Hunting Season (28 page)

“Almost there.” Henry kept walking. “Almost there, babe.”

Chapter Fifteen:

Home Free

Henry sat on all fours in the mud breathing hard. He had no idea how long he’d been walking but his legs finally gave out and he’d collapsed, dropping the bag and the sword and falling face first into the muck.

He wiped mud out of his eyes and away from his mouth and looked at the bag lying next to him. “I can’t go any further.”

The rain had let up but the sky still harbored dark clouds and Henry couldn’t tell where the sun sat. He figured it was sometime in the afternoon.

Henry looked away from the bag. “I can’t. Just can’t. Too tired.”

After a few minutes, Henry took a deep breath and grabbed the sword and the bag. He pushed himself with what strength he had left to his feet and resumed the slow and painful walk.

“We should have found the path by now.”

He looked at the moist ground around him and shook his head.

“Should have found it by now.”

*  *  *  *  *

Nate walked along the edge of the tree line between the forest and the parking lot. The rain had let up enough to start the search just after noon. Fred had bitched but let the dogs out and resumed the hunt anyway.

The search parties hugged the trails, looking for anything the rain might have washed up. Nate didn’t want them venturing off incase the heavens opened up again.

Five hours after he’d sent them back into the woods, Nate prepared to call them back. With the sun heading down and the cold kicking up, Nate believed he’d done what he could to find Henry and Claire.

Nate grabbed his Brick and said, “All right, everyone. Come on back. Unless you find something between where you’re standing and the parking lot, this search is over.”

*  *  *  *  *

“I’m sorry, Claire,” Henry said, his voice cracked and barely a whisper. “I’m sorry.”

Something moved behind him. Henry, tired and ready to die, managed to increase his grip on the hilt and spun around and prepared to kill whatever had come upon him.

Ten feet away stood a deer, its eyes fixed on Henry. He didn’t think anything of it at first. Just an animal which would get to watch him die.

Then Henry noticed the white spot of hair above its right eye.

“Brownie,” he said.

The reason why I’m here, Henry thought. “The reason

Claire’s dead.”

Henry shrugged the cavalry bag off his shoulder and lifted it toward Brownie.

“Come take a look at what you did.”

Brownie turned as if repulsed and started walking slowly away. Henry gritted his teeth and followed, his anger and desire to punish Brownie driving him forward.

“Had to release you to the wild.” Henry closed and readied the sword for a thrust to the chest.

Brownie walked a few more feet and then stopped and twisted its head to look at Henry.

“Not scared of me because you know me.” Henry took a deep breath. “She just had to save you. Had to care for you.” The sword shook in his hand. Tears welled and rolled down his cheeks. “Loved you and wanted to see you free again.”

Brownie just stared at him.

Henry looked away and lowered the sword. As he did, he caught sight of something beyond the trees to the right. It took him a moment to realize it was a car not more than thirty feet away.

Then he noticed the people walking around in the drizzling rain, talking and motioning toward the trees. They stood in the parking lot. One of them Henry recognized as Nate.

Henry looked back at Brownie, his lower lip trembling. “Thank you.”

Brownie blinked and then bounded away into the forest and vanished like a fleeting dream.

Henry opened the bag and unwrapped Claire’s head and looked into her eyes one last time. “We’re here.”

He ran his finger down her cheek and choked back a wail creeping up his throat. The tears wouldn’t stop, though, and he gave up trying to control them.

The sound of doors shutting and engines starting snapped him out of his grief.

“Nate!” he yelled.

Henry pushed himself, trying to find the strength to run but only managing to walk fast. He held Claire like a football to his chest and used the sword to knock rogue tree limbs dangling in his way to the side.

“Nate!”

*  *  *  *  *

“Nate!”

Nate twisted away from Fred and looked toward the tree line. The voice was hoarse and weak but Nate knew it was a man’s and he knew it had to be Henry’s.

He walked toward the trees. He saw Driscole moving away from his car and he heard Fred yelling at his dogs to quiet behind him.

Then Nate saw Henry. It was a different Henry. Not his neighbor anymore. This version was bloody and beaten, his skin and clothes caked with mud.

“Jesus,” Fred said behind him.

Nate thought for a split second Fred had commented on Henry’s appearance. Then Nate saw what Henry carried and all Nate could do was swallow hard and wish this was some nightmare rather than reality.

“Nate!” Henry’s yell sounded so desperate. He moved slow with a limp. “Look what they did to Claire!”

“Freeze, buddy!”

Nate’s eyes darted to Driscole. The young idiot had his gun pulled and leveled at Henry.

“Driscole, lower your weapon!” Nate moved forward to try and get between the anxious deputy and Henry.

Driscole either didn’t hear Nate or chose to ignore him. “I said freeze!”

Henry didn’t listen, either. He kept limping forward. He raised Claire’s head, grasping her by the hair, out in front of him. “Look what they did—”

A single gunshot cut Henry off. Nate watched the bullet hit his friend and neighbor in the chest and drop him to the ground. Claire’s head landed on the asphalt. It sounded like a rotten wet log falling on concrete. It rolled a few feet toward Driscole.

“Christ,” Driscole said and threw up.

Nate sprinted to Henry’s side and dropped to his knees and put pressure on the wound. Blood flowed fast from Henry’s chest and he breathed shallow and rapid.

Nate called for an ambulance on the Brick with his free hand. Fred and the others stood around dumbfounded and silent.

“They,” Henry said around his short breaths. “They killed Claire.”

“Who?” Nate said.

“They-killed-Claire.”

Henry was losing too much blood and Nate knew he wouldn’t last more than a few more minutes. “Who, Henry? Who did this to Claire?”

“North-east...half-day’s...walk.” Henry’s breathing slowed.

“Who?” Nate leaned in close, listening closely. “Who?”

“They...” Henry’s voice faded and his breath slowed and then stopped. His eyes fixed on Nate in an immortal stare until Nate closed them.

From the journal of Nate Lewis:

Expedition into Hell. That’s the only way to describe it.

Despite being shot in the chest, Henry had been stabbed in the side, cut across the leg, and had the hallmark signs of a physical struggle on his autopsy report. Claire had been decapitated by something sharp but not the sword Henry had with him. Although there were several other blood types on the blade of what turned out to be a pre-Civil War cavalry saber, none were Claire’s. I read the report and decided I needed to go back in the woods and find whoever had fought with Henry and probably killed Claire. I needed to find whoever else’s blood was on the saber.

I made sure Henry and Claire’s remains were seen to by family before taking the search party into the woods. Twenty people accompanied me, including county crime lab personnel, Fred and his dogs, and a few volunteers who were either friends or family of Henry and Claire.

Driscole got left behind. I decided not to pursue charges against my Deputy and had convinced the family the fatal shot had been an accident. And it had. I didn’t hold any ill will toward Driscole. I knew, at the time, the young buck had been terrified and anxious. But I also knew his presence would cause an uneasiness I didn’t want to deal with on a long walk in Blackwater.

I led the party in the direction Henry had stated; northeast, a half-day’s walk. I had the party fan out, putting about twenty feet between each person, as they marched through the pines. The Sheriff Department personnel carried either shotguns or sidearms. I allowed the civilians with us to bring a hunting rifle if they had one. I didn’t want a vengeance-driven massacre but I wouldn’t walk into a death camp unprotected either.

And a death camp is what we found.

Just near twilight the dogs started howling. Fred shouted and prayed loudly. Then I closed in on the noise and saw what had freaked both man and animal out. Stakes, dozens of them, with skulls spitted upon them.

The dogs wouldn’t walk past them as if an invisible barrier held them at bay. Fred called it a “ghost fence”. I didn’t know what the hell that meant but I knew they were scared and couldn’t blame them. Hell, I could barely keep my bowels from loosing upon seeing all those heads.

I moved past the skulls and into a primitive camp and saw the statue. Chills ran down my spine as I looked at its faceless face and knew this place was evil. Then my sight fell on the bodies. A teenage girl with her head gone. A little boy with a hole through his head. A male teenager stabbed through the throat. An old man with no head and hacked to pieces. Two fresh burial mounds.

I wanted to dig into the mounds and see if one of them belonged to Claire. But the whole camp was now a crime scene and I knew deep down Claire was under one of those mounds. Digging her up would just be a formality.

The crime lab bubbas started their work after we secured the scene. The friends and family members cried and held each other. Fred’s dogs sat on the other side of the invisible barrier and whined.

 “What the hell happened here?” Fred said and drank from his flask.

I looked at the wall of skulls and the faceless statue and the bodies. I thought about how many missing persons sat propped up on those stakes, rotting in the sun. I thought about Henry and Claire, two people trying to do something good and finding themselves in a living nightmare. I thought about our search efforts and wished I’d tried harder to find them and blamed myself for failing.

Then I looked at Fred and swallowed hard and said, “They don’t have words for what happened here.”

It took two weeks to remove the human remains. Some people we were able to identify. Most of them were missing hunters. Others, we couldn’t find enough of them to make an i.d. The bodies we found in the camp, the ones who had done all the killing, were unidentifiable as well. I made sure their remains, whoever they were, stayed in the camp.

Fred and I went back into the woods once all the other remains had been moved. We smashed the lean-to’s and knocked over all the stakes which once sported the severed heads. We dynamited that ungodly statue. We piled everything in the carnival cage and lit the sucker on fire and left the woods for good.

The fire grew out of control. It ended up scorching over a hundred acres. I don’t know how much it cost the tax-payers for the state to fight the fire and I don’t care. That place needed to be wiped off the face of the earth so no one could ever visit there and try and turn it into some goddamned tourist attraction. The people that died there deserved better. Destroying that place seemed the best thing I could give them.

Sometimes I think about Henry and Claire. Not as much as I used to. Others have moved into their house and I’ve gotten to know them well enough to call them friends. But every once in awhile, as I sit on my back porch, I remember Henry drinking a beer with me the last night I saw him and seeing Claire walking that deer around the backyard. I think of everything that’s happened since then, all the bad stuff, and know that night was the last good night any of us had.

Now I sit and wait, thinking about the good times as the darkness and those who dwell in it slowly closes in.

About the Author

Erik williams is pretty much a nobody in the world of fiction. But he’s working real hard to change that. At least he says he is. Then again, he’s only been writing since 2005 so he’s not really doing too badly.

He lives in Southern California where he works as a Defense Contractor to pay the bills. His short stories have appeared in Apex Digest, Greatest Uncommon Denominator, and Necrotic Tissue magazines. His novelette, The Reverend’s Powder, will be published in 2010 by Sideshow Press. And his first novel, Demon, will be published by Bad Moon Books in 2011. See, he is working hard.

Publication History

“I am Vision, I am Death” first appeared in
Horror Library 4
, 2010.

“FUBAR” first appeared in
MagusZine
, 2007.

“Closing Time” first appeared in
HorrorLibrary.net
, 2007.

“Faces” first appeared in
Polluto
, 2009.

“A Slice of Heaven on the Edge of Hell” first appeared in
We, the Dead
, 2012.

“General Gordo’s Strange Request” first appeared in
From the Asylum
, 2007.

“The Hooker in the Backseat” first appeared in
The Death Panel
, 2009.

“Ties the Room Together” first appeared in
Downinthecellar.com
, 2008.

“Four Torments and a Judgment” first appeared in
GUD
, 2008.

“The Reverend’s Powder” first appeared as its own chapbook by
Sideshow Press
, 2010.

“The Undead Dead…Or Something Like That” first appeared as its own e-book, 2011.

“Silent Treatment” first appeared in
Polluto
, 2009.

“Rings” first appeared in
Dark Recesses
, 2008.

“The Monster Whisperer” first appeared in
Necrotic Tissue
, 2010.

“Treatment” first appeared as its own e-book, 2011.