The Hunting Tree

by Ike Hamill

  Please enjoy this excerpt from “Blood Ghost - The Hunting Tree, Book II”

  Available now on Amazon.com

  BLOOD GHOST — CHAPTER ONE

  David

  The boy tried to make himself comfortable on the couch. It didn’t feel right against his skin. It made his shirt bunch up around his shoulders. It made his neck itch. It made his arms feel cold.

  “Davey,” the doctor, Dr. John Tooley, said, “it’s been a long time.”

  “Call me David,” the boy said.

  “Absolutely, David,” the doctor said. “And if you remember, I prefer my patients call me John.”

  “I remember.”

  “Last time you were here, you preferred to be called Davey,” John said. “What’s different?”

  “I chose the less common version of my name so I could see things with a new perspective. Do you know what I mean?”

  “I do,” John said. “I’ve used that technique myself. Why don’t you tell me why you’re here.”

  “Mostly because of my mom,” David said. “I started having nightmares again a few months ago, and she was worried about me. Last time the nightmares got really bad.”

  “Last time meaning three years ago?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And you’re having nightmares again?”

  “Yes—they’re not the same ones though. These have a different set of people in them.”

  David stopped talking. He squirmed on the couch. He moved to put his feet up on the coffee table and then remembered his manners and put them back on the floor. He adjusted the pillow behind his back.

  “I’ve had complaints about the couch,” John said.

  David nodded.

  “Could I have your permission to record our discussion? I’ll only use it to reinforce my memory,” John said. He held up his phone and waved it at David. None of the kids objected to a phone recording. He could hold up a little digital recorder and ninety-nine out of a hundred would clam up. Hold up a smart phone, and the kids all went along no problem.

  “Sure,” David said.

  John wanted to know about the dreams. The last time he interviewed David—then called Davey—his dreams had been fascinating. They were classic nightmares about the unseen menace, but they had such an elaborate backstory. Davey was nine at the time, having the nightmares of a twenty-five year old.

  “Why don’t you tell me about school?”

  “We’re almost done,” David said. “With grade school, I mean. We’ve got a few more weeks left and then it’s summer vacation.”

  “Which do you prefer?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Between school and vacation. Would you rather be in school or be on vacation.”

  David laughed. “Summer, of course.”

  “Are you nervous about going to a different school next year?”

  “No,” David said, “not really. Because of where I live, I’ll be going to school with a lot of different people. Most of the kids at my school will go over to Easton. I’ll take the bus over to the Falls.”

  “And that’s better?”

  “Than what?”

  “Than staying with the same group you went to grade school with?”

  “Yeah, definitely. I’ll get to meet all new kids. It’s always better when you get to hang out with new kids. Like at camp.”

  John set down his coffee mug on the table next to the phone. This little thunk would show up on the audio recording as a spike. Later, when reviewing the session, he’d use this spike to locate this part of the conversation. Taking notes always made kids nervous, but setting down a coffee mug didn’t cause any suspicion at all. At least that was John’s theory. He’d only recently thought of the coffee mug approach.

  “David, are you nervous about being here?”

  “I’m nervous about wasting money. I don’t want to waste my mom’s money. She always says we have enough to get by…” David said. He scratched his head. “So can we talk about the nightmares?”

  “Yes,” John said. “Please do.”

  “There’s this woman, I don’t know her name, who is walking through the desert. She keeps finding things to drink but she won’t, so she keeps getting more and more thirsty.”

  David paused. He rubbed the side of his face.

  “I always wonder why she won’t drink from the little pool she finds. She smells it, and it’s fine. She rubs some on her head, but then she keeps walking. Her mouth is so dry that her tongue is starting to swell up. It drives me crazy.”

  “Is that what makes it scary?”

  “No. The thing inside her makes it scary. She’s got this other thing living inside her skin, like in the places between her veins, and muscles, and organs. That thing living inside her needs to eat, and it only wants to eat people. That’s what makes the dreams scary. It’s a blood ghost.”

  David sat up straight on the couch and moved the pillow again.

  John waited to see what else he would say.

  “She doesn’t want to. She tries to fight the thing. Maybe that’s why she won’t drink. She knows that if she drinks, then the thing inside her will get the water too. It doesn’t matter though. When the thing finds someone to feed on, it gets all the water it needs by sucking it out of them.”

  David hugged himself and rubbed his hands up and down his arms. He was comforting himself from the memory.

  “What do you think it means?” David asked.

  “That’s hard to say,” John said. “What does she remind you of? Does she remind you of a particular person, or a character from a movie?”

  “I don’t know. She acts like a vampire. That’s just the thing inside her though. She’s not evil or anything. She doesn’t want to eat people. Actually, I’ve never seen her kill anyone, she just drinks from them. It’s like if you picked all the apples off a tree, but you didn’t cut it down, you know?”

  “Yes. What’s her name?” John asked.

  “I don’t know. She hasn’t told me.”

  “We need something to call her. What should we call her?”

  “I don’t know,” David said.

  “Any name will do. Just pick on.”

  “She’s in nightmares, so let’s call her Mare. Like a girl horse.”

  “And what do we call the thing inside her? What do we call the thing that only wants to eat people?”

  “The blood ghost? I don’t know,” David said. He seemed to shrink a little from the question.

  “Do you already have a name for it?”

  “Kinda.”

  “What do you call it?” John asked.

  “Davey.”

  BLOOD GHOST — CHAPTER TWO

  DonCo

  The young man froze. He stood with his foot hovering a few inches over the pavement and peered into the darkness. Something was watching him—he was sure of it. Could be a dog or coyote. Hell, it could even be a bear. He had found bear tracks in the woods across the road before. Or it could be something more strange, more exotic, more deadly. It wouldn’t be the first time.

  He lowered the garbage bag to the driveway and prepared to run. Better safe than sorry. He could always come back in the morning to put the bag inside the trash can. What stopped him was laziness. There’s a particular brand of laziness that infects young men, and when they’re in their early twenties it’s especially potent. He imagined himself waking early to attend to the trash bag and imagined the trash strewn all over the road. He imagined himself bleary eyed and bending a thousand times to pick up the garbage after it had been torn apart by the raccoons.

  Ignoring self-preservation and ignoring the sounds he’d heard from the woods, Don grabbed the garbage bag and resumed his march down the long driveway to the street.

  When he lifted the lid to the can, he heard footsteps.

  Before sunset, Don had rolled the can out to the street. And, magically, his mom had managed to fill another garbage bag after dark. When Don was home from grad school, one of his jobs was to take t
he trash out to the street. Don’s family didn’t know about his fear of the woods at night. They didn’t know about the sounds that would wake him and leave him wide awake to stare out the window until dawn. They didn’t know about what he’d seen, or thought he’d seen out in the shifting shadows.

  Don put the new bag in the can.

  Footstep.

  Don closed the lid.

  Footstep.

  Don turned just as the hulking shape burst from the trees and ran at him. He had time to get his hands up, but the thing hit him low and drove him backwards. Don screamed as he landed on his back in the sand at the side of the road.

  “Jesus, DonCo, you pussy!” Kyle said, sitting on Don’s chest. “You always yell like a girl?”

  “Get off me, douche,” Don said. He rolled to the side and pushed Kyle away.

  Kyle was laughing and snorting as he picked himself up. Kyle offered Don a hand and pulled him to his feet. Don could barely see the offered hand in the starlight.

  “I told you that too much college would make you soft,” Kyle said.

  “Get bent,” Don said. “Damn, there’s sand all over me now.”

  Back when such a term seemed to mean something, Kyle had been Don’s “best friend.” They’d grown up as neighbors on a rural road where houses only came a dozen or two per mile. Kyle was eleven months younger than Don so they hadn’t always attended the same schools, but they’d been inseparable until Don went off to college.

  “Turn around, I’ll dust you off,” Kyle said. “Priss,” he said under his breath as he beat the sand off Don’s shirt. “When did you get back?”

  “Last weekend,” Don said.

  For the first few years of college, they’d kept in contact. Don went to school down south and Kyle attended a local school, but for the most part their vacations lined up. They went to the movies together, double dated, and even got summer work at the same place. Then, Kyle graduated. Kyle got an associate degree and took a job while Don completed a four-year program and started his graduate work. That’s how the two drifted apart. They weren’t on the same path anymore. They weren’t at the same stage. Kyle had moved on and was trying to move up. Don was still learning and hoping. At least he had been.

  “You should have called,” Kyle said, smacking Don’s shoulder. “We got roasted down at the Fluke last weekend. Beth was there. She was fuh-ka-dupt.” That’s how he said “fucked up”—in three equal syllables. He’d done it since he was thirteen.

  “I had a thing with my family,” Don said, hooking a thumb over his shoulder. “Jesus, it’s dark out here. How’d you even see me?”

  “I got the night eyes, remember?”

  “I guessed,” Don said. He was amazed at how quickly he fell into the same old expressions with Kyle. “I guessed” was their shorthand for “I guess to fuck,” as in “I guess to fuck you have the night eyes.” Whatever that meant. Kyle’s parents had punished the boys whenever they’d heard the f-word. Between cleaning dishes, pulling weeds, or washing the dog, the boys learned to disguise their profanity.

  “I’m going back out to the Fluke on Thursday. You want me to pick you up?” Kyle asked.

  “No, that’s okay.”

  “Youth is wasted on the young, my friend. You’re a living, breathing example of the expression.”

  “I just don’t have any money to spare. I don’t have a job yet, and I’m trying to save up.”

  “You’ve got all summer to save.”

  “Yeah,” Don said. He had at least the summer, but he didn’t divulge that part.

  “Come out on Thursday. It’s on me this time. I’ve got all that crazy old-people cash.”

  “I don’t know,” Don said. “I might have an interview on Friday and then if I get a callback on Monday they could have a drug test.”

  “You just tell them you need a few days to think about it. You’ll be ready for a piss test in seven days. All you have to do is drink cranberry juice.”

  “First, I don’t think that works. Second, they give you an appointment at the drug testing lab when they extend the offer. You can’t take any time between.”

  “That sucks. You can still drink though. They can’t stop you from that.”

  “Yeah, but the interview is early on Friday,” Don said. This theoretical interview that he hoped to set up for Friday could be early. It might not turn out to be a lie.

  “Fine, but you’re definitely coming out to the movies on Saturday night.”

  “It’s first Saturday,” Don said. The first Saturday of the month was always family game night, and Don hadn’t attended since January.

  “That ends by nine. We’re going to the ten-fifteen show.”

  Don’s excuse train had blown its whistle at the final stop. He disembarked.

  “Yeah, okay. Pick me up at nine-thirty,” Don said.

  “Nice. I’ll make Manda drive though, ’cuz I’ll be fuh-ka-dupt.”

  “Stay classy, K.”

  Kyle laughed.

  “Where’s Barney?” Don asked.

  “Oh, Barney’s back at the house, sleeping it off. He hit a porky pine this afternoon and the vet doped him up to pull the quills.”

  “A porcupine? In the afternoon?”

  “I know, right? Maybe it was sick or something. I’ve seen all kinds of night animals around in the day though. I saw two racoons cross the road at noon last weekend,” Kyle said.

  “Weird.”

  “All right, man, I’ll see you Saturday. Good luck with your interview on Friday. And see if you can make it back down your driveway in one piece. You collapsed like a house of cards when I hit you.”

  “You only outweigh me by eighty pounds,” Don said, laughing.

  “Pure muscle, baby.”

  “See ya,” Don waved to the darkness. Kyle disappeared into the black, but he could still hear his footfalls, crunching down the sandy shoulder of the road.

  # # # # #

  Don sat in the uncomfortable chair and tried to keep his knees from bouncing. He’d had a large coffee on the way over, and his legs wanted to dance with nervous energy. Back when Crooklin Concrete & Gravel had been in business, you didn’t have to interview. You just walked into the office—a trailer parked next to the rock muncher—and asked for work. The foreman would make you sign a sheet of paper and then he’d point you to the yard manager. Crooklin’s was where Don and Kyle had spent all of their teenage summers. And at Crooklin’s, you never had to wait in an uncomfortable chair for the woman to come back from the laser printer so she could ask you more questions.

  She turned sideways to squeeze between her desk and the wall. She flipped through the printouts.

  “I’ve got two spots at Bloom Designs,” she said. “All their computers are Apple Macs. You’ve used Pages?”

  “Yes,” Don said. He’d only used a Mac a few times, but when it came to software, he decided to always say yes. He’d already missed a job because he didn’t claim to be an expert at Excel. He wasn’t going to make that mistake again. They could always fire him if he couldn’t perform, he figured.

  “Photoshop?”

  “Yes.”

  “Keynote?”

  “Yes.”

  “Blender?”

  What? What the hell—“Yes.”

  “Good. Would you say you’re an expert in Dangloo?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m sorry. I should have said Danyaloo. Are you an expert in that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. We’ve got a basic skills assessment you need to take. You can wait in the lobby for a few minutes and Tammy will get you set up.”

  “Okay,” Don said.

  The basic skills were way more basic than he expected. His nerves settled as he realized that he’d reached the last page of the test. Nothing more complicated than typing and cutting and pasting. Now, back in the uncomfortable chair, he leaned back and rested his feet flat on the floor.

  “You did very well on your assessment, Don,” Julia said. “
I’m going to send your name over to Bloom right away. They’re looking for someone to start on Monday, so I wouldn’t be surprised if they reach out to you before the end of the day. You’re available on Monday, yes?”

  “Sure. Yes,” Don said. Very well—he’d done very well. He’d be surprised if he hadn’t scored perfectly on the assessment. It was that easy. “Do you know how much they pay?”

  “Yes, of course,” she said. Like she was negotiating in a movie about high-stakes professionals, she wrote the hourly figure down on a slip of paper and slid it over the desk towards Don. It wasn’t enough. It wasn’t even as much as he’d earned during his last summer at Crooklin’s, but everyone said that Bloom gave out plenty of overtime. And Bloom was close-ish to his house. He could take his bike instead of always begging for a ride.

  “Great,” Don said.

  “If you don’t hear from them today, you’ll hear from me on Monday. I’ve got a couple other openings if Bloom doesn’t work out.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Good luck.”

  # # # # #

  Don’s father, Wes, was in the driveway when Don got home on his bicycle. He had the small tractor pulled out and tools spread all around on the asphalt. Don rolled to a stop. Wes set down his wrench and wiped his forehead.

  “You ride your bike all the way from town?” his father asked.

  “Yeah. I had an interview.”

  “Temp?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s not too late. You could always come work for me,” his father said.

  Wes Covington was loyal, fair, and principled.

  Don knew that his father could give him a good job and his dad probably wouldn’t even fire him when he learned Don’s plans. But Don couldn’t stand the thought of going to work every day under his father’s disappointed gaze.

  “Thanks, Dad.”

  “I know, you want to do your own thing. I understood when you worked construction all those summers. You got a great tan and you were tone and strong when you went back to school. I’ll be damned if I understand why you’d want to be an office temp for the summer. What’s the allure?”

  “Something different?”

  “I’ll say.”