Blood Ghost (The Hunting Tree Book 2)

by Ike Hamill

  Heavy footfalls jogged up and Don heard his own voice.

  “What are you laughing at?” video-Don asked.

  “What?” Kyle asked. The video shut off.

  Don watched the second half of the video a few more times. Something about that slurping sound was familiar, and he definitely remembered the singing from somewhere.

  “Come on, Barnyard,” Don said.

  He took Barney outside. After being tucked away in his dark room, Don squinted into the summer sun. The singing was so familiar, but where could he have heard it?

  When the compressor for the air conditioner turned on, Don’s memory flooded back. He’d been standing right here. The singing had been in the woods just beyond his back yard, and it had just been the night before, hadn’t it? By reconstructing the events, he pinned it down, but the memory was so elusive. He’d fallen asleep on the couch and then when he took Barney out he’d heard the singing.

  Don brought the dog in and rushed up the stairs.

  His father was at the table sketching something on a pad of paper.

  “Is mom here?”

  “Yes, she’s upstairs,” Wes said.

  “Thanks,” Don said. He headed for the stairs.

  “She might be asleep,” Wes called after his son.

  Don ignored him and ran up the stairs. He knocked lightly on the closed door.

  He heard her voice. “Yes?”

  Don let himself in.

  The room was almost as dark as his own had been. She had the shades down and the curtains drawn. Even the clock was set facedown on the table so its electronic light was muffled. Gwen was lying on top of the covers, looking up at the ceiling. She pushed herself up to a seated position when she saw Don sitting down in the chair next to the closet.

  “Hey, Don, how are you?”

  “I’m okay,” Don said. “I wanted to ask you about anemia.”

  “Yes?”

  “What’s it caused by?”

  “In general, or Kyle’s anemia?”

  “Both,” Don said.

  “Well,” she said. She reached up a hand and rubbed the side of her forehead. “It can be caused by blood loss, lack of red blood cell production, faulty blood cells—there are some genetic disorders which lead to some of those. In women, heavy menstruation can be a factor. There’s pernicious anemia, which is caused by a loss of…”

  Don cut her off. “So if you lost a lot of blood, that could cause it?”

  “Essentially, the condition is the absence of enough red blood cells, so that’s the definition.”

  “If I gave blood too often, you’d say I had anemia,” Don said.

  “Yes,” she said. “That would be my observation. I don’t think that’s the root of Kyle’s problem though. I haven’t seen the final…”

  Don was sitting on the very edge of his chair and could barely contain himself.

  “Are there any animals around here that feed on blood?”

  “Sure,” she said.

  “There are?” Don asked. He was amazed she said yes.

  “Yes,” she said, “you have ticks, mosquitoes, leeches, parasites…”

  “Anything bigger?”

  “Bigger?”

  “Yeah, like a mammal or a reptile,” Don said.

  “Don, what are you talking about? You’ve spent most of your life in New Hampshire, don’t you think you’d know if there were some big blood-sucking creature around? Wouldn’t it be on the news every night? You’re too young to lose a close friend. I never had to deal with that kind of thing until much later in life, and I’m so sorry that it’s happening to you…”

  Don cut her off again.

  “What about Barney? Why do you think Kyle and Barney both had the same problem?”

  “Honey, anemia is like a symptom, not a disease. It’s not a cause. It’s an effect. Barney could have internal bleeding, or some other age-related malady.”

  “Not that they can find,” Don said.

  “Grief is a monster with many heads, and it will sneak up on you. We’ve got groups at the hospital that meet almost every day. Would you go with me to one so we can talk about our loss?”

  “That’s not what this is about, Mom,” Don said.

  “Of course it is, honey,” she said.

  He was glad for the dark; glad she couldn’t see his face.

  “I don’t think it is,” he said. He settled back in the chair. “I think there’s something out there and I think it hurt Barney and I think it eventually killed Kyle.”

  “Out where?”

  “In the woods, behind the house.”

  “Don.”

  “What?”

  “Just listen for a second,” she said. “Do you remember a few years ago when your grandfather died?”

  “Mom, this isn’t the same.”

  “I asked you to listen.” She paused to make sure he would. Don’s shoulders slumped. “When your grandfather died, you became convinced that you saw something out back there in the woods. Now Kyle’s gone, and you’re convinced that there’s something back there in the woods. Do you see the pattern I’m seeing?”

  “I’m not one of your patients, and you’re not a psychiatrist,” Don said.

  “Everyone deals with grief differently and it never gets any easier. There’s only one thing that helps, and that’s time. You need time to develop perspective and go through all the stages. Can you come to one group with me? I need it as much as you do, and it’s so much easier to go with someone else. Please?”

  “Why don’t you take Chelsea? She’s still mourning the death of her relationship with you,” Don said. He walked out and closed the door quietly behind himself.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Awakening

  “HOW HAVE YOU BEEN sleeping?” Dr. John Tooley asked once David appeared comfortable.

  “Better. Not great,” David said. “I think that talking about her is giving her more power. It’s…” he searched for the right word, “invigorating her.”

  “So when we talk about her, she becomes more vivid in your dreams?”

  “Yes, and I think more vivid in real life,” David said.

  “How do you mean?”

  David thought about this and then looked at John. He seemed to make up his mind about something before he continued.

  “She’s a real creature in the world. I know it seems stupid, but she is. Somehow, I’m dreaming about her. There are some things in the world that get more energy when people think about them. She’s one of those things.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I’ve dealt with those kind of things before,” David said. “I’m not sure how much you know about last time.”

  “Last time?”

  “The last time when I used to come talk to you. Years ago?”

  “Yes?”

  “I was dreaming of the really tall monster. Do you remember?”

  “Yes. In fact, I was reviewing my notes of our conversation recently.”

  “Well that thing got stronger when I dreamed about it. It ended up killing a bunch of people. It was on the news, but they didn’t get the end of the story right. They missed all kinds of details even though Mr. Morris sat with that one reporter for a whole day in the hospital, telling him everything. Mr. Morris said the reporter didn’t want to hear.”

  “Can you tell me the whole story?”

  David told him the quick version. He’d managed to piece it together over the years from his memory of the dreams, what Dr. Mike Markey had said before he died, and from the cousins—Roland, Merritt, and Morris. The cousins were the best source, but all their information was cluttered up with legends and myths from their childhood. David had to pick out the details from a sea of embellishments. For awhile, David’s mom had allowed David to talk to the cousins whenever they came to visit, and had allowed David to visit Morris in the hospital as the man’s leg healed. Then, as she began to spin her own version of the story, she’d cut off access.

  “Do y
ou remember any of that from the news?”

  “Parts of it,” John said. “Of course they never mentioned your name, or your family.”

  “Yeah, Mom made sure of that,” David said.

  “When you’re involved in something like that, it’s easy to think you should take some of the blame. There’s a thing called survivor’s guilt. You survive a traumatic event and you feel a little guilty because other people didn’t, or because other people lost more than you did.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yes. So it’s perfectly natural to think something like, the killer got some of his power because I was thinking of him. It’s your brain’s way of taking some of that burden onto yourself because you already feel bad. Does that make sense?”

  “Maybe, but that’s not what happened,” David said. “I was a blood relative of that thing, so it was coming after me the whole time. It tracked me all the way from the mountains of New Hampshire, almost all the way to the coast, and then back south when we tried to run away. I know it was after me, and I know that it was getting power from me thinking about it. Most of the blame belongs to Dr. Mike, but he didn’t know that he was going to wake it up.”

  “You said your mom changed the story. What does she think?”

  “Once the thing disintegrated, she started thinking of it as smaller and smaller. Now, if you can get her to talk about it at all, she just thinks that a crazy person was trying to abduct me. She’s still grateful to Mr. Morris and the others for helping us out, and she put flowers on Mr. Chester’s grave and Dr. Mike’s. But she won’t let me talk to those guys anymore and she doesn’t really believe in most of it. My sister still believes. We talked about it a few times, but then she didn’t want to talk anymore. It’s like when my dad died. After awhile she just said that she didn’t want to think about it.”

  “Some people need a lot of time and space, and rewriting history can be a valid coping mechanism,” John said.

  “I think it’s wrong.”

  “Which part?”

  “My teacher, Ms. Hahn, said that you learn history so you can make better choices in the future.”

  “And you’re afraid of making bad choices?”

  “Yeah, of course,” David said. “Last time I had to run away because my mom wouldn’t believe me that there was something coming after us. It wasn’t until Mr. Morris and Dr. Mike showed up that she finally believed she should leave. I told her the whole thing. Now, I’m having dreams again and because she rewrote her history, she didn’t just listen to me, she sent me here to talk to you. That’s the same thing we did last time. It didn’t work, but we’re doing the same thing.”

  “But you said the dreams were different this time. Do you think you should be running away this time as well?”

  “No, probably not, but we shouldn’t just ignore them and think they’re just dreams, or guilt, or whatever. We should be ready for anything.”

  “And what do you think would constitute getting ready?”

  “What?”

  “You said you should be ready for anything. What would you do?”

  “I think we should start with Katherine Brown,” David said.

  “Who is that?”

  “She used to work with the guy I call Dr. Mike. His name was Dr. Mike Markey. He’s the guy who built the machine that woke up the monster.”

  “And she can help you with the woman from your dreams? You called her Mare?”

  “Please don’t say her name. I think the thing I’ve been dreaming about likes when people say her name. Katherine Brown might be able to tell us what it is, but I don’t know if she believes in it or not.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “She wrote this book. It’s called ‘Chasing Demons.’ It’s about when she and Dr. Mike and a guy named Gary used to go around and look for ghosts and stuff. I got it on my Kindle and I haven’t finished it yet. She went with those guys to investigate a Loogaroo. That’s how they first got together with the cousins.”

  “So she was connected to the men who were there in the final fight with the monster?”

  “Yeah, but she was mad at Dr. Mike by then. You can even tell it in her book. She thinks that Gary died because Dr. Mike was negligent about stuff. She didn’t seem to know what happened exactly with Bill Carson, but I think she blamed him for that too. A lot of the reviews for the book said that she wrote it because she sued the estate of Dr. Mike and he didn’t have any money.”

  “So the woman from your dreams is connected to what happened three years ago.”

  “In a way,” David said. “At least the same people found her and everything. I don’t think she was connected to the monster. But Katherine Brown talks about going to Roland’s place, and that’s the place where we fought the monster, so that means I was right down there close to the Loogaroo. All the details about the Loogaroo fit, too. She lives in the woods and collects blood. The legend is that she gives the blood to the devil. Katherine Brown says that they all got together and set up all kinds of equipment down at Roland’s house but they didn’t record any evidence. She said that all the rest of the people made up a story about something that came out of the woods and bit Mr. Merritt.”

  “When did you read this book?”

  “I tried to read it when it came out. That was back when the cousins were still allowed to come over and talk to me. I think Mr. Morris brought the copy by. Mom took it away. She said it would give me nightmares.”

  “And that was before these nightmares started?” John asked.

  “Yeah,” David said. He chewed the side of his lip and looked up at the ceiling for a second. “But I didn’t read the part about the Loogaroo before my nightmares started. I had only read a little bit about the woman who drowned in the river and came up after the kid who was drinking. That part was pretty funny. There was a bunch of kids who were drinking beers and Dr. Mike chased them away. I guess I did start a little about the Loogaroo, but I had just started that chapter when my mom took the book away.”

  “How long after that did the nightmares start?”

  “Right about that same time,” David said.

  “Tell me more about what Katherine Brown says about Loogaroos.”

  “She said it’s an legend from the Caribbean?” David said, looking to John for confirmation on his pronunciation. “And that it’s a thing that’s an old woman during the day, but it turns into a vampire at night. It doesn’t drink the blood, but it collects it because it has a deal with the devil. Every night it has to collect a certain amount of blood to give to the devil so it can keep it’s magical powers. If it doesn’t get enough blood, the devil will take the Loogaroo’s blood, and that will kill it.”

  “I thought you said that the Loogaroo had something living inside it, between the muscles?” John asked.

  “That’s what I dreamed, but that’s not what Katherine Brown wrote about. Katherine Brown got her information from researching old legends and stuff. I think the stuff I was dreaming about is closer to what’s actually real. All that stuff about the devil is just stuff that people made up over the years or something. You know, like the Greeks talking about where thunder comes from?”

  “Mythology.”

  “Yeah, exactly,” David said.

  “So if what you’re dreaming is closer to real, then why do you think that Katherine Brown would be any help with the Loogaroo.”

  “I think she’d be a good person to start with. Even if the old legends are wrong, they probably figured out some way to get rid of a Loogaroo. There’s stuff on the internet about how they’re compulsive. You can put a bunch of sand, or salt, or rice outside your door and the Loogaroo has to count it all before it can come inside. That’s one way you can stall it. My mom puts salt down for the slugs anyway.”

  “Can’t you just research it on the internet? I still don’t understand why you think you should be talking to Katherine Brown.”

  “I don’t know, it just seems like she’d be helpful. Whether or not she
believes in it, she was right there, and she’s still around, you know?”

  “Merritt was there, too?”

  “Yes,” David said. “Merritt, Roland, Katherine, Mike, and Gary, I think. Mike and Gary are dead, but supposedly Roland and Merritt were both there. My mom doesn’t want to talk to Roland and Merritt though. She said they weren’t good for me.”

  “And if you don’t figure out this Loogaroo, it will come after you?”

  “I don’t know,” David said. “With the other monster, I knew that it wanted to kill me. With this one, I just know that it likes blood and it likes when people say its name. And I’ve seen a lot about where it came from. But I’m not sure that it really knows about me. Still, it makes me scared. I’m sure it’s going to hurt someone.”

  “The world’s a dangerous place,” John said. “You can’t protect everyone.”

  “But if I’m dreaming about it, I think that means that I should try to help. I have to at least try,” David said.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Don

  DON SAT ON THE kitchen floor and tried to entice Barney with another piece of kibble with one hand while he messed with his tablet computer with the other.

  “Come on, you can’t just spit it out. That’s not fair to me or the food, Barney,” Don said.

  His father entered at a fast pace. He was wearing his standard summer work uniform—khaki pants, a short-sleeve button-down shirt, and a pair of beat up loafers that looked like they might be older than Don. Wes opened the refrigerator and pulled out the milk carton.

  “Donny, we talked about this. Please don’t feed him in the kitchen. You’ve got a dozen other places you could feed that dog.”

  “Not on the carpet. Not in the kitchen. Not in my bedroom. I can’t feed him outside—he won’t pay attention. Where exactly should I move to?”

  “How about you try the garage? Is there something wrong with that? Or you could try feeding him at his house. That’s another good option.”

  “Come on, Dad.”

  Wes pulled his travel mug from next to the coffee maker and poured himself the last of the pot. He topped it off with milk and tightened the lid.