FICTION BY DR. SUSAN SAVAGE LEE

Dr. Susan Savage Lee is Associate Professor of Spanish at Jefferson Community and Technical College. Her academic articles have appeared in Confluencia, Revistas de Estudios de Género y Sexualidades, and the Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies. Her short stories have been featured in Black Petals, Bewildering Stories, and Aphelion. She writes horror, psychological thrillers, and speculative fiction.

THE HUNTER
by Dr. Susan Savage Lee

Although Andy’s mother had promised him that the kitchen counters had been properly sanitized, upon closer inspection, he noticed black hair and pieces of shredded cheese tucked under the cutting board. He felt queasy at the sight.

He began wiping them down with disinfectant and paper towels, certain that he’d already contracted a virus or a bacterial infection from his mother’s incompetence. He figured he would have to stress again the importance of keeping things clean and sanitary in the house. A part of him thought she did it on purpose to convince him that his multiple visits to specialists were warranted. Hadn’t she even said during their last argument that nothing was wrong with his 18-year-old body except for his brain?

Satisfied that everything was now clean enough for him to make a snack, Andy stopped in the middle of grabbing a plate, feeling that peculiar sensation of being watched. He looked out the window above the kitchen sink, but saw nothing but trees waving in the summer breeze. Then he moved to the sliding glass doors, standing close enough to stare out without actually touching them, mindful of the ugliness of leaving smudges behind.

Beyond the patio sat the oddly-shaped pool his father had built shortly before dying at the age of fifty-four. The Saunders family had a history of early deaths, Andy liked to remind his mom, and his own could be one of them if he wasn’t careful enough.

Frowning at the thought of someone watching him without his permission, Andy peered out the sliding glass door, searching for a person he knew in his gut was out there.

And then he saw it—a strange man.

The man wore animal furs like a hunter from another century. He stood rigidly by the deep end of the pool. A dog that looked part wolf, part Siberian husky was seated next to him panting in the ninety-degree heat, yet the man appeared unaffected by it despite the furs. Andy frowned again as he watched the man stretch out one arm to point toward the street. The whole time he did so, the man didn’t look away, his face blank and pale.

“What are you staring at?” his mother asked him after she entered the kitchen. Andy turned with a start.

“There’s a man out there,” Andy told her, terribly frightened in ways that he wasn’t during his numerous doctors’ visits. His mother walked around the counter, then stood beside him, resting a hand on his shoulder before pulling it away. Andy was unhappily reminded that she refused to accept that he hated being touched.

“Where? I don’t see anyone,” she said, turning to face the same direction as Andy. He followed her gaze to the deep end of the pool where a potted bird of paradise sat, waving in the breeze just like the trees above it. The man and his dog were gone.

“But he was just there,” Andy said, his mother already losing interest. She now busied herself with sorting through the fridge in the search for something to eat.

Andy remained at the sliding glass door until his mother finished making her sandwich. Then he picked up the disinfectant and paper towels, intent on scrubbing the counters down again, in case he’d missed something the first time. Although normally a comforting process because he controlled it, Andy was unmoved this time. For whatever reason, he knew the man in the furs was there just for him, although he hadn’t the slightest idea why.

*****

After suffering from a headache for two days, Andy’s mind leapt to the worst conclusion: he had a brain tumor. With an exasperated sigh, his mother scheduled an appointment with a specialist who frowned when he realized that the only symptom was a headache.

“How much water are you drinking?” the doctor asked.

“Not much, come to think of it,” Andy admitted.

On the way home, his mother simmered in frustration beside him.

“It’s like you want to be sick––or worse,” she said, her cheeks blotchy from anger.

Andy stared listlessly out the car window, wishing he could just tell her the truth. After his father’s unexpected death, he spiraled into a deep depression. At the end of it, or as near to the end as he would ever get, he made a sudden realization. Life was filled with unexpected events outside his control.

But his body…well, that was a different story. Researching diseases and treatments had been cathartic in a strange way as he envisioned himself discovering a crack in his health before it got too deep. It was like cheating fate.

Andy couldn’t tell his mom any of this for fear that she wouldn’t understand––or worse, get angry for wasting her time with a myriad of doctors’ appointments. Instead, he remained silent, watching trees fly by the car window in green blurs.

After they got home, his mom ran upstairs to take a bath. That was her refuge away from Andy and his neuroses; although she never told him that out loud, he knew it anyway. With nothing to do, Andy paced in the kitchen, trying to think of a way to make it up to his mom. After all, he knew she really loved him, even if he was fucked up.

Then, from the corner of his left eye, he caught a flash of movement. When he stopped to see what it was, he saw the man in furs standing on the other side of the iron-wrought fence. This time, instead of appearing at the far end of the pool, he had moved much closer. He wasn’t more than ten feet away from the sliding glass doors.

Andy froze in fright as his eyes traveled over the dog sitting at the man’s feet and then the man’s extended left arm, pointing toward the street again. A clematis plant had woven itself through the bars of the fence, making it hard for Andy to see the man’s face. He knew it was the same guy who had been there the day before, though.

“Mom! Come here! There’s a man by the pool,” Andy shouted upstairs, turning his head to project his voice.

A few minutes later, his mom thudded down the stairs, the ends of her hair damp, her robe pulled tightly around her body.

“What man? Where?” she asked him, peeping over his shoulder.

“He was right there,” Andy whispered, pointing to the spot by the clematis plant.

“Andy, this sort of thing has got to stop,” she said, the exasperation returning to her voice. “Look, I know that losing your dad was hard, but you’ve got to get control of yourself. The doctors’ visits, the worry and panic over nothing, and now some imaginary guy…it has been two years, and I don’t know how much more I can take. I lost someone too,” she continued, her voice trembling. “And I need time to process that.”

She didn’t give Andy a chance to respond. She simply turned on her heel and walked out of the kitchen. A moment later, her feet pounded up the stairs.

Long after she was gone, Andy stood at the sliding glass door, peering out, looking for any movement from the man he was sure was a hunter.

“But he’s not from this time,” Andy whispered in the quiet room. After constantly complaining about illnesses that turned out to be nothing, now she wouldn’t believe anything he told her, especially crazy theories about a man from the past.

He was determined to find out how the man had time-traveled.

*****

A week later, he kept reading the same passage from his book on Norse mythology––the first book he’d opened without a medical focus. According to its author, figures like Odin, a hunter and a wanderer, had prophetic abilities. Closing the book with a snap, he thought myths like this were created to give people a sense of control over the world around them. The natural world, he thought.

He hadn’t seen the hunter since the time by the clematis, so his mental image of the man had started to fade. Maybe it was all in his imagination like his mother suggested.

He sought solace in going out of the house. Outside, he noticed a tree leaning after the most recent heavy rain. It now hung over the driveway like a sideways exclamation point. He should probably mention it to his mom.

Andy started taking walks around the neighborhood to create new habits and new perspectives. Maybe he could reach out a little bit more into the real world outside his house, like one of his psychiatrists had suggested. He could take one little risk at a time and with each risk, he might stop feeling the need to make up stories about illnesses…or strange people.

In the street, some middle-schoolers played hockey, only moving when a car approached. Andy walked past them, remembering playing basketball with his dad or racing in swim competitions. The summers had been filled with endless hours spent outside under the warm sun, the sky unblemished by clouds.

He frowned as he thought of what he had been doing in the two years since his father’s death––frantically cleaning the kitchen and bathrooms, folding and refolding clothes into neat piles, researching symptoms in the search for illness, and most importantly, avoiding the outside world because it was too dangerous. You could be driving down the tree-lined road in the dark, coming home after a twelve-hour shift at the hospital, not seeing the busted tire in the street, and crashing as a result––just like his father had. No, it was better to stay inside where it was safe.

But that wasn’t living, Andy admitted to himself as he watched his sneakers tread on the paved road, brushing aside a loose piece of gravel here and there. Sprinklers spun in tight circles in the Howards’ yard, a dog barked behind a glass door, and the middle-schoolers shouted at one another, arguing over the score. This was living, he was sure of it.

Once he got back to the house and entered the kitchen, he found his mother standing behind the counter, watching the midday news.

“Did you actually go for a walk?” she asked him. “Outside?”

“I did,” he said with an easy smile as he wiped sweat from the back of his neck.

“I’m impressed,” she said with a dry tone, although she was smiling too. “Keep up the good work.”

He waved as he left the room to go upstairs, thinking he might crack open the book, Revival, that he’d never finished around the time his father died. He wanted to find out if Jamie ever discovers what happens when we die.

*****

Another week passed and with it, the image of the hunter with his dog continued to fade in his mind. Andy kept taking walks, staying outside longer and longer each time. He even started swimming in the pool again, rewarding himself with an ice cream that dripped down his fingers in the heat outside.

After washing his hands in the kitchen, he froze at the sound of a dog barking on the patio. None of their neighbors had a dog, except the Howards, four houses down. Maybe it had gotten loose. Andy started to walk around the counter to the sliding glass door, trying to remember the dog’s name at the same time, when he froze, frightened by the scene in front of him.

The dog faced the sliding glass door, its front paws resting on the top step. It wasn’t the Howards’ dog, though, but the hunter’s. When the dog saw him, it sat down on the middle step under the large overhang before becoming silent. Behind it, standing motionless, stood the man.

The hunter had never ventured this close to the house before. But now he stood there, pointing toward the street with an arm that didn’t bend. Although he had dark hair and a beard of the same color, there was something off about his face. Without wanting to but unable to stop himself, Andy drew closer to the door with silent steps.

It wasn’t until he stood, just two feet away from the hunter, on the other side of the glass, that he saw what was wrong with his face. Instead of eyes with pupils and irises, the hunter’s were like silver dollars––blank, vacant, like a statue’s.

Andy covered his mouth in horror, then turned and fled the room. Upstairs, he slammed the door and locked it, before throwing himself onto his bed.

What does he want? What could he possibly want? Andy asked himself again and again, pounding his fist against the mattress and bedding. Then a terrifying thought began to emerge like something partially hidden by mist. What if the hunter wasn’t a hunter at all, but death coming to claim him?

Andy rolled onto his back and covered his eyes with his hands, trying to contain the scream that was building inside of him, begging for release.

*****

In his pocket, Andy tucked the Swiss army knife his dad had given him on his twelfth birthday. Although a part of him wanted to resume his reclusiveness inside the house, another part became angered at the thought of losing the progress he’d made. Even his mom seemed happier now that he wasn’t dragging her all over town to yet another specialist. If he let her down again, she might never forgive him.

He wasn’t going to change his new lifestyle out of fear, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t be prepared if the hunter returned. This time, with ill intent. The Swiss army knife would protect him. He was certain of it.

Outside on the street, the day seemed hotter than others with huge, rain-soaked puddles in the dips of the neighborhood’s driveways. He began sweating after passing the hockey players who used a puddle to mark out of bounds. A sudden thirst struck him enough that he began to resent being outside on a walk. Maybe he could return home sooner than he normally did. After all, he’d proven that he hadn’t relapsed just by walking a few blocks. With a sigh of relief, Andy turned around and headed back home.

He broke into a jog when he saw his driveway, a few beads of sweat dropping onto the pavement. A glass of water would feel so amazing, he thought, marveling at the short distance between discomfort and pleasure.

Turning into the driveway, he heard it before he saw what was happening. At first, he thought it was the sound of a giant piece of construction paper being ripped. It was startling enough that he stopped to look around, noticing at the same time, the tree that had been hanging at an angle moving toward him.

Frozen, he watched its descent, finally understanding what the hunter had been trying to do. Then the world fell dark, blotting out Andy’s glimpse of something bigger than himself.