Ike Hamill - The Hunting Tree Trilogy

“Susan,” said Melanie. “None of this is your brother’s fault.”

“Whose fault is it then? That thing is chasing him . He’s only been dreaming about it forever,” she asserted.

In the front seat, Morris connected with his cousin. Melanie hushed her daughter so she could hear the conversation. As Mike drove steadily down the highway, everyone in the car listened in on Morris’s end of the phone call.

“S’me,” he said when the connection was made. “That giant’s awake,” he said. “I know.” He listened for a long time, Melanie began to wonder if his cousin was still on the line when he talked again. “Maybe hour and a half.” He disconnected the phone.

Waiting for the call to end first, Susan started up again—“Why do we all have to run away if it only wants him? Let these guys take Davey and we can just go home.”

“That’s enough.” Melanie shot a look at her daughter. “We’re a family and I intend to keep it that way. Now hush so we can figure out what we’re going to do.” She turned her attention back to the front seat. “Who was that?” she asked Morris.

“My cousin,” he said.

“And what was that all about? Does he know about this thing too?” she asked.

Morris shifted around so he could look to the back seat. He looked down at Davey for a moment before he spoke, but the boy didn’t meet his gaze. “I talked to my cousin about the giant a few days ago. He and his brother know about this kind of stuff. They keep the history of our family. I’ll tell you what they told me. It’s not very much.”

Mike kept his eyes pegged to the road, but his attention was focused on the deep-voiced man in the passenger seat. In the back, Melanie leaned forward, ready to absorb any information. Her daughter looked out the window and pretended not to listen. Davey appeared to be deep in thought.

“I’m not much of a storyteller, but what my cousin said was something like this,” he said. “A hundred generations ago, ancestors of my blood lived just south of here. They were just beginning to stay settled year-round, instead of moving with the seasons. They lived simply. The families farther north were always slightly more advanced. They built better shelters and made better pottery.

“The runners came early for the summer gathering one year. This would have been between four and five thousand years ago, but it’s impossible to know for sure. Nobody kept track of the years until much later. When the runners showed up, lots of people thought another war party was coming, but they came to warn of a different threat. The message was about a giant killer, moving amongst the families and murdering the sick and weak. The runner gathered a pledge from my ancestors—we would all help dispose of the monster in an unprecedented cooperative effort.”

“I don’t see what any of this has to do…” Melanie began.

Morris silenced her objection by simply raising a finger. He spoke slowly—“Hundreds and hundreds of the most skilled hunters and warriors from every family within traveling distance gathered to form this mob. I heard about the chase when I was a kid, when we’d pester my great uncle into telling us a story. Even when I was young I understood the hyperbole inherent in the tale. His stories were always full of talking rabbits and enormous flying turtles. But when Mike and I started to track this beast from the cave in New Hampshire where it must have slept through the years, I couldn’t ignore the similarities to my uncle’s story.”

Mike stole a glance at his passenger, the normally silent Morris. He wondered if Morris had ever strung that many words together before in his life. The answer seemed obvious—this type of long-winded explanation was like a hundred-year storm for Morris: he might not talk ever again.

“So you’re suggesting that thing slept for millennia and then woke up to hunt my son?” Her arm, protectively around Davey, drew him in close.

“Yes ma’am,” said Morris.

“That’s just absurd,” she said. “I can’t explain what I saw running behind the truck earlier, but nothing can live for five thousand years.”

“I never took my uncle’s stories as gospel, but sometimes his explanations made more sense than anyone else’s. In this case, he probably would have told you that the thing that woke up was a Tsi-noo. That’s something that used to be human, but its heart got replaced with ice when it lost its soul. According to him, those things could last forever because they weren’t really still alive.” He lowered his voice and leaned further between the seats. “They eat souls for their strength.”

Behind the wheel, Mike shuddered and checked his mirrors. The highway was nearly empty.

“But there’s another thing my uncle never talked about. It wasn’t one of his stories—it belonged to the grandmothers. They talked about the man who created himself, but sometimes it was a woman. Depending on who you talked to, that thing was the father or mother of everything. Not that I’m saying the thing that chased us through your neighborhood was that type of god, but I think its strength comes from the same well.”

Melanie’s skepticism had been worn away by Morris’s persistence. She found herself leaning forward to hear the details. When Morris paused, Melanie noticed that even her angry daughter now hung on every word.

“I’ll tell you what I mean—when we’d get together for the big family gatherings, we kids all slept together outside in sleeping bags, or under a big tent if it was raining. We’d run around all day long, but still couldn’t get to sleep at night. Kids would be whispering and playing jokes all night long. So one of the adults would tell us about the stages of the night. It was a way of scaring us into quieting down.”

Beside her, pressed against her side, Melanie felt her son take in a large breath. She had assumed that he was in deep shock, and was barely processing the world around him. Now she wondered if perhaps he was in some sort of trance. When she remembered the pill, his behavior made more sense. Its intended effect was to relieve anxiety, but detachment was a common side-effect.

“In the first stage of the night, the Stage of Possibilities, the rules of the world would change,” Morris continued. “That’s when your imagination could actually take legs and turn into something real; something with claws. I always thought that the man who created himself, Odzihozo, probably came forward in that Stage of the night. All the kids knew they’d better get to sleep before the Stage when anything was possible, or they’d end up calling forth something that could hunt.”

“Who could sleep if they were that scared?” Melanie asked.

“Once the extra adrenaline wore off, you’d be asleep before you even knew it. The parents probably figured that the kids would shake in their beds for a while and at least they’d be quiet until they crashed.”

“That’s so cruel,” commented Melanie.

“Maybe so, maybe not. If there’s any truth to it, then I think we can figure that’s where our thing came from.” He waved off towards the dark rear-window. “What if that thing was half Tsi-noo and half Odzihozo—the man with no soul that imagined himself into being. That thing would never have a reason to die, unless it was a reason that it believed in.”

“Odzihozo,” whispered Davey.

“I think you’re frightening the children,” said Melanie.

“I wouldn’t doubt it,” said Morris. He pulled back around to the correct side of his seat and settled back.

“So wait a second.” Mike interrupted the silence. “Why are we going to your cousins’ house again? Do they have some sort of magic or something that’s going to stop this thing?”