Ike Hamill: The Hunting Tree Trilogy

A knock on the passenger’s window startled the men. Mike spilled his soda.

“Jesus,” he whispered. He rolled down his window a few inches—“You scared the shit out of me.”

“Sorry, Dr. Mike,” she said, smiling. “Am I early?”

“Nope, you’re right on time,” he said, recapping his drink. The girl outside the window backed away as he pushed open the van door. “We’re about to get set up. You can help me in back.”

“This is so exciting,” she said.

“Do you have a sweater or something?” Mike asked. “It might get cold out here.”

“I’m fine,” she waved, “I’m from around here; I don’t get cold easily.”

He led the young woman around to the rear of the van and motioned for her to stand aside as he pulled open the back doors.

“Wow, look at all that stuff,” she said.

Mike lowered a built-in stepladder to the ground and smiled at her enthusiasm.

Gary appeared from the left side. “Hey, I’m Gary.”

“Hi,” she said, taking Gary’s hand. “I’m Katie Brown, from Bowdoin. The college, not the town.” She pointed south.

“We’re going to be studying that area of rocks, just past that sign,” said Mike, stepping between them.

“I know that place,” said Katie. “Sometimes kids go down there to get drunk. Mostly high-school kids though.”

“Exactly,” said Mike.

“Have you ever seen anything down there Katie?” asked Gary.

“Nope,” said Katie. “I’ve heard of it, but I don’t drink.”

“Good for you,” said Gary softly, tilting his head.

“Anyway,” said Mike. “We’ll set up the narrow transmitter from here, and then we’ll get multiple angles with the thermals and infrared.”

“Which is the new one?” asked Katie. “The narrow one? Is that it?”

“Yes,” said Mike. “The main thing we’re testing here tonight is my new narrowband amplifying transmitter.”

“You invented it?” asked Katie.

“Yes,” said Mike. He turned to the van and started pulling equipment. “Gary, can you get this on the roof and aim it at the bottom part of the dam?”

“No problem.” Gary made a show of hauling the tripod up the ladder on the side of the van.

Mike handed the end of a cord up to Gary and swiveled a rack of equipment so it faced out the back of the van. He reset knobs and powered up the equipment as Gary mounted and pointed the antenna.

“So what’s it do, exactly?” asked Katie.

Mike ignored her for the moment—“Hey Gary, what’s your compass direction?”

“One ninety-seven.”

“You can think of it like a power supply for paranormal activity,” Mike explained as he began his calibration process. “Gary and I measured specific types and frequencies of energy that were being drawn, or tapped into, by paranormal activity. You ready, Gary?”

“Yup,” Gary called down from the roof.

“First,” Mike said to Katie, “we’re going to calibrate the baseline." He pointed to a display which showed a jagged horizontal line. “Gary’s going to do a slow spin of that antenna to find the natural hotspots." They watched the display closely as noise moved quickly across the line. A giant spike tracked across the line from right to left.

“What’s that?” asked Katie?

“Probably just the sun,” said Mike. “Too big to be anything local. What’s your bearing Gary?”

“I’m in the two-forties,” said Gary.

“Yeah, see, that’s about west,” said Mike. “We always get a big hit roughly west. It’s probably some lingering effects of the sunset." They waited for almost a minute before their next spike. This one rose only a fraction of the previous reading.

“You’re back at south?” Mike asked Gary.

“Yup,” he replied.

“So that’s the thing we’re here to measure tonight. You can see that it’s pretty small right now, but we’ll be able to jack it up when we turn on the emitter,” Mike informed Katie.

Gary jumped down from the ladder and landed beside Mike and Katie. “Ready for cameras?” he asked.

“Yes. You want to show Katie the ropes while I finish the calibration and tuning?” asked Mike.

“I’d be glad to,” said Gary. “If you could grab a reel of those cables, Miss Katie?”

“Just Katie,” she replied.

Mike smiled at his dials.

THIRTY MINUTES LATER, all the equipment and cables had been properly deployed. The three researchers gathered inside the van to monitor the displays.

“If you could just slide in a little and shut that door, Katie?” asked Mike. “We like to make sure that people driving by don’t get curious when we turn on the video equipment.”

“Oh, sure,” she said.

Their control center showed them the river at the base of the dam, the rocks, and a group of drunk teens passing a bottle around their small circle.

“As you can see from this meter,” Mike said, continuing his tutorial, “there’s some activity down there, but we don’t see any visual, infrared, or thermal evidence. Those kids don’t seem too impressed either. But, if we use our amplifier, we should be able to find a resonant frequency for the entity to tap into.”

“And does that make it visible?” asked Katie.

“Well, we don’t know yet,” said Gary.

“Really?” Katie asked.

“It’s true,” said Mike. “We’ve detected this energy drop several times, and we surmise that the activity is limited by the amount of energy in the area, but this is the first time we’ll attempt to amplify it.”

“That’s cool,” she said, “so this is ground-breaking.”

“We certainly hope so,” said Mike. “Let’s start small. Give it an amp Gary.”

“Roger that,” said Gary. He made an adjustment. “Okay, we’re there.”

“Nothing yet,” said Mike. “No change from the ambient levels at all. We might need to cross a threshold to see results. Try ramping up to five over thirty seconds.”

“Will do,” said Gary.

He held out his watch and slowly turned the large dial. After ten seconds the three looked up to the roof as the humming sound grew in intensity. When the dial read three, a set of headphones hanging from a hook began to rattle. Mike pulled them down and sat the headphones on shelf, but they resumed rattling when he let go.

“Keep going?” asked Gary.

“Yeah,” said Mike, studying his meter. “I think it’s about to start absorbing.”

“So that thing is supposed to go down?” asked Katie.

“No, this display is inverted, but if we see a spike it would represent the energy decreasing. The theory being…” he trailed off. “Wait a second. Hold it there, Gary.”

“Okay, but we’re pulling some serious power. We’ll only have a couple minutes of output,” said Gary.

“I think that might just be enough,” said Mike. He tapped the display and Gary and Katie looked over his shoulder. “See this?”

“Looks like it’s gathering or something,” said Gary.

“Exactly,” said Mike, transfixed by the jagged green line.

“Dr. Mike?” asked Katie. “Dr. Mike?” she said louder.

“What?” asked Mike. He snapped around. Katie pointed at the video display which showed the output of one of the infrared cameras. The picture showed green teens, drinking on green rocks, next to a green river. At the center of the image a green blob slid slowly uphill towards the teens. “What is that?” she whispered.

“Off, Gary, turn it off,” said Mike.

Gary fumbled for the big dial and spun it with both hands until the knob clicked off. Mike turned back to his readout, horrified. “It’s still drawing,” he informed them. “It’s drawing more than ever.”