Ike Hamill - The Hunting Tree Trilogy

He muted the television again and picked up the thickest book from his coffee table. History of local tribes was maddeningly sparse, but he had collected the best information available from the local libraries. As the indigenous people were overrun with colonizing immigrants, their rich oral history had been twisted and discarded. He sought information on the mythology of local tribes, but most of the legends he read were contradicted, sometimes just pages later in the same book.

He snapped shut the book and slammed it down on the table.

Snatching his keys, he stood up, pulled down the biggest map from the wall and headed out to his car. Mike spent the rest of the day in his car, until his back had sweated through to the seat and then dried again in the cool evening air. He drove from one side of the state to the other, starting in the west, near where he and Morris had left off, and continued east until he found himself back at the dam where Gary and Katie had helped him stake out the woman from the water.

He sat on the hood of his car and looked over the flowing water at dusk. After losing his friend, job, and his financial independence, Mike had latched onto the idea of redeeming his work and himself through tracking down this mysterious killer. At first he’d felt that it was his duty to Gary’s memory to finish the detective work that Gary had started.

I should’ve stuck to my day job , thought Mike.

For several years, Mike had split his time between working as a geneticist and investigating paranormal activity. Both obsessions stemmed from the death of his brother, and a deep desire to prove his worthiness to his dead parents.

Mike walked through the timeline of his own childhood. His family had been doomed to tragedy. When he was seven years old, riding his bike down a quiet suburban sidewalk, he had been struck by a swerving van and thrown into a tree. His spine had nearly been severed, and his family had endured several months of caring for Mike while his body lay in a motionless coma. Years passed before Mike’s young life returned to normal. His parents rearranged every aspect of their lives to accommodate his various therapies and expenses.

Even at his ninth birthday, Mike understood the dynamic of his family. Their parents worked tirelessly to guarantee that Mike had every chance for a full recovery, and shielded him from anything or anyone that would make him feel strange or burdensome. If Mike had been an only child, their careful act would have been perfectly convincing, but his parents also had Charlie. Younger, mischievous, independent, and healthy, Charlie was almost ignored for the years of Mike’s recovery. Although their energy and money was consistently directed to Mike, he could feel their silent devotion to Charlie. His little brother was the unsung hero of the family, oblivious to any injustice in being the younger brother of an accident victim.

His parents’ hardened hearts slowly broke when Charlie was diagnosed with leukemia. It didn’t matter that Mike had fully recovered, they couldn’t count on him the way they might once have—he was already fragile and damaged. Charlie was their last hope at an unblemished child, and once he became scheduled to die, Mike’s parents died too.

After the funeral, Mike knew his mother was already dead. She spent the first half of each week lost in depression, not bothering to dress or even leave her bed. For a while, his father made a good show of resuming a normal life. He kept his job, kept the bills paid, and kept the family going. But when Mike’s mother collapsed with pneumonia, and then drifted off to death, Mike’s dad started down the same slope.

Mike turned thirteen as an orphan. His grandparents took him in and raised him to value education and hard work above all else. It was also on his thirteenth birthday that Mike vowed to one day help find the cures for diseases like the one that had taken Charlie and the soul of his small family. When Mike first heard Charlie’s voice through the static on the radio, he also committed himself to furthering the research of paranormal phenomenon.

Now, just a couple years away from his fortieth birthday, Mike had lost his job helping people with genetic disorders, and had failed at paranormal research. It didn’t occur to him until just that moment, but he was almost exactly as old as his father had been when his father had died.

Is there still time? he wondered. Mike had never placed a high priority on relationships, getting married, or having kids. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he always thought there would be time later for those considerations; after his scientific discoveries, renown, and financial success. He counted back on his fingers—his last girlfriend had been seven years before.

Sandy had left him over an argument about his priorities. She said that he cared more about maintaining his house as a shrine to his dead grandparents than her. He attempted to argue that point, but knew he was on shaky ground. In fact, between his job, his paranormal hobby, and keeping his house exactly as his grandparents had left it, he didn’t seem to have much time for Sandy. When it came to things that she wanted to do, he participated begrudgingly, or not at all.

Mike slid off the hood of his car and glanced at his watch, startled by the time. He must have been sitting in that same spot, thinking about his life, for hours.

I’ve got to think of a way to combine my interests, he thought, then they won’t always compete.

Mike walked around the side of the car and stopped in his tracks, dropping his keys in the gravel. A new thought formed in the wreckage of his failed ambitions. Connections swirled in his mind. He didn’t need to combine his interests—they were already tied together.

He realized everything in a flash—the case that Ken had called him to consult on, the one about the boy, and the creature he had been chasing were part of the same puzzle. He had nearly described the entire thing to Ken at lunch, completely ignorant of how correct he had been.

The last piece fell into place in his mind.

“Oh shit,” he said aloud. The sound of his own voice snapped him into action and he bent over to grab his keys from the gravel. He fumbled for a few seconds, but then jumped in the car and started the engine. His latest realization was something that the creature and the boy already knew: the rogue and the extinction vector were on a collision course. If his latest theory was correct, the rogue wasn’t headed for the dam at all. The creature’s real destination would be wherever the boy called home. Since there wasn’t much land to the east of where Mike stood, it most likely meant that the boy lived west. The creature had already shown the ability to cover ground quickly, and that meant the boy’s life was in immediate danger.

Mike put his car in reverse and gunned the engine, sending gravel flying. After he backed around, he dropped the transmission into drive and took a deep breath. Getting himself killed in a car accident wasn’t going to help the kid, and he had to find a phone so he could alert Ken to the danger.

It wasn’t until he was back on the main drag, scanning for a pay phone and cursing himself for letting his cell phone expire, that he realized that he didn’t even have a home number for Dr. Ken Stuart.

Mike focused back on the road in front of him and sped up; he would have to visit Ken at home to deliver the news.

THE DOORBELL HAD NO LIGHT, and even when he pressed his ear to the door, he couldn’t hear the bell ringing inside. Mike resorted to knocking. On his third rap, the door fell away from his knuckles. The porch light came on as the door cracked open.

“Mike?”

“Hey Ken, I’ve got to talk to you about something. Can I come in?”