The Hunt

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Chris Bullard

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I don’t know why my cousin, Dalton, hated me so much. I asked my mom and she told me that I was being too sensitive and that Dalton didn’t have anything against me, but I didn’t believe her. “Well, maybe, he’s a bit over-aggressive with you and Brady,” she said, “but you have to remember that Dalton doesn’t have a dad around, so he’s lacking a strong, male presence in his life.” That’s the way my mom talked. She was a psychologist.

I thought this statement was a little strange because my own father, who was an actuary with an insurance company, was as a quiet a fellow as you could find and not someone I ever thought of as a “strong male presence.” Even if Dalton had grown up with an actuary in the house, I bet that he would have turned into a prima donna.  

I had fun the first couple of times I visited my Aunt Suzy. My grandpop Ferguson still had his farm next door and we got to ride on the tractor and play with the goats. But now my grandpop was in assisted care in Morgantown and Aunt Suzy had sold his farm to pay for his medical expenses. 

Dalton’s dad had left Aunt Suzy before Dalton was even out of diapers. I’d heard that from my mom. Aunt Suzy never talked about him and I certainly wasn’t going to ask Dalton about his dad. That would have just gotten him upset. Dalton didn’t even like to hear about other people’s dads. Once, when I started talking about things my dad and I had done, Dalton had stormed out of the room.   

Dalton had always been sort of moody. He’d ask me sports questions that I couldn’t answer and when I said something Dalton thought was stupid, he’d pitch a baseball at my chest. And Dalton could throw pretty hard. He played third base for his junior high, the Bagwell Bobcats.    

Mean as he was to me, Dalton was even worse to my brother, Brady. Dalton was always trying to scare him with his stories about the animals that lived in the woods next to my aunt’s house. “I saw a copperhead down by the stream last week,” he’d tell Brady, or he’d say, “I heard a bear snuffling around the back of the house last night.”     

Once he’d figured out that what scared Brady the most were stories about monsters, Dalton began talking about the Mothman, a creature that was supposed to live in the mountains around Bagwell. 

Dalton would prop his eyelids open with his fingers and whisper to Brady, “He’s got big glowing red eyes.” He’d flap his arms and say, “And he’s got great big wings.” He’d grab Brady around the shoulders and shout, “Look out, Mothman’s gonna eat you up.”

Despite the teasing, Brady was fascinated with Dalton. Whenever Brady and I were together that summer he would go on about Dalton and about all the interesting things that Dalton did and how brave Dalton was to go out in the woods alone.

It was toward the end of our stay at my aunt’s that Brady told me how Dalton had promised to take him on a snipe hunt, “He said that I could hold the bag and that he would chase them right up to me.” 

The prospect of filling a bag with snipe excited Brady even though he couldn’t tell me what one was. He seemed to think that they were some sort of cuddly forest creature. 

I didn’t know then that a snipe hunt is a trick that campers have been playing on innocent friends since the glaciers receded. You give someone a sack and take him out into the woods. You tell him that he’s supposed to stay in one place while you drive the snipe toward him. Then you go back to the campfire and wait to see how long it takes for him to figure out that he’s an idiot.

I can’t say that I saw what was coming, but I did have my suspicions about Dalton. I couldn’t see him wanting to do us anything but nastiness. But when I tried to talk Brady out of going, he just kept saying that Dalton would think he was a coward if he backed out.  

Since Brady wouldn’t listen to me about Dalton, I decided that I had to go with him. I wanted to keep him safe. When I told Dalton to count me in, he got a big grin on his face, which made me even more way about the hunt. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll have bags for both of you gentlemen.”

After dinner the next night, Dalton told my aunt and my mom that he wanted to take Brady and me over to see one of his friends who had collected some neat rocks and minerals. I was sort of surprised that my mom would let us go, but Aunt Suzy had assured her that Dalton knew his way around the hills and I guess that the idea of having a few hours alone to talk over adult things with Aunty Suzy seemed like a good idea.   

We started walking. After a few minutes, we veered off from the paved road and started on the inclined trail that ran into the trees. I didn’t go there up very often. I preferred playing around the farm. To me, the forest was just a place where the fields stopped. 

As we picked our way along the trail, trying not to trip over the big roots that ran across the path, I started to think of the woods a little differently. For one thing, they seemed endless. And they were dark. Just a few steps in, I started worrying that we wouldn’t be able to find our way back to the road.  

It was a good thing that we had brought the flashlight. We wouldn’t have been able to see our way through the trees without it. Dalton shined it ahead of us and directed us onto a path that turned off from the one we were using. We hiked for another few minutes before we came to a clearing. I was huffing from the climb.

Dalton handed Brady and me two pillowcases. “I’m going to scare the snipe into this clearing. When they come toward you, just catch them in the bag. Don’t worry. They’re harmless.”

Dalton snickered, then vanished. I’m sure that he didn’t want to give us any time to change our minds. A few moments later, we heard his voice calling out “snipe, snipe.” 

As we waited, the moon rose over the crest of the mountains. It was gigantic. I had never realized how bright the moon could be. The center of the clearing seemed to light up like a spotlight was shining on it. 

“Do you think mom will let me keep the snipe I catch?” Brady asked me. 

“Don’t bank on it,” I said.

We could still hear Dalton calling “snipe, snipe” out in the woods beyond the clearing, but his voice was further away than before. Brady turned toward me, “How long do you think it’ll take for the snipe to come?” 

“I don’t know about you,” I said, “but I’m not waiting long.”

The moonlight was bright enough that I could easily see the hands of my wristwatch. It was 9:30 and mom had told us to be back before 11:00.

A few moments later, Dalton decided to raise the ante. Instead of “snipe, snipe” he started to howl like a wolf. It seemed like he was moving around us in the darkness as his calls got louder and fiercer. We could hear snarls and growls everywhere. At last, he finished off with a set of horrible screams like he was an animal caught in the jaws of a murderous beast.

I could hear Brady take a big swallow. “What’s that?” he said. 

I dropped my pillow case and put my hands on his shoulders. “Don’t worry,” I told him. “It’s just Dalton.”

“Why does he want to scare us?” Brady was almost crying.

“He just wants to scare the snipe,” I said.

I could feel Brady’s body trembling.

I didn’t want to leave him, but I wanted to tell Dalton to stop scaring Brady.

“Don’t move from the moonlight,” I said. “Animals don’t like the light. They won’t touch you if you’re standing where it’s bright.”

“Don’t go,” Brady whimpered.

I patted his head. “Don’t worry. I’ll be back in a second. I promise. Just stay where you are. I’m going to get Dalton and then we’ll all go home.”

I moved to the edge of the clearing and shouted, “Dalton, you come back here now. Brady and I want to go.”

Nobody responded, so I started to work my way around the perimeter while shouting, “Dalton, we want to go home, right now.” 

I figured that Dalton was still out there playing a game with us. I was sure that he knew how much trouble he would get into if he went home without us. After he’d had enough fun, he’d come back and get us. I wasn’t looking forward to how he’d mock of us for being scared and for being stupid enough to believe in something as crazy as snipe, but I would gladly put up with his jokes if it meant that Brady and I were going home.

When I looked back to see how Brady was making out, I froze. Brady wasn’t standing there alone. I could make out the figure of a man standing behind him.

I could feel my muscles knot up and I had to steady myself to keep from falling over. I wanted to run to Brady, but my fear wouldn’t let me.

It was only when I saw the man disappear into the darkness that I got up enough nerve to hustle over to my brother. 

“Are you all right? What was that man doing to you? Did he touch you?” That was the question they always asked kids on TV.

“Just on the shoulder,” he quivered. “He was really strong.”

After a moment, Brady straightened up. “I’m alright,” he said quietly. “I thought you had come back, but I knew it wasn’t you when I heard his voice.”

“What did the man say?” I don’t know why I asked this. I should have just snatched Brady up and started running for home, but I was in shock. I wasn’t thinking right.

“He told me to open up my bag. Then he dropped in a snipe. He said that it was a good hunt.”

Brady offered me the bag. At the bottom of the pillow case I could see a baseball cap printed with the words, “Bagwell Bobcats.”

I can’t really remember dragging Brady down the trail, or getting us inside my aunt’s house. But it’s not hard to summon up the memory of my aunt’s wail when we told her that something had “gotten” Dalton.   

Everybody wanted to ask us questions. Brady and I had to speak with what seemed like every policeman in West Virginia. Luckily, my mom was able to keep us out the clutches of the reporters who shouted questions at us whenever we were out in public.

Dalton was just gone. Once in while some true crime TV show presents the story of the missing West Virginia boy as an “unsolved mystery.” I change the channels when that happens.

My mom lost regular contact with my aunt. Suzy left Bagwell and let the bank take her house. She never visited my grandpop again at his nursing home. Some Christmases we’d get a card from her. Each of them had a postmark from a different town. 

I still regret that I was gullible enough to fall for Dalton’s snipe hunt. I should never have let him take Brady out there. I still feel that I’m the one responsible for everything that happened.  

But even though I couldn’t protect my brother that night, I like to think that I’ve been able to shield him in one way since then. I’ve never told him or anyone else what else I saw out there in the moonlight. I don’t want Brady to have the sort of nightmares that wake me.

I don’t want Brady to know that the man in the clearing had eyes that shined like torches. I don’t want him to know that the man who stood behind him didn’t walk away but leapt into the sky. 

I am a city dweller and an office-worker, an actuary like my dad. I live on the twentieth floor of a midtown condo. I live by myself, perhaps because I don’t want to try to explain to anyone about those things that make me shout in my sleep. 

Brady lives in the suburbs with his wife and two kids. His house backs up on state game lands and he sometimes makes jokes about how uncomfortable I seem when I sit with him on the patio while his kids run around on the lawn. “We don’t have any bear around here, you know,” he tells me. “Nothing’s gonna come out of the woods and get us all.”

I try to smile. “I guess I just feel like the city mouse out here in the country.” I say. We have a good relationship and I think that he takes no offense from the fact that I won’t ever stay overnight at his house, but always insist on driving back to town.

I think that he has forgotten what happened that night, or most of it. 

I haven’t. Tonight, when a glorious orange moon rises above the apartment houses lining the river, I cannot look long before my mind summons up the silhouette of a man hovering on bat wings, staring down at me, looking directly at me with those crimson glowing eyes.

I shake my head and the image clears. I see only the moon again. I am living in a great city, I say to myself. I am out of those dark endless woods. I am safe now. The figure that I so often see is something I imagine and not something real. But screams still play inside my head. 

Where I live there’s a Starbucks on every corner and the city lights stay on all night. What would he be doing here and how could he still recognize me with my grey hair and white beard? And even if he has found me, what could he want with me?

What scares me is the possibility that the hunt is not over yet and that one night I will hear the rustle of wings overhead and feel strong hands take me by the shoulders and lift me from the city streets and fly me off to wherever Dalton was taken, some place where the deep forest gives way to the brightest moonlight.

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Chris Bullard dressed as a pirate alongside his sister.

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A native of Jacksonville, Florida, Chris Bullard is a retired judge who lives in Philadelphia. In 2022, Main Street Rag published his chapbook, Florida Man, and Moonstone Press published his chapbook, The Rainclouds of y. Finishing Line Press has accepted his chapbook, Lungs, for publication in 2024. He was nominated this year for the Pushcart Prize.

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