The Hunting Tree

by Ike Hamill

  In the distance, Kyle laughed again and Don felt a chill run through his veins. The laugh wasn’t natural. It didn’t sound right in the woods at night. It sounded empty.

  Don started jogging.

  As it turned out he didn’t need to find the rock. He found Kyle by the light of Kyle’s phone. His friend was holding it at arm’s length and the display was lighting up the whole area. Don came up behind Kyle.

  “What are you laughing at?” Don asked.

  Kyle jumped and turned.

  “What?”

  “I said what are you laughing at?” Don asked again. He turned his head left and right, pointing his light into the woods. For a second he was convinced that something was moving.

  “Laughing?”

  “I heard you laughing,” Don said. He bent over to catch his breath.

  “No, I was taking a video of the rock. See?” Kyle pointed toward Raven Rock. It was a big boulder—taller than either of the young men—sitting between two pine trees. When they were kids, they’d set up a fort on top. Now the boards were moss-covered and decayed.

  “What am I looking at?”

  “I don’t know,” Kyle said.

  “Are you okay, man? You seem weird.”

  “Yeah, I’m fine,” Kyle said.

  “Where’s Barney?”

  “He didn’t want to come. I put him on the bed. Plus, I didn’t know if there would be anything out here. I figured maybe a bear or something was scaring all the animals and I didn’t want Barney to get hurt.”

  “But it’s okay if you get hurt.”

  “I could take a bear.”

  “Sure you could,” Don said. “Why were you taking a video of the rock? Did you see something?”

  “Yeah. I don’t know. Maybe not,” he said.

  “That’s pretty much every possible answer,” Don said. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”

  “But I’m not done with my investigation,” Kyle said.

  He didn’t sound like a twenty-one-year old. He sounded like a little kid. Don grabbed Kyle’s elbow and tugged him towards the path.

  “Let’s go check on Barney,” Don said.

  “Okay,” Kyle said. He rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand and then lowered his head. He followed Don.

  They walked through the woods without speaking. Don took care to walk as quietly as possible, but Kyle shuffled behind him, crashing through the woods. Something was walking near them—Don could swear he heard footsteps. He stopped and put a hand back to stop Kyle. The noise stopped too.

  “Did you hear something?” Don whispered to Kyle.

  Kyle shook his head. His lips flapped as his head shook.

  “Are you okay? Seriously?”

  Kyle nodded.

  Don didn’t like the vacant look on Kyle’s face. He picked up his pace and made sure that Kyle was keeping up. He exhaled with relief when they reached Kyle’s back yard and he could see the deck and the clock on the microwave through Kyle’s kitchen window.

  Don turned. Kyle wasn’t behind him anymore.

  “Kyle! Kyle!” Don whispered into the woods. He backtracked a few paces and saw his friend on his hands and knees. He put his hand on Kyle’s shoulder and his friend turned and snarled. He actually snarled—like a feral cat or something.

  “Kyle?”

  “What?”

  “Let’s go.”

  “Okay,” Kyle said. He was back to the vacant look. He allowed Don to help him up and lead him back to the house.

  Don opened the door to a dark and quiet house.

  “Where are your parents?”

  “They’re down at my grandparent’s house for the weekend,” Kyle said. He looked more alert, but he was still moving pretty slow. Don took him to his room. He flipped on the light and saw Barney sprawled out on the bed.

  “Hey, buddy,” Don said. He sat on the bed next to the dog and stroked his head as the dog woke up. Barney looked at him and closed his eyes again.

  “You see? He’s not feeling good.”

  “Did you take him to the vet?”

  “Mom did. They gave him some pills to help his appetite, but they didn’t have any other ideas. He’s supposed to have an ultrasound on Monday if he’s still not feeling good.”

  Kyle approached the bed and Barney let out a little whine. He pushed back with his front feet and pressed back against the head of the bed. He didn’t take his eyes off of Kyle and his nose twitched as he breathed in quick little pants.

  “What’s wrong with him?” Don asked.

  “I don’t know,” Kyle said. “Maybe he had a bad dream.”

  Don reached over and pet Barney.

  “He’s afraid of you,” Don said. “I bet you smell like whatever is in the woods. I think he’s scared of it.”

  “You think?”

  “What else could it be?”

  “Hey, Barnyard, it’s okay,” Kyle said. “It’s just me.” He sat down on the bed and reached for the dog. Barney let Kyle touch his head, but he kept pressing away, bunching up the bedspread underneath him. Kyle pulled back his hand and Barney slid down to the floor and slinked out of the room.

  “Weird,” Kyle said.

  “He’s getting old,” Don said.

  “Isn’t it strange? You want a beer?”

  “No, that’s okay,” Don said.

  “Christ, DonCo, we’re legal and my folks aren’t even here. It’s my beer, for Frank’s sake.”

  “Yeah, okay,” Don said. He pushed himself onto the bed and propped himself up while Kyle went to the kitchen. His friend returned with a can in each hand. He opened them one-handed, at the same time, splashing foam on his own bed. Kyle laughed and Don smiled as he took the can.

  “When did you start drinking the good stuff?” Don asked.

  Kyle sat down in his recliner and kicked back so the footrest would extend. “You gotta spend your money somehow. I’ve developed a taste for the finer things.”

  “While cleaning out old people’s diapers?” Don asked.

  Kyle’s face turned to stone and Don knew he had insulted him. Don was just about to apologize when an easy grin broke through Kyle’s frown.

  Kyle raised his can towards Don and they toasted.

  “Old Barnyard is in the corner of the kitchen. You remember where he used to get down next to the cabinet when he didn’t want to eat?” Kyle asked.

  “Yeah,” Don said.

  “He was so scared. My dad said he was the runt of the litter and he might be afraid of shit. I thought he was going to starve to death that first month.”

  “He got used to it,” Don said.

  “Oh, don’t I know. I still have to take his food away halfway through or he’ll eat so fast he throws up. He’s slowed down a bit now. I think his jaw hurts him. If you have to open his mouth to give him pills, his jaw pops. Sometimes it won’t even open.”

  “That sucks.”

  “He doesn’t seem to mind,” Kyle said. “I give him his pills in cream cheese now. I’m sure he doesn’t mind that.”

  “What were you saying was strange before? Right before you went to get the beers. I said he’s getting old…”

  “Oh, right. Isn’t it strange that he’s all done with his life and we’re just getting started. It seems like we all kinda began at the same place. We were so young—still in grade school—and he was just a tiny puppy. We were all little kids together. You remember when we tried to teach him baseball? Then we grow up and he grows old. Now he’s almost done. He lived a complete lifetime and we’ve still got all this time left.”

  “Hopefully,” Don said.

  “Yeah, of course. That’s kinda fatalistic of you. Are you hanging out with the emo kids or something?”

  “No, I’m just saying that you can’t take it for granted. You can’t assume how long you’re going to live.”

  “Well obviously,” Kyle said. “I’m just saying—odds are we’re going to live another five of Barney’s lifetimes. He probably won’t even make it to the
end of the year.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “You can’t hide your head in the sand. It’s going to hurt like a bitch, but he will die.”

  Don sipped his beer and tried to think of a good way to change the subject. All he could think about was death—the death of his grandmother, a couple of years before; the death of that deputy sheriff on that night a few years ago.

  “Hey—how’d you do at the Fluke?”

  “I got fuh-ka-dupt. What do you think happens at the Fluke?”

  When they were growing up, they’d dreamed about turning twenty-one and getting to hang out all night playing pool and drinking beer. Every chance they got they would ride their bikes to the gravel parking lot, weaving between the broken bottle glass and listening to the jukebox. To Don, rockabilly music still sounded like freedom and felt like frustration because of that jukebox.

  “But did you see anyone there?”

  “Who, like Beth? Are you trying to ask me if your old girlfriend was there?”

  “I was more asking if the future Ms. Ex-Kyle was there. Did you meet anyone? Are you exclusive with Amanda?”

  “DonCo, if you want to be my girlfriend, just ask.”

  Kyle laughed and Don joined him. They were interrupted by Barney, who pushed open the door and slinked back in. His head and tail were so low that they both seemed to drag on the floor as he walked. He lowered himself to the carpet by Kyle’s recliner.

  “Tell me about your new job,” Kyle said. He took a long drink from his can.

  “Oh, it’s nothing. I start on Monday. I get the impression I’m just going to be making copies and putting numbers into spreadsheets and stuff,” Don said.

  “What does the company do? You’re going to be working at Bloom, right?”

  “Yeah. I don’t know everything they do, but I know that they do industrial process design. I start on Monday.”

  “How does that fit with your statistics stuff?”

  “It doesn’t,” Don said.

  “Shouldn’t you be an intern with a big company by now? I thought you’d be getting some work experience in your field by now so you can make an easy transition once you get your masters or doctorate.”

  “Yeah. A lot of people do that,” Don said. If there was anyone he could trust, it was Kyle, but he didn’t want to talk about his plans. He wasn’t ready to defend them yet.

  “So what are you doing here taking a shitty temp job?”

  Don didn’t intend to tell Kyle anything.

  “I don’t think I’m going back,” Don said. Maybe it was the beer, he thought. Maybe he just needed to get it off his chest.

  “What does that mean? Either you are or you aren’t. What does thinking have to do with it?” Kyle had stolen this logic from one of their old bosses at Crooklin’s. You’d say, “I don’t think I can lift that,” and he’d say the same thing.

  “I’m not going back,” Don said. “You happy?”

  “Are you?”

  “No. That’s why I’m not going back.”

  “Let me get this right—you decide what you want in high school, when most of the guys are just trying to figure out how to get a bra off some girl, or how to get ten minutes alone to jerk off without their mom knocking on the bathroom door. You decide then that you want to get all deep into statistical analysis and variance of whatnot.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And then you rush through undergrad—finish in three years.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Get into the masters program with a full scholarship.”

  “No, I work for that money.”

  “Whatever. It’s not like you have any student loans or anything.”

  “True.”

  “And then you get within a year of finishing, and you decide to pull the plug?”

  “Yup,” Don said.

  “What the hell are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well what the hell happened? What changed your mind?” Kyle asked.

  “I don’t know,” Don said. It was the truth, too. He’d been working towards his goal longer than Kyle had even known. He’d first stumbled into statistics back when his class learned about genetics in middle school, and he’d been hooked. The idea that you could predict the distribution of results without guessing the outcome of any individual result? That was magic to Don, and it was all he wanted to study. The field was so deep—so technical, and well-researched, and documented. It thrilled Don that he could learn it all and then position himself on the cusp of the newest discoveries. It was all he ever wanted. Then, one day, he just didn’t want it anymore. He wasn’t bored with it, or disappointed. He just didn’t want it.

  “Wow. The great Don Covington abandons his future. Your dad is going to shit. Wait, did you tell him yet?”

  “No.”

  “Can I be there? Oh, Jesus, I want to see his face.”

  “Don’t be an asshole.”

  “I don’t mean anything by it. It’s just all those years he told you to be open to different things. He was always trying to get you to do new stuff and look around at different fields. You were like a laser. Now you’re ditching your path? Maybe he’s going to be thrilled. You don’t know.”

  “You remember what he always said?” Don asked.

  “He said a lot of things. Oh, wait, you mean ‘twenty-three or advanced degree’?”

  “Exactly. I can live at home while I’m still twenty-two or if I’m studying for a masters.”

  “So you’ve got two months.”

  “That’s right,” Don said.

  “I bet he didn’t mean it. He was just trying to motivate you.”

  “There’s nothing he hates more than something dropped halfway through. I hated lacrosse, but I signed up so he made me finish out the season.”

  “Yeah, that was brutal,” Kyle said. He shifted in his seat so he could dangle his hand to the floor to pet Barney.

  Don tipped his can and knocked back the rest of his beer. He got up from the bed.

  “I should get going. Don’t say anything to my family about school, okay?”

  “Yeah, of course,” Kyle said. He climbed over the leg of his recliner so he wouldn’t disturb Barney.

  Kyle followed Don down the hall and up the stairs to the kitchen. They negotiated the kitchen without turning on the light. Don stopped at the back door and looked out over the deck, into the night.

  “You should go out the driveway and walk back on the road,” Kyle said. “Or I can give you a ride if you want.”

  “Why?” Don asked. He liked the sound of a ride, but didn’t want to admit it. Kyle already hassled him enough about his fear of the woods.

  “I’m still not sure what’s out there, but something is scaring the animals. Hell, whatever it is even scares old Barney.”

  “Hey—you never showed me that video you took of the rock. What was on it?”

  “I don’t know. Probably nothing. I’ll show you tomorrow when I pick you up.”

  “You’re coming over before, right?”

  “What, for game night?”

  “Yeah,” Don said.

  “That’s your family’s thing. I don’t want to intrude.”

  “Come on. You used to come to every game night.”

  “That was a long time ago,” Kyle said.

  “You come to game night or I’m not going to the movies.”

  Kyle paused and thought about it for a minute. His stuffed his hands down in his pockets.

  “Yeah, okay,” Kyle said.

  “Good,” Don said.

  Don opened the door and stepped out. Kyle’s house was still cool—most of the windows were closed so the air inside hadn’t received the message about the sultry, humid air that had invaded their northern climate. At school, Don loved nights like this. He would turn out the lights in his room, open the windows, and enjoy the embrace of the night air. Here, so close to the woods, the moist air seemed oppressive.

  When he got to the ga
rage, he turned right and headed for the road.

  No cars passed him on the road, and there were no street lights, but it still seemed safer than tromping through the woods. Don walked fast. He had his headlamp strapped on, but he didn’t use it. He let his eyes adjust to the starlight and kept them on the road ahead.

  When he reached the end of his own driveway, he had that feeling again, like he was being watched. For a second he wondered if Kyle had followed him, to play another joke. He didn’t care if it was Kyle, and he didn’t care if Kyle teased him for the rest of his life. Don was done being out here alone. He ran up his long driveway and didn’t stop until he’d closed the basement door behind himself. He stared out into the darkness through the glass and then reached down and locked the door. Even in his bedroom with the windows closed and the blinds drawn, he didn’t feel safe. He couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something in the woods that was waiting for a chance to sneak up on him. It had followed him home from Kyle’s and now it was watching his house and waiting.

  Don turned on his television and put the volume all the way down so he would hear anything creeping around in the woods. He turned away from the window and lay on top of his covers as he watched the flickering light of the TV cast its shadows on the floor. Sometime before dawn, he drifted to sleep.

  BLOOD GHOST — CHAPTER THREE

  Soucoyant (3 years earlier)

  She maneuvered around the rock carefully, so it wouldn’t touch any part of her skin. Every time she had to pick up and move to a new place, it was because of skin. A careless scrape against a tree or a rock and they’d be on her. They’d track her down like a rabbit in the bushes, if she gave them half a chance. She didn’t want to have to move again. She was too old to move again. Her home here in the north was the coldest place she’d ever lived. Snow on the ground for half the damned year, it seemed. It was worth it though. Up here in the north the people were too damned stupid to track her down. Maybe the snow made their brains too cold to work properly. Whatever the reason, she certainly had no intention of moving. So she left her cave very carefully, and didn’t leave any skin behind. Not there, at least.

  Once she got past the rock and made her way out into the night, the old witch practically flew through the forest. She felt fifty years younger, since she’d met the young man who lived in the trailer. New love brought vigor to old bones.