Viscous Nature - Chapter 28 - Voyeur Natural

Chapter 28 – Voyeur Natural

“I’ve got him now. He’s going to wish he stayed in that hole in L.A. that son of bitch.”

The flood lights from every van had this little dirt road lit up like Tigers stadium with the towering trees leaning in from the left and right side as if they were the fan filled bleachers. A crowd of professional reporters and some dubious ones had pressed their way in through the crowd of onlookers to snatch the best view point of the demolished patrol car and gathering of hunters.

Patrick Alfred Donhauser Jr. had started life quite eloquently living the lifestyle of a rich kid. His parents were ‘new’ millionaires riding the wave of success brought to Silicon Valley by the introduction of the World Wide Web in the eighties and nineties. Used to the pampering of his parents, the secret love of his nanny, and the ever growing urge to party with his less than acceptable peers, at least according to his parents, made him seem at times bipolar. The mandatory college life pressed onto him by his parents and the failures one after the other had only fed his desire to hurt others. To see the disbelief in the eyes of a victim turn to dismay and then to utter abandonment provided him with such satisfaction that nothing he could think of compared to it, a rush that at times might be considered something akin to sexual arousal. His only passion, the curiosity, the need to see into the lives of others and to feel and feed off of their pain is why journalism had so intrigued him and finally gave him the drive to excel. 

It was in his first year working for the magazine Under Cover PI that he had his encounter with Sheriff Wheeler, at that time the captain of Precinct 7 in L.A. Business as usual, he had been tracking down a sadistic pedophile which was among his favorite targets next to bringing down seemingly innocent politicians, priests, and those that consider themselves clean and above the law. That fateful day while stalking his victim, actually breaking into that sick fucker’s house to take some premium pictures for his next article, is when he got caught in the crossfire with the law. Captain Wheeler had set up a sting operation which ended up catching him in the act of breaking and entering resulting in a sixty day jail stay. Even that wasn’t the real issue since his employer had absolutely loved the extents at which he went to get his stories and even offered a bonus for his short stint behind bars. It was the aftermath of that arrest that really got him. The fact that he broke into the neighbor’s house rather than his intended victim and despite his pleading with the police that his intentions were to ‘dog’ that sick bastard, that Captain Wheeler pressed charges and revealed his name to the press destroying his image with every single one of the respectable magazines. His chances of landing a ‘good’ job following that public humiliation were zilch.

No one fucks with me, it was a singular statement that rattled through his brain every second he wasn’t possessed with trying to flay one of his new fancies. Captain Wheeler had become a fascination and soon after his release from jail an obsession. It was he who had gone public with pictures of Captain Wheeler enjoying the company of a woman other than his wife. It didn’t matter that there may have been nothing sexually going on but the fact that other magazines picked up on the ‘scandal’ and hounded the man and his family was enough to bring the captain to grief with his wife due to the additional stress. That grief of course turned to drinking and more scandalous behavior caught on film which led to his premature departure from the L.A. police force. Captain Wheelers move to Michigan and the honorable job as Sheriff was enough to pull Patrick from his daily crusade of inflicting pain to take a pause and privately fund a trip out east. He had already been thinking up new headlines for his next article, Sheriff Confirms Bigfoot, Hunt for a New Sheriff, or Sheriff Fails Under Weight of Myth. None of the names seemed catchy enough but it didn’t bother him much at the moment, to destroy this man and leave him groveling in the dirt is his primary intention, the details can be worked out later. This would be an article that he planned on putting on his personal webpage from which it would surely go viral but if his magazine decided to pay him for his troubles and print it, then even better.

“An eye for an eye you prick.” Patrick had just found a stooge among the hunters being gathered to chase the animal that supposedly thrashed the patrol car. The damage is actually quite impressive, he was thinking to himself as he presses a button on his small laptop, one so small it wasn’t much bigger than a check book. Attached on a length of strap draped around his neck, it is quickly accessible and his constant companion. The display flipped open, he taps the screen and an assortment of Apps balloon into view. His finger finds the GPS tracking program where he had previously adjusted a few settings to allow him to follow the signal now being provided by the sender he passed onto that hick idiot going on the hunt. The dork doesn’t even realize that he is carrying a homing device, disguised as a money clip in which a thousand dollars had been pinched he’ll never know the difference.

“Your down payment for first dibs on your account of the hunt, an exclusive interview that I want to have with you when you guys are done. There will be another thousand for you when we have finished that interview.” It was a quick conversation, one that needed to be kept from the other reporters not because of the first interview opportunity, there were fifty other hunters to be had. He could care less about that hunter and the man could die for all he cared but not until the hunt was over, not until he could be onsite when they find the beast and he has his camera full of the footage he was determined to get. Discretion was required because one, to plant that homing device and not let on to the other reporters that he will be following the chase and two, not become part of the news by his… unethical and in this case unlawful procedure for gaining the information he was after.

The program opened up without a hitch and within seconds a bleeping blue dot could be seen on the screen in the middle of a topographical map of what could easily be seen as the Black Oak Park, the street name Pine Wood clearly visible. A smile runs across his face. With a little bit of luck, I will have some pictures of our beast and a ‘to die for’ article over our Mr. Wheeler. Patrick can see a real suicide style ending to this story, a story that he started and it was only fitting that he should document its end… as he has done on multiple occasions. He thinks for a moment, like a thousand times before, If I am lucky enough I will one day get a story started like Princess Diana, a story that will be talked about for decades, maybe even over the centuries.

Swinging into the rented jeep he turns the vehicle around and snakes his way back out of the throng of people and headed towards the main entrance of the park. Not yet at the gate he sees the blue dot pulsing with a higher frequency on the screen, an indication that his stooge was on the move. They are heading northwest, perfect. Jumping into that gas pedal he blasts through the barely opened gate leaving a dust cloud in his wake. Barely stopping to look for oncoming traffic he screams the four wheeler into a left turn with a near northerly direction.

A few miles up he stops his jeep at an intersection to carefully determine the direction his bleeping blue idiot is taking. The software for his GPS, like many marine style systems, allows for the path of the sender to be plotted, a stagnant light blue line that distinguishes itself ideally from the forest greens, black streets, grey houses and brown barren land. At first that line was a mess, zig-zagging back and forth but eventually steadied out with a near northwest route until the dot stopped about thirty minutes into the chase. The slower less intensive blinking had shown a definite halt in the movement of his pigeon.

The dot had stopped for what seemed like minutes, “What the fuck are you guys up too?” Patrick’s question ringing out through his open window. “Did you already find our beast?” his ass swinging this way and that in the driver seat as he considers the fact that he might not get those pictures he was expecting and even worse, missing being there to catch the Sheriff making an ass of himself that he might exploit it.

“Fuck!” He slams his Jeep into first gear and was just about to throw himself into a squealing left turn when the dot began to move again. It moved but not with any direction. It seemed as if it was going in circles then a bit left then right, “What the hell are you guys doing?” His foot on the clutch he switches the GPS to Satellite view and zooms in. The blue dot appears to be in an open patch of land free of trees, long and thin, stretched out in an almost east – west direction. There were no roads shown in the area, maybe they are on a road that hasn’t been updated in the software? He thinks to himself. There is a dirt road shown on the map, possibly a mile or two north of his blue dot. Without waiting to see what else that dot does, he steps into the gas pedal headed directly west in the direction of his search team. 

His eyes on the computer display as much as the road, he sees his hick on the move again. “Good boy, you obviously didn’t have an encounter of the savage kind yet or you would be moving back towards home base now wouldn’t you? No, you are still hot on the trail heading northwest, very good.” His own voice sooths his nerves as he scouts out the entrance to that dirt road he had seen near that clearing.

Turning left again almost due south, he pulls onto the dirt road and stops. Grabbing the small computer, he sets it on his lap scrolling through the area, looking to see where this dirt road leads. In the satellite view it was fairly easy to make out a couple of homes along the road where it turns to west. It appeared as though the dirt road ended about three or four miles into the forest. One of the homes was about half way up it but further north and didn’t seem to be connected in any way. The other house was located at the end of the road and perched on the edge of a lake. The team of hunters seemed almost to be heading directly towards that last home, at a couple of points almost meeting up with it only to have the road make a turn away from them. The direction they were heading, they wouldn’t come close to that road again, at least not until they reached that last home.

His nerves raw with the chase and eager to get some pictures he puts the computer back onto the dash, “It’s as a good a time as any to take a look.” And rips down the rough dirt road at an almost break neck pace.

It didn’t seem to take but a few minutes and he was already ahead of the blue dot on the screen and nearing the end of the rocky road. The computer automatically zooms in and he sees that the road ends quite a distance from the home. “Looks like we will be walking a bit.” No sooner had he uttered the words than two vehicles come into view, parked off to the side of what appeared to be a cul-de-sac circled by trees and brush.

Parking just short of the two vehicles and somewhat into the woods at the side of the trail he was out of the Jeep with his computer, camera with night vision and a parabolic microphone all strapped to his side or back.

“Here we are, the beginning of November walking up a trail that from its looks could come out of the story line for The Legend of Sleepy Hallow. There is a beast, a predator, a possible man eater on the loose in these woods...  one that may have killed as many as three people of this small town of Pennbrooke.” Patrick, his face lit up from the shine of the hand held cameras’ display trips and stumbles a few times as he makes his way up the walking trail sweeping his lens to either side to get the affect he wanted from the hostile looking foliage. He liked the affect that night vision gave the footage and often would only film in that mode but experience had taught him that filming in nature at night had a much more profound and ‘scare’ effect when done in the normal mode with the inadequate white lighting from his small camera. After several hundred feet he stops and switches from normal mode to night vision. The search team shouldn’t be anywhere near yet but better to be safe.

“Will we be witness to a new animal; one that Crypto zoologists claim might have been here long before the coming of man, possibly a man creature or devil from the myths of medieval with the soul of a man and the body of raging beast? Or will we document the down fall of a once prestigious law officer that has fallen from grace, undone by his appetite for sex and wealth?”  With the night vision on and only being able to navigate the unkempt trail by the small screen, his progress was slower and much noisier than he would have liked, tripping over exposed roots, stepping on dead twigs and cursing when a branch would whack his face.

His cameras night vision function is equipped with Infrared lights used to light the objects before him allowing his camera to pick them up and display what is in front of him in light shades of green and varying shades of gray and black, everything beyond that splay of light is depicted in dark shades of green and grey giving some perception of depth. Any natural or manmade illumination which emits light in the infrared spectrum can also be picked up which is why Patrick came to a sudden standstill when he noticed the light green of a house window showing up in his view.

Lifting his computer so that he could see its screen that little blue dot was still some distance off but moving steadily in his direction. Whispering, “Okay, time to find a spot to watch from.”

Not having any idea if that animal they are chasing will avoid the house or not, Patrick slips off to the right of the path into the woods and away from the oncoming party but still within sight of the house. What little light is coming from that house will definitely help with the filming, he thinks to himself. Putting the house almost exactly between him and his anxiously awaited quarry, he finds a depression in the ground next a big birch tree with a perfect view of the home and most of the north side of it. He could smell the clean water of the lake nearby, it’s actually one of the few things he finds beautiful in the world.

“The full moon will be gone soon and with it the power it has over the demons and devils of this world. It will also mean that my film will not be as prime as it could.” Turning the camera to the moon sitting low on the horizon and only just barely filtering through the trees, he captures a few seconds of the blood red thing before turning it back onto the house.

“I am now settling into my little hide and will fix the camera on the clearing in the front of the house. With some luck, we will have a great view of the stooges when they come through here.” His voice is just a bit louder than the breeze in his ears as he lies down onto the leaf carpeted ground, making his body comfortable in a semi laying position with his elbows propped up on the lip of his natural hole.

Although the wind was at his back, the sounds of moaning had fluttered to his ears from the house. It wasn’t the moaning of someone in pain but of a person in ecstasy, the kind of good feeling that one only gets from having great sex. “Hmmm, things just got a bit more interesting.” Smiling to himself he glues his eyes to both displays, his excitement building inside as he watches that blue dot moving ever closer. Pulling the large microphone from his back, think I will listen in on this action while I am waiting.