The Tracker

by John Hunt

  ***

  Taylor called the police and told them he had an intruder in his basement and they arrived with lights flashing and hands on the butt of their guns, heads on a swivel as they approached the door. They knocked. Taylor yelled an answer and after much cajoling through the door, Taylor, with reluctance, left his post seated at the basement door to unlock the front door for them. He hobbled on legs still sore from overuse and opened the door for the officers. Like most people, they were taken aback at his sheer size but unlike most people because Taylor suspected them being cops, they probably saw a lot of unusual sights, they hid their distaste and got to business as he explained what happened last night and why he spent it on the floor. Nodding, eyes periodically peering over Taylor’s shoulder to the door, the police officers remained stoic.

  “We’ll take care of it. Please step aside,” said the older of the two.

  Taylor moved so he stood behind the officers. Without a word to each other, the younger one approached the basement door and grasped the knob. With a nod from his partner, he yanked it open. The flashlight of the older one cut a line through the darkness. The officers stepped down and Taylor waited, holding his breath.

  Taylor heard one of them say, “Can’t even get to the bottom,” and then, “Look at all this stuff.”

  They couldn’t proceed further than the bottom of the stairs because it was blocked. The officers returned to the top and the older one flashed his light on the ground, squinting at something.

  Taylor said, “See something?”

  The older one said, “No. Checking to see if there are footprints on the stairs. There aren’t.”

  They cleared the rest of the house, peering into kitchen cupboards and closets as Taylor followed close behind. They walked around the outside of the house, peering at the ground and checking windowsills. They returned to speak to Taylor inside.

  The officer who spoke to him scratched his chin where he was attempting to grow a beard. His breath smelled of cigarette smoke and coffee.

  “There was nothing outside or in the basement. Are you sure you heard what you heard?”

  Taylor said, “I didn’t just hear it. I felt it. Someone pushing on the other side of that door. I could see their hands.”

  The officer looked at his partner, a younger guy who only frowned back.

  “Look, I understand your mom died last week? My dispatcher told us we were here last week and what for.”

  “Yeah. So?”

  “First off, I’m sorry. That’s a sad thing and I’m sorry for your loss.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Second, sometimes, when someone important dies, the mind does weird things in an attempt to process it.”

  “You think I dreamed it? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “Hey, all I’m saying is you told us there are only two ways into the house, the front door and the back door. The only way a person could get into your basement would be to get in here first and then go down there right?”

  “There’s a window…”

  “I’ll get to that in a second. Both the front and back doors were locked when we got here. You had to let us in the front and I checked the back and it was locked. And in the back there is a window to the basement. It is about one foot high by two feet wide? It would have to be a real small person to get in there and they would have to break the window to do it. The window was intact and there were no footprints out back either. So can you explain to me how this person got into your locked home without unlocking a door or breaking a window?”

  “Well, no. But it happened. I know it. I wouldn’t sit on the floor all night for no good reason.”

  “Okay. That’s fine. From my standpoint, there is no physical evidence to support that it did. When we were here last, did one of the officers offer Victim Assistance?”

  “Yeah. I think so.”

  “It might be a good idea to call them. Losing a mom is a big deal and they like to listen if you’re willing to talk.”

  The officers left and Taylor locked the door behind them. After that, Taylor didn’t know what to think. Could he have imagined it? The pounding on the door, the gloves, the door sliding open? That was almost as scary to him, thinking he might have made it up. Taylor dreaded going to sleep that night only he didn’t have to worry. It would be some time before another oddity occurred.

  -7-

  The day-to-day grind…

  Taylor worked as an assistant manager at Indigo. In high school he worked part time at a locally owned book store but as the way with all things commercial, the big guys bullied out the little guys and he needed a new place of employment. Taylor enjoyed his job. Books helped to alleviate his loneliness and from all his years of being a book lover, his knowledge helped customers find what they needed. It paid a reasonable amount (nothing to retire on though) and Taylor didn’t need a lot of income. His mother’s life insurance paid off what little remained of the mortgage and what he earned easily covered the monthly bills and groceries. His work day followed a strict routine devised by him and if for some reason this routine were interrupted, he became anxious. Taylor didn’t like change or surprises. He would show up, review the inventory, order items as required and count the previous evening’s earnings. That would take him to lunch time. In the afternoon he would fill the time behind the till or help with setting up displays. Every day was the same but different.

  After the inexplicable nighttime terror and the police visit, Taylor returned to work mulling over the event wondering if it had been real or a grief-induced delusion. He couldn’t figure out how a large man in a fedora associated with the death of his mother. It wasn’t connected. He never knew a man who wore a fedora and knew his mother had never met one or she would have told him about it. Being a reader, the only idea that made any sense was the brain is a fragile and creative organ capable of many incredulous machinations. Not helpful, but he thought it better than nothing. Taylor wasn’t a head shrink and never pretended to be. Since the incident hadn’t been repeated, he thought it would be best to let it go and get back to his life. It preserved his sanity, to push the memory aside, bury it in the mysterious organ in his skull. So that is what he did.

  He got up, went to work, did his thing, went home, ate, watched TV, read a book in bed and went to sleep. At first, this worked for him because it always had and routine was a comfort wasn’t it? A warm blanket of known expectations. No surprises. He spoke to enough people at work to get his social fill, shared a laugh with a few customers and the younger employees and to him, this normalcy was enough. A month after the night visit, Taylor’s energy levels dropped. He had never been the most energetic person. Unless there was an all-you-can-eat-ribs special, Taylor never hustled anywhere. This was different though. His eyes burned halfway through the day and his body ached with a dull throb telling him to take it easy. He nodded off at the desk he shared with the manager more than once. He woke up with his face on the desk in a circle of drool under his cheek. He plodded through the rest of the day, thinking of his home and his bed. The regular customers asked him if he was feeling well and his co-workers did the same. He told them he was fine, only tired. After the work day, he would go home, cram food into his mouth and crawl into bed exhausted. He would sleep for ten or more hours and it wouldn’t be enough. He craved more. He read up on it, wondering what the hell was going on and learned there were many reasons why a person felt tired all the time. Could be a thyroid problem or a multitude of other medical reasons and Google self-diagnosis created more questions than answers. Some of the stuff he read suggested the most dire of consequences and like most thoughts he didn’t like, Taylor buried them. He scheduled a doctor’s appointment, had a check up and blood drawn. Other than the standard 'you gotta lose weight’
advice, the doctor had nothing helpful to offer him other than to say it could be depression. His mother had recently died after all and the grief process can take years to work through. Years? Ugh.

  Taylor forced himself to introspection. Did he miss his mom? Absolutely. She had been his one friend for all of his life and her loss would be felt for as long as Taylor would be alive. But he didn’t think anything more of it. That was normal. He should be sad. And when he walked into the kitchen and caught her scent of cookie dough with a hint of sweat he did miss her. It did hurt him. But he wasn’t depressed about it. People live, people die and the ones you love you’re going to miss. Pretty standard stuff that happened to everyone. No. He wasn’t depressed. It was something else. He waited for the results of his blood work with more than a little fear. There could be something wrong with him. Years of poor diet and no exercise could cause all sorts of medical problems. The sneaky kind that stops your heart while you’re waiting for dinner and a fly dances on your eyeball looking for an opening to lay its eggs. He wasn’t depressed. He was scared.

  When the blood results came in and showed nothing wrong with him other than high cholesterol, Taylor felt relieved and then annoyed. It didn’t solve his tiredness problem.

  Six months into his energy issues Taylor was reading a book in his back office on how to combat this problem. The medical field had failed him and now he was researching holistic remedies. He rubbed his eyes, stifled a yawn and glanced out the one-way window into the store. The man in the fedora stood on the other side of the glass staring at him.

  A one way window, the dark man shouldn’t be able to see inside, shouldn’t be able to see him at all. Taylor felt the man’s eyes boring into him. A large man, his chin into his chest so Taylor could only make out a suggestion of eyes where the store light caught the wetness of his eyeballs. The rest of him remained in shadow.

  Taylor could not breathe when he saw him as though fear stole the ability from him. When he did regain his breath, he swallowed a hard lump of air. He ducked under his desk, pushing pens and paper to the floor in his haste. How could the man see him in here? It was one way glass for a reason. So he could look out and no one could look in. How did he know where he worked? Taylor squeezed his eyes close. His body shook while he hid on all fours. Go away, go away, please go away, thought Taylor, almost crying in fear. A light tap on the glass, goading him, making fun of him for hiding under the desk. It turned into a hard rap, a bang really and he knocked his head on the underside of the desk because it startled him. Taylor couldn’t care less how hard the man rapped on the glass. He wasn’t raising his head for anything or for anyone.

  “Taylor?”

  He opened his eyes. Jill, the manager, his boss, stood in the doorway, one hand on a hip and the other holding an iPad. A line appeared between her eyes. She said, “Are you okay?”

  Taylor raised his head above the desk and glanced towards the window. No one was there.

  He whispered, “He’s gone.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Nothing, sorry.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Huh?”

  “On the floor. What are you doing?”

  “Uh, lower back problem. My doctor said this was a good way to stretch it. The cat fox or something?”

  “Oh, yoga, the cat cow pose. I know that one.”

  “Yeah. Sorry to do it here. My back was aching real bad so I thought why not?”

  “Hey, no problem. Lower back pain is the worst.”

  Taylor sat back in the chair with a grunt. Almost all of his movements were accompanied by a grunt. He couldn’t help it. They escaped him without his consent. Did he grunt like this in high school? Maybe not so much. He was twenty-five years old. He was young but he didn’t feel like it. He moved as lithely as an eighty-year old man with a cane. Pathetic.

  Jill said, “You could take the rest of the day off you know. You shouldn’t be here if you’re hurt.”

  “No. I’m fine really. That stretching seemed to do the trick.”

  “Okay. Uh, the reason I wanted to talk to you was because I need the monthly figures completed today to send to the head office. For some reason, they need it today instead of the usual time, like at the end of the month.”

  “Yeah. I can do that. I’ll email it to you.”

  “Thanks Taylor.”

  “No problem.”

  “You sure you’re okay? You look pale. And sweaty.”

  “Ha! I’m always sweaty. But I’m fine. Really.”

  “Alright then. The offer stands though. They can wait for their report. If you’re not feeling well, you should go home.”

  “I’m good.”

  Jill smiled and left. Taylor turned to the window. He watched Jill stop and speak with a customer. Taylor did feel ill but not from a virus. No, fear had done this to him. His stomach twisted and turned and his heart danced to an irregular rhythm. He couldn’t go home though. He was afraid the shadow man would be behind the basement door, waiting to greet him. Instead, Taylor completed the monthly figures, sent them to Jill and considered what to have for lunch when he thought, video. Indigo had in-store video cameras. And being a big-shot assistant manager, he could view it.

  He opened the program on the desktop and after messing around with it a bit, figured out how to view the footage. There were ten cameras placed about the store and that is how they appeared on his screen, in ten small little windows. He could barely see a person walk by, the tiny image indistinct. After a frustrating few minutes, he figured out how to make an individual window bigger. Once he sorted that out, he started going through every window and viewing it. The camera angles were all from the ceiling to the floor. What he wouldn’t give for an eye level one placed at the entrance. The head office wouldn’t go for it. It would be too intrusive to the customers for their taste. He started at the entrance to the store and at 10:47am, he found him, the shadow man, walking in. The hair on Taylor’s arms raised.

  The dark man walked in, shoulders hunched up to his ears, wearing that black fedora and a black trench coat taut across his wide shoulders. The collar of the coat was turned up, obscuring most of his face. His hands were buried deep in his pockets. He walked with purpose. He walked straight to the back office to where Taylor sat. Taylor followed him with the camera, his eyes bugged and his mouth dry. The man was real, right? The proof rolled along in front of him on the screen.

  The camera didn’t catch the back office window. Taylor could only follow him on camera to the Harry Potter display right outside the window. He watched the recording, waiting for the man to leave. He stared at the screen for two minutes, three minutes and stopped it at five minutes. Where did the man go? He had been outside of the window for maybe, at the very longest, thirty seconds and Taylor waited five minutes and didn’t see him leave. Where did he go? Did the camera miss him? Why would he walk in so bold and then creep out?

  Taylor went back to the main screen where all ten feeds were on the screen at one time. Drawing it out on a piece of paper, he outlined the camera coverage of the store. It was possible, if the man skirted the very borders of the store, that he left through the shopping mall exit. Three problems with that. He would have to know exactly what area the cameras covered and he would have had to duck below the level of the displays while moving and leave on an angle where the cameras wouldn’t catch him. Why would he do that? And he had to have done that. The alternative of him disappearing wasn’t an alternative at all.

  Who the hell was this guy and what did he want with Taylor? He exported the video of the man to a USB and put it in his pocket. At least he had some evidence the man existed. Something else bothered him about the video. It hovered over his mind refusing to become coherent. He
was on the bus home when he figured it out.

  When the man walked in the store, wearing what he was wearing and walking like he was walking, he stood out. He rated high on the weird barometer. The store wasn’t bursting with customers like it was at anytime of the day in the month of December but it wasn’t empty either. The man had walked by a woman pushing a child in a stroller and she didn’t even notice him. And she would have noticed. Any new mother noticed everything weird near their child and this guy, this freak, was definitely weird. More than that, he was scary. So why didn’t she see him? Why didn’t she cringe or stare at him when he passed her by? Taylor’s scalp tingled. Was the fucking guy real or not? Or was Taylor straddling the fine line between sane and insane?

  -8-

  Oh, how the weekend flies by…

  The shadow man proved to be an elusive bastard. Taylor would see him from the corner of his eye or in a dark corner and when he tried to peer closer to the shape, the man would be gone and then he would think, was he there? Am I conjuring this myself? It was enough to cause Taylor to doubt he existed. That wasn’t exactly true. He did have the video. The video where he seemingly disappeared with no reasonable explanation. He hadn’t shown it to anyone yet. Not Jill and certainly not the police officers who doubted him at his house. Truth of it was, Taylor feared the man wouldn’t be there for them if he played them the video. Taylor thought maybe a little bit of crazy had leaked into his brain after his mom had passed. Cause that’s when it all started for him. For now, he could tell himself he had digital proof on a USB of the shadow man but if he showed someone and that person didn’t see him, what then? It meant he could book himself a room at the crazy hotel because seeing a non-existent stalking man in a fifties style fedora wasn’t an example of a healthy mind. Taylor wasn’t ready to face that. He didn’t think he would ever be ready for that. He decided to ignore it for now because sometimes things get better on their own. It could be possible he hadn’t completely processed the grief of his mother’s death and his brain had materialized this man out of nothing to distract himself from dealing with it. Who knows? The brain is a fucked up thing really.