The Hunt Chronicles: Volume 1 (3 page)

Her body was
obstructing my view, but I listened as the jelly lid hit the counter.  She
reached for the knife, and as she pulled it in, I leaned forward and tapped her
on the shoulder.  I heard the tiny teeth of the knife
ping
ping
ping
somewhere against
the jar before it fell and hit the counter.  Cheryl jumped and
screamed.  When she turned to look at me, I saw how much damage my little
tap had done.  Her eyes were wide and she was breathing fast.  Her
left hand seized her right and I realized she either cut or poked herself with
the knife thanks to my surprise.

I screamed as
well.  Cheryl moaned a little, then ran to the left side of the kitchen
and opened the cabinet below the sink.  A small first-
aide
kit sat there amongst a forest of cleaning products.  She grabbed the
white and red box, opened it, and pulled out a roll of gauze.  When she
turned to face me, her right hand was wrapped in white bandages.  I
started talking quickly, like a man on the brink of a guilty verdict. 
“Damn!  I’m sorry, Cheryl.  I didn’t mean to scare you.  I’m
sorry, I’m
sor
-”

“I’m okay, relax,”
she said, taking a deep breath.  I followed suit.

“Are you alright?”

“Just a little
jolt,” she said.  “I stuck myself when you scared me.”

“I’m really sorry.”

“It’s okay,
really.  I think I’ll survive.”  She walked back to her plate. 
The two pieces of bread on it were still bare.  At the rate she was going,
she’d never finish her sandwich.  “What are you doing up so late?”

“I heard someone’s
voice out here.  Suppose it was you.”

“Probably; that was
me speaking with Daddy.”

“Oh?” I asked,
intentionally playing stupid.  In my experience, stupidity is the gate
through which information flows, which explains why morons think they know more
than they do.

“I’ve got
a…situation only he can help me.”

“I see.  And
you felt after midnight would be the best time to discuss it?”  She turned
and smiled.

“There’s no time
like the present, especially when you can’t sleep.”  She grabbed the jelly
jar and moved back towards the fridge.

“No peanut
butter?”  I asked, noticing that both slices of bread now had a healthy
coating of jelly.

“Just jelly is good
enough for me,” she said, and I laughed.  I guess you didn’t keep a figure
like hers through your forties by eating peanut butter
and
jelly.

Cheryl finished
cleaning up as Nona walked in, looking cranky and balloon-like in her
nightgown.   “What’s going on?”

“Just getting a
snack,” Cheryl said.

“I’m shocked you
managed it on your own,” Nona said.  “Everyone in this house bitches
because they can’t find anything in here, yet you did just fine without a map
or a compass.  Oh, you made a sandwich and played doctor, I see,” Cheryl
blushed.  “If this keeps up, Mr. Hunt, I’ll be out of a job.”

“Not to worry,
Nona.  Cheryl still had to rummage through this room to find everything
she needed.  I think your job is safe for now.”  We laughed like old
school chums in the kitchen for a while, me mostly faking it.  Cheryl
eventually took her snack up to her room, and I left behind her, leaving Nona
in the kitchen alone with a crumb-covered countertop.  She said she
couldn’t sleep knowing the kitchen was now an ant magnet.

 
“Once
they get in, you’ll never get rid of them for good,” she said.  I left her
there with a goodnight and a sponge.

I passed
Maddie’s
room, but then backtracked and opened the door to
see how she was doing.  A few rays of dusty light leapt across her
bed. 
Her empty bed.
 
Where the hell did
she go?
my
little voice asked, but I didn’t have
an answer.  I finally reached my room and went in.  The clock now
read 12:59.  I yawned and grunted, shutting the door behind me.  I
hadn’t even let go of the knob when I heard footsteps approaching on the other
side.  Assuming it was
Maddie
, I opened the door
again, only to close it quickly.  I peered through the crack of light
separating me from the hallway.  Richard walked passed my room and towards
his father’s, wearing a tired looking T-shirt and sweats. 
Poor guy
can’t even get a minute’s peace at one in the morning.
 
No wonder
he screams so much. 
I started to shut the door when I looked down and
saw that Richard was leaving moist footprints on the floor behind him.  I
stuck my head out a little further and watched him disappear into the darkness
of the foyer.  I looked back down at the footprints again, decided it was
too late to care, and shut the door once more.  I found my way to my bed
in the dark following the beacon of red numbers that now screamed 1:05 at my
eyes.  I buried my head under a pillow and an inch of comforter, and
prayed for sleep.

I heard the gate
moving along its track and was hurled, yet again, into the world of
consciousness.  I peered at the blurry numbers on the clock…1:32. 
For a split second, I remember wondering who the hell could be coming up the
drive at that hour, but the thought quickly vanished.  It was undoubtedly
Donald just as Richard described…drunk as a skunk.

A few minutes later,
there was the sound of a key scraping across a doorknob outside, searching for
a keyhole.  After about a minute, the doorknob finally turned and the door
swung open on squeaky hinges I didn‘t notice the day we arrived.  The door
slammed hard, making me jump in my skin.  Apparently I wasn’t the only one
who was disturbed.  Cheryl’s scolding voice and broken conversation filled
my sleepy head.  “It’s past midnight…trying to sleep…Daddy will kill
you…are you nuts?”  Donald, still assuming it was Donald, made some
attempts at speech, but I didn’t recognize the language.  “Come on…water…”
Cheryl said.

The faucet was on in
the kitchen, and I heard the distinct sound of ice-cubes hitting the bottom of
a glass.  The voices were quieter then, and I started to drift away. 
I heard Cheryl say something like “Dad” and “said…money,” or it could have been
“honey.”  Either way, I was too tired to care.  Seven minutes later,
I finally fell into uninterrupted slumber.

I awoke a little
after eight the next morning, not by choice but by force.  Someone was
banging on my door demanding I open it.  I sat up too fast and my head
began to throb.  My head fell back to the pillow while the banging
continued.  “Oh for the love of God, come in already!”  The door
opened and there was
Maddie
all dolled up in her
uniform.  “What’s your problem,
Maddie
?”
  If you wake up everyone else that way, it’s a wonder you still have
a job.”

“
Reevie
…” 
She said softly, but I barely noticed.

“I had the craziest
dream last night,” I began.  “Yesterday, while you were all tipsy from
those pills, you told me I had better go to bed because I had a math quiz the
next day.”

“
Reevie
?”

“I dreamt I was back
in Ms. Lyons’ class, sitting in my old seat-”

“
Reevie
,
please…”

“…but get this, I
was old, like I am now.  There I was, crammed into one of those little
desks surrounded by classmates.  Here’s the worst part-”

“
Reevie
.”

“I wasn’t wearing
anything but my underwear and a sombrero.”

“Reevan, shut
up!”  She exploded.

“What?  What’s
wrong,
Maddie
?”  I hadn’t looked at my sister
through clear eyes until then.  She was in her uniform, but I had missed
the important details.  She was holding a Kleenex, and her eyes were wet
and red.  A stream of tears ran down her cheeks. 
“
Maddie
?
  What is it?”

“
Reevie
,
there is someone out here who needs to speak to you.”  She brought the
Kleenex up to her eyes and turned away, shutting the door as she went. 
Already I heard voices out in the foyer.  There was sobbing, and then
screaming.  I got dressed and went out to meet the person who demanded my
attention.

The foyer was
painfully bright and loud.  I looked passed the noisy crowd of strangers
into the dining room.  Cheryl McCune was sitting in her chair with her
back to me. 
Maddie
had a hand on her
shoulder.  I looked back towards the throng of foreigners; about two-dozen
of them seemed to be hovering about, and a small but noisy cluster of five had
conjugated in the middle of the foyer at the foot of the staircase. 
Sunlight poured in through the open front door and flooded over them. 
Above, the chandelier trembled with the sounds of the ruckus.

Richard was in that
cluster of people talking to a man who stood above everyone else, and who was
of proportionate girth.  I stepped forward towards them and was nearly
knocked over by a man rushing passed.  I noticed he was wearing white
gloves. 
They are all wearing white gloves
Little Reevan said,
finally waking up.

I took another step
forward and called out to Richard.  He turned to me, as did his large new
friend and the three others flocking around them.  “Richard!”  I
hollered over the commotion.  “What’s going on?”  Richard’s colossal
companion bent forward, whispered to the others and then pointed to me. 
Two of the little people went off towards Wilson’s room.  Richard, the
giant, and another shrimp started towards me.

Finally, my sleepy fog
was beginning to lift.  The man grew larger as he came closer.  He
was wearing a suit and tie along with some more of those white gloves. 
Richard was still in the shirt and sweats I saw him in the night before. 
The shrimp,
who
was actually Richard’s height, carried
a small pad in his gloved hands.

As they drew closer,
I saw Richard’s eyes begin to water.  The faces of the others, all of the
others, were serious and determined.  There was a man kneeling down over
the threshold of the front door, apparently inspecting it with a tool not
unlike a letter opener.  A woman was sitting down at the dining room table
next to Cheryl and my sister.  Her pen raced across the page as Cheryl
sobbed incessantly.  I turned to my right and watched as a stout bald man
descended the stairs slowly, running a gloved finger over the glistening
banister.  A uniformed police officer stood in the corner, watching me
watching them.

One didn’t have to
be a genius to see what was going on.  That investigative parade was no
termite inspection or asbestos check.  Something more serious had occurred
at McCune Hall last night, and thanks to a night of constant interruptions, I
had slept right through it.

An unfamiliar voice
brought me back to my body.  “Mr. Hunt, are you there?”  I turned,
craned my head upwards and locked eyes with the anonymous goliath.

“Yes, I’m here,” I
answered.

“Reevan, something
awful has happened.”  I turned to look at Richard.  He was a
man.  He’d been a man for quite a while.  He was young and strong;
the picture of health and possibilities.  Just then, however, as I looked
at him standing in the shadow of a giant with watered eyes, he looked like the
child I used to scratch on the head when I visited my sister years ago.

“Mr. Hunt, my name
is Detective Walters.”  He reached into his breast pocket, pulled out a
card and handed it to me.  “Do you have any idea what happened here last
night?”  The word
robbery
flashed in front of my eyes.

“Oh
jeez, a robbery, of course!
 
Well, no one came into my room; at least I don’t think so.  All of my
belongings are still…”  A hand caressed my shoulder.  I turned. 
It was
Maddie
.  She had been crying. Her eyes
were red and puffy.  They filled with water again as she stared at
me. 
“Oh no,
Maddie
.
 
Did they take something of yours?”

 
“It wasn’t a robbery, Reevan.”  Her voice
was small and weak, which is incredibly uncharacteristic.  “Wilson was
murdered last night.” 
Maddie
tightened her grip
and went from crying to blubbering.  I turned and hugged her, shocked,
utterly
shocked
at what she had just said. 
Murder?
 
What is this
murder
word you speak of?
  When she reached out
and put an arm around Richard’s neck, and pulled him close to us, I suddenly
remembered.  The shock jerked two tears from my eyes, and the sobs from
Richard and my sister squeezed out a few more.

As is usually the
case with bitter, crusty, old men who suddenly lose control of their emotions,
I responded with anger, and grasped at the only straw I could see.  “Why
the hell didn’t somebody wake me sooner?” I barked.

“An excellent
question,” added Walters, who seemed most perturbed by the appearance of yet
another body in McCune Hall.  At least this one was still alive.

“Forgot you were
here,”
Maddie
burbled into my shoulder. 
“Forgot you were here, Reevan.”
  I hugged her close,
and my crusty exterior began to melt away.