Cricket Hunters

by Jeremy Hepler

  The girl darted behind a tree when he took a step toward her. She emerged a moment later between two others, farther away. She moved lithely and quick, like a ghost. She smiled a familiar smile and gestured for Parker to follow her. Gooseflesh sprung to life on his arms, but he didn’t move. She gestured again, slowly, and then moved deeper into the woods. Parker hesitated, but eventually his feet tore loose of the dirt and he ran after her.

  He kept his eyes forward, searching, as he kicked through the shrubbery and shoved through the branches grasping at his skin. By the time he caught sight of her again, he’d tripped twice, ripping a hole in his slacks, and had scrapes on his forearms from using them as shields as he barreled through the woods.

  He followed her, crossing two game trails, catching momentary glimpses of her behind this tree, around that tree as she zigzagged with ease through the thicket. It wasn’t until he heard the water flowing that he realized how deep into the woods he’d gone. When she reached the large, two-foot-high, flat rock nestled up alongside Mesquite Creek, she stopped and looked back at him. She eyed him for a second or two, then leapt off the rock, splashed through the water, and disappeared in the woods on the opposite side of the creek.

  Short of breath, a sharp stitch needling his side, Parker hopped onto the rock and put his hands on his hips. Mesquite Creek split Hunter’s Haven into two nearly-equal halves. He couldn’t go on any farther. He sat down on the same rock he’d sat on a hundred times as a kid—“Table Rock,” the Cricket Hunters had called it—looped his arms around his knees, and watched the woods on the opposite side of the creek, his mind struggling to rationalize the situation.

  What the hell was going on? He didn’t believe in ghosts. Auras and spiritual energy, okay, but not human-shaped apparitions haunting forests. There had to be a logical explanation. She was real, right? If she wasn’t, was he hallucinating? Was his mind slipping? He’d definitely been stressed lately, not sleeping well. And his family did have a history of mental illness. Depression. Bi-polar disorder. Alzheimer’s. Name the problem and one of his relatives had it. Or…couldn’t hallucinations be signs of a stroke? A brain bleed? His blood pressure had been through the roof the last few months. So high his doctor had upped his medication twice. And, of course, there was family history there, too. His dad had had two strokes before his fatal heart attack five years earlier. Or, what about a brain tumor? He’d read that those could cause hallucinations, too. And he’d been having frequent headaches lately. Cancer could rear its ugly head anywhere, anytime, right? Jesus-fucking-Christ.

  Beginning to panic, he closed his eyes and shook his head as if the movement would jar the anxiety and worry loose, allowing the unwanted parasites to fly out of his ears. He took a series of deep breaths, focusing on the movement of the air in and out of his lungs and nothing else.

  When he opened his eyes, he stood and looked back the way he’d come. He’d spent enough sunsets in Hunter’s Haven to know it would be pitch black soon. Without the flashlight app on his cell phone, he wouldn’t be able to see two feet in front of him. He needed to get back to his car. He hopped off the rock, glanced back over his shoulder, and searched the tree line on the opposite side of the creek one last time. “I’m losing my mind. I couldn’t have—”

  His consciousness cut off mid-thought when something slammed into the back of his head.

  Chapter 6 - Cel

  After leaving Grandview Apartments, Cel drove by Whiskey River and The Pub, two local bars Parker occasionally met his sister at for drinks, but she didn’t see his Camry or Jennifer’s Audi in either parking lot. She drove by the public library he frequented. Nothing. The gym. Nope. Out of ideas, she decided to drive to his parent’s house again. Jennifer’s Audi and Beverly’s Durango were still there, but not Parker’s Camry. She watched the house for almost an hour before heading home, texting and calling him multiple times in vain while she waited.

  As she turned onto Matador Lane, she stiffened her back and tilted toward the windshield, her eyes wide with foolish hope. But when the headlight beams lit up her house, she found the modest brick home at the back of a deep lot dark and empty, the porch light off, blinds closed, none of the windows lit from the inside, Parker’s car nowhere to be seen. “He’s not here,” she whispered, slumping back against the seat as she pulled into the driveway.

  In the foyer, she slipped off her shoes and called out Parker’s name anyway. Mila immediately emerged from the darkness and rubbed against her shins, meowing. Cel stroked Mila’s back. “Hi, girl. Did you miss me? Has Daddy been here?”

  Cel made her way to the kitchen and flicked on the light. All the clean dishes and cookware were neatly stacked in the doorless cupboards. The countertops were empty, the chairs neatly pushed under the table, place mats perfectly aligned. Just as she’d left the place. She looked in the fridge and found the food she’d cooked untouched.

  With Mila on her heels, she walked to the bedroom. She turned on the overhead light and saw that the bed was still made. No clothes were on the floor. Most days when Parker came home, he tossed his dirty clothes on the floor at the foot of the bed and changed into sweats. If she didn’t pick them up, he’d add to the pile the next day.

  She went to the bathroom and sat down on the toilet to pee. She’d been holding it for over an hour. As she checked her phone to make sure she hadn’t missed a text or call from Parker, she heard a soft crash somewhere on the other side of the house. Her heart hiccupped, and her urine flow stopped. She shot up straight as though stroked down the spine with a sharp instrument. Had she locked the front door behind her when she’d gotten home? There had been two break-ins in the neighborhood last month. The perps broke into the houses in the evening when the residents weren’t home, stealing TVs, laptops, weapons, and jewelry. As far as Cel knew, they hadn’t been caught.

  “Parker?” she called out. “Is that you?”

  She pulled up her shorts and sent her ears out as far as she could, hoping to hear Parker’s voice. The house answered with cold silence.

  “Parker, is that you?” she tried again as she made her way through the bedroom to the light switch by the door. She flicked it on, peeked out into the hall, and looked both directions while reflexively reciting the protection spell her abuela had whispered to her every morning before she’d boarded the school bus as a child. She didn’t realize she was saying it until she finished the last verse and the house grew eerily silent again.

  Feeling like she wasn’t alone, like she was being watched, she suddenly craved a physical form of protection, a weapon. She hurried to the kitchen, turned on the light, grabbed a steak knife from a drawer, and checked the French doors leading out onto the patio and the window above the sink. They were both locked and secure.

  She held the knife head-high as she moved into the living room and turned on the lamp on the end table beside the couch. Nothing appeared broken or amiss in the room. The two windows were closed and locked, their outer screens undamaged.

  “Parker,” she hollered again as she headed to the front door to check if she’d locked it behind her when she’d entered. She hadn’t. Damn it. She fastened the deadbolt, flicked on the porch light, and then made her way back down the hall. After checking the bathroom, she went into the spare bedroom that doubled as their office space and turned on the light. She took a couple of steps into the room, and that’s when she noticed the paperback books in the center of the closet floor to her right. They always left the closet door open because house settling had made it impossible to fully close. The walk-in closet shelves housed CDs, photo albums, Parker’s collection of paperback novels, and Cel’s overflow of clothes.

  She cautiously made her way into the closet. Seven or eight of Parker’s books, some Stephen King and Agatha Christie, and Bradbury’s The Illustrated Man, had fallen onto the floor. The Illustrated Man was upright, spread-eagled like a tepee. On the upper shelf, many of his other books were askew, another hanging over the edge about to fall, and Cel’s stacks of fold
ed sweaters next to them were knocked over. It appeared as though a strong wind gust had whipped across that side of the closet and that side only.

  She spun around and faced the bedroom door before squatting to gather the books. When she reached for The Illustrated Man, she noticed a picture sticking out from in between the pages. She slid it out as she rose.

  For a brief moment Cel thought the girl with thick brunette hair parted down the middle and dark eyes was Lauren Page. The similarities were uncanny. The face shape. The body shape. The smile. But her breath caught in her throat when she realized the face didn’t belong to Lauren. It belonged to Abby Powell. One of her best friends when she was in elementary and middle school. One of the Cricket Hunters. The one whose disappearance had all of Oak Mott on edge fifteen years ago to the month. And she was sitting on Table Rock in Hunter’s Haven, wearing the yellow and blue summer dress she was last seen in.

  Stunned and confused, Cel stood in the center of the closet, staring at the image as the past roared toward her like a runaway locomotive.

  SEPTEMBER 1998

  Chapter 7 - Cel

  Four weeks before Abby disappeared, just before sunset, the Cricket Hunters met in the field that separated Yesenia’s house from Hunter’s Haven to compare cricket sticks. Yesenia had given Cel the instructions on how to craft them a week earlier. She’d copied the spell from one of the grimoires she kept locked in a wooden chest in her closet, books once owned by her mom, and her mom before that. The weapon wasn’t specifically designed for crickets, but that’s what Yesenia wanted the kids to kill. She’d promised to pay each of them ten dollars a week if they kept the crickets around her house at bay until winter arrived.

  “Did you guys have to use the matches to start the fire like me?” Cel asked, her eyes sliding across her friend’s faces.

  Parker, Natalie, Abby, and Omar nodded in unison. They’d spent every afternoon out in Hunter’s Haven since receiving the instructions, spinning twigs and rubbing their palms raw, trying to learn how to spark a friction fire. The abundant elm trees and dry air were ideal for the process according to the library books they’d checked out, but mastering the art still proved difficult. Yesenia had given them purified wooden match sticks as an alternative, just in case.

  “And you did everything else like we practiced, too, right? Especially the part about the blood? That was the most—”

  “Relax,” Parker interjected. “We did everything just like we were supposed to. Look.” He extended his hand, palm up. A fresh gash ran from his lower thumb to his wrist, still bloody.

  Omar, Natalie, and Abby followed suit, placing their hands palm-up alongside Parker’s. All had similar wounds, the one on Omar’s bony hand the shallowest, but adequate.

  A blend of relief and gratitude mushroomed in Cel’s chest as her eyes slid from hand to hand, cut to cut. Although none of the other hunters had said so to her face, she knew they each carried a growing degree of skepticism about her family’s beliefs. At one time, back when Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy were as real to them as their parents, there was zero skepticism. They would participate in rituals like the evil-eye-egg-roll and body sweeping with excitement sparkling in their eyes, just like her. They would sit rapt on the back porch with Yesenia for hours, listening to her tales of magic and mischief, curses and revenge, knowing it was real. But over the past few years, Cel had noticed them shooting each other hesitant looks more and more when she asked them to participate in a ritual, or help her cast a spell, or hang out with Yesenia on the back porch. She figured her abuela had noticed too, which was why she’d offered to pay them to craft the sticks and help hunt the espiritus venganza rather than just asking. They might not have agreed to follow the specific instructions as diligently, or hunt as eagerly and frequently, if there had been no monetary gain. Cel would never know. And right now, she didn’t care. All that mattered was that they had followed the instructions and were ready to hunt. She slid back the sleeve of her worn, over-sized blue and black flannel, and stuck out her hand to join the Bloody Hand Club. Her cut was deepest, flayed open.

  Parker shot her an ornery look. He was a head taller than her, his hand nearly twice the size. “Mine’s bigger.”

  She playfully elbowed him. “Whatever.” Then she tilted the handle of her stick forward, revealing the symbol she’d chosen as her mark—the same symbol that adorned the necklace she wore around her neck. A necklace that had belonged to her mother. “I carved the infinity symbol on mine.”

  “I knew you would,” Natalie blurted out, nervously adjusting her Houston Astros cap when everyone looked at her. She’d been forced to chop her bouncy curls down to nubs at the beginning of summer after her little brother spat a wad of gum into her hair while she napped. She’d worn her dad’s Astros cap every day since. Strands were finally beginning to poke out of the edges and tickle the tops of her ears.

  Cel smiled at Natalie. “What did you pick?”

  “Well, since I’m always having dreams where I’m flying through the sky like a bird, I picked this.” Natalie laid her stick across Cel’s, a small four-feathered wing carved into the handle.

  Parker immediately placed his stick on top of Natalie’s and twisted it until an X inside a circle became visible, his recent obsession with Deadshot in the Batman comics on display. “I put a sniper’s crosshairs on mine.”

  Abby and Omar added their sticks to the crisscrossed stack. Omar met eyes with Abby, and they simultaneously said, “You go first,” which caused Abby to giggle and her chest to jiggle, catching everyone’s eye. Over the past six months, her breasts had blossomed into C cups, but her shirts had remained the same size. In early June, when Cel had jokingly remarked about Abby’s new assets, Abby had guffawed and covered her chest and told Cel to “shut up,” that she couldn’t help it. On the surface, Cel apologized for teasing and embarrassing Abby, but deep down she knew—everyone knew—Abby welcomed the attention. Abby and attention went hand-in-hand. She thrived on it.

  Omar snapped his gaze back to Abby’s face and flashed a guilt-ridden smile. “Go ahead.”

  “Mine’s a star,” Abby said. Her eyes bounced around the group, gauging their reactions. Two of the points were round rather than sharp, and one was a dwarf compared to the others. “Not great, I know, but it’s the best I could do with the shitty rocks around my tree.” She looked at Omar, eager for him to take over.

  “I picked the Pi symbol,” he said, surprising no one. Everything was numbers and angles and percentages with him. Every day, rain or shine, hot or cold, he carried a Texas Instruments graphing calculator in the front of pocket of his cuff-rolled, hand-me-down jeans. It was a hand-me-down, too, given to him by his oldest sister Sophia after she graduated from high school, but he treated it as if it were sacred.

  “All right,” Parker said. “Now that we have everything settled, can we get to cricket hunting? They’re singing like crazy.”

  A quiet giggle seeped out of Abby’s mouth.

  Parker glanced at her. “What?”

  “It just sounds funny, saying it that way…cricket hunting.” She giggled again and lightly shook her head. “I mean, really, who hunts for stupid crickets?”

  Parker put his hand on his waist and puffed out his chest like Superman. “We do,” he said in a comically deep voice. “Because, by the power of our blood, we are now…” He raised his cricket stick high in the air and looked upward as if there were something fantastical in the sky. “Ordained Cricket Hunters.” He opened his mouth and let loose a victorious scream reminiscent of the pig-slaughtering boys dancing around the camp-fire on Lord of the Flies.

  Seconds later, the other four jabbed their sticks at the sky and joined in.

  All five had been friends for as long as they could remember. They’d played t-ball together, eaten cheap popsicles on Table Rock in Hunter’s Haven together, ridden their bikes to the municipal pool every summer together, trick-or-treated the streets of their middle-class neighborhood together, worked on their ho
mework together, lied to their parents together, fought off bullies together, stolen together, danced together, but they’d never discussed or used a collective name. Others had. Natalie’s dad had occasionally referred to them as the Gateway Gang. Omar’s mom, the Rotten Bunch. But they’d never embraced a name themselves. That night, punctuated with guttural howls and blood purified sticks, they embraced one without discussion.

  The Cricket Hunters.

  As their yells faded and they lowered their sticks, Cel noticed movement behind Abby, near the Hunter’s Haven tree line about thirty yards away. She pointed. “Looks like we have a visitor.”

  Everyone’s heads swiveled. Abby put her hand on her cocked hip and whispered, “Jesus.”

  “Not Jesus,” Cel responded, “Jeff.”

  Abby’s only sibling, her younger brother Jeff, waved enthusiastically and trotted toward the group. He was eleven years old but could easily pass for nine. Doctors said his constant battles with pneumonia as a toddler had resulted in his smaller than average frame. He wore a dirty T-shirt and carried a long stick in his right hand. A stick sharpened to a point. A cricket stick. Having no friends of his own in the neighborhood, and, with a natural desire to grow up faster than needed, he constantly chased after Abby and her friends. Sometimes they allowed him to hang out, sometimes not. Abby voted no every time.

  He stopped a few feet from the group, beaming ear-to-ear, proud. “I just finished mine.” He dipped his head and held the stick out in front of him horizontally, like a blacksmith offering a finished sword to a knight. “I followed all the rules.”

  Abby glowered at him. “I told you that you couldn’t come tonight.”

  Jeff’s smile dissolved.

  “Go home. Before I make you sorry you came.”