Hunted

“At night everything is a threat; every shadow or flicker is something predatory just beyond our line of sight when nothing is there Kyle, it’s just brought on by drink and the time of year I expect, it will pass I promise you,” The priest tried to soothe his frantic parishioner once more, ‘Kyle has had a hard life’ he told himself. Repeatedly. Unconvincingly. Kyle paced and ranted back and forth across the hard-stone floor, looking more and more feral as time passed. The priest rang 999 to get him forcibly removed. He was refusing to leave. The chapel was getting colder as the long January night drew in when all the noise from behind the huge oak doors to the catacombs stopped. After what felt like an age the strangled murmur came, “Protect me and I will leave.”

Three months earlier…

Whiskey. Sweat. Vomit. The smells of a pub. Along with the scent of a male and the false scents people insisted on drowning themselves in and yet there is something more to this one I’m sure of it. Why can’t I place it? He is tangy? Sour but sweet? Almost fruity but not like the fruit that the thorns had hidden from me in my early memories that’s for certain, not that I can remember my life before that anyway. What is his extra smell? I follow him trying to put it together. His skin was warm, clammy like rain slicked mud and when I fell the fleece I had grabbed hold of had been soft with something thick stitched on to it. It smelled like a diluted form of his ‘other’ scent. There was a rubber ribbon that had brushed my arm, but it wasn’t the cause of it either; it played a strange melody, it was oddly soothing yet distinctive. A marker just like his scent. I bite my lip puzzled as I perch like a bird and wait for him to leave the cold stone shelter he was hiding in. House. I remember the word for that it’s a house he’ s hiding in. I have learned to hide to from people, my face frightens them, the stench of their fear bitters their taste. Animals do not fear me, they hunted me for long enough when I came out of the cold mud and stumbled about in the dark. I remember the first time I hunted them and smile. The furry, snarling four-legged creatures taught me much as I learned to move silently when hunting others. All the others taught me things too when they wandered through my forest. The loud ones were rare, easy meals and the small high-pitched ones that smelled of milk were sweeter still- the larger ones that accompanied them were more difficult though. Each helped me hunt. Yet none smelled like him. Still like all the others he does not look up.

I haven’t hunted like this in a long time, the challenge just hasn’t been there. I have to ignore my angrily rumbling stomach to hear the sounds coming down the rubber ribbon the man always wears. It shuts him off normally, today however there is someone with him. He stinks of meat and fat and if that wasn’t enough he is a disgusting eater. They were on their way to…work? If the fat man was to be understood. Thankfully the building he entered did not smell of cats. His house makes my head hurt with the creature’s scent and constant appeals I will have to quiet it when I take my chance. Wait, his scent has changed- its earthier, darker and stronger than before. Why has it… Oh. A woman.

There is nothing like Mozart’s moonlight sonata to start the morning off, Kyle mused as he struggled to find his shirt. It had been nine months since his daughter had gone missing, shortly after his wife had died of cancer. The police had given up looking for her in spite of their protestations to the contrary and now all that eased the worried knot inside of him was music. Initially, when the grief was still raw, it had helped him drown out the quiet of his now empty house, now it was a familiar addition to his day. Kyle had finally managed to get that Asda job in the grocery section he had applied for three times before. He had moved to the north east coast of England when his wife had taken ill a year ago, he didn’t know many people to ask for comfort from. Picking up his green Asda polo and zipping his fleece up to the top, he grabbed some toast, fed the cat that stayed with him in spite of him throwing it out every time he saw it and left the house all before five in the morning. The bitter cold ate its way through his thin shoes and crawled up his legs as he walked past St Joseph’s where his daughter used to go to school, ignoring the sadness that rose up like bile in his throat. Where could she be, who has her, where questions that haunted him, every day, every waking hour, and when he was unlucky they haunted his sleep. The lampposts flickered lazily as he entered Church Street and the sheets of black ice glistened. He was just passing the junction passed the cinema when the track changed and he almost fell over someone. He was startled and almost hit the ground himself; it was highly unusual for anyone else to be out at this time of the morning especially in this weather. He only realised it was a girl when she moaned softly and clung to his fleece to gain her footing, Kyle tried to help her up but was stunned at how strong she was- she didn’t look more than about twelve, thirteen at the most.

“Are you alright miss?” He asked when he found his voice. She made no reply so he tried to find her face under the mass of clothes she wore, to check if she was alright when she bolted. He tried to call after her but hit the ground hard skinning his knee in the process making him cry out. Only then did she stop. She turned as though sniffing the air like a blood hound and Kyle realised he could not move. He had been mesmerised by her even in the half light of that cold winters morning. He tried once more to call out to her once he’d staggered to his feet but she had gone. He limped into work that morning having twisted his ankle as well as cut his knee and tried to put the whole event behind him as he stacked the pineapples for display.

The next few weeks went by quickly in Hartlepool on the run up to Christmas and as usual for the holiday every shop was jam packed full of customers. Kyle didn’t notice. Ever since that morning he couldn’t shake the sensation of being…stalked. Every moment alone was soured by this presence of something he couldn’t see. In his house things kept moving, he’d finally nod off only to wake up half garrotted by his earphones blasting Vivaldi. There was always a scent of damp earth wherever he went; it was stuck to his bed clothes when he returned from work. The most disturbing thing was every photo of his family had been torn to shreds, his wife’s perfume still clinging to them from her jewellery box. He took a lodger in after that. He felt safer afterwards less vulnerable, although it didn’t look like his friend would be staying passed new-year’s. He stared agitatedly at his cupboards trying to forget. Antonia Martinique; beautiful, kind, Argentinean Antonia. He had plucked up the courage to talk to her about going for coffee when she turned him down flat, it still brought a wry smile to his lips even now. His tears had been too painful to let fall when he saw on the news she had been killed that morning.

Betrayal. That’s what his sleep driven murmurs had made me feel. I can’t explain it, I know its from before the mud, but it’s there and real and painful and it has to end. I know I’m not the same as the babies I used to snatch yet I have no more memory than they do. At the same time the closer I get to him the more I start to remember. The train of thought makes my hunger too urgent so I let it fall. I have learned to be more cautious here, there are people in screeching cars, police, that catch people who kill each other. I must remember to eat. It distracts me otherwise. I’ve been following him more and more closely, the times when he is beyond my reach I go to his house to know him instead. The pictures…I didn’t understand them their scent stung too, so I destroyed them. He hadn’t been happy after that and then the fat one moved in. The place stank of whiskey now, even the cat had left because of him. Were it not for his tang that compels me here I’d run and not come back.

Antonia, that’s what he called her I remembered her name as she sagged beneath me. Her hair was matted with her blood and the bush I’d dragged her through. She was sat on a bench in the park at night. Odd but others do it too. Her feet went clip-clop, clip-clop. It was easy to track. When the twitching stopped and her heart finally gave out I stopped. I put some sap I’d used to heal myself before on the puncture wounds and raked her neck with my finger nails. It seems such a waste to throw her in the sea now. Still it can’t be helped, I have to make it easy for him to disappear without notice. The fat one was next on my list along with the woman he lived with.

Kyle was shaking in his bed. Gary was dead so was his wife, with all the same hallmarks as Antonia and all connected to him. He quit his job before they could fire him. It was the losses his boss had said sympathetically, he just needed help to rebalance again, everyone’s elastic band snaps at some point. It had fallen on deaf ears as Kyle had ranted his way into a nice padded cell for the next three days before they had to let him go. He was tempted to go back; it had been the best rest he’d had in months. The pharmacy had given him sleeping tablets to make him rest and he was under strict instructions to get help if he slipped again. He knew something was hunting him, hunting anyone he had left so he was alone and easy prey. It was the only thing that made sense. The more secluded he felt the more in danger he knew he was and yet everyone was turning their backs. He knew it in the same place he knew his name but no one would believe him. He tried to get a band of his so-called friends together to hunt this ‘something’ down but they just laughed and didn’t move an inch. He was sure Mike was the one who had gotten him barred from the pub. He even tried the police station but he had no proof and nothing more than this sixth sense of ‘it’ that followed him around like a black cloud. One of them laughingly said he was being haunted. Kyle knew it was a joke but it had stuck and he spent hours in the library looking for anything that felt right. People avoided him on sight in there, the librarians had even stopped insisting he be quiet. Eventually, he was barred by a police order. The incidents didn’t end there, when he was outside he started thumbing a crucifix repeatedly cutting into his thumb. He was trying to draw it out. It liked blood, there it was again. Damp earth. He spun in circles trying to spot it only catching fragments when at last he saw the girl again in the distance. Hooded but smelling the air just like that morning. He went to chase her but the policemen caught his arm. On instinct he lashed out thrusting the cross into his stomach. The blood was instant. The panic should have been too but it didn’t set in until the crowd started screaming; initially joy had been the order of the day when he thought he had her in his reach. Then everything closed in and he ran to the only place he felt safe- St Joseph’s Church and Father Coxon. He had only left once he had received a blessing as protection, knives didn’t feel like they would be enough anymore.

I thought my chances of hunting him were over once he saw me but he came back and with the scent of another’s blood on him. He always brings me presents. I wait for him to sleep; his body is waning and no one will come looking as long as I leave him here after… he took care of that for me. I perch on the stairs waiting as I have so many times before for him to snore. His smell hasn’t changed it wasn’t the fruit from his work, its him. I remember as I approach his bed what the loud easy ones have taught me, go for their voices first. Straddling him now tracing his face he feels familiar and name dances across my tongue that won’t quite take shape. I take slightly too long and start to drool. He’s awake!

Samantha! Kyle’s mind screamed the name of his daughter, as he takes the ruin of her in and cannot move for terror. Her eyes had brought him so much delight before, always bright and smiling had been gauged out leaving huge, black and scarred craters in her once innocent face. She looks ravenous and predatory and older and none of it fits but it is her. She has her mother’s face. He opens his mouth to scream and catches sight of the piercing he’d been so angry about only a year before. The scream almost breaks through…almost.

I cannot let him make a noise! I lunge as I have so many times before for their voices, as I tighten my grip, he tastes even better than he smells. His warmth melts into me and so do memories of before. The more that flows into me the more ravenous I become and soon his head is lying separate from his body and I can see. I cannot remember the last thing I saw alive but my father’s tear stained face by candlelight is the first thing I see dead…