Vance and Lumis made their way out of the woods without a second to spare.
The moment they reached their vehicles, Vance slid into his overcoat, grabbed his gun, and gave the detective an urgent look.
“Call this in,” he said, pointing at the trees. “Tell them you’ve got the identity and the hideout of the Cutthroat Killer here. I need to get to the school.”
“Vance,” Lumis sighed. “Who is Rodney to you? What is this—?”
“I don’t have time! ” Vance hollered, leaping into his car.
He revved his engine and peeled off the side of the road, his black Impala rocketing out of sight with haste. Lumis watched him go, leaning on his car and pulling out his phone, making the call that would finally end the reign of the Cutthroat Killer.
The tension that had taken over Gates Mill lately could scantly be compared to what Vance felt now—soaring around every corner and yelling angrily at all the trick-or-treaters in his way. Rodney was in danger—and that fact alone seemed to guide Vance’s every move.
He reached the university in record time, screeching to a crooked stop in the parking lot of the health wing, which was only occupied by two other vehicles—Rodney’s car and Arkus’s pickup.
Vance sprung out of the car, spotting the pickup and swearing under his breath. His leg burning in pain—he strode into the darkened building from the side entrance and marched down the unlit hallways, reaching Rodney’s room and yanking on the door’s knob, though the door seemed to be locked.
Vance took a breath and hammered on it rapidly. “I’m here!”
Rodney turned his head, wincing as he slowly reached his feet. He meandered across the clearing and unlocked the door, allowing Vance to burst inside. Rodney then closed and locked the door again, turned away, and lumbered back to his chair, inhaling a sharp, pained breath as he sank back into his seat.
Vance glared at him with a bizarre intrigue—but all his suspicions vanished momentarily when he spotted the thick bloodstains up and down Rodney’s left side, where two wounds had been tied up in a makeshift manner.
“Jesus,” Vance breathed, striding toward him. “What happened to you? Where is Harley now?”
Rodney tiredly raised his brows. “So you remember his name, then…”
“Where is he?” Vance griped, tightening his grasp on his pistol. “How did you—?”
“What else do you remember?” Rodney asked interestingly. “About Harley and Melinda… and Victor and Sarah, while we’re at it.”
Vance’s head pounded almost as painfully as his leg. “I don’t know, he—it doesn’t matter right now. I need to deal with him. Where did he go? How did you fight him off?”
“Well… to be frank, I didn’t,” Rodney replied. “Your daughter did. With this.”
He tapped on the handle of the katana on his desk.
“Ari— why is Ari here? ” Vance hissed. “Where is she—?”
“Vance,” Rodney said calmly, raising his hand. “Harley is pursuing Zane Jackson as we speak. Zane Jackson—the little monster who is directly responsible for that young dead girl we found last night. The same evil monster who took a rock to Arkus’s skull, put a sword to Lucy’s throat, nearly burned numerous people to death in that church, and tried to force himself on your daughter. Now, I have never once agreed with my son’s decisions—but I will not lose any sleep over the murder of Zane Jackson. That boy is not just a loudmouthed protester or a distant father—he’s someone who really, truly does deserve to die. And I couldn’t sleep at night if I knew he was still alive out there later down the road, plotting exactly how he would get back at Ariella someday.”
“You let him go,” Vance uttered. “You let him go so he could find Zane.”
“Yes, I did. Ariella and I both did,” Rodney stated. “Right now, she is checking to make sure none of her friends are at that party where Zane is supposed to show up. She promised to stick to the crowds, then come right back here. And, after she quite literally saved my life, I feel inclined to trust her ability to do so. Besides, I… I’m in no state to try and restrain her…”
“How can—how could you just let her go?” Vance barked. “Right after Harley attacked you—you let her go— with a serial killer in the building —!”
“Vance—Harley has no interest in her at the moment,” Rodney said firmly.
“How can you know that?” Vance griped. “How can you know that for sure?”
“Because… of… many reasons,” Rodney sighed. “At first… I imagine he kept an eye on her because she was a witness. He watched her and her friends because they had the ability to spread the story of their eye-witness accounts to the rest of town. But then, at some point, he realized who she was… and that she was connected to me… and to you. So… he ended up at a peculiar crossroad. Watching, waiting, doing nothing… until he felt he needed to. Harley doesn’t kill people just for witnessing him, Vance. He kills people who try to stop him.”
Rodney slowly pulled his collar to the side, revealing the crooked, jagged scar left on his person eighteen long years ago.
“And… when it all started… I did try to stop him. Most of his targets are objective to him. I’m the only one who’s not. I’m the only person he targets purely for emotional reasons. We’re all temperamental… always have been. I took out my aggression with hunting… and so did both of you,” Rodney explained. “But he… later in life… took the Hunter name to a whole new level. That killer’s instinct, and that temper… that was engrained in him… and he just never coped with reality. Never.”
Vance stared at the scar for several seconds. Then, his eyes drifted downward, landing on the various things atop his desk—a shrunken head, a color-coded globe, a portrait, and a long, thin stand that was gold-plated, which had his name etched onto the front, just like all the university professors had. The stand was hidden behind the other items, where it was presumably sealed away from the sight of his students on a regular basis.
Vance slowly lifted it, reading the name that was imprinted onto the front. In thin gold letters, the name read:
Professor Rodney Hunter.
He glared into it, then into Rodney, his skull pulsating once again.
“Why do I know you?” Vance said softly. “You were my friend’s father—but it’s more than that. It seems like there was more.”
“That’s because there was ,” Rodney replied.
“You saved my ass last night,” Vance pondered aloud. “I paled around with you all night long without question… and when I found out Harley was coming after you, I… reacted like… it was Ari…”
“You don’t remember everything,” Rodney figured. “Not quite, it seems.”
“No… I don’t,” Vance understood. “What else is there?”
Rodney took a deep, thoughtful breath, easefully reaching his feet and leveling his eyes with Vance’s own.
“Well… allow me to fill in the gaps for you.”
The story of the forgotten family began in the early 1980s—when Rodney Hunter regularly rented his hunting cabins out to the folks of Gates Mill.
Rodney had a special discount price for the friends in his life; he and his wife, Melinda, lived in the Hunter household in the woods, the first building visible to all the hunters who came around, with the big oak tree in the front and the wide front porch where the two often sat as he watched the his son play in the yard.
After a long period of renovating, Rodney was able to reopen his hunting cabins to the public—and when he did, the first customers to arrive was the family he and Melinda had long ago befriended. Their friends, Victor and Sarah, were fellow hunters who originally met Rodney and Melinda while renting out their cabins years ago—though they weren’t able to see their friends much during the renovating phase. No available hunting cabins meant fewer visits from their hunting-enthusiast friends. As a result, Rodney and Melinda didn’t see much of Victor or Sarah very often for a while.
However, on the day when the hunting cabins reopened, this routine changed; Victor and Sarah drove up the driveway in their Suburban, their young son in the back seat, Rodney and Melinda standing on the front porch and watching the vehicle approach, smiling and waving welcomingly as they did.
Young Harley sat on the edge of the porch, his messy black hairs tenting over his eyes as he kept his face buried in his coloring book. The Callaghans pulled to a stop in the gravel driveway and began to step out of their vehicle, and their son leaped out of the back, grinning excitedly and holding a plastic gun in his hands, dressed in all camouflage. Six-year-old Vance aimed the gun in all directions, almost as if he expected to hunt something in the Hunters’ driveway with his brightly-colored toy. Victor and Sarah chuckled at him, then approached the front porch to greet their old friends.
Rodney and Victor shook hands, Sarah and Melinda trading a hug. Contrary to Sarah’s silky blonde hair, Melinda’s was short and dark, and while the two women were dressed normally, Rodney and Victor were both wearing hunting gear.
Vance sprinted up to the adults, pointing his toy gun at the nearby squirrels and making shooting noises. Then, he spotted another child sitting on the edge of the porch and approached him without a second thought.
“Hey!” Vance said, slapping Harley’s arm. “I’m Vance. How old are you?”
Harley looked up from his coloring book, giving him an odd squint.
“Harley,” Rodney uttered, nudging him on the back with his foot. “Say hello. Be polite. This is Vance Callaghan—Sarah and Victor’s son.”
“Oh, that’s right,” Melinda said, smiling and tilting her head at Harley. “You two haven’t met before now, have you…?”
“I’m six,” Vance stated, holding up six of his fingers. “How old are you? You like hunting? You wanna go play?”
“Vance, honey… let the boy answer,” Sarah said kindly, patting her son on the head. “One question at a time.”
“He’s the same age as you, Vance,” Rodney informed. “And, yes, he does like to play. He’s just a bit shy.”
Vance nodded up at Rodney, then turned to his parents. “Can me and Harley go play?”
“Yeah,” Victor replied, his voice low and gruff, rustling Vance’s hair. “You can play all you want while we’re gone—just don’t wander too far from the house, son. I don’t want you two wandering anywhere near the hunting grounds.”
“That’s right—and both your mothers are gonna be here watching you, so be good,” Rodney advised, jabbing a finger at the boys. “Harley—say something to Vance, boy. He’s been talkin’ your ear off, and you haven’t said a single word. Introduce yourself.”
Harley glimpsed up at all the adults nervously, then met Vance’s eyes. He gulped and jutted his hand outward.
“I’m Harley… nice to meet you.”
Vance shook his hand vigorously, then held up his plastic gun. “I got nerf guns—you wanna go play war?”
Harley smirked and leaped off the porch, both boys rushing over to the Callaghans’ Suburban to retrieve Vance’s other toy guns. The parents all smiled as they watched.
“Heh. He’s a little fighter, ain’t he?” Rodney commented.
“Yeah… afraid so. Can’t help it. He got it from me,” Victor chuckled.
“Well, that’s good.” Rodney turned to him. “I’ve never seen anybody pull Harley out of his shell that fast. I reckon they’ll be good friends.”
“Oh, that’d be so nice… Harley needs a friend,” Melinda said, trading smiles with Sarah. “He lives so far out from the other kids in his school…”
“Well… Vance is old enough to come here with us now,” Victor remarked. “No reason he can’t come hang out with Harley whenever Rodney and I are out shootin’ during the day.”
“Yeah, speaking of—you ready to go get dinner?” Rodney asked, grabbing the rifle that was propped against the house just beside the front door. “’Cause I am. I’m ready to give the new cabins a baptism and break ‘em in. Been waiting forever for this.”
“P’shit, I’ve been ready all day. Hell—I’ve been ready for that all year. It’s about damn time,” Victor smirked, giving Sarah a kiss goodbye.
Rodney did the same with Melinda, and the mothers sat on the porch to watch the children while the fathers ventured off to hunt dinner.
This day started a new routine for the families; Harley and Vance would venture out to the woods, climb trees, and fight with their toy guns whenever their fathers disappeared to the hunting grounds for hours at a time. Months later, when Vance and Harley were practically attached at the hip, Rodney and Victor decided to string up a buck by the hind legs in the front yard, peeling off the skin and teaching the boys how to field dress the animal. Melinda argued that they were too young, but Vance seemed fascinated by the process. Harley, however, didn’t seem to like it one bit—but he endured the lesson nonetheless.
During this time, it seemed that Harley was far less excited about the idea of hunting than everyone else in the family. In fact, one day, when the boys were playing in the woods, Vance managed to capture a rabbit with his bare hands. He held the rabbit upright by its legs, the animal dangling upside-down and wriggling around in fear, Harley yelling in protest, screaming for him to let the poor creature go. Vance stared at him, laughing it off and scoffing as he tossed the rabbit into the shrubs, allowing it to scramble upright and scamper away.
For two years—the Hunters and the Callaghans grew closer than ever, practically merging into one single family. They often joined together for their celebrations, nights out, and yearly vacations. Many days and nights were spent with the two families sitting together at restaurants, visiting Boomsday and the yearly carnival, and—of course—attending many BBQs and get-togethers at Rodney and Melinda’s place. During all their times together, the adults talked and joked with one another while Vance went out of his way to drag Harley into unwitting adventures. At Boomsday and the carnival, Vance often led Harley away from the adults, and the two of them would run around alone after escaping supervision, riding rides, playing games, and getting food at the concession stands with their allowances. After a while, Harley warmed up to Vance’s trouble-making ways, and neither of them cared that they always ended up in trouble sometime afterward.
Whenever the two of them would play in the front yard of the Hunter home, the boys often found themselves leaping into random wrestling matches with one another. Rodney and Melinda had put a trampoline in the yard, and the boys would jump around on it, tackling each other, doing fancy spins and flips as they laughed, wrestled, and tried to pin one another down.
Many times, Rodney and Melinda found themselves sitting on the porch, watching the boys and smirking. Rodney often had his arm around his wife, the two of them observing as the kids lost themselves in their fun.
“Go easy on him, fighter-boy!” Rodney always yelled.
Each time this was said, Harley took it as a challenge to one-up the fighter-boy; he’d barrel into Vance with a more powerful attack, huffing and panting as he fought relentlessly to pin his friend to the fabric of the trampoline, Vance suffocating with laughter the whole time. Despite how much he enjoyed playing with his best friend, Harley often saw him as an obstacle to overcome; Vance was the stronger and more outgoing of the two, after all, and Harley knew his father would be impressed if he ever managed to defeat him in a wrestling match.
These playful routines carried on for weeks, then months, eventually spanning into two fantastic years, the Callaghans visiting the Hunters all the time, Harley and Vance becoming partners in crime, Rodney and Victor hunting together, Sarah and Melinda breaking off to do other tasks while they watched the children; all of the time the Hunters and Callaghans spent together was absolutely wonderful.
The two years that passed after meeting Harley Hunter were the best years of Vance’s childhood. But, on one particularly grim and stormy afternoon—his serene and childlike world shattered into a million pieces.
Eight-year-old Vance stood outside of Gates Mill Elementary, adjusting his backpack and waiting for his parents to arrive and pick him up as usual. Like every day, the front walkway of the school was filled with a crowd of children awaiting their parents.
And as time passed, one by one, each and every child climbed into their parents’ cars, a few of them—Vance’s friends—waving him off as they rode away. After a while, when the afternoon daylight began to dim in the sky, and when dark storm clouds began to shroud ominously around the sun, Vance glanced in every direction, knowing that something was amiss.
Every other kid had gone home for the day, leaving Vance standing by his lonesome in front of Gates Mill Elementary School. He couldn’t fathom why his parents were so late to pick him up, as they’d never been late to do so before. In fact, his mother and father were the protective types, and they often arrived much sooner than they needed to. Their Suburban was usually one of the first vehicles to arrive, and it always sat welcomingly by the curb whenever he marched out of the school. Now that he thought about it, he’d never really had to wait for them before. They were always sitting parked outside the school before the bell ever rang.
Yes, something was most assuredly off about this. Something must’ve come up. Perhaps they’d been held up in traffic, or something else occurred that needed their immediate attention. He’d simply have to wait a bit longer for them.
With nothing else to do, Vance sighed and plopped down, sitting on the curb and pulling a comic book out of his backpack. He read through it for a while, trying to keep himself occupied while he waited for his parents, but when it began to sprinkle, he was forced to pack the book away again, sighing and frowning at the empty road before him.
The more time that passed, the stranger he felt, grim and anxious, as if some subtle, mild dread was spreading throughout him like a cold fire. With every five or ten minutes to go by, he became less certain that his parents simply had something to deal with, his anxiety slowly, steadily growing, worrying that something worse may have been going on. He knew something was wrong, but he hadn’t the faintest clue what…
Vance shook the thought away, huffing out a breath and leaning back on his hands atop the concrete, the rainfall beginning to grow.
It was during this time when Rodney and Melinda—who had already returned home with Harley an hour ago—were all inside their cozy, isolated home, Harley pestering his father to take him to Vance’s house to play, Rodney repeatedly declining due to being busy grading papers, and Melinda trying to cook dinner in the kitchenette.
Storm clouds rolled over Gates Mill in darkened billows, thunder rumbling in the atmosphere—and then, the landline in the hallway began to ring.
Rodney, who was sitting at the kitchen table and grading the essays of his university students, sighed and put his pen down, standing and walking to the hallway. He took the phone from the wall and held it to his ear.
The caller was a close friend of the Callaghan family, one of Sarah’s best friends from work—and as this person spoke to Rodney, as her voice seeped into his ears, his expression darkened severely, an awful knot forming in the pit of his stomach.
Melinda peeked out of the kitchen, taking a break from her cooking and joining her husband in the hall. She leaned on the doorway and examined him—and the moment she met eyes with him, she frowned, reading his expression and knowing something was very wrong.
“I wanna go to Vance’s house!” Harley cried from behind his mother.
Melinda turned and smiled down at him, patting his head and motioning over toward the kitchenette. “Honey, go do your homework. I need to talk to your father.”
Harley groaned and tossed his head back, sauntering out of their earshot.
When Melinda faced Rodney again, his visage was even heavier with perturbation, holding the phone to his chest and shaking his head.
“What happened?” she whispered worriedly.
Rodney met her gaze again, thoroughly disturbed. “Victor and Sarah have been in a, uhm… they’ve been in an accident…”
Melina inhaled sharply, covering her mouth. “Oh God…”
“They just got t-boned on the interstate,” Rodney said gravely.
“Are they…?” Melinda breathed.
“They’re gone,” Rodney replied regretfully, releasing a distressed cloud of breath.
“Oh no… oh my God, no…” Melina grimaced, wearing a look of despair. Then, her eyes widened, and she grasped his arm with concern. “What about Vance…?!”
Her husband stared intensely into her, then held the phone to his ear again. “Sorry… I’m back. Yes… that’s right. Yeah, we’re the godparents. Yes, we intend to. No, he… his parents were supposed to pick him up today. He’s probably still…”
Rodney’s eyes drifted over to the living room window, where the gentle sprinkle outside had evolved into a complete downpour.
“I’m gonna go get him right now,” he told the woman on the phone. “Thank you. Bye.”
At that—Rodney hung up and marched briskly out of the hallway, sliding into his coat and grabbing his keys from the wall. He turned to give Melinda a quick kiss goodbye, then paused, seeing that Harley was just behind them, staring at them with a shocked expression strewn across his face.
“What happened to Uncle Victor and Aunt Sarah?” Harley asked.
Rodney gave him a conflicted look, then reached for the doorknob. “We’ll talk about it later. I need to go pick up Vance.”
“Why?” Harley pestered.
“ Later , Harley,” Rodney said impatiently, grabbing his umbrella from its stand and marching out the door.
Rodney drove down the back road and entered the town quickly, despite the thunder and the heavy rainfall pummeling his car. He frowned, pondering gravely on the unexpected loss of his friends and hoping dearly that Vance was where he expected him to be.
When he pulled up to the rounded drive-in pathway in front of the school—Vance was sitting alone on the curb, cradling himself and soaked to the bone with rain, his short black hairs heavy and dripping with water.
Rodney peered out at the child from inside his car, sighing grimly and feeling a terrible lurch in his gut, only just realizing that he had to break the news to the boy. After a moment of troubled hesitation, he popped the door open and emerged from the car, holding his umbrella over his head and approaching the child.
Vance stared up at him, looking confused and remaining silent. He was curled up in his wet jacket, shivering in the cool autumn weather as the rain continued to drench him.
Rodney let out another stressed exhalation, kneeling in front of him and holding the umbrella over the boy, shielding him from the downpour and giving him a long, grave stare.
“Vance, there’s… um…” Rodney began with some difficulty, biting his lip and clearing his throat. “We… all right… listen. Listen to me. You and I… and Aunt Melinda, and Harley… we’re all about to go through something very difficult right now. And… I want you to know, I’m here for you every step of the way. All right? We all are.”
Vance stared at him, saying nothing.
Rodney gulped roughly, taking a deep breath and forcing the words out.
“Vance, there’s… there’s been an accident. Your parents were in an accident today… and… they didn’t make it. I’m sorry.”
Vance fell entirely still—and in an instant, the feeling of cold, mild dread seemed to explode into a horrific sense of terror inside him, no hint of it on his face, though his insides felt to be erupting, screaming in agony.
“Your parents… made us your godparents. That means they wanted… ehm… they wanted you to stay with us if anything ever happened to them,” Rodney told him. “So… you’re gonna be staying with us from now on.”
There was a long, heavy silence following these words, no sound stirring aside from the shower of rainwater all around. Vance still showed no visible reaction, though everything inside him was wailing and writhing, his mind succumbing to a sudden hazy fog, the feeling of horror slowly overwhelming him, making him feel as if he was living through a dark, terrible dream, as if what he’d heard couldn’t possibly be reality.
“Look at me, boy… look. Listen.” Rodney placed a hand firmly on his shoulder, staring into Vance profoundly. “I promise… I swear to you, we’re gonna make sure you’re all right. Everything’s gonna be all right. I will make damn sure of that. And I know… I know this is gonna be very hard for you to deal with for a good long while… but I know you’re gonna be okay. You’re our little fighter-boy.”
Vance’s lip trembled—and instantly, he felt as if a dam had broken inside him, the horrid feelings finally escaping him in one great burst. He erupted in despair, now shedding tears and allowing them to stream down his face alongside rainwater. He choked out a sob before devolving into cries—and Rodney scooped him into a hug, frowning and patting him on the back. For a long while, the two remained on the curb, Rodney kneeling and holding the umbrella over the crying child, embracing him closely, the boy sobbing madly into his collar.
It was the longest, gravest moment of Vance’s childhood.
When Rodney eventually returned home with him, the two of them stepped inside the house, their clothes leaving a puddle of water on the welcome mat as they did. Melinda pulled Vance into a close, motherly embrace, and when she released him, her son approached.
Harley opened his mouth to speak to his friend, but hesitated, staring at Vance and instantly feeling perturbed by the sight of him. His usually excited and adventurous expression was nowhere to be seen, his stare vacant, his eyes deadened in a way they never had been before.
“What’s wrong…?” Harley mumbled.
“Harley, just… go finish your homework,” Rodney advised. “Now’s not the time.”
Vance wandered inside and sat on the couch, staring emptily into the darkened TV. Rodney and Melinda watched from beside the narrow counter along the wall, glimpsing over at him with worrisome visages and trading hushed conversation about everything they planned to do now.
Vance cared nothing for watching cartoons like usual, nor did he want to play with Harley or follow the heavenly scent from the kitchenette, where Melinda had made one of her wonderfully delicious lasagnas yet again. He had cried during the entire ride here—but now, he felt suddenly devoid of emotion, fully and completely drained, wanting nothing more than to sleep for as long as possible. The great passion inside him, the adventure and fun, the confidence and joy—it had all flooded out of him in one fell swoop.
He remained this way until his parents’ funeral, and even long after.
Rodney never forgot standing in the graveyard that day. It was an overcast day with a close-casket funeral, and every friend of the family stood close by, listening to several people speak fondly of Victor and Sarah Callaghan before they all gathered at the twin gravesites, watching as the dark, shiny caskets were lowered into the ground, Rodney’s hands clasped onto Vance’s shoulders, Vance glaring into the deep, rectangular holes with a deadpan stare. He didn’t cry at the funeral, nor the following night—but days later, he isolated himself in the spare bedroom of the Hunter household, crying alone for hours on end.
In the weeks following his parents’ deaths, Vance felt no desire to play or do his schoolwork, nor laugh with his friends at school. All of Harley’s attempts at cheering him up failed, and for a very long time, he simply sulked in a deep depression as Rodney and Melinda worked to complete the full adoption process. Vance only spoke directly to Rodney once during this long, grave period of bereavement. He told his adoptive father that he wanted to keep his original surname, and Rodney graciously obliged. Victor Callaghan was a proud sort when he was alive, someone who greatly valued his family, someone who once saw all the potential in the world in his son’s eyes—and as much as Vance loved the Hunter family, and as much as he cherished being a part of it, he never wanted to abolish the Callaghan name from himself.
For a span that felt like years—Vance remained lost in a dark fog of shock, still struggling to accept the sudden and horrific event that had transpired—that Victor and Sarah Callaghan were gone from this world in the blink of an eye, seemingly for no reason whatsoever.
He didn’t smile again until the next carnival in Gates Mill the following year.
It was his first visit to the carnival without his parents—but Rodney and Melinda worked hard to make him feel like part of the family, as he truly, honestly was. Contrary to their old routine—this time, Harley was the one to drag Vance off into random adventures throughout the carnival, fleeing from their parents and jumping on the rides by themselves. Harley made it his mission to bring his best friend out of his saddened state—and all day long, he yanked Vance around, dragging him into the house of mirrors and onto the ferris wheel, though Vance still seemed somewhat distant throughout much of the adventure.
But then—a miracle occurred. The boys arrived at their usual favorite ride, the dragon-themed roller coaster, the wildest and scariest ride of the carnival. And as they rode the frightening coaster, Harley suddenly beamed with delight—because, when he looked to his side, he finally saw his best friend’s excited, passionate smile make a full return. Vance grinned from ear to ear, his eyes filling with joyful tears as he screamed and laughed with glee, the ride whipping and soaring around, launching the two boys in several directions at incredible speed, up and down in waves and twisting around in rapid upside-down loops. The two of them screamed in fright and laughed insanely on nearly every ride afterward—and at long last, Vance finally regained the ability to laugh and smile. The horrible era of grief began to end, and the boys were now more than just best friends.
This was the day Harley Hunter and Vance Callaghan became brothers.
Rodney and Melinda were both left the Callaghan home in Victor’s will, given the circumstance that Vance was not yet old enough to inherit and maintain it. The Hunters obtained full ownership of the property on Colonial Avenue, and with Vance and Harley attending the same school in town, and with Rodney and Melinda both working in and near the heart of Gates Mill, they all decided it best to uproot from their isolated house on the hunting grounds and move into the Callaghan household.
Vance had mixed feelings about returning to his original home, but he quickly adapted—he and Harley taking the two small rooms while Rodney and Melinda slept in the master bedroom. Little changed in the house over the years; just as it was present day, the couch was aimed at the TV and the living room, its back facing the kitchen, the kitchen table placed near the front door and the window. Young Vance slept in the room that eventually became his storage room, Harley sleeping in the room that would eventually become Ariella’s—and for many years to follow, the Hunter-Callaghan family lived in peace in their home on Colonial Avenue.
As the boys grew older, they spread across the neighborhood and claimed various new hangouts—the woods down the street, the railroad bridge, the river, and the treehouse that Rodney helped them to build. Often times, the boys dragged their friends from school into the woods to swim, sometimes sneaking beers and liquors out to the woods for secret parties. And every year, when the season came around, Rodney and Melinda drove the boys out to their hunting grounds for their annual hunting trips. Hunting was their favorite activity, even well into their teen years. Vance grew alongside the Hunters, living as one of them, a true and honest family he loved and cherished as much as he did his birth parents—Rodney as his father, Melinda as his mother, and Harley as the brother who never left his side.
However, the dynamic of their nuclear family began to change when Vance and Harley approached their later teens.
Vance spent a lot of time going through his father’s military belongings, expressing frequent interest in joining the military straight out of high school. Rodney and Melinda were all right with this idea, though both of them had their concerns—but Harley hated the idea the most. By the time the boys were seniors in high school, Vance started hanging around with an entirely different crowd while Harley spent much of his time being bullied or doing odd jobs around the town, mainly mowing lawns and other yard work.
The two of them grew apart during this time, no longer laughing together and sharing all their adventures. Aside from their coffee shop visits, the two spent little time together apart from their walks home. And, with Vance succeeding in every endeavor—and with Harley seeming to fail at his own, as well as taking frequent mistreatment from his peers at school—he soon fell into a deep depression, one that his brother and father seemed not to notice.
The day he was struck by the hit-and-run driver seemed to spark a mad realization.
This was the time when Harley began to grow a deep disdain for people of a certain personality—and for his own father.
While Harley came to Rodney with complaints of bullies, Vance came to him with ideas for the future. While Harley spoke frequently about how the other students treated him and how his customers stiffed him on payments, Vance boasted proudly about his excellent grades and his plans to join the military, even joining a boxing club in school and winning most of his matches.
So, intentional or not, Rodney ended up praising Vance far more often than Harley. It wasn’t due to any hatred or resentment; Rodney simply liked to see the impassionated initiative that Vance had taken on, especially after such hardship during childhood. Sure, Rodney tried to help Harley with his issues as well—but the issues never ceased, and Harley simply didn’t seem capable of coping with them, while Vance overcame his issues almost effortlessly.
This imbalance manufactured an air of dysfunction in the Hunter-Callaghan home.
Harley quickly came to the conclusion that Rodney simply preferred arrogant people over docile ones—that Rodney wanted to side with bullies over victims—and he often accused his father of loving Vance more than his own flesh-and-blood son. Harley and Rodney shared numerous heated arguments over this, Melinda always trying to enact damage control and become their peacemaker, though her efforts rarely yielded any fruit. These fights even evolved into physical altercations a couple of times, which Vance was forced to break apart.
The dysfunction of the Hunter-Callaghan family slowly dissipated when Vance left for the military. After graduation, and after a difficult goodbye to his brother, Harley spent much of his time making friends and connections throughout the yard work business. With no bullies in his life now, and with more experience in his new line of work, things were calmer for him during this brief span, seeming to work out smoother than before.
About a month after Vance left for Iraq, Harley was visiting Shamrock on a fairly regular basis, namely to meet up with a girl who’d caught his eye.
Alison was a perfect combination of slender and curvy, an auburn shade of hair that was similar to Harley’s mother’s, though her face was far smoother, her outfits always hugging her figure tightly, her clothing dark with an alternative fashion. For many weeks, Harley met up with her during the pool tournaments in the bar—and Alison was a wild type, always drinking and dancing, always partying her heart out at every given opportunity. It wasn’t long before Harley finally mustered the nerve to ask her out—and to his incredible pleasure, she agreed.
Sometime during their dating, Alison revealed that she needed a place to stay, and she’d been living in her car. So, after a long talk with his father, Harley manufactured a plan; he moved out of the Hunter-Callaghan household and returned to his childhood home on the hunting grounds, taking on Alison as a roommate.
Not much time passed before Alison switched from roommate to wife.
Rodney and Melinda made frequent drives out to the old Hunter home in order to check up on them, to visit, or to simply bring by some groceries. Melinda decided never to stop cooking for his son even after he moved out, periodically bringing casseroles, enchiladas, and of course, her famous triple-cheese lasagna to the new Hunter couple.
During the beginning of this new phase of life, Harley and Rodney were getting along a bit better—but the same couldn’t be said for Harley and Alison.
Even after having a child together, Alison soon showed her true colors, demanding to know where he was at all times, hollering vulgarities every time the baby cried, and going on the occasional destructive rampage whenever she’d have a mental breakdown, destroying numerous things in the house and sobbing hysterically afterward.
Harley had no idea how unstable she was beforehand. For three years that felt like thirty, he fought and struggled to save his relationship—but even after counseling, Alison always devolved to her regular maniacal ways. The day Harley came home to find Alison holding the baby in the air by its arms and screaming curse words into its face—he nearly attacked her, and just barely managed not to.
Throughout these three long years, his mild disdain for predatory people was on a slow, silent incline, steadily growing into a deep, festering hatred. He tried to tell his parents about Alison’s wild nature, but it rarely yielded any results.
It seemed the predators of the world would always get away with the awful things they were doing—just as the assaulters at his old school did when they berated and physically attacked him, just as the hit-and-run driver did when he nearly killed Harley on Gleason Avenue, and just as Alison was now, dragging the baby around by its arms and screaming curses into its face whenever it dared to cry.
After hearing of the abuse, Melinda refused to talk to Alison any longer—though Melinda and Rodney frequently babysat their grandchild, often bringing the baby to the Hunter-Callaghan home. In Melinda’s opinion, it wasn’t babysitting so much as it was protection. Rodney didn’t entirely believe Harley’s accusations, didn’t think that Alison could behave so terribly towards such a small toddler—but Melinda, on the other hand, seemed to believe her son wholeheartedly.
Throughout this time of grim dysfunction and routine miscommunication, Rodney visited the old Hunter home almost daily. He was constantly worried about the state of their family, and he felt he needed to check up on them. Whenever Rodney arrived and Alison wasn’t home, Harley had longwinded conversations with his father, begging for advice and repeatedly expressing that he wanted to leave Alison—but Rodney often suggested getting Alison another therapist and working to rescue the relationship rather than getting divorced.
And once more, the routine of the father and son fighting was revived—only now, it was escalated further, as they often shared these fights solo in the old Hunter home, with no Vance or Melinda around to enact damage control.
Each time they had these conversations, Harley stated that he only wanted a divorce while Rodney continued suggesting ways to make it work. These talks grew into heated shouting matches, and to make matters worse, Harley often had to deal with another round of screaming the moment he’d see his wife again.
After numerous arguments with his father, Harley soon gave up on trying to make him see reason, and he returned to his old dark conclusion; Rodney would always be on the side of the predators and the proud, whether it was Vance and his boastful arrogance or Alison and her narcissistic insanity.
In reality—Rodney simply had no idea that Alison was abusing their baby, and he couldn’t think her capable of such a thing, despite how many times Harley professed it to be true. Each time Rodney saw her with the baby, she always treated it with a sense of warm, motherly care. Besides, Rodney didn’t exactly put it past Harley to invent stories for attention. Perhaps in retrospect, he should’ve listened to his son, but he had never experienced a person like Alison before, and he could scantly know what to expect of her behavior.
Quite honestly, Rodney’s only goal was to help their family survive—and if that meant listening to his son curse and vent, trying to help Alison find treatment for her mental problems, and taking care of their baby whenever he felt the need to—he would.
Harley, on the other hand, felt as if he was becoming a ticking time-bomb, growing angrier and angrier by the day.
After all—it was entirely, unjustly, and inarguably unfair.
How long would he be expected to repress every ounce of his feelings of resentment toward these obviously wrong people? How long would he have to simply meander through life, letting everyone in the world harm him, dismiss him, and screw him over, simply letting the psychotic woman he unfortunately married mistreat his own child? How—how on earth —could he ever accept such a reality, such a broken, evil world?
That’s the way the world is , Vance once told him.
But as he struggled to accept this dark and awful fact, he could never shake the feeling that—if his statement was true—then the world itself was wickedly, undoubtedly, and undeniably wrong .
And there was no reason that he, or anyone else, should have to put up with it any longer.
Still—Harley could think of no solution, no way of solving the impossible problems that the world had handed him.
So, for a long while, he simply wandered through life with an aimless and angry depression weighing heavily on him, doing his job glumly by day and returning to his wildly dysfunctional home by night, feeling as if he was slowly dying inside, as if his soul was beginning to flicker out like a small, fading flame.
During all of this, it was a regular occurrence for Rodney and Melinda to take care of the baby whenever Harley and Alison were at work—or when they went to counseling, or when they exploded into an altercation with one another. Rodney loved that baby dearly; those big shining eyes, round little cheeks, and that light, cackling laugh always brought a smile to his face. His wonderful little grandchild was the main reason he wanted to keep Harley and Alison’s family from falling apart.
But one fateful night brought every hope to an end.
On this day, Harley had been working hard sawing some branches off the side of a tree that were reaching into power lines. It was sprinkling throughout the entire day, so he wore his black overcoat and his largest hat in order to keep mostly dry underneath. When his laborious day of work was over, he rolled up to the old Hunter home and parked during twilight, stepping out of his old black car and approaching the front door, branch-saw still at hand.
He instantly tensed up as he approached the home, hearing two dreadful noises inside—the baby crying, and Alison hollering vulgarities at it.
It was going to be one of those nights again…
Sighing and bracing himself, Harley opened the door and prepared to give the usual order, to tell Alison to calm down and go cool off in the bedroom—but the moment he stepped inside and closed the door, his heart plummeted.
Alison was standing on the other side of the living room beside the crib, holding the toddler against the wall and trying to keep it still, as it was kicking madly at her—her hands wrapped around the child’s throat.
“WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?!” Harley bellowed—making Alison jump and drop the baby to the floor.
She wheeled around and backed away, her face twisted with anger—and Harley pushed past her and picked up the wailing toddler, placing it gently in its crib before rounding on his wife.
“I don’t care!” Alison shouted, tossing her hands up. “I don’t fucking care anymore! You’re the one who wanted kids! I DON’T WANT THAT THING FUCKING SCREAMING ALL FUCKING NIGHT ANYMORE—I CAN’T—!”
Harley suddenly lost every ounce of restraint he ever harbored—and he shoved Alison backward, slamming her into the wall.
“ SO YOU WANNA KILL OUR CHILD? !”
Alison pushed him back—and he toppled over the coffee table and fell backward, landing painfully in front of the couch. She then leaped on top of him—the baby crying horribly as it staggered to a stand in its crib—Alison reaching for Harley’s throat—
And just when her fingers coiled around his windpipe—Harley saw red.
He kicked her squarely in the stomach—launching her off him and hurriedly reaching his feet, fixing his hat as his eyes followed his wife’s every move.
Alison scrambled into the kitchen, grabbing a knife and lunging at him—
Harley lost himself to the rage—grasping her wrist and snapping it backward.
It made a faint crack —and Alison shrieked in agony, the knife clattering onto the bar counter.
“ You wanna play that game? ” Harley glowered, fuming into her face and holding her against the wall. “YOU WANNA PLAY THAT GAME?!”
And then—in the moment of Harley’s greatest resolve, the fire inside suddenly raging, every restraint inside shattering at once as he vowed never to tolerate the predators in his life any longer—it happened.
He pressed the branch-saw to her throat and let out a monstrous roar—slashing her skin with the toothy blade and ripping her throat wide open in a frayed, bloody split.
Crimson poured out of the fleshy wound as Alison’s eyes tore wide open, sputtering and choking as she stumbled backward, falling down and convulsing madly on the tiled floor, groping helplessly at her bleeding throat as she did.
Harley heaved several incensed breaths, his hat crooked, hair screwed up, branch-saw spotted with blood, tiny specks of skin remaining on the teeth of the blade. He glared hatefully down at her, his eyes fixating angrily on her blood-spotted wedding ring, his chest rising and falling with every hot breath, feeling rushed with a wicked euphoria that overtook his entire being, freeing him entirely of every dark depression he’d ever felt at long, long last—and he continued leering at Alison’s bloody body even long after she’d fallen motionless.
Part of him felt glorious, another part panicked and terribly nauseated.
As the adrenaline slowly faded, his mind began to race, processing what he’d done and mulling over every grave consequence of his actions.
But then—something occurred to him that absolved him of his guilt entirely, cleansing his mind of the panic and the disgust.
It felt fantastic, an overwhelming wave of morbid bliss—a dark, great, and all-consuming justification coursing through every fiber of his being—and the simple, solid rationalization floated out of his mouth in a faint, hissing growl.
“ You deserved it .”
Nothing stirred, no noise aside from the toddler crying from its crib, standing inside it and watching the entire event unfold.
Harley didn’t tear his gaze from his dead wife until he heard another sound—the sound of his front door creaking ever so faintly behind him.
Harley slowly turned—facing his father and saying nothing.
Rodney had only just stepped inside, freezing stock still, holding a grocery bag of leftovers sent by Melinda. He didn’t move, his expression blank, mouth hanging slightly agape as he stared down at Alison’s body in silent disbelief.
After a long, grave moment of tension, his eyes flickered up to Harley’s.
“What have you done…?” Rodney breathed in a faint, astonished whisper.
“You… you know what she did,” Harley fumed, gritting his teeth and shooting him a nasty scowl. “You know what she did… you know what she does… and you don’t… fucking… care . You never fucking cared.”
Rodney gaped at him in bewildered shock, shaking his head and giving Harley a wild look.
“I’ve told you… a million times … what she does,” Harley growled. “And you… never … fucking… cared .”
“What… the fuck are you…?” Rodney breathed, glancing down at the corpse again and covering his mouth. “Oh God, you… you killed her …”
“Yeah—that’s what she fucking deserved,” Harley spat.
Suddenly panicked, Rodney’s eyes shot over to the crib, where the crying baby was standing and wailing sadly at the people across the room. He quickly moved to approach his grandchild—and Harley’s arm shot out—holding the toothy blade to his neck and making him halt on a dime.
Rodney jerked his head back, slowly inching away and giving his son a searing glare.
Harley returned the heated leer in full. “ Don’t .”
“I need to take her,” Rodney exhaled through clenched teeth. “She’s not safe here.”
“SHE’S MY DAUGHTER!” Harley bellowed, making him jump. “AND I’LL BE DAMNED IF SHE’S GONNA BE RAISED BY ANOTHER FUCKING NARCASSIST! YOU—ARE—NOT—TAKING—MY—KID! SHE’S MINE!”
“AND YOU JUST KILLED HER MOTHER , YOU FUCKING MONSTER!” Rodney erupted furiously, smacking his arm away and shoving him backward. “NO— HELL NO! THIS IS IT! THIS IS THE FINAL FUCKING STRAW! YOU’RE DONE! YOU UNDERSTAND ME, BOY?! YOU ARE DONE! ”
Harley pushed him back as well, raising his weapon and advancing on his father. “No, bitch— I’m just fucking getting started .”
Rodney released every restraint he knew—snatching the knife from the counter and staggering back. Harley swiped at him and missed—and Rodney bared his teeth and swung with all his might—slicing his son’s face and making him explode in a painful howl.
Harley stumbled away and clasped his face, blood pouring from his cheek as a sliver of skin hung from the corner of the wound.
Rodney lost it; he charged forward, raising the knife and deciding to end him forever—Harley vowing the same—
The branch-saw shot out and caught the knife—whipping it from Rodney’s grasp.
And with a final heaving lunge—Harley swiped the branch-saw upward with all his strength—
Rodney leaping back in alarm—
“ Agh —!”
The teeth of the blade narrowly missed his throat when he moved—slicing him open from chest to collar, blood pouring out of him profusely, saturating his shirt and making him lose every ounce of energy at once.
Rodney croaked hoarsely, clasping the deep, terrible wound and collapsing backward to the floor, landing on his back in the doorway.
The longest, gravest silence of the Hunter home came to be as Harley loomed over his father, the toddler sobbing, Rodney fighting a losing battle with unconsciousness.
He spared a moment to stare down at him, then turned away and approached the crib.
Rodney tried to raise his head, watching in horror as the killer approached the toddler, everything inside him fighting to move, screaming at him to stop Harley, though his body would no longer cooperate.
“N… o…”
Everything began to shift and distort, Rodney trying with all his might to keep his eyes open as his blood escaped him. He struggled to move, to stand, to fight and to rescue the baby from the killer, but the world spun, everything fading black around him.
He soon fell motionless in on the threshold of his old family home—and Rodney Hunter knew no more.
During the telling of Rodney’s story, Vance found himself reliving various memories of certain events he spoke of. With every word, and every event, he began to recall numerous aspects of his past as clear as day—and curiously, this time, each recollection came with no pain whatsoever.
Now, with the story mostly concluded, Vance stood before Rodney’s desk, a deep, profound sense of seriousness in the air of the spacious classroom. Vance was still staring at him with an investigative visage, Rodney’s fingers smoothly intertwining atop his stomach, leaning back in his chair and awaiting a reaction.
“No headache?” Rodney asked.
Vance swallowed, slowly shaking his head. “No…”
“Well…” Rodney sighed and shrugged. “I guess you’re finally ready to know, then.”
“I don’t… what happened after?” Vance inquired. “After he attacked you.”
“Oh… I woke up in a shallow grave two counties away,” Rodney replied with an odd nonchalance. “I suppose he was too panicked to notice I wasn’t dead. The dirt ended up clogging up that big nasty slash, stopped the bleeding. Lucky for me.”
“That woman… Alison Hunter,” Vance murmured, thinking back to the morbid board of trophies in Harley’s hidden shack. “He has her finger pinned to a wall… and that finger had a… wedding ring on it.”
Rodney’s eyes narrowed. “Where’d you find that?”
“The railroad… near the treehouse,” Vance replied. “I started remembering earlier today, so I checked out all the old hangout spots… and I found his current residence. My partner and the rest of the cops should be swarming all over that place by now.”
Rodney grimaced. “He cut off her godforsaken finger…”
“She was abusing her kid,” Vance figured. “She really must’ve been. That must be why he lost it… one night, he just snapped, and… killed her.”
Rodney let out a cloud of breath. “I suppose so. I guess I… didn’t wanna believe she was… doing that. Alison was as sweet as could be in the beginning. I knew she had issues, but I had no idea she was so…”
“Hold on—my partner Bill was called to the scene after the Hunter couple disappeared,” Vance remembered. “He said the place was empty and spotless.”
“Well… I imagine it was, by the time they got there,” Rodney replied. “I was wandering around wounded and covered in dirt in the middle of absolute nowhere. Must’ve walked for a day straight before I ever found a road. Took me forever to find a phone.”
“So you’re the one who made the anonymous call about the homicide.”
“Yes, I was. I was the only witness. It was too late, but I had to give it a shot.”
“Why didn’t you ever go to the police with any of this?”
“Because I know my son,” Rodney said darkly, his eyes shining with a certain severity. “He’s just like me… and if he has the chance to kill me again, he will take it. I didn’t wanna give him a reason to start looking for me. He thought I was dead, and for a long time, it stayed that way… up until recently. I knew he’d wanna try to kill me again, and he won’t hesitate. Nor would I.”
Vance gave him a questioning look.
Rodney sighed heavily. “Vance… in that moment, I decided to kill him. In that one moment… he and I… were both trying to kill each other. And ever since this little podcast started, I knew I might have to face that same fight again sometime soon. Harley and I have been circling around each other ever since he first resurfaced… just preparing for the moment one of us had to kill the other. That makes us both killers. Only difference is, I didn’t throw my entire life away just so I could act on that sick little impulse. He did.”
Vance stared downward in thought. “We’re all just a family of killers…”
“Yes… of different brands and varieties, but yes. We are,” Rodney surmised.
“The kid,” Vance uttered. “The Hunters’ baby… what ever happened to it?”
Rodney stared into him deeply for a moment, his finger pressed thoughtfully to his mouth.
“When I woke up… and for several years after… I knew in my gut what happened,” he explained. “After I finally got back home, Melinda was overjoyed to see me, since I’d been missing for two days… and I told her everything that went down. She wanted to go to the police, but I knew the police wouldn’t offer us any protection if we did. Plus, Harley would be out for blood again if he found out I survived, and I’d already called the police once already. I figured he went off the radar after what he’d done, and we didn’t wanna risk being somewhere that he knew about. So… we kept quiet, we packed everything up, and we left the house, moved out to the middle of nowhere so he wouldn’t have much of a chance of crossing paths with us. I kept the house on Colonial Avenue taken care of until you came home from Iraq. And, in all that time… I knew… he couldn’t have possibly taken care of a baby while he was living on the run. So… there was only one thing that could’ve happened. The only logical explanation that I could think of was that he… killed… my grandchild. I figured he probably saw it as a mercy-killing, too… like he was rescuing his kid from living in a world full of predators and bullies, or whatever…”
Vance’s stomach contracted with disgust. “Jesus H Christ…”
Rodney nodded grimly.
“And Melinda…” Vance muttered.
“Oh… yeah… my sweet Melinda. I’m sorry,” Rodney said somberly. “I’m sorry you didn’t get to see her again before she passed… but she talked about you all the time. You were her son. You were our son…”
Vance squinted at him. “Why didn’t… why didn’t you ever just tell me? You knew where I was, and you’ve been in this town the whole time…”
“Well… I did try. I actually tried more than once, but you were fresh out of hell and couldn’t remember anything about your own life. Not to mention.” Rodney raised his hand, gesturing to the room around him. “I do happen to know a bit about psychology… and I know you’re not supposed to push someone too hard to fight their own amnesia. That’s where your headaches come from, Vance. You’re constantly fighting it.”
Vance sighed and gave a slight shrug. “Yeah, well… I’m the fighter-boy.”
Rodney cracked a whimsical smile.
The two of them paused, glancing over at the door and feeling somewhat impatient.
“Ari should be back by now,” Vance mumbled.
“Give her a moment. Do you have any idea how huge the crowd is over there?” Rodney chuckled. “It’s a goddamn circus right now.”
Vance continued to stare at the door, growing concerned.
Rodney observed his expression, tapping his mouth and eyeing him thoughtfully.
“Vance,” he said. “What were the circumstances that led to you adopting her?”
Vance faced him again. “That’s a really long and disturbing story.”
“Right… as if I didn’t just tell one of those,” Rodney snarked. “Let me hear it.”
“Well, it… it was a foster home full of kids, and the foster mother was a lunatic,” Vance summarized. “I was doing some snooping for Bill when I heard gunshots at another house, found Ari in there, crying on the floor with the foster mother pointing a gun at her.”
Rodney slowly nodded. “What did you do?”
“I killed her,” Vance replied simply.
Rodney’s brows raised.
Vance nodded and gave another glimpse to the door.
Rodney surveyed him. “And after that?”
“I took Ari to the hospital,” Vance replied. “And, at some point… while I was there… I made the decision to take her home.”
Rodney gave him a curious look. “Why?”
Vance met his eyes, shooting him a strange stare. “Same reason you did.”
“Yes, but… I was your godfather,” Rodney pointed out. “Ariella was just a random child you stumbled upon in a stranger’s home.”
Vance narrowed his eyes at him.
Then, Rodney’s expression hardened, and he slowly reached his feet again, wincing as he did. He met Vance’s gaze properly, looking more intense than before.
“Your head is clearing up for the first time in many… many years,” Rodney said seriously. “So… now, I want you to think back on it, Vance. Think back to the moment you decided to adopt her, and try to remember why you did.”
Vance said nothing, staring at him oddly and pondering on the past.
He remembered driving the wounded eight-year-old Ariella to the hospital that night, the night he first met her, just after the deaths of Eddie and Eliza Grant, and he remembered sitting in the waiting room, trying to fill out the proper medical forms for Ariella even though he lacked much of the information to do so.
Rodney gently loomed forward, leaning on his desk and eyeing him closely.
Vance continued glaring into him wordlessly, the memory playing through his mind completely painlessly now.
He recalled sitting in the waiting room and growing frustrated as he tried to fill out Ariella’s hospital forms. At the time, he had no clue what her information was, from her full name and age to her insurance information. And as he replayed the fateful night in his mind, his heart began to pound, his expression hardening; he remembered growing irritated in the waiting room, standing and asking to visit Ariella’s hospital room down the hall. The nurse led him to Ariella’s room, and Vance sat beside her hospital bed, kindly asking the young girl to add her information to the forms and placing the clipboard in her lap.
“I think you knew… even with your mind completely fogged and deluded, I think you knew,” Rodney determined. “You knew you had to take her home… because some part of you knew… deep, deep down… that she was family.”
Vance gulped, inhaling a slow, shaking breath as the memory lingered on his mind…
The young and traumatized Ariella, glumly scribbling her information down on the medical clipboard, Vance stroking her along the back comfortingly as she did. When she finished, she handed the clipboard back to him, and he read over it thoroughly.
“All this time, I thought the whole family died out long ago… but the Hunter-Callaghan family never died. It’s alive and well right now,” Rodney disclosed.
At the top of the page, where Ariella had written her name out, Vance remembered his eyes tracing along every line and curve, every single letter that spelled it out. His head throbbed as he read over it intently, unable to tear his eyes from the name, a slow, growing anxiety and an immense surge of paternal compassion rising up inside him for reasons unknown. It was then—during this very moment thirteen years ago—when something clicked together amidst the shrouded haze of his mind, and he knew—somehow, for a reason he couldn’t yet comprehend—that he was obligated to take the girl home.
The name read:
Ariella Hunter.
Vance’s mouth drifted agape as he stared at Rodney incredulously.
“It’s fifty-fifty, Vance,” Rodney said in a low, ominous voice. “Between environment and genetics… both make up a child’s personality, and Ariella has it all. Everything I’ve seen before, every familiar little quirk of personality, everything I ever saw in both of you boys. I’ve seen it all in her. Every provocation and every instinct, every notion of righting all the morbid wrongs of the world, every passionate task she takes on… it all makes me proud of her, but it also makes me scared for her. That’s what we all have in common in our family. That is the heart of a hunter. That… is the heart of a Hunter . And it’s not all because of you, Vance. It wasn’t just taught to her by you. It was engrained in her from me .”