The Hunter Inside

by David McGowan

  ‘Yeah. I seen em, baby.’

  Nurse Stevens snapped back to attention. Baby, he said baby. In five and a half years he hadn’t said anything other than ‘woo’, ‘yeah’ or ‘I seen em’. Maybe in another fifty years or so he’d manage to tell her what the fuck he was talking about.

  She unlocked the medicine cabinet that she positioned outside Buckley’s room every night at the end of her rounds and took out the needle containing the sedative that she prepared every night, ready for midnight.

  Nurse Monica Stevens took the cap off the syringe, unlocked the door of the padded room, and stepped inside.

  ‘Seen em. Seen em baby,’ Earl Buckley said, more quietly this time. His eyes remained trained on the wall, Despite Nurse Stevens’ entry, and despite the view of the giant redwoods under the stars on the other side of the four inch thick reinforced plastic that separated Earl Buckley and the world outside.

  ‘Time for you to quit buggin me, Earl,’ Nurse Stevens said as she stuck the needle into his flabby forearm.

  ‘Seen, seen, seen. Woo, I seen ‘em.’

  In ten minutes he would be seeing nothing at all. Once the sedative kicked in, she might get some peace and quiet to eat her cookies and resume her Mediterranean cruise with Luke Steel. That’s if the rest of the wacko farm didn’t give her any trouble.

  Earl Buckley’s eyes were already glazed. His lips continued to mouth the words, but no sound came out.

  That’s the way – aha aha – I like it, Nurse Stevens thought as she exited the room and locked the door behind her.

  Earl Buckley was now as quiet as a dead mouse.

  Outside the window, the sky sat big and black, faraway planets twinkling like precious diamonds as far as the eye could see.

  *

  ‘I don’t know Luke,’ Kimberley Carter said. ‘My Mom said I had to be home by 12, and it’s already quarter past.’

  ‘Aw, come on Kim. Just a half hour? It’s really beautiful up there at this time of night.’

  And it was really beautiful too. The view that had inspired romance (and probably a few babies) to countless teenage couples who looked out from secluded spots along Key Brow was certainly breathtaking. The even split between the sky and the land, the moon hanging low illuminating the edge of a forest of vast redwoods on one side and catching the conifers that bordered the town, and the twinkling of lights in the smattering of houses below Key Brow, made Luke Bonalo feel like he belonged. It made him recognise the vastness of the world in which he lived, and although Camberway was only a small part of that world, it was his small part.

  His brother, Jim, had said, ‘Make sure you get your money’s worth if you’re payin. Better still, get her to pay and get your money’s worth. Better still again, get her to drive, then you can get loaded. But whatever you do, try and come home with a limp’.

  He hadn’t gotten what he meant at first, but he certainly got it now as he looked at her dark, flowing hair that hung across the brown skin of her permanently tanned shoulders. It was dark inside the car, but he could make out enough of her lips to want to feel the warmth and sensuous wetness of them against his own. A pallid light dissected the area between her waist and her neck, and he could just about see her erect nipples through the flimsy, sky-blue cotton dress that she wore.

  Her hands were folded across her waist, her fingers twirling almost nervously. ‘Come on Luke. Stop kidding around. I got to get home. I’m already going to get into trouble as it is. Maybe next time we go out you can take me to Key Brow.’

  ‘Yeah, OK,’ Luke said. He knew that if Jim had been sitting where he sat now, she probably wouldn’t get to go out with him again. There were girls that would give him what he wanted. But Luke wanted Kimberley.

  ‘Luke, I’ve had a great time tonight. I really have.’ Maybe he was trying to lay a guilt trip on her but she wasn’t having it. Her mother hadn’t raised a fool, and she was going to make him wait – see how much he really wanted it. Like Jules Carter, her mother (and one of the most well-respected women in Camberway) said – ‘If he’s worth it, he’ll wait. If he’s not, then Hell’s waiting for him’.

  Kimberley didn’t think Luke was going to Hell, but she was pretty sure his pervert brother and asshole father were.

  ‘Anyway, with this rain and all the clouds we wouldn’t be able to see anything of the view.’ She leaned over and pecked him on the cheek.

  He was glad his face was covered by shadow. If she saw him blush then she saw his weakness, and once a girl knew you had a weakness—

  No, that wasn’t him talking. That was his brother or his father, but not him. She was so beautiful, and they connected on a deeper level. It was more than just physical attraction. He wanted to make love to her. He wanted them to make love.

  ‘I know, and I’ve had a great time too,’ he said, and they kissed properly then, their lips fitting together as perfectly as the Earth was round.

  *

  He missed her as soon as she got out of the car, and he waited until the heavy mahogany door closed behind her before driving away.

  He was taking a chance – Jules Carter hated the whole Bonalo family with a passion akin to that of warring generals on a battlefield. She was liable to beat him to death with the rolling pin that was famed all over Camberway for its perfect pastry if he ever harmed her. He didn’t intend to – every second that he spent in the presence of Kimberley Carter made him want to be near her even more.

  He drove away from the upmarket Alveston Court cul-de-sac with mixed feelings. Maybe this was what love felt like – a man-eating virus in his stomach – and he wondered how he could survive the symptoms of this lovebug. But he was afraid too. Not that he wouldn’t get her into bed, but of the possibility that something would mess everything up and he wouldn’t get to marry her or see what their kids looked like.

  He drove with caution, the jittery wipers on the beat up old Chevy Malibu barely able to cope with the rain that fell. He also drove aimlessly for ten minutes, trying to reconcile the man his father and his brother wanted him to be with the man he actually was.

  Maybe if he had a Mom like Kimberley’s, he would be encouraged to be sensitive and caring. But he didn’t have any Mom at all, just a father and a brother who were obsessed with getting things for free, ripping people off, and drinking away as much of the tiny amount of money they had as they could.

  He decided to head towards Key Brow anyway. If he went home now, Jim and his father would still be up, probably loaded and watching porn. It was hardly the way for him to end his fairytale night – his drunk brother desperate to know whether he’d managed to get into her panties, and his even drunker father with his hand pushed a little too deep in his pocket.

  He could imagine what his father would probably be saying to Jim right at that moment. ‘Probably just a little cock-teaser. They go on about equal rights, but they sure as hell don’t wanna do no heavy liftin’ (his father hadn’t worked for fifteen years) ‘and they sure as hell don’t mind gettin everythin paid for aswell. Let her put her hand in her pocket, and if she doesn’t then the least she can do is give the boy a damn blowjob. ‘Stead of runnin off to her frilly pink house at midnight to her frilly pink bed and her teddy bears. What the fuck do they want with teddy bears anyway?’

  The voice was almost audible to Luke inside the car as it climbed the gradient of Brow Point Pass. But he had heard just about the same lecture from his father after each of the five dates he’d arrived home from (what his father and brother considered to be) early from in the past month.

  His brother’s lecture was slightly different. ‘Luke, they all want it. You just gotta persuade them it ain’t somethin bad that they’re doin, and their panties come off like they’re two sizes too big and their legs are covered in diesel. I’m tellin you bro, persuasion, that’s the name of the game. Don’t let her play games with you – act like the more she says no, the less you want it, and she’ll give it you like a shot. Ask her does she love you. And don’t be scared
of putting a bit of pressure on either, it’s just another word for persuasion.’

  He passed a car on the way up the Pass – an old tiny Datsun that didn’t look much better than his Chevy and probably had two more lovestruck teenagers making out inside.

  As he pushed onwards through the rain towards his destination, he tried to silence the contesting voices of his father and brother inside his head, preferring to focus on what little of the road he could see through the dark night. Tall, thick conifers bordered the road on either side, making the narrow lane difficult to traverse, and he was glad when he reached his destination, pulling the Chevy into what normally was the most picturesque view of Camberway Valley available.

  The valley opened out below him like a huge crater, the steep bank dropping off from Key Brow towards the mostly sleeping town below. Most of the people in Camberway would be tucked up in their beds, safe and sound, as the cold night gripped the small town.

  Luke killed the engine of the aging Chevy and listened to the silence that surrounded him. It was a little eerie and unnerving to be there alone after midnight, and he wished Kimberley had been able to go with him. The only sound he could hear was the low whine of a bitter wind that blew through the trees. If she had been there, he knew he would never have heard, or even considered, the haunting sound of that wind. He would be wrapped up in her; something he realised – even after just five dates – could be more than literal. He was wrapped inextricably – his mind, his soul, everything in fact, in Kimberley Carter.

  He looked down at the Kennedy River, and the few lights that twinkled through the rain below, and thought about the first date they had been on together, ignoring the growing chill inside the Chevy. It had been the best night of his 18 years. Of course, he had been terrified. Not of her, but of the attitude his father and brother had tried to hammer into his head.

  Don’t show weaknesses, boy. Give er one for me. Let her pay her own way, them Carter’s are loaded. Pressure, Luke, pressure. Probably just a teaser like the rest of em.

  Except she wasn’t. Well, he hadn’t gotten past first base and he’d been dating her for over a month. Jim would have hightailed it to his next victim by now like he had a jetrocket backpack attached to him. But that was the last thing Luke wanted to do.

  He couldn’t imagine what a future without her would be like. If this was how he felt after a month, he couldn’t wait to see what it felt like after a year, or five, or even ten. Ever since that first date, when they had driven across the bridge into Turton to see a movie at the Turton Odeon, its century-old projector making Tom Cruise look like he had advanced parkinson’s disease, the feeling growing inside his soul had been like nothing he had ever experienced.

  He imagined Jim and his father had never gotten anywhere near such a feeling, and he kept it a secret from them. He would be hard pressed to tell them in words just how it felt. He was no John Keats – didn’t even know who John Keats was in actual fact – but he imagined it felt like standing at the top of a five hundred foot drop and knowing you could fly, but being too afraid to jump. Indecision; emotions ranging from despair to great anticipation and paranoia to great confidence; the brink of tears through fear to the soaring joyous heights of her smile, when the ground below ceased to be part of the equation and looking into her eyes made his heart lighter than the air on which he floated when he was with her.

  It was something magnificent, and his father and brother’s obsession with sex was one that he didn’t share.

  Okay, so tonight he had been jacked up with testosterone and had nearly split his pants, but that wasn’t him. That was what the boffins on CNN called peer group pressure and now, as he looked through the clouds at the land he knew so well, he was ashamed and angry with himself for the erection that had made him try and pressure her into going up there with him.

  She was so pure and perfect. She was serene. There was nothing, and no-one, in this world that could amaze him so much and concentrate his attention so fully.

  He lit the display on his Casio. 1.30AM.Pretty soon his father and brother would likely pass out drunk, and he could slip in and go to his room without being questioned. Then he could dream about the most amazing thing he had ever seen – Kimberley Carter.

  Except all that was about to change.

  *

  The damn rain had stopped. But not like it usually did, fading gradually until it ceased completely. It was more like God had watched him with great amusement as he had struggled along on his journey, before flipping a switch marked ‘Rain over Barrett Holroyd’.

  One second he was fighting against a swirling blizzard of drizzle that attacked him like a swarm of bees protecting their queen in the hive, the next he was standing one hundred yards away from the dilapidated old house, looking up at the sky and wondering how the rain could have ceased so suddenly and so completely.

  God’s idea of how life for Barrett Holroyd should be. One big crazy joke. Let’s make the rain stop just in time to really piss him off. Even better, let’s kill his wife after degrading her memory so much that he hates her guts for the feeling she left inside him. God’s idea of fun, when he wasn’t busy murdering children or starting wars all over the world. When floods and earthquakes got boring – time to have some fun with Barrett Holroyd.

  He was frozen, unmoving, to the spot. Looking up at the sky as the cold invaded his body and attacked him from every angle. Standing still in soaking wet clothes in 35o Fahrenheit. What was he thinking of?

  He half-expected Betsy’s face to appear, huge above him in the sky, eyes sunken and ringed with dark bags, face drawn and pale, cheekbones and jaw jutting out, hair a mess.

  ‘Just what are you doing, standing there waiting to get pneumonia? You’re a stupid man, Barrett Holroyd. You should know better at your age. Linda will be worried sick. Do you never think about anything or anybody other than yourself?’

  Except he wasn’t thinking about himself. In fact, he wasn’t thinking about anything. He was standing still, and his mind felt like a blank canvas, a morning schoolboard wiped clean of yesterday’s chalk.

  What had he been thinking about? He swung the splintered wooden gate behind him and walked towards the house. He wasn’t thinking of the Ford, abandoned after chugging to a standstill a mile away from Miller’s Diner. He wasn’t even thinking about how much he’d like to give the Bonalo boy a shiner when he saw him tomorrow or Louise Miller’s cleavage when she had bent down in front of him earlier.

  He pushed his slightly bent, silver key into the rusted lock and let himself into the house. The door’s hinges screamed in rusted protest and he winced, thinking about the boy. And Linda.

  ‘Daddy,’ she exclaimed in a voice that was little more than a whisper, ‘where have you been?’

  The dog, Samuel, pricked his ears at the sound of her voice. He lifted his head from the blanket on which he lay and studied Barrett through the gloom for a moment, before resting his head and closing his eyes, ears still pricked to attention.

  She began to sob as she went to him and put her arms around him, seemingly unaware of his soaking wet clothes. ‘I was so worried; I thought something had happened to you. Where have you been? Are you okay? Why didn’t you call?’

  Her grip around his neck was painfully tight. Her heart was beating fast, too fast, against his chest, and her whole body shook against his.

  Emotionally, he knew, she was in pieces. But he couldn’t have called, for two reasons. The first was that he didn’t have a cell phone. The reception in Camberway was shot to shit, it being in the middle of nowhere and all. Bill Lyons forever complained about it to Barrett whenever they ran into each other in town. ‘Something should be done, Barr,’ he would say, a finger wagging in whatever wind was up on any given day. He was the only person Barrett Holroyd had ever known that shortened his name. He didn’t like it but he didn’t complain, partly because he didn’t want to suffer the embarrassment and partly because Bill Lyons was a doctor, and Barrett had a lot of respect for d
octors, and the level of performance they had to keep up for many years. Not to mention the studying they had to do. The studying was as much a part of the job as diagnosing cancer in people like Betsy Holroyd was.

  All the roads in his life led back to the same stormy intersection. The one inside his heart, mind and soul.

  Linda was the most important thing right now. Not Dr. Lyons’ cell phone problems and not Betsy.

  The second, and most definitely defining, reason he couldn’t have called was because the phone had been cut off weeks ago, after they had ignored the second final demand. That had left Linda sobbing, same way she was now, head boring into his shoulder like he imagined an ostrich to do with sand – except he was sure they didn’t really do that at all. He had heard that somewhere. Maybe Dan Rather. Maybe Discovery Channel.

  Focus, Barrett.

  ‘There, there, you calm down now,’ he said as he stroked her hair, worried that she might wake the boy with all this crying. Not that ‘there there’ was going to knit her broken heart back together or make her feel better, same way Betsy lying half-wasted and half-dead saying ‘I’m a fighter’ wasn’t going to stop the cancer from killing her. Except she was already gone.

  Linda’s all that matters now, he thought, mentally slapping himself to focus his attention once more and on calming his (wildly overreacting) daughter. He was only an hour and a half late, after all. Why should he have to touch base every five minutes like she was Betsy? Betsy was gone.

  Linda, Linda, think about Linda.

  He realised he was shivering. Lightheaded too. Maybe he was catching pneumonia after all.

  That damn Bonalo.

  Linda’s sobbing continued unabated.

  She must have cried a hundred million tears, he thought.