HUNTERS

The world is an utterly strange place with stranger stories spinning their threads in every corner of its existence, every single second. And all I can remember now is one such strange story that nearly shook me off, making me doubt the thin line between reality and illusion.

“To whoever reading my letter,

By the time you shall find this, I probably must have gone, for good- I suppose. The voices within my head will have killed me ruthlessly. But before that, I needed to tell you something…”

The man stopped writing his letter for a moment and looked up. He was being who looked much older than his age, years of solitude and depression etching themselves deep into the wrinkles upon his face. Merely in his late fortys, he was clad casually in a set of tattered clothes, soiled from use and stinking of poverty.

He lived in a little cottage built of woods and rocks, deep within the forests of Northern California, to specific, the Santa Cruz region. While not a quite lavish setting, the one room he had to call a home, had everything one needed to stay alive amidst nature- a camp bed, some wooden furniture, a couple of guns for safety and other essentials for daily survival.

He stood up from his chair and walked towards an open window in his room, its panes broken. A distant glance at the half-cracked clock in the room told him that it was about ten past two in the afternoon. He looked out through the window and saw the dense forests basking in the never-ending glory of the sunlit terrain. There was a narrow forest path which went by his cottage, leading to a great tannery a little far off.

This factory wasn’t there forever- the man had seen it getting constructed day by day before his eyes. And now it stood, like a gigantic technological marvel with its chimney up in the air. Though most of it was hidden from sight by the tall forest canopies, the man had heard they slaughtered animals to process their hides in the factory. A truck carrying woods for fuel used to pass by his cottage every day, carrying them right up to the tannery. From the truck driver, who happened to be a great friend of his, he had come to know that it was called The New American Works, its owner a rich industrialist from Brookslyn.

The man now picked up the receiver of his telephone and holding it across his ear, looked at a torn bit of an old photograph of his across on of the cottage walls. What a good looking man had he been back then!

“Hello, this is Mr. Sebastian Hills,” said the man, still holding the receiver. “Am I speaking to the North California Police Station? Sir, what about the complaint that I had filed against the New American Works? It has been three years already since I had visited your office. The smoke from the tannery suffocates me, makes me sick at head. I had requested the authorities to stop the construction of a tannery so close to my house…What? The government has agreed to give me a new house in the city? Well no, no. There is history, you see. I won’t abandon these woods ever…Yeah, please look into my request or else I’ll have to do what I don’t desire to.”

Saying so, Sebastian kept down the receiver of the telephone- and to tell the truth- I tell this to you as the narrator of the story- the telephone had no sort of an electrical connection. What an insane being to have talked a full-length conversation with just no one at the other end.

And you must still be pondering about what history he had been talking of. Well, it was about his old father, who had been the Forest Officer of these very woods. And he had stayed with his father in his cottage ever since until ten years ago, when the old man had died of old age. But fortunately, he had got Sebastian married to a very beautiful woman- actually his friend’s daughter. She was called Laura and they had um, kids- two, John and Jacob. But the marriage didn’t last long.

For a moment, he again looked at the half-broken clock upon the wall. It was fifteen past two. “I must finish fast,” he said and sat down to complete his letter.

***

“At what time did you say the explosion occurred?” asked Gluton Coners with a look of confusion over his face. He had been in the Special Branch of the North Californian Police for the past seventeen years with a great reputation. Every inch of his face, his investigative eyes and a twisted smile radiated intelligence of a rare kind. He had been seated across the table of the Plant Manager, Mr. Elijah and two other men from his investigative team had been standing behind him with hands folded. They were in the only room of the factory that had been spared from the massive fire outbreak.

“At 2:20 sharp in the afternoon,” said Elijah looking through the recorded documents.

“And which day was it?” asked Gluton carefully inspecting the room with eyes of an investigator.

“7th May, that is, two days back. Do you think Inspector, there’s a foul play behind it?”

“May be one of the rivals of your owner. Or someone else who had envied the success of the firm, convincing himself to burn it down to ashes. Or maybe, just a disaster, an accident like they had in Thailand, USA or even India. Fire breakouts in tanneries in not something unnatural but the government wants us to investigate the case.”

“I see,” Elijah said with a polite smile.

“Sir, do you know of someone who didn’t wish that the tannery was set up here?” Gluton asked, raising his left leg over his right. “Some sort of a resentment or discontent?”

“To tell the truth, I was never happy with the idea of this tannery, Inspector. The geographical conditions were never extremely suitable here. I myself was a student of Geography.”

Gluton looked with enraged eyes at Elijah. “So shall I get you behind bars? Your room’s the only one of the total twenty locations that got spared from tragedy, Elijah. Twenty two men killed in the fire and Plant Manager away that particular day itself.”

“I had been for some personal work to the city. And I’m not a guard who’s meant to protect the tannery every single second. The fire was clearly not my fault.”

“Then think and tell me, Elijah, who it might be who never wanted this place to rise. I haven’t come there to waste my time over burnt stuff.”

Elijah thought for a couple of seconds before a light of realization beamed over his face. “Was it him then?”

“Who?” Gluton asked.

“There’s a man called Sebastian Hills who lives in an old cottage a little far from the tannery, right in the heart of the forest. He had protested against the construction of the factory near his home. He had even filed a case in your police station, I suppose.”

“Yeah, I remember. I had been there when he had come to file the complaint. But I had just ignored the case for the past three years for I knew that a poor man like him could never have won against the owner who’s a rich industrialist. So, did he do it?”

“May be. How do I know? It’s your work to investigate the case.”

“Tell me, does he have access to the tannery somehow?”

“Not that I know of. But yes, the truck driver, while bringing the woods for fuel halts near his home sometimes for may be a chat with the poor soul or a cup of tea.”

“Good Heavens! Then that was the time when he had kept the explosives in the truck along with the piles of wood. Your workers must have carelessly loaded them into the fuel charging station which lead to the great explosion that day. It matches exactly- everything together to get an interesting story cooked.”

“So, why are you waiting? Go and arrest him.”

“What makes me think if there’s a greater conspiracy involved here. Was he a spy from one of your rivals? Such a poor man can’t afford expensive explosives like those. We popularly call it Rival Hunting nowadays.”

“I don’t really know how far the man can go. I’ve never met him but the truck driver could have testified against him if he really had stopped that day at his cottage. But he’s dead in the explosion.”

“Never mind. Come, let’s go to the cottage of this man. I think I’ve got my criminal.”

***

Inspector Gluton, his men and the Plant Manager drove to the little cottage of Sebastian that evening. The sun rays had touched off the cloud-capped horizons. A cold breeze had been speeding through the tall trees.

Gluton knocked at his door…once, twice, thrice and then finally, broke the only unbroken object in the cottage in a single blow.

To their surprise, the body of Sebastian Hills had been hanging from the ceiling of the cottage by a strong rope. It had turned pale, with an expression of terror in his face but eyes closed in peaceful harmony.

“The man has killed himself!” Gluton remarked. “Hey, but there’s something stuck between his fingers in the right hand!”

Gluton’s men got it for him. It was a folded photograph- old and torn apart from one side, the other part of it was still neatly stuck upon the wall, a photo of Sebastian in his handsome days.

The portion of the photo in Gluton’s hand had three figures in them, a beautiful woman and two little children. You probably must have guessed by now who they were.

Gluton turned the torn photograph and saw that behind it, a letter had been written upon it, probably by Sebastian.

“But before that, I needed to tell you something. Almost three years ago, my wife, Laura and our children- they were sick from the toxic smokes of the tannery. Soon, I lost them forever to their illness. I had buried their bodies with my own hand just behind my cottage. I had tried to protest against setting up of factories near residences so that no man had to lose his family ever like I did. But, in vain. No one gives a damn about a poor man’s cries. So today, a defeated man decides to end up his life. But I have a little message to people sitting up there on the throne making profits out of nature. You’ve hurt the forests, by hunting down animals, cutting down woods. Remember, that fate shall serve justice fairly. The forests are not as unforgiving as mankind is. It remembers its hunters and hunts them back.

Sebastian Hills.

6th May, 2023.”

A day before the fire breakout at the tannery, that is!