The Tracker

by John Hunt

  After copying the video onto the USB, Taylor carried it around with him, patting it on occasion to make sure it hadn’t gone anywhere. He debated showing Jill but just as soon as the thought formed he dismissed it. On a Friday after work he brought the USB home and put it under his mattress, which incidentally was the same place he used to hide his dirty magazines. He had no idea who he was hiding it from but it felt right. Like his few magazines, the USB felt dirty.

  He cooked himself some dinner, ate it in front of the TV and then carried a book to bed and fell asleep reading it within minutes. It was his routine. He was always tired and after work, bed called to him most insistently. Well, after food of course. When he woke up it was daylight and he stretched, yawned and scratched the places that itched. He glanced at his watch, saw 9:34am and stared at the ceiling while summoning the energy to get out of bed. He frowned. When he checked the time his eye caught the date. He didn’t think anything of it only now the date didn’t seem right.

  He raised the face of the watch to his eyes. It read April 28th. When he went to sleep (last night?) it had been April 25th. His heart sped up and he rubbed at the digital face of his watch as if that would change the readout, as though he could erase it. It didn’t. That meant it was Monday. He remembered going to bed on a Friday. On a damn Friday! What the fuck was going on? There were plates of food beside his bed, soda cans on the floor, bags of chips and crumbs on and in his bed and he was fully dressed in track pants and a hooded sweater that was crusty with food stains and what is that? Sweat? He pulled at his sweater and there were salt stains under his boobs and on his stomach. What had he been doing? The phone rang by his ear and he screamed. He sat up, slowed his breathing and reached for the phone.

  “Hello?”

  “Taylor? It’s Jill.”

  “Hey.”

  “Are you alright?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “No. I don’t think I’m alright at all.” He thought, I think I’m going crazy here, something isn’t right, my brain is a mess and I don’t know if a band-aid exists that could fix it.

  “Well, you’re late for work and you’re never late for work so I figured something must be up. You catch what Jack had? That nasty cold? I don’t know why that guy came into work as sick as he was.”

  “Yeah. I got something.” Maybe a brain tumour, schizophrenia, bi-polar disorder, a first class ticket on the crazy train to crazy town.

  “Okay. Stay home, get better and call me in the morning if you don’t think you’re going to make it in.”

  “Will do.”

  “Take care.”

  “Thanks, Jill. You too.”

  He hung up the phone. His lips trembled and his eyes burned. What was going on? He wished he had someone to talk to about this. He wished his mother hadn’t died. He swung his feet to the floor and rubbed his face with his hands. He took deep breaths, his mind racing, his heart fluttering. What was he supposed to do? What could he do? He thought, you can have a shower, clean this place up and maybe call those Victim Assistance people. Maybe they knew of an anonymous phone line he could call and tell them what was going on. They could point him in the right direction. A doctor or a clinic or something, anything that would help explain what he was going through.

  He stood and surveyed the mess of his room. He sighed and started cleaning. Every so often, a chill would shake through his body. There was no memory of anything he had done on the weekend. A gap of time where nothing remained. No impressions, no flashes of insight, nothing. He ground his teeth and took the trash from his room and tossed it into the bin in the garage.

  The kitchen was in a similar state of cleanliness and he spent more of the morning cleaning it up, wiping down counters and putting the cold items (like the milk carton and the melted butter) back in the fridge. Once done, he sat for a bit and nibbled on toast with jam. He wasn’t hungry. For the first time in as long as he could remember, he wasn’t hungry in the morning. He ate the toast out of habit more than any desire to eat and it tasted like sand in his mouth. Taylor threw half of the toast out. He didn’t want it anymore.

  He stood and walked to the living room. He turned on the TV and sank into the chair with a sigh. His eyes were heavy. His body ached. He was so tired. A cold draft tickled the back of his neck. His eyes popped wide and he turned his head. The basement door was wide open. Hanging on the basement side doorknob was a black fedora. Taylor’s mouth opened and closed like a fish. He heard a creak on the stairs from deep in the basement. He staggered out of his chair and lunged for the door. He slammed it closed and leaned against it, breathing hard and wanting to cry. In the brief moment before he slammed the door shut he saw a shadow standing in the darkness at the bottom of the stairs. He could’ve sworn he heard the man chuckle before the door slammed.

  ***

  Taylor sat before the door as long as it took two episodes of Seinfeld to finish on the TV. He hadn’t heard anymore noise from the basement. No steps, no evil chuckling and no pounding on the door. He didn’t see the fedora on the ground and then remembered it had been on the inside of the door and when he closed it he probably launched it into the basement. Or once again, maybe he imagined it. Maybe this was further progression of his mental illness. One thing he did know, he wasn’t going to open the door to go searching in the dark for the damn hat just to prove he had seen it. He could imagine creeping down the stairs, well not creeping, a guy as heavy as him couldn’t creep anywhere and reaching around at the bottom of the stairs for the hat. That would be the time a hand would grab his wrist and with a chuckle, pull him further into the dark. So, no, that wasn’t a viable plan. He wasn’t calling the police again. He wouldn’t be calling Jill and other than that, there was no one else he would even consider calling. Calling Victim Assistance felt more dangerous than helpful to him. Opening up to them, they might feel obligated to call someone, get him sent to a mental health institution. He didn’t want that. Not at all.

  Instead, after mustering up the courage, he ran to the kitchen, snagged a chair and jammed it under the door knob of the basement door. He frowned, thinking the chair wouldn’t be very effective if the door opened inwards and then remembered it didn’t because he had to slam it closed and not pull it shut. With that done, he grabbed his wallet, called a cab and went to the Home Depot. He bought four sturdy lock clasps and four heavy duty locks. He returned home with his purchases, peeking in the front window to make sure the chair was still doing it’s job and he went inside and secured the shit out of the door. Four locks from the top of the frame to the bottom. There was no way anyone was coming up those stairs and into his house. Not without a lot of noise and a lot of work which would give Taylor ample time to run out of the house screaming. He nodded at the door, pleased with his work. He wrinkled his nose catching a whiff of himself. He stunk. Time to have a shower, read a book in bed and get some rest. He was nervous about sleeping again. What if he woke up and it was next week, next month or next year with no memory of the time passing? Nothing to be done about it though. He would have to sleep. And as usual with him since his mom died, he was exhausted.

  -9-

  A return to monotony…

  The lock on the door did the trick. He went to sleep and woke up the next day and not two days later because that happening was too damn scary and between the dark man and forgetting entire days, he’d rather see the dark man. Well, maybe. He went to work and when he returned home the locks on the basement door were fine. He didn’t see the shadow man at his work, behind a tree, sitting next to him on the bus or hear him creaking up the basement stairs. He returned to his boring, comfortable routine and it made Taylor happy. No rattling or shaking doors and no stupid shadows wearing hats from a half century ago. A return to peace. Taylor wondered if
he had locked the jerk in the basement for good or maybe the locks worked as a symbolic thing for his mind. Locked in the basement, locked away in his mind. Whatever the case, Taylor welcomed the return to normality.

  His energy levels hadn’t returned and that still concerned him but not as much as the fedora wearing man had and so, as he liked to do with unpleasant thoughts, he ignored them. He was tired all the time and slept a lot but at least there wasn’t some freak creeping up his basement stairs or staring at him while he sat at his desk at work. Anything was better than that.

  In this fashion, the rest of the year passed by. There had been moments that had caused Taylor concern. One time he woke up, walked into his kitchen past the basement door and one of those hard steel locks sat on the floor. Just one. He gasped and checked over his shoulder to see if a hand was reaching for him. The other three locks were still on, still secure and that was good. After he steadied his pulse with big lungfuls of air, he put the lock back on (it wasn’t broken, only unclasped) and resolved to put it out of his mind. And after a few days the moment lost its strength and became hazy with distance and Taylor employed his excellent skill of avoidance to help him forget about it.

  Other times, he would wake up surrounded again by empty plates and the detritus of a meal on his sheets and a stain on his shirt. Only from one night though, and not two or three. Still, he should remember getting up and making this food right? Except the dark man didn’t accompany these moments and without his dark presence those moments were trivial. Better to be a little crazy, a manageable crazy instead of being full blown seeing scary-as-hell-shadow-man type of crazy. He could handle the plates of food he didn’t remember eating and locks that unlocked themselves. He couldn’t handle the dark man or missing time. And both seemed to have gone away. Taylor went to work, came home, ate and went to bed with the occasional oddity disturbing his otherwise boring life.

  -10-

  The dark man cometh…

  Owen said, “So, what do you think Taylor? You think this dark man is real?” Taylor had been right about that at least. No one would believe his story. Who would? No doubt an interesting tale and Taylor did tell it well and with conviction but it was still just a story. A story to lay blame for the death of four people in someone else’s lap. The old ‘the other dude did it’ defence. Or with the way the story was headed, the not criminally responsible by reason of insanity defence. The last one concerned him. Owen had to admit, from all the interviews he had done over the years he could see Taylor believed what he was saying. In Taylor’s mind, from what Owen could tell, all this happened, all of it real as the table between them. That didn’t make the story any less off-the-wall. All it meant, at this point, was that Taylor believed it. So Owen would probe and pick and try to find the lies and the inconsistencies that would pull this elaborate nonsense apart. Because murder is always simple. Well, simpler than what Taylor was trying to sell.

  “I know he is real.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because I didn’t kill anyone. He did. I saw him do it.”

  ***

  Another wild and crazy Friday night for Taylor. He dragged himself in the door of his house after a long day at work, every fibre of his body exhausted and he was ready to go straight to bed and call it a night, hell, call it a weekend. He didn’t even want to make himself any dinner. But let’s be real here, Taylor could always eat. He did manage to amble into the kitchen and nibble on a cheese croissant before he went to bed still in the clothes he wore to work. He crawled under the covers and dreamland sucked him in.

  He woke in the dark, wide-eyed and alert. Passing headlights flashed along his ceiling. A chill ran the length of his body. He didn’t know why, but fear prodded him from sleep. The bedside digital clock read 12:04am in emerald green. He went to turn on the lamp but couldn’t move his hands. He couldn’t move his legs. He couldn’t even raise his head. He was strapped to his bed. He looked down his body and over the top of the comforter were dark bands. He saw a thick line over the lightness of his comforter pressing against his chest, abdomen, legs, arms, shoulders. Another band across his forehead prevented movement. The darkness hid further details. He thought it must be duct tape. He could feel the thickness of them through the blanket and he thought, I am in the looney bin and I just woke up from the dream of my life and I am now in the real world where they strap crazy fuckers like me to beds because I am too big to mess around with. I could crush a person by lying on them. I could smack them across the room. This is the real world and my life before this was the dream. But they wouldn’t use duct tape to bind me, right? They’d use straps of some sort and these…these weren’t straps.

  Taylor gasped. A tear rolled into his ear.

  “Taylor.”

  Taylor’s eyes searched out the voice beside his bed. A large shadow occupied a chair close to him. How had he not seen the man immediately upon waking up? Because you had other problems on your mind, like being strapped to your bed! Another car passed outside and the lights backlit the shadowed man wearing a fedora. In the midst of his terror Taylor wondered where he got the chair from. He didn’t have a chair in his room. Probably from the kitchen? The man from the basement dragged one in here and waited for him to wake up? How long had he been sitting here watching him? Taylor jerked under the straps as fear constricted his breath.

  Taylor said, “Are you real?” He closed his eyes and moaned, “No, no, no, you can’t be real. That’s stupid. This can’t be real.”

  The man reached out and slapped Taylor across the face. The sound echoed in the small room. Taylor’s face burned from the sting of it.

  The man said, “How was that for real?”

  Taylor closed his eyes and shook his head from side to side. He whispered in the dark, “This is nothing. This is a dream, this is a nightmare you cooked up because you’re a fat lonely boy who misses his mommy.”

  The chuckle from the dark straightened the hairs on Taylor’s body.

  “There is no hiding from this, boy.”

  He heard the click of the bedside lamp. His closed eyelids went from black to a soft red from the light. Why did he turn on the light? Why did he have to do that? The light brings clarity. Taylor didn’t want clarity. He wanted the haze, the murk to help him continue pretending the dark man only existed in his mind, to push this all away, like it wasn’t happening. He squeezed his eyes tighter and the redness went away. Back in the dark, exactly where he wanted to be.

  “Look at me, Taylor.”

  Taylor shook his head, eyes shut and a moan escaped him but he didn’t care. He wanted to open his eyes and the man be gone. He willed it to be so and wished for it the way a child would wish to be able to fly. An impossibility made possible through sheer want.

  “If you don’t look at me, I’m going to bite off your pinky.” The man said it casual, as though he said ‘french fry’ rather than pinky. It was the casualness that caused Taylor to believe him and it was the cold hand separating his pinky finger from the rest that made him open his eyes.

  “There he is. There’s our Taylor.”

  A scream started in Taylor’s throat and the man reached over and pinched his lips shut and shook his head. His lips grated against his teeth. Blood slipped onto his tongue.

  “We’ll have none of that nonsense, thank you.”

  Satisfied, he released Taylor’s lips and studied Taylor. In turn, Taylor studied him back. The dark man’s face resembled a wax doll. The features had melted into a smooth surface but dark, so very dark. He had no nose, no ears under his hat Taylor could see and his jawline was only a suggestion in the shadows. He had eyes though and a mouth. The eyes glowed black (if that were even possible) like a starlit night, dots of twinkling brightness in the void. Infinite space in the orbs of his
eyes. The mouth was a slit in the skin, a line in the shifting shades of his face but when he opened it to speak, Taylor could see the white teeth gleaming. And he wanted to scream but remembering the dark man’s fingers pressed on his lips, he stopped it from rising. They were shark’s teeth. The triangular, serrated fangs jutted from his gums and pointed in every direction. When he spoke lines of drool escaped from the corners and were swiftly absorbed by his skin, as though his skin drank it in, took it back. He couldn’t be real. Nothing like this thing could be real. There would be stories about it. Taylor thought, there are stories. He’s the goddamn boogeyman. Children and adults have been talking about him, it, for centuries. Now he’s here for you. You’re his latest meal and you’ll be a big one.

  “We don’t have time for your screaming or your crying, Taylor. The game has started whether you want to acknowledge it or not.”

  “What game? What are you talking about?”

  “A fun old-fashioned game called hide and seek. You played that when you were a kid, right? Hide and seek?”

  “What? Hide?”

  “Yes, hide. Pay attention Taylor. You need to focus here. Your life depends on it.”

  “How is this possible? How are you possible?”

  The dark man raised a finger waving it back and forth in front of Taylor’s eyes. The finger was abnormally long and the tip was sharp. Fingers like that could eviscerate Taylor with a swipe.