[Henry is at fault.]
Howard scrubbed the stables clean in the little farm he had been working in. He was busy all day long, but the living and pay was good enough to keep him there. They had been there for about a year and everything was going well.
Henry grew taller every day and seemed to tower over the other kids in the block. He was fourteen at the time, and quite popular with the girls. He was also quite handsome looking, much like their estranged mother who had left them when they were a child.
Howard got news of his father and his drunken antics from people from his old town who had kept his location a secret from his father. They all knew how harsh the man was on everyone.
Word of mouth said that he was diseased and not taken care of, he had been diagnosed with cancer and was very likely going to die from it because he had neither money for the care required for one to recover from it. Howard remembered thinking about the matter and scoffing.
It was on one of those particular days that he received a call from his father. The manager of the farm had called on him as he worked in the stables and asked him to pick up the phone. The man was apparently asking for Howard and he thought it was one of his neighbours calling to see what he had been up to.
"Hello?" he said into the phone. There was the sound of light breathing from the other side.
"Come home," the other person said, startling Howard immensely. It was a voice he knew well and had come to loathe. Yet there it was, vulnerably asking him to return home.
"Why?" he asked, not wanting to give away the fear that was tingling up his spine. "I am not going anywhere near you." He said roughly. He was about to hang up when he heard his father's cough from the other side.
"Kid, I am sick. You grew up in front of my eyes. I am your father. Surely, you won't abandon me!" he coaxed, but Howard was beyond angry. How could he dare to ask him to come back?
"You beat me up every day and accused me of several crimes I didn't commit," he accused.
"I was wrong, please come back," he pled.
He was close to hanging up but a sick sense of satisfaction overcame him. He wanted nothing more than to watch his father slowly wither away, his body rotting from his disease, being able to do nothing as he experienced excruciating pain. He would have gone back for that simple reason, but he knew how devious that father of his was. He could have made up lies and spread them so that he could empathize with him and come back to take care of him.
No, Howard was not going back to that place ever again, absolutely not when he knew what would happen to him if he went. Not only him, but also Henry would become abused by his father yet again.
He coldly hung up the phone and left the house.
He would only return to the house the day his father died and shoot his body in his grave just to make sure nothing could bring him back. Mercy? He didn't have those sort of ideas for a man who pretended to be sick and leeched off his sons. Mercy? He didn't have it for the two-faced mother of his who left him when it mattered the most. Mercy? He didn't even have it for the brother of his who made sure to steal his parents from him and make him live like a slave in his own home. He was done with them. He would no longer have anything to do with these people. He was decided.
.
Everyone slept peacefully at the barn, but Howard sat on his bed, a withered look on his face as he gazed on his sleeping brother. The palms of his hand sweated as fear and intention gripped him. This was it, if not for Henry then how would his mother have abandoned him and gone away? And he dared to be better than Howard. He dared to flaunt his better conditions in front of his older brother, the man who had raised him and helped feed and clothe him. Howard was filled with rage.
He heard the light snoring coming from Henry and sighed heavily. He went back to bed, scared of what he was about to do. He closed his eyes and dreamt of butchering his brother.
.
Days passed as his dreams and intentions recurred. It plagued him to even look at his brother without thinking of the various ways he could do away with the pest that had invaded his life and taken absent from him everything that he knew. It was all Henry's faultl, his mind kept telling him.
One night he finally snapped. He gripped his brother by the throat and fiercely pressed down and ended his little life. The deep-seated fear of being found left his body when he went to the outhouse to get the metal tools and dismember him. He remembered the time he had stabbed the poor frog to death and realized that this… this was much better.
The monster inside him churned and reared its ugly head as he proceeded with the process… His eyes glowed with delight as he tied the limbs in the sheet they had been sleeping on and took it out into the forests early next morning.
His brother had run away. Everyone knew that he did.
Maybe he went back to their abusive father or farm life didn't suit him.
No one questioned his absence. They had seen too many people come and go.
The madness in his brother's eyes escaped these people.
Until one day they were being questioned about his life.
The cops said he killed people. They couldn't understand how such a strange yet good boy could do something of the sort. And that was the story of Howard Hunt.