Chapter 5

Hunter

    The woods were dark and cold. They were always dark and cold. And damp. An odd cold damp that found its way through your clothing and bit into your bones. It was almost painful. Hunter had layered up like the rest of the searchers. They had been at it for hours. It was a grid search. People from town walking side by side, calling out the names of the missing kids, calling over investigators every time they found something odd. 

    There were a lot of odd things in these woods. Enough abandoned clothing to open a shop if it wasn’t so frayed, damaged, and disintegrated by time. Toys in broken bits. Bullet holes in trees. Car parts strewn a half mile from the road. Sheriff Beckert told them to leave the odd discovers were they were. If it didn’t belong to the kids that were missing, the searchers weren’t allowed to move it.

    Hunter wondered how many people came to the woods to dump their trash. It seemed to be everywhere. The searcher next to Hunter called out and his group stopped moving. 

    “Bones,” the searcher said, looking horrified.

    Hunter thought he recognized her. She was a teacher at the school. Not the high school, maybe the elementary school. After Alex’s time though. Hunter would have remembered her if she had taught Alex. She also seem too young to have been a teacher back then.

    One of the forensic officers came rushing over. The bones couldn’t possibly belong to the kids. They hadn’t been missing that long. 

    Out of curiosity, Hunter took a step closer toward the bones. They were arranged in a neat pattern. Almost like a mandala.

    The forensic officer took one look at them and shook his head.

    “Deer bones,” he said.

    “Is it them?” Alex asked, tugging on Hunter’s arm.

    Hunter hadn’t wanted her to come, but here she was. Searching the woods with the rest of them. Had she been friends with these kids? Hunter asked himself. He thought he knew Alex well enough to name all of her friends. She had been acting odd though every since they disappeared. Sleeping in his bed, clinging to his arm, staying home instead of going out. Not that Hunter was mad about her staying home. With whatever was happening, he would rather have her in his sight than at a friend’s house. 

    “It’s deer bones,” Hunter said. “Not human bones. It would be impossible for them to be bones by now. They haven’t been gone that long.”

    “Oh,” Alex said. She clung to Hunter’s arm and watched the forensic officer leave and the school teacher walk around the bones. Next to them, they could hear the horrified teacher muttering about what kind of monster would rearrange a corpse like that. How disgusting and inhumane it was, even if the body only belonged to a deer.

    “Go back to your spot, honey,” Hunter said. “We’re going to start up again soon.”

    To make sure nothing happened to Alex while they were in the woods, Hunter put her between himself and Tanya as they walked their grid.

    Alex slowly went back to her spot and, once everyone was back in place, their line of volunteers started moving again, stepping slowly through the dense brush and around the old trees.

    There were two large trees ahead. Alex was going to pass right through them. Something about her being out of sight even for that one moment made Hunter feel sick. He knew that if she disappeared stepping through those trees, there really wasn’t anything to worry about. He would know exactly where to look for her. Yet, Hunter couldn’t shake the feeling of something bad about to happen.

    The closer they got to the trees, the more he dreaded it. Tanya started shooting nervous looks their way as well. Hunter tried to calm himself. Telling himself over and over again that it was the eeriness of the woods that was making him nervous. That the generations of stories and mountains of odd items had seeped into his brain and created dangers that weren’t actually there. He would just slow his pace slightly so that he could watch Alex pass through the trees from behind while Tanya could get out in front of the trees. 

    Hunter slowed his pace just enough and watched as Alex passed between the two large trees. There was the crunching of twigs and branches on the ground as she moved through. Something about that sound gave him chills.

    As he moved to catch up with his line, he heard Tanya call out.

    “Bones!”

    They were probably animal bones. If they were laid out as another mandala, Hunter would tell Sheriff Beckert to look into who was making those since it seemed like a real serial killer kind of thing to do.

    When Hunter made it passed the trees, he looked toward Tanya who pointed at Alex. Alex was looking up. Hunter followed her gaze and saw bones hanging from the branches of the trees. Hunter reached out and grabbed Alex by the arm and pulled her close to him.

    The bones in the tree were human. The skulls dangling like Christmas ornaments made it obvious. Hunter heard a gaps next to him. It was the teacher. She was staring opened mouthed in front of them. 

    He hadn’t noticed it before, but there were bones strewn out ahead. It was as if someone had emptied the entire contents of a cemetery in the woods ahead. There were full skeletons mixed in with random bones here and there. Some glistened white as if they were fresh and new. Others were clearly older. Darkened by dirt and time. Some skulls had been out here long enough to have saplings and mushrooms growing out of the empty eyes and mouth.

    The forensics officer came over and stopped dead in his track.

    “Shit,” he said. He got on his radio and called for help after which he told the searchers to go back to the check in point, check out for the day, and go home. There would be no more searching after this.

    Hunter didn’t need to be told twice. He held Alex tightly by one hand and grabbed Tanya with his other. The three of them started marching out of the woods. Others from their groups pulled in close to them. There was usually a sense of safety in numbers, but it wasn’t really working here. 

    When they emerged from the woods, they saw that other groups from the search had already made it back. One by one, the groups checked out and went back home to wait for any news. When Hunter’s group checked out, there was one person missing. The young teacher. Even though she had drawn in close to them on the way back, she was gone now.

    “Don’t worry about it,” the officer checking them out said. “We have her contact info. We’ll track her down. She probably just got spooked and went home when she saw other people leaving.”

    “Are you sure? I can go back the way we came,” Hunter said.

    The officer cut him off. “You said she was walking pretty close to you. You weren’t too far into the woods to begin with. If she didn’t go home, there’s plenty of cops swarming that area now. They’ll get her out if she’s still in there.”

    Hunter hesitated. He didn’t feel right leaving without knowing that woman was all right, but he felt a tug on his arm and looked at Alex’s impatient face. It was a mistake letting her come. Hunter knew that he was running the risk of her finding the missing kids either injured or dead, but he hadn’t expected something as unsettling as this. There were hundreds of bodies in these woods if not more, just out there in the open.

    “Let’s go home,” Hunter said.

    “Can we have pancakes?” Alex asked.

    “Sweetheart, if it makes up for what you saw here today,” Hunter said. “I will feed you whatever you like.”

    Hunter and Alex walked Tanya to her car and hugged her goodbye before getting in the big truck Hunter used for his construction work. He’d brought it along just in case they needed something with a little bit of power to move a fallen tree or some odd item in the woods.

    Once they were driving home, Hunter spoke.

    “Kiddo,” he said. “I need you to tell me what’s going on here. I need you to tell me everything you know about those kids."