The Beast of Bridgewater

by David Willoughby

window, but it occurred at the same time as the scratching noise. It had to come from two different animals. I lay in bed with a mild irrational panic for a few moments longer before I decided to set foot on the ground. The carpet felt like fur beneath my feet, a product of my imaginings of what might be outside of the window. As I crept across the floor towards the window the panting and the scratching fueled my anxiety. I reached the window and flung back the curtain.

  The outside was black. Not merely dark but black. I tried to peer out in to the darkness but the shade of the trees blotted out any moonlight and the darkness of the breezeway was absolute. I could hear the panting coming from the other side of the window. Suddenly a portion of the window right in front of my face began to fog up.

  I immediately shut the curtain. I could not see whatever was out there but I had no doubt in my mind it could see me. The scratching on the walls stopped. I crept to my door and slowly and carefully turned the knob. The front door was just to my right. I quickly checked the lock on the door; both the main door lock and the dead bolt were securely in place. I slide back in to my own room and turned the lock on my own door knob. The three locks on the door and the end of the scratching was enough for me to fall back in to a light sleep.

  I found my roommates to be sluggish in the morning, as they had been the prior day. I now worried that they might be hearing the same noises that had kept me awake at night. I would be working around noon today and be back around six. It was an odd schedule but it would give me time to eat an actual dinner. I thought little about the haunting episode from last night. I figured I was merely reacting poorly to the new place. A neighbor’s dog is no reason to panic.

  My morning tea was augmented with the caffeine from a soda as I headed out to work at noon. The parking lot was the usual barren wasteland of asphalt. The highway to work was packed with lunch traffic. I found the midday ride an almost alien experience after nearly a month of evening shifts.

  That evening I parked in the still desolate lot outside of the apartment. I walked in to the apartment to see my roommates lounging in the living room. They had yet to clean up from their dinners and as I went to cook my first real meal in weeks I noticed that almost every pot in the house was laying in the sink. I splashed around with the water and a sponge but after a hard day’s work I merely did not have the energy to clean them out. I resigned myself to another microwave dinner. My roommates watched some cheap discount bin horror movie before leaving for their respective rooms. I sat in the living room finishing some assignments before I eventually retired to my own room. I fell asleep very quickly.

  I awoke with a start, there were multiple things scratching at the outer wall. They were some distance apart and the heavy panting of the nights before was now accompanied by sniffing, the kind you might hear from a hound dog on the trail of a fox. My curtains once again blocked my view of the outside. I dared not repeat my trip to the window, the air of my room seemed more sinister that night. The clawing at the side of my building was intense, so much so that I feared damage to the exterior.

  I left my bed and silently moved towards the door. I had locked it that night; subconsciously I guess I feared another visit. I checked the front door once more, the bottom was locked but the deadbolt was left unlatched. I moved my hand towards the lock and slowly slide it in to place. I moved as silently as possible but upon securing the bolt there was a tell-tale click. I felt a slight push against the door and something began sniffing from just the other side. I lifted my eye to the peep hole and tried to see what ever might be there.

  The darkness thwarted me. Whatever was on the other side of the key hole might as well have its wretched hand covering the glass. I balked to think that a sniffing growling thing would have hands and shuddered at the deformed appendages that became apparent in my mind’s eye. I detested the thoughts that coursed through my mind in those few minutes standing before the door, that portal to madness and derangement, the meaning of lunacy finally striking home under the mysteriously absent light of the moon.

  That was when the first of my roommates stumbled in to the living room. It was the couple furthest from the front door. They shuffled in to the living room and clicked on the little lamp in the corner. It illuminated the room without blinding any one. I do not remember what words were exchanged in those minutes that the other couples filtered sleepily in to the living room but we soon developed a full picture of what was going on.

   The only room to have been spared the noises was the one without an exterior window, however he they were being kept awake by the chatter coming from the other rooms. Noises of a decidedly bestial nature seemed to be coming from outside of every window. Being on the ground floor actually put us above the terrace floor.  The room that had no ground access had heard scratching and climbing noises. That was the room we started our investigation in. Like a squad of militia men we moved in to the room. The sounds were obviously coming from the walls outside. The window was curiously left alone. With it being exposed as it was I saw no obvious breath prints as I had in my room that second night. The night was still the deepest black under the trees above the complex. There was no looking outside.

  We moved to the next room and to the next. It was almost four by the time we had investigated fully. This left little time before dawn but no one seemed to have sleep on their mind. We all gathered in the living room and sat.

  It was a long wait for morning. We sat in the living room staring across the room at each other. We spoke little in the intermittent moments of silence but for the most part took silent solace in the knowledge that we all knew that the sounds were not the products of our imaginations. Looking back one might ask why no one bothered to open the door and chase away whatever the things were. Maybe it was cowardice; maybe it was a desire to just forget it. Perhaps it was the air of dread that the constant din held over the building.

  With the rising sun came the rather sudden end to the noises that had haunted our darkened hours. As it ended a sudden feeling of utter silliness over the situation struck us all. We laughed at our own stupidity. The area around the neighborhood was heavily wooded and the land rather undeveloped. It was easy to imagine that a whole host of animals might make noises around the apartment at night.

  That morning we all left to go to our respective jobs and school. I had class that day and took the time after my lecture to head to the library. I didn’t know what my roommates truly believed but I found it hard to think that those noises I had heard in each and every room were the work of squirrels and birds. I decided to the only thing my work in the discipline of history had prepared me for, research and reading.

  The library was a musty refuge from my thoughts. I relished the day off work and even the fact of boring lectures was not enough to dampen the spirits to which I hit the stacks of books. I may not be the best at my job and I may not be able to count on the support of a loved one, but here in the stacks I am at home. The smell of the books fills my nose and for an instant I forget why I am there. The sounds from last night come creeping back in to my thoughts and I head towards the indexes.

  The slightly outdated system was new to the college, but an old friend of mine. It took me only a few minutes to find a few local history books and to pull up several documents of importance. I had no idea what I was looking for but I knew that if Bridgewater was harboring a secret I would find it. I was in my element and settled down for solemna day of study and research.

  The books and documents were of very little help. They told of treaties with natives and local slave trade. The local histories told of the exodus of the natives inspired by Andrew Jackson. I am familiar with this portion of history, but the texts talk about a group who were given permission to maintain their tribal lands. This struck me as very interesting. I decided to look more closely at this tribe.

  In all the records and references I never read a name for the tribe, they seemed to be referred to separately from the other natives but no mention of a tribal name appeared in a
ll of the papers. In sales documents on slave trade I found a shipping manifesto and a few sales bills that were perfect. The groups of natives are referred to as simply “the dirt skins”. This was a popular euphemism for some natives of the East Coast and it was a jack pot. One of the sales slips gives an order for 14 slaves. The average cost of a slave at that time was about that of a new sports car, so this was a hefty order for a group of people who probably hadn’t adopted real currency.

  I found that the man they ordered from had a made few other shipments of this kind to Bridgewater with no specific payment. It was then that I read a small journal entry from a slave trader who talked about his disdain for a fellow trader who looked decidedly “dirt skinned”, he had also remarked on the man’s almost predatory smile and said it sent shivers down his spine. This second “dirt skinned” trader seemed to be the man making the local slave deliveries. With a little more digging I found the shipping and delivery order. The slaves were going to be taken from the port of Savannah all the way up near the burgeoning city of Terminus, later known as Thrasherville and then Atlanta, by wagon. The directions