The Hunted

by Mike Dellosso

  She thought about calling Joe, telling him everything, but the three green numbers on her clock reading 2:32 advised against it.

  She needed to talk to someone, seek help, get advice, anything. And the only person she trusted outside her family was Joe. At least she thought she could trust him. She did at one time. Maybe she would call him in the morning. Then she remembered it was morning. She needed to get some sleep. She'd call him when she woke up.

  It had turned out to be a dreary morning. The sky was slate with a ceiling of dense, low-hanging stratus clouds. The air was cold and heavy with a damp humidity, the kind that penetrated skin and sinew and settled in the bones. Joe had entered Darlene's intending to enjoy a quiet breakfast and read the morning paper. He had grabbed a booth in the corner, hoping for some privacy, and sat with his back to the door. The waitress, Sam, according to her nametag, had promised to be back "in a jiffy" with his food.

  Joe snapped open the weekend edition of USA Today and scanned the headlines for anything that looked new and interesting. The president was getting slammed for some kind of alleged scandal again. Things in the Middle East were still looking grim. The Senate was fighting over some immigration bill. Nope. Nothing interesting. Well, at least nothing new.

  Across the aisle, in the booth opposite his, he heard an elderly man with thick glasses and yellowing gray hair jawing to his wife about "that kid who got attacked." Apparently he thought that Maggie wasn't doing enough.

  Sam appeared again, holding a dish full of pancakes and a small pitcher of syrup. "Here ya go," she said with a wide smile and a quick wink. "Enjoy."

  "Thanks," Joe mumbled. He folded the paper and set it aside.

  He was in the middle of cutting into the tall stack of pancakes when an elderly man walked up and stood beside his table.

  Joe looked up and stared blankly at his visitor, not recognizing him. He was at least eighty, with gray eyes, deeply creviced face, thinning snow-white hair, and a mouth that curved downward like it was stuck in a permanent frown. His hands were tucked into the pockets of his baggy blue-jean overalls.

  Either the old-timer was a bum looking for a handout or the American Hillbilly Society had adopted a new recruitment technique-I ain't leavin' til you join up. Maybe the army should take notes.

  The man invited himself to sit across from Joe and crinkled his eyes in a smile. "Well, Joe, you're not exactly what I expected, but I'm sure I got the right guy." He had an amazingly clear voice for a man his age.

  Joe blinked. Was this guy crazy? "Excuse me?"

  The old man laughed, showing a mouth full of large, stained teeth. "Oh, I'm sorry. You don't even know who I am." He extended a large, weathered hand across the table. "Name's Josiah Walker, but my friends call me Jo."

  An electric shock bolted up Joe's spine and buzzed along his skull. Jo holds secret. He stared at the man, unable to speak, holding his fork in midair like a pronged diving board.

  Josiah pulled his hand away and laughed. "Well, I can tell by the way your mouth is hangin' open that I got the right guy. I s'pose this must seem awful strange to you, 'cause it is, you see. I've never had anything like this happen to me before."

  Joe shut his mouth and just stared at the old-timer. What was he talking about?

  "I said I've never had anything like this happen to me before."

  Joe blinked. "Like-like what?"

  "There you go. I've been hearin' a voice for the past few nights, and then last night I had a vision that accompanied the voice. It was you, Joe, sitting right in this here diner in this here booth looking just like you are now. It was a vision."

  Great, the Hillbilly Society was a front for a nutty religious cult. Next thing, Uncle Jesse here would be pulling out a variety pack of Kool-Aid, asking Joe what flavor he fancied. "Really," Joe said, not trying to hide his skepticism. "And my voice too?"

  Josiah laughed. "Oh, no. It was God's voice, all right. There was no doubt about that. No mistakin' the voice of the Lord."

  Now Joe laughed. "God's voice. You mean God has been speaking to you at night." He went back to cutting his pancakes. "Maybe you were dreaming. Bad scrapple or something."

  Josiah shook his head. "Nope. Woke up first, then heard the voice. Always happens at two-fifteen in the a.m."

  Great, not only was the quiet breakfast ruined, but now he had to share it with Rev. Redneck here who thought he was some kind of prophet from the R2-D2 Gamma System. "Why two-fifteen? What's the significance of that?"

  "Beats the buffalo chips outta me. Tell you the truth, I don't think there is any." Josiah folded his hands and looked Joe square in the eyes. "You don't believe me, do you?"

  Joe put his fork down and sat back. "Kinda hard to, don't you think? I don't even know who you are. You come up to me, somehow knowing my name, and tell me God talks to you at night, or in the morning, whatever, and you saw my face in your dream. I'm still waiting for the Raelians- want-you pitch. And that's when I tell you to get lost."

  "There will be no pitch, I promise, and it wasn't a dream," Josiah corrected. "It was a vision. There's a difference. And you do know me. I just introduced myself. By the way, what is your surname?"

  Joe cocked one eyebrow. "You don't know? Didn't God tell you that?"

  "No. He just said 'Joe."'

  "What did He tell you about me?"

  "Well, now. I can't tell you that 'til you believe I actually heard from God."

  "OK. I believe."

  Josiah laughed. "No, you don't. I know you're one of His children, He told me that much, but like most Christians nowadays you've put God in a safe little box and told Him what He can and can't do, or should and shouldn't do." He leaned on the table with both elbows and narrowed his eyes at Joe. "Son, God can do anything He wants to do so long as He doesn't contradict Himself, and He's very careful not to do that. If I were you, I'd let Him out of that box you've got Him in and see what He'll do. Why can't God talk to someone? I mean, audibly like talk to someone. Even an uneducated, farm-raised old geezer like me? That's what you're thinkin', ain't it? Is He not capable of it?"

  Joe didn't know how to answer. He remembered the voice he'd heard in the woods and while he prayed the other night. Sure, it wasn't audible, but it was real enough, and he knew it was God's. As much as he hated to admit it, the old farmer was actually making some sense. "Uh, sure He is."

  "So why won't you believe? I mean, really believe?"

  "Look, Mr. Walker-"

  "Jo. I said my friends call me Jo. And I count you as a friend now."

  "OK. Thanks. Look, Jo. I do believe that God can do anything. But like I said, I don't even know you. Yeah, I know your name, but I don't know anything else about you. For all I know, you could just be some loony jerking my chain."

  Josiah sighed and shrugged. "Well, that's reasonable. At least you believe it is possible for someone to hear God's voice. Maybe this will help. He told me `Joe needs answers."'

  Joe's heart thumped in his chest. Maybe this guy wasn't as cuckoo as he appeared. Maybe he really did hear God's voice. It was unbelievable, yes, and yet somehow, strangely, totally believable. Joe turned both hands palm up. "OK. You've got my attention."

  "And you've got mine. What kinda answers do you need?"

  Joe pushed his plate aside. He wasn't thinking about his appetite anymore. He wanted to see what kind of secrets this overalled hillbilly had to reveal. "My nephew was mauled by something a week ago and is in a coma. A few days ago his hand started spasming, and the physical therapist put a pencil in it. He wrote words. They said, `Jo hold secre.' Jo holds secret. I thought it meant me, but now I think it means you. You hold the secret to something, but I'm not sure what."

  Josiah furrowed his brow and lifted a hand to his chin. "That is interesting. A boy in a coma who I met but a couple times writes about a secret I hold. Let's talk some more, and maybe we'll stumble upon the answer. I'm assuming you don't live here in Dark Hills. What's happened since you've been here?"

  Joe looked around
and lowered his voice to almost a whisper. "Did you know Bob Cummings?"

  Josiah looked surprised. "Did? I do know him. Went hunting with him a few times. Mainly whitetails. Good hunter too."

  "Yeah, well, he and I went hunting the thing that mauled Caleb, and-" Joe swallowed. It was still hard to talk about Cummings's death. "He was killed. The beast, we didn't even know what it was ... killed him."

  The blood drained from Josiah's face, and it fell a pasty white. Joe definitely had his attention now.

  "Joe, my boy," Josiah said, leaning back. He swallowed hard, his Adam's apple jerking up, then slowly falling. Looking around conspiratorially, he said, "I think I know the secret you're after. Has Maggie Gill looked into this?"

  "That's just it. She won't lift a finger. Her officers went back to get Cummings's body and said it was gone. She wouldn't even admit he was dead; she wrote him up as missing. Had all kinds of excuses too."

  "She won't be any help to you," Josiah said. He was as matter-of-fact as if he were commenting on his brand of denture adhesive.

  "Why not?"

  "First of all, let me say one thing, make the waters a little clearer, then you'll have to do some homework on your own. Her officers are her cousins. The Gills-"

  "Wait a minute," Joe said, cutting Josiah off. "Cousins? I dated Maggie in high school and met most of her family. I never met them."

  Josiah held up a hand. "Let me finish, and then you'll understand. Most people 'round here don't know the history of the Gills, and if they do, they chose to forget about it a long time ago. Makes life a whole lot easier. But I've been around long enough-seventy-eight years to be exact-and I can follow the family tree. Your secret, the secret I hold because I may be the only one in Dark Hills that knows the real story of the Gills, is the Gill family secret-the Secret. You know that since the early 1900s the police chief has always been a Gill?"

  "Yes."

  "You know why?"

  Joe shrugged. "No."

  "Because of the Secret. All the police officers have been Gills. Sure, they don't all claim the Gill name, but they all have Gill blood. Decades ago they stopped associating with one another on an extended family level so people wouldn't know who was part of the family and who wasn't. Gives them a sense of privacy. It's so twisted and convoluted now nobody even cares anymore. And they wouldn't know unless they kept track of the family tree."

  "And you have?"

  "Not intentionally. But I know who's who and what's what."

  Joe lifted his eyebrows and leaned forward on the table. "So what's the secret?"

  At that, Josiah laughed and held up a finger. "Not so fast, young man. It ain't that easy. I need to ask you something. You said you dated Maggie in high school. Was it serious?"

  Joe sniffed. "What's that got to do with-"

  Josiah held up a hand again, stopping Joe in his tracks. "Answer the question, then you'll get your own answers. Was it serious? Your relationship with Maggie."

  "I guess. Yes. We were serious. Even talked about marriage."

  "Do you still have romantic feelings for her?"

  "Look Mr. Walker-Jo-I'm sure you think you're getting to the bottom of something, but I really don't see how my feelings for Maggie have anything to do with what almost killed Caleb and did kill Cummings."

  Josiah sighed deeply and wrinkled his brow. "You're gonna have to trust me on this, Joe. It has everything to do with what you're about to find out. Just answer the question. And be straight with me."

  Joe hesitated. His feelings for Maggie were none of this guy's business. He'd answered his first question, however absurd and irrelevant it was. What more did he want? Maybe he should tell him about all the other girls he'd been interested in too. Tell him about his hobbies, favorite book, color, waist size, boxers or briefs-a regular truth-or-dare session. But Josiah had done a good job of convincing him that he did indeed hold the secret Caleb wrote about. And now Joe's curiosity was aroused. If Walker held the secret, he wanted to find out what it was. He had to find out what it was. He nodded his head slowly. "Yeah, I guess on some levels I do."

  "What do you mean on some levels? Either you do or you don't."

  "Yes. I do...I think."

  "Good enough. Then you'll have to do some homework first. The Gill secret goes back to the 1920s. I want you to read the Gills' side of the story first; then I'll tell you the truth."

  "The truth? And you know what the truth is?"

  A light twinkled in Josiah's eye, a spark of confidence. "I'm fairly certain I do."

  "OK. What do I have to do?"

  "Go to the library and look up the old Dark Hills Gazette from 1922. It was a weekly paper they printed up, and the library has all of them. Read 'em, and then we'll talk."

  "Nineteen twenty-two. Read all of them? What am I looking for?"

  "You'll know it when you see it."

  "How can I reach you?"

  Josiah pulled a napkin out of the chrome napkin holder, then a pen out of the front pocket of his overalls, and wrote a phone number on the napkin. "When you're done, call me."

  Maggie Gill awoke at 8:30, still tired after six hours of restless sleep. Now she wrestled with the thought of whether to tell Joe about the family secret or not. Seeing him again and having him back in her life had brought feelings to the surface that she thought she'd long ago buried. His sudden appearance had changed everything. She now thought of the life they could have had together. They would be married, two or three kids in school, and busy running around to basketball games and school concerts. Maybe it could still happen. Sure, they'd be a little behind schedulefifteen years behind-but it's not like it had never been done before. They could still be happily married. She could rid herself of the Gill legacy, the Secret, and Dark Hills forever. Live the rest of her life in peace.

  She still had feelings for Joe; she knew that much. And she had been doing a lot of thinking about where her life was headed, and her conclusion was simple: in a word, nowhere. She was thirty-three, single, childless, living in a small town getting smaller, with no social life to speak of. She had no friends, her mother was dead, and her father, her dear father, was only a misshapen shadow of the man he once was.

  Her father. Chief Elston Gill. As a child she thought her dad was a reallife Lone Ranger. He was her hero, her idol. She wanted to be just like him. Now, his pleading eyes and raspy voice came back to her: Secret! Hide! No tell. But she had to tell, didn't she? She couldn't bear this burden. Over the years she'd done some of her own research and learned more and more of the family secret. The Secret that was protected by the legacy. Gill blood had enforced the law in Dark Hills for the last century. It was what her dad so desperately wanted to preserve. It was his legacy, his father's legacy, and his father's legacy. And now it was her legacy.

  But she could trust Joe. She knew she could. She had to. She was tired of lying.

  She would call him and ease into it, see how he responded before fully disclosing her family's past.

  Picking up the phone, Maggie punched in the number for Joe's cell phone.

  The phone rang.

  But how could she ever explain all that had happened? Simple, she wouldn't. But that would be protecting the Secret. And she wanted to rid herself of the Secret. Or did she? After all, it was part of her family history. Part of who she was, imprinted on her genetic makeup. But if she and Joe were ever going to have an honest relationship, she'd have to be just that, honest.

  Again, her dad's voice was there: Promise, Magpie.

  And she had. "OK. I promise." That's what she'd said. And she had meant it.

  The phone rang three more times before Joe's prerecorded voice came on instructing her to leave a message.

  Maggie slammed the phone into its cradle. Dumb idea, Maggie. You promised Dad. Joe would never believe you anyway. And even if he did, how could anyone love a crooked cop who lied to protect her family legacy? No. It would never work. Dad was right. Protect the Secret. Protect it at all costs.

&n
bsp; CHAPTER 21

  HE MEETING WASN'T exactly a meeting of the minds. No one claimed it was. It was more a meeting of the wills. Clark Martin had organized an "emergency" meeting to discuss with some of the men of Dark Hills what they would do to rid themselves of the beast stalking their town. Someone had to take action, and Clark saw himself as the only someone willing to do it.

  Fifteen were invited. Three showed up. Four total. It seemed after the gathering at the police station, the witnesses had lost some of their credibility around town. Well, Clark had thought, they'll believe us when we march through town with a lion carcass in our pickup.

  The men had gathered at Clark's farmhouse. Besides Clark, there was Mike Little, Gerald Heller, and Dick Moyer-the Fearless Four. Not exactly what Clark had hoped for. Not what any of them had hoped for. But it would do. It would have to do. It would only take one shot anyway, right?

  "Thanks for comin', guys," Clark said, caressing the stock of his pumpaction shotgun like it was the family pet as he sat on a wooden chair. He stood and eyed the three men in his living room. Mike Little, dressed in full military camo, was impatiently shifting his weight in the middle of the room. Gerald Heller was wearing a camo jacket and hat and stood by the door. Dick Moyer, clad in a tree bark camo jumpsuit, was seated on the sofa. "I guess you know why I called this here meetin'. It's time somebody takes action and does sumptin' about that beast that's out there. If we sit around on our behinds like Chief is doin', people are gonna start dyin'. I hear the Saunders boy is hanging on, but he coulda just as easily been... well, you know. We don't want anyone else... look, somebody's gotta protect this town, our town, and it looks like the job has fallen on us.

  "I say we go now," Mike Little said. He was a red-checked, fiery young mill worker always in the mood for a good fight. Down at McCormick's he'd gotten quite a reputation. Some of the guys had given him the name "Sparky" because of his short fuse. "We're only wasting time sitting around here talking about it." He looked around the room. The redness in his cheeks was spreading down his neck. "And it looks to me like we all came with the same thing in mind. Let's go get us a lion."