Chief and Mike set out for the spot marked on the map. It was twenty miles into the woods. On foot it would take hours, but Chief and Mike took the squad car. They turned in the opposite direction as Mort and made their way towards the hills. They rode as far as possible in the car and parked it next to the woods. Then they entered the heavy brush, on foot, heading north.

The progress was slow at first because there was no path. The men had to pick their way over fallen trees, scrub brush and brambles for over an hour before they had made their way to a clearer section of woods where the going was much easier. Both Chief and Mike broke into a run once the trees opened up enough to afford passage. They dodged cypress and oak, ducking in and out along the leaf-lined forest floor. The ground sloped slightly upwards and eventually gave way to a small rise. Once over the rise, they came across the deer trail that would eventually bring them to the spot marked on Fred’s map. Quickening their pace: half-jogging and half running, they pushed through the brush until they came across the intersecting path that marked the spot they were hunting. But there was no sign of Hank or his brother. Mike and Chief fanned out to cover the ground more carefully.

After several minutes of searching the brush, Mike called, “Chief! Over here!” He dodged into some thick brush that lined the clearing. The sound of rushing water seeped into the stillness of the woods from a small creek that backed itself up against the area.

Chief crossed to the spot where Mike disappeared and followed his deputy’s trail. Beyond the trees and thorny blackberry bushes was a second open area.

“What is it?” Chief asked as he made his way closer to Mike.

“Signs of a struggle, boss. Look,” Mike pointed to the bushes that had been crushed. “There’s blood.”

Chief examined the brush. Blood spattered several of the branches. Chief pulled them aside and moved through the bushes. There were more signs of disturbance: broken branches, scuff marks in the black earth below a layer of disturbed oak leaves… and a small trail of blood.

The blood started as droplets- scarlet specks dotting the emerald leaves of the lower branches and bushes, the volume increasing, as did the level of disruption along the outlying area. Chief and Mike picked up the pace towards a small creek. One more line of trees and they were on the bank. Hank was face down in the water ten yards away.

They arrived at the body simultaneously and knelt on either side. Chief carefully placed his hand under Hank’s jaw and lifted him from the water. With Mike’s help, he pulled Hank onto the bank where they carefully turned him over to examine his wounds.

Hank was covered in his own blood and river water. His chest was caved in and many of the ribs were broken. His face was bruised and swollen and covered in blood from several deep gashes, bone showed through in many places, and his right leg was severely crushed.

*  *  *  *  *

There was a look to Chief as he came out of Hank’s house. He looked at me and Joe and I could have sworn I saw his mouth say “damn.” Mr. Mort and Mike looked all white and ghostly too.

“I wonder what’s going on,” whispered Joe.

I looked at him and shrugged, even though I already knew. The tiger got Hank. Huey had been in my dream last night too. He was in the stands when Billy disappeared. He was laughing when the tiger lit Hank up and when the tiger grinned at me and started moving in for the kill. It was then that I woke up. But even after I was awake a while, I could still hear Huey laugh ... and still see his eyes glowing in the darkness. He had the tiger’s eyes, same as the day we picked him up in Springdale.

Mr. Mort stopped Chief by the arm. They took to talking, Chief all the while looking over at us. When they had finished, Chief patted Mr. Mort’s shoulder and went over to the police car, taking Mike with him. They stood watch as Mr. Mort came up to the truck.

I reached over and unlocked the door. He got in and started the truck. While looking over his shoulder, he backed the truck up the drive and out the gate without so much as a word to us. I watched Chief shrink in the windshield until Mr. Mort turned out of the drive and Chief disappeared altogether.

“What’s going on, Sergeant?” Joe asked as we were again driving down the service road, back to town.

He looked over at Joe real quick, then back to the window. “Hank and Huey are missing,” he answered.

I looked up from the front windshield and looked at Mr. Mort. “The tiger got him,” I let him know.

I watched his eyebrows come together in a frown. He was still staring out the window when he asked me, “Hank? Or Huey?”

“Hank of course,” I answered. Then I turned to my hands. “Huey set him up.”

At that he swiveled on the seat and looked at me. I felt his stare and looked up. It was hard to deal with and caught me off-guard and I had to turn away. I looked over at Joe, but he too was staring.

“What makes you say that?” Mr. Mort said. He had to take his eyes off of me and was again staring out the front window at the road in front of us.

“I saw.”

“What did you see?”

“I saw the tiger hurt Hank.”

He turned at me again. “When?”

“She means she dreamt it,” Joe put in.

“I thought those had stopped,” Mr. Mort said. “At least that’s what your father said.”

“I told him that so he wouldn’t worry, Mr. Mort. I didn’t know it would really happen. It’s all my fault... If I’d have told Chief earlier he could have warned Hank.” I felt like I was about to cry and my stomach started to churn. “Everybody kept telling me they were just a bunch of dreams. I guess that I wanted to believe it so bad that I ... I did.”

“It’s all right, kiddo. Tell you what, why don’t you tell me about the dream you had about Hank. Maybe between the two of us we can make some sense of it.”

I looked at him sharp. He was looking out the window again. “You think it will help?”

He turned back to see me for a second then looked down the road. “So far ... so far me and your father have been moving in circles. We have part of the puzzle and darlin’ you have the other.”

“The dreams?”

“Exactly.”

“It started during a baseball practice. I was still sportin’ a cast but Coach had me playing outfield anyway. Billy was in the stands–”

“What time of day?”

“Afternoon, like always.”

“Color or black and white?”

“Color...I always dream in color.”

“What color were the stands?”

“Green. Like they are in real life.”

“All right...go on.”

“Then the bird flew over me and I saw Billy’s face go dark.”

“What kind of bird?”

“A big black one... like what Chief calls a grackle, only bigger and blacker- with red and blue in its wings.”

“I see,” Mr. Mort said. His eyes sharpened on the road. He looked to be biting his lip.  “What do you mean by ‘goes dark?’”

“Like a shadow...crossing his face, even though there’s plenty of sun out.”

He turned the car off the service road and onto Willow. “What happened next?”

“I thought the bird was after Billy so I quit the game and went to the stands.” I felt Joe looking at me and it made my ears feel hot. I didn’t look back as I told Mr. Mort about the dream. “He was drawing on bits of paper when I got there. I asked him what he was doing but he never answered. But papers fell from his hands and on all of them was a picture of Hank. I picked one up and looked at it. That’s when the picture started coming to life–”

“Were all the pictures the same. Or were the poses different?”

“All the same.  It was the same picture I saw in Billy’s loft two weeks ago... and it was the same picture I saw in the first dream–”

“You had this dream before?”

“Not exactly the same, but close. I mean it was mostly the same, only in the first dream Hank turned  into the tiger. In this last dream, Hank just came alive on the paper. When I looked up to see Billy the first time, he was just gone; this time Billy was gone, but Huey was there instead. He was laughing at me and Hank who was still stuck half on the paper. The bird was in the tree screaming. It had the Major–”

“Major?”

“Major Pinkerton, Sam’s old cat. It was the cat that ate the bird that came down for Sam on his porch.”

“Was this part of your dream?”

“No sir. It really happened. Before the dreams started up for real. The bird–”

“The same bird as from your dream?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What did it do?”

“It landed on Sam’s porch. Sam’s face got dark, then the Major jumped the bird and ate it under the porch. That afternoon the house fell on Sam and killed him. I know the bird did it.”

“I see,” Mr. Mort whispered, rubbing his chin with his free hand. “So what happened next in your dream?”

“You’re not going to tell me it was just a bird ... and that birds don’t kill people?”

At that Mr. Mort turned his attention on me. He gave me a smile and shook his head slow from side to side. “About the dream?”

“The bird was up in a big tree, it ain’t the tree that is really there. And it has–”

“Hold on a minute. Describe the tree.”

“It’s really big. And it had branches out all over the place. They grow to the ground and make roots.”

“The bird was up in the tree with the…cat, Major?”

“Yeah. And it was dropping on me but it wasn’t bird droppings. It was blood. Then all a sudden it was a lot of blood, more than could come from a cat... even a cat the size of the Major.”

“How much blood?”

“It was like someone dumped a bucketful over my head. And it got all over my hands. Then the tiger came. It was grinnin’. It matched Huey’s grin on the stands. Huey had the tiger’s eyes by then and he kept laughin’. Next I know the tiger was gettin’ closer, blood in his eyes, and in his teeth was the meat–”

“Meat?”

“Of the guards it took when it got out I s’pect. Or somebody else. An eye hung from one of its teeth and–”

“An eye...” Mr. Mort said real low. “What color?”

“Blue I think. Like mine.” 

Mr. Mort took a slow draw of air. 

“The tiger grabbed the picture then,” I went on. “And he lit a match and put it to the picture. Then he tossed the picture at me, to burn me up, I guess. But when I caught hold of it, the blood on my hands put it out. But it had already burned up Hank’s legs. That was when the tree started bleeding.”

“You mean the bird dropped more blood?”

“No sir. The tree started bleeding. There was a hole about three feet or so higher than me. It bled from there–”

Mr. Mort slammed on the brakes. Both me and Joe shot forward but we weren’t going so fast as to smash into the dash. 

“Jesus H. Christ,” Mr. Mort said to himself. He turned to me. “Say that again.”

I swallowed. “The tree was bleeding from a hole above my head,” I whispered, not wanting to upset him further.

At that Mr. Mort leaned back against his seat and heaved a breath of air. He blew it out slow, staring at the road in front of us. We were now parked in the middle of the road and a car came up behind us. The driver laid into the horn loudly before pulling around us. He yelled out the window at us and showed us his middle finger, before cruising off. But it didn’t bother Mr. Mort at all. He just stared out the window clenching his teeth.

“Sergeant?” Joe started. 

Mr. Mort turned. He noticed us and put the truck back into gear.

“What’s going on?” Joe asked.

“Things have a way of coming full circle, son,” was all he said and drove the truck down 2nd Street and up in front of Doc Granger’s office. “Wait here,” he told us before ducking into Doc’s office.

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