Page 78 of Wicche Hunt

He’s younger. Wearing a long-sleeve olive green shirt and matching pants. A patch on the pocket readsGarza. He’s in a forested area, sawing through a tree branch that cracked in last night’s storm. The students aren’t allowed in the grove on their own, but still. Can’t have a heavy branch fall on a kid chasing a soccer ball.

He pauses to answer a text from the headmaster and hears whispering. He turns his head, trying to determine where the sound is coming from.

He follows the whispers and giggles through the trees, hoping he’s not going to find students having sex. He hates that.

When he finds two teenagers not touching each other, he breathes a sigh of relief. He’s about to bark at them about getting back up to the school when he hears a weak, pitiful mewing sound.

He circles around behind them, a sick feeling in his stomach. The boys haven’t noticed him. They’re too engrossed in what they’re doing.

“What—” It’s all he can get out. The tall one’s hand moves so fast, Garza almost misses it. Something shiny and bloodstained just went in his pocket. The stick he’d been using to hold the wounded cat in place drops to the ground.

The other boy, shorter, looks scared. “We found him like this. We were going to bring him up to the school.”

The tall one nods. “We heard him crying and came to help. We were trying to decide the best way to pick him up so we didn’t injure him further.”

“Get back to the school,” Garza orders.

The short one doesn’t need to be told twice. He takes off running. The tall one looks down his nose at the groundskeeper. “You shouldn’t talk to us that way. We came to help. Our actions are laudable and you should remember your place.” With that, he turns and walks back through the forest, leaving Garza with a tortured cat.

The image goes dark and then…

Garza is walking down the school hall. He’s uncomfortable in here, much prefers to stay out on the grounds, but he’s been thinking about the shorter one, the scared one. He hasn’t been able to sleep, thinking about the two of them, what he’s sure they did. He spoke to the headmaster, but that was a waste of time. The headmaster assured him that they were good young men from fine families and he was positive Garza had misinterpreted the situation.

He'd even gone to the dean, but he kept asking Garza if he’d actually seen the students hurting the cat. He hadn’t, so the dean said he’d make a note of it in his files and dismissed him.

His wife told him to let it go. He’d done what he could. It was up to the school now. He knows she’s right, but the shorter one looked scared and he needs to check on him, maybe help him get away from the other one. His own son had fallen in with the wrong group of boys when he was in school. Garza knew how hard it could be to break away from so-called friends at that age. Maybe the scared one just needed some help, an adult to blame that allowed him to save face.

He knows when the shorter one has PE, has seen him out on the field, and so is waiting outside the boys’ changing room for him. When the student emerges and sees Garza, he quickly looks around. Garza waves him over and the boy goes reluctantly.

“Are you okay?” Garza asks.

He shrugs, still seeming to look for the dean.

“Listen,” Garza continues. “You’re a decent kid, right? You didn’t want to hurt that animal, did you?”

“We told you. We found him like that.” He looks over his shoulder. “Maybe a mountain lion attacked him.” He shrugs again. “I don’t know. We were just trying to help.”

“I saw what the other one had in his hand. I saw the knife. Do you need help? The headmaster can keep you safe. I can talk to him for y—”

“No!” he whisper-shouts, looking over his shoulder again. “I told you, you’re wrong.” He turns back to Garza, his expression cold. “Unless you’d like me to tell the headmaster how you make me uncomfortable, always trying to talk to me and touch me, I suggest you leave me the fuck alone,” he hisses.

Garza recoils. “I’m only trying to help.”

“That was your first mistake.” The one-minute chime is heard over the loudspeaker and the student jogs to his next class.

When the image dims again, I think of his death.

He knows his wife will be annoyed with him, but when the young man contacted him, he couldn’t say no. He should have. He sees that now, but he keeps thinking about the fear on the kid’s face when he’d caught them with the cat. The kid told him to park on the road, so he does. Why they couldn’t meet at a coffee shop is beyond him. The big house is dark and the grounds deserted. He’s got no reason to be on this property. If this is some stupid prank, he might be calling his very angry wife to bail him out tonight.

He sees a flare of light at the tree line, so he goes in that direction.

The same scene plays out, but this time I have a better look at the killer as an adult.It’s dark and Garza’s eyesight isn’t as good as it used to be, but still. The killer was right. Garza doesn’t see the shovel until it hits him.

What the young man doesn’t realize is that the hit didn’t kill him. Garza comes to, groggy and sore, as the killer rolls him to the edge. He sees a series of flashes and then is kicked over the edge, freefalling into the ocean and rocks below…

“What the hell was that?”

I opened my eyes at the bear’s snarl as I dangled over the cliff, hanging from the arm around my waist. At the same time that I processed what a strange predicament I was in, a huge wave hit the cliff, a good thirty to forty feet higher than normal.

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