Beast
Page 13
I’m starting a website called “Adam’s Bigfoot”—a sort of underground blog where people can share their own encounters and talk to people like me to help them make sense of it all and keep them from feeling as alone as we did. That’s my new sense of purpose.
Without Uncle John I don’t think I could even attempt to come across as normal. He won’t ever replace my parents, but he’s my dad now. And he’s a good one. I still don’t know if he really buys into Bigfoot or not. I don’t talk to him about it, and it really doesn’t matter. I know he understands the creatures are a part of my life now, and he supports me. Most of all, he remains my link to the “others”—what Stanley and I call people who haven’t experienced what we have. Because even if you believe, until you meet one of these things face-to-face, you will never understand the effect it has on you.
I think it’s possible that one day you might see one of these creatures for yourself. The human population is expanding, and we are constantly driving them out of the forests and into the open. There are more sightings every year. And when the day comes, and your world is changed forever, I’m here to talk to you about it. And tell you you’re not crazy at all.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
I have never seen Bigfoot or anything like it. But I did have something happen to me that often has me wondering if such a creature exists. A few years ago, on an afternoon in early December, I was deer hunting on our family farm in a remote part of the Mississippi Delta. This area is mostly cropland, but there are large swaths of dark, swampy marsh with black cypress brakes and impenetrable cane thickets. I have hunted these swamps most of my life, and I’m familiar enough with the woods to walk through them in the dark without a light.
That afternoon I was sitting in a ladder stand fifteen feet off the ground in a hardwood bottom about a mile from the farmhouse. The woods were alive with the cheeping of birds and scurrying of squirrels, all going about their pre-evening rituals of socializing and gathering food. As the sun dropped below the treetops and long shadows fell over me, I settled into my chair in anticipation of dusk, the best hunting time of the day.
About forty-five minutes before nightfall, an uneasy feeling slipped over me. Then it occurred to me that the woods had become completely quiet. I looked around, and there were no more birds, no more squirrels, nothing. Everything had fled or gone silent. The woods felt so suddenly empty, it was unnerving.
Suddenly, I didn’t want to be there. Aside from the fact that no deer seemed likely to show themselves, something else wasn’t right. I felt like I was being watched. I know from years of hunting that there is a subtle telepathy existing between animals. Imagine being in a room full of people. If you pick a person out of the crowd and stare at them, chances are they will turn and look at you. The same thing exists when hunting. When I am stalking an animal, I try not to look directly at it until it’s time to take my shot. Somehow they can sense it.
I grew so uneasy I decided to come down out of my stand and head back toward the farmhouse to see if I could spot a deer while there was still enough daylight to shoot. The woods start getting dark fast once the sun is gone below the trees, so I was going to have to hurry.
I shouldered my rifle and a small backpack of supplies I carried and began walking. The next thing I know, I’m standing at the base of the same ladder stand I had just left. As I said, I know these woods well. This never happens. I was so confused I briefly wondered if I was sick. Then, to make matters even stranger, it didn’t seem like the woods had grown any darker. Like maybe I’d never even left. But I distinctly remembered walking and the sound of the leaves crunching under my boots in the eerie silence. But I couldn’t actually remember the walk itself. I still can’t.
I made it back to the farmhouse that evening and met up with the other hunters. I didn’t discuss what had happened to me that evening. I didn’t know how to explain it.
Not long after this incident, I was listening to a radio show that was hosting a man who claimed to have seen Sasquatch and was describing his encounter. This man was deer hunting like me, and just before he saw the creature, the woods went silent, like everything scurried away and hid in the presence of this thing. But I didn’t connect his experience to my own until he mentioned something called infrasound. This hunter believed the creature emitted a sound that left him disoriented and dizzy. Something like a dog whistle—a sound on a frequency humans can’t hear. He suspected the creature used this ability as either a defense mechanism or a weapon. And I thought about the day I was hunting.
Like most people, it is hard for me to grasp such a creature as Sasquatch exists. But I’m overwhelmed by the number of witnesses coming forth every day, claiming to have seen what amounts to a giant, humanlike ape walking on two legs. Unlike most, I have no problem accepting such a creature can live relatively undiscovered in the wilderness areas of the United States. The next time you are in a plane, just look out the window at all the unpopulated forested areas. And I have no problem accepting no remains of such a creature have been found. If Sasquatch exists it is an apex meat-eating predator. In all my years of hunting, I have never found the naturally dead body of a predator in the wild. People often find dead deer and rabbits and other prey but rarely, if ever, a predator like a coyote or bobcat or mountain lion or bear. These animals usually die of natural causes and crawl off someplace remote and hidden to spend their final hours. And within days their remains are eaten by other animals.
But in today’s world of trail cameras and drones and a video recorder on everyone’s phone, why is there still no compelling evidence of a live one? If all these people are seeing them, why aren’t they taking better pictures? Why can’t we catch up with this thing? That’s the part I have a hard time accepting. But even then, I consider that I’ve been hunting buck deer for more than forty years. As of today it is estimated there are more than thirty million deer in the United States. I think it’s reasonable to assume that if Sasquatch exists, their population relative to bucks would be at least one in a thousand and probably much less. I see fewer than ten bucks a year in the woods. And in all my years of hunting, I’ve only captured video of one. I recorded it on my phone, and it was so blurry it wasn’t worth showing.
In the end I’m left believing there’s got to be something more to Sasquatch. I don’t know what it is, but I do know there are a lot of people thinking about it. And in this story I give you what some of them say is really going on.
Watt Key
Mobile, Alabama
BOOKS BY WATT KEY
Alabama Moon
Dirt Road Home
Fourmile
Terror at Bottle Creek
Hideout
Deep Water
Beast: Face-to-Face with the Florida Bigfoot
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Albert Watkins Key, Jr., publishing under the name Watt Key, is an award-winning southern fiction author. He grew up and currently lives in southern Alabama with his wife and family. Watt spent much of his childhood hunting and fishing the forests of Alabama, which inspired his debut novel, Alabama Moon, published to national acclaim in 2006. Alabama Moon won the 2007 E.B. White Read-Aloud Award, was included on Time Magazine’s list of the Best One Hundred YA Books of All Time, and has been translated in seven languages. You can sign up for email updates here.
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Epilogue
Author’s Note
Books by Watt Key
About the Author
Copyright
Farrar Straus Giroux Books for Young Readers
An imprint of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC
120 Broadway, New York, NY 10271
Text copyright © 2020 by Watt Key
All rights reserved
First hardcover edition, 2020
eBook edition, April 2020
mackids.com
Library of Congress Control Number: 2019943446
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eISBN 9780374313685