Decemberland

Chapter 7: Red Thread

Gasping for breath, Nico struggled to wrench Phillip’s hand from her throat, but it his death-grip was as firm as steel. Her vision faded in and out, and she could feel herself slowly slipping away. Finally her sight went black, and she nearly went unconscious when she heard someone else shout, “Stop!”

Her body dropped and her vision came back to her as she coughed and wheezed, rubbing her throat tenderly. She looked up, and Phillip’s figure was just above hers, with his foot in the air. It came crashing down into her stomach, knocking the wind out of her, spit flying from her mouth. He dug his heel in to make sure she was pinned down.

The second voice belonged to Blake, who just came out of the bushes behind Phillip. He knelt down at her side, his eyes somewhere between pity and disappointment.

“Why did you do it?” he asked. Between her mind being raddled from the attack and the vagueness of Blake’s question, she was clueless as to what he meant.

“What are you talking about?” she gasped. Phillip didn’t seem to like that answer, because he dug his heel further into her gut.

“Why did you kill old man McFeener!” Phillip shouted.

“What?” Once more, he kicked his heel into her gut, practically cracking her rib cage. “I don’t…” she gasped, “know what you’re talking about! I didn’t kill him!”

He took his knife and stuck it in her face, pressing even harder with his heel to the point that tears were coming down her face. “Don’t lie!” he shouted. “We saw the message! We know you were talking to the professor about it!”

Nico looked up at Phillip, her mouth hanging open, catching all of her tears, but no words came out. The most she could do was shake her head.

“Phillip, ease up a bit, she can’t talk.”

She gasped for air as Phillip lightened the pressure on her diaphragm. “I swear I didn’t kill him!” she sputtered, “I didn’t even know him!”

“You told the professor you did!”

“That was a lie!”

Blake raised a hand to stop Phillip from interjecting. He took a deep breath before calmly addressing her again, “You see, where you lied to the professor about knowing Mr. McFeener, Phillip actually did. He stopped by his house every once in a while to share his hunting adventures with the old man. They both had a lot in common, but most of all they shared hunting interests. In exchange for pelts, the old man gave him hunting equipment and advice. With time, everyone noticed a small change in Mr. McFeener’s sour attitude. It was thanks to Phillip that that happened.”

Phillip grunted, and continued where Blake left off. “That’s right. I hunt. And the old man was bitter about the town law against hunting. He had lots of classic hunting tools and devices, and the last thing he wanted was for them to be repossessed. But he loved animal pelts just as much, so I decided to go out and get some for him since it was too hard to sneak around the Town Guard in his old age.” His eyes began to glow with a passionate hatred as he continued his story.

“One day the old coot asks me a personal favor and asks me to hunt a bear for him. Hands me his best bow to do it with. It was hard to hunt since those things are so damn rare, but after two days of hunting, I finally catch one and turn it into a grade “A” pelt. I was excited to show him, like a little kid…”

If it wasn’t so dark, Nico would have sworn that Phillip’s eyes were watering as he remembered.

“And what do I find next to his dead body on the wall? A whole paragraph of Ancient Braumish encrypted in some plasmatic substance on the wall. And who speaks Ancient Braumish, Blake?”