Estimated reading time — 51 minutes

My mom and dad were born and raised in Clarence, an old small town in the countryside between the midlands and the coast. A flat woodland, lush from its snaking rivers and creeks. Its swamps bled into the marshes and down through the deltas into the salty southern coast that was a little over an hour away. Clarence was the little nothing-town people passed when they drove down to the beach for vacation.

My grandparents, Nanny and Papa, owned a pine tree farm in Clarence. 100 acres, and 75 of those acres were rows upon rows of loblolly pine trees. They lived on the property in a small farmhouse at the end of a long dirt driveway. It was small, and while it may have been nearly prehistoric, it never felt creepy. It felt like a cozy respite, a home away from home; sitting like an island in the middle of a large yard dotted with gnarled towering oak, walnut, and pecan trees. There were rickety barns as old as the dirt they sat on. Sprawling garden beds with herbs, flowers and vegetables. Wooden arbors overgrown with pluming heaps of muscadine grape vines. All acting as a buffer for the pine rows that surrounded the house on three sides.

The remaining 20-or-so acres behind the pine rows were dense woods, cut down the middle by a winding trail that lead to the river. Nanny and Papa had clear-cut those 75 acres and planted the pines about 10 years prior. Papa passed away when I was small, and Nanny wasn’t far behind him, passing a few years later.

We inherited their cherished little farmhouse and pine tree farm.

We couldn’t live at the farm, of course. My Dad already had a job, and nobody gets a weekly paycheck to watch pine trees grow. So while adding the upkeep of a farm would be a heavy burden on top of a 9-5 work week, it was a labor of love that my parents were used to. Before Nanny passed, we would come down to Clarence to visit her every other weekend, giving her a hand with house work and yard work- especially as she got older. In the spring and summer it was more like every weekend, a constant battle for my Dad to keep the vegetation from taking over.

Despite how exhausting it sounded, my busy-body parents enjoyed it. The farm was a way of staying near their family and friends, all while enjoying the rural lifestyle of their hometown again. Getting themselves and their only daughter away from the buzz of suburbia.

At the time of this story, the pines were somewhere between 12-15ft tall. Nanny had passed away in October and we didn’t return until spring that next year. It was the mid 90s, and I was 8 years old.

We left home that March on a Friday afternoon and head down the interstate towards Clarence and our pine tree farm, a routine that we knew well. It was a 45 or-so minute drive, and once we pulled into town and got situated, Dad would stay at the house and start on yard-work. Mom and I would go to the grocery store, getting enough food to last us until we left Sunday afternoon.

The only grocery store in Clarence was the old Piggly Wiggly. I distinctly remember the sweet wrinkled smiles of its employees and the smell of cigarettes that hung in the air.

Mom and I stood in the checkout line.

“Oh shi- shoot! Oh shoot! Honey I forgot the bread, can you run and grab one for me real quick?”

I gave her a chirpy “yes ma’am” and moved swiftly towards the bread aisle. I skirted to a stop when I realized there was a small display right there by checkout. A table laid out with checkerboard table cloth, loaves carefully placed in circular tiers. I snatched up a loaf, brought it to my mom and we headed home.

We drove back to the farmhouse in my Mom’s station wagon, a new single by Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers was on the radio. Anticipation began to build as I stared eagerly out the window, in childish awe of the countryside’s vast emerging greenery.

We turned off of the road, patches of field on either side of the long dirt driveway leading up to the farmhouse, which sat at the end like a lady. A sweet, modest, classy thing, built in 1903. She was stark white, laced with gingerbread trim. Full, blossoming azalea bushes hemmed the wide front porch like a skirt, all of her topped off with an evergreen tin roof that sang me to sleep in the rain.

My mom backed her station wagon up to the front porch and I helped her as we began to take in groceries.

We heard him coming before we saw him. A humming engine sang over a chorus of baying hounds.
It was Mr. Voss, our neighbor. His hunting beagles running spiritedly behind his ATV, a howling snarling cloud of dust tearing down the road before turning into our driveway.

My Dad pulled up beside us in his creaky old brown work truck, that I had affectionately named “Bear,” when I was small. Because it was brown, and it growled.

Dad hopped out. He ruffled my hair, and gave my mom a kiss on the cheek.

“Hey squirt. Hey honey, Dan called- said we needed to talk.”
“Everything okay?”
“I guess we’ll find out. Hope so. Need any help with those groceries?”
“No, no, I’ve got my sidekick here helping me, you invite Dan inside and I’ll bring you boys something to drink.”
Dad gave me a wink and a pat on the back before he walked up to greet Mr. Voss who had pulled up and cut the power on his ATV, his dogs gallivanting off to play and sniff around. My dad always looked so big and strong to me, but next to Mr Voss he looked small. I heard the frame creak as he dismounted his machine.

Daniel Voss was Clarence’s nearly retired fire chief, and when he wasn’t in uniform he was in camo. He shook Dad’s hand with a pursed smile under his mustache, and nodded towards my mother and me.

“Mrs Willis, little Miss Willis,”

He directed his attention back to my dad. “Thanks for letting me stop by, Peter.”

“Hey, no problem man. Everything alright? You sounded serious over the phone.”

My mom took the last bag of groceries and shooed me off to play. I was old enough to understand that the adults were talking and I needed to scadaddle. However, I was also a talented eavesdropper, as most children are. I ran along the side of the house, sneaking in through the back door. I found a nice hiding spot behind a small wooden bench in the hallway. There was a mirror on the wall, giving me a peak into the living room where Dad knelt striking a match in the fireplace, while Mr. Voss made comments about the weather and the sitting president.

After Mom had put away the groceries she joined them with a handful of empty glasses. She grabbed a bottle of whisky from the top of the china cabinet and poured them all a shot of the syrupy golden spirit. Mr Voss sat in the tattered plaid wingback by the fireplace, a small modest flame beginning to crackle in its hearth. He laced and re-laced his fingers, as if he was somewhat apprehensive to begin the conversation until suddenly he cleared his throat.

“So Peter, Lori, I know y’all just rolled into town, but I had to fill you folks in on what’s been going on around here lately. It’s a matter of safety, especially with yer little youngin’ running around.”

I always thought it was such a shame that Mr Voss chewed tobacco all the time. Not only because I thought spitting dip was gross, but because it prevented him from speaking as much. Mr Voss sounded like the lowest string on a fiddle, his vocal chords oiled with old southern blood. A lullaby with seamless rises and dips in cadence, every sentence a resonant stanza in a ballad. He would recall a trip to the post office to the tune of an old campfire story.

That early evening in March, as dusk and its chill fell upon the treetops of Clarence and the sun sank low in a peach colored sky, I noticed that Mr Voss’ speech was unobscured by his usual lip full of dip.

I settled into my hiding spot. This must be serious. Mr Voss was about to spin a yarn.

“So, all of this started in late November, best we can all surmise. Rumors began floating around right after Thanksgiving. Late November, ya know, ya had boys out there on their land or their buddy’s land hunting deer and ducks, doves and geese. Fat and happy in their camo, believe me I was one of ‘em. But a few of ‘em made some grizzly discoveries. They, uh, found some animal carcasses while they were huntin’.”

The puzzled looks on my parents faces were suddenly imbued with concern. Mr Voss took a sip of his whisky and continued,

“As I’m sure you both know, eastwards, right yander across the river from your property is Ed Kerry’s huntin’ land. He’s got about 50 acres or thereabouts. Well, Kerry and his boys were huntin’ in the wee hours of the morning, planning on shacking up in a little hunting stand near a clearing in the center of the property. Once they got up there and started lookin’ around, they found a buck-”

His voice cracked for a moment as his eyes flickered between Mom and Dad.

“-a mutilated buck… At first, they thought it was a pack of coyotes, maybe a bobcat. But the more they saw, the harder it was to rationalize in their minds. Now Peter, Lori, I don’t mean to be graphic, but I think it’s important that you know the details.”

He paused, waiting for one of them to stop him, but neither did.

“It was fresh. The neck was broken, violently. It had been ‘eviscerated’ as one of Kerry’s boys put it. Ed said it was a mess, carnage just- everywhere. Something had taken a bite through its leg at the haunches, cracked right through the bones, and crushed the socket when it ripped it out. Ed said the bite was this big,”

He gestured, but from outside of my peeping-mirror’s view.
My Dad exhaled in disbelief.
My mom winced, a pained look on her face.
“My God, Dan.”

“By December’s end they had found that buck, and a few more animals torn up to a similar degree. The week before Christmas, I was in the field near the border of your property, and I saw a lump of fur layin’ off yander in the field. I was worried it was one of my beagles. But once I got up close to it I saw it was a coyote. There were these deep gashes, from the tips of the ribs on one side to the tips of the ribs on the other. I could see the oval shape of the bite mark, it had a set of jaws- I mean a big set jaws, like Ed had said. Must’ve just held its ribcage in its mouth and bitten down on it.”

Mr Voss paused, lost in thought for a moment.

“Peter I’ve never seen anything like it. It was a nightmare, I’m just glad the wife didn’t stumble on it.”

Mr Voss downed what was left of his whisky. I heard the clink of his glass as he sat it on coffee table.

“Then, about 2 weeks later David Kilpatrick and his daughter were out huntin’ on Kerry’s land. Ya know Kerry’s boy, Joey, been sweet on her for a while, so Kerry lets Dave take her out there huntin’. Give Joey something to bond with her over and all that. Well, the little lady bags her a doe, so her and Dave head over to it trudging through all the brush and fallen leaves and what have ya to tag it. As they’re walking over, little lady goes to hop over this recently fallen sweet gum tree. That poor child landed in a dead buck’s corpse. It was almost all skeleton, but fallin’ into a leathery cracked-open rib cage shakes her up pretty good. Dave said that its head was all gnawed up with big ol’ teeth marks, and the antlers were crunched. Now I don’t know about you but I’ve never heard of a bite that’d crunch antlers on a deer like that.”

My dad shook his head, staring off in a daze. “No, never.”

“Well, then Neal found another coyote, said it looked just like the one on my property. But who knows, it could’ve been skinned alive and split in half and Neal wouldn’t mention it. You know Neal, you could tie him to the railroad tracks and he’d barely mumble about it. Last thing I’d heard was a week ago when Bill found a doe. He was near the border of your property, said he’d been fixing a fence post earlier that day and left his pack of smokes out there. So he hopped in his truck in his pajamas that night and went back to fetch em. The same fence post he’d fixed was broken again, and not 10 feet from it was a doe. She’d been ripped apart at the rib cage. Bill said it looked like a damn frog dissection from high school.”

All of them were silent for a long moment, the only sound the crackling in the fireplace.

Dad spoke up, “What is everybody thinking? A bear?”

I heard Mr Voss sniff, as he nodded. “Bear. Maybe a big wolf.”

“I’ve heard of bear wandering down this far south occasionally, but a wolf? I don’t know…”

Mr Voss inclined his hand toward the the whisky bottle on the table, Dad encouraged him to help himself, so Mr Voss poured everyone another finger.

“A bear, a wolf, whatever it is- it’s a devil. The damage it does is just gruesome.”

“Nobody’s found any tracks?”

“Not in the leaves. You know how it is this time of year. You’re practically wading through ‘em.”

Mr Voss sighed as he fiddled with the glass, so small in his hands.

“But I wanted to catch you as soon as you arrived, Peter, and I know I don’t need to spell this out for you, yer a smart fella. But we’re finding bodies north, south, east and west of here, and l’m not trying to alarm you folks but- I think you know as well as I do that you might have some dead animals on your property.”

At that I decided to make my exit, sneaking away from my hiding spot. I figured I would need to be in position when Mom or Dad came to tell me about my inevitable new ground rules.

I ran off to the squatty structure near the back of the house, what my Nanny had called “The Kitty Cat Barn.” It was a dilapidated flat-roof barn, enlaced with morning glories that crawled through the rusted rotting holes in its ancient metal siding. It seems to have once been a small barn for a couple of work animals like donkeys or small horses, but Papa had put shelves up and Nanny just used it to store her preserves. However as she and Papa got older, they garnered a large collection of stray cats, as the sweet and elderly have a habit of doing. So near the end of their life, they gave away all their preserves to their kids and their friends from church and stocked the shelves instead with baskets and boxes, lined with soft old towels and worn rags. Setting out a couple dozen of little bowls for them to eat from. When we weren’t there, one of our neighbors, Mrs. Kerry, gladly came out and fed them for us in exchange for herbs from the garden, though she rarely ever took any.

I squatted on the dirt floor of the barn. It wasn’t long before a handful of kittens clumsily wandered out to investigate my presence. Moments later, what I assumed was their mother, came over and began nuzzling up against me. I rubbed gently behind her velvety ears before walking out of the barn. I made sounds gesturing for the kittens to come out into the grass to play, but their mood shifted and they would not come. They only stood in the doorway beside their mother, watching me. I scoffed. Cats.

Not a moment later, Mom came over, asking if we could talk. We sat on one of the steps of the back door stoop. She gave me a frank but watered down version of Mr. Voss’s story, then laid down the law.

“No playing in the pine rows, and no going outside for any reason after sunset. If you see something, anything, out of the ordinary- come tell myself or your father, immediately. Are we clear?”

“Yes ma’am.”

She asked if knew what to do if I was approached by a bear or a wolf, and I prattled off the steps to her. Don’t run. Back away slowly. If it approaches you, try to make yourself look big. All that. I can tell this relaxed her a bit, and she told me to have fun playing, and to be careful.

The rest of the day was as pleasant as any day when you were 8. I ran aimlessly all over the yard, not much different from Mr Voss’s beagles. I stopped by the arbor to pick muscadine grapes. I helped Mom do some work in the flower beds, and before I knew it it was time to come inside. She threw a Disney movie into the small tube television in my room while she worked in the kitchen. Dad came in and washed up from doing yard work all day, the farmhouse’s old pipes groaning as he showered. We had dinner that night, I can’t recall what it was, but it was warm and I went back for seconds. After Dad and I cleaned the kitchen for Mom, we all sat at on the floor of the living room, playing Old Maid and talking by the fire. As the evening drew to a close, we all started getting ready for bed.

That was the first night I saw the beast.

I remember it well.

After I had given Dad a kiss and told him goodnight, Mom tucked me into bed under the fresh linens she had put on earlier that afternoon. She kissed my head reminding me to say my prayers before turning off the lights and closing the door, bidding me goodnight.

Prayers said, I waited for sleep to overcome me but it never did. I tossed and turned for a while, before quietly sliding out of bed and slinking over to my window. The cats would always come out at night, and the view from outside of my bedroom window happened to be a particularly high traffic cat crossing.

There were bushes beneath my window, and looking past them you could see paths that wound between and around garden beds brimming with various flowers and herbs. Behind them was the smallest of the barns that adorned the yard, Nanny had used it for storing gardening equipment and potting soil. It may have been geriatric, but it was a sturdy structure. It had survived an oak falling on it a couple years before and still stood tall. Behind it was a small stretch of field, and then the sea of pine rows.

I peered out of the antique, single pane glass. Keeping my breaths shallow as to not fog it up. I searched the shadows for cats, when my eye caught something in the distance. Deer occasionally appeared during these midnight matinees, strolling in the field or leaping through the pine rows.

But this shape wasn’t moving like that.

The more I focused in on it, the more I saw that it was larger than I had thought. Larger than a deer. My sleepy brain began to dial in, seemingly aware that this was something outside of our routine viewing. I concentrated on the shape, holding my breath so as to ease my face as close to the glass as possible.

It prowled beneath the branches, its spine arched, its limbs creeping like a spider. Slow, deliberate movements, its ashen form lurked in the dark obscurity of the pine rows. It horrified me to think that if I hadn’t been deliberately looking at it, I could have cast a glance out the window and not even noticed it.

Being that I was child, I did what any child might do. In my horror, I hyperventilated and broke into tears. I went running into my parents’ room. Desperate and pitiful, trying to explain to them what I saw. Mom was quick to fall into her maternal instincts, holding me close, wiping away my tears and stroking my hair. My Dad rubbed my back to comfort me, but his mind had gone back to the discussion with Mr Voss.
“Did you see its face honey? Did it look like a bear?”
I quickly shook my head, eyes still wet with tears.
“No- no it wasn’t a bear. It was too… too tall and long. A- a bear would be… less- gangly. This wasn’t. And it didn’t have any fur. It was-”

The more I thought back on the beast the more scared I became, all over again, until I burst into tears. I buried my face into my mother’s shoulder.

“It was so awful,” I sobbed,

“I just want it to never come back.”

My parents exchanged sympathetic looks. I slept in bed with them that night.

The next day was business as usual. In the morning after breakfast I helped Mom with some chores and then was released into the yard to play. I rode my bike up and down the dirt driveway while I listened to my Walkman. Mom watched me from the front porch while she mended some of Dad’s overalls. After a while she called me to help her again in the garden. We watered and weeded until it was time for lunch. Mom made grilled cheese and tomato soup. Dad came in, just having finished weed-eating, so he was a little dirty and peppered with blades of grass. We talked and ate and joked around. It wasn’t until Mom and I were doing the dishes that I noticed that Dad had vanished.

“Where’s Dad?” I asked, a little incredulously, at the absence of my dishwashing partner.

Mom’s eyes never left her work as she spoke,
“He’s meeting Mr Voss.”

“Why?”

“Just to check out the Pine Rows”

She said nonchalantly. I didn’t press her about it, I knew they were out searching for dead animals.

Dad didn’t return until it was nearly dinner time. He didn’t say hey, he didn’t go to the kitchen for something to drink, he went straight to the shower. I could hear the pipes from my bedroom. During dinner, Dad seemed tired, but he put on a tired smile, asking me about my day and what all Mom and I had been up to. I had a feeling he didn’t want me to ask about his day, so I blabbed about everything Mom and I had done, how the cats were acting, and the songs I listened to on my Walkman. After we ate, I asked if I could go watch a movie in my room until lights out. My parents eagerly obliged.

I sat cross legged on my bed, pretending to watch the Black Cauldron, I saw Dad pass my bedroom door. I tiptoed over, peaking my head out, watching him make his way wearily through the house and out to the front porch. I heard the pipes creak and knew Mom would be joining him shortly.

Sensing an interesting conversation on the horizon, I took up a hiding spot near a coat rack by the front door, with a great view out the window and onto the front porch. I watched as Dad fell back into a rocking chair, exhausted. He packed and lit his briar pipe. The sky bore pearly hues of blush and lilac as it laid the day to rest. Dad leaned back, the embers in his pipe akin to the glow of the sunset as he took a long deep pull, exhaling a swirling plume of smoke.

I ducked down as Mom walked by. Her skin still rosey from her hot shower. Her hair was thrown up in a bun, and all her makeup was off. But she was more beautiful than the dusk sky, and Dad’s eyes corroborated my opinion.

She met his gaze with a gentle smile, joining him in an adjacent rocking chair with a glass of wine in one hand and a beer in another.

“I saw your bloody jeans in the hamper. I assume you had a work boots kind of day.” She said with a weak laugh.

Dad scoffed. Mom always teased him for wearing the same pair of very-off-white New Balances all the time. She used to make comments to me on the days she saw them sitting by the back door, saying that he must be out doing dirty work.

“You and Dan found an animal out there today?”

“Multiple.” Dad replied, his pipe hanging from the corner of his mouth as he cracked open his beer.

“Two deer, a coyote, and a bobcat. We buried one of the deer and the bobcat. The rest of them were decayed enough or out of the way enough that we said ‘to hell with it.’”

Mom pensively said nothing.

“Dan called his game warden buddy, kind of a jack-ass, in my opinion. He told us to get photographic evidence. So Dan snapped some photos, said he’s gonna get ‘em developed tomorrow afternoon.”

The were a few lingering moments of silence until Mom spoke, asking softly,

“What had happened to them?”

I heard Dad’s pipe clack between his teeth after taking another pull. By then the woody aroma had drifted into the house from under the front door. The smell of his tobacco was earthy, rich and sweet. He paused, taking a swig of his beer before answering.

“A few of the deer seemed to have recently rotted down to their skeletons. Lots of their bones were broken, so we couldn’t quite put together what had happened to them; and ya’ know the vultures had probably gotten to ‘em and moved stuff around too. The coyote carcass was maybe a month old, it looked something had put a bunch of weight down on its ribs and crushed it. The bobcat-“

Dad stopped for a moment, as if remembering in awe.

“The bobcat was fresh Lori, real fresh. Past 24 hours fresh.”

“Oh my God, Peter.”

“It was a big one too. We found it at the base of a black walnut tree. It looked like it’s spine had been snapped against the trunk, and then something just-“ dad gestured with his hands, digging at the air. Sparing the gory details.
“All the blood on my clothes was from the Bobcat.”

“Well, thank God we didn’t let Amy play in the pine rows yesterday, how far was it from the house?”

“It was near the back of the rows, towards the woods. After we found and buried it we decided to call it quits for the day, but we’ll finish tomorrow, Dan said he’d help me.”

“Finish?”

“Yeah, we only got halfway around the pines, Lori. We still have to look around the other half tomorrow.”

The quiet returned for a few moments. Hanging in the air with the smoke from Dad’s pipe.

“Lori, don’t let Amy out of your sight.” I saw Mom nodding her head.

“I’m gonna keep the Benelli by the back door, it’s the semi-automatic, I remember you said you felt comfortable with that one. And I’m gonna keep the thirty-thirty, the Marlin, by the front door. I doubt it would just come up to the house in broad daylight, but I want you to be prepared in case I’m not here at the house with you.”

“That’s a good idea. And I think when Amy plays outside I need to tell her to stay in view of the windows. So you or I can see her.”

“Okay, good thinking. And we’ll need to ask her not to have her Walkman on her ears while she’s out there. I don’t want something sneaking up on her.”

Mom scoffed, “She’s not gonna like that.”

“Nah, she’s smart. If we explain it to her I’m sure she’ll understand.”

I didn’t like that.

But I knew as well as they did that I would, in all likelihood, comply. Mom and Dad were reasonable, so I usually did.

“I know this is all scary for her- shit, it’s scary for all of us.”

“What the hell do you think this thing is Peter?”

Dad let out a long exasperated sigh, as though he’d been asking himself that very thing all day. “The best thing I can figure is a bear. A very, very large bear. But who knows, I mean, we looked, but we didn’t see any tracks or scat or anything.”

“There were no tracks near the path? Even near the bobcat?”

Dad shook his head, “Too many pine needles. I mean years and years worth. We saw indentions in the earth under them, but nothing we could decipher.”

Dad finished his beer, setting it down on the ground by his rocking chair.
“Tomorrow, Dan’s gonna help me check the second half of the pine rows. He said one day next week he could send his nephews out on their four wheelers to check the woods that back up to the river.”

“Oh gosh is that safe?”

“It’s been a few years but those little rascals are grown, they’re young men now, they’re almost as tall as Dan.”

Mom hummed, not convinced, but opting to move on. “That’s nice of Dan to help you.”

“Yeah, he didn’t ask for anything but I told him I’d throw him and his nephews some cash for the help. I wish I could say I was hopeful, but I worry what those boys might find out there.”

I heard one of their rocking chairs creak as they moved to stand up, so I quietly scurried back off to my room. My parents didn’t bring it up to me that night or ever, didn’t say anything about it at all. Likely fearful that I would have another “nightmare.”

The last day, Sunday afternoon, Mom and I did the laundry and packed our things. The packing didn’t take long. We left most of our stuff behind, seeing that we would be back next weekend. Once I had my little red and white polka dot duffle bag tucked in the trunk of her station wagon Mom told me I could play until we left in a couple of hours. I climbed my favorite tree, an oak near the back door that Dad had nailed wooden steps onto. Mom sat outside with me, folding laundry. I finished my Goosebumps book, so I examined my pockets and discovered a long screw. Lord know where I’d found it or why I’d picked it up but I decided it was time to carve my initials into a tree.

Mom and I both heard the phone in the house ring, so she hopped up to get it. Probably Aunt Cheryl. She had been meaning to stop by that weekend but Mom had told her it wasn’t a great time. While carving an “A” from way up in the tree I saw Dad coming over from the shop barn. It was the largest of the barns, and Papa had used it as a workshop. From the shade of the enormous oak beside the barn, it looked like Dad had grabbed a rag, using it to wipe something on his shirt. As he stepped out into the light I could see that it was blood. Red, fresh.

Dad didn’t see me in the tree, so he didn’t put on any heirs. He pulled his baseball cap off and wiped the sweat on his forehead with his arm. For a busy-body who normally took such long purposeful strides, his steps were slow. Heavy. His face was so white. His eyes were locked onto the ground in front of him as he walked. My dad looked scared.

Mom tried to covertly put his dirty clothes in a bag while Dad showered and got changed. I didn’t say anything. Dad didn’t know I’d seen him, and Mom thought I was none the wiser. We turned off all the lights, locked all the doors, and then hit the road for home. Looking out my window at the lush greenery of the countryside that had so enamored me only days before, I couldn’t help but think now that it only acted as a shroud, a living, flowering veil that hid the beast lurking within.

Back at home in the sardine can of suburbia, any moment absent of conscious thought was overcome with visions of the beast. If I had been any older, it would have been an easy write off, “just a nightmare,” “you’re crazy,” “go see a psychologist;” but I wasn’t. I was an 8 year old little girl who read mythology encyclopedias and fairy tale compendiums like I was going for a PhD. I actively side stepped mushroom rings for fear of being kidnapped by the fae. A small piece of every Little Debbie cake I got was left near the crawl space door in case we had hobgoblins or brownies living under our house (which at the time, I seriously suspected we did).

My parents, the logic-bound adults could chock it all up to a subconscious presentation of a fear response, but I didn’t want to lie to myself.

I knew what I saw.

As harrowing as it was, I kept mulling it over in my mind. Turning it over, rotating it at different angles, all in hopes of better understanding what it really was- the devil outside my bedroom window. If I was acting spacey, my friends at school didn’t say anything, at least not to my face. In the hallway, at lunch, at P.E. It possessed my every thought.

The list of things I didn’t know about it was infinite, so I started with what I did know about it.

It was large. Tall. I tried to think of it in comparison to the pines, and in doing so I stumbled upon a memory. It was a year before Nanny died, I was small, but not small enough to forget. It was the last time she was able to walk the pine rows with me. Her hair was as white as her sweet little farmhouse, and her bones burled and bent with age. Her voice was as gentle as the rustle in the pine needles. She said that because the pines were all planted so close together, the lowest of the branches wouldn’t get enough sunlight. As a result, they would drop off while the higher branches would reach upwards to take in more sunlight. I remember her smiling, as if that fact meant something to her.
She said that Papa had measured, and most of the branches in the pine rows were 5-7 feet from the ground.

With that information at my disposal. I did some guesswork, but my safe guess was that it had been at least 4 feet, or probably more like 5 feet tall, on all fours.

It’s torso and appendages were lean. Not stocky, like a bear’s. Bears weren’t built that way. Why was I still thinking about bears? It definitely wasn’t a bear. What features I did see resembled a wolf, but wolves weren’t that large, that hairless, or that lanky. Neither were bears. My head began to throb. Whatever small annoying part of my brain had started developing was trying desperately to compare it to what I knew to be real. Thankfully the rest of my mind was fantastical and thought mermaids existed, so instead of having a psychological breakdown like an adult, I came to grips with the fact that this beast was a wolf-like and in all likelihood a werewolf. But I needed to do some research.

That day after school, I asked Mom to take me to the library, a request she was used to. On the car ride there, she asked me what kind of book I was going to look for. So I explained my werewolf theory to her. A decision I immediately regretted when I saw the pity and concern within her eyes in the rear view mirror.

“Honey, I know we’ve talked about all of this with the fairies and the mermaids and the unicorns, but werewolves aren’t real honey. I love that you have such a vivid imagination, but you’ve got to be realistic. I mean, sure, it might have been that bear or wolf out in the woods, but it was probably just a nightmare-“

“It couldn’t be a nightmare, I was at the window, and I know what I saw! It wasn’t normal looking- It didn’t look like a bear or a wolf, it was something else. I’m 100% sure that I saw what I saw! Mom, I swear- I swear I’m not lying.”

I saw the pained deliberation in her eyes. Outside of my fascination and proclivity for fairy stories I was pretty practical for my age. I listened to Mom and Dad when they told me things, I was forthcoming and honest if I did something I wasn’t supposed to. I wouldn’t blatantly lie to my Mom, and she knew that.

“Well, then, baby… if you really did see what you think you saw then- well, then it must have been a nightmare. And you’ve slept walked before! You know you were probably just sleep walking, had a nightmare, and woke at the window.”

My brow furrowed, taking what my mom said into consideration but not able to convince myself. I stared out the window in deep thought until we pulled up to the library.

Once we arrived, I didn’t have to worry about trying to give my Mom the slip. My love of books and stories came from her, and she made a B-line for the mystery section. Despite her dismissal of my werewolf theory, she loved spooky stories.

After collecting a few books from the sections labeled “folklore” and “nature science,” I found an empty table and started to read. I skimmed through a couple of books on mythology and American folklore and the like, none of its pages revealing any groundbreaking revelations. Silver bullets, transformation under the light of the moon, all the usual factoids. What was highly informative, however, was the expository book on wolves.

How fast they were, how much power and stamina they possessed, how strong their bite was, how sharp their eyes were, how keen their sense of smell was; all the things that made them great hunters. I kept in mind that this was all a baseline for this creature. At the very least it did all these things. The thought overcame me with dread. I didn’t exactly calculate the metrics, but I knew that this monster likely doubled if not tripled anything a wolf could do.

Knowing that time was running out before Mom came to fetch me, I ran over to
the children’s section and grabbed a Junie B. Jones book I hadn’t read yet, as well as the newest Goosebumps book.

When I approached Mom, I tried to hide my wolf book under my selection of age appropriate literature, but Lori didn’t miss a thing.
“Study of the American Wolf, huh?”
I tried to brush past her comment and critical side eye,
“I thought you said I needed to be more realistic. Wolves are real, aren’t they?”
She sighed, rolling her eyes, handing it and my other books over to the librarian for check out.

That evening at home, we had finished dinner and cleared the dining room table to play Jenga. The phone rang, and Dad stepped out of the room and into the kitchen to take it. Dad answered in a hushed tone, keeping his voice down. Unfortunately for Dad, he wasn’t a great whisperer.
“Hey Dan… find any-?…How many…?”

Silence. For a long while, silence. Mom and I locked eyes.

“God… Yeah, I see. Thank the boys for me… I’ll pay em for all their help… we both know that’s a lot of work. So sorry they had to… yeah… well… my God… I don’t know either, man… Yeah… Yeah… Thanks again Dan.”

Dad returned, doing his best to hide the weary look on his face. He glanced over at my Mom, and then at me, giving me a smile. I smiled back timidly.

I looked back and forth between Mom and Dad, as she gave him a look that said, ‘You know she heard all that, right?’

Dad hummed, pursing his lips in a wry way. I couldn’t help but laugh at him. But the quiet that followed it sobered the moment.

“Amy,” My Dad paused as he weighed his words. “Your old man… is an awful whisperer.”

“Yeah, you kind of are.” I snickered.

“I know you’re a smart girl, even if you didn’t just hear me on the phone, I know that you know that some scary stuff is going on right now.”

I nodded. Dad sat back down at the table, folding his hands as he spoke.

“But I want you to know that while we’re at the farm, you aren’t in any danger as long as you listen to what your mother and I say. Follow the rules, stay in the yard, and don’t go into the pine rows. I don’t want this to cause you too much distress, because none of this is going to last forever.

Mr Voss, myself and some other people in the community are getting evidence together, and filling paperwork out, which -is stupid- but we are doing it to see if we can get the game warden or someone from DNR involved. Whoever ends up helping us, they will know what to do. Its their job, that my taxes pay for by the way, and the fact that they haven’t sent someone out already is-“

Mom kicked Dad under the table. Dad cleared his throat.

“The point is, whatever this thing is, a bear, a wolf, its just wandered too far out of its habitat. Whenever someone from the state does get out there, they’ll either capture it or kill it or do whatever they have to to keep people safe, to keep us safe.”

I nodded again with a small smile. I thought it was sweet that Mom and Dad were trying to keep my spirits up, especially when I could tell all of this weighed on them so heavily.

I tried to lighten the mood a little bit, the way any 8 year old girl would, by being a little snarky.

“So, what will we do if the game warden looks at everything and says its a werewolf?” I said.

To me it was only kind of a joke, but to Mom and Dad it was ridiculous, and that was all that mattered. Dad smirked.

“Ah yes, your mother told me all about your werewolf theory.”

“Well, what if it is?” I crossed my arms, making a face that wrinkled my nose.

Dad put on a gravely serious look, laying it on thick.

“If it is, I’ll just have to melt down your mother’s silver dinnerware set into bullets.”

“Oh no you won’t! That set is an heirloom!”

Dad dramatically lifted his hands, dropping them back down on the table in defeat.

“Well then, I guess your mother is just going to let us all die,”

Mom and I cracked up. Dad attempted to remain dry but the corners of his mouth crept up into a smile.

“We’ll just have to try and stab the thing with silver butter knives. That’ll show ‘em.”

We cut-up for the rest of the evening, our hearts full of mirth as we turned in for the night. None of us spoke about it again for the rest of the week. But it festered in our minds, leaked into every unoccupied moment. I could see the apprehension buried in their eyes when they were lost in thought, driving, cooking dinner, staring out the window. I lied awake in bed every night, counting down the days until Friday, when we returned to the farm.


That Friday we headed to Clarence once again. Outside of the music on the radio the car ride was pointedly quieter than usual, less chatty. Nobody said what everyone was thinking, but perhaps it was for the best. A deluge of comments and concerns wouldn’t prevent Dad from finding more dead animals. So we all acted like everything was business as usual. As we passed the “Welcome to Clarence! Population: 804,” sign, thoughts of the monster that had been congregating in my mind all week began to swarm.

We turned from the old sun baked road and onto the dirt drive way. Whatever cheery ambient banjo music my brain normally played when we arrived at farm was silent. I only heard the tires as they crunched over rocks.

Once we got settled in, Dad told Mom and I to go do our usual grocery shopping. While we were gone he planned to go around the pine rows in Bear and “take a look around” which we all knew meant “search for carcasses.” He assured us he would be fine, putting our minds at ease with a dad joke about his shotgun riding shotgun.

So Mom and I went by the Piggly Wiggly in Clarence. The same old lady from last time was at the front, greeting us when we walked in. Mom gave me half the grocery list so we could divide and conquer. She wanted to get back to the farmhouse, she didn’t like the idea of Dad out there by himself.

Rounding the corner I went to dodge the bread display but it wasn’t there. I proceeded down the list until I had completed my scavenger hunt, meeting back up with Mom. We checked out, the nice older lady remembering us from last time, and striking up conversation with Mom. I zoned out..

Maybe the movie tropes were true and it only transformed under a full moon. It wasn’t a full moon this weekend, but it wasn’t a full moon last weekend either, and Dad said the Bobcat was fresh. So what if it was there? Would Dad find more dead animals? Were we really safe like Dad said? What if now it knew we were coming out there and tried to eat us?

My thoughts were fitful and aimless. The swarm constructing a hive.

Before I knew it we were back at the farmhouse. From the look on Mom’s face I could see that the same swarm had built a hive in her brain as well. We watched Dad emerge from the front porch as we pulled up. He gave us a wave, his smile seemed hopeful as he approached.

“Good news. I went around the pines and didn’t see any signs of the big nasty varmint.” Dad said ruffling my hair.

“Really? Peter, do you think maybe it’s wandered off somewhere else?”

He clicked his tongue, “Eh, I don’t think so, but who knows. I mean I hope so, that would be great.”

“Yeah, let some other bum bury dead animals.” I jeered.

“Yeah!” Dad jeered with me.

“Maybe that big ugly thing went off and died somewhere!”

“Yeah!”

Mom chuckled, “You two are a couple of clowns. Now can I get some help with the rest of these groceries please?” Dad walked past me to grab an armful of groceries, bumping me over playfully. I laughed, trying and failing to push him over in return.

Despite the swarm, and all the apprehension built up in my gut, I couldn’t help but want to try and carry on as usual, to treat this weekend like a normal weekend. At least until I was given a reason not to.

The rest of that weekend was like a dream. Friday afternoon I helped Mom with some chores, and then I played outside, finishing the carving in my oak tree, building little houses for fairies with sticks. I saw the cats running around the farm like they normally do. No longer lingering near the Kitty Cat Barn like they were last week. They frolicked in the clovers, basked in the warm rays of sunlight. I enjoyed watching them. That night there was a glorious heavy rain. Mom made a hot beef stew, hearty and savory.

Tucked in that night I was tired and my belly was full. I wouldn’t have seen anything out the window anyway, so I didn’t look. The tin roof sang me to sleep.

Saturday was more of the same Arcadian bliss. Aunt Cheryl came to visit on Saturday. She was Mom’s older sister, and while we loved Aunt Cheryl, Dad had taught me to make myself busy when she came around. Poor Mom was left to pull up a chair and listen. She was twice divorced, and at the time she was dating Mr. Neal. She had leathery bronze skin and bleach blonde hair, and smelled like shea butter hand lotion.

Mom and Aunt Cheryl sat on the porch, and I played in the yard with some Barbie dolls pretending I was extremely busy. They talked about the cold front coming in next week, Aunt Cheryl’s work at the dentist’s office, Aunt Cheryl’s most recent ex-husband’s new girlfriend, Aunt Cheryl’s problems with her heart burn, and Aunt Cheryl’s plans for dinner that night. When Aunt Cheryl went to take a sip of her drink to oil the wheels on her trap, Mom finally got a word in. She said it in a hush, in case I was listening. Which I was.

“Cheryl you haven’t heard anything new recently, you know about the animal attacks?”

Aunt Cheryl responded at full volume.

“Shit, not since you told me about the dead animals y’all found, honey. And Neal hadn’t said nothing about it, but you know Neal. He’s the tall dark and mysterious type. Ya know I told him he needs to quit slouchin’ but he don’t listen to me-“

The conversation trailed off, and a small budding sense of hope began to take root within me. No news was good news, right?

That night, against my better judgement, I slowly eased myself out of bed to peer out the window. I couldn’t help but to shiver when I imagined what I might see. Despite my unease, I was only greeted with the cats, loitering around the small gardening barn, stalking mice among flower bushes. A barn owl called from one of the pecan trees.

I felt that bud of hopefulness start to blossom.

We drove home on Sunday, and I couldn’t help but to feel disarmed as I peered out the window, admiring the scenery like I used to.

If only I knew how much danger I would soon be in.



The week was filled with delightful tedium. School, homework, a couple afternoons at friends’ houses. I hadn’t told any of my them about the slew of dead animals we had found in Clarence, what I had seen in the pine rows, or much less my werewolf theory.

Before all of this started I had asked Mom and Dad if we could to take a friend with us one weekend. They responded positively to that, but I was sure that wasn’t the case now. I had a feeling it would be a while before either of them felt comfortable with that, but if the beast stayed away, then maybe they would become open to the idea again.

I pondered these thoughts as we pulled up to Piggly Wiggly that Friday. We decided to stop by on the way in to town. Dad was running by the hardware store, something about brackets for some roof mounted lights for Bear.

Mom gave me half of the grocery list. As I looked it over, I turned the corner to go down the next aisle and almost bumped into it. The bread display. Once we finished our shopping, we checked out and met Dad by the car. When we asked him if he found the part he was looking for, he began to rant about the hardware store never having what he needed. From there we headed to the farm.

We pulled up to farmhouse, in good spirits as we unloaded groceries. Once we finished l Mom said I could go play until dinner time, so long as she could see me from the house; but before I could shoot out into the yard, Dad whistled for my attention.

“Ey! Before you go play, I need you to go feed those cats. They probably need a refill. Make sure they got clean water too.”

Mom and Dad exchanged looks. The Kitty Cat Barn wasn’t in view of the windows.

“Don’t worry Lori, I’m headed over to the shop barn, I’ll be able to keep an eye on her until she can get back into your line of sight.”

I heard Dad whisper something to her under his breath about responsibility, before he came over affectionately grabbing my shoulders as he walked with me to the shop barn. I waited by the door while he fetched me a little bag of cat food and then sent me on my way. I could feel his gaze on me until I was out of sight.

There were about 10 cats living in the Kitty Cat Barn at a time, not including their kittens. All of them were Nanny’s strays.

Despite knowing they were regularly checked on by Mrs Kerry, I still worried about them, especially out in the wild with some beast on the loose. Though, I felt like a werewolf eating a cat was equivalent to me eating a singular popcorn shrimp. I wasn’t sure if the cats knew that, but perhaps they felt better in the Kitty Cat Barn, being popcorn shrimp in a hard to reach place.

I wrapped my fingers around the lopsided wire-paneled door that bowed on its hinges, allowing the cats easy entry. I stepped through the threshold an initial response of relief to see glimmering eyes shining at me through the musty darkness. However, I was then horrified by the fact that they were all there. More than 10, probably 20, all tucked into the shelves, hiding. I stopped dead in my tracks, and stayed dead there for a minute, trying to process what this may have meant, why they were there. Unfortunately, I had an idea. I tried to push through the motions, moving on to the task at hand. I fed them, and they graciously came down to eat. I used the hose to clean their bowl and they gladly drank. I was hopeful that maybe they were just still spooked by “something,” and that perhaps some food and drink would help them perk up. But once they had eaten and drank their fill, they just jumped right back onto their shelves, tucking themselves in like books. Dozens of eyes, pairs of wide luminous globes staring at me with feral transparency.

‘You need to run.’ They said.

‘You need to hide.’

I would have gone straight to Dad to report this, but I heard the air compressor running, and I knew that meant “busy,” so I came running back into the house.

“Mom! Mom! The cats are all hiding in the Kitty Cat Barn!”

“What?” She said peaking her head out from doorway to the kitchen.

“There are like 20 cats hiding in the barn, Mom! I-“

I paused for a moment, staring out the window.

“I think they might be hiding from the werewolf!”

There was a beat of silence.

“Amy-“ Mom huffed, “come here.”

I did as she said, any fearful wind in my sails shadowed by the threat of a scolding from my mother. I walked timidly into the kitchen as she finished washing her hands, wiping them on her apron before placing them on my shoulders.

“Amy, sweetheart. There was, or is, an animal out there. Absolutely. We don’t know if it’s a wolf or a bear, but we know that it’s one of the two.”

She knew I disagreed, but my better judgement had me keep my mouth shut.

“You are a good girl Amy, and I know you’re not lying to me. Now whether you did see something out there or maybe dreamed it, it doesn’t matter. It scared you, and it would’ve scared me too! I don’t want you to think I don’t believe that you saw what you think you saw, okay? I do. But it’s just not a werewolf, honey, okay? Werewolves are not real.”

She said all of this firmly but, kindly, warmly. With a yearning for understanding in her eyes.

I loved my Mom, so much. I gave her a small smile. Nodding.

“Are we in agreement then?”

I nodded.

I wondered if I should start taking into consideration that this wasn’t a werewolf, and that she was probably right. The very thought caused me to psychologically squirm, but maybe I really did just have a nightmare.

That night I laid in bed, kissed and tucked in under fresh linens. Prayers said. I tossed and turned for half an hour before I knocked on the door to Mom and Dad’s room. Pitifully declaring,

“I can’t sleep.”

Mom lovingly embraced me, probably glad I hadn’t come bursting in about seeing a werewolf. She tucked me back into bed and brought me a glass of warm milk to help me relax. It calmed me enough that when she asked if I was comfortable enough for her to go back to bed, that I said yes. She kissed my forehead, telling me goodnight, and I was suddenly alone again. Warm and snug under the covers, but still awake, staring at the ceiling.

Were the cats still huddled in the barn? How long would they cower in there?

I turned to look over at the window, until slowly I got up.

I peaked out the window. One of the flood lights was on the garden barn. Dad had started leaving it on since burying those animals with Mr Voss. Its light cast shadows on the yard and it’s various shrubs and garden beds. I didn’t see any of the cats. None of them played around in the grass or slinked about in the shadows. I sighed, climbing back into bed. I hadn’t laid back down for more than 15 minutes, sleep’s spell almost cast on me when I heard it.

I heard it.

The groaning sound of wood in the yard. By the time I’d flipped the covers over to venture out of bed and investigate I heard another sound, right below my window- the crunching of leaves, followed by a very soft high pitched yap.

I rushed to the window and below it, under the bush, I saw a fox and her kits skulking up against the side of the house. The mother was coming down from a snarl, as though she had just snapped at one of them. I saw the kit in question, coming up to nuzzle the mother with its litter mates.

I didn’t have time to ask myself what they were hiding from.

A shape loomed in my periphery. From the shadowy outline of the garden shed’s roof I saw a shape emerge. Somewhat indiscernible, a head and a pair of shoulders- human looking, muscular, but very broad- like they’d been unnaturally pushed apart to make room for the tall spinous protrusions of its back. It approached the front most part of the roof turning to the side, and in the inky midnight blue sky its black silhouette engrained itself into my mind for eternity. From the massive torso and arched spine came a long thick neck that ran up to a skull, distinctly canine with a muzzle. The ears were pointed and translucent like the wings of a bat. I watched as one of its abnormally long arms moved dexterously to maneuver its body over the roof. Fear hit my blood stream, and I had to work to contain my scream of panic. My raspy whimper cracked out from my throat as I sprinted to my parents room where it turned into a cry.

“Daaaaad! Mommmm!”

It was pure instinct, A child running and whimpering to its parents as the kit had beneath my window.

They groaned as they sat up in bed,

“Amy? What is it baby? Are you okay?”

I approached my mom’s side, cowering into my her arms. She held me tight by my wrists, trying to make out what I was saying despite being half asleep.

A sudden wall within me fell, and defeat consumed me.

They wouldn’t believe me, but I know what I saw.

I know what I saw.

“Its the werewolf,” the last word came out in slow shaky whimper.

“I swear. I swear Mama.” I gasped between sobs.

She released a deep breath, holding me close.

“Amy,” I could hear the sorrow in her voice, but what stung was the disappointment.

“Amy, you saw it out your window?” Dad was on his feet, already at the door to their bedroom.

I nodded quickly.

I heard him as he moved swiftly down the hall, presumably to go look out my window. He made footfall to the back door, grabbing a shell from the top of the bookshelf, loading it into his shot gun.

Of course, he came back with nothing to report.

“Amy, you must’ve had a nightmare baby.”

“It was a werewolf! I’m not making it up! It was on the garden barn, Daddy it was just there!”

“I looked, baby, and I didn’t see it.”

“Honey we know you’re not lying, you just had a vivid nightmare is all.”

I shook my head and I wept. Not sure what was real anymore.

Mom and Dad let me crawl into bed with them.

The next morning I heard them talking in hushed tones in the living room, over coffee. About me.

“I was thinking if she saw something on two legs out there that maybe it was just a big man. I talked to Dan yesterday on the phone, he said some people in the area don’t want to wait for the game warden- can’t say I entirely blame ‘em- but they might be out there trying to hunt the thing. I don’t know…”

“I thought we had a good understanding yesterday. I should have done more to keep her grounded through all of this, paid more attention, I just-“ I heard my mom sigh, burying her face in her hands. My dad patted her back.

“I hate that she is going through this. She’s such a good kid.”

“No honey, none of this is your fault. I should’ve gotten more involved-”

“No, no- you’ve been great. Not to mention, you’re working a 9 to 5 all week and then keeping the grounds up here… and burying dead animals as of late. Hopefully this is just a phase she’s going through. I just worry about her you know? The fairy stories, those so called “friends” of hers at school-“

I couldn’t bear to hear any more. Mom and Dad had so much they were trying to juggle, and now I had caused them to worry about me.

I hated myself for that, I hated that I had made them hurt.

I tip toed back to their bedroom, crying under the covers for a little while until I had gotten my emotions under control. I wiped my tears and walked into the living room, making sure they saw me run the sleep from my eyes, an excuse for their redness.

The rest of the day I read mostly. Not wanting to really talk to anyone. I would’ve liked to have played with the cats, but there was no coaxing them from their refuge in the Kitty Cat Barn.

I was mostly quiet at lunch and at dinner, finishing both quickly to “get back to the book I was reading.” Mom and Dad had each made at least one attempt during the day to say something to me about the night before. To make sure I was okay, to ask if I needed or wanted to talk about it. I knew that if we did they would only end up trying to help validate in my mind that it was all a dream. By the end of the day I wished that I was just being an imaginative child, and that I could honestly tell myself that it was just a vivid nightmare.

Mom and Dad offered to let me sleep with them that night. I thanked them, but refused, assuring them that I would be fine. I told myself that so long as I didn’t look out my window I wouldn’t risk seeing anything, and that gave me comfort. Enough comfort to sleep alone in a dark room with a werewolf possibly outside, anyway.

To my own surprise I managed to get to sleep well enough, tired from all the emotions I had been untangling for the past 24 hours.

To this day, I cannot say what compelled me to stir from my rest in the middle of the night. I awoke, rubbing my eyes as I got my bearings.

I had told myself.

Don’t go over to the window. Nothing good ever happens when you go over to the window.

I don’t know if there was a part of me that wanted to prove myself wrong, so I could say to myself,

‘See? There’s nothing out there. Maybe Mom and Dad are right, and you’re just a dumb little kid having nightmares.’

I padded over, hearing the friendly creak of the floorboards. I ducked under the lacey curtain veil that my mother had lovingly sewn together and hung up on my window, in all likelihood hoping it would keep me from doing exactly what I was about to do.

To my everlasting regret, I peered out into the pitch black world beyond the glass.

Through one of the vintage pane’s I saw something familiar. A pair of chalky white new balance sneakers, something that I thought was unique to only one person.

I felt my heart sink to the floor.

The bright white shoes stood out in the underbrush, and I squinted at the way they almost seemed to hover in the darkness. I managed to make out that the figure they belonged to was staggering into the woods.

What was wrong with Dad? Was he hurt?

I remember my mind beginning to free fall, panic setting in. My thoughts fogged up the window pane on a whisper,

“If I wake Mom, I’ll just make her upset.”

I should have just gotten Mom. God, I should have just gotten Mom.

But I had cried wolf too many times.

My plan was to go out the back door and call out to him from the stoop. I shuffled out into the night chill, hugging my arms to my chest.

I had opened my mouth to shout his name, but before I could, I heard the agonizing cry from the figure out in the woods. I’d heard my Dad yelp when he brought a hammer down on his thumb, but I had never heard him cry out like that before.

It sounded excruciating.

Had the monster hurt him? Could he walk? Did he need help?

I watched the figure nearly crumpling over as it staggered into the pine rows.
I- the sweet summer child- thought,

‘He isn’t far away.’

‘I could catch up to him quickly.’

‘I run that distance in P.E. all the time.’

Before I knew it I was sprinting through the yard with confidence, I knew every rock, ant hill, and arching root. It was all mostly open space until you got to the concrete slab in front of the shop barn where Dad parked the Backhoe and Bear. My eyes slowly began to adjust to the dark. I ran on tiptoe across the icy cold concrete slab. I didn’t even have any shoes on.

I stopped to take a better look at the barn. The lights weren’t on. Dad hadn’t been working on anything. What in the world was he doing out here so late? Did he see something?

I peered into the pine rows. No sight of the figure.

I wanted to call out to him, but hesitated. If that thing was out here I wasn’t going to draw its attention to us.

He couldn’t have been more than half a football field away. I could catch him.

I ran through the frigid night air, my heart knocking like a piston within my chest. My gaze swung between the pine trunks as I scanned the rows. Seeing nothing, I continued to run. The monotony of the trunks and the rows and the waves of pine straw putting me into a trance.

How many rows back had I gone? Was this a football field- or half a football field?

‘Surely I would have seen Dad by now.’

By the grace of God I stopped, warm blood pumping through my chest, I tried to catch my breath as quietly as I could. The pines stood in formation around me, a sprawling arboreal army.

It felt like some dense mass had been dropped down my throat until it hit the bottom of my stomach, sinking like a stone. The nausea set in as I became cognizant of my situation, my instincts being translated into a flimsy string of cohesive thought.

‘Dear God. Dear God. I ran too far.’

‘You idiot. You stupid dumb little child.’

I became very still.

Soft tender moonlight trickled through the pines, pearly beams scattering across the fallen pine needles.

I looked out, down the corridors of trees. Making out a shape a few rows over, I squinted, shifting my head to see through the trunks. When I realized what I was seeing my eyes grew very wide, and my spine grew rigid. Terror hit me like lightning.

It was far enough away that I hadn’t seen it at first, but not so far that I couldn’t now see it in painful clarity.

It moved like a wraith in a crypt, a lean, creeping monstrosity. I remember thinking how fast it looked. How little time it would likely take it to get to me.

I took slow silent steps backwards willing to do this all the way home if I had to. Now acutely aware of my surroundings, I stepped and felt a pang of hope. When I stepped there was no crunch in the pine needles.

Thinking this was to my advantage, I made a handful of quick steps until suddenly, to my corporeal horror, it stopped. I watched as its ears fanned upwards, unnaturally long and pointy. Its head turned on its long neck, the top of its muzzle moved up in a familiar motion. A sniff.

It could smell me.

Slow and shaky steps turned quickly into a full sprint in the opposite direction, I nearly held my breath as I ran, trying to keep myself as quiet as possible. I bit my lips to keep from whimpering. I hoped I would be able to hear him if he started to run towards me.

But it dawned on me that what I had moments ago thought to be to my advantage was now to my great detriment-

When I stepped- there was no crunch.

I was suddenly also painfully aware of how bright neon pink my nightgown was in the darkness.

My jaw began to quiver as I pressed forward. I cut diagonally across the rows, moving in the general direction of the farmhouse.

I ran like this, cutting across row after row after row until suddenly I collided with the ground, having tripped on a groove in the earth. In that moment I remember thinking that between keeping my tears at bay and fighting the urge to involuntarily wet myself, I knew something had to give. Urine it would smell, but hopefully not tears. That thought alone, and how hopelessly dead I began to realize I was caused them to fall like a downpour, cascading down my cheeks. Cold rivers on my warm flushed face. I scrambled up, again fighting the urge to whimper, until my blurry eyes caught sight of what I had tripped on.

The groove I had tripped on was one of many, claw marks that had slashed up layers of pine needles and ripped into the earth. Less than half a row away was a pile of clothes, among them were the treasonous pair of white new balance sneakers, cast aside haphazardly.

I wish I could say that I told myself to calm down and think, but I didn’t. My hippocampus, my amygdala, one of them went AWOL and violently threw open the filing cabinet labeled “Wolves.”

In all my follies that evening I made one decision that might have saved my life.

I stripped off my neon pink nightgown, flinging it to the side.

Down to nothing but my Barbie underwear, I yanked the shirt up from the ground, sliding it over my head.

I grabbed the jacket, hurriedly slipping my arms into the sleeves.

It was huge on me, and smelled like cigarettes, but more importantly it wasn’t bright pink and it would mask my smell. The smell of Mr. Bubble bath soap and warm milk.

With less than a couple of seconds to make a decision that I was willing to bet my life on, I frantically assumed that if the beast followed my scent diagonally through the pine rows that I would go diagonally the opposite way, but still in the direction of the house.

Hurtling forward I thought this would be a great plan until it occurred to me that it would see me. It would have one chance of seeing me from down the pine rows, I could only hope that I was far enough away.

Adrenaline eventually took all my thoughts by the collar and kicked them out. Fate had dealt me a handful of seconds for thinking and I had used them up. My only task now was to act on them and pray.

As I ran I mustered up the courage to pivot and look beside me down the pine rows. Painfully aware that I was at the indefensible mercy of what I might see.

After crossing over half a dozen rows I saw a flash. The most terrifying blur I had ever seen. I only vaguely made out its shape. Headed in the direction I had been in less than a minute before. There was no speculating about it.

The monster was after me.

I could see light from the farmhouse, an angel reaching out in the night. Mom and Dad had realized that their baby girl wasn’t tucked in bed under her daisy quilt. My heart began to ache. I could practically smell the remnants of smoke from my dad’s pipe, feel the crisp linen sheets mom had just put on the bed. I choked back a sob.

I continued to run until I emerged from the pine rows, right beside the shop barn. For a splintering second I thought of the naive child that had stood there not 15 minutes ago, preparing to run into the devil’s hunting ground.

I was so close, so close to the house. 100 yards at the most. I was ready to collapse in on myself, fall into hysterics in the safety of my parents arms.

But as I reached the shop barn I stopped. Dead in my tracks. A tug, a pull, a gut feeling. A memory from the night before.

Surely, the shop barn was too tall.

But the oak tree beside it- beside me- wasn’t.

My head snapped up to my right.

It sat like a looming gargoyle on the burled apex of the oak’s twisted knotted branches, its enormous torso coiled up in the dark, ready to strike had I taken a few steps further.

The shadow of the barn had concealed me, but not for long. I watched as a cadaverous front limb slid down the trunk from the dark and into the unholy moonlight. Massively elongated human palms and fingers, the bones bowing horrifically outwards like paws, tipped with keratinous claws that bit into the bark. I took a step backward. I watched in terror as the hand revealed an arm, muscled like a human’s but twice as long and curved at an unnatural angle.

I darted into the barn. I knew I didn’t have more than a second or two.

I stumbled in through the doorway. I was going to make a break for the upstairs loft, but I opted not to for fear of being cornered.

My eyes only had enough time for one vicious sweep of the room. They landed on a solid wooden workbench up against the wall with a trash can beneath it. I raced over, frantically crawling under it, unbothered by the cobwebs. Beside me was a bucket with various lengths of PVC pipe. With whatever borrowed time I didn’t have, I reached to move it to my side and block me in under the bench.

I was unaware of the chains wound up in the bottom like snakes.

I heard the grit from the bottom of the bucket scrape against the cement and I wanted to vomit.

I peered out from my hiding spot, a tall ominous shape standing still in the doorway.

For all I knew, the scrape was inconsequential, perhaps it had already seen me and I was as good as dead anyway.

My cheeks were cold, but I felt the warm trails of tears still on my face.

I watched as it entered the barn. It’s lean disfigured arms came into view first, the muscles slithering beneath the skin as it moved. Its torso was human but wide, stretched outwards unnaturally. The hips were the same way, narrow, but also having been stretched to achieve its new unholy function. It’s legs were much like the arms, and the feet much like the hands.

It stalked into the barn, sniffing the air. Once beside the bench it slowly began to crouch towards the ground.

I was nearly blind with fear as it lowered itself.

As its head came into my line of sight I caught my breath in my throat. Below the bridge of the nose was oversized abnormal canine, as though its snout had erupted out of a human face. Its jaws and teeth were so large, and the skull had morphed to accommodate it.

I could feel the heat radiate from the creature. Like it was on fire, burning and expending more energy than the vessel was meant to. I felt a wave of warmth wash over my legs but I was too petrified to register it.

However abhorrently vile and evil its entire form was, it eyes were what shattered me. It’s eyes are what I see every time I close my own, every night of my life.

They were hauntingly and devastatingly human. A man’s eyes. Green. Glassed over. The eyes nor the brows moved as it sniffed the air beside my hiding spot. They remained unfazed despite the snarl on its pale lips, or the twitch in its ears as it listened for me and instead heard something else.

The eyes were fixed in place, looking wherever the neck told it to. I watched as it slowly tilted its head at the sound, as if its interest had been gradually piqued.

A few seconds later I heard the quick and heavy footsteps of my Dad approaching from outside the barn, followed by Bear roaring to life. The engine bellowed as he hit the gas.

Like a shot, the beast moved out of the barn, seemingly in one silent spider like motion. Faster than wind. The sudden absence of its immense presence gutted me.

I don’t know when, but I realized that at some point my hand had slowly crept over my mouth in horror.

I sat there for what felt like an hour. Sure that it was by the door. Waiting for me to come running out.

I sat, every muscle in my body tensed until I heard a howl in distance.

When you hear a wolf howl in a scary movie, it’s so weightless. Often times it means nothing, merely an overused sound bite to set the mood.

What I heard caused whatever part of my psyche that was spiritual to tremble.

It was both an animalistic howl and a human scream.

It was anguish and rage and hunger.

Tears fell as I thought of my Dad. I came out here thinking I was helping him and I might’ve just gotten him killed. The dam was ready to burst, but I had to get home first.

I delineated for a few moments. Unabashed horror holding me in a vice. I shook violently as I clumsily came out from under the bench. Feeling something wet I looked down. I had wet myself. I realized that I hadn’t gotten lucky. I had outsmarted nothing. The beast left because I was popcorn shrimp in a hard to reach place.

After mustering up the courage to leave the barn, I made a break for the house. A hysterical mess of tears.

Mom had stayed behind. She was on the phone with Dad, likely checking in to see if he’d found me. Her eyes jumped to me as I stumbled through the door and she nearly wept. I practically crawled into her arms.

“PETER! Peter she just came in, oh my God, Amy- baby are you okay? Are you hurt?”

I sobbed deeply as I shook my head, unable to form a sentence.

“Is-Is-Is Dad-?? Okay??” I choked out.

She nodded, immensely confused, but prioritizing other things.

Mom looked me over. “Hold on Peter, let me look at her- she seems okay.”

Mom held my face in her hands, kissing me. Kneeling down as she looked me over.

“Honey, what happened? Wha- whose jacket is this?”

My mother’s face paled. Any joy she had at my return dwindled like a flame in the wind.

“P-Peter, Peter, she’s seems okay, but she is seriously shaken up, let me uh- let me get her calmed down and we’ll get the story when you’re home… Okay- okay- Be safe. Bye.”

My mom grabbed me up in her arms for a moment. Just holding me. She was warm and smelled like lavender. I wept in her arms for a moment. Allowing her smell, her warmth and her hushing kisses to calm me.

She then became very tense and walked me into the bathroom. Drawing up hot water in the tub to wash me off.
While she got the water warm I reached into my pocket, finding the paper. It was just a receipt for cigarettes and a payday candy bar. My mom saw me and snatched up the receipt. She scanned it fervently until, realizing it was nothing of importance, she searched through the other pockets. She stuffed the receipt back into its place and hastily tossed the coat aside when she found nothing. Sighing, she knelt down and looked deeply into my eyes.

“Amy.”

Her voice was a serious as the grave.

“Please be honest with me, baby.” Her eyes were desperate, horrified. I had never seen my mother like this.

“What happened out there honey? Why are you only wearing a man’s clothes?”

When I finally caught up to the moment and realized my mother’s worst fears, I hurriedly tried to ease her mind, my voice still slightly warbled from my crying induced congestion.

“I promise Mom, I swear on my life, nothing like that happened. I s-saw a man outside and I thought it was Dad, so I ran after him. Then in the pine rows I saw the-“

My voice faltered,

“An animal. I don’t know what it was. But, I-I saw it and it saw me and started chasing me.”

The moments flashed in my mind and I started to cry as I recalled it all again.

“I ran, and then I found these clothes. I- I don’t know who they belonged to, but I had read my book talking about how good wolves eyes are,”

I saw his eyes again, his green eyes.

I sobbed. Beginning to break down, but my mothers eyes softened, seemingly able to put two and two together. She then began to cry with me, wrapping me up in her arms, her voice broken with emotion.

“I’m so sorry Amy, I’m so sorry baby… But lm so glad you’re okay. Now let’s get you cleaned up. Your Dad will be home any minute.”

She gave me a warm sponge bath and got me in fresh pajamas. Before we could go to wait for Dad in the living room, we heard him burst through the door. I ran towards him as he knelt on floor. Arms wide open. I collided into his chest and his strong arms held me tight. I felt his wet cheek against my forehead. I clung tightly to him for a while as he rubbed my back.

Both Mom and Dad then sat me down, wanting to know the full story. I had given them the scare of the century, and I could sense an anger beneath their concern, waiting to chew me out as soon as they knew what happened. Which I deserved.

I didn’t even make a conscious decision to not tell them about the monster. I just knew that I couldn’t. However having been taught that honesty was always the best policy, I kept everything as close to the truth as possible.

I told them everything, mostly. I told them I saw “an animal,” though I couldn’t make out what it was. Which was true. I made a small adjustment to the part about the man’s clothing. Understandably, it seemed to be the most important information to them, since they knew I was otherwise safe. I told them I found the shirt and jacket while running away from the animal, and that I made a split second decision that I was safer wearing those brown and grey clothes rather than my bright pink night gown.
Which wasn’t a lie.

The rumors about poachers served as a fitting scape goat, and Mom and Dad were able to convince themselves that that was who I had seen stumbling off into the pine rows. They even speculated that he was drunk. It explained away the stumbling, the stripping off of clothes. Dad looked through the pockets, hoping like Mom had, to find some form of ID, but was disappointed to only find the receipt.

Afterwards they chewed me out, gave me a legendary scolding. like good parents do. They eased up after a while, figuring I had been through enough, but even as they lectured, Dad wasn’t as stern as usual. I saw it in his eyes. Heard the small beat of hesitation in his voice.

I never asked and he never told, but I often wonder what happened after that thing followed Dad in Bear that night. What he saw, how he had managed to get it off his tail.

For the next month, Mom and I didn’t go out to the farmhouse. Dad would drive his weary mind down early on Saturday morning and drive his exhausted body back late Saturday night. If Dad found any dead animals in those 4 weekends, I never heard anything about it.

It seemed like every other day my mom would ask me if I was sure I was okay. That nothing had happened. That I hadn’t interacted with “the poacher” in any way. I felt so bad that the worry ate at her the way it did, but eventually she really did believe me, and let it go.

Finally after a month of watching Dad suffer, I told them I wanted to go back. They were a little hesitant, but seemed glad that I had a desire to return. It was our little family get away, our escape, and we all still loved the place.

The Thursday before our first weekend back, I finally had a nightmare. A real, discernible, REM sleep nightmare. The beast was in the farmhouse, it wasn’t raining, but I could hear the thunder outside. See the heat lightning. Every pang of light lit up the body of the monster in a new way as it stalked through the house sneaking from room to room, stealthy despite its immense size and presence. Somehow I knew it was searching for me. I awoke, sweating, knowing they were just dreams. An oddly validating experience.

That Friday afternoon, Mom and I stopped by the Piggly Wiggly. As usual. I had kind of missed the place. I almost bumped into the bread display, sitting in its semi-usual place. I smiled.

We got everything we needed and proceeded to checkout.

There was a tall younger man in front of us. He had good posture, and looked clean cut.

He stepped forward and greeted the cashier.

“Hey Mrs. Crystal.”

“Hey there Scott! How are you doin’ sugar?”

“I’m good, how are you? Your car’s heater still working alright?”

“Yes! Thank you so much again for fixin’ that for me! You know how much a mechanic would’ve charged me? It would’ve been a fortune! Your route gotcha comin back next week?”wwete

“No ma’am, next week I’m in Allensville, but I’ll be back week after that.”

“Well I’ll look forward to seein you then sweetheart.” She winked at him as she handed him a Payday and a pack of cigarettes. He took a step to leave before she called for him,

“Oh baby! your receipt!”

He stopped, turning back to grab it. As he did I saw his face.

It’s hard to explain how you recognize half of a face, an upper brow; but I saw it, in the same way Dr Jekyll’s visage likely resembled that of Mr Hyde’s.

Before turning back again to leave, his eyes were met with the sight of my mother and me. In the past I would’ve blushed at the sight of him. He smiled warmly, and politely tipped his ball cap, with a logo that read, “Watson Bread Delivery.”

And beneath the rim sat sharp green eyes.

Credit: Evelyn Clark

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