The Equinox

by M J Preston

  Hurry up!

  Hopper stood at the foot of the hole and did something that made Derek even more uncomfortable. He unzipped and shamelessly began to piss on the ground. The noise reminded Derek of the pigs his family kept. Looking down at the sweaty fat man he noted he had more in common with their pigs than how he peed.

  After zipping up, Hopper stood there a moment, took another look around and then reached over and grabbed the big black garbage bag and heaved it into the hole. Derek watched it tumble end over end as it fell and listened to the dead weight of its thump when it hit bottom. Just as he was about to ponder what was in the bag when it split open: a small pale hand fell out and into view.

  Derek almost screamed, almost lost complete control and fell from his vantage point. He wanted to cover, to shield his eyes. A hand! Oh my God, a hand!

  But Derek didn’t cry out. In fact, he didn’t move at all, because he understood almost instantly that if Mr. Hopper now discovered that he was spying on him, he would be digging another hole. Instead, he thought about deer hunting in Spruce Woods and what his father had taught him.

  “There are three rules of thumb for being a good hunter,” his father’s voice echoed. “First, if you see a deer, you can’t go off ranting and raving, or you’ll lose the animal before you even get it in your sights.”

  Derek focused on Daddy’s voice, pushing away the horror of Mr. Hopper and the pale bluish hand.

  “Secondly, breathing is a vital part of hunting, my boy. If you don’t control your breathing, you will lose your concentration, and your shot will be wild. Practice your breathing. Take a breath in and let half out, then relax as long as you can. Once you take your shot, expel the second half of your breath and follow through on your target.” Derek practiced breathing in, exhaling halfway, holding it then expelling the remainder.

  He focused hard, pushed every distraction aside. As he did so, his father explained to him that this was an excellent time to assess his surroundings. It took a day spent in the bush, but he soon found his breathing method, and Donald Wakeman said, “You’re a natural. The third rule is that if you shoot something, you own it. Never let a wounded animal suffer. If it bolts, follow the blood trail and finish what you started.”

  While Derek’s initial reaction was to scream and take flight, he instead began to breathe and take stock of his situation. He envisioned a deer in a clearing and inhaled a full breath ever so slowly, aware that sudden movement would draw attention. He pushed away from the side that was screaming for him to run and watched Mr. Hopper as he began to heave shovels full of dirt back into the hole and on top of the bag.

  His bum had fallen asleep. He loosened his grip on the branch above him, shifted minutely, to relieve himself from getting a cramp. Then he expelled the second half of his breath and began the exercise all over again. He locked away his want to scream, to run – instead he focused on Mr. Hopper and pretended he was a deer through his rifle sight.

  Mr. Hopper scooped another shovel of dirt and heaved it into the hole. When it hit the plastic, Derek again exhaled the remaining half of his first breath. He scooped; Derek inhaled. He heaved; Derek exhaled. Derek worked his breathing to perfectly match this routine.

  For the next fifteen minutes, Derek Wakeman sat motionless on the tree branch like a chameleon. Occasionally Mr. Hopper would stop, wipe his brow, and Derek would hold his breath until the work resumed.

  Finally, after what felt like an eternity, Mr. Hopper was padding the soil with his shovel, and for a short while, Derek was able to breathe freely. Mr. Hopper looked as though he was ready to leave – but then suddenly he began to move toward the tree line, and Derek.

  He could easily have screamed and dropped from the branch but continued his meditation pushing away the urge, focusing instead on the imaginary deer that had got him to this point.

  Ten feet directly below him, Mr. Hopper surveyed the tree line and began to pull bits of brush and branches from the ground. He carried the first handful back to the grave and started to camouflage it.

  Go home.

  Mr. Hopper examined his work and moved back to the edge of the tree line again.

  What if he looks up? Panic was finally starting to dig its claws in. Daddy is always checking the sky for clouds! Please, Jesus! Please, I beg you! Please don’t let him see me! But though his mind reeled, he sat perfectly still, eyes forward.

  Hopper picked up an old log and dragged it back. He threw it across the grave, arranging brush and branches, trying to make it look natural. Finished, he examined his work again.

  Go away!

  Mr. Hopper began to gather up his tools and tossed them in his wheelbarrow, where they clanged together. Derek took this opportunity to shift ever so slightly, causing the branch to tremble. Mr. Hopper stopped dead in his tracks.

  Oh, Jesus, no!

  Derek’s heart began pounding uncontrollably, and again he almost lost control. Making matters worse he could feel the pressure of a much-needed pee rising in his bladder. He thought the beating of his heart was loud enough for anyone to hear.

  Don’t look up! Please! Don’t look!

  Mr. Hopper began to raise his eyes upward – and a miracle occurred. Just then a crow burst from the tree line and landed on a fence post to his right. It cawed with delight, catching the fat man off guard and startling him. For a minute he gawked at the bird, almost as if he recognized it – then he shook his head and cussed. “Fucking crows.”

  Derek watched, continuing to breathe slowly, mindful not to make any more noise as Hopper grabbed the handles of the wheelbarrow, spun around and walked back down the path into the cornfield. He waited until he was out of sight a full five minutes before he carefully climbed down from the tree. His heart was still thumping madly to the point that it hurt. He gasped for air and looked around desperately. No longer the composed statue that melted in with its surroundings, he was now the terrified little boy digesting an unwanted taste of the macabre.

  He was running now. Branches whipped his face as he ignored the trail and sprinted in a straight line toward his father’s field. He could not feel the slashing; the pain muted by his terror, his dread that Mr. Hopper was going to reach out and lob off his head with his shovel at any moment.

  He tripped. He hit the ground, scraping his hands on an old root, but he did not stop to check his wounds. Instead, he was up and moving at breakneck speed for Daddy’s field.

  Gotta keep going! Not safe, gotta get home!

  6

  Donald Wakeman saw the movement in his canola just as he was about to eat his lunch. The yellow flowers swayed in the opposite direction of the wind, which was blowing from the east today. Wakeman watched curiously. The moving object was coming straight at him from about 200 yards out. He was still deciding what kind of animal it might be when he realized it was Derek.

  “What the heck is that boy doing?” he muttered, a smirk forming on his face. He could barely see the top of Derek’s blonde tangle of hair as he cut a trail through the crop.

  The smile on Wakeman’s face began to slip away when his boy tumbled, got up and dashed forward. He started climbing down from the tractor, his lunch forgotten.

  7

  Derek got up and started running again. He had lost complete control and had forgotten to breathe. He didn’t dare look back. Daddy was in sight now, walking towards him. He pumped his legs even harder.

  Almost there!

  When he reached his father, he fell to the ground.

  Safe!

  Donald Wakeman looked down at his son. Derek’s face was smeared with yellow and covered in welts from the branches and canola. Beneath the colorful smears, he was red, almost purple, and he wasn’t breathing. His eyes were wide, terrified, and darted madly back and forth. Donald reached down, but the boy pulled away almost instinctively and looked crazily from left to right.

  He’s choking,
Wakeman panicked. Swallowed something?

  “Breath, Derek!” he urged.

  Derek could not hear his father’s words. The horror of what he had seen was into much.

  His father reached down and slapped him on each cheek.

  “Breathe, Derek! Are you choking? Breathe!”

  Daddy looked scared now, like the day he found him in the woods. Tears were welling up in his eyes.

  He slapped Derek a little harder, and that was enough. A rush of breath escaped Derek’s lips, and he began to convulse and hyperventilate.

  “What happened to you?”

  His mouth flapped, but no words came.

  “Who did this to you, son?”

  “Ddddd,” was all he could manage.

  “What?” Donald was lifting Derek up.

  “Dddddeee,” he stuttered.

  “I can’t understand you!”

  “Deeeeeeerrrrrrrrr! Deer,” he cried shrilly, and then there were no words, no stuttering – just the terrified screams of a boy who had seen something which no boy should ever see, even in his darkest nightmares.

  He was still screaming when his father picked him up and carried him into the house.

  8

  Thirty minutes later Donald Wakeman was loading his shotgun as his wife protested. He could not hear her; rage unlike anything he’d felt in years beat through him. Derek had eventually told him what had happened.

  “Donald, we need you here,” his wife insisted.

  “Francine, I need you to do two things. Get our son to the hospital and call the police.”

  He walked out the door bound for Stephen Hopper’s farm.

  ***

  Chapter 3 - Confrontations

  1

  Chief David Logan was shuffling through manpower reports for the Mayor’s quarterly fiscal budget. He had been Chief of Police in Thomasville for ten years, and this was the side of the job he honestly hated. Being a Police Officer was all David Logan had ever wanted to be, and although he had always been ambitious about getting his own command, he had never thought through the bureaucratic end of running a department.

  Every three months he had to submit justifications for overtime and acquisitions. Mayor Locke was a good guy but would have the department of 10 Officers and one dispatcher working with a shoestring budget. Logan learned early on that you had to cross your “t’s” and dot your “i’s” or the Mayor’s office would strip your funding. Therefore, instead of searching for a missing boy, Logan was doing what was necessary to keep his department out of the red. His second-in-command, Sgt. Mick Collins, would be leaving Thomasville in approximately six months to broaden his horizons in drug enforcement. Although he would miss Collins, both as 2IC and friend, he supported his decision to leave and further his career. Thomasville did not have a lot to offer in the way of career advancement other than the odd marijuana grow operation. For an ambitious police officer, Thomasville was not where you wanted to spend your career: it was more like where you’d want to end it.

  Logan admired Mick, partly because his 2IC reminded him of when he was a young, ambitious homicide detective many years before. Ambition was fine, as long as you were willing to make sacrifices. Logan knew all about sacrifice. He had given up his marriage for his career, and now only saw his children during holidays. He hoped that Mick’s wife, Nancy, would be able to endure the sacrifices imposed by her husband’s ambitious career path. A plus in their favor was that they had no children, but that would likely change. Mick would have to be replaced, and there were two suitable candidates: Corporals Don Steel and James West. Both were capable young lads with a nose for police work, but when you got them together, they acted like juveniles. For the last three months, Logan quietly observed and took notes, but did not alert either of them to the possibility of promotion – although there was speculation that one of them would be taking the reins.

  He realized that he had let his mind wander and picked another manpower report to log into his computer. Just as he was about to go over the numbers the dispatch line rang. He picked it up, already reciting. “Sabrina, what is it?”

  “Sorry, Chief. I have Francine Wakeman on the line, and she’s frantic,” she replied.

  “Uh. Can’t the duty officer handle this?” Logan responded.

  “You sent Peter out to get lunch.” Sabrina was looking at him through the office window from her desk.

  “Okay, put her through.” There was a beep. Logan said, “Chief Logan.”

  “Chief, he’s going to kill him,” Francine Wakeman cried.

  Logan sat up. “Hold on a second, Francine, who are you talking about?”

  “Donald… My husband; he’s gone over to kill our neighbor Mr. Hopper. You have to get over there!” She was in hysterics.

  Logan was already up and out of his seat, attaching his holster to his belt. “Listen, Francine, I am getting ready to go, but I need you to calm down and tell me what’s going on. You said that your husband Don is going over to Mr. Hopper’s house. How do you know he’s going to kill him, and why?”

  She took a deep breath and began to explain. “Derek came home this afternoon in a horrible state, screaming, and when we finally got him calmed down, he said that he had seen Mr. Hopper burying a body.”

  “Are you sure he wasn’t kidding around, Francine? You know kids –”

  “A child’s body! Chief, a child!” she cried shrilly.

  Logan tapped the office glass to get Sabrina’s attention. The sixty-year-old dispatcher got up and came to the door. “Okay, Francine, I’m going to head over to Mr. Hopper’s place. Was Don carrying a gun or any weapon?”

  “He had his shotgun. Oh, dear Lord,” she cried. “Please don’t hurt him.”

  Logan was more worried about getting accidentally shot by Wakeman than hurting him. “Alright. I’m going to put you on with our dispatcher, Sabrina. You stay on the line with her, and she’ll get the rest of the information.”

  Constable Pete Kennedy was just walking in the door with lunch when Logan alerted him to get his gear. “Drop the bags, Pete! We’ve got a 10-54d and a civilian with a gun.” 10-54d was police code for possible dead body.

  Kennedy put down the bags and followed the Chief out to the parking lot.

  2

  A thousand things ran through Donald Wakeman’s mind as he drove his pickup over to Hopper’s farm. His first thought was that the man had hurt his son and for all his Christian goodwill, he could not find it in himself to get past that. He was a kettle of rage, and that blinded him to the fear he should have felt.

  He turned into the cul-de-sac dirt driveway in front of Hopper’s three-bedroom farmhouse. Originally covered with cedar strips and shingles, it was now grey and old. The Anguses took far more care around the place – but that was not why he was here.

  He stepped out of his Ford pickup and grabbed his shotgun. Carefully he tucked his arm under it and held it casually so as not to draw suspicion, then walked toward Hopper’s doorway, preparing for what he would do next.

  3

  Mick was going over a county map when the radio call came through to clear all traffic. A couple of other officers stopped and listened to their remotes. Thomasville Police, like most other police departments in North America, had abandoned police code to avoid confusion during transmission. In this case, Logan used a combination of the old system because he knew that most of his officers were near civilians. “All units be advised we have a 10-54d, I am en route to the location. Have Paul Sam contact me via secure means for a briefing.”

  Paul Sam was phonetic for Patrol Sgt. Mick pulled his cell phone out, dialed Logan’s number and placed it to his ear. It barely got off a single ring before Logan picked up.

  “Mick, are you alone?” Logan asked.

  “Copy that,” he replied looking around to make sure.

  “Okay, it looks like we may h
ave located the missing child. Unfortunately, the details don’t look promising, but we have bigger problems. A neighbor is on his way over to the suspect’s house with a shotgun. The address is 4987 Van Dyke Rd, suspect’s name is Stephen Hopper. Neighbor with the gun is Donald Wakeman. Have you got that?”

  “Copy that.”

  “I need you to get all officers moving to that position ASAP. Have two Officers block both ends of Van Dyke to keep traffic out of the area.”

  “Copy that.” Mick was scribbling madly while turning over the situation in his mind. “ETA to that position is twenty-five minutes. Send rendezvous location.”

  “RV will be on site. I have Constable Kennedy in tow; he’ll be my back up. Send everyone you have.” He paused, then, “Wait!” Logan set the phone down to turn the corner; he was ten miles from Hoppers Farm. “Is John Parkins still on site?”

  “Yes.”

  “Shit! Okay, have one officer escort, Mr. Parkins, back to his residence and keep him there. Someone that he knows. Your prerogative, Mick. Inform all available that radio traffic is to be kept to a minimum. I will keep you informed on the cell.”

  Logan got on his radio. “Constable Hardy, come to the command post.” All officers within sight were looking his way. They had heard the transmission and understood a portion of what was going on. Sandra Hardy was about 900 yards away when he sent the call through, and she began jogging back across the field toward him.

  4

  Stephen Hopper opened the door to see his neighbor standing on the porch with a shotgun under his arm. “Hello, Mr. Wakeman. What brings you over here?”

  “Hi. Well, I had a couple coyotes get at some of my chickens, and they headed this way a few minutes ago, so I jumped in my truck; thought we might head them off before they do any more damage.” Wakeman smiled thinly.

  “Head them off?” Hopper was still looking at the shotgun.