The Ring of Cacciatore
The crest on his ring was black with a gold outline of a man raising his sword above his
head. At the tip of the sword splayed a lion on its back. The band was dark gold, tarnished,
appearing as if it was hundreds of years old. Lopsided swirls and ripples of pewter interrupted
the monotony of the rusting band. The thing was enormous. It spanned the entire gap between
the middle knuckle and the knuckle that connected his ring finger to the rest of his right hand. If
he were to take it off, that half of the finger would stand starkly against the orangey tan of the
rest of his skin. He would expose the shriveled and ghostly paleness that lives underneath the
hideous monstrosity.
Whenever Leonardo Cacciatore spoke to me, he would gesture wildly with his oversized
hands. He would wave his right hand in front of him as if to draw attention to the chunk of
unfortunate jewelry. I swore that he did it on purpose, and I loathed him for it. Every wild
movement he made with his arms, emanating his scent of tobacco and pomade, called for my
respect of him and his ring. I dreaded his speeches, always featuring stories of how he had
inherited all of his furniture or how successful his last hunting trip had been, and telling me I
should investigate the new heads on the wall of his study. He would stand three feet in front of
me, wearing his long red robe and black slippers of some animal skin or another, and act as if he
were some fascinating role model that I should follow. He would finish each speech with the
phrase, “old boy,” and then send me off into another part of his manor so that he could go about
his mysterious business. I believe he felt that he was entitled to treat his employees as both his
progeny and as lucky strangers who had received the chance to work for him and live humbly in
his presence. He acted like he thought he was a king with a right to be adored, respected, and
admired for his divine right. I only tolerated him because, dreadful as it was, the mansion was a
place to stay, and he paid decently. He also never asked questions of my past.
Before I had long been working in the cold estate, I learned to look forward to
Cacciatore’s business outings and hunting trips. I would watch the tip of his long, black coat
swing behind him out the door, then listen until the clicking of his shoes ceased and he ducked
his silver head into the open cab door of the car. Once the short old man was gone, I could set
my plan in action.
The mansion was just like the ring. Dark, ancient furniture with ghastly carvings and
knots filled each room. Bookcases were lined along the top with decorative carvings like
gargoyles. Cushions and carpets were different shades of red, from pure, bloodlike red to a deep,
velvety maroon. There were paintings of frowning men, his ancestors, of animals of prey, and
lions, knights, hunters. Weapons lined the walls for more decoration. It was so dark that it
seemed taboo when the morning light shone through the windows. The study, the room of animal
trophies, was the worst of all. Walls, ceiling, and furniture were all wood. Above eye level, not
an inch was spared of remnants of a dead animal. There was only one window, long and slim,
lined with deep red curtains. Carpeting the wood floor were animal skins. A room of death,
though I know he esteemed it as his room of triumph.
I began my plan minutely. I switched the places of two nearly identical bedside lamps.
Both lamps were burgundy with off-white shades. Gold brush strokes decorated the red surfaces.
The only difference between them was that one had previously been broken, and the harsh lines
where it had cracked were apparent near the base. The broken one sat on the left of his bed. I
switched it with the still pristine lamp on the right. I couldn’t tell if the murderer noticed when he
returned home.
During his next outing, I switched the pillows around on all of the couches. These, too,
were all very similar to one another. Many of them had the same crest as on his ring. All of them
were red, with either black or gold sewn in somewhere. Some were leather, some were velvet,
and some were silk. I mixed up every ornamental pillow in every room. Still, the man seemed to
perceive nothing amiss.
After that, I grew bolder. I moved the armoire in his bedroom, another ghastly large and
dark piece of furniture, a foot farther to the left of the doorway, so that it now lined up perfectly
with the window on the opposite wall. He would be sure to notice this move when he lay down
in bed. Normally the armoire would block a bit of one’s line of vision from the bed through the
doorway. I am sure that he had a harder time falling asleep that night.
Every week, the furniture shifted slightly. I believe Cacciatore began to wonder whether
his furniture had actually developed a mind of its own, or whether he was simply going mad. It
soon became difficult to remember what the manor had looked like beforehand. I had grown so
audacious that I now altered something in the house every night. Sometimes I moved things back
and forth between different locations. I could see him stare at a misplaced table, trying to
remember if it had always been in that spot. After that I would move the table back and watch
him struggle to decide if he had been imagining things the day before. I moved rugs from the
centers of the rooms. Days later I moved them back. I angled chairs differently. I fixed them. I
tilted paintings. I straightened them. I shifted the books around on their shelves. I reordered
them.
After months of this, Cacciatore had begun to spend the majority of his time in his study.
The room with the animal heads. The room of death. The one room that I did not touch for the
dozens of deer heads, moose heads, bear heads, even one cougar head, with all of their eyes
staring at me, watching my every move. Perhaps he understood the room as his one haven from
the troublesome ghost of the estate. But his paranoia did not plateau. He ceased leaving on any
more excursions. He nearly completely ceased leaving the study. But I could see his tiny green
eyes dart around at the walls when he sat at his desk. He watched his belongings avidly,
fearfully, daring them to move around now. I would bring him his dinners straight from the
kitchen, and he would take the tray quickly from me and urge me to go on, he needed no more
assistance. His ring waved in my face no more.
I was satisfied. I stopped contorting the arrangement of the Cacciatore estate. The
furniture now sat, stagnant, where it all had originated. But Cacciatore still kept himself locked
in his study. He never left at all anymore. He stayed in his red robe, moving only between his
desk and the window. He slept in the window seat, a hard, uncomfortable leather surface. At
night, I began to hear him whimper through the wooden door. The soft sound grew. Night by
night, the whimper evolved into a groan, a cry, a sob. He moaned for everything around him to
freeze. One night, right at midnight, the sobbing lurched into a deep bellow and then high
pitched howling. “Stop! Leave me alone! What do you want from me? What do you want from
me?”
The next morning when I brought his tray of breakfast, I heard him muttering to himself,
“They’re watching me. They’re always watching me. They’re still alive. How can they still be
alive? I killed them! I killed all of them!” I set the tray on his desk and left, not daring ask how
he slept. He took no time to recognize that I had entered the room. His eyes remained flitting
from the deer, to the bears, to the cougar right above him.
This continued for many days, until one final night. This night was very quiet. I fell
asleep by midnight, convinced that Cacciatore had found safety from his madness. But soon the
sound of heavy breathing interrupted my dreams. I searched through the darkness in my mind for
the source of the breathing and found him.
He lay on the window seat, quivering and panting. His eyes wildly rolled around in their
sockets. Suddenly, he bolted upright. Was this a dream? The eyes glowed at us on the walls. The
dozens of small pairs of lights glinted and blinked as we scanned them all. The pair directly
above the desk smoldered the brightest. Those feline eyes lured our gaze. Now there was nothing
else but those two bright beads. They grew, wider and wider. Inch by inch they were making
their way towards us. The eyes shone green as the cougar stalked closer into his range of vision.
Its body was no longer severed, its neck lined with a circle of blood where its head had once
attached to a plaque on the wall. Its muscles clenched, skin and fur folding over itself as its body
lowered to its enormous gray paws, ready to pounce.
With a roar, it leapt toward us. Its teeth and claws stretched in front of it. Its eyes glinted
with rage. Closer and closer it came. In our last glimpse, the cat had grown a dark mane and pale
yellow fur. The mane shook.
And then all was darkness. The eyes had disappeared. Cacciatore and the room of trophy
heads were silent.