Cry of the Hunter - Jack Higgins [0]
Jack Higgins
Open Road Integrated Media
New York
For
UNCLE DAVID
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
A Biography of Jack Higgins
CHAPTER ONE
FALLON awakened suddenly and completely and lay staring blindly into the darkness. Gradually the room began to take shape as his eyes became accustomed to the gloom, and he reached for cigarettes to the small table that stood beside the bed. He closed his eyes against the sudden flare of the match and inhaled deeply. His throat was dry and his mouth tasted bad. He groaned and his searching hand groped again in the darkness until it located a bottle.
He pulled the cork with his teeth and swallowed deeply. The whisky burned its way down to his stomach, filling him with a nausea that was followed by a pleasant glow. He leaned back against the pillows with a sigh of relief.
Rain spattered on the window with ghostly fingers and he looked at the luminous dial of his watch and saw that it was eleven-thirty. He wondered what day it was. He lifted the bottle to his lips again and considered the point. He was still dressed so he must have been drunk when he went to bed. That much was obvious, but beyond that point it was difficult to go for memory had a way of playing tricks on him. He decided he must be getting old and took another generous swallow from the bottle. He remembered getting up and it had been a fine morning. He had tried to work but the words had refused to come and the whisky hadn’t helped. It hadn’t helped at all. One thing was certain. He couldn’t have lain there for more than a day because his watch was still going.
A sudden gust of wind loosed a tendril of ivy from the wall and set it tapping against the window with an eerie monotony that was unnerving. He shivered and raised the bottle to his lips again. It was empty and he dropped it carelessly to the floor and decided to get up.
He stubbed his cigarette into the ashtray that stood on the small table and then, suddenly, he was alone with the darkness and it moved in on him, pushing against his body with a terrible weightless pressure that was terrifying in its relentless force. The darkness moved in and moved out and a curious sibilant whisper rippled through the void. For a moment he swayed on the edge of panic and then he hurled aside the bedclothes and lurched to his feet.
His trembling fingers fumbled with matches and a small flame blossomed out of the darkness. He turned up the wick of the bedside lamp with his free hand and touched it with the match. Light spread to each corner of the room, driving the shadows before it, and he sat down on the bed and lit another cigarette with hands that shook slightly.
After a while he took the lamp and went into the bathroom. His shirt was damp with perspiration and he stripped it from his body and sluiced his head and shoulders with cold water. As he dried himself he examined his face in the mirror. Dark, sombre eyes that were too deeply set in their sockets, stared out at him with an expression he could no longer analyse even to himself. The ugly, puckered scar that slanted across his right cheek, lifted the corner of his mouth giving him an oddly bitter and sardonic expression that was accentuated by the dark fringe of his beard.
He returned to the bedroom and rummaged in a drawer until he found a clean shirt. He pulled it quickly over his head and buttoned it with fingers that had found their sureness again and then he took the lamp and left the room. It was cold in the stone-flagged passage and he passed quickly into the kitchen. He took a bundle of kindling from a box in one corner and went into the main room of the cottage.
His typewriter rested on a table by the window and the floor was littered with crumpled balls of paper. He gathered them together quickly and used them to start the fire with. In a few moments the dry kindling was burning brightly and he carefully added logs