by Ike Hamill
“Shingles,” he pointed.
Mike looked that house in the direction of Morris’s finger, but couldn’t decipher what he was supposed to see.
“I don’t get it,” he said, shaking his head. “Some of them look blacker, is that it?”
“They’re darker because they’re not as weathered,” Morris explained. When Mike still didn’t get it, he explained further—“The ones on top were torn off, there, there, and there." He jabbed his finger at three points leading from the gutter to the roof. “Something climbed that roof quickly.”
“You think our guy scaled that roof?”
“He ran over that house like it was porch stairs,” said Morris.
“Wow,” said Mike.
“Yup,” replied Morris.
* * * * *
THE NEXT PHASE of Morris’s investigation involved driving slowly up Route 203, just east of Snow Pond. Mike fidgeted and sat on his hands. He finally lost his struggle with his own silence.
“I don’t get it,” he said. “How are you going to see anything on this road?”
Morris didn’t answer, but continued to scan the grassy ditch on the side of the road.
“This murder was days ago,” said Mike. “They showed helicopters looking for this guy. He’s long gone. Shouldn’t we be looking like forty miles from here or something?”
Morris shot a look at Mike and then pulled off the road where the shoulder widened slightly. Mike thought that Morris had stopped to address him, but was surprised when Morris simply used the wider patch of road to turn the truck around.
The quiet tracker pointed to the right as they drove south. “Swamp,” he said. Then, a few hundred yards later, he pointed again and said, “Lake.”
Pulling over at the driveway to a camp, he pulled out his laminated map. Tracing his finger around contour lines, he pronounced his judgement. “Chased from here,” he pointed, “he would have fled through here.” His finger showed a path skirting between the swamp and the lake. “You say he’s heading towards the Brunswick dam on the Androscoggin.”
“Yeah, that’s definitely where he was heading. All four of these locations point to it, and that’s where we first used the amplifier. I really do think he must be headed towards that spot,” said Mike.
Morris tapped the map. He thought several moments and then decided—“We have to wait for him to make another move.”
“What? Why?” asked Mike. “I thought you were on his trail.”
“We can’t catch up to him. He’s too fast. And he knows he’s being chased, so he’s changing his course randomly. If you’re right about his destination then we could wait there, but I think it’s best if we wait for him to make another move and then try to guess when he’s going to get there.”
Morris stowed his map, pulled out of the driveway, checked the road behind, and pulled back into the southbound lane.
When he got the truck back up to speed, he spoke without turning towards Mike—“Why are you looking for this thing anyway?”
“Pardon?” asked Mike. Morris’s low, quiet voice was absorbed the ample road noise of the old truck.
“Why track this thing?” Morris asked again.
“Oh,” said Mike. He was startled that he didn’t have an answer at hand and had to think carefully. “I think maybe I had a hand in waking it up,” he said eventually.
This time Morris glanced at Mike before speaking. “You believe that?”
“I guess,” said Mike, sitting back in his seat. He had leaned forward to hear Morris’s question. “I guess I also feel guilty about Gary, and he believed there was something interesting to find in those mountains. I want to prove him right; not that it changes anything.”
Morris nodded. Mike felt like they had made a connection with that answer. He hoped to make Morris genuinely interested in the quest to track down the killer before the taciturn man discovered that Mike didn’t have money to pay him for his services.
“What do you think it is?” asked Mike.
When Morris didn’t answer, Mike wondered if Morris had heard the question.
“Still don’t know,” Morris said. Mike leaned back again, figuring the conversation had concluded, but Morris started talking again. “My grandfather used to talk about an Armless Hunter. He would stalk the night and destroy those who wronged him. He had no eyes or arms—just legs and a neck that ended with a thousand teeth. He was a mortal turned supernatural; immortal.”
“I’ve read about that,” said Mike.
Morris drove another mile before continuing. “These victims are too spread apart, and not connected,” he said. “Doesn’t fit the Armless Hunter.”
“Also one per night,” said Mike. “Like he has to kill. He’s compelled to kill each night.”
“And he travels fast, like he’s headed for something,” said Morris.
“The signal,” added Mike.
The conversation died. Mike tried to resuscitate it several times on the remainder of the drive, but Morris remained silent, lost in thought.
CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN
Crooked Tree
THE PREVIOUS FEW NIGHTS had resulted in little progress for Crooked Tree. He spent hours carefully navigating around settlements—the population density increased steadily as he moved east. But his lock on the boy had grown much stronger. Side distractions—local infections—no longer clouded his vision. When he reached out to sense the boy the signal was many times stronger, aided by the proximity and because the infection had spread to more people.
His pursuers hadn’t managed to renew their fix on his position. Crooked Tree’s careful pace competed with his growing unease that the boy’s infection had begun to spread to others.
Crooked Tree sat on the branch of a pine tree atop a tall hill and looked towards a lake in the distance. The lake covered a huge span from north to south and brought a large concentration of houses and people. Further to the north, another lake wasn’t nearly as wide, but he couldn’t see how far stretched. Earlier that evening, he had tried to cross a thin spit of land between the lakes, but the heavy nighttime traffic kept forcing him back into the forest.
He pondered three choices: wait to see if the traffic on the road abated in the deep hours of the night; try his luck south where more people lived; or travel north to skirt both lakes. The boy was so close. He thought that before the next full moon he could locate and remove him, perhaps fulfilling his final duty as a loose spirit roaming the earth. He opted for the cautious approach and headed north—around the lakes—to avoid more contact with gun-wielding police.
The tree shook as Crooked Tree dropped to the ground next to its thick trunk. He started down the hill, moving from shadow to shadow. He had adjusted to this world—he could creep within a dozen yards of a house, stepping over a shaft of light projecting down through a window, and remain undetected. Halfway down the hill, he crossed a narrow private road and toured the outskirts of a well-maintained yard. A half-dressed man paced the living room. Crooked Tree saw him through the windows, walking back and forth. The bare-chested man talked into a phone and paused at the mantle to rearrange his curios.
Crooked Tree sniffed the air and approached the house. He sensed no other people in the house, and no dogs to reveal his trespass. He stopped a few feet from the window, not wanting to reveal himself in the light from the house. As he watched, the man’s shoulders slumped and he spun slowly, speaking low into the phone.
In the quiet night, the man’s conversation was just barely audible through the glass. “…just seems like it’s time. You know?” the man asked his phone. The man stopped in the center of his clean living room and looked up at the ceiling as he listened. Crooked Tree studied him. He wore only pajama bottoms; his bare feet were planted in the soft carpet. His torso sagged and bulged.
Crooked Tree tried to summon some emotion. He thought he should feel anger or even hatred for this soft, solitary denizen of the ruined landscape his family had once called home. At the very least, Crooked Tre
e thought he should feel offended that this man didn’t surround himself with his progeny, fulfilling his mandate to build the largest, strongest clan he could during his years. Crooked Tree’s education on the purpose of life was short and simple. His father had taught him to fight and propagate; anything less was failure. He just didn’t feel enough connection to this man who stood before him to even try to hold him to the same standards.
While he watched, the man neared, step-by-step, until he was only a pace from the window. Crooked Tree shrunk back. The man reached down and retrieved something from the table next to the couch, but continued to look out the window. Concern spread across the man’s face. He held up the device from the table. Crooked Tree recognized it from his stolen memories—this device was a remote control. With that realization, Crooked Tree took a half-step back from the window. The giant had suddenly grown concerned, but remained unsure why.
By stabbing his thumb into the remote, the man triggered his outside lights. The yard lights came on with an thump as relays closed. Light spilled all around Crooked Tree, as if the sun had jumped into the night sky. He turned to flee into the woods, but stopped himself before he could take another step. Beyond the buzz of the lights he recognized that the man in the house hadn’t uttered a word into his phone since he’d turned on the lights. Perhaps he was stunned at the sight of a mammoth, naked, dirty man standing in his yard. Crooked Tree recognized both the danger and the opportunity. He would spend the remaining hours of the night trying to flee to safety if this man managed to call the police.
Crooked Tree pivoted back towards the house, fell forward, and sent a burst of energy through his leg muscles, launching himself towards the window. He crashed through the glass hands-first, with one hand opening and deftly plucking the telephone from the stunned man’s dropping hand. The handset was crushed by Crooked Tree’s right hand as his left hand curled around the back of the man’s neck.
The half-naked man’s phone-talking days ended forever as Crooked Tree snapped his neck—closing his fist around the vertebrae. Still horizontal, Crooked Tree’s momentum carried him fully into the living room where he landed on his latest victim and skidded briefly, bunching up the carpet before coming to rest.
He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, focusing his senses once again to tune to possible threats. Detecting nothing, he retrieved the remote control from the man’s limp hand and studied the buttons. Most didn’t make sense, but he found a large button in the corner that he could identify. He pressed the button and the outside lights shut off instantly.
* * * * *
CROOKED TREE DRAGGED THE BODY deep into the woods before opening the soft man to examine and consume him. It rankled his sensibilities to taste healthy flesh, but he ate defensively. Even with limited understanding of this time, Crooked Tree intuited that this man warranted extra care. He scooped soft dirt from forest floor and fashioned a grave as memories and images from the dead man’s organs leaked into Crooked Tree’s consciousness. Before he finished covering the new corpse with the damp dirt, he knew he had to return to the house. The house contained video surveillance, which the man had doubtlessly triggered with the lights. Crooked Tree didn’t know exactly where to find the device in the house, but he could picture it through the dead man’s eyes.
Walking on the balls of his feet, Crooked Tree gripped the dead man’s boots between his oversized toes. The prints behind him weren’t perfect, but he thought they disguised his giant bare feet. He had found the boots next to the back door where he had also located a broom to clean up the glass from the living room floor. In a cabinet in the basement, he found the video system. He carefully took the components to the woods, where he smashed each piece before burying them far away from their former owner.
Crooked Tree glanced around the living room one more time before shutting off the lights. It nearly matched the residual version in his head, so he turned off the lights and exited through the kitchen door. He tread carefully, balancing on the borrowed boots until he found a patch of rocks where he could remove the shoes and toss them up into a tree. His crime wasn’t perfect. His understanding had caught up enough for him to guess that the police would eventually uncover the details, but he figured it was good enough to buy him time. With any luck, by the time anyone discovered the murder, he would have already dispatched the boy and moved on to the afterlife to join his family.
He finished the night with the fortuitous discovery of an old, forgotten graveyard next to a neglected dirt road. Pressing his shoulder against the edge of a crypt he found enough room to curl up inside with the dust of ancient inhabitants. He drifted off to sleep just as the sun rose on a clean, empty house with a broken window, halfway up the hill.
CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT
Davey
“THANKS AGAIN FOR THE RIDE,” said Davey.
“No problem Davey,” said Coach Peterson. “You run up to the building there. I told your mom I would see you from door to door.”
“No problem, Coach P.,” said Davey.
He smiled as he climbed out of the passenger seat of the coach’s car. The coach’s own son sat in the back seat and made no effort to address Davey’s departure. Davey returned the favor. As soon as he turned towards the Center, Davey frowned. The concrete two-story building looked cold and musty, like a sewer pipe. Mindful of the coach’s time he jogged towards the door, with the bag of his baseball clothes under his arm.
A few yards from the door he turned to wave goodbye to the coach, but his instructor was already pulling away from the curb, and saying something between the seats to his young son.
Davey’s frown returned, full strength. All the kids his age knew to stay away from the Career Center, it was the domain of older kids. Kids that hung around its treeless campus were more like Paul’s brother Kris, but meaner. The credible stories included lunch thrown on the roof, and shoes stolen and tossed over the power lines.
He looked up at the big metal door and considered his options before grabbing the handle. Since the coach had left, he supposed he could sneak away and return when it was time for his mom to pick him up. He didn’t trust his mom’s timing though—should could easily decide to pick him up early and ruin his plan.
An image of Paul popped into his head. In his imagination, Paul would likely be sitting at home, killing time playing video games and eating cookies.
“Makes a better door than a window,” a voice spoke from behind Davey.
He turned to see the kind eyes of a woman who looked somewhat like his grandmother. Davey smiled back at her.
“I was just…” he began.
“Never mind,” she prodded, “just open the door for a lady. You know that much, don’t you?”
A cold edge wore through the edges of her command. Davey reacted instantly. After holding the door open for her, he felt helpless; he had to follow her in. Before continuing down the hall, she pointed Davey to a table at the far end of the air-conditioned lobby.
“First day?” asked the girl at the table.
“Yes,” said Davey.
“Name?”
With her questions answered, Davey was given a slip of paper and pointed down the hall where he would take a left, and find his room on the right.
Worse than school, he thought as he listened to his shoes squeak on the polished-tile.
He found his room and slung his bag over his shoulder so he could turn the big knob with both hands. On the other side of the door, the long room was nearly empty. A few feet away a woman sat with her feet atop a desk and a book propped open on her thighs.
“Name?” she asked.
Instead of replying, Davey strode forward and handed her the paper from the lobby-girl.
“You’re not supposed to bring your bag in here,” she said. “Didn’t you get a locker?”
“Locker?” he asked.
“Tomorrow,” she said slowly, “get a locker from Melissa.”
“Okay,” said Davey, reaching over and scratching his arm.
“Just put your bag there for today,” she pointed to the corner near the door.
“It’s just my baseball clothes,” he said.
She continued to hold her arm out, aimed at the corner, until he dropped his bag there and returned.
“Everyone’s out in the courtyard until one,” she said. “Then Mr. Nguyen comes back for afternoon stuff.”
Davey stood nervously, awaiting clearer instructions, but the reclining woman had already returned to her book.
“Do you have to go to the bathroom?” she asked.
“No,” said Davey.
“Then you can go to the courtyard.” She nodded towards the back of the room.
Davey finally saw what she meant—near the far corner of the long room, a set of double-doors blended into the windowed wall. He crossed the big, empty room and pushed the bar to let himself out. Compared to the air-conditioning of the building, the heat was instantly oppressive. Davey squinted as he descended the few stairs to the dry, dirt yard.
Surrounded by the two-story Center, the courtyard felt like a mockery of outdoors. Davey had spent his morning doing drills in catcher’s camp—an activity that he had previously considered to be the antithesis of play activity—but compared to this place, it had been a lush paradise. Davey shaded his eyes with a hand just in time to spot a kickball hurtling towards his face.
He ducked, reacting without thinking. The ball grazed the top of his hair, and smacked hard into the glass that made the top half of the door.
The woman from the desk appeared at the door almost instantly. She rapped her knuckles on the pane several times and then pointed while glaring. Davey followed her finger and saw an older boy with long blond hair sitting on the back of a bench. The blond boy ignored the woman and stared at Davey.
Davey turned left and headed toward the other end of the courtyard, where some younger kids played in the shadow of the building. He shuffled towards them trying to see if he recognized any of their faces before he committed to joining their number. Nobody seemed familiar, and the biggest boy looked to be a full year younger than Davey. He sat near the outskirts of their group and listened to two boys playing with small action figures.