I adjusted our speed to keep us close behind the deteriorating green station wagon ahead of us. A steep embankment guarded our left, while the forest encroached too closely on the other. Veronica coughed on the dust as we raced along the gravel road. When I took a switchback too fast, the truck slid on the large rocks. I could feel the tires spinning in the thick gravel near the ditch. She gave me a worried look while I straightened out to catch up to Mrs. Ferguson.
Racing down a stretch of road, we passed a large swamp that was painted in dull grays and pale browns. Between the gray sky, the broken and decaying trees protruding through the surface of the water, and the dry reeds stretching into the distance, it was a dismal scene. At some point we might have sun again, but this summer was the most miserable weather to date this year.
Veronica still hadn’t said a word to me since we started out. A couple of weeks ago, I would’ve given anything to just have her alive and back in my life again. Now that she was here, I couldn’t even hold a conversation with her without it breaking down into a fight. Traversing the open space, we re-entered the dark forest on the other side. The station wagon suddenly jerked to the right as an old blue pick-up pulled out in front of us traveling at twice our speed.
I cursed, and Veronica let out a yelp as the driver hit the horn. I stomped on the brakes and swerved into the ditch to let them sail past. Taking a breath, I started away from the ditch to follow Mrs. Ferguson again. Veronica sputtered something about the driver while we continued down the gravel road at a more cautious pace. Rounding another bend, the green wagon braked and turned into a gravel driveway. I parked across the bottom of the driveway, sliding to a stop with the rocks bouncing forward. Veronica just gave me an odd look and shook her head.
I stepped out onto the gravel, causing it to crunch under foot while I examined the house. The driveway led to a large split-level home, a black-shingled roof capped the home with fading white eaves. The two-car garage was at the head of the driveway. Both roll-down doors were closed. Blue clapboards covered the house, with black shutters accenting the windows. The lawn tipped to rise and meet the other half of the house, with the front door only a few steps up from the ground. In the driveway, the green station wagon parked beside a brown pick-up truck.
Surveying the property, a light wind rippled my coat. What were the chances of there actually being a creature? Who were the more likely culprits? Bear? Prankster?
“I don’t know who’s worse. You or her.” I rolled my eyes. “Ignoring me?” Veronica asked, tapping her fingernails on the roof to gain my attention. I saw her frustration in a venomous glare. “Well?” I blinked, uncertain of what she was expecting as an answer. “You are, aren’t you?” Veronica repeated her question. I stared blankly at her as she walked around the front of the truck to stand in front of me. I watched her eyes, hidden behind the pink lenses of her sunglasses. She was shorter than me without her heels, but right now she felt more intimidating. Her conversation clicked.
“Sorry, just lost in thought.”
“Yeah, sure.” She shook her head and let out a sigh.
“I am,” I thought about it. “But can we please focus here?”
“Whatever.”
“Veronica…”
“Don’t.” She looked up in my eyes. “You just don’t get it.”
“Uh, yeah.” I lowered my voice. “I understand better than you think.” One of the most difficult parts of working professionally with someone close is keeping personal baggage separate. Veronica glared.
“Do you need anything?” Mrs. Ferguson called to us from the front steps of the house with a motherly voice. “I’ll go get Seth.”
“We’re good,” I called up to her, taking a step away from Veronica. I spared Veronica another glance before moving to the truck bed.
“Doesn’t feel it.” Veronica leaned on the back fender. I opened the bed-cover to unzip a black duffle bag and pull out a camera. She grabbed the camera from my hand.
“Can we please focus? After we deal with this we still have another two-hour drive to get to Striga.” She scrunched up her face in annoyance.
“Fine.” She adjusted the camera and fired off the picture in my face before snapping one of the house.
“Ok,” I countered politely, walking up the driveway with her. “Let’s get to work.” My curiosity piqued when we got closer to the battered pick-up truck.
The truck was a recent model outfitted with small tires and various aftermarket accessories that transformed the vehicle into a low-riding stereo. The truck was heavily damaged, just as the woman had described. A few rocks were in the empty truck bed, giving the indication of what had caused some of the damage. The back windows were missing, and the only traces of the shattered driver’s window were glass fragments on the ground. The sides of the truck were dented in numerous places, with both the hood and roof crushed under heavy pressure. The total damage to the truck made it seem like someone had rolled the vehicle. I stopped and knelt down next to the most unusual damage.
“Veronica.” I called her over from the other side of the truck. She snapped a picture of the damage and joined me.
“Yeah?” She stooped down next to me. I only glanced at her for a moment before scrutinizing the truck.
“What do you think?”
“Well, when I wrote that article about the coach in high school, a bunch of…critics took baseball bats to my car. It looked a lot like this.”
“What, you mean there were people who didn’t love your opinions? When was that?” I fixed my sunglasses and looked back to the truck.
“Around the second time Jess roped us into the school paper.”
“Ah. Yeah, that was about the time…”
“Yeah, well, it was some good journalism.”
“If you didn’t mind ticking off half the school. Anyhow, I think you’re on the right track, look.” I nodded at the tire. She found a narrow slit in the sidewall of the tire by my fingertip.
“The tires have been slashed.” She snapped a close-up of the cut.
“Unless Bigfoot has gone gangster, I think we’ve got a person here.” I stood up and Veronica followed suit.
“So, he mixes with the wrong people and he blames it on their demon?” She glanced at the back tire, nodding at the same damage.
“Something like that.”
“You see what it did to my truck? It’s totally trashed!” A gruff teenager’s voice called over to us. We looked up to see a skinny boy in baggy clothes and long blond hair drawn into a ponytail.
“You Seth?” I challenged the kid, carefully judging his reaction.
“Yeah, you the investigators?” The acne-riddled teenager approached us, clomping down the lawn. He stood on the opposite corner of the front bumper from us, scrutinizing.
“That’s us.” I caught a glimpse of Veronica tugging her skirt down, before turning to face the kid. “Your mother gave us the short version, care to elaborate?” I glanced down making sure the recorder was running.
“It trashed my truck, man. Now, I’m stuck taking the bus until I can pay the deductible.” The kid’s eyes were on Veronica’s legs.
“You want to tell us exactly what happened?” Veronica closed her jacket, but I doubted that would stop his imagination.
“You don’t look like what I was expecting. I mean, I’ve seen those shows before that are dealing with this stuff, and they’re all old and fat.” The kid ogled at Veronica, making her clearly uncomfortable.
“Yeah, sure. You want to tell us what happened?” I tried to drag the kid’s attention away from his fantasy encounter with Veronica.
“Uh, sure. I got back late the other night and I had a fight with Kim, that’s when all sorts of stuff starts happening. It’s like running around the house, looking in the windows and we hear the sound of my truck getting trashed. I come out in the morning and I find it like this.”
“Did you recently agitate anyone really badly at school or such?” Veronica asked, crossing her arms defensively.
“Not that I’m aware of, why? Don’t you think it was the thing? I mean, you should see what it does to our backyard.”
“There’s some questionable damage here.” I watched his reaction, but wasn’t even certain he heard me. “Your mother requested that we take a look out back. Would you care to show us?”
“Uh, this way.” The teenager led us around the corner of the garage. Veronica had trouble following us up the grass bank, as her flat soled shoes slipped underfoot. She clung to my arm to save her from falling. The kid trudged forward without so much as a word. Walking around to the back of the house, the kid stopped when we reached a somewhat flat surface.
“So, what can you tell us?” I looked around.
“Just that it comes out of the tree line from that direction.” The kid pointed at the far corner of the house. “And sometimes it comes from there.” He pointed at the forest straight back from the house.
“Can you describe it or its behavior?” Veronica glanced around.
“It usually comes out at like ten or so and it’s about seven to ten feet tall. It’s big, walks around like a weird person and has red eyes. Uh, it usually throws around the lawn furniture and digs through the trashcans. My sister can tell you more, her and her friends know all about it.” His mannerisms told me all I needed to know.
“Can you get your sister? I would like to speak with her,” I asked.
“Sure.” Giving Veronica a studious glance, the kid obligingly entered the house through a set of glass patio doors into the kitchen.
“He’s lying.”
“So, I’m right?” Veronica unzipped her jacket and fanned herself. It was too hot to wear her jacket, but her disgust with the kid was stronger.
“Yeah, you alright?” I watched her flap the jacket again.
“Cooked.” She slipped the jacket off her shoulders, and picked at her shirt until she saw the glass door slide open again. A young average looking girl in jeans and a tube top came out. Her dark hair was drawn back into a braid. “Kim?”
“Yeah?” The girl blinked at us. Veronica slipped her jacket back into place, while I surveyed the immediate area.
The backyard was a large patch of grass that spanned the entire length of the house, with a few meters to spare on each end separating the house from the surrounding forest. Several trashcans had been knocked over, their contents strewn about the yard. Patio furniture lay scattered about like a storm had blown through. Among the various bits of debris were large footprints that tracked about. I noted the broken bulb in the outdoor light fixture just below the roof over the patio. Veronica followed the nearest tracks attempting to discern a pattern to the movement.
“Excuse me, Kim?” Kneeling, I was entranced by a particular track indented deep into the soil. Something was odd about it.
“Yes?”
“Can you do us a favor?” I stood up and brushed off my hands. Another print several feet away drew my attention.
“Sure.”
“There’s a….”—I stepped over the tracks, and heard Veronica snapping pictures—“…a black toolbox in the bed of our truck. Could you run and get it?” I knelt down to examine the other print. I didn’t like asking others to do our work but I didn’t want to continue our discussion in front of the girl.
“Okay.” The girl trotted off around the corner of the house. The track was different from the last but not too dissimilar. Something was distinctly off about this.
“Connor!” Veronica called to me from the other end of the house. Stepping over the tracks and around other debris, I made my way over to her.
When researching a case that sounds too fantastical to be true, you just need to look at the evidence objectively. Removing the description of the subject from the scenario left the obvious. A peeping-tom, a stalker. I found Veronica examining a series of tracks that seemed to stop outside a broken window some eight feet up. The window was too high for either of us to see into, but the tracks clearly stopped and stood facing the window. Two small rectangular depressions on each side raised suspicions. Veronica traced them with her fingers. She tossed down a pen from inside her jacket next to them and snapped a picture before re-pocketing the pen. It certainly added more weight to my theory.
“Give me a boost.” Veronica pointed at the window. I ducked down and laced my fingers together. She placed her left foot in my meshed hands. I hoisted her without a sound allowing her to balance on one foot and look in the window. I tried my best to keep my eyes on the ground and not on her.
“What do you see?”
“It’s the bathroom. Eww.” Craning my neck, I saw she was poking at something under the eaves, just above the small window. She was precariously balanced with the camera dangling from her wrist. She held up the camera and snapped a picture of what she had found.
“What is it?”
“Gum. Down please.” I carefully lowered her back to the ground. She moved to slap me but I caught her wrist. She kicked my shin instead. “That’s for looking.” I released her and stepped back while she straightened herself.
“Gum?” I pondered the implications. That made three pieces so far. Now if we could establish where the tracks went, we could put this to rest and get moving. “Let’s see if we can’t make some sense of these tracks.”
“Yeah.” Veronica was still focused on the eves and window reasoning out the most probable scenarios.
“Is this it?” The girl came around the corner of the house, holding up the black toolbox as she walked closer.
“Thank you.” I took the toolbox and set it down near the two tracks I had picked out. Veronica came over, pulled out a tape measure from the toolbox, and photographed both with measurements after I left a tape sticker with a number by each of the two prints. Pulling out a plastic bag full of a quick dry plaster, I poured it into each of the prints. Veronica began to walk the tracks until she followed a set into the woods.
“Connor, bring me the camera!” She called to me, refusing to budge from her spot a few feet into the woods.
“What are you doing?” The girl followed me over to where Veronica was standing. Veronica took the surveillance camera from me and started setting it up.
“Just checking on a few things.” I helped Veronica strap the box to a tree at the right height. “Kim, have you or anyone ever tried to track these prints or attempted to record any evidence?”
“No, we try to leave the demon alone.”
“Has anyone been working near the bathroom window recently?” Veronica nodded at the plastic covered window. I wadded up the now empty zip lock bag and stashed it in the toolbox.
“N-No, but the demon was watching me from there.” The girl’s movements were very telling. She clearly knew more than she was sharing.
“Plastic?” Veronica pointed at the window.
“Dad put it up on the inside, said he’d fix it this weekend.”
“Uh-huh.” I nodded and glanced at Veronica who gave me a suspicious look. She really was a quick study. She had the same idea I did. “Would you care to describe the demon to us?” I checked the recorder making sure it was still running.
“Um, it’s seven or eight feet tall, really dark in color, like furry with long arms and legs but really stocky. It walks upright and it has weird arms that like bend backwards or something and it has really creepy red eyes.”
“Interesting.” I gave Veronica a sideways glance, but she was off following the tracks again.
“You do believe me right? ‘Cause we’ve all seen it and Cassie said…” The girl’s reference made me twitch.
“When do you usually see it?” I interrupted.
“Usually at night, it likes the darkness. Although, I did see it in the woods over there the other day.” She pointed past me with a gesture toward the bathroom window. “But it’s always in the dark any time we try to put a light on it, it breaks the light with a rock.”
“Do you feel it’s dangerous?” Veronica asked loudly after returning from her path tracing exercise.
“One time when we were out walking through the woods back that way…” The girl nodded past the trail camera we had just set up. “We were walking and we got too close to it. It threw rocks at the trees around us until we ran away.”
“It throws rocks? Have you heard it make any sorts of sounds?”
“There’s something you need to see.” Veronica tugged on my coat sleeve.
“In a minute.” Veronica glared at me. “Any sorts of sounds?”
“Yeah, when it threw rocks at us it made sort of grunt sounds first, like bone chilling sounds, then it sort of howls sometimes late at night when it’s far away.”
“Okay, thank you.” I switched off the recorder and glanced at Veronica. “We’re going to be around for a bit waiting for the casts so, please don’t touch them. Okay?”
“Uh-huh.” The girl nodded looking at the casts.
“Good.” I turned back to Veronica. “What is it?” I set the toolbox down and followed Veronica over to the bathroom window again. She continued past the window around the corner of the house to the front lawn near the tree line. She stopped and pointed at a specific track. I stooped to examine it closely as Veronica did the same. Immediately, I noticed what she had found.
“I think Bigfoot needs some arch support.”
“What’s wrong with this picture?” I touched the print tracing it with my fingers.
“There are no depth or contours.” Veronica smirked.
“Good find. Anything else?”
“Gum and ladder prints?”
“Yeah and the knife marks on the truck tires.” I visually followed the tracks to the gravel road. I could just make out the tracks on the edge of the drainage ditch. Every so many prints one would be deeper than the rest. The puzzle was becoming ever more apparent. “Opinion?”
“This definitely doesn’t read as an animal regardless how smart. If it was smart enough to throw rocks that’s one thing, but stabbing a tire with a knife?” Veronica stood up to look down on me.
“Care to go for a walk?” I nodded at the road. “We’ve got about twenty minutes until the tracks are ready, so let’s see if we can’t follow these back to the source.”
“Always trying to get me alone.”
“I think I know what’s going on here but, big but there.” I raised a finger “But I still have some questions about a few things.”
“Like why someone spying on the girl would want to draw attention to himself?”
“Let’s solve the mystery of our monster creator, shall we?”