They’re Always Watching

By Eli A. Susman

He knows he shouldn’t have done that. It went against his code, literally. The Phoenix Police department code. But unfortunately even after 15 years, that wasn’t enough to stop Henry Hunt from being here–with his headlights shining on the desert highway at 115 miles per hour trying to forget what lay behind him in his backseat. Each glance back makes the code echo in his head and his spine tingle. He recoils when he sees it, he even gags a little.

I suppose that’s what happens when you stare into the empty eyes of the boy you killed in your police car.

He can’t be more than 16, the boy. And he isn’t the first.

No, Henry Hunt had put two other young boys out of their misery too. One back in January when the air was cold and his wife filed the divorce papers declaring she would win custody of their son. That led to Cameron Felix’s death. The backup cornerback on the high school football team who for no reason other than bad timing was shot dead by Henry Hunt. Henry had just stormed from his house after a fight with his wife, and began knocking all the trash cans over on the street. He cursed and kicked the tires of cars. Cameron, on his way home from football practice tried to intervene before any more property was broken. One gun drawn, one bullet fired, and one pointless investigation chalked up to self-defense, and just like that, Henry walked free.

The next one happened in April when the growing heat was too much to bear and his son was starting to look more and more like a faggot as he spent more time with his mother and less time with Henry. This time it was Michael Rigby, captain of the cheer team who received the retaliatory gunfire. After Henry discovered his son having sex with Michael in their back shed, Officer Hunt put three bullets in his chest and made his son swear to never tell the real truth. “I saved you,” he would say. “That disgusting boy was going to hurt you, and I saved you from that.” With no solid evidence of what really happened, the police review board took his word for it and decided his son would have died if Officer Hunt hadn’t stepped in, and just like that, Henry walked free.

And now with the July heat persisting through the night, and Henry’s son hanging from a rope in his bedroom doorway, it happened again. This time was different, this time it was on purpose. Henry wanted revenge. He didn’t know the boy, didn’t even recognize him. But the look on his face, or rather the lack of emotion in his face, makes a lasting imprint on Henry–he won’t be forgetting this boy's face anytime soon. He’d bury him in the desert sand, but the image of his face would only burrow deeper into Henry’s brain.

Panic starts to seep into his fingers making it hard to keep hold of the steering wheel. Henry almost stops to let his nerves calm but before he can everything turns to a bright white, the kind of white that people see right before they die and ascend to heaven.

No more than a second or two passes before he is back to the normal color palette of life. Officer Hunt blinks hard, trying to make sense of what he’s just seen.

“Maybe I passed out for a second? Yeah, that’s it. I’m just overwhelmed. I need to dispose of this kid. Do that, and I’ll be fine.” He thinks.

He pushes down on the gas pedal even more than he already had been and the car starts picking up speed.

Suddenly, everything surrounding Officer Hunt begins to shake. His car rumbles more than he has ever experienced, and the ground outside of the car looks as if it is passing by him at the speed of a plane–maybe faster. Suddenly, the shrieking of the car explodes to an unbearable level, and the bright light that he’d seen as just a flash minutes ago appears again. This time it is more than a flash. The light seems to come from no specific place, but rather, it surrounds him. He takes his foot off the gas and switches it to the break. He presses down on it, but nothing happens. The car continues to speed up, and the windows shake as if they are about to shatter. His steering wheel vibrates so that he can barely keep hold of it.

Officer Hunt lets go of the wheel and goes for the door handle, screaming in his head. But the door won’t open. He feels the car speeding up, and the sound of the engine makes him feel like his head will explode.

Then, just as fast as it began, it ends. The bright light, the rumbling floor, the shrieking car, and the fast passing ground all come to a sudden stop.

Officer Hunt sits in his car, panting hard, eyes wide. He whips his head from side to side trying to understand where he is. It’s dark, but not the same consuming darkness that was there before. It’s as if the ground itself, the pavement of the rural highway, is emanating light from itself. Everything is just slightly illuminated.

Everything looks the same...sort of. There are no major differences, but everything feels a little...off. He reaches for the door handle again, and this time, he can push the door open and step out onto the pavement.

As he does, the cracked pavement seems to hiss like there are a million snakes living beneath it that are mad at him for disturbing them. Officer Hunt flinches when he hears the noise.

“Calm down, calm down. You just fell asleep at the wheel, it’s nothing. It’s all getting to your head, forget it. Get back into the car, and go bury this kid. You’re just having a panic attack. Get back into the car, and go get rid of this kid….this kid.”

He looks into the back of the car and sees nothing but an empty seat. Before he can think through the missing dead body in the back of his car, he hears shuffling feet behind him and spins around, a tingle running up and down through his spine.

Three young boys stand behind him. He jumps back with a childish yeep and bumps up against his car.

“Good evening boys.” His voice is shaky and he tries to hide his fear by not looking directly at the boys in front of him. “What are you doing out so late?”

He looks down at his watch, only to see the watch’s hands have stopped moving.

“What the fuck?” He whispers quietly as he smacks the watch face with the palm of his hand.

“Hello, Mr. Hunt.” The three boys speak in unison. His head jumps up to look at them directly for the first time.

“No, no. That’s impossible. It can’t be. They're dead. I killed them.”

One boy has dark black eyes that sparkle like a galaxy is within them. One has glowing white eyes that contrast his dark skin. And the third one has eyes redder than the freshly spilled blood in the back seat.

“Hello, Mr. Hunt. Are you ready?”

“What? No. Ready for what?” He has nowhere to back up, so he moves around the boys and onto the dirt next to the road. “You boys need to go home. Your parents are probably worried sick.”

“Mr. Hunt...Are you ready?”

“Ready for what?” He stumbles backward trying to get away from the boys without taking his eyes off them as they step perfectly in unison towards him.

“Ready for what?” He yells and trips over a rock. He falls backward and lands in the dirt and dust of the desert. He looks up into the eyes of the boys. They are standing over him.

“Come with us, Mr. Hunt. You are ready.”

With blank faces and vacant glares, the three boys ignore Hunt’s yells and bend down to grab him.

No one ever heard from Officer Henry Hunt of the Phoenix Police Department again

***

When Derrick Fallow’s dad said goodbye to Derrick on a hot Thursday night, he never thought that it would be the last time he saw him. Derrick lifted his gray hoodie off the coat rack by the door, and grabbed his bike to head first to the gas station, and second to the park to play some basketball by himself. Once he was out of sight from his house and he knew his dad wouldn’t argue with him about wearing his headphones while biking, he took them from his backpack and put them over his ears. Then he pulled his hoodie over his head to keep the wind moving past him from muffling the sound of the music.

He arrived at the gas station and leaned his bike against the side wall. He bought a bottle of Sprite and Barbeque Lays and shoved them into his jacket pockets. He climbed back on board his bike and pedaled down the short road and onto the side of the highway. The only sound was that of his bike chain clicking and spinning and of his breath panting heavily. But Derrick didn’t hear either of these things with the loud music and his headphones. That’s why when a cop car came roaring up behind him he didn’t notice until it was too late.

By the time he noticed the light and sound behind him, the hood of the car banged his back wheel. The bike swerved to the right and Derrick pulled it up and to the left, trying to overcorrect. His hand naturally grabbed onto the brake. The back wheel skipped on the ground before it rose up, lifting Derrick’s body up into the air with it. He flew left towards the median on the road, spinning in the air. His chest slammed onto the asphalt and he slid a few feet.

Then everything was silent. Everything but the low hum of the car engine. Derrick felt a burning sensation on the front of his entire torso. He forced himself to roll over onto his back. The front of his shirt was missing, replaced by a pink and red mess of burned and cut skin. He didn’t cry, and the shock kept him from panicking outwardly. But within, his heart pounded and his brain rushed with thoughts of what happened.

A cop got out of the car and walked over to Derrick. He stood over him and looked into his eyes without saying a word. His eyes were red like he had been manically crying. Derrick lifted his head to look at the cop and at the dark and empty desert surrounding them. In one fluid motion and without even a moment of hesitation the cop pulled the pistol from the holster on his hip, pointed it at Derrick’s chest, and fired the metal bullet, sending it ripping through Derrick’s heart.

***

We take what is left behind. We take the old and make it new again. The used, we renew. The broken, we fix. The discarded and lost–we give them power. We are always watching, waiting, for we know everyday new souls present themselves. And when they do, we are ready. As we are now, on the side of this Texas highway.

This boy on the road, we watch as the burly man lifts his limp body and dumps it into the car. He drives off with the body of the boy, but we see more here. We see beyond that which a man’s eye can see. Moving slowly we take the boy's soul into our caressing hands. Streaks of black, white, and red reach from above and below and envelope the ethereal blue of this boy’s soul and turn it crimson red. It fills, and we lift. We lift and we fall. Up, down, up, down. Until finally his soul releases an energy we’ve seen so many times before but is unimaginable to the human mind. Bright colors erupt, then a darkness so dark. Quickly it turns into a color that is almost too bright to look at. Then a fracturing red that fills us with fire for just a moment. And finally a smooth white that wraps us up like a hug, both hot and cold at the very same time. Perfectly balanced. We breathe in, lift the soul, breathe out, and he becomes one with us. One with the spirits. His time has come.

***

“He should be back by now,” I say to her. I lift my hand from our kitchen counter and pace back and forth between the table and the coat rack. “He should be back by now.”

“How many times are you going to say that? How many times?”

I don’t respond. Instead I stop walking and take my brown leather coat from the rack. I swing it around my shoulders and feel a strange sensation run down my back from my shoulders. I don’t know if it’s comforting or foreboding.

“I should go look for him.”

“He’ll be back tomorrow. It’s not the first time he’s done this.”

“It says he has been at the same spot on the side of the road for an hour and a half, Debora!” I lift my phone showing Derrick’s phone tracker location. “It’s the middle of the fuckin’ night!”

“Then go,” she throws a dismissive wave my way. “Like I care. You both can leave me here, I’ll be just fine thank you very much.” She gives a curt nod and looks down at the phone in her hand.

“God dammit.” I say before shoving my keys in my left pocket and leaving my house to find my son Derrick

***

“He should be back by now, right?”

“I’m sure he’s fine. Just took a pit stop at Jimmy’s on the way home.”

“I’m just worried about him,” I say as I sit back down at my desk. I check the clock and see that it’s 20 past midnight. “With everything that’s been going on with him, you know?”

The other cop left at the precinct finishes chewing his muffin then says, “You mean the nasty divorce and his son hanging himself and all?”

“Yeah, he’s just been through a lot is all.”

“I suppose.” He says.

I check the clock again. It’s so strange that he isn’t back yet. It’s not like him.

“I think I'll head out and see if he’s where he should be. Do a couple rounds.”

“Mh-hm.” He says, shoveling more of the muffin in his mouth.

I leave the precinct and get into my car to try and find Officer Henry Hunt.

***

I take the route I know Derrick always takes. Well, the route I always take to get to the courts. The route I taught him to take. If something happened to him, it would be my fault.

I stop myself from thinking that way as I walk into the gas station I know he must have stopped at. The cashier tells me he came in here hours ago, and that he left with just a bottle of Sprite and a bag of Barbeque Lays. I thank him, and continue down the road. From here, there are only a few more turns he would have made, the rest is mostly straight never-ending stretches of desert highway. I never should have stayed here. I should have left this hell-hole of a town years ago. I should have left even before I met Deborah, before we had Derrick. Crap. Forget it.

The radio is playing quietly, but I can still hear the scratchy voice of whoever is the current pop music teenager. I reach to turn it up, but my hand freezes when I see a bike lying at the side of the road. I pull over and jump out of my car faster than I ever have. Kneeling down and shining my phone’s flashlight on the bike I identify it as Derrick’s. His bike is here, but it’s dented in the back. Was he hit by a car? Where is he? I shove the bike into the back of my car, and then continue down the road in search of Derrick.

***

I drive through the center of town, expecting to see Henry’s car drive by me, his face covered in a half-drunken grin. We’d wave, and meet up back at the precinct, everything would be fine. But some small part of me thinks I’m being naive–that I have to take this more seriously. I get onto the flat highway and head in the direction that Henry always takes for his last round around the town. If he isn’t somewhere along this road, then something has gone seriously wrong.

After ten minutes on the highway I see his car stopped in the middle of the road up ahead. I pull up next to the car and can see the skid marks left on the road behind it. The backseat is covered in blood, but the rest of the car looks typical, and Henry is nowhere to be found. Is that his blood? I get out of my car to take a closer look. The blood is starting to dry, it must have been there for hours. I look to the side of the road and can see that the dirt is strewn about, like someone had been crawling or walking around in it. Henry wasn’t the only person here. There were others. I sit down on the hood of the car, and pull out my phone–I’m gonna need backup for this.

***

My heart sinks when I see two police cars stopped on the road ahead of me. Please let this have nothing to do with Derrick. Oh please, let it be anything else. I pull over just behind the two cars and get out of my own.

“What’s going on here? Is my son here?” I ask, seeing only one cop standing there. A skinny man who looks too young to be in uniform. “I’m looking for my son. He is missing.”

“Sir I’m gonna need you to stay back, this is an active police investigation.”

“My son, Derrick, have you seen him?”

“Sir, move along.”

But I don’t move along. I move forward a couple of paces until I’m standing right beside one of the cop cars. His name tag says Johnson.

“Officer Johnson, my son is missing and I think…” I look to my right and see the backseat of the car covered in blood. A bottle of Sprite and a bag of Barbeque Lays on the floor. I don’t know if the man in uniform before me can see it, the fire, the flame broiling in my heart. It’s ready to burst.

***

We’re watching. We’re always watching. This is when his demeanor changes.

“Where is my son? I know you did something!”

“We’re missing an officer too, it’s not just…”

“Are you not listening? My son was in this car!”

“What do you mean he was in the car?”

“The blood and the food, it’s his!”

“His? Your son’s? How do you know?”

“I just know dammit!”

They are both silent. The man opens his mouth to speak, but no sound comes out. Instead, his jaw starts shaking, and he falls to the floor. Tears pour from his eyes and he throws his head back. A loud shriek erupts from him. It echoes through the quiet desert, the only sound heard miles around. The other man walks over to him and kneels down in front of him.

“I’m missing my friend. This is his squad car. I don’t know what happened. He seems to be missing.”

He looks up and they stare into each other’s eyes.

“I’m sorry about your son.” He extends a hand out to the man on the ground. He takes the hand and stands up. He’s taller, and heavier. Bigger in every way than the cop in front of him. The cop continues.

“I want to help.”

“Do you?” The man clears his throat and wipes his eyes.

“Yes. I don’t know what happened to Officer Hunt, and I don’t know what happened to your son…”

“Derrick, my son's name is Derrick Fallows.”

“Mr. Fallows, I don’t know what happened to either of them. But we’ll figure it out. I’m sure of it.”

There is nothing left here for us now. We will come another time. But for now we leave. We leave these two men standing in the middle of the desert as they agree to embark on a journey and take on a power they can’t even comprehend. But that’s okay, because when the time comes, we’ll be ready for them.