The Hunting Tree

by Ike Hamill

“You just ring that buzzer if you need anything else,” she said, pointing to the cord looped around his bed’s handrail.

  “Okay,” said Davey. “Thanks again.”

  “No problem,” said Beth. She took the pitcher over to the bathroom and flipped on the light. She raised the seat—better safe than sorry—noted the volume of fluid, and dumped it into the toilet. Beth transferred the plastic jug to her left hand so she could mark the number of CCs on Davey’s bathroom chart.

  Beth made no secret of her disdain for the prissy new nurses who felt the need to don latex gloves every time they got within ten feet of a patient, and she certainly wasn’t afraid of urine from an nine-year-old boy. She barely noticed the drop that spilled from the mouth of the plastic jug onto her wrist. Beth filled the pitcher with water from the tap, sloshed it around, and cast it into the toilet with the rest. She flushed, returned the pitcher to its home, and washed her hands with hot, soapy water.

  When she returned to Davey’s bedside, she spotted a mark on his cheek. “You’ve got a little schmutz on your cheek, hon,” she said.

  “Oh, thanks,” said Davey. He grabbed a tissue from his tray and wiped his face.

  “Don’t forget, hon,” Beth said as she turned to the door, “just buzz.”

  Davey waved.

  By the time she had returned to the nurses station Beth had forgotten all about the single drop of urine which had landed on her left wrist. Once washed off, a small thing like that was expunged from her memory—just another minor detail in a day full of duties.

  Beth had no way of knowing that the single drop, washed and forgotten, would see her dead within a few months of that day. Her only living relative, her older sister who had taken up permanent residence in Beth’s guest room, would die just five minutes after, also because of that same accidental drop.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Mike

  “MIKE, SERIOUSLY, I’VE GOT to show you something when you get a chance,” said Gary.

  “Okay Gary,” Mike snapped, “I heard you the first time, but there’s a lot of shit going on here.”

  “Got it,” said Gary, as he stalked off towards the van.

  “So you’ve got feeds for us?” asked the producer.

  “Just pull your truck up next to the van and talk to that pudgy guy there,” Mike said pointing at Gary.

  “I heard that,” Gary yelled.

  “Shit,” Mike said under his breath. He turned his attention back to the paperwork spread out on Bill’s workbench and tried to make sense of it. The writing was tiny, and the lighting in Bill’s garage proved inadequate as the sun set outside.

  “Mike?” asked Katie. “I think Bill is coming down the road.”

  “Stall him,” said Mike. “We don’t need him complaining too.”

  “Fuck it,” Mike said, sighing. He flipped to the last page of the contract and signed his name. “Let him sue me. I don’t have any money.”

  Mike spun around at the sound of yelling outside the garage. As he expected, Bill rounded the corner and strode through the garage door, already yelling.

  “What the hell are you guys doing?” demanded Bill.

  “Relax, Bill. We’re just getting set up,” said Mike.

  “I thought I told you to keep the door shut,” said Bill. He leaned in close—“If that thing figures out what you’re up to, this is going to be one hell of a night.”

  “That wouldn’t exactly be bad news for us, Bill,” said Katie, standing off to the side of the irate man.

  “Yeah, well,” said Bill, striding over to the workbench and picking up the contract that Mike had just signed, “this paper says you agree to my rules, or I get a percentage of your business.”

  “We don’t make any money,” said Mike.

  “You will once I’m done with you,” said Bill.

  Mike raised his eyebrows and cocked his head, wondering what Bill meant.

  “Can we do some establishing shots inside now?” asked a well-dressed woman from the garage door.

  “This is a fucking circus,” said Bill, throwing up his arms.

  Mike pointed from the woman to Bill. “Leslie, this is the homeowner: Bill Carson. Bill, Leslie.”

  “So nice to meet you, Bill,” said Leslie, turning on her TV personality charm. “I’ll be doing the narration and scene work. My producer wants to know if we can get inside for some shots. Is that okay?” She smiled and winked at Bill.

  Mike winced, predicting a negative response from Bill to the obvious flirting.

  Bill surprised everyone by thrusting his hands in his pockets and stowing his earlier irritation. “Yeah, sure,” he said.

  “Thank you so much,” she said. She put her hands together in a prayer position and bowed slightly to Bill, Katie, and Mike before stepping back, out of the garage.

  “This better go smooth,” said Bill, regaining his ire as he turned back to Mike.

  “Don’t worry,” said Mike. “We’re just here to make some observations and the press is here to keep everything documented and credible.”

  “Hey, do you think I should show her the hand?” asked Bill, changing personalities once again.

  “What? No!” said Mike. “They’re here to show that we’re not crackpots. Please don’t do anything crazy. Not to mention that you’ll probably get sued or go to jail if anyone finds out you’ve got a severed hand in your freezer.”

  Gary trotted back into the garage, panting. “I’m ready to start doing cameras, but we’re never going to have enough cable. Do you think I could pull up on the lawn to get the van closer?”

  “Hold on,” said Mike. “One step at a time. First, you can’t set up the equipment yet because the news crew is about to do their establishing shots. They want an untouched house; they don’t want to see our equipment everywhere. But as soon as they’re done, I want you in there. Second, ask Bill if you can pull up on the lawn. It’s his lawn.”

  “Bill?” asked Gary.

  “Go ahead,” said Bill.

  As Gary jogged back out, Mike wore a puzzled expression. “Why wouldn’t he have enough cable?”

  “The windows are nailed shut upstairs,” said Katie.

  “Really?” Mike asked Bill.

  “The contractors did it,” said Bill. “They said the windows made them uncomfortable and offered to replace them at the end of the job if I let them nail ‘em shut.”

  “That must have been a strange outfit,” commented Mike.

  “We’re going in for our shots now,” said Leslie, standing with her producer and camera man at the entrance to the garage. “Would you care to give us a tour?” she asked Bill.

  “Sure, no problem,” replied Bill. He looked down at his his worn jeans and t-shirt. “Should I change?”

  “You won’t be on camera,” said Leslie. “You just show me around and I’ll do the rest.”

  Bill kept his eyes locked on the newswoman, but Mike saw Leslie’s producer roll his eyes slightly.

  When Mike and Katie were finally alone in the garage, Mike sat down on a stool and sighed.

  “What was that thing you signed?” asked Katie.

  “It was a contract that Bill had his lawyer draw up,” answered Mike. He rolled his head around, trying to find relief from the stress building up in his neck. “Part non-disclosure for the technology of the amplifier, and some language about how we can’t seek damages if any of our equipment gets destroyed on his property. Also some stuff about how we won’t destroy his property through negligence. Standard stuff.”

  “Standard? What about any of this is standard?” she laughed.

  “True,” Mike smiled. “I think he was just trying to cover his bases.”

  “Anything financial?”

  “Not really,” answered Mike. “Nothing I saw, at least. Honestly, I really don’t think that Bill is trying to profit off this whole thing, he just wants his house back.”

  “I think Bill tries to profit from anything he does,” commented Katie. “We really haven’t tal
ked financials either.”

  “How’s that?” asked Mike, rolling his neck again and scratching his head.

  “Well if you end up profiting, what about me and Gary?”

  “Oh, I won’t profit. I’m not in it for the money. Someone else will end up making all the money. That’s just the way it is with scientific breakthroughs. I remember when I was a grad student, the professors used me like slave labor. They push, and push, and then they never made a dime. I didn’t have a chance. A step down from nothing is less than nothing. I was lucky I didn’t owe them money at the end of a project.”

  “So Gary and I get less than nothing?” asked Katie.

  “No, no, I didn’t mean you guys,” said Mike. “I was just saying that’s the way it was when I was in school. You guys are in this for your own reasons, right?”

  “Yeah, I guess,” said Katie. “Hey, don’t forget, Gary wants to show you something.”

  “Yes, yes,” said Mike, pushing himself up from the stool dramatically. “The boss’s work is never done.”

  Katie watched him leave the garage and folded her arms.

  * * * * *

  “GARY,” SAID MIKE as he climbed into the van. “What’s up?”

  “I’m trying to work in the new numbers,” said Gary. “Give me a second.”

  At the front of the cargo area, Gary had folded down the small table and propped a laptop open with a map on the display. He typed coordinates from a piece of scrap paper into the application.

  “Yup, it aligns,” said Gary.

  “What’s that?” asked Mike.

  “Okay, let me start at the beginning,” said Gary. He zoomed out the map display revealing a view of New Hampshire and scrolled over to the Maine coast. “You remember our first couple experiments with the new instruments? How we saw that big bias point to the west?”

  “Sure,” said Mike. “The sunset was giving off a ton of signal and everything peaked.”

  “Yeah, right,” said Gary. “That’s what I thought too. But then as we worked more and more cases we started to do a lot of work to the south.”

  “But the readings were all pretty much west,” said Mike.

  “Well, not quite,” said Gary. “They all had a west component, but some were more northwest than west.”

  “Okay,” said Mike. “Sure, but the earth is on an axis. The sun’s not always west. Plus it was earlier and later in some of the measurements.”

  “Yup, that’s true,” said Gary. “I didn’t think anything about it either. When I plotted the bearings on my paper map, they just seemed to be pretty random lines. But then I started thinking, those maps use a Mercator projection,” Gary pointed to a map hanging on the wall of the van. It showed the New England states and had several red lines traced across from the locations where they had conducted investigations.

  “What does that mean?” asked Mike.

  “Well, simply put, north and south, east and west, are all straight lines on these maps, but we live on a sphere.”

  Mike shrugged.

  “That means if I just walked off in a straight line, then it wouldn’t appear as a straight line on this map. It would make a curve. It’s called a ‘great circle curve,’” said Gary.

  “Where are you going with this?” asked Mike.

  “If I use a mapping program, I can put in the positions and bearings of our readings and plot the great circle curves to see where the lines actually go.”

  “And that gives you a different answer than your paper map?” asked Mike.

  “Sure does,” said Gary. “Check this out." He spun the laptop towards Mike and overlaid the data. The red lines from their investigations curved gracefully and all met at a common point in New Hampshire. “See where they meet?” asked Gary.

  “I do,” said Mike. “What does it mean?”

  “You tell me,” said Gary. “Once I factored in the projection, these lines all meet within two hundred feet of each other, and it’s in the mountains of New Hampshire, near Campton.”

  “Can you zoom in?” asked Mike.

  The display changed as Gary decreased the scale and individual roads appeared on the map. The satellite imagery disappeared, leaving just the labeled lines of roads.

  “What’s this dotted line? It goes right near your intersection,” commented Mike.

  “Looks like a hiking trail,” said Gary. He pulled up the information on the line and reported—“It has two names according to this: ‘Moose Cross Trail,’ and ‘The Ledges.’”

  “Huh,” said Mike.

  Their conversation was interrupted by a knock on the side of the van.

  The producer poked his head through the door. “We’re all done with our shots. Ready for your setup,” he said.

  “Hey,” called Mike after the man’s head had vanished around the corner.

  “Yeah?” The producer looked back in.

  “Did you guys see anything?” asked Mike. “Anything unusual?”

  “What, in the house?”

  “Yeah,” said Mike, frowning.

  “Just a house,” said the producer, raising his eyebrows.

  “Thanks,” Mike called out as the producer dismissed himself. “That’s weird,” he said to Gary. “I wonder if the entity in Bill’s house hides before sundown.”

  “Could be,” said Gary. “But Bill said the contractors were hearing stuff all day when they were here.”

  “You’ve got a point, but maybe its behavior has changed,” said Mike. “Either way, let’s get in there and get the equipment online while nothing’s going on.”

  “Roger that,” nodded Gary.

  * * * * *

  GARY, KATIE, AND MIKE FINISHED their preparations several minutes before sunset that Thursday afternoon. In the driveway, Leslie chewed the inside of her lip and talked to her producer about the editing schedule required to get the piece on the air that weekend, and to create a compelling teaser for their station to run to generate interest. Bill waited in his garage, reviewing the schematic of Mike’s paranormal amplifier.

  At the edge of Bill’s yard, Gary leaned against a rock and smoked his cigarette. Just upwind, Katie stood with her arms crossed and the two spoke casually. Mike surveyed the scene, looking at everyone gathered for this unique research, and tried to think of how the night’s events would change his life. Convinced that he had finally arranged the right people at the right location, he was certain that he would finally have solid evidence. His theories would be confirmed, and his positions vindicated.

  Mike narrated his own television biography in his head—“Paranormal research started as just a hobby for Dr. Markey,” he imagined the announcer saying while his college pictures glided across the screen. “He left his field of study and invested every dime to prove his theories.”

  “You ready?” asked Gary.

  “Jeez Gary,” said Mike. “You scared the shit out of me,” Mike said and then laughed nervously. “Those guys set?” He pointed to the news crew.

  “Yup,” said Gary. “Just you and me at first and they’ll do the outside piece once we’re in.”

  “Good,” said Mike. “I think that will play out really well. Did you tell Bill not to touch anything?”

  “Don’t worry,” said Gary. “Katie will keep him in line.”

  “Let’s do it,” said Mike. He unclipped the radio from his belt and clicked the send button twice. “You set, Katie?”

  “Yes,” Katie’s voice came from the speaker.

  “After you,” Mike waved Gary to the front door.

  The first floor of Bill’s house appeared normal except for the bundle of cables tucked into the corner of the front door and running up the stairs. A reading light in the living room illuminated a pleasant, inviting space to curl up on the couch. To their left, the short hall showed a kitchen both well-equipped and clean. Mike mentally compared Bill’s cozy home to his own tiny house and envied the engineer despite his second-floor troubles.

  Mike clicked his radio once more “Heading
upstairs,” he said. He took the lead this time, and Gary followed close behind. They came to a stop several steps from the top when Mike heard child’s laughter once more.

  “Did you get that?” he asked his radio.

  “Nothing here,” said Katie through a wave of static.

  Mike turned and raised his eyebrows at Gary who shrugged back.

  “We’re getting a little static here Katie. Everything clear on your end?”

  “As a bell,” said Katie.

  Mike and Gary continued up the stairs and stopped at the top. Mike scanned the room, checking the camera locations. He glanced one more time at Gary and then made a statement for the record—“This is Mike and Gary, we’re doing our initial sweep of the second floor to check for abnormal activity and perform the final check on all the equipment before we introduce any stimulation.”

  They moved methodically through the space, verifying the operation of each instrument. They had almost finished their initial sweep when Gary tapped Mike on the shoulder.

  “Hey Mike, I’m getting a really odd sensation here,” said Gary.

  “Odd, like what?” Mike asked, pointing a tape recorder.

  “I’m not sure how to describe it,” said Gary. “I feel cold, but not like an external cold. More like it’s coming from the inside.”

  “Okay,” said Mike. “And we’re in the back right, so this would be the north-west corner of the house." He snapped off the tape. “This is just the sweep, Gary. I don’t want to discourage you from letting me know when you have a strange feeling, but let’s get some hard-core action for the news guys before we talk about too much touchy-feely stuff.”

  “Okay,” said Gary.

  “Mike?” Katie asked over the radio.

  “Yeah?” Mike replied.

  “You’re right next to one of the open microphones,” said Katie.

  “I know,” said Mike, but his face told a different story. He took a deep breath, wondering if he had just ruined his credibility with the news crew. It was important for them to believe that they were invisible, impartial observers at this investigation, and that Mike wasn’t trying to put on a show for them. Now the news people might have just heard evidence to the contrary. Mike exhaled and turned to Gary. “I think we’re done with the initial sweep. Let’s get back to the van and calibrate the instruments.”