Ike Hamill - The Hunting Tree Trilogy

He pulled himself slightly closer to the opening and heard the din of a large crowd, debating their course of action. Crooked Tree’s deliberation was short and easy. He would stay put, healing faster than the hunting party could imagine, and kill them one-by-one as they tried to attack.

By the time the group made their next move, the night had worn thin. The moon had set, and the stars began to fade. Using his keen senses, he smelled their smoke. He wondered if they knew how nocturnal he had become; wondered if they were just waiting for the daylight to stage their final attack. Although it had been a while since Crooked Tree had been awake in the sunlight, he suspected it wasn’t impossible for him.

The hunting party grew quiet just before their next move. Creeping feet approached and Crooked Tree readied himself for battle. Even without feasting on victims, he’d had time to heal. His legs mostly worked, although he wanted to avoid testing their power, and the bone of his left arm had nearly knit back together. He armed himself with a long spear and a heavy rock and kept his eyes trained on the opening.

The next thing through the hole wasn’t a spear or a man, but a log. A smoldering log, giving off thick, acrid smoke rolled down through the opening and landed next to Crooked Tree’s hand. He picked it up to cast it back out, but it collided with two more logs coming in and all three rolled back into the hole. Soon his cave was thick with gray smoke and Crooked Tree couldn’t take a deep breath without coughing it back out. His cave grew dark; the men placed a large rock over his exit.

Crooked Tree shoved the rock aside with one of the burning logs, but an instant later it was replaced with another boulder. He fought back and forth with the men trying to block the cave, but the smoke took its toll. Each stone blocked the hole a little more. The walls of his cave shook with the next rock they dropped into place. He imagined the size of a rock required to knock the dust from the walls and pictured dozens of men hefting it into place. Ready or not, he decided it was time to test his legs. Pulling in a thin lungful of air from the only crack in the wall that still smelled fresh, Crooked Tree braced his feet against the cave floor and pressed his shoulder into the obstruction. He felt it move, but not nearly enough. The most he could accomplish was to shift the rocks a few inches.

The exertion spent the rest of his energy. Crooked Tree sunk to the floor of the cave and pulled shallow breaths by pressing his nose to the crack in the wall. Outside the cave, he heard the men piling on rock after rock, sealing him in with the smoky logs.

He drifted into a trance, robbed of his consciousness and silently suffocating in his tomb.

“USUALLY BY THE THIRD VISIT, my guests start to talk a little bit,” said John.

John was the first adult Davey had met who insisted on being called by his first name. He had been impressed for about fifteen minutes, and then found the soft-spoken man both boring and irritating. John’s bald head was accented by a thin beard. Davey guessed that the little man would rather die before getting dirt under his fingernails or going to a hockey game.

“How is school going, David?” asked John.

Davey generally ignored the doctor’s statements, but he was too polite to not respond to a direct question.

“Okay, I guess,” said Davey. He squirmed in the big leather chair.

“I thought I heard that perhaps you had a bit of trouble this week,” stated John.

Davey kept to his rule and offered no information in response to the stated fact.

John corrected his approach and asked, “Did you get in trouble?”

“Yeah,” sighed Davey.

“Could you tell me what happened?” asked John.

“The teacher caught me putting a dead mouse in some kid’s book,” Davey admitted.

“Where did you get a dead mouse at school?” asked John.

“I found it,” said Davey.

“You found it,” John stated.

Davey kept quiet.

“Somehow, I sense you’re not giving me the whole story, David. How was your friend Paul involved?”

“He didn’t do anything.”

The psychiatrist paused and reviewed his notes, trying to find a way to get Davey to open up.

“The notebook belonged to,” John started, flipping back through his notes, “Ted?”

“Yeah,” confirmed Davey.

“Does Paul have a problem with Ted?”

“I guess,” said Davey.

John sensed an opening. “Why doesn’t Paul like Ted?”

“Nobody likes Ted,” said Davey. He made firm eye contact with John as he said this, punctuating his point. “He’s a big jerk.”

“What does Ted do?”

“He’s always making fun of people, and playing tricks on people. He’s mean for no reason at all,” said Davey.

“What are some of the things he says about Paul?”

“I don’t know,” said Davey, rolling his eyes back and to his left, “stuff like how he’s a big queer. Jerky stuff. He makes fun of everyone that way.”

“Who was he making fun of that day?” asked John.

“Mostly Christina,” said Davey. “He’s always making fun of her.”

“You hate it when he makes fun of Christina?” asked John.

“Yeah, well not just her. I just hate it when he does that stuff. It’s so dumb.”

“What did he say about Christina that day?” John asked.

“He didn’t really say anything,” said Davey. He paused before he continued. “He and Nicholas were going to play a prank on her. She didn’t deserve it.”

“Is she pretty?”

“What?" Davey twisted his face into a scowl. “No way,” he continued, “she’s kinda gross.”

“Gross in what way?”

“Everyone says she eats her own snot,” said Davey. “She’s pretty fat, too. I don’t know why she does the gross things, but sometimes I feel sorry for her.”

“How come?”

“I don’t know,” said Davey. “She only started at our school last year, and she had this big rash on her face. She didn’t try to be anyone’s friend or anything, she mostly just stayed by herself, so I thought that the other kids should just leave her alone.”

“Don’t you think she would have been lonely if everyone ignored her?” asked John.

“I’m not saying they should ignore her,” said Davey. “But sometimes the kids will climb over chairs so they don’t have to sit next to her and stuff. Then they say she eats snot in the bathroom and whatever. I wouldn’t like, be her friend or anything, but I don’t do that stuff.”

“Do you sit next to her?”

“No, I sit with Paul,” said Davey.

“So what were Ted and Nick going to do to Christina?” asked John.

“Why do you do that?” asked Davey.

John suppressed his excitement. He had been hoping that Davey would ask him a direct question about the therapy. The first sign of engagement was notoriously difficult to achieve. “Do what?” asked John, raising his eyebrows.

“You call me David, and I told you that other kid’s name was Nicholas, but you called him Nick,” said Davey.

“Oh, did I?” asked John.

Davey pressed his lips together and regarded John.

John offered a better answer before Davey could fully shut down—“I refer to people with their less common names so that you can see things with a new perspective. Do you know what I mean?”

“I guess,” said Davey, unclenching his jaw.

“I’ll stop, if you’d like,” said John.

Davey nodded.

“So what were Ted and Nicholas going to do to Christina? Was it something with the mouse?” asked John. He had waited until Davey showed interest in his process before revealing that he was capable of producing deductions from Davey’s veiled information.