by Joseph Rubas
"Nah," he said, "it’s fine. Some guys don’t even make it this far. They run away down the path and that’s that." He smiled. "When I first came up here back in ’62, I nearly shit myself. Literally. I had to go off"- he motioned past me-"and let loose."
He dreamily shook his head. "The trip up’s the worst part. We’ll go back down after the sun comes up. Sound good?"
I nodded. That sounded great.
Soon, the rock pile beside me began crumbling again. I reacted a little calmer than I had before. I jumped to my feet and backed off like a man does when he finds a black widow in a dark corner, but I didn’t puke.
When Joey was sitting up, Jimmy kicked him in the chest so hard I heard the former’s spine crack in half. Joey gurgled and gagged as Jimmy stood over him. "Havin fun, rat?" Jimmy asked, and then stomped Joey’s face in.
The entire night passed thus. It was a pattern: Sit by the fire, kill Joey, sit by the fire, kill Joey. Jimmy really was having fun. He stabbed Joey, shot Joey in the heart, threw a rock at Joey’s head, injected Joey with some kind of poison, lobbed the top of Joey’s head off with the shovel, got a running start and kicked Joey’s head, garroted Joey with a rope.
Finally, he started getting tired.
"You wanna get him next?" he asked heavily, slumping down across the fire.
I shook my head. "No, you go ahead."
He chuckled. "We done everything we can do to him. Let’s just bu…." He trailed off, perking, his eyes widening. "That’s it!"
For a half an hour he sat giddily in silence, waiting for Joey to get back up. As soon as he did, Jimmy shot him and got the gas can. Splashing the contents on Joey’s inert form, he said, "Now let’s see if ashes come back."
They didn’t.
Attack of the Sasquatch
Editor’s note: The following account was taken from the diary of 16-year-old Jacob Warner who, along with his father James and his uncle Henry, disappeared during a hunting trip in British Colombia in 1885. Upon investigation, police found the trio’s cabin in shambles and the floor covered with blood. The notebook was outside in the grass.
It was originally published in a local newspaper, and then again in “The Case for the ‘Sasquatch’” by Chester Compton in 1924. This version, slightly abridged, first appeared in the June 1959 issue of Amazing! magazine.
July 5, 1885- We arrived at the cabin today around noon. The trek from town was strenuous but, as the sun was shining brightly and the temperature was high, also exceedingly pleasant. When we stopped in a meadow near a stream for lunch, I proposed that we take our time and enjoy the day. Father and Uncle Henry, however, were impatient. "Come, hurry," Father said. "We have not much further to go." I was forced to eat my food like a savage, and then run to catch up with them.
In fifteen minutes, we crested a small, forested rise and came within sight of the cabin, which sits on a ridge overlooking the vast wilderness, a small, rustic one-storey structure, primitive yet beautiful. Father is like a boy again, his eyes aglow and his face radiant. He and Uncle Henry haven't been here in years, and they've been delighting in the domestic trivialities like a pair of girls. I cannot help but smile watching them.
Presently, as they tidy, I sit outside and basking in the wondrous afternoon. Father says that once he and Uncle Henry have gathered enough wood for a fire, we shall go hunting. I doubt we will have time to canoe downstream to fish before the sun sets.
Later
We are just returned, and with only a rabbit and a single deer to show for it. But that is fine. We had a rather nice time. We also found a set of curious tracks near the river. Father says they must have been made by an enormous grizzly, though they looked unsettlingly human.
July 6, 1885- After a breakfast of eggs, bacon and coffee, we set out down the river between tall, flanking pines. We set up a temporary camp on a rocky, out-jutting peninsula in a bend, and have been fishing ever since. Father caught three trout, I two, and Uncle Henry nothing. Poor old man. He doesn't seem to mind a bit, though.
Later
We paddled back at dusk through the gathering gloom and clinging mist, the stars like glinting needlepoints, and the mixture of blues, oranges and purples breathtaking. I can clearly see why Father and Uncle Henry are so in love with the place.
The wildlife, though, has proven troublesome. Upon reaching the cabin, we are perturbed to see that some largish beast had knocked in the door and rummaged around inside, drawn, said father, by the game we killed yesterday. Luckily there are tools on hand and we fix the door. From now on we are to sleep with a strong bar across it, lest something enter in the night.
July 7, 1885- At roughly midnight, we were awakened by strange noises in the bush, like a wildebeest panting in heat. Father was the bravest among us, and took a rifle to investigate. He returned after five minutes and announced that he had found nothing.
This morning, however, I and Uncle Henry discovered more of those queer tracks along the western wall. These were, of course, fresher than the ones we had seen previously and therefore more discernible. They are each about 18 inches long and 5 inches across, featuring 5 toes, the littlest ones mashed together, and a large heel. They seem again to be those of an exceptionally large man. Father dismissed them once more as belonging to a bear, and I have faith in his assessment.
After we had lunch, we return to yesterday's spot and fish. I and Uncle Henry, neither of us having had a nibble, eventually went off into the forest for a walk. We found an old deer trail worn through the underbrush, and followed it quite a ways to a cliff giving out on a rolling panorama of rising trees and a distant mountain, the peak capped with snow even in the summer. Closer, we observed a plume of sooty black smoke puffing into the air, and were quite startled by the shrill blast of a locomotive whistle.
'Why, I had no idea they put in a railroad,' Uncle Henry laughed.
On our way back to the river, we several times heard the sound of something large moving in the woods to our far left. I was unnerved by thoughts of bears and big cats, but Uncle Henry was his usual jovial self, and saw fit to tell me of the wendigo, an Indian superstition regarding cannibal giants who haunted the north woods in the winter. That diverted my wary mind, I must confess!
Again, we return at dusk. The cabin had not been molested, and we had a most comfortable evening around the fire.
July 8, 1885- Uncle Henry trekked down the mountain to the village of Rocky Top today to check the post office and to pick up some supplies. I very much wanted to go with him, but remained with Father to help with the wash.
Uncle Henry returned about supper, bearing a letter from mother. All is well in Burlington, though there was a tremendous thunderstorm there the night we left, and a fierce whirlwind damaged the Negro section of town.
Today was not as much of an adventure as the past few have been, but toward dusk we took a long walk in the woods around the cabin. Upon our return we found the door again smashed down and our effects strewn about. Father was beside himself, and Uncle Henry was worried, claiming it appeared the work of men. There are still wild redskins in the woods, he says, and they may be hostile. Father dismisses that notion, but vows to kill one should he see him.
July 10, 1885- We are again startled from sleep, this time by an awful pounding on the side of the cabin accompanied by an inhuman combination of grunts and yells. Not even Father could muster the courage to go outside. In the morning, several sets of tracks are present. Father has admitted that they look distressingly human (I shudder to think of the man who made them!), but will not even consider leaving.
Later
At around four this morning, we are roused by a large stone crashing through one of the windows. In the deep black, I caught a flash of glowing red eyes through the window. My heart gave a frightful leap and I very nearly swooned. Father saw too, for he fired.
I seriously doubt that our attacker is a man, and I suspect Father and Uncle Henry think likewise.
We are making preparations to leave
at once.
July 11, 1885- Uncle Henry has gone missing. He went out to use the outhouse while we packed, and never came back. Father and I called his name and, in answer, received only a faint, echoing cry as of agony or unbearable fear. We are going to fetch the constable.
Later. Dusk.
We are unable to make good our escape, for half-way down the road to Rocky Top we were confronted by a giant, man-like ape which stepped into our path. It was a loathsome thing of about ten feet tall with matted brown fur, blazing red eyes, and mammoth, protruding fangs. Father fired on it with his shot-gun and I with my rifle, but our bullets had no effect upon it. It merely thrust out its pelvis and pounded its great chest with simian fury, letting out a thunderous roar. Screaming in mortal terror, Father and I fell all over each other to flee.
We've heard Uncle Henry again, crying out as those monsters hurt him. I doubt we shall sleep.
July 12, 1885- Father is gravely wounded. We are surrounded by those demons last night, and as one they converge on us, trying with unfathomable power to smash their way in. We kill three of them and damage a fourth so badly it couldn't retreat and was abandoned. Its pitiful whimpering would be horrible if I didn't find such a savage relish in it.
Later
An hour and a half ago those things return and shower the roof with stones and God knows what, shrieking like wild monkeys in sexual frenzy. One of their projectiles sails through a smashed window, hits the floor, and rolls up to my foot like some ghoulish pet risen from the grave.
A human head. Uncle Henry’s head…
I think I suffer a breakdown looking into his cold, glazed eyes. I weep bitterly for nearly an hour, clutching my rifle like a child would a doll. When I am quite under control, I…toed Uncle Henry away and covered him with a cloth. I read a bit of verse over him, then I come back to father’s side. I am very worried about him. He has lost a lot of blood. I must-
Only Sleeping
It happened on the muggy night of July 23, 2005, when I still lived in the picturesque small town of Picketts Meade, in northern Virginia’s Fauquier County. My elderly aunt had recently died and left me her ramshackle Victorian house. I needed money at the time, so I sold and hocked everything from the inside that I could, from furniture and antiques to my aunt’s old moth-eaten muumuus.
The place was nearly empty, and I was planning on selling that, too. I had already put it on the market, and some potential buyers had viewed it earlier in the day; a young couple in their late twenties. The wife was pregnant and the husband was an up-and-coming doctor at Fauquier hospital in Warrenton; they wanted a bigger house for their growing family, and the wife was in love with antiquated architecture. The price was reasonable, I thought, and they seemed to really like the house.
I liked the location myself, but I thought that the house proper was slightly unnerving; it looked to my young eyes like something from a gloomy gothic novel or a black-and-white Alfred Hitchcock film. It was drafty inside and dusty beyond even my notoriously low standards. (A stickler for clean houses and bodies, my aunt spent the last months of her life in the hospital). I hated it; so big, so ancient, not my kind of scene at all, so to say. I wanted a nice normal apartment in Warrenton; and in order for that to happen, the Bates house had to go.
My room was on the second floor, at the end of a narrow, lonely corridor with dull pink wallpaper peeling from the walls and ugly brown spots adorning the low ceiling. Most nights, I sat up at my desk trying to write mystery novels by comfortable lamplight and failing miserably. My room was tiny, decorated with only the desk, which held my notebooks and cheap Bic pens, and a small cot pushed up against the wall. From here, I could hear every moan and groan of the vacuum-silent house, the vermin in the walls (I hoped that the young couple wouldn’t find out about that until after the deal had been made), and even a pin dropping on the first floor. I had no radio or CD player and no TV, so the house was perpetually quiet as a tomb; so quiet it was deafening.
On the humid night of the 23rd, with thunder and lightning making infrequent appearances outside, I was bent over one of my notebooks, scratching out a terrible Whodunit set in a dreary British fishing village. Sweat poured from my head and dripped onto the page, the wetness from my writing arm left a dark grease stain on the paper, and I generally hated life. There was no AC in the house and I was too tight to waste any of my money on a fan, so I had to put up with the terrible heat.
As I was engrossed in my terrible story, my ears detected a sound other than the normal ones to which I had become accustomed. It sounded vaguely like a door somewhere on the first floor slowly creaking open. That noise froze me like a statue and filled me with near insufferable fear. It was a terrible sound, like the wail of a sick infant crying desperately for its mother.
I ceased movement and strained my ears to detect the slightest sound; the wind whistled eerily in the eaves. That was all for a moment, until I heard what dreadfully sounded like a shuffling footfall in the house below.
At this a shock of fear ran through me, paralyzing me. At length I was able to sit up straight in my metal folding chair without making any noise. Over the ghostly wind I plainly heard another scraping footstep and a crash as something made of glass exploded on the floor; it sounded as if the action was coming from the kitchen.
Don’t be such a pussy, I belittled myself. Some asshole is down there wrecking your house, grow some balls and go get him.
A tiny measure of courage surged though me after this half-assed pep talk. I was slightly afraid that the burglar would have a gun, but I decided that it didn’t really matter; I’d just creep up on him. I knew the house well enough, and I was pretty sure that I could manage to sneak up on whoever it was and neutralize the threat.
I closed my notebook and clutched the right hip pocket of my Levis and felt the reassuring outline; thin and rigid. I fished my pocket knife out, and looked disappointedly at it; it seemed a more formidable weapon when there was no foe to skew.
Still frightened despite the confidence which trickled into me, I stood, and the legs of my chair scraped across the wooden floor. As if in answer, a moan of blood-chilling inhumanity rose from the kitchen and drifted through the barren house. The terrible noise would not have been out of place in a nineteenth century gothic novel. It sounded, frankly, like the wail of a dammed soul, a hungry damned soul.
My heart jumped into my throat and my stomach clenched. I stood silently, listening to see if the intruder would come my way; he didn’t, thank God. Though I wanted nothing more than to call the police, my cell phone wasn’t charged. If anything was to be done, I would have to do it myself.
So, pocket knife in shaking hand, heart thundering in my chest like a herd of wild Clydesdales, I managed to gather enough courage to descend into the darkened bowels of the house, where some kind of enemy lurked. I’m a big guy, mostly useless fat, and my worst nightmare as I prepared to go down into the gloomy chasm was that I would encounter some demented Rambo or Arnold Schwarzenegger. The thought of being accosted in the dark by a wall of bulging muscle struck fear into my heart.
Of course I knew that I was being unreasonable; buff slabs of meat have better things to do with their time. Whoever was down there was probably just a skinny little crack head, a Dave Chappell lookalike. In that case, if he didn’t ambush me from a dark corner, or slash my passing ankle from under the sofa or the kitchen table, I could take him for sure. I didn’t know why a drug fiend would want to break into an old Victorian house; the place was obviously filled with not much more than dust and cobwebs. Then the thought struck me that maybe my visitor was high on something. I’d seen on the Discovery channel what some narcotics did to men. Some, held in the wild thrall of PCP, had to be gunned down by police after failing to heed warnings. Some people were even turned into lunatic monsters who could easily defeat the likes of Rambo. A few even flung themselves from high buildings, only to splatter on waiting pavement. If I was facing a madman with no regard for his own wellbeing, a beas
t with no pain threshold…
Oh, shut the hell up and go defend your home, pussy.
I smiled at my own thoughts, but my heart still hammered and my stomach was still sour, sweat poured off of me in torrents. I really didn’t want to move too much and alert my visitor that I was on the prowl, but I had to. The boards would creak, and he would hear me. Maybe he would set up in a position from which to strike like a quick desert snake, or maybe, being nothing more than a sober burglar, more afraid of me than I was of him, he would flee into the night. It could have been kids looking to party, deface decomposing property, or clandestinely make out. I hoped to find a few idiot teenagers with spray paint, stolen beer, and mussed hair, but my pessimistic nature refused to let go so easily: Rambo, Arnold, Mad Max and shrimpy Dave Chappell were lurking down in the murky depths, waiting to attack.
I took a deep breath, and began to slowly move across the wooden floor, which creaked and moaned loudly under me. Every time this happened I froze and winced, expecting to hear rushing feet on the stairs and the sounds of gunfire. I finally equated the situation with ripping a bandage from a wound; I would have to do this quick, or I’d never do it at all. I could hide in a closet until dawn, but what would that say about me? I would have to live the rest of my life knowing that I cowered, shivering and whimpering, in a closet while I was robbed and victimized.
I strode across the floor, disregarding creaking boards, and gently eased the door open. The hall was dark, the light spilling from my room but a feeble spark. I knew the layout of the house; I could do it without switching on a light, hopefully surprising the intruder. His eyes would be night-adjusted, and mine wouldn’t, which wasn’t good. Staying rigidly in place, I leaned back into my room and switched off the light, plunging myself into what I imagined a blind man lived every day. I held my palm before me and wiggled my fingers, but saw nothing of them; it was as though they weren’t there at all. The dark was unsettling, unbroken, and unreal. I don’t believe that I had ever seen such. Even outside at night I’d had the aid of stars, the moon, or lights from human made structures. This was nothingness, a void, a vacuum, the view from inside an interred coffin.
