The Hunting Tree Trilogy

by Ike Hamill

  “That’s great,” said Mike. “We’ve certainly had our share of disbelievers.”

  “I’m a straight shooter,” said Bruce, “and people know it. They’ll believe this when I tell them about it. I just hope you’re ready for what that means.”

  “How do you mean?” asked Mike.

  “Shit,” said Bruce, waving his hand, “if I print a story about a stray dog we have fifty people ready to give it a home before lunch. You better know that they’re going to latch onto this story and come looking for you. People will be all over you to talk to their dead relatives, contact Jesus, find Elvis, you name it.

  # # #

  AFTER DROPPING KATIE BACK at her car, Gary and Mike went for coffee.

  “So why is it so important you get people to believe in what we’re doing?” asked Gary.

  “What, the press?”

  “Yeah, and that guy Bob,” said Gary. “You were really pissed.”

  “I need credibility,” said Mike. “I’ve got my whole life wrapped up in this stuff. I used all my savings putting together that van and all the equipment.”

  “Really?” asked Gary. “What about your day job? I thought you were a doctor.”

  “I’ve got a Ph.D. but I’m basically just a lab guy,” said Mike, taking another sip from his paper cup. “Glorified technician. I’d be doing this full time if I could land some funding. I can’t get anyone to really believe in what I want to do. I’m just lucky that you and Katie are volunteering your time. I don’t know what I’d do without you guys.”

  “It’s the most interesting shit I’ve ever seen,” said Gary. “I love doing this stuff.”

  They sat in silence for a while and regarded the customers coming and going from the counter.

  “So have you thought of any ways to make money doing this?” asked Gary.

  “Well, I don’t have a formal plan or anything,” said Mike. “I guess I always figured I would put together some solid evidence and publish my research. Once I got over the credibility hurdle, I’d probably be able to make some good money with a lecture tour or maybe even book.”

  “Huh,” said Gary. “What about like selling the footage to a TV show or something? We could all be famous—maybe get endorsements or whatever.”

  “No, I wouldn’t want to commercialize the science,” said Mike. Gary looked down at his coffee and frowned. Mike continued—“I’m just going to keep everything modest. I don’t need much. Just some money and maybe a little fame.”

  “Ready to go?” Gary asked, clipping the end of Mike’s sentence.

  “Oh, sure,” said Mike. “I thought you wanted to finish your doughnut, but yeah, that’s fine.”

  # # #

  “SO WHAT DID YOU THINK? Was it accurate?” Bruce asked over the phone.

  “You did a great job, Bruce,” answered Mike. “You got all the terminology correct; the sequence of events was perfect. Really great job.”

  “Excellent,” said Bruce. “That’s what I do.”

  “Your prediction didn’t come true though,” said Mike.

  “Which one?”

  “You seemed to think we’d be inundated with work,” said Mike. “It’s been two weeks, and I’ve only gotten a couple of phone calls.”

  “Anything good? Should I come along?” asked Bruce.

  “No, nothing even remotely good,” said Mike. “We got one email from a woman who said that her dead dog kept scratching at the door to come in a night. We went over there and figured out that she had mice.”

  Bruce laughed. “Haunted mice?”

  “Yeah, probably,” said Mike. “We had another guy who claims he’s getting abducted by aliens. Strangely enough, he only gets abducted after he’s been out all night drinking, and then he wakes up safe and sound back at home but his car is still at the bar.”

  “Those sound like helpful aliens,” said Bruce.

  “Yeah, turns out the bartender takes him home,” said Mike. “The guy won’t believe him though.”

  “You know, I could call in Leslie Buckmann,” offered Bruce.

  “Who’s that?”

  “Channel Nine’s Leslie Buckmann? Watch TV much?”

  “Not really,” Mike admitted.

  “She’s the weekend news anchor over there. On Thursdays he does a piece for the six o’clock. You’d have to film it the night before, but she might go for that,” explained Bruce. “Why don’t I give her a call. I think people might be even more engaged if they saw some ordinary person with a ghost in their house.”

  “That means I have to get a lead on a real person,” said Mike.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll talk to my subscriber services. They’ve probably gotten at least one misplaced phone call I can send your way.”

  “That’s great, Bruce. Thank you,” said Mike.

  “No problem,” said Bruce. “You guys satisfied one of my deepest curiosities, and I got to see my Grandma again. I owe you one. Plus, I’ve got my reputation to think of. The day one of my articles doesn’t generate unwanted attention is the day I need to start thinking about hanging up my keyboard. We’ll get you overrun with haunted mice before you know it.”

  “Thanks again,” said Mike.

  “I’ll be in touch,” said Bruce.

  Mike heard the phone click as Bruce hung up.

  # # #

  BRUCE’S PREDICTION FINALLY CAME TRUE. Mike and his team received a list of phone numbers of readers who had hastily dialed the first number they had seen in the paper: subscriber services. Mike, Gary, and Katie divided the list and interviewed the potential witnesses over the phone. When they met again, they had culled the list to the top ten.

  “I still put the Butler case in front of Meyers,” said Mike.

  “That’s only because you didn’t talk to Meyers,” Katie defended. “He’s got a really compelling tone. He sounded much more credible than anyone else I talked to.”

  “Yeah, but it’s a baby,” said Gary taking Mike’s side. “I think the next logical step we need to take is to make contact. How are we supposed to make contact with a baby? I’d rather do an adult apparition. There’s at least some chance of successful contact that way.”

  “You’re jumping to a conclusion though,” said Katie. She took another sip of her soda and shook her head. “This thing is intelligent. It locked him out of the house after moving the phone out of the house and somehow getting it to ring. It may be manifesting as a baby, but it’s more mature than that.”

  “That’s the other thing though,” said Mike, lowering his voice. “That’s pretty freaking creepy, don’t you think? Didn’t you say it laughed at the guy?”

  “Yeah,” Katie admitted. “When he got outside and picked up the phone it was the baby laughing and then the line went dead. He has caller ID and it just said thirty-four on it.”

  “No, wait,” said Gary, shaking his head. “It didn’t say thirty-four. It said, ‘Three, four.’ I bet it’s from that movie, Nightmare on Elm Street. They have a rhyme at the beginning that says ‘One, Two, Freddy’s coming for you. Three, four, better lock your door.’”

  They sat silent for a second before Mike spoke—“Come on, that’s a stretch.”

  “I know,” Gary said, smiling, “but you had chills for just a second, admit it.”

  Mike laughed. “Yeah.”

  “Fine,” Katie said, disgusted. “So you guys are afraid of babies and joking about it. That spirit could be tortured, just trying to find some help in getting out of limbo, and you’re going to pick the less believable case because the baby is ‘pretty freaking creepy.’”

  “Okay, you’ve got a point,” said Mike. “I admit, I’m a little jumpy. We’ve had some difficult cases lately.”

  “The grandma was okay,” injected Gary.

  “She wasn’t his grandma,” said Mike. “But still, I am a little gun shy and perhaps I was leaning towards the case that had a less active entity.”

  “We can go talk to him,” said Katie. “He’s just over in Saco. Probab
ly less than twenty minutes from here.”

  “You know what? That’s a great idea,” said Mike. “We’ll go over with no equipment or anything and just get a feel for him and the case.”

  Gary leaned out into the aisle and flagged the waiter. “Check?”

  Katie picked up her phone and consulted her list to arrange the meeting.

  As they climbed into Mike’s car, Katie relayed the rest of the information she had collected about the case. “He moved in about ten years ago, but nothing happened for the first eight years,” she announced as she closed her door. Katie sat in the back, but leaned forward to read from her notebook as Mike drove.

  “Hey, can I smoke in here?” asked Gary.

  “No,” said Mike, turning on to the highway.

  “He said that the activity began when he started to remodel the second floor. There used to be just a couple of bedrooms up there at the top of the stairs. Bill decided to add a bathroom and another bedroom by putting a big dormer across the back of the house,” said Katie.

  “You got a ton of information,” said Mike, taking his eyes off the road for a second and raising his eyebrows.

  “He’s very thorough and he talks fast,” she said. “Anyway, he said that as soon as they pulled out the old walls and opened up the back of the attic, the activity started. Started that same night, he said. At first they just heard laughing and stuff being knocked over. After a few weeks stuff started moving around. The workers would ask Bill to stop moving their tools and he kept saying that they must be mistaken, but then the tool would show up in some strange place.”

  “Like what?” asked Mike.

  “He said the worst one was a guy’s framing gun,” she pronounced slowly. “I’m pretty sure that’s what he called it.”

  “That makes sense,” said Gary. “If it was a good one, those things are expensive. It’s a nail gun that you use for framing.” Mike and Katie glanced at Gary, not understanding. “Big nails? For framing walls? Never mind.”

  “So the framing gun was missing and Bill said that the guys were ready to quit because they were pissed that Bill was stealing their stuff,” Katie said. “But just before the foreman stopped the work, the guy who was pulling down the old ceiling yelled that he had found it.”

  “In the ceiling?” asked Mike.

  “Yeah,” she said. “They were totally freaked out. They said it couldn’t have possibly have gotten up there. The ceiling was at least fifty years old and nothing was disturbed. Plus, Bill said that the thing fell out of the ceiling with a thick layer of dust and cobwebs all over it.”

  “Probably just one of the guys playing a joke that got out of hand,” offered Gary. “Those guys are always pulling pranks.”

  “Well then it got really out of hand,” said Katie. “They didn’t finish the job. Bill could barely get them to finish putting the new roof on.”

  “What happened?” asked Mike.

  “One of the guys cut his hand off,” said Katie.

  “What?” Mike whipped around and nearly swerved out of his lane.

  “That’s all I know,” said Katie.

  “Did he talk about anything else?” asked Mike.

  “Nope,” said Katie.

  “It was probably the remodeling,” said Gary. “I’ve heard of lots of people who only start seeing activity in their house after they start a major renovation project.”

  “That’s generally true for intelligent hauntings or earthbounds,” said Mike. “They don’t like changes to the physical space. But the rest sounds more like poltergeist or even demon.”

  “Or something else,” said Gary.

  “Yeah, true. Let’s not jump to conclusions. This could just as easily be another crackpot,” said Mike.

  Katie leaned back and crossed her arms.

  “We just have to be evidence-based,” said Mike, looking in the rearview mirror.

  “He said pull up to the garage,” said Katie. “He’ll meet us there.”

  # # #

  MIKE SHUT OFF HIS VEHICLE and they looked at the rectangles the headlights cast on the garage door. After half-a-minute the headlights shut off and they sat in the darkness for a few seconds before the porch light came on. A man lifted the garage door from the inside and waved them into the garage.

  “Bill?” asked Mike.

  “Yeah, come in,” Bill said as he waved them in.

  “I’m Mike, this is Gary, and you’ve already talked to Katie.”

  Bill closed the door before talking. “It doesn’t seem to hear me in here, so I always come out here if I want to talk about it.”

  “I’m sorry? Talk about what?” asked Mike.

  “Don’t waste my time,” said Bill, as he produced a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket.

  “May I?” Gary already had a cigarette in his mouth and was ready to light it.

  “Of course,” said Bill between pursed lips.

  Bill took a long drag and then resumed—“I already told Katie all the details.” He pointed to the young woman. She nodded.

  “Yes,” said Mike, “but if you don’t mind starting at the beginning. We have to get all the facts so we know where to start investigating.”

  “Yeah, okay,” said Bill. “I don’t want to sound like an asshole, but I’m at the end, you know? No, you probably don’t. Anyway, I really need your help getting rid of this thing.”

  “We should probably start there then, Bill,” said Mike. “We’re just researchers. We’re not in the business of trying to get rid of paranormal activity. If that’s indeed what you’ve got.”

  “That article in the paper said you guys could amplify these things, right?” asked Bill.

  “Yes, that’s true,” said Mike.

  “If you can amplify it then there must be a way to attenuate it,” said Bill. “I’m an electronics guy. Anything you can boost, I can pot.”

  “Well, yeah, but that’s not our field of study,” said Mike.

  “I’ll worry about that. You show me what you got and I’ll figure out the rest,” said Bill.

  “Our technology is still private,” said Mike. “We haven’t published anything yet.”

  “Look,” said Bill. “I’ll make this simple for you—I reverse engineer stuff all the time. You give me an iron-clad non-disclosure agreement and I’ll turn over all my findings at the end. But we are getting way ahead of ourselves here. You need to know what we’re dealing with.”

  “Please,” said Mike. He pulled up a stool from the workbench and pushed it towards Katie before grabbing one for himself.

  The two smokers stood while Bill explained. “This started almost two years ago, when I had the upstairs re-done. The contractor was a good guy until his tools and stuff started going missing. He asked me one time where my kid was, but I didn’t think anything of it. His guys had been hearing stuff, but eventually figured it was just the radio or something.”

  Mike nodded, trying to keep pace with the story.

  “Anyway, one day his good carpenter was cutting some boards for a header. I talked to him later in the hospital. You know, bring him flowers and shit? He was using a chop saw, like that.” He pointed to a compound mitre saw mounted to his bench. “He said he had a good grip on the two by ten when something yanked it. So he’s holding the board like this,” Bill said, demonstrating, “and cutting with the saw with his right hand. Halfway down with the blade, the board was jerked to the right and he just cut his own hand off." Bill nearly hit Gary with his cigarette as he demonstrated.

  “The contractor grabbed the hand and put it in a plastic bag and put the whole thing in my ice bucket,” Bill explained. “They couldn’t put it back on. Said there was too much tissue damage.”

  “And you think this was connected to the activity?” asked Mike.

  “I know it was,” said Bill, taking another deep drag on his cigarette.

  “How’s that?” asked Mike.

  Bill stubbed out his cigarette on his heel and tossed the butt to the trash as he cros
sed to the back of the garage. “Next day,” started Bill. He opened a chest freezer positioned along the back wall. “I found this in my bed.” He pulled a plastic bag from the freezer and tossed it to Mike.

  While the bag was still in the air, Mike began to pull back. Fear of the object grew overwhelming as it approached, but he couldn’t stop himself from catching the bag as it hit his chest. He immediately tossed it on the workbench.

  Mike and Katie just looked at the bag while Bill continued.

  “I tried to bury the thing,” said Bill, “but it was right back in my bed the next day. I took it to the hospital and threw it in the dumpster. I dropped it in the river. I even pitched it into a bonfire. It’s indestructible and it comes back to my bed every night.”

  Mike couldn’t tear his eyes away from the bag. The inside was filled with ice crystals, so he couldn’t see much, but he thought he could make out a dark black splotch near one corner of the bag. Gary leaned between Mike and Katie and picked up the bag, unrolling it to get a better look at the contents.

  Mike opened his mouth and spoke—“How do you know it’s…” he began.

  “It’s got the guy’s wedding ring. On the fourth time it showed up, I pulled the ring to check it. It’s not incontrovertible, but it’s beyond a reasonable doubt—it has his name inscribed.”

  “There’s the ring,” Gary held up the bag and pointed to the ring with his cigarette.

  “It looks like it’s been in that bag for a while,” said Katie. “I thought you said it always comes back to your bed.”

  “Ah, yeah, that’s another reason I think the garage is a special place. It can’t seem to find the hand when it’s here,” said Bill as he lit another cigarette. “The first night I put the hand here, the thing was really pissed. Kept me up all night knocking over lamps and shit.”

  “Why do you stay here at this house?” Katie asked.

  “Where am I going to go?” asked Bill. “I can’t afford to take a huge loss on this place, and the market is shit. Trudy took off last year when this really heavy shit started. So I’ve got alimony, too. It’s either here or I’m homeless.”