Crooked Tree tried to summon some emotion. He thought he should feel anger or even hatred for this soft, solitary denizen of the ruined landscape his family had once called home. At the very least, Crooked Tree thought he should feel offended that this man didn’t surround himself with his progeny, fulfilling his mandate to build the largest, strongest clan he could during his years. Crooked Tree’s education on the purpose of life was short and simple. His father had taught him to fight and propagate; anything less was failure. He just didn’t feel enough connection to this man who stood before him to even try to hold him to the same standards.
While he watched, the man neared, step-by-step, until he was only a pace from the window. Crooked Tree shrunk back. The man reached down and retrieved something from the table next to the couch, but continued to look out the window. Concern spread across the man’s face. He held up the device from the table. Crooked Tree recognized it from his stolen memories—this device was a remote control. With that realization, Crooked Tree took a half-step back from the window. The giant had suddenly grown concerned, but remained unsure why.
By stabbing his thumb into the remote, the man triggered his outside lights. The yard lights came on with an thump as relays closed. Light spilled all around Crooked Tree, as if the sun had jumped into the night sky. He turned to flee into the woods, but stopped himself before he could take another step. Beyond the buzz of the lights he recognized that the man in the house hadn’t uttered a word into his phone since he’d turned on the lights. Perhaps he was stunned at the sight of a mammoth, naked, dirty man standing in his yard. Crooked Tree recognized both the danger and the opportunity. He would spend the remaining hours of the night trying to flee to safety if this man managed to call the police.
Crooked Tree pivoted back towards the house, fell forward, and sent a burst of energy through his leg muscles, launching himself towards the window. He crashed through the glass hands-first, with one hand opening and deftly plucking the telephone from the stunned man’s dropping hand. The handset was crushed by Crooked Tree’s right hand as his left hand curled around the back of the man’s neck.
The half-naked man’s phone-talking days ended forever as Crooked Tree snapped his neck—closing his fist around the vertebrae. Still horizontal, Crooked Tree’s momentum carried him fully into the living room where he landed on his latest victim and skidded briefly, bunching up the carpet before coming to rest.
He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, focusing his senses once again to tune to possible threats. Detecting nothing, he retrieved the remote control from the man’s limp hand and studied the buttons. Most didn’t make sense, but he found a large button in the corner that he could identify. He pressed the button and the outside lights shut off instantly.
CROOKED TREE DRAGGED THE BODY deep into the woods before opening the soft man to examine and consume him. It rankled his sensibilities to taste healthy flesh, but he ate defensively. Even with limited understanding of this time, Crooked Tree intuited that this man warranted extra care. He scooped soft dirt from forest floor and fashioned a grave as memories and images from the dead man’s organs leaked into Crooked Tree’s consciousness. Before he finished covering the new corpse with the damp dirt, he knew he had to return to the house. The house contained video surveillance, which the man had doubtlessly triggered with the lights. Crooked Tree didn’t know exactly where to find the device in the house, but he could picture it through the dead man’s eyes.
Walking on the balls of his feet, Crooked Tree gripped the dead man’s boots between his oversized toes. The prints behind him weren’t perfect, but he thought they disguised his giant bare feet. He had found the boots next to the back door where he had also located a broom to clean up the glass from the living room floor. In a cabinet in the basement, he found the video system. He carefully took the components to the woods, where he smashed each piece before burying them far away from their former owner.
Crooked Tree glanced around the living room one more time before shutting off the lights. It nearly matched the residual version in his head, so he turned off the lights and exited through the kitchen door. He tread carefully, balancing on the borrowed boots until he found a patch of rocks where he could remove the shoes and toss them up into a tree. His crime wasn’t perfect. His understanding had caught up enough for him to guess that the police would eventually uncover the details, but he figured it was good enough to buy him time. With any luck, by the time anyone discovered the murder, he would have already dispatched the boy and moved on to the afterlife to join his family.
He finished the night with the fortuitous discovery of an old, forgotten graveyard next to a neglected dirt road. Pressing his shoulder against the edge of a crypt he found enough room to curl up inside with the dust of ancient inhabitants. He drifted off to sleep just as the sun rose on a clean, empty house with a broken window, halfway up the hill.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Davey
“THANKS AGAIN FOR THE RIDE,” said Davey.
“No problem Davey,” said Coach Peterson. “You run up to the building there. I told your mom I would see you from door to door.”
“No problem, Coach P.,” said Davey.
He smiled as he climbed out of the passenger seat of the coach’s car. The coach’s own son sat in the back seat and made no effort to address Davey’s departure. Davey returned the favor. As soon as he turned towards the Center, Davey frowned. The concrete two-story building looked cold and musty, like a sewer pipe. Mindful of the coach’s time he jogged towards the door, with the bag of his baseball clothes under his arm.
A few yards from the door he turned to wave goodbye to the coach, but his instructor was already pulling away from the curb, and saying something between the seats to his young son.
Davey’s frown returned, full strength. All the kids his age knew to stay away from the Career Center, it was the domain of older kids. Kids that hung around its treeless campus were more like Paul’s brother Kris, but meaner. The credible stories included lunch thrown on the roof, and shoes stolen and tossed over the power lines.
He looked up at the big metal door and considered his options before grabbing the handle. Since the coach had left, he supposed he could sneak away and return when it was time for his mom to pick him up. He didn’t trust his mom’s timing though—should could easily decide to pick him up early and ruin his plan.
An image of Paul popped into his head. In his imagination, Paul would likely be sitting at home, killing time playing video games and eating cookies.
“Makes a better door than a window,” a voice spoke from behind Davey.
He turned to see the kind eyes of a woman who looked somewhat like his grandmother. Davey smiled back at her.
“I was just…” he began.
“Never mind,” she prodded, “just open the door for a lady. You know that much, don’t you?”
A cold edge wore through the edges of her command. Davey reacted instantly. After holding the door open for her, he felt helpless; he had to follow her in. Before continuing down the hall, she pointed Davey to a table at the far end of the air-conditioned lobby.
“First day?” asked the girl at the table.
“Yes,” said Davey.
“Name?”
With her questions answered, Davey was given a slip of paper and pointed down the hall where he would take a left, and find his room on the right.
Worse than school, he thought as he listened to his shoes squeak on the polished-tile.