Claws of Doom

by Peebles, Chrissy

  Lou peered down at the ground and looked thoughtful. “My gut tells me Beau’s just fooling around, as usual.”

  “Can I quote you on that?” MB said.

  “No way, man … something took him. If it’s Bigfoot … I wonder what it’s doing with him,” Chad said, eyes wide with excitement. “Hey, dude … do Bigfoot eat people, like in that movie, Abominable?” Chad sniggered, “That was so awesome!”

  Lou asked, “You’re the resident expert, make a guess?”

  MB sighed heavily, “What … whether Bigfoot eat people or not?” He saw the look on Lou’s face. She was beginning to lose it. What the hell, “Old Indian Legend tells us that man who makes a guess sometimes guesses wrong.”

  Chad grinned at MB’s remark. “That’s so true, dude.” He shrugged, “You know, I guess all the time … my grades prove it.”

  “Yeah, I guess you’re right,” Lou agreed with a sigh.

  “Hey … I just had a thought!” Chad exclaimed.

  “Don’t tax your brain, Chad,” Lou teased.

  “You don’t think Duane’s got anything to do with this?” Chad looked really pleased. “Well, you know … he does go about dressed up as Bigfoot all the time.” He focused his attention on Duane.

  MB and Lou exchanged glances and both stared at a rigid Duane.

  MB knew they were both thinking the same thing — Duane wouldn’t be dumb enough to get involved in Beau’s abduction prank. The lame-brain must know it would get him into real big trouble with the law — not that Lou would arrest him, but the Mayor would insist Duane be held accountable for complicity in Beau’s abduction prank, if it was found out he was involved in it.

  Duane shook his head and said, “I’m dumb but not dumb enough to get involved in Beau’s supposed abduction. I wouldn’t want to get in trouble with the law on such a serious matter. I know the Mayor would insist I be held accountable.”

  My thoughts exactly, mused MB. “I know you’re not that dumb,” he said.

  “Leave the thinking to me, Chad,” Lou remarked in a weary voice.

  Chad shrugged his shoulders and looked disgruntled at Sheriff Lou. “Okay, I get it … but if a grizzly or Bigfoot hasn’t taken Beau then it has to be someone else dressed as Bigfoot or some evil, axe-wielding cannibal … maybe he’s being barbecued right now.”

  By the look on Duane’s face he was seriously pissed off with Chad’s big fat mouth, MB thought. He decided to let nature take its course and say nothing. He stood up, folded his arms across his chest and gave Chad a sharp look.

  Chad stirred uneasily beneath Chief Mocking Bird’s condescending gaze. “What I say now, dude?”

  “Old Indian Legend tells us that if all the stupid dudes in the world thought at once they wouldn’t release enough energy to light one bulb.”

  Chad looked hurt. “That really hurts, dude.” He perked up. “But, like honest, MB, I’m telling the truth … this female Bigfoot joined our party and danced around the fire. She had a squeaky high-pitched voice and her name was … shit can’t remember.” He looked apologetically at Duane, “It couldn’t have been Duane … he doesn’t have boobs.” Chad stared at Lou’s boobs.

  Lou rolled her eyes in annoyance.

  Either Chad was a good liar or he was telling the truth, MB thought. Nah, the dufus had to be a good liar. MB and Lou exchanged dubious glances. He guessed she was probably thinking the same thing — “fool me once, fool me twice, but fool me three times just ain’t so nice”.

  “That’s it then!” Lou spoke into her two-way. “Okay Dwight … release the dogs.” She didn’t look happy at all.

  Doors slammed and dogs barked.

  Dwight and Rick emerged from the forest each leading a bloodhound. Both dogs were champing at the bit and pulling each deputy towards Duane. Dick sauntered behind them looking glum.

  Without a word Duane quickly walked away from the Big X towards Little Beaver River. He stopped when the weirdest images and thoughts smacked upside his head. He turned and grimaced at both dogs now wagging their tales. Those damned hounds wanted to chase the crap out of him. He tuned into Tommy and Freddy’s thoughts.

  “Hey, Freddy.”

  “What, Tommy?”

  “Look over there … it’s that stink ass again.”

  “Well wadya know … so it is. My sniffer still remembers that one’s stink.”

  “Let’s piddle down his leg like we did the last time.”

  “Hold on … we’ll lick our balls and ass first.”

  Woof!

  “Good idea Freddy … then we can lick his face all over.”

  “I know let’s hump his leg rotten.”

  “Yeah, he don’t like that at all.”

  Woof — woof — woof!

  “Let’s get ‘im.”

  Dwight and Rick were dragged across the picnic area on their wobbly bellies by two insane Bloodhounds.

  Dick collapsed in hysterics.

  Duane didn’t need any further nudging. He jumped into the river to wash away his scent.

  MB, Lou and Chad stared open-mouthed at the hysterical scene.

  “Look at Duane go.” Chad pointed. “He could be an Olympic runner.” He fell down laughing.

  MB gave a quizzical look to Lou and frowned as if wondering what the hell was going on. He whistled. The dogs stopped just before Dwight and Rick would get a dousing in the river.

  MB called out, “Hey Duane, get back here.”

  “Keep them hounds off me, okay,” Duane shouted from across the river. He watched Dwight and Rick struggle with their charges and manage some semblance of control. Once they had returned to Lou and MB, Duane splashed across the shallows and sheepishly eyed both dogs.

  “If you two do that again, I’ll have you both neutered,” Duane promised, pointing at the hounds.

  Tommy and Freddy crouched down and whined with tails between legs.

  Duane was satisfied now, but what if the bloody hounds traced the scent all the way to his friends deep in the forest to the far north. There was only one thing to do.

  “Okay guys, let the dogs sniff the Big X and let them lead away,” Duane said with as much authority as he could muster. That stink should fry their brains for a day or two, he hoped.

  Lou gave him a sharp look, “No need to tell me how to do my job.” She nodded to her deputies.

  Tommy and Freddy were allowed to sniff around the Big X.

  “What the bloody hell is that stink, Tommy?”

  “Dunno, Freddy, but it’s worse than that one over there.”

  Freddy’s snout aimed at a dripping wet Duane, who was grinning like a Cheshire cat.

  “Phew, that’s one mother of a pong.”

  “Oh yeah … should be easy to track then … come on.”

  Tommy and Freddy barked. With snouts to the ground, they dragged their deadweight charges behind them.

  Duane hoped the stink would screw up their sniffers so much they would be rendered useless. He had to be real careful now. With MB at his side, he followed the sniffer dogs while Lou, Dick and Chad took up the rear.

  Duane had a plan — to lead them all to the burrows where the ground was kinda thin so to speak.

  Up ahead, Duane saw the mound of earth tunneled through by raccoons.

  “Hey, is that Beau I see over there!” He pointed at the burrows.

  Before disaster struck, Duane snuck off to get some rest as his head ached and he felt so weak from overusing his super senses.

  Chapter 12

  Meet The Brugers

  DUANE LAY IN an exhausted heap on his busted sofa catching some well-deserved zees when the lights flashed Las Vegas-style in his head. He moaned out loud, “Geez Louise, gimme a break, will ya.” There was nothing else he could do, so he made a coffee on the old range, boiling water without modern technology. “That’s all I need … Walt!” With a heavy sigh he tuned into Lou’s encounter with “Mister Drainage”.

  It was late afternoon and Lou was real pissed off, suspecting Duane had d
eliberately led them to a trap and wasted her valuable time in a fruitless search. After a quick shower and change of uniform which had been scratched to pieces, torn and muddied, she drove up to Beau’s home in a foul mood.

  Word had spread about the search where Dwight had fallen down a sinkhole and had stuck like a champagne cork. She had to admit, with a chuckle, it brightened her day when both dogs not only licked Dwight’s face like a popsicle, but then proceeded to pee all over him. It took hours to haul his butt out of there and by the then the search was over.

  And then dozens of Beaverites had teased her about it. Geez, word sure spreads fast in this town. And Beau’s latest prank had spread like wildfire, thanks to his friends. They had even posted a video of the Bigfoot dancing around the fire on Facebook and YouTube. She had confiscated Soozie’s camcorder as evidence.

  Lou parked up and walked along the garden path toward the Bruger house. Now she had to face Beau’s parents who probably knew the complete unabridged version before she placed a foot on their doorstep. She knocked the door.

  Walt Bruger opened the door with a grimace and allowed the sheriff to enter the house. He was a huge bear of a man, in his mid thirties with close-cropped sandy hair. He had a ruddy complexion from spending a lot of time outdoors.

  Sheriff Lou took a seat on the sofa with Beau’s less-than-distraught mother, Rose, a petite woman in her mid-thirties.

  Rose was a sweet-natured woman, but it was well-known she wore the pants in the Bruger home. Her bullish husband was putty in her hands.

  Lou and Rose sipped coffee from delicate porcelain cups on saucers, all very genteel.

  “He’ll show up, and when he does, I’ll give him a good telling off, Sheriff,” Rose said. “He’s a good boy at heart … just likes to get up to mischief, is all.” Rose looked at Walt’s dour face, twisted with a scowl. “He takes after that one … monkey see, monkey do.”

  Lou wasn’t surprised by Rose’s reaction. The poor woman must be fed up with Beau’s antics by now. She sipped her coffee but was so riled she had to say her piece. “It’s no laughing matter spending the town’s taxes on a pointless search party.”

  Rose nodded her head in agreement and patted Lou’s knee in consolation. “I know, my dear. I don’t know what to say.”

  Walt stood by the fireplace with a permanent grimace on his face. Above the fireplace was a Sharps rifle, and above that monstrous gun was a stuffed head of a deer that had presumably been shot by Walt. The rest of the living room walls were dotted with Walt’s hunting trophies strangely mixed with sweet paintings of flowers that Rose had painted herself.

  Walt flexed his manly biceps protruding from his red-checked shirt with sleeves rolled up. His jeans had two inch turn ups, making him look like a perfect effigy of Paul Bunyan, except for the massive beer belly, and the fact that Walt had never in his life chopped down a tree with an axe.

  Like so many in town, Lou had often thought Rose and Walt were ill-suited. Walt was a fervid hunter and a collector of antique guns, not to mention a fanatical Elvis Presley fan. Rose had a passion for the finer things in life, classical music, ballet, painting pretty flowers and landscape scenes. The Brugers seemed to have very little in common except the conception of their son, but to those who really knew them, Walt and Rose were as much in love as the day they were married.

  “Wait until he gets home, I’ll give him more than a good talking to this time,” Walt said with real menace. “This is the millionth time he’s pulled this prank.”

  Walt was also a fisherman, which explained his penchant for exaggeration, as proved by the smallest steelhead ever to be mounted and displayed for all to see next to the deer’s head.

  “It’s all your fault he likes to pretend to be abducted by Bigfoot,” Rose accused, wagging her tiny finger at her husband.

  Walt grunted his disapproval at being reprimanded by his wife in front of Sheriff Lou. He clenched his fists.

  “The problem with the world today is that parents have got to be ever so nice to their kids. In my day my father wouldn’t stand for half the crap Beau has put us through,” Walt stated with a glare.

  Rose placed her coffee cup and saucer on a side table and jumped to her feet. She marched up and stood facing her husband. Her finger prodded him forcefully in his excessively hairy chest.

  Walt didn’t raise a hand to stop his wife — he just grimaced and took it like a bowl of quivering jello.

  Everyone, including Sheriff Lou, knew he had never raised a hand to his wife and never would, but she had listened many times to Walt bragging at Earl’s Bar & Grill how he wore the trousers in his home.

  “Now, now mother, you know how I feel about you prodding your finger into my chest,” Walt said with a nervous smile.

  Rose continued to prod, exclaiming, “Don’t you now-now-mother me, Walt Bruger, you useless good-for-nothing. Beau is only taking after you. How many times have you claimed to be abducted by Bigfoot?” She stood back a pace with hands on hips.

  “Can’t rightly say, offhand … but I’ve given up counting,” Walt replied indignantly. He pleaded to Lou with hand on heart. “I was genuinely abducted by Bigfoot, not to mention these tall, blonde aliens from the planet Abba.”

  “Yeah, yeah … so you’ve said as often as I dared to listen.” Lou was irritated and wanted to leave.

  “I know you don’t believe me Sheriff, but it’s the God’s honest truth … I was abducted by aliens. The females had long hair the color of wheat in the sun … very Swedish in appearance. They were slender, young and beautiful, with soft hands and supple bodies … oh and perky breasts. And there was this one overweight male alien who looked exactly like Elvis, who told me he actually was Elvis, and that they had sent Elvis’ clone back to earth so nobody would notice his abduction.” Walt paused and looked thoughtful for a moment or two. “The females would do anything I wanted them to do, sex-wise.” He started to grin as if his lewd thoughts were creating pictures in his mind.

  Rose punched him in the arm. “Crap-cookies, Walt … is that all you can think about … S. E. X.?”

  Walt gave a snigger. “Not all the time, Rose, darling, love bud of my life … sometimes, as you know, I ponder the fate of mankind and the consequences of global warming.”

  Lou had spent just about enough time as she dared with Beau’s parents, realizing they were not taking his disappearance seriously. She handed her empty cup and saucer to Rose as she got up from the sofa.

  “Well, I’ve contacted the FBI. If Beau hasn’t turned up by tomorrow, they’ll be sending two agents from the Sacramento Field Office to help us with our investigations.”

  “Shit,” Walt said, mimicking awe. “The FBI are coming.” He shook his head with dismay. “Whoever they’ll send won’t be able to find the whereabouts of a missing toilet roll even if it was shoved up their tight asses.”

  Lou didn’t reply to Walt’s crude remark. “I’ll keep you both informed of my investigations.”

  Rose nodded her head politely, “Thank you, dear.”

  Walt shook his head and grimaced. “F.B.I,” he slowly sounded the letters with a disgusted snarl on his lips. “Feeble-Brained Idiots. Shit, that’s all we need.”

  It was no secret to Lou that Walt had a strong contempt for the FBI, mainly due to the Bureau’s reluctance to believe he had been abducted by aliens. She hoped there would be no reason for FBI agents to come to Big Beaver. That Beau would show up before they did.

  “Talking of idiots, that reminds me — you had the DNA results back on the Phantom Bigfoot Bather’s second crime yet?” Walt asked.

  Oh yeah, she had the results back, Lou thought. And as expected the analysis of the hairs left by the Phantom Bigfoot Bather’s second incident could not be ascertained because, once again, they had been contaminated with bleach. As for the pungent odor, it was determined to be caused by various animal extracts, skunk urine and sulfur oxide for that extra lingering noxious smell. It was confirmed by all involved that the perp was a class
“A” nut job.

  Whoever was responsible for the practical joke — and she was pretty damned sure it had to be Duane — had cleverly manufactured each crime scene to prevent it from being properly analyzed. One thing though — and everyone in Sacramento was in agreement, it could not be a Bigfoot, because Bigfoot was a myth.

  “Yeah, I’ve got the results of the DNA,” Lou replied. “Same old, same old.”

  Walt looked disgusted. “I hope no one’s going to blame me for contaminating the evidence. I merely help extract the evidence from the scene as requested by you, ASAP, with the utmost of care, I might add.” Walt folded his muscular arms exuding pride in his plumber’s job. “Not my fault I had to take a piss at the wrong moment.”

  “Like I said, as soon as I know something, you’ll know.” Lou nodded to the Brugers.

  Rose led Lou from the living room, down the hall to the front porch. “Please don’t mind Walt, his bark is worse than his bite.” Rose smiled sweetly, “And don’t worry your pretty head about Beau, he’s probably laughing right now.”

  Lou smiled half-heartedly, “Speak to you soon, Rose.”

  Duane breathed a sigh of relief and finished his coffee, barely able to keep his eyes open. He placed his mug on the tree trunk section coffee table and closed his eyes. Once stretched out on the sofa, he fell into a deep sleep.

  Chapter 13

  Zola Wuvs Boo

  DUANE MUMBLED IN his sleep, “Zola want play … Zola … Zola.” And as he often did, he once more dreamt of his adventures in the forest with his wild friends. He tuned into Zola, blissfully unaware of her naughtiness, for the images were most erratic and made no sense at all. Sometimes the images arrived in reverse sequence.

  Zola sat up and yawned. She stretched hairy arms and swatted at several pesky buzzies flitting around her ears as the sun bathed her outside her cave. She absolutely hated it when they got stuck down her ears. The buzzing would drive her almost insane and the only way she knew how to get the nasty little buzzies out was to dip her head in the magic waters and count twenty strides. She chased some buzzies into her cave. She yawned again and looked about her wuvly little wuv nest. Her eyes bugged out. She coughed out a buzzie.