the auditorium, and I had to proceed slowly to minimize the sound of my movements.

As I progressed, screams of frustration and threats of impending pain were directed at me from areas below. They caused me to startle and pause often in dread. The knowledge that I was scaling a feeble tube of metal fifty feet in the air only added to my terror.

It must have been nearly twenty minutes before I arrived at the vent in the ceiling of the technician's box. I could still hear Kain prowling around beneath me. He knew I hadn't left the room. Neither of us could exit without letting light in through some door or other.

The duct descended about a foot and a half straight down before it met the vent I was looking for. I leaned down, picked up the vent cover from its fitting, and lifted it up to discard behind me. The size of the duct made it impossible for me to shift my body and descend feet first, so I scooted forward and lowered my head through the hole, using the lip where the duct met the vent to brace myself.

The blackness of the auditorium fed into the box, so I couldn't judge the distance between me and the ground. The unknown made me panic. I lost my grip and slipped from the hole, rushing head long to the floor.

My arms jutted out to protect my head from impact, but it wasn't the floor that I hit. The control panel must have been replaced since my time, because the new one sat nearer to the vent. My elbow slammed into the corner of it and caused me to bounce in a different direction, so that I toppled over a chair.

The newest pains this fall caused made me unable to hold back a groan. The noise from my landing was bound to have alerted the madman already. I couldn't stay here like this, so I pushed myself up, holding back the cries that my various injuries tried to produce in me.

Straightening myself, I noticed the light spilling into the box from the stage. I must have hit some of the switches for the stage lights in my fall. The illumination glowed orange from the red and yellow bulbs that glared down on the wooden boards.

What made my heart stop beating was what was in the middle of the stage. Kain stared up at me. Even though the glass of the box had a dark film over it that made it impossible to see inside, he knew I was here. The pleased grin and the sadistic gleam in his eye made my skin crawl.

I locked the upper level door that led to the box. Oh, shit. What should I do now?

He didn't come barreling down the isle towards the box like I expected him to, though.

Instead, he exited stage right.

Chapter Twenty-four

What the hell was he doing? I didn't know, couldn't begin to guess, and it scared me.

Perhaps he thought to use the back exit from the stage to go around to the hallway where he could access the door that led up to the technician's box. I locked the upper door, but how long could I expect to hold him off? I knew his crimes. He would stop at nothing to silence me now.

Not knowing where Kain went made it impossible for me to make a run for it. If I left this box, I ran the risk of becoming open prey. He could run me down again. If I stayed here, he would find a way it inside eventually. Was I prolonging the inevitable?

The panic that accompanied this train of thought brought on hysteria, and triggered an attack of shakes and sobs. I couldn't get a hold of myself. Such a thing as this had never happened to me before. Luke's attack on me in college was nothing compared to this. This wouldn't just change me. This would end me.

I fought back, and I was losing. All the self-defense classes I attended, all the training I focused on, and I still couldn't protect myself from the bad men in the world. What did I do to deserve this? What did I do wrong?

And I cursed myself for leaving my cell phone at home – at my parent's home. I could have called nine-one-one by now, and help would be on the way. I'd get no help now, thanks to my lack of intuition. I let Kain dupe me. How could I be so stupid?

There was no access to a fire alarm in here, no phone. I didn't know what to do now. Wait to die?

No. I didn't want to die.

My sobs began to choke me, but, just then, I saw movement on the stage again. Kain returned, and he pulled a ladder in his arms. He must have rummaged through the tool closet located next to the stage; that cluttered room where I spent much of my time, years ago, during set design.

He tossed the eight-foot ladder off the stage, and jumped down into the isle. From there, he began pulling it towards the back of the auditorium, where the box stood high up in the wall.

He couldn't possibly think he'd just climb up here, could he? We were separated by glass. Did he intend to break it with his head?