Along Hatchetman Trail
by Jackson Arthur
I shot from the building like a bullet. In those days, I was usually
one of the first people to escape middle school after the final bell
rang. I always tried to move swiftly out of the double doors, because I
liked to avoid the other kids in my school. The ones gathering for the
buses or the ones who had to walk home, like me. I always wanted to be
alone, whenever possible. Not because other people didn’t like me, but
because I just didn’t like them.
They never understood me.
And neither will you.
I remember that day as being abnormally hot and muggy for April. The
sky was also an unusually crisp blue, especially for northeastern Ohio,
which was known for having far more cloudy and overcast days during the
year.
The school’s central air unit must have been cranked up, because when I
exited the building the drastic change in temperature nearly took my
breath away. It was almost like I was leaving a chilly refrigerator to
jump headfirst into a hot pool. I was nearly stopped in my tracks by
the sudden blast of heat and humidity, but once I was out the doors, I
kept moving full speed.
I clearly recall how my upper body, most of all the flesh beneath my
black, long-sleeved shirt, instantly broke out in pools of sweat,
causing me to instinctively pull up on my sleeves. That was what a
normal kid would do. I didn’t think about it. I just reacted. As I
began tugging on the left sleeve, though, I pulled it high enough to
catch a brief glimpse at one of those fabulous oval scars on my right
arm. The one that I had caught sight of that day was old and white.
Mostly healed. It actually wasn’t a full circle, now that I think about
it. More like a half or quarter moon.
Quickly, I scanned around me for any possible onlookers before pushing
the sleeve back down to my wrist. I pushed the heat from my mind and
kept moving.
Instead of turning right from the main entrance, toward the school’s
parking lot and further to the main drag, which was a walker's normal
way home after school, I had decided to cut a hard left toward the
opposite side of the building.
In a small town like Oak Hill, a lot of kids walked home from school.
Everything, not just the elementary, middle, and high schools, were
within walking distance in a tiny town like that. The grocery stores.
Banks. Police and fire departments. Bars. And churches. All were within
a brisque stroll from anywhere else in town.
Along the left side of the school, I swiftly moved across the
basketball court, around a set of swings, before beginning my trek
toward the treeline on the other side of the soccer field. Behind the
middle school was a dense patch of woods. Back before Oak Hill was dug
out and established, the entire area of land had been forest, or so I
had been told most of my life. The town founders, or whoever built the
town, didn’t remove the entire forest, for some reason, but left a
strip of trees.
The trees were like an unspoken dividing line running through the
middle of town. On one side, you had the small-town businesses, along
with all of the town’s nice homes and nice happy families. On the other
side of the trees, you had the projects. Worn out two-story apartment
buildings filled with people living in state housing units. Drug
pushers. Addicts. And the poor welfare bums.
I bet you can guess on which side of the trees I had lived.
Projects.
Back then, I was living with my mother.
I couldn’t even venture a guess as to where my father was then, or
where he might be now. In all my life, I have never met the man. And I
don’t know anything about that bastard...or if he is even still
breathing.
It doesn’t matter.
In theory, going through the woods would have put me on a more direct
path to my apartment, getting me home quicker than going along the main
road. The main road always took me out and around the trees, instead of
in a straight line to my home. But going through the woods was not
about getting home faster. It was about slowing down, stalling the
inevitable. I knew that I had to get there at some point, but I was
rarely in any hurry. Especially on that day. That afternoon, I had zero
desire to get home any faster than necessary.
When I had left for school that morning, mother had already opened her
bottle of the day. It had been a dark, amber alcohol, nearly black in
color. Dark liquor usually meant that the day would be bad, worse than
usual. I figured that maybe by lollygagging through the woods, mother
would be passed out on the couch by the time I got home.
I had hoped, anyway.
Hope in one hand, shit in the other, and see which fills faster, my mother sometimes said.
I can almost laugh at the thought, as I sit here writing this. I could
have taken all the time I wanted. She didn’t care or pay attention to
where I was or when I would be home. No. That wasn’t completely true.
She cared enough about me to occasionally notice my existence. But that
was only when I was within her line of sight. I still have proof of
that up and down my arms. It meant that the more I stayed out of her
sights, the better it was for me.
Which was why I often went through the woods, back then. I enjoyed it,
too. I will admit. Especially during the spring and summer, when the
world finally began to thaw. During the winter, apart from it being
bitterly cold, it was also depressing to walk through the trees when
they were barren. It didn’t remind me of death, but of an emotion
similar to emptiness. Thoughts of death never bothered me, but the
sense of hopelessness I got during the winter would take me to internal
places that were dark and endless.
Little did I know then, but I would someday come to appreciate those same dark places.
Whenever I cut through the woods, I didn’t just stomp or trudge
aimlessly from one side to the other. There was a beaten route I took,
a worn path that everyone in town called Hatchetman Trail. There were a
bunch of old stories about that specific path. According to most of the
tall tales that I have heard, there once had been a strange man who
used to hide back in those woods, sometime during the 1970s. He liked
to snatch up any kid who made the mistake of going beyond the treeline.
He would then hang them from a sturdy branch so that he could hack at
them with a hatchet, as if the kid was a party pinata filled with
treats.
Obviously the stories were complete bullshit. Every town in America had
its own version of the boogeyman, or Hatchetman, meant to keep dumb
little kids from wandering into the woods.
Or so I had thought.
As I arrived at Hatchetman Trail, I stopped for a second at its head. I
couldn’t hold back a slight feeling of anxiety mixed with adrenaline.
The tall tales were bullshit, but somewhere behind the logic sections
of my brain, I wondered what would happen if they were true. What if
Hatchetman was real? What if he didn’t exist in the ‘70s, but right
then, and he was watching me from behind a large tree? Waiting for me.
Would I be able to make it the full run of the trail before he got me?
Would he tie me up and spill my guts onto the dirt?
The sensations flowing through me made me feel...alive. I was brave and
tough. I would face the trail no matter what dangers I might find.
I stepped onto the path and silently dared Hatchetman to give it his best try.
The stretch of forest was not very wide, but when the leaves and grass
and weeds began to fill in the spaces between the trees, it became
dense with green foliage and black shadows. Only fragments of sunlight
managed to make it all the way to the ground. Once I was inside, it was
easy to lose myself completely, forgetting about everything else that
might exist beyond the treeline. There was nothing else. No Oak Hill.
No other people. No mother.
There was only me.
I often went entirely into my fantasy world while on the trail.
Occasionally, the real world would break through, though. As you
probably guessed, there were other people that would use the trail,
sometimes. I would often see signs of them along the way. Discarded
cigarette butts or beer cans. One time, I saw two high school seniors,
both girls, making out and rubbing on each other against a tree several
feet from the path.
How disgusting.
But most of the time, like that specific day, I was alone.
Hatchetman trail was not a straight line through the woods. You could
follow it for aways, twisting and turning, before eventually getting to
the other side, where you would come out a few yards away from a row of
apartment buildings. It wasn’t a straight line, but it was a single
path. No split-offs or forks. Except, for some reason, that particular
afternoon.
I had been taking my time, as always, walking slow and steady. The
shadows and the shade were drying and cooling me down. It felt nice and
calming to both my flesh and my mind. I eventually reached the deepest
point of the trail and from then on I would be making my way outward,
instead of in. Something unexpected made me instantly halt. Hatchetman
Trail didn’t just continue its normal route toward the other side, but
it suddenly split, a new path moving off to my right.
I stood and stared for nearly a minute, confused. What was happening?
Had I taken a different path, somehow? Was there more than one way
through the woods?
I can’t explain what I was thinking when I began to follow this new
path, instead of just going home. I don’t why I didn’t question this
oddity further. None of that makes a difference, now. I can’t explain
the decisions of that young man, because taking that impossible new
path changed me into someone different. I can’t explain the decisions
of that person because I am no longer that person.
I don’t believe that I went all that far, a few yards, maybe, but at
the time it felt like I was a hundred miles away from where I had been.
The air smelled different. Cleaner somehow. The trunks of the trees
were wider, broader, and possibly a darker shade of brown. And even the
sky seemed different. Above the swaying branches, the crisp blue had
been replaced by dark gray clouds.
It was gonna rain.
I could feel my skin anticipating it.
Also, Oak Hill was always a very flat town. Yet, on this new path, I
found the land sharply rising. This new path began to lead me up the
side of a tall, steep hill. As I continued to move, the muscles in my
legs started to burn with exertion. My breathing turned sharp and
forced. I wasn’t used to the effort.
At the top of the steep hill, the impossible path abruptly ended. My
tired lungs wanted to take in air as fast as they could, but instead, I
clamped my lips shut and held my breath. Every muscle of my body froze
still.
I found myself at the edges of a small circular clearing. The sad, gray
sky above me was now fully exposed and it was obviously about to cry
large, wet tears. At the center of the clearing, grew the most massive
tree I had ever seen. But it wasn’t the overly large tree or the sad
sky that had stolen my breath and my movement. It was the sight of the
boy dangling from one of the tree’s lowest branches, his feet barely a
foot from the ground. His wrists were bound by what appeared to be
thick rope. The same thick rope had then been wrapped tightly around
the center of the wide branch, forcing the boy to hang by his arms.
Both his shoulders bulged in their sockets, as if they were about to
break free from the rest of the boy’s body.
The boy appeared to be around the same age as me, but I didn’t
immediately recognize him from school. He was nearly nude, wearing
nothing more than his tighty-whity underwear, which was far from tight
and far from white. I then noticed that a pile of clothes had been
discarded beneath the boy’s feet and at once figured that they had been
his. His sandy blonde hair was disheveled. I assumed that his face was
normally a similar pale complexion as the rest of him, whenever it
wasn’t covered in splashes of dirt and mud. Even though the boy’s eyes
were wide and filled with fear, I could clearly see their bright blue.
They were nearly as crips a blue as the sky had once been.
Three long gashes had been carved across the boy’s chest. I could see
the ripped skin and the fresh streams of blood that flowed like narrow
rivers toward his waist.
As he noticed me, the boy began to kick his legs around. He tried to
scream, but silver duct tape covered his mouth, keeping his tongue at
bay. He was calling for me to help him, but I didn’t get the chance to
try, because all of a sudden a man was there. I hadn’t noticed anyone
other than the boy, so I can’t say for certain exactly where the man
came from. The treeline? Another possible trail that I couldn’t see? I
don’t know. All I did know was that one minute there was just the boy
hanging from the tree, and then out of nowhere a strange man wearing a
well-soiled black hoodie and filthy blue jeans was walking toward the
boy from my left. He had long, light brown hair that nearly fell down
to his shoulders. The tips of his hair had been dyed bright pink.
I only caught a brief glimpse of the man’s face before he turned away
from me to face the hanging boy, enough to observe that his face was
hidden from the nose down by a black half-mask.
At his side, gripped with dark black gloves, the man was holding a
freshly bloodied hatchet. The hatchet was small, simple, with a long
black handle. It looked more like a throwing hatchet, one hurled at
wooden targets for points, instead of a tool used for any type of
actual work.
Somehow, the strange man hadn’t noticed me. By some miracle, I had not
been seen. I should have taken advantage of that moment to run away, to
get the hell out of there. But I didn’t. I stayed. And I watched.
For a few seconds, the strange man merely stood in front of the hanging
boy, his head cocked sideways, like a curious dog. He then began to run
the fingers of his free hand across the boy’s wounded chest. Back and
forth. Up and down. As if the blood was paint and he was creating a
masterpiece. A muffled, frightened scream erupted from the young boy,
as his short legs and bare feet began to kick wildly at the man. A few
of the kicks hit the man, but he seemed unfazed by them.
After completing his painting, the strange man took a step back from
the boy. Without warning, the hatchet was swung and violently sunk deep
into the boy’s belly button. Shrieking filled the field and I did my
best not to scream myself at the sudden ferocity. The man then pulled
the hatchet free before swiftly plunging it again into the boy’s
stomach.
Hastily, the man dropped the hatchet to his feet, before pushing one of
his hands through the newly formed opening in the boy’s torso. The man
began to tear out part of the boy’s insides, throwing them to the
ground next to the boy’s discarded clothes. The boy’s howling rose for
a second, before falling lower and lower. His kicking became slower and
weaker. I watched as the boy’s blue eyes rolled back into his skull and
spasms viciously shook him from head to toe.
It didn’t take long before the boy was dead and hollowed out like a pumpkin at Halloween.
Before I knew what was happening, the strange man had turned around and
rushed at me. He knew the whole time that I was there, that I was
watching his brutality. I could smell the stench of the boy on him, the
odor of blood and insides came off him in disgusting waves of filth. I
still did not run, though. At the time, I didn’t understand what it was
that kept me in that field, even as the strange man and I stood face to
face.
It wasn’t fear.
It was something else.
As I was given an up-close view of the man’s face, two things
immediately stood out. The man was not that old. I could tell by his
skin, its firmness and lack of wrinkles. But most importantly, I could
see his eyes. They weren’t a crisp blue like the dead boy, but a forest
green. With speckles of gold. There was just something about them that
was familiar. Something...that I recognized.
I also got a good look at that half-mask that was covering the man’s
mouth and chin. It was made of a rough black cloth that was wrapped
around the man’s head, front to back, like a bandana. The back of the
half-mask was hidden from view, tugged away beneath the man’s long
hair. Across the front of the cloth was a picture of fake lips, which
sat over top of the strange man’s real lips. The fake mouth was closed,
permanently sewn shut by a thick white thread. I watched the black
cloth begin to shift as the man’s real mouth began to move.
“Did you like it?” he growled. “Do you like what you see?”
I didn’t answer.
“Do you like what you see?” he repeated, his voice growing more aggressive.
That was when I ran. I fled from both the child killer and his strange
question. As I descended the steep hill, I could hear the man several
feet behind me, chasing me, his heavy feet stomping against the path.
He would catch me.
He would string me up, too.
I just knew it.
But he never did. He remained within arms reach the entire stretch of
the new path, his rapid breathing nearly on my neck, but he never got
me. Why? If I had been wearing my backpack when I left school, he could
have easily grabbed it. He had been that close. I pushed the question
away as I abruptly swung my body left and onto the original Hatchetman
Trail. I never slowed or faltered until I broke the treeline and a
familiar brown apartment building came into view.
Birds were singing. The sun was shining. And the sky was at once again a brilliant blue.
I continued home in a slow daze, unsure if what happened had been real.
It had to have been real. Right? Or had it been all in my head? Had I
been imagining it? Or had I broken from reality? When it was happening,
it all felt completely real. But as I stepped up to the front door of
my apartment, it also seemed like a fading dream.
Still moving slowly, I pushed open the front door of my home and went
cautiously inside. A pungent stench was there to greet me. It was
different from what had been wafting off the child killer, but I at
once knew it to be the aroma of death mixed with the recognizable odor
of cigarette smoke. Following the stench, I found my mother in the
living room, lying on the couch. I had hoped that she would be sleeping
when I got home, but I didn’t expect her to be sleeping that deeply.
Drying mucus and a weird white foam was beginning to form a layer of
crust on her gaping mouth. Splotches of fresh vomit covered her chest
and shirt. Her eyes were open. Empty. I clearly smelled piss and shit.
I followed the smoke in the air to the cigarette that was still burning
on the coffee table. It was nearly gone but a faint red ember remained.
At the sight of the cigarette, the spots on my arm, healed or
otherwise, began to itch. I was scratching them when I spotted the
empty bottle of liquor sitting next to the ashtray. She normally didn’t
finish the whole bottle of booze until the end of the day. But it
hadn’t been the liquor that killed her. I was sure. And it definitely
hadn’t been the tobacco. Whatever she had injected herself with had
done the job. I could see the needle that still hung from her arm, like
a young boy hanging from a tree.
I can’t say how long I stood there staring at her lifeless body.
Burning cigarette. Fresh vomit. My mother hadn’t been dead long. She
might even have been dying at the same moment the young boy was being
gutted. If I hadn’t taken Hatchetman Trail and gotten home sooner, I
might have been able to help her. She might have lived.
A smirk formed.
Good.
I wouldn’t have pissed on her if she had been on fire.
Taking my time, I found my mother’s cell phone and called the police.
The next day or so was a blur. I never said anything to the cops about
the boy and his killer. It didn’t matter, right then. I still wasn’t
sure if it had been real. If it had been real, I was sure the police
would find out at some point. They didn’t need me to do their jobs.
Why am I telling you all of this? Why am I taking you with me on this
trip down memory lane? I am not trying to justify what I have done. No.
And I don’t expect you to understand. Not really. I just want you to
see it for what it really is.
After my mom died, Social Services tried like hell to find my father.
His name wasn’t on my birth certificate. And all of my mother’s family
was either dead or unable to be located. Except for her one brother,
someone that I never knew existed. My mother had always said that she
was an only child. Liar. My uncle hadn’t known the name of my father
either.
My uncle lived deep in the mountains of West Virginia, six or more
hours from Ohio. He was a nice enough man and was able to give me a
place to stay. He was much older than my mother and far less angry or
aggressive. I was often defiant and we normally butted heads, but I
never had any new burn marks after that, only fading white ovals.
Something from that day in the woods stayed with me, however. I slowly
became more and more obsessed. I had always been a loner, but I somehow
became even more withdrawn, totally isolated from absolutely
everything.
I couldn’t shake the hanging boy from my thoughts. The man’s strange
question echoed over and over inside my mind, becoming louder and
louder.
Do you like what you see?
I searched online almost daily for any news about a boy being hung up
and gutted in Ohio. I found nothing, though. Nothing at all.
And then one day, as I was looking at myself in the mirror, my reality
shifted, and everything made perfect and clear sense. The man’s
familiar eyes. Forest green. Speckles of gold. His eyes were suddenly
staring back at me in the mirror. They were my eyes.
For the three years following my mother’s death, I had physically
changed, like most teenagers do. I not only had an exceptional growth
spurt, shooting up over six inches, but I had let my hair grow out, as
well. It was light brown and long, nearly falling to my shoulders.
Without consciously realizing it, I had transformed into the same man
that had been haunting my thoughts.
I was him.
And he was me, all along.
Do you like what you see?
Yes.
Yes, I did.
My uncles hated the pink tips in my hair, but he got over it. I found the hatchet and the half-mask at a local Wal-mart.
You see, detective, it had been fate. When you find this note, I will
have killed my third young boy. But I am not done yet. I cannot quit
until I have the exact blonde boy hanging from the exact tree in the
middle of the exact field on top of the exact hill. It will happen one
day. I know because I have already seen it. And when everything is
perfect and the fates are aligned, a 14-year-old will appear as a
witness and the circle will continue to go around and around.
What is going to happen has already happened. And what already happened
is going to happen. It is a cycle that neither one of us can break.
And don’t think that you can use this note to figure out who I am. All
of what I have told you is true. All except for one detail. I never
grew up in the town of Oak Hill. I don’t even know if a place by that
name even exists in Ohio.
I know that you will keep trying to catch me, detective, and you may at some point. But not until I have completed my destiny.
Sincerely yours,
Hatchetman
THE END
© 2020 Jackson Arthur
Bio: Hello. My name is Jackson Arthur. I have been previously
published in the online magazine Bewildering Stories and have been
accepted for future publication by Blue Lake Review. I have had several
short stories used for narration on Youtube.com.
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