Luke stared out the cracked forward window at a beast like something out of a nightmare. The thing in front of the Chevy stood at least nine feet tall. Despite the ambient light of the truck’s one still-functional high beam, the thing’s eyes seemed to glow a bright shade of yellow in the night. Its lips were twisted in a snarl of pain and anger. Thick brown hair covered the beast from head to toe and was wet with fresh blood near its hip where the truck had crashed into it as the beast had come barreling across the road. The beast stood on two legs like a person would, but its arms were overly long like those an ape’s. One look into those burning yellow eyes and Luke knew he was a dead man. He shoved open the driver’s door and half-leaped, half-fell out of the truck’s cab into the gravel. It scuffed his hands and knees, cutting into them, but Luke ignored the pain. All he could think about was getting away from the thing that was already in the process of moving around the mangled front of the Chevy towards him. Luke scrambled to his feet and took off running as fast as he could. He could hear the panting of the beast behind him as it raced after him. The beast’s breathing reminded him of the slow puffing of a locomotive, and he didn’t doubt that the thing’s legs were just that powerful. Luke had barely made it a few steps before he felt the fingers of the beast’s overly large hand close on the back of his coat. Their nails scraped his skin as they tore through cloth, and the beast got a good hold on him. It picked him up seemingly without any real effort on its part and tossed him across the road into the trunk of a tree on the opposite side.
He hit the tree with enough force that his breath left his lungs in a grunt of pain as his shoulder gave way inside its socket. Luke knew it was dislocated because try as he might, he couldn’t move the arm attached to it. He rolled over, shifting his weight so that he came up on his feet just as the beast closed on him again. Luke wondered if he had finally snapped and this was all a delusion brought on by his anxiety as he tilted his head up to look into the eyes of the monster that towered over him.
One of the beast’s hands lashed out to close around his neck. His gasping for air, trying to refill what had been knocked from his lungs, stopped suddenly as the pressure of its fingers crushed his throat and windpipe. The last thing Luke heard was the sound of his own neck being broken ringing in his ears. His Chevy still sat not far away in the middle of the road. Its one remaining headlight shined pointlessly into the darkness as the beast left his body where it fell and limped away into the woods.
****
The sun had set by the time Lyle, Robert, and Ed reached Ashley’s house. Lyle was fuming about it. He had wanted to get there while there was still at least some light. His plan was to get his coonhounds the scent of the cat and let them go after it in the woods. It wasn’t a great plan, but it was the only hope he had of living up to the promise he made the girls. His logic was that if the dogs could track by scent, then it didn’t matter what the scent was that they were following. Robert didn’t have an opinion on the subject or any wisdom to offer. He wasn’t a hunter like Lyle and neither was Ed. This was completely Lyle’s show and the two of them were just along for the ride.
The girls met them in the drive outside Ashley’s house, fawning over the dogs and ready for them to get started. Ashley’s house was a mansion by Robert’s reckoning of things. It dwarfed even the house that Lyle and his family lived in and made Ed’s trailer and Robert’s house seem like shacks in comparison. Robert had always known that Ashley’s family was one of the few “well-to-do” ones in the area because her father owned the local paper mill, but he hadn’t realized just how well off they were until right now standing in her driveway. He did his best not to let that fact alter his opinion of her as a person. Robert told himself that he was a rarity for the area too. He had sold his first story to a professional magazine two years back and was well on his way to becoming a successful writer. Just this past summer, he had landed his first major book deal and though the advance was being paid out in three payments, in total, it was as much as most of the adults who worked full time in Canton made in a year. That money had kept his mother from losing their house and was helping to provide for them since his dad wasn’t around anymore.
Robert’s father had been the pastor of a local church by day and a wife-beating drunkard by night. The whole mess had cost Robert his childhood and distanced him from God for years. God had moved in his life though and saved his mother and himself when push came to shove though. Their prayers had been answered when Sheriff Jerry Higgins and his deputies had shown up one night when his father was at his rock-bottom worst. They had wrestled him to the ground, cuffed him, and hauled him away to an institution where he supposedly could get the help he needed. Robert didn’t give a crap about his dad getting help. He was just glad that hell he and his mother lived in for so long had finally come to an end. Robert had never fit in at school anyway but after that night, what happened with his dad assured that the other kids were never going to treat him the same. He was the son of one of the county’s worst lowlifes and he was treated as such. The other kids either shunned him or pitied him and he despised it all.
He and his mother should have been just fine without his dad in their lives but they weren’t. His mom was diagnosed with cancer shortly thereafter, which only added to his woes at school and further stressed the limited amount of money his mom’s crappy job at the local medical supply factory brought in. Robert didn’t blame God for the cancer, but his father. He had made his peace with God by then, but he figured forgiving his dad would be something that he could never bring himself to do.
“So how’s this going to work?” Rita demanded, staring at Lyle who had just finished getting the dogs out of the truck bed and calmed down from the ride over. Her sharp, harsh tone snapped Robert out of his thoughts and brought his attention back to his present surroundings.
“We just need to get them the cat’s scent and then we’ll let them go,” Lyle told her. “We’ll follow them into the woods and should be back with Ashley’s cat in no time.”
“I can’t believe you’re really doing this for me,” Ashley breathed, eyeing Lyle and Robert. “I don’t know how I will ever be able to thank you enough for trying like this.”
“It’s what friends are for,” Lyle told her.
Rita cocked an eyebrow at that as if to say, do you really think we’re friends with the likes of you?
Robert noticed Sarah elbow Rita in the ribs before she could say anything that she knew they would all regret.
Ashley went into the house and brought out some of the cat’s toys, its bed, and its litter box.
“Will this be enough for them to get Jinx’s scent from?” she asked, clearly hoping that it was.
“More than what’s needed.” Lyle smiled at Ashley, letting the dogs do their things with the stuff she’d brought out.
“Hey!” Rita suddenly spoke up, despite Sarah’s attempt at getting her to keep quiet. “I don’t see any guns! Don’t you hunter folks need guns?”
“Rita!” Sarah snapped. “They’re hunting Jinx! Why would they need a gun to do that? Are you wanting them to kill Ashley’s cat?”
“I… I… I just thought that it’s dark out,” Rita stuttered, trying to recover without losing face in front of Ashley as best she could. “I mean, who knows what’s in those woods? Aren’t there bears, wolves, and things out there?”
“We’ll be fine,” Lyle said. “Ain’t nothing out there in these parts this close to town that we can’t handle without guns. Our biggest worry is going to be keeping up with the dogs in the dark once they get going.”
“Uh…” Robert started, and Ed looked like he wanted to speak up too, but Lyle silenced them both.
“You guys said you were going to help, well, this is what helping is going to take,” Lyle said to them. “Just do your best to keep up and stay out of the dogs’ way. Got it?”
“Got it,” Ed answered reluctantly.
“And you’re sure there’s nothing else we can do?” Ashley asked.
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Lyle shook his head. “No, ma’am. Too many people out there will just make things harder. You ladies stay here and we’ll be back before you know it.”
“Sexist much?” Rita quipped.
“That’s it.” Sarah grabbed Rita by the arm and led her towards the front door of Ashley’s house. “It’s time you and I had a talk about manners.”
“I’m sorry about that.” Ashley looked ashamed by what Rita had implied.
“Don’t worry about it,” Robert told her before Lyle could answer himself. “I’ve been called a lot worse.”
Ashley looked like she wanted to say ‘I know you have,’ but she didn’t. Instead, she just smiled at him. “Good luck out there. Please bring Jinx home.”
The dogs were already acting as if they had the cat’s scent. Lyle let them loose and they dashed away into the trees. Lyle, Robert, and Ed sprinted after them.
****
The blue lights of the ambulance and Roger’s patrol car were flashing where they were parked as Jerry pulled his own patrol car off the road near them. By the time Jerry arrived, Roger had Jones Mountain Road closed down and shut off. He’d had to stop and move the warning sign at the bottom of the road before he could drive up it. The road wasn’t a high traffic one, but that wouldn’t keep the folks who did make use of it at night from complaining about it being closed. The sooner they got things sorted and cleaned up, the better. The clock was ticking in Jerry’s head as he got out of his patrol car and walked towards the scene of the accident.
Roger saw him coming and ran to meet him. “Sheriff!”
“Roger,” Jerry said, nodding at him. “What’s happened here?”
Roger looked like he didn’t have an easy answer even before he started talking. “I don’t rightly know, sir. That truck hit something that looks like came onto the road in front of it from the trees over there. Not a clue as to what though. Maybe a bear, I reckon. Whatever it was…stopped the truck cold.”
“No body?” Jerry asked, looking around. He saw the two paramedics in the process of loading up the body of the truck’s driver in the rear of their vehicle, but that wasn’t the body he was asking about.
“Of the animal? No, sir,” Roger told him. “Had to be hurting pretty bad though, there’s blood everywhere and you can see what it did to the front of the truck.”
“Who was the driver?” Jerry frowned.
“A local named Luke Rathbone, worked at the super center in town. No record, but from what I was able to dig up about him on the fly, he had some mental issues, anxiety or something.” Roger swallowed hard, nervously seeking his approval for how he had handled things.
Jerry whistled as he walked closer to the mangled truck. “You weren’t kidding about the amount of damage whatever this vehicle hit did to it. I don’t see how anything could have just walked off from something like this. You’ve checked around in the woods close by for the animal, right?”
Roger shuffled his feet. “My priority was getting Mr. Rathbone dealt with, sir. I did look around, but it was a quick look.”
Jerry grunted. It wasn’t the answer he was hoping for. Still, even a quick look around should have turned up anything if it was there. An animal large enough to do that to Rathbone’s truck wasn’t something that was going to be easily overlooked in the dark. Roger might be a bit on the young side as far as his deputies went, but he was a good officer and quick on his feet. If there was anything out there to be found, he had faith that Roger would have spotted it.
“I’ve got the usual folks in route to get Mr. Rathbone’s truck out of here and handle the cleanup,” Roger said, not sure how to take his prolonged silence.
“You did good work here, Roger,” Jerry assured him. “I want you to take a lot of pictures of that truck before it’s moved though. More detail than usual. What happened up here might be related to another case I’m working on. We need to figure out what Mr. Rathbone hit. Got me?”
“Copy that loud and clear, sir. Consider me on it,” Roger replied at him, thankful for his approval.
Jerry let Roger get to work on finishing up dealing with the accident and turned to stare into the shadows of the trees around the road. He didn’t like where the evidence was leading, but there wasn’t a blasted thing he could do but keep following it. But that was for tomorrow. Jerry informed Roger that he was headed home and radioed the station to let them know where he was if anything else comes up before the morning on the way there. It was time to listen to Harley’s advice and get some rest. Maybe when he woke up things would start making more sense than they were because right now, it was beginning to feel like he was living out some low-budget horror flick in real life.
****
Bo sat on his porch, listening to the sound of the approaching coonhounds. He could hear them in the woods on the mountain above his house. He grinned as he caught a glimpse of the three kids chasing the dogs through the trees. He snorted a laugh at them. One of them was a big kid who was having trouble keeping up with the others and another was dressed like…what did you call it?…a Goth or something. Only the boy in the lead looked like a hunter. What in the devil the three of them were up to, Bo wasn’t sure he wanted to know. He thought about yelling at them as they ran by his house but decided it wasn’t worth the effort. It had been a long day at the paper mill. His back hurt and all he wanted was to just sit on his porch and enjoy a cold beer and some Waylon Jennings.
Taking a chug from his beer, Bo reached to get the pack of cigarettes and lighter next to his chair. He lit up a smoke and puffed on it as he remembered what it was like to be young and stupid like the kids chasing the dogs. Not a single one of them was carrying a rifle. If they were coon hunting, he wondered what they planned to do when their dogs did manage to tree a coon. This place was enough to drive anyone crazy. The whole county was a trap designed by a higher power to lock you here in its boring grip for the entirety of your life. When he was their age, Bo had dreamed of packing up and leaving for the city, but it had never happened. He’d never found the courage to do it. Back then, escape seemed possible, just around the corner at the end of every week. Who knows? If it hadn’t been for Mary Beth, maybe he would have left. The two of them met at the big homecoming game of his junior year and hooked up afterward. That had sealed his fate. He’d knocked her up and they were married a few months later.
He supposed his life hadn’t been too bad. Mary had loved him with everything she had and made things seem okay despite the failure of his dreams. Bo had gone to work at the paper mill to support them and had been there ever since. Even after the cancer took Mary from him and he retired, he didn’t have the gumption to pack up and leave Canton behind him. His kids were here. His son, Marcus, had worked at the mill too and his little girl, all grown up now, had a well-paying job with the state. He couldn’t leave them any more than he could have left Mary.
Bo’s stomach rumbled, reminding him that he hadn’t fixed dinner yet. The thought of doing it made him sad. Mary had always kept a hot meal waiting for him when he got home from work. Nowadays, he lived on sandwiches, microwavable meals, and eggs unless he was willing to stop on his way home or drive back into town to pick up some burgers.
Sighing, Bo pushed himself up and out of his chair. As he stretched, his bones popped, reminding him again just how old he had become. The folks who said that fifty-seven was still young were full of crap. That kind of junk was just a lie to make people feel better about something that was unavoidable and happened to them all. Everyone got old. Everyone. Bo rubbed at his cheek with the palm of his hand. The stubble there scraped at his hand.
As he turned to head into the house, he saw a shadow of something standing at the edge of the porch, just around the corner of the house that caught his attention. Bo swung his tired head around to get a better look at whatever it was. When he did, his heart skipped a beat and his breath caught in his lungs. Bo froze, unable to move as he saw the thing as it took a single step forward that brought it fully into view. Its yello
w eyes glowed in the darkness like a demon’s. The animal, or whatever the devil it was, stood over eight feet tall. Bo wondered how the thing had gotten so close to him without him hearing it. The animal was massive. Muscles bulged and rippled beneath the hair that covered its body.
So far, the creature hadn’t seemed to notice he was there or care if it did. Its eyes were locked on the mountain in the direction the dogs and the boys chasing them had disappeared in. Bo was darn sure he didn’t want the thing to know he was there either. From the look of it, the creature could tear him apart with its bare hands. The animal, despite its size, was human-shaped and stood on two legs. He knew that every second he lingered on the porch just gave the creature that much more time to decide that he was worth the effort of coming after. Bo kept a shotgun loaded and ready above the fireplace in his living room. It was only a few yards through the door he stood in front of. As quietly and slowly as he could, Bo took a step towards the door. The side of his boot bumped against his chair, knocking his can of beer from where it sat perched precariously on its arm. The half-full beer can clattered onto the porch at his feet.
“Oh crap,” Bo muttered as the animal turned its eyes on him. That was all it took to get him moving. Adrenaline rushed through his veins as his hand grabbed the screen door that led into the living room and swung it open. He threw himself into the house, slamming the heavier wooden door behind the screen shut behind him. Bo heard the creature leap onto the porch, smashing through its banister in the process. He could hear it racing towards the door as he ran for the fireplace. The front door exploded in a shower of splinters and broken wood as the creature burst into the house, its shoulders tearing away parts of the wall around the door as it forced its way through. Bo crashed into the wall by the fireplace in his hurry to get the shotgun above it. He grunted with pain from the impact, knowing he was going to have a heck of a bruise on his shoulder in the morning if he lived through the night.
Day of the Sasquatch Page 3
