Beast

by Watt Key

  But even if I could find the location, I had no way of knowing if this man still lived there. The only thing I knew for sure is he was the closest opportunity for getting to the truth. I felt I had to find this farm and this man if I were to even begin putting my life back together again.

  I made a desperate decision.

  * * *

  I figured it would take me most of the night to walk the twenty miles to Yellow Jacket. Of course Uncle John would discover I was gone the next morning, so I left a note to keep him from worrying too much.

  Dear Uncle John,

  I want you to know I am okay. I have gone looking for answers. I’ll be back when I have them. Thank you for everything you’ve done, and please try not to worry about me.

  Adam

  7

  I took my schoolbooks out of my backpack and stuffed it with an extra pair of jeans, a few pairs of socks, a flannel shirt, an undershirt, and a rain jacket. The temperature hadn’t gotten below the midfifties, so I didn’t think I needed more. Then I slipped on my fishing cap and stepped out of the room.

  I stopped in the kitchen and checked my wallet. I counted twelve dollars. Then I rummaged through the kitchen and found a penlight, a few packages of peanut butter crackers, two cans of Vienna sausage, and three plastic bottles of water. I put these things in with the clothes, slung the backpack over my shoulder, and stepped out into the night.

  * * *

  There’s not much to Cross City. It’s basically a pass-through town with a population of no more than two thousand people. Once you get on the main highway and walk past two gas stations and a Dollar General, you’re into the countryside. Then it’s pine trees and palms on both sides of the blacktop and the occasional farmhouse and cow pasture.

  The highway is mostly deserted that time of night. I plodded along the roadside, the sky clear and specked with stars. Frogs cheeped from the ditches, and crickets chirped from the scrub. Occasionally I heard the lonely call of an owl from a place even deeper into the forest. Just a week before, if you’d asked me to walk this road alone in the dark, I would have been frightened. Now I felt impervious to it all. Fear had been redefined for me.

  It was almost one o’clock in the morning before I came to Highway 349, just outside of Fanning Springs. Had I kept walking another mile, I would have come to the site of the accident, but I didn’t want to go there and dwell on it. I had to keep moving ahead. So I turned and started south on the road to Yellow Jacket, visualizing the Suwannee River edging closer and soon to be paralleling me from the east. Somewhere, between me and the river, was where the creature had walked.

  Before the accident the Suwannee was little more to me than just another river we crossed over heading into south Florida. I’d heard the famous song about it, and in school we talked about the gulf sturgeon migrating up it in spring and leaving late fall. But the river was an hour away from Perry, so it wasn’t a place I often considered. Occasionally there were stories in the news of people getting killed when their boats collided with leaping sturgeon, but I didn’t give them much thought. The dangers of the Suwannee just weren’t anything I ever expected to encounter. Little did I know just how mysterious and vast the scope of these dangers were.

  * * *

  There were no houses on the road to Yellow Jacket, and I didn’t pass a single car. My watch showed four o’clock in the morning when I arrived at a crossroads. There wasn’t even a stop sign. The only indication I’d arrived was a sign for County Road 34, pointing down a sandy dirt road into a pine plantation. I walked about a mile before the pines suddenly ended and I saw an overgrown pasture to my left. Even if there had been a cedar tree in the middle of it, there was no way to see through the wild tangle of cabbage palms, palmetto, briars, and brambles.

  I kept walking until I came to a driveway that led into a two-acre cutout of the old field. I saw a farmhouse with a single light glowing over the front porch. To the left of the house was what looked like a barn, and I reasoned this was as good a place as any to start. But I was tired, and it was too late and dark to be creeping around a stranger’s property. It would have to wait until morning. So I lay down on the roadside and used my backpack as a pillow. Then I closed my eyes and slept without nightmares for the first time since I’d left the hospital.

  * * *

  I woke to the sun shining over the treetops onto my face. I looked at my watch and saw it was just past eight o’clock in the morning. I sat up and studied the farmhouse. It was wood framed and mostly gray where the paint had flaked off. To the left was a barn with some of the roof collapsed. There was a rusty pickup truck with flat tires in the side yard. Had there not been a light on behind the front windows, I would have thought the place abandoned.

  I approached the house and stopped before it. There was a ramp at one end of the porch and concrete steps in the middle. I studied the windows and listened but didn’t hear anything. I walked up the steps onto the porch, and boards creaked underfoot as I approached the front door. Then I knocked and waited. Nothing. After a moment I knocked again. Still nothing. I stepped sideways and peered into a window.

  “Hello?” I called out.

  There was no answer. I knocked again. I thought I heard the floor creaking from inside.

  “Hello?” I said again.

  “What do you want!” a man shouted.

  “I’m Adam Parks from Cross City,” I said.

  “I’m not buying anything, and I don’t have a phone!”

  “I’m not here to sell anything, and I don’t need to call anybody. I just want to ask you a question.”

  “Then ask me.”

  “Are you the one that wrote in about Bigfoot?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “In 2013. Someone reported they’d seen one nearby in 1991.”

  “The answer’s no. Get off my property.”

  “Did you live here in 1991?”

  “That’s two questions.”

  “Did you hear about it?”

  “That’s three questions. Get out of here before I stick a shotgun in your face.”

  I wasn’t convinced the man was telling the truth, but I didn’t know what else to do besides travel farther down the road and look for another house. I stepped off the porch and walked into the yard and stopped and looked around. Something caught my eye to the right. I studied an overgrown patch of cabbage palms and palmetto. In the midst of it were the rusty remains of a tractor. I slowly turned and studied the edges of the yard, staring deep into the underbrush. And I began to see more. There was the black outline of a rotten cattle chute. There was an aluminum cattle gate that seemed to lead to nowhere. I looked at the barn again. On the second story a hayloft door hung open like it had been stuck that way for years. This place had definitely been a cattle farm once. And if I really wanted to make sure it was the right one, somewhere out in that overgrown field would be the large cedar tree.

  8

  I went back to the road in case the man was watching me. Then I walked out of sight of the driveway and stepped off into the thicket. I remembered something Dad told me on one of our walks in the woods. He said if you wanted to go in a straight line, find a big tree in the distance and walk toward it. If there weren’t any trees, you could rely on the sun, making small adjustments for its westerly movement. In this case there were no big trees to be seen. I kept the sun over my right shoulder and started fighting my way through the underbrush.

  It didn’t take me long to intersect what looked like a deer trail heading in the same general direction. By ducking down I was able to make easier progress. I went another hundred yards, and the brush thinned enough for me to stand and peer into the treetops. And I saw it off to my right, the evergreen canopy of the cedar rising out of the tangled ruin.

  As I approached the lost cedar, an eerie feeling fell over me. It seemed there was still something of the creature’s presence lingering ghostlike in this place. I imagined the old pasture as it must have been y
ears before, lush and green. I pictured the creature sitting beneath this very same tree, eating from the cow leg.

  I ran my hand over the bark and sat next to it, thinking perhaps I was sitting in the very place the creature had been. I leaned against the trunk and looked up into the canopy. If only this tree could tell me what it had seen. But I felt I was getting closer now. A calm settled over me, and I closed my eyes and slept again.

  * * *

  When I woke it was late afternoon, and the air was getting cooler. Now I knew this was the right place, but I still didn’t know if I’d found the right man. He could be someone new who had moved here. There was only one way to find out.

  I approached the farmhouse again. This time I didn’t knock. I knew he heard me crossing the porch, and I knew he was listening.

  “I saw one,” I said.

  There was no response.

  “He was in the road near Fanning Springs. People think I’m crazy. I just wanted to talk to somebody.”

  A few moments of silence followed. Then I heard a commotion inside. The door opened, and the man was sitting before me in a wheelchair. He looked to be about seventy years old. His face was tan and lined, like he’d spent a lifetime in the sun. His hair was white and wispy and tied into a ponytail.

  “I just want to know what it is,” I said.

  He studied me for a moment. “I don’t get many visitors.”

  “I won’t stay long. I’ll stay out here on the porch if you want.”

  The man frowned and backed the wheelchair away from the door. “Come inside,” he said.

  * * *

  The farmhouse reminded me of our hunting cabin. It was made out of rough-sawn, untreated pine and smelled like turpentine and mothballs. The furniture was old and wooden, with the varnish worn off in all places a hand would touch or an arm would rest. There were spiderwebs in the corners of the ceiling, and the drapes beside the windows were threadbare and torn. Most of the light bulbs were burned out, the remaining bulbs illuminating the room in a sickly yellow light.

  “Sit down,” the man said, pointing to a small kitchen table in the center of what appeared to be the living room.

  “All right,” I said.

  I pulled out one of the wooden chairs and sat in it.

  “What is it you want?” he said.

  I told the man the story of the accident. He stared at me and listened to it all without interrupting. When I was done, he didn’t say anything for a few seconds. Then he scratched behind his ear and grunted to himself.

  “Looks like you’re still pretty banged up.”

  “It doesn’t hurt anymore.”

  “You want a root beer?”

  “Sure. Thank you.”

  Along one wall was a countertop and sink, stove, and refrigerator. The man wheeled across the floor to the refrigerator. He got out two bottles of Barq’s root beer and brought them to the table. He parked across from me, opened both of them with the edge of a pocketknife, and slid one over. I picked it up and took a long swallow and didn’t remember anything ever tasting so good.

  The man was fidgety. His hands and everything about him seemed to constantly twitch.

  “How’d you get here?” he asked.

  “I walked.”

  “From where?”

  “Cross City.”

  “Cross City?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “That’s a long walk.”

  “Yes, sir. It is.”

  “What for?”

  “I told you. Because I want to find the person who lived here that was supposed to have seen a Bigfoot.”

  “Okay. Here I am.”

  I drew a deep breath, relaxed into my chair, and took another swig of root beer.

  “I just want to talk to somebody else who’s seen one,” I continued. “Just to know I’m not losing my mind.”

  The man took another swallow, set the bottle on the table, and leaned back in his chair.

  “You’re mighty young for all this.”

  “I wish I’d never seen it.”

  “I know how you feel. You can’t sleep, can you?”

  I shook my head.

  “You have nightmares?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You think maybe I can fix all this for you?”

  “I don’t know what to think anymore.”

  He leaned forward and locked eyes with me. “If it’s proof you came looking for, you won’t find it here. All I’ve got is old stories. Stories nobody wants to hear.”

  “I want to hear them,” I said.

  9

  The man studied me like he might change his mind about telling me the stories. But after a moment he sat back in the wheelchair and began talking.

  “I saw it sitting out there in my pasture with its legs crossed. Leaning over one of my cows it had ripped apart. It looked up at me, and its eyes were black as caves. It had blood dripping from its mouth. Had teeth like a person. Had a face like a person. Like a caveman or something. But it was covered in hair and must have been ten feet tall. It wasn’t scared of me at all.”

  “What was it?”

  “An abomination. Something that’s been around a lot longer than us. Inbred and crossbred into all different kinds of things. Part ape, part human, maybe part other stuff.”

  “How many do you think there are?”

  “Hard to say. People see them all over the world.”

  “I mean around here?”

  “There must have been a bigger group at one time. Maybe they migrated down in the fall and went back north in the spring. Now my guess is that there’s only a dozen, or less, though I’ve only ever seen the one.”

  “The one I saw was headed this way. He was crossing the road in this direction.”

  “The Refuge is their wintering ground. You used to hear them in the night, starting around this time of year. At first I thought it was coyotes or wildcats. Then I saw that big one out in the pasture. And I remembered how my grandpa told me about swamp apes in the hammock. I was a boy about your age then. I thought he was trying to scare me into staying close. I think he always knew about them.”

  “Do you still hear them?”

  “No. I think they stay deeper in the Refuge now. But they used to come around a lot. I remember one time my grandpa took me out to feed the cows. When we were done, he had me sit on the tailgate of his truck with a sack of sulfur. Had me sprinkle it on the ground while he drove around the outside of the pasture fence. Said it kept out snakes and swamp apes.”

  “They don’t like the way it smells?”

  “I don’t know. I guess. He never said.”

  “Can they talk?”

  “Not that I’ve ever heard. But they can do lots of things.”

  “Like what?”

  The man leaned forward and got his root beer and sat back with it. He took another swallow.

  “Tell me your name again.”

  “Adam Parks.”

  “Travis Stanley,” he said. “People just call me Stanley. I’d come over and shake your hand, but as you can see, I don’t get around too easy.”

  “That’s fine,” I said.

  “They never found your parents?”

  “No, sir. I’m living with my Uncle John. I guess he’s wondering where I am.”

  “You could call him if I had a phone.”

  I looked down and shook my head. “He’d just come get me. But I’m not ready to go. I need some more answers about these things.”

  “I hate to break it to you, but that’s the big problem. There’s lots of theories and opinions, but no answers.”

  “I don’t understand how people can’t know about them.”

  “The government covers it up. You go public with any convincing evidence, and they’ll get rid of it. Then they’ll send the military in to try and kill it.”

  “But there’s stuff all over the internet.”

  “Yeah, in case you haven’t noticed, there’s stuff about everything all over the internet.”
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  “But there’s all the encounter stories and pictures and videos.”

  “You ever seen a real clear photo or video of a Sasquatch?”

  I shook my head.

  “That’s right. And most people will tell you all those stories of sightings are from wackos or people making them up for attention. And that’s what the government wants you to think.”

  “Why would they cover it up?”

  “Some say people would be too scared to go in the woods anymore. Then the national park system would fail, which would hurt the economy. Some say environmental groups would try to protect these things and hurt the logging business. I think some of that might be true, but it doesn’t make total sense. These creatures are spotted all over the planet. You can’t tell me every government in the world has gotten together and decided to hide these things. No, there’s more to it. I think the government’s come up against something they don’t know how to control. And the last thing a politician wants to admit is he’s not in control.”

  I nodded, taking it all in.

  “These creatures can do things that aren’t natural.”

  “Like what?”

  Stanley paused while he took another sip of his root beer.

  “There’s a part of the story I didn’t tell that BSO reporter. I didn’t think they’d believe me, but now I’ve read about others that reported the same thing.”

  “You mean the reports about them coming from UFOs?”

  “Naw, I never saw anything like that. I’m talking about infrasound. The thing made me sick.”

  “Like how?”