Blood Ghost (The Hunting Tree Book 2)

by Ike Hamill

  Gwen’s unconscious hand—possessed by a malevolent force—swept towards the knives kept by the cutting board. It passed over the ten-inch chef’s knife. The thing inside Gwen settled her fingers around the razor-sharp paring knife—this was the blade for a surgeon.

  Sliding Gwen’s feet over the hard tile, it approached Seth from behind.

  Seth was surrounded by a small circle of light from the fixture hanging above his round kitchen table. The cold light consumed his vision, filling it with the black letters and numbers from the white paper. He bounced a blue pen in his left hand in time with the music and in time with his right knee. He used the pen to underline facts he expected to return to later. His effort was wasted. His eyes wouldn’t return to those facts any time soon.

  Years before, Seth had read an article about how blind people navigate. The author proposed that the blind had a sense of proximity—perhaps the skin could feel its own heat reflected by nearby objects. Seth didn’t remember the article as the hair on the back of his neck stood up. Before the blade pierced his larynx and blood rushed down his trachea, Seth thought only of the numbers and his wife, Marianne. His worry for her was a constant, ever since Kyle’s death.

  Seth’s hand stopped mid-underline. He waited to see if his sudden prickly feeling would be followed by a premonition, or a realization, or a…

  The tip of the knife pierced the cartilage of his trachea and then the blade tilted into his jugular. As the blade entered his throat, cutting off his ability to yell out to Marianne, a presence seeped into his mind. This foreign intelligence calmed Seth’s thoughts and subdued his urge to fight. He wondered if this was what it felt like to be swaddled—helpless, but somehow content in being controlled. With the idea of swaddling and infants, his concern returned to Marianne. She was downstairs. Would the knife in his throat find her next?

  Seth’s paralysis broke.

  He pushed forward, driving the knife farther into his own throat, but pulling his attacker off-balance. He felt the foreign intelligence flee from his mind as he reached back over his head with both hands. He plunged his fingers into the hair of his attacker and pulled. Seth pushed himself away from the table as he tugged the weight of his attacker over his shoulder. The light body flipped over him and crashed into the table.

  Seth pulled the knife from his throat. The tip of the blade nicked his esophagus and Seth felt warm blood trickle into his stomach. He coughed and spat at the blood trying to drown his lungs.

  The woman on the floor raised her head. His attacker was his neighbor and friend of many years—Gwen Covington.

  She rose and fixed her eyes on him. It was Gwen, but it wasn’t Gwen. Seth couldn’t make sense of this thing that was both his neighbor and yet not his neighbor. It reminded him of something and it took him less than a heartbeat to remember what. This Gwen-not-Gwen reminded him of when he and Marianne had returned from their awful trip.

  They’d found the house quiet. Nobody—not even the dog—responded to their greeting as they pushed open the door with their bags. Seth and Marianne figured that Kyle must have taken Barney out for a walk in the woods. Until Marianne was starting laundry and she heard Barney’s low whine from Kyle’s room, they didn’t think anyone was home.

  Seth had been walking down the stairs when he heard his wife’s tentative call—“Barney? Kyle? Are you in there?”

  He joined his wife as she pushed open the door to her son’s room.

  Marianne hadn’t noticed at first, but it was obvious to Seth. The thing on Kyle’s bed was Kyle and yet not Kyle. It had his son’s features, his hair, his clothes, and even his skin, but the light was gone. The light of his beautiful boy—his miracle boy who had been conceived despite assurances that Marianne would never carry—the light was gone.

  That was the same issue with Gwen-not-Gwen. It was the body of his neighbor, but her light was gone.

  Seth shifted the tiny paring knife to his left hand and clapped his right over his throat. He coughed up another mouthful of blood and the tickle in his lungs abated.

  He tried to speak but all that came out was a bubbling, popping noise. Seth grimaced with the fresh pain.

  Gwen-not-Gwen placed her palms together in front of her chest as if she were about to pray. She rose to her knees. Seth looked to the phone. He wasn’t willing to put down the knife to pick it up. He stomped on the floor—perhaps his wife would hear and come to his aid.

  Gwen-not-Gwen narrowed her eyes.

  Seth’s mouth fell open. The previous assault on his brain had been a caress, this was a hammer blow.

  The knife fell from Seth’s hand and clattered to the tiles. The invading intelligence took over Seth’s brain and swaddled his will in chains. It kept his right hand clamped to his torn throat and move towards the stairs. It moved towards the negotiation.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Marianne

  MARIANNE SAT ON THE bare mattress with piles of paper in every direction. She had a stack of boxes to her left. On top of the boxes sat a bottle of water and a sleeve of dry crackers. The water was compulsive and the crackers were defensive. The water filled her stomach and kept her moving—every two hours she needed a refill and about that often she had to use the bathroom. If the water hit her empty stomach and just bubbled, threatening to come back up, she stuffed the dry crackers down her throat. That they also gave her body enough glucose to function was just a side effect. She only cared about not having to clean up more watery vomit.

  She was supposed to be sorting and throwing away. She was supposed to keep only important documents and pictures and very special remembrances. She was supposed to come to terms with the idea that Kyle wasn’t coming back. He would never again need his report cards from sixth grade. He would never again need a twelfth birthday card from his Aunt Ellen.

  Instead of disposing of anything, Marianne simply sorted and labeled and boxed.

  She looked at the ceiling and frowned. Seth was up there bouncing his knee again. All he did was listen to music and bounce his knee with nervous energy. He had a lot of nerve giving her any advice. He bounced his knee so hard that he would probably pop his achilles tendon one of these days.

  Marianne collected Kyle’s credit card statements—she still hadn’t found January’s—and bank statements and put them back into the folder marked “financial.” They had already been organized this way, but Marianne had put them in chronological order. She planned to divide them into their own folders later, on another pass through this box.

  When the bed was clean of all the stacks of paper, Marianne put the lid back on the plastic box marked “Files” and took the lid from the box marked “Shirts.” They were folded and stacked, but they weren’t sorted by age or size. Marianne dumped the box on the bed.

  Upstairs, the bouncing-knee sound became a thump and then a pound. Marianne sighed. She picked up the first shirt and started her first pile.

  Over the next few seconds, the pounding from upstairs grew in intensity. Marianne considered yelling up to her husband, but it wouldn’t do any good. He listened to his music so loud, he would never hear her. When the pounding stopped, she waited with a shirt in her hands, hoping it wouldn’t start again. It didn’t, but worse, she heard slow steps coming down the stairs.

  Marianne put the shirt into the proper pile and waited. He wouldn’t say anything about what she was doing, but he wouldn’t have to. She would see the concern in his eyes.

  As it turned out, she was shocked at what she saw in his eyes. It was that farthest thing from concern.

  # # # #

  Marianne folded her arms when Seth appeared in the doorway.

  His eyes had a cold, hard intensity that she’d never seen before. When his lips moved, no sound came out.

  “I can’t hear you,” she said.

  He took a step forward. He was holding a hand to his throat and when he stepped forward she saw that the dark streaks running down his shirt were blood.

  His lips moved again and this time she
did hear, but not with her ears. She heard the voice in her head. Its thick accent was made slightly more understandable by reading her husband’s lips, but the effect was unsettling, like watching a poorly dubbed movie.

  “I require your assistance,” the voice said. The pitch was low and raspy. Marianne identified it as female, which made it even weirder that it was in sync with the words on her husband’s silent lips.

  Marianne was too shocked to move.

  “What are you, and what’s… what’s wrong with you?” Marianne asked. Some part of her wanted to flee. She suppressed it. She had a lot of practice at suppressing her self-preservation instinct lately. As it became easier, it also began to seem like the right thing to do.

  “I know who’s fault it is that your son died,” the voice said. As Seth’s face mouthed the words, his features softened, as if the real Seth heard them too.

  “Who?” Marianne asked. Her blood ran cold in her veins. Fault was something she was very interested in. Ever since Kyle died, she’d wanted to assign blame and find fault.

  “First, I will tell you what I need,” the voice said.

  Seth’s body leaned against the wall. His hand was shiny with fresh blood—it was still flowing despite his efforts to clamp the injury with his hand.

  “Did you do that to my husband?” Marianne asked.

  “Yes and no. I did not intend to hurt him. I needed to silence his own voice so you’d hear mine,” the voice said.

  Marianne considered this contradiction.

  “Will you hear my request?” the voice asked.

  Marianne nodded and reached a shaky hand for her water. Seth’s eyes watched her carefully. His lips moved and Marianne heard the strange, raspy voice start to speak again in her head.

  “You and I have the opportunity to settle a debt, and punish those men who are complicit in your son’s death. They come from a little trailer on the other side of the woods.”

  Marianne’s eyes widened at this. She knew the trailer. It was the source of frequent arguments between her and her husband. She hated the loud parties they threw and the whine of sirens when emergency vehicles were summoned in the night to the trashy little place. She hated the gunfire that echoed through the forest. One day two of them had come over—Kyle had been just a boy at the time—to warn her that her son shouldn’t play in the woods by the stream because that’s where they sighted their rifles. As if the whole world should be off-limits because of their incessant need to play with firearms. Seth wanted to accept this behavior in the name of tolerance. Marianne wanted to promote re-zoning the neighborhood to force the trashy people out.

  “Complicit?” Marianne asked. She didn’t trust her enraged voice to more than one word.

  “Yes, yes,” the voice said. “They harbored the creature who stole your son’s blood. Their uncle cared for it for years and then they began to indulge it as well. I’ve been chasing this creature for a long time, trying to get close enough to extinguish it. I move from patron to patron, working with my hosts.”

  “Then why do you need my help?”

  “I only work with my patrons. I don’t overpower them. Your husband wants to help you heal, so he brought me here. Before that, the surgeon wants to alter flesh so she brought me to your husband. Before that, the parent wants to repay a debt, so he brought…”

  “Okay, but why me?”

  “You want to punish. I want to punish. We shall go punish together,” the voice said.

  Marianne felt a sly heat forming in her belly. Instead of filtered water, it felt as if she’d taken a shot of whiskey, and the heat began to bloom through her chest. Marianne smiled as the thing came into her. She felt its need for revenge against the men who counted themselves as part of the Abenaki tribe. At the door, Seth stumbled his way into Kyle’s recliner and moaned as he brought his other hand to his neck. Marianne sprang from the bed and flew to the door. She heard his croaking objection as she ran down the hall and up the stairs. Through the front door, she—and the thing inside her—found the night. Together, they turned Marianne’s eyes to the sky and oriented to the stars.

  The thing inside Marianne sniffed at the air and reached out to the three men in the woods.

  It whispered to her inside her own head and, despite the accent, to Marianne it sounded like her own thought.

  “Now we’ll go track down those men and make them pay for Kyle.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Interrupted Vacation

  WES WOKE AND LAY perfectly still. The air was humid and cool and seemed to cling to everything, leaving behind a layer of salt. He got up and switched on the reading light. The quilt was twisted and pushed the side—he’d fallen asleep in his clothes, on top of the bed covers.

  He heard the howl again.

  Now he remembered—that’s what had woken him up. It was a forlorn howl that had pulled him from his dream.

  He got to his feet and crossed the room.

  It was a beautiful house. Big rooms were decorated with simple, traditional furnishings that made it feel like a home. Handmade rugs were spaced across the warm oak floors, and old pictures of long-dead relatives graced the walls. Wes liked it immediately, but also feared the house. Rather, he feared the reproach of the owners should he or his children mess up this perfect dwelling. It was clearly not a summer rental. This was a second home used only by family. God knows how Gwen had convinced the owners to let them stay.

  He opened the door to the hall and found his way to the family room. Chelsea was sitting on the couch with her feet tucked under her, watching something on her tablet. Wes waved until she removed an ear bud.

  “Can you find your brother? The dog is…”

  Wes was cut off by another gut-wrenching howl. The dog was standing near the big french doors that looked out towards the beach.

  “His dog is howling,” Wes finished.

  “I don’t know where he is. Why do I have to find him?”

  “I’m old, honey. I’m going back to bed. Could you please take care of this for your old man?”

  “Fine.”

  Wes shuffled his feet back down the hall, unbuttoning his shirt as he walked.

  # # # #

  He’d just laid his head on the fresh pillow—they must have had a service come in and launder the sheets—when Chelsea threw open the door.

  “Dad?”

  “What.”

  “There’s something wrong with Don,” she said. He heard the concern in her voice and his feet were on the floor before his eyes were fully open. Chelsea turned to the side and let her father push past her in the hall.

  “Where is he?” Wes asked. He nearly tripped over Barney, who was pacing down the hall.

  “Upstairs. On the left.”

  Wes pulled himself up the stairs with the railing. His feet could barely keep up. When he was a new parent and Don could still fit in the crook of his arm, he’d known Don’s different cries automatically. There was a cry for fussiness, one for hungry, one for hurt, and another for changing. Chelsea had been the same way—her cries sounded almost identical to her brother’s. In that same way, he’d heard the urgency in Chelsea’s voice when she’d come into his room. Now he couldn’t seem to make his body move fast enough to find his son.

  The door was open. Wes ran through to his son’s side and assessed Don’s condition.

  “Phone—where’s the phone?” he asked Chelsea as she came through the door. He was hunting on night tables and dressers.

  “You can use mine,” she said, holding out her cell.

  Wes nodded. He called in the emergency—Don was breathing, but he wouldn’t wake up.

  “They’re on their way. Put Barney in my room and then call your mom,” Wes said.

  “Okay,” Chelsea said. Tears were rolling down her face, chasing each other to the overhang of her chin. “Come on, Barney.” The dog struggled against his collar for a second and then submitted.

  “Wait, Chelse,” Wes called. “Put him in the car.”

/>   Wes was squeezing his son’s unresponsive hand. He forced himself to relax his grip.

  “Wake up, just wake up,” he whispered.

  # # # #

  Wes followed the ambulance with Chelsea in the seat next to him. The paramedics were polite and gentle and told him nothing as they carried his son on a stretcher down to the ambulance. Each of his questions were met with questions from them.

  “Is your son on any drugs that you know of? Do you suspect he takes anything not prescribed to him?”

  They offered for Wes or Chelsea to ride in the back of the ambulance, but Wes turned them down.

  “Is your mom going to meet us there?” Wes asked Chelsea. He forced himself to give the speeding ambulance a little room. Wes slowed down until he could see the spot where the ambulance’s rear wheels touched the pavement.

  “I never got her.”

  “What?”

  “No, I tried at the hospital and at home and I tried the service with the emergency code. She didn’t respond.”

  “Try again.”

  “But Dad, the service tries again automatically, every five minutes.”

  “I know, but try again anyway. Call the house phone. Call the Umbers—it’s the middle of the night, but maybe Seth will go over and knock on the door,” Wes said.

  “I tried the Umbers already. They’re not answering either.”

  “What? Are the phone lines down or something?” Wes asked.

  “I don’t know, Dad.” She sounded close to tears.

  Wes put his hand on her arm. “It will be okay. I’m just freaking out a little.”

  “Me too.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Melanie

  “WE’RE GOING TO BE arrested, you realize that, right?” Melanie asked her children.