The Hunting Tree

by Ike Hamill

  Davey kept to his rule and offered no information in response to the stated fact.

  John corrected his approach and asked, “Did you get in trouble?”

  “Yeah,” sighed Davey.

  “Could you tell me what happened?” asked John.

  “The teacher caught me putting a dead mouse in some kid’s book,” Davey admitted.

  “Where did you get a dead mouse at school?” asked John.

  “I found it,” said Davey.

  “You found it,” John stated.

  Davey kept quiet.

  “Somehow, I sense you’re not giving me the whole story, David. How was your friend Paul involved?”

  “He didn’t do anything.”

  The psychiatrist paused and reviewed his notes, trying to find a way to get Davey to open up.

  “The notebook belonged to,” John started, flipping back through his notes, “Ted?”

  “Yeah,” confirmed Davey.

  “Does Paul have a problem with Ted?”

  “I guess,” said Davey.

  John sensed an opening. “Why doesn’t Paul like Ted?”

  “Nobody likes Ted,” said Davey. He made firm eye contact with John as he said this, punctuating his point. “He’s a big jerk.”

  “What does Ted do?”

  “He’s always making fun of people, and playing tricks on people. He’s mean for no reason at all,” said Davey.

  “What are some of the things he says about Paul?”

  “I don’t know,” said Davey, rolling his eyes back and to his left, “stuff like how he’s a big queer. Jerky stuff. He makes fun of everyone that way.”

  “Who was he making fun of that day?” asked John.

  “Mostly Christina,” said Davey. “He’s always making fun of her.”

  “You hate it when he makes fun of Christina?” asked John.

  “Yeah, well not just her. I just hate it when he does that stuff. It’s so dumb.”

  “What did he say about Christina that day?” John asked.

  “He didn’t really say anything,” said Davey. He paused before he continued. “He and Nicholas were going to play a prank on her. She didn’t deserve it.”

  “Is she pretty?”

  “What?" Davey twisted his face into a scowl. “No way,” he continued, “she’s kinda gross.”

  “Gross in what way?”

  “Everyone says she eats her own snot,” said Davey. “She’s pretty fat, too. I don’t know why she does the gross things, but sometimes I feel sorry for her.”

  “How come?”

  “I don’t know,” said Davey. “She only started at our school last year, and she had this big rash on her face. She didn’t try to be anyone’s friend or anything, she mostly just stayed by herself, so I thought that the other kids should just leave her alone.”

  “Don’t you think she would have been lonely if everyone ignored her?” asked John.

  “I’m not saying they should ignore her,” said Davey. “But sometimes the kids will climb over chairs so they don’t have to sit next to her and stuff. Then they say she eats snot in the bathroom and whatever. I wouldn’t like, be her friend or anything, but I don’t do that stuff.”

  “Do you sit next to her?”

  “No, I sit with Paul,” said Davey.

  “So what were Ted and Nick going to do to Christina?” asked John.

  “Why do you do that?” asked Davey.

  John suppressed his excitement. He had been hoping that Davey would ask him a direct question about the therapy. The first sign of engagement was notoriously difficult to achieve. “Do what?” asked John, raising his eyebrows.

  “You call me David, and I told you that other kid’s name was Nicholas, but you called him Nick,” said Davey.

  “Oh, did I?” asked John.

  Davey pressed his lips together and regarded John.

  John offered a better answer before Davey could fully shut down—“I refer to people with their less common names so that you can see things with a new perspective. Do you know what I mean?”

  “I guess,” said Davey, unclenching his jaw.

  “I’ll stop, if you’d like,” said John.

  Davey nodded.

  “So what were Ted and Nicholas going to do to Christina? Was it something with the mouse?” asked John. He had waited until Davey showed interest in his process before revealing that he was capable of producing deductions from Davey’s veiled information.

  “Yeah,” admitted Davey. “They were going to put it in her lunchbox.”

  “How did you find out?”

  “I heard them talking near the cubbies,” said Davey.

  “And you took the mouse out of the lunchbox and put it in Ted’s book?”

  “Nope,” said Davey, smiling. “They never got it into her lunchbox.”

  John smiled and quickly covered his mouth. “How did you get it?”

  “I could smell it in Nicholas’s cubby. It was in a sandwich bag, behind his book. I said I had to go to the bathroom and then I found the mouse. It was covered in little white bugs. I dumped it out in Ted’s book and then squished it closed.”

  “That must have smelled terrible,” said John.

  “It did.” Davey beamed.

  “So how did Paul get in trouble?”

  Davey puffed out his cheeks and sighed. “He was right near Ted when he found the mouse. I told him not to laugh, but he pointed and laughed at Ted. When Mrs. Roberts came, Ted said that Paul did it. They started to take Paul down to the office and that’s when I told her it was me. I didn’t want Paul to get in trouble for what I did.”

  “Your heart was in the right place,” said John.

  “I guess,” said Davey, turning to look out the window.

  “Seriously, Davey, it takes a lot of guts to stand up for someone who is being teased by a bully. It also takes a lot of guts to admit it was you instead of letting your friend get in trouble.”

  “Yeah,” said Davey.

  “You pretty much screwed up the most important part though,” said John.

  Davey turned back to John and looked surprised.

  “It’s not enough to do something for the right reason,” said John. “You also have to do the right thing.”

  “What? Like tell?” asked Davey.

  “Sometimes, yes. But not always,” said John.

  “What then?”

  “Well, when you heard that Ted and Nicholas were going to put the mouse in her lunchbox, you could have gone to them and told them not to do it, that it wasn’t right.”

  “Yeah, then they would have said I was in love with Christina,” said Davey. “They would have told everyone.”

  “Are you?”

  “No,” said Davey. “No way. I don’t even like her.”

  “Then what’s the harm? If you’re worried that someone like Ted will lie, then you’ve got an awful lot more worrying to do. People like Ted lie all the time. He could say you love Christina no matter what.”

  “That’s true,” said Davey. “But just because I tell him not to put the mouse in there doesn’t mean he won’t do it.”

  “I’ll let you in on a little secret,” said John. “More often than not, people like Ted are cowards. They’re afraid of confrontation, and they’re usually pretty insecure about themselves. I bet if he found out that you knew what he was up to, it might discourage him from even trying it.”

  “You think so?” asked Davey.

  “I do,” said John.

  “That would be good if I didn’t have to tell on him,” said Davey. “I hate doing that.”

  “There are some things you should still tell about,” said John. “But I think you’ll know those when you see them.”

  Davey grunted.

  “Have you been sleeping okay?” asked John, risking a change of subject.

  “Okay I guess,” said Davey.

  “Any bad dreams?”

  “Sometimes,” Davey said slowly.

  “Could you tell me on
e?” asked John.

  “I don’t know,” said Davey. “I don’t remember.”

  “I’ll tell you one of mine if you want,” said John.

  Davey nodded.

  “I haven’t had this one in years, but it used to scare the bejesus out of me,” John said as he rubbed his temple. “I would wake up, and it would be a few minutes before sunrise. You know when you can see everything even though the sun isn’t quite up yet?”

  “Yeah,” whispered Davey.

  “I’d be about to get up, but then for some reason I would look across the room before I would swing my feet off the bed. In my old room there was a heating vent a couple of feet to the left of the door, and just for a second I would see a little face looking out from behind that vent.”

  “Really?” asked Davey.

  “Yeah, well it was a dream, but you couldn’t have convinced me of that at the time. That little baby was scary. It would back away just when I saw it. Sometimes I would try to scream, but nothing would come out.”

  “Then what happened?” asked Davey.

  “Most of the time that would be it,” said John. “I’d wake up and I would be sweating all over, but by then the baby didn’t seem as scary. But sometimes the dream would keep going, and I would be walking through the house and everywhere there was a vent, that baby would be looking out at me. I just knew it was waiting for me to stop looking so it could get out and come after me. It was just a baby, but I knew it could hurt me.”

  “But you stopped having that dream?” asked Davey. His eyes had grown wide.

  “Yeah, eventually,” said John. “I learned about lucid dreaming. Have you ever heard of that?”

  Davey shook his head slowly.

  “I’m not surprised. Nobody talks about it much anymore,” said John.

  “What is it?” whispered Davey.

  John took a sip of his water and coughed into his hand. “Tell me about your dream and then I’ll tell you about lucid dreaming. My throat is a little scratchy.”

  “Well,” Davey paused. He concentrated hard for a second and then his face softened, from his brow then down to his chin, as he dropped into a trance. “Most of my dreams are about the giant man.”

  John held very still; he knew not to interrupt.

  “I used to think that I created him, but that was wrong,” said Davey. He spoke low, just above a whisper, and at a measured pace. “I thought that he was like the sideways-head thing, but he’s not. He’s been around almost forever, but he’s been asleep.”

  John almost prompted, but then Davey continued—“Something has been waking him up, and he smells me. He’ll come to find me some day, and he can’t be stopped.”

  John waited for several moments, but decided it was important to get as much information as possible before their hour was up. “What do you know about him?” asked John.

  “He’s big,” said Davey. His eyes looked beyond the walls of John’s office—wide, but focused on nothing. “He’s bigger than anyone you’ve ever seen, and he can kill with a single swing of his hand. He hunts people like me—people who are sick, or … flawed,” said Davey. He swallowed a hard knot before continuing. “He started by eating his entire family. He ate their brains, and lungs, and muscles until he took their strength and smarts.”

  John wished he had the capability to record Davey’s monologue. He was certain that nobody would believe that this nine-year-old had dropped into a self-hypnotic trance to talk about a cannibal monster who stalked his dreams.

  “Why does he hunt you?” asked John.

  “He has to,” said Davey. “His family was poisoned, so they killed themselves. Now he’s a wandering spirit.”

  “But why you?”

  “Because I have the disease, too. When I grow up, I’ll spread it,” said Davey.

  “What disease?”

  “Don’t know,” said Davey. “But he can smell it. When the power came and woke him up, his eyes opened in the dark, and he could smell me from miles and miles away.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “He rests during the day,” said Davey. “He’s underground somewhere, where it’s wet and smelly. But he stirs.”

  “I thought he was coming for you?”

  “He wants to. He can smell me.”

  “Where is he?” asked John.

  Davey’s brow knit with concentration—“I don’t know,” he said. “I can’t see that.”

  “You said he has been around forever,” John consulted his notes, “where did he come from?”

  “He used to be a normal boy. His people were the people of the valley with squash and corn. They were from the man who created himself. Then he ate his family,” Davey said. “Now he eats bats and mice. He has to replace his body a little bit at a time…” Davey slowed as he trailed off.

  “You said you used to think you created him,” said John. “Why did you think that?”

  “Because he was born in the Stage of Possibilities. I thought he was from my dream, because maybe I stayed up too late and imagined him into possibility,” said Davey. “But he moved into the Stage of the Hunger long before I was born. Now he’s coming into the Stage of the Hunt.”

  “Can you tell me what he looks like?” asked John.

  “Tsi-noo,” said Davey.

  “Pardon?” asked John.

  “Odzihozo, Tsi-noo,” Davey said in a low, guttural tone. “Tsi-noo,” he repeated again. The boy squeezed his eyes shut and thrashed his head, sending out hot tears in small arcs.

  “What does that mean?” asked John. “Can you tell me what it means?”

  Davey’s eyes flew open and he clamped his jaw shut. He wiped his eyes with the back of his arm arm turned his attention to the doctor. “What?” he asked.

  “Can you tell me what Tsi-Noo means?” John asked.

  “I don’t know,” said Davey, shrugging his shoulders and shaking his head.

  “You were saying Tsi-noo,” said John.

  Davey looked around, confused. “I don’t know,” he said.

  John’s clock dinged twice, and Davey pushed away from the leather chair.

  “Can you do me a favor for next time?” asked John.

  “Okay,” said Davey.

  “When you wake up in the morning, can you write whatever you can remember from your dreams?”

  Davey’s face dropped into a frown. “Do I have to?”

  “I would appreciate it,” said John. “I’ll tell you about lucid dreaming next time you come in.”

  “Okay,” Davey shrugged again, uninterested.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Mike

  MIKE PULLED INTO THE PARKING LOT of the medical center and flipped his visor down to check his hair. The call from his old friend took him by surprise, and he drove for twenty-five minutes before realizing he hadn’t showered or shaved in days. Instead of turning around to go home and clean up, he stopped at a convenience store and picked up a travel-sized stick of deodorant and tube of toothpaste. After a bum-shower in the bathroom, he got back on the road and arrived at the office just five minutes after eleven o’clock.

  Greasy, but presentable, he thought.

  Mike climbed out of the car and walked up to the building. He squinted against the bright sun, and took a deep breath of the fragrant apple blossoms. Spring had always been Mike’s favorite time of year, but this spring had been ruined by his legal troubles. He slumped as he exhaled, and made his way up the steps.

  “I’m here for Ken Stuart,” he told the receptionist.

  “Is Dr. Stuart expecting you?” she asked, flipping open the doctor’s calendar.

  “Dr. Markey,” said Mike, reaching to straighten his tie and then realizing he wore a sweatshirt. “Eleven o’clock consult.”

  “He’s running a bit behind,” said the receptionist. “Would you care to take a seat?”

  “If you could show me to his office?” said Mike. “I’ll wait there.”

  “Well,” she said. “He didn’t leave me any…” she tr
ailed off.

  “Mike!” said Dr. Stuart, emerging from the hall behind the desk.

  “Hey Ken,” said Mike.

  “Come on around,” he waved Mike towards the door. “Nothing until after lunch, right Jules?”

  The receptionist nodded.

  “Great,” said Ken. “Emergencies only, then. We’ve got a tough one to figure out.”

  “Certainly,” said Jules.

  * * * * *

  KEN PULLED UP TWO CHAIRS to his desk and spread out test results. On the screen of his computer, more results were arrayed. Mike studied silently for twenty minutes before asking his first question.

  “How come you haven’t sent these out for a consultation?” asked Mike.

  “I did,” said Ken. “Sent them to your firm, and asked for you specifically. That’s when I found out you were on hiatus.”

  “That’s a nice way for them to put it,” said Mike, smirking. “More like shit-canned without pay until they could figure out what to do with me.”

  “What happened?” asked Ken.

  “Bad stuff with a side thing I was doing,” said Mike. “Nothing to do with my work, but they’re afraid I’ll get convicted of something and they don’t want any impropriety scandal. So what was their conclusion about the results?”

  “How about you tell me what you think first?” asked Ken.

  “Well,” Mike said rubbing his temple. “It’s nothing that has been classified, I can tell you that. It’s great you’ve got samples from the mom and dad, but why only sperm from dad?”

  “He’s dead,” said Ken. “Had a vasectomy before he kicked, so they banked some.”

  “And what’s this with mom?” Mike pointed at an anomaly on Melanie’s results.

  “Uh, don’t know. Probably got contaminated. I’m going to have her retested,” said Ken. “Do you want to see some of the casework?”

  “In a second,” said Mike. “Not to be crass, but this is my favorite part.”

  “Okay,” said Ken.

  “I’m going to say…” Mike tapped a page of results with his finger and hummed a little. “Clumsy.”

  “Wow,” said Ken. “That’s amazing. How did you know?”

  “It’s a gift,” Mike smiled. “No, seriously, none of these results show any of the markers I would expect. So he clearly isn’t dying of cancer. Plus, you don’t have any signs of delayed development here. If anything, I’d say he’s an early bloomer.”