Chapter 2 : The Discovery and the Hunt
The smell hit Sheriff Nate Craven before he even got out of his patrol car. Death had a particular odor that every law enforcement officer learned to recognize—sweet, cloying and foul that seemed to seep into your clothes and follow you home. But this was different. Sharper. More like the smell of a butcher shop mixed with something seriously wrong.
Doc Morslow stood at the edge of the tree line, his usually steady hands trembling as he lit his third cigarette in ten minutes. The county coroner was a thin, old man who had seen his share of death in forty years of practice, but his face was pale beneath his graying beard.
"Jesus, Doc, what's got you so rattled?" Nate asked, approaching cautiously.
"I found him about an hour ago," Morrison said, not meeting Nate's eyes. "Or what's left of him. Some dog walker spotted the flies and called it in." He took a long drag from his cigarette. "Nate, in all my years, I ain't never seen anything like this."
They walked together into the woods, following a rough trail that had been beaten down by the feet of doctor and his assistant. The buzzing of flies grew louder with each step. Fifty yards in, the doctor stopped and pointed to a large oak tree.
"Up there," he said simply.
Nate looked up and felt his stomach lurch. Suspended from the oak's lower branches was what had once been a human being, though it took him several seconds to process what he was seeing.
The body had been dismembered and hung like cuts of meat in a slaughterhouse. Arms, legs, and torso were separated and suspended at different heights, each piece wrapped in what looked like heavy-duty plastic sheeting.
"Christ almighty," Nate breathed, pulling out his handkerchief to cover his nose.
"It gets worse," Morrison said grimly. "Look closer."
Nate forced himself to examine the gruesome display more carefully. The cuts were clean and precise. Each piece of flesh had been separated at the joints cleanly, as if whoever had done this possessed an excellant knowledge of human anatomy.
"This is some professional work," Nate observed, his detective instincts overriding his revulsion. "Whoever did this knew exactly what they were doing."
"That's not the worst part," Morslow said. "Watch this." He approached the hanging remains and pulled back a section of plastic sheeting.
The flesh beneath was pale as fish meat, completely drained of blood. Despite the warm autumn weather and the obvious passage of time, there was no sign of bleeding and no pools of congealed blood on the ground below. It was as if every drop of blood had been extracted from the corpse.
"How is that possible?" Nate asked.
"Damned if I know. I have been doing this for four decades, and I ain't never seen a body drained this clean. It's like he was... processed."
Nate walked around the tree, studying the scene from different angles. The dismemberment was disturbing enough, but the complete absence of blood was genuinely another level. This wasn't the work of an ordinary killer.
"Any idea who it is?"
Doctor nodded grimly. "We found his wallet in his jacket pocket. Abel Dougherty, amill worker from over in Rakehell. He's been missing about two weeks according to their sheriff."
"Dougherty," Nate repeated, making a mental note. "So we're looking at someone who's hunting across county lines. This isn't just a Bailey problem anymore."
He called for his camera and spent the next hour documenting the scene from every conceivable angle. Each photograph captured another horrifying detail—the clean cuts, the bloodless flesh, the arrangement of the body parts. This wasn't a crime of passion or a robbery gone wrong. This was something else entirely.
"I need hunters," Nate said finally, lowering his camera. "Men who know these woods, who can track and shoot."
"You think whoever did this is still out there?"
"I think whoever did this will be back." Nate looked up at the hanging remains. "This is a cache, Doc. Like you might put a pot roast in the icebox for making sandwiches later."
* * * * * * *
By evening, Nate had assembled a team of local hunters and set up surveillance positions around the grisly site. Jim Dodge and Tom Owens were both experienced outdoorsmen who knew these mountains better than anyone. If something came back for the remains, they would see it.
"Remember," Nate instructed them as the sun set behind the trees, "observe and report only. Do not engage. Whatever did this is dangerous, and I don't want any heroes getting themselves killed."
Dodge, a grizzled man in his sixties who had been hunting these woods since childhood, spat tobacco juice into the leaves. "Sheriff, I been tracking everything from deer to bear in these hills. Whatever's out there, it bleeds same as anything else."
"Maybe," Nate said, though privately he wasn't so sure. "But I want you both to promise me—anything happens, anything at all, you radio for backup and get the hell out of there."
Owens nodded from his position on the ridge overlooking the tree. He was younger than Dodge, more cautious by nature, but equally skilled in the woods. "How long you want us to maintain surveillance?"
"Till dawn. If nothing shows by then, we'll rotate in fresh men."
Nate left them with radios and extra batteries, promising to check in every two hours. As he drove back to town, he couldn't shake the feeling that he was missing something crucial. Multiple missing persons, now one mutilated corpse. The pattern suggested a serial killer, but the methodology was unlike anything in his experience.
The radio crackled to life just after midnight.
"Sheriff, this is Dodge. We got movement down here."
Nate grabbed the microphone. "What kind of movement?"
"Something big, moving through the underbrush. Can't get a clear visual, but it's definitely heading straight for the tree."
"Do not engage," Nate repeated. "Observe and report."
For ten minutes, the radio was silent except for occasional position updates. Then Owens' voice came through, tense with excitement: "Sheriff, you need to see this. Whatever it is, it's... it's taking down the packages."
"The body parts?"
"Yeah. He's using some kind of tool to cut through the rope."
Nate was already in his patrol car, racing through the dark country roads toward the surveillance site. His headlights cut through the darkness as he pushed the speedometer past safe limits, his mind racing with possibilities. None of them were good.
"Dodge, talk to me. What's your visual?"
Static answered him.
"Owens, come in."
More static.
Nate's hands tightened on the steering wheel as a cold dread settled in his stomach. He tried the radio again as he turned onto the dirt road leading to the woods.
"Dodge, Owens, anybody copy?"
Nothing but electronic hiss.
* * * * * * *
The surveillance site was empty when Nate arrived. His flashlight beam sweeped across the abandoned positions where his men should have been waiting. Their equipment was still there—radios, binoculars, even Dodge's thermos of coffee, still warm. But the men themselves had vanished as completely as if they had never existed.
Worse, the tree was empty. Every piece of Abel Dougherty's remains had been removed, leaving only cut ropes swaying in the night breeze.
Nate searched the area for three hours, calling out names that went unanswered through the forest. He found no trace of his missing men, no signs of struggle, no blood. Like the others, they had simply ceased to exist.
As dawn broke over the mountains, painting the sky in shades of pink and gold, Nate sat in his patrol car and stared at the empty tree. Whatever was hunting in these woods had just escalated its campaign, and he was no closer to understanding what he was dealing with.
The radio crackled, making him jump.
"Sheriff Craven?" The voice belonged to Deputy Davis.
"Go ahead, Davis."
"Got a call from Sheriff Martin over in Rakehell. He says he's got information about one of your missing persons. A fellow named Eddie Sykes, but he's been going by Joe Allen."
Nate's fatigue vanished instantly. A living witness, someone who might have answers. "Where?"
"Trucker's Tavern, about twenty minutes out. Martin says the guy's been acting strange, but he's definitely alive."
For the first time in weeks, Nate felt a spark of hope. Maybe this Joe Allen could shed some light on the disappearances. Maybe he had seen and survived something that the others hadn't.
As Nate drove toward Trucker's Tavern, the morning sun climbed higher in the sky lighting up a world that seemed normal on the surface but harbored horrors beyond human comprehension below. The hunt was about to become much more personal.