The Watcher: A Tony Hunter Novel

by H. Leslie Simmons

  The Watcher

  A Tony Hunter Novel

  H. Leslie Simmons

  Copyright

  The Watcher is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locals is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2016 by H. Leslie Simmons

  All rights are reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, with prior written permission of the author.

  For information and inquires contact the author at hlesliesimmons@gmail. com

  Author’s website: https://wordpress.com/stats/day/hlesliesimmonsauthor. wordpress. com.

  CONTENTS

  Copyright

  1986

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  2016

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ALSO BY H. LESLIE SIMMONS

  1986

  Tony Hunter was born in Potaucac, Virginia, a small southern town on the banks of the Appomattox River, fifteen miles west of Petersburg. In 1986, when Tony was twelve years old, Potaucac was shaken by the disappearance of a girl two years older than Tony. The events that followed shaped his young life and still haunted him when he was thirty years older.

  Chapter 1

  On a Friday afternoon Tony decided to go down to their swimming hole on the river to look for his friends, Ned, Jeff, and Eric, neither of which had been home when he looked for them there. To get to the swimming hole he had to go through the Heavenly Rest Memorial Park, which was a fancy name for a not so fancy burial ground. The cemetery entrance was an overhead frame bearing the sign reading Heavenly Rest Memorial Park. From that frame, hung rusted iron gates that had stood inoperable and open for longer than Tony could remember. He walked slowly down the dirt road from town and stepped briskly into the cemetery heading quickly toward the far end and to the steep hill leading down to the river. Near the road, the graves were mostly new. They held people Tony had known, which was creepy enough. As he got farther into the cemetery, he went past a gravestone that had been there since the civil war. Deeper in, some of the stones were dated back as far as the seventeen hundreds, and a few had almost worn-off dates in the late sixteen hundreds. The place always made him feel like his hair would stand straight up at any minute, especially when he was alone. When the guys were along, they would joke and punch each other on the arms and make believe they were just passing down any old road. They all felt it though; they just didn’t talk about it because it was chicken to talk about it. When Tony was alone, he walked very fast through the old cemetery. He wouldn’t have been surprised if one of those old graves was to open up and disgorge a rotting corpse of some civil war soldier or the bones of a revolutionary war one. The real old stones leaned this way and that as if somebody was trying to push them out of the way from below. A few had even fallen over and one had fallen and been stood up by someone to lean against another stone. He always breathed a sigh of relief when he got past the stones and rusty iron fences that surrounded family plots and started down the steep hill past the spring to the old canal.

  As he reached the top of the hill he heard a rustling and turned to look back. About fifty yards behind him, at the beginning of the older section, stood a man in what looked like a civil war vintage grey uniform. Tony squinted trying to recognize the man but couldn’t at that distance. As Tony watched, the man began to move toward him.

  At about twenty-five yards Tony could see that the figure was not a living man at all. The clothes hung from the figure as if there was no meat to support them. He wore no hat. His matted brown hair stood away from his head and vibrated as if caught in strong variable static electricity. Beneath that flying hair was a grinning skull turned brown from long burial and baring remnants of skin turned to thin rawhide by the years. The eye sockets gleamed with a blue light that emanated from within the skull. The figure made no sound from its gaping mouth. The only sound was from bones clattering together as he sidled toward Tony, dragging his right leg behind him. The leg was wrapped in a mummy-like dressing that had peeled partly away and the loose end dragged on the ground behind him.

  Tony was frozen for a moment staring at the apparition as it dragged itself toward him. When the man was twenty feet away it reached bony arms toward Tony clacking its bony fingers together in a come to me gesture.

  The figure was coming down the center of the path leading back to the road to town. Tony looked beside the figure wondering if there was enough room to get by without being caught. To the figure’s right was a four-foot-high rusted iron fence. Maybe he could jump it and get away that way. On the other side of the path tightly packed pine trees blocked the way. Maybe there was enough room to get by that way and maybe not. There was no way to tell how fast or agile the man thing was. He backed away down the path toward the hill leading to the river.

  The thing was now only ten feet away. Tony decided to not take the risk of trying to get by the thing. It seemed slow. Maybe the best thing was to go down the hill away from the figure. It probably couldn’t catch him. If the guys were there they could help him fight it. If they were not there he could run up the canal and get behind the thing. He could make his way up river and back home before the thing got anywhere near him. His dad would know what to do if the thing showed up there. Just as the creature reached for him, Tony turned and ran down the hill, stumbling over loose rocks and fell, sending waves of pain through his arm abraded by the rocks. Before he could get to his feet the thing was on him, grabbing at his arms with its bony hands.

  Tony skidded back away and bumped into a large oak tree. The thing loomed over him as he lay there. He screamed in fear and tried to slide around the tree, but the figure, faster than Tony had thought it to be, blocked his way.

  As the thing reached for him, Tony groped around on the ground and found a large stick, part of a rotten limb that had fallen, managed to wrest if free from the leaves and underbrush, and swung it toward the thing striking it in the side. The thing hesitated for a moment, giving Tony the chance to get the tree between him and it. He circled the tree keeping the thing on the other side. As he reached the side where the path lead toward the river Tony dashed for it apparently taking the thing by surprise. Tony reached the path leading down before the thing could catch him. He stumbled down the steep hill passed by the spring
where he usually stopped to get a drink of the crystal-clear water and scrambled up the bank to the top of the canal wall. He turned to see where the thing was but didn’t see it. It hadn’t followed him all the way to the bottom of the hill.

  The canal was a wide ditch cut into the steep bank uphill from the river. By 1986 it had sixty foot Virginia pines growing in the middle of it where barges once floated down to Petersburg. The river side of the canal had been built up to form a six-foot-high wall between the canal and the steep drop down to the river. It was necessary to climb down into the canal and climb back up to the river bank. Over the years, people had cut steps into both side walls and filled them in with rocks to make a stable stair up and back down. As Tony began to go over the canal wall, he saw Craig Cook and two of his buddies, Tom Price and Lee Sanders, lying face down on the opposite canal bank looking over the top of the bank down toward the river. He supposed that the thing had either seen or sensed the other boys and had decided to break of its pursuit rather than face four of them. Or maybe it had been all in his imagination and a dead civil war soldier had never been there at all.

  Craig, Brett, and Lee were not the guys he was looking for. Never the less he was glad to see them this time. They were all older than he was and tended to pick on him a bit, especially Craig. But by then he was trapped. If he went back up the hill he’d probably run into the nightmare lurking up there.

  Lee turned around and saw him. He started to tell them what had happened to him up in the cemetery, but Lee held his fingers over his lips and waved for Tony to join them on the canal bank. He started over toward them walking normally, but Lee skidded over to him and dragged him to the ground.

  “Shut up you little fart or I’ll bust your lip.”

  Tony didn’t say anything. He liked his lip the way it was and he believed that Lee would change it. He would keep an eye on the canal bank in case the soldier changed his mind and decided to come after him.

  Lee turned around and began looking over the top of the bank again.

  Tony crawled up to where they were. It was then that he saw that Craig had his dong out of his pants and was jerking it off. It was gross. Not that he had never done it, but he would never jerk off around other people, not even guys; especially not around these guys. The other two were not watching Craig at all. They were staring over the top of the hill down onto the river. Tony looked over as well.

  There were two people on the rocks below. Quickly he ducked back down behind the canal wall and raised only the top of his head to see them.

  There was a girl and a boy. He recognized the girl right away. The boy he had to think a bit. Then he knew who he was, too. He was Joquan Brown, a football star at the high school in Petersburg. He remembered seeing his picture in the Progress Index newspaper. The girl was his grandparent’s next door neighbor, Lisa Demarco. They were as naked as the day they were born.

  Tony had never seen a girl naked before. He had seen a French post card Craig stole from his uncle, but never a real naked girl. He had an idea what it would look like, but he was still surprised. He was also instantly, and irretrievable in love. Lisa was beautiful. Her breasts were not large, but then she had only just turned fifteen years old. Her pubic hair was as red as the hair on her head. Her body was lithe and supple. She wrapped her legs around that damned football player like she was going to ride a horse. He turned her over on her back and moved between her legs. He drove his body into hers and she screamed. Tony started over the hill to help her, but then she laughed and he dropped back into the canal.

  The boys watched the pair for at least twenty minutes. Craig finished what he was doing, caught the stuff in his handkerchief and buried the handkerchief in the canal bank. Somewhere during that time, Brett and Lee had copied Craig. When he buried his handkerchief, they both did the same thing. It was like they followed Craig in everything. Tony had the feeling that if Craig had jumped off the River Bridge, they would have been right behind him.

  When they were all three finished. Craig buttoned up his pants, grabbed a stone from the canal bank, and stood up. The other two followed him. On his command, they each hurled their stones at the couple on the rocks below. None of them could throw a stone that far, but the effect was all the same. Two of their misses splashed into the water on the fly. The third one hit on the rocks with a ping and bounced over several outcroppings before sliding into the water.

  When the stones hit, Brown stood up away from Lisa, looked up to where the boys were on the canal bank and shook his fist. Tony wasn’t worried about him. There was enough distance between them that they would be far up the hill before he got to the canal. Tony watched as the pair quickly grabbed up their clothes. She started to pull her panties on, but he grabbed her arm and said, “For Christ’s sake, Lisa let’s get the hell out of here.”

  Craig, Brett, and Lee were laughing so hard they fell and rolled around on the canal bank.

  Tony was ashamed and embarrassed for Lisa. At the same time, he was furious at Brown. He decided there and then that he would make Brown sorry for what he had done to Lisa. He wasn’t sure how he was going to do it, but he was determined.

  Lisa looked up to where the boys were and Tony swore that he saw a smile on her face. Later, he thought it must have been his imagination. As the pair on the rocks gathered up their clothes, Tony made a mental note of hers; she had a navy-blue skirt with red vertical stripes and a light blue blouse. Her panties were red, almost the same color as her pubic hair. Tony couldn’t believe that. Lisa was wearing red panties. He thought that only girls in French postcards wore red panties. There was no question about the color, either. She dropped them in a small pond of water and picked them out dripping wet. Clothes in hand, they ran toward the far river bank, bounding across the rocks. Tony watched as they went up the bank on that side of the river, one thin white figure and the other black as night, and disappeared into the woods.

  Bored now Craig went over the bank and down toward the river. Not so sure of doing that, Lee shouted after him, “Hey Craig, that bastard might still be down there.”

  “Come on, chicken shit. There’s three of us. Together we can take him.”

  As though he wasn’t so sure of that, Lee followed him over the bank and Brett followed.

  Tony thought of going with them. He didn’t enjoy their company, but that might be better than facing that all too solid ghost up in the cemetery. He decided to follow his original plan and walk up river in the canal until he reached the river bridge. There he would head north into town and then south on River Road to home.

  By the time he reached home a half hour later, he was not so sure that what he remembered had been real. He would sound like a real dork if he told his folks that the ghost of a civil war soldier had chased him through the cemetery. His dad would probably hit him for telling lies and start another fight between his parents. He decided to say nothing. Anyway, even he wasn’t sure that he had seen a skeleton in a grey civil war confederate uniform in the cemetery. How could he expect them to believe him?

  Chapter 2

  The next day, Tony decided to go again to the river looking for his friends, but this time he went to the River Bridge and walked on the rocks to the swimming hole avoiding the cemetery and the canal. His buddies they were not there. He knew that Lisa wouldn’t be there, but was still disappointed that she wasn’t. When he got back home, he found a note from his mother saying that she was at his grandma’s and that he should come there. When he got there, his mother and his grandma were on the front porch. Tony’s grandma, in her long plaid go-to-meeting dress, was in her rocker. His mother was dressed in a blue skirt and a white blouse, not exactly her Sunday best, but dressy anyway. She was pacing up and down like she had just lost something and couldn’t think where to look for it. Her dress swished as she paced.

  Next door, in front of the Demarco house stood two brown, bright and shiny, State Police cars. Tony recognized the number on one of them. It was his mother’s parent’s neighbor, Mr.
Bacon.

  “It’s a strange thing to happen in our town,” Tony’s grandmother said. “Two young girls missing in the same week. The first girl dead. They are saying that the Demarco girl ran away. Why would she run away? She seemed like a good girl to me.”

  “Where have you been?” Tony’s mother said. “Have you been to the river?” She stopped her pacing and came over to him and put her hand on his shoulder.

  “No,” he said, sensing that the river was not the place to have been that morning. “We were just messing around, down at Ned’s house.”

  “I called Ned’s mother. She said that you weren’t there.”

  “I guess we were in the woods part of the time. Ned, Eric, and me are building a tree house.”

  “What kind of tree house?”

  “Just some boards up in a pine tree.”

  “And where did you get the boards?”

  “We helped Mr. Tomlinson tear down his old shed. He said that we could have the boards and whatever nails we could salvage.”

  “How high up is this tree house?” His grandma stood up and came over to him.

  “Not very high.” That was not true, but that was part of the adventure. They wanted to get up high, where they could see a lot of the town. From up there, they could see who came and went. It was like his grandma sitting on her porch so she could see who was going up and down the road, just higher up was all.

  “Your uncle, Charles, fell out of a tree house like that one time, fore you were born, when he was just about your age. Broke his arm. You be careful, you hear?”

  “I’ll be careful, Grandma. Don’t you worry about me.” He decided that he would give it some thought though. He had never heard about Charlie falling out of a tree house before. He would ask him what happened when he got the chance. He walked to the end of the porch closest to the Demarco house. “What’s going on over there?”

  “Lisa Demarco is missing,” his mother said.