The Cutting by James Hayman
Prologue
July 1971
He pressed the terrified creature firmly against his body. He was a sturdy boy, tall for his eight years, with dark hair and a long, thin face. After more than a month of summer sunshine, his normally fair skin had turned quite brown. He could feel the rabbit, just weeks old, shivering, and he felt a sense of rising excitement, anticipating the adventure that lay ahead. The boy resisted an urge to run toward the secret place. He feared tripping over a bit of protruding ledge or a branch buried in last fall’s rotting leaves. His prize might fall loose and scamper away. Even as the boy walked, his breathing quickened. He lightly stroked the bunny’s soft fur, trying to calm its beating heart and, perhaps, his own as well.
It took him nearly twenty minutes to reach his destination, a kind of natural cave formed by arching tendrils of bittersweet vines as they reached upward to grasp and wind around the young white pine and birch trees that surrounded the place. The boy had filled in the lower walls, layering spruce branches atop the bittersweet. He had also cut away the growth from the interior and brought in armfuls of dead leaves and pine needles to form a kind of floor. The entire space measured about four feet in diameter and at its center was no more than three feet high. Shafts of sunlight entered from above, projecting a pattern of brightness and shadow on the ground.
The boy crawled into the cave, securing the rabbit with one hand against his chest. Moisture from the ground soaked through the knees of his jeans and felt cold against his skin. Once inside, he laid the animal on the ground, holding it by its ears. Its black button eyes were fixed on the boy, who saw what he sensed was both terror and resignation. It was a feeling that the creature knew – and in its way accepted – what the boy had so carefully planned and prepared for. This seemed to the boy to be as it should be.
With his free hand he withdrew the folding knife from his back pocket. He had sharpened the three-inch blade to razor fineness on his father’s stone, and he took care not to cut his finger as he worked it open.
He forced himself to wait a few seconds, enjoying the anticipation. He could feel his heart pounding as he placed the point of the blade just below the creature’s neck. He pushed hard and then sliced down toward its stomach, opening the animal up. The creature’s screams pierced the air. So like the high-pitched shrieks of pain that came from his infant brother when the boy played with him. He didn’t let the sound distract him from his task. He was quite sure no one could hear.
He had no words for the feeling that shook his body as he gazed upon the rabbit’s beating heart and held it for an instant in his hand before the beating stopped and the creature died. He only knew it was something he wanted to experience again and again.
1
Portland, Maine
September 16, 2005
Friday. 5:30 A.M.
Fog can be a sudden thing on the Maine coast. On even the clearest mornings, swirling gray mists sometimes appear in an instant, covering the earth with an opacity that makes it hard to see even one’s own feet on the ground. On this particular September morning it descended at 5:30, about the time Lucinda Cassidy and her companion Fritz, a small dog of indeterminate pedigree, arrived at the cemetery on Vaughan Street to begin their four-mile run along the streets of Portland’s West End and the path that borders the city’s Western Promenade.