by T S Paul
Finally, Ana spoke. “Interesting. It might be time for Mr. Hoover to make a journey out there, then. Call it a fact-finding mission. Was it one of the Agents that told you this?”
“No. They still have elevator operators in the building. It was one of them,” I answered.
“He would know. Fine. I’ll take care of it. Complete your mission and all will be right with the world, Jack. Take care of yourself and watch your back. If what you just told me is true, you might be in danger. I have big plans for you, so don’t go and get yourself killed,” Ana informed me. And then she hung up.
I stared at the phone receiver for a moment before hanging it up. Plans? It was easy to forget that while Anastasia was my direct boss, she was also Director Hoover’s personal assistant. Speaking to her was like talking to him. Gathering my wits about me, I said goodbye to the office here and set out for Northern California and my actual case.
Weitchpec.
What a name. Some of the collected research said that the whole area was part of the Yurok tribal lands, and many of the names in the region reflected either ancestral villages or their districts. Technically, most of Humboldt County was part of the reservation set aside for them after the Klamath and Salmon River war of 1851-1856. It had only been a century since they had been settled. The reservation was created by executive order, as well. Something quite unusual for the time period. Despite pressure from miners and loggers, the tribe was allowed to remain upon their own land, mostly.
The area wasn’t just Yurok, though. Civilization had come to the area, and so had the Parks Department. Both national and state departments lay claim to large portions of territory. Loggers and miners still ventured into the territory, but now under state or federal mandate. It was considered progress.
I took highway 101 North up through the redwoods all the way to Eureka. It was my first real look at the Pacific Ocean and all its glory. My brief time in San Francisco was entirely too busy for me to have visited the bay there. Eureka called itself the Queen of the Ultimate West. It was a hub of fisheries, logging, mining, and tourism. Literally thousands went there to just get away. So much history and so little time. Maybe one day I’d come back.
Cutting east, I entered the Yurok reservation and the city of Weitchpec. Calling it a city was reaching. It was more of a hunting camp, crossed with a ghost town. A few old buildings mixed with hunting camps and run-down houses made up the town. Doctor Johnson owned what my briefing papers called a vacation home on the river.
Two hours of wrong turns and dusty roads brought me to my destination. I had to rub my eyes a few times. The ‘vacation home’ was actually a huge Victorian mansion that would’ve given Marcella and her family a run for their money. Looking around, I wondered how they got all the building supplies up the goat road I came in on.
I pulled up to the massive home in a cloud of road dust. Climbing out of home and office, I glanced at the outside of my truck. It looked dull in the bright sun. If I didn’t know better, I wouldn’t have believed it was supposed to be yellow and black. It was so encrusted with mud, crud and leaves, it looked to be camouflaged. So busy looking at all the dirt, I completely missed the man standing on the porch watching me. So much for my situational awareness.
“Are you with the FBI?” a voice asked me.
Shielding my eyes, I looked up at the porch. “Special Agent Jack Dalton, Magical Division. And you are?”
“Charles Johnson, Doctor Charles Johnson. Come on inside and I’ll explain the situation.” The doctor waved at me.
Thirteen was the number of steps I climbed to reach the porch. I hoped it didn’t mean I was in for an unlucky day. The porch was wide and seemed to stretch out far into the distance. Looking closer, I could see it was an optical illusion as it wrapped around the house. Whoever built the place was very skilled. Holding out my hand, I smiled at Dr. Johnson. “Nice to meet you.”
Cautiously, the doctor took my hand and squeezed it. I could tell right away he was going to be trouble. Trying to assert dominance over a government Agent was not the way to start the day off properly. He led me to a table and we sat down.
“My family has owned this house and much of the land around it until that thief Teddy Roosevelt took it away from us in 1905,” he said. “It was bad enough that the Indians we fought off for it were being given entire sections. We took this to mean that we should take a more ‘active’ role in government to prevent more loss. Now this.” Johnson slammed his hand down on the table. Scowling, the doctor continued. “Thirty years or so ago my father started a logging and mining interest. He wanted to profit from our land before more of it was taken from us.
“I don’t see...” I started to say.
Johnson pointed his finger at me. “Stop right there. I’m getting to it. There was vandalism right from the start. Footprints. Wrecked equipment. Even a few injuries. But local law enforcement stopped it. Indians were arrested, and it stopped for a few years. Now the prints are back and my foremen are telling me that entire swaths of land that I own are damaged beyond all repair!”
“How do you damage trees and rocks?” I asked him.
“Do they teach you nothing in the FBI? Spikes! Someone drove iron spikes into ALL the old growth trees. Every. Single. One of them! And the mines? Flooded. It’s going to cost hundreds of dollars to pump them out. That is, if we’re even able to!” Johnson shouted at me.
I nodded. The logging industry wasn’t something I knew a lot about, but sabotage I could smell a mile away. It was only a small matter of discovering what sort of tricks were being played here. For trees, iron spikes seemed to be it. If not found they could seriously damage a sawmill.
“So, what are you going to do about these beasts plaguing me?” Johnson asked.
“Other than telling me about your troubles, you have yet to show me any evidence that Bigfoot exists or that paranormals are the ones damaging your property and business. How would creatures that exist only in the forest even know how to sabotage trees like that or divert a creek to fill a mine with water?” I asked him.
“They had help, obviously. The savages around here deny it, of course. I’ve had the sheriff, CBI, and the parks department out here. Indian affairs didn’t do squat. Bigfoot is an obsession around here,” Johnson fumed.
Cocking my head to one side, I watched the doctor. “Still no hard proof. What did the Yurok elders say? I assume you or Indian Affairs asked them.”
Johnson barked a laugh. “They actually support me. ‘Forest dwellers’ is what they said. Damn troublemakers.”
That brought me up short. All the research Friday and Gannon had done called the creatures Elder Brother or Stick Indians. Terms like that didn’t equate to forest dwellers. Did something else live there? “What did they say exactly, do you remember? It might be important.”
Scrabbling through the papers in front of him, he pulled out a form. “The BIA wrote it all down. Something about liability. Read it for yourself.”
I took the paper from him and gave it a look. Little tree dwellers, or Canotila (chawn-oh-tee-lah,) was the exact wording. That word made me frown. There’d been a note about that in the files I’d copied. Looking at the doctor, I raised one finger. “Let me check something in my van.”
I stepped outside and popped open the passenger side. I had my own form of filing and tried to stay as current as possible. The two small cabinets where the seat used to be helped me do that. After searching three files and an envelope of pictures, I found what I remembered. Native terminology. Canotila was what the natives around here called the Fae. Rocking back on my heels, I took a deep breath. Fairies were a different sort of problem than a big shaggy thing with big feet.
The Fae had an interesting history in America. They had established an embassy in Washington practically the day after the world discovered that paranormals existed by purchasing a house and setting up shop. A few treaties were signed and deals made shortly before the start of the Demon war, and then nothing. No one went i
n and no one came out of the embassy. Not even the staff. But figures could be seen from the windows and somehow the shrubbery was trimmed. OSS and FBI investigations failed to discover anything and since it was still foreign soil…Needless to say, people forgot they existed. Someway, somehow, they have this effect on some humans.
Me included.
I investigated and battled a Fae creature just last year and don’t remember a bit of it. There are reports though. Ana hasn’t mentioned my loss of memory, but I kept a copy of the primary report and at the urging of Marcella Blackmore of all people, I started keeping a diary. Anastasia once told me that there are those in the government that know the Fae are real, though. It made me wonder if those mysterious officials know about this place?
Writing myself a copy of the information, I placed the original, still unfiled, back where I found it. With luck it might even stay there. As I walked inside, I thought about how I would present this to Johnson.
“Sorry about that. A word you said rang a bell and I needed to check my notes. The office in San Francisco had a file on the area up here and I took notes from it,” I explained to the man.
“What word?” he asked me.
“Canotila. It means people of the woods, or people of the trees in Lakota,” I replied.
“Woods, trees, forest, whatever the hell you like to say, these things are destroying my property and I want it stopped right now!” Johnson thundered at me. “I asked for help and they send me one, snot-nosed kid up here. I’m going to call my congressman and give him a piece of my mind!”
I held up both my hands palm out towards the man. “Call them. Be sure you explain that I was given no hard proof and no chance as of yet to look for proof. Investigations take time. Nothing is as instantaneous as shown on television. That, sir, is a fantasy. Be sure to give whichever congressman you call my best. Unlike the sheriff or the parks departments, I work at the behest of both Congress and the president. Director Hoover gives me direction but even he is technically NOT my boss.”
I smiled inwardly as Johnson’s mouth dropped open in surprise. If there was more than a handful of men who’d stood up to the man in his lifetime, I’d have been surprised.
“Now. Do you want me to still look for evidence or are you making that phone call?” I asked him.
There was too much rock at the mining sites to find any hard physical evidence, but I at least needed to look around. At first glance, I knew what Johnson was doing was against the law.
Modern mining techniques involved the heavy use of explosives and excavating machines. Basically, they would dynamite and dig up the mountain in search of whatever mineral they sought.
What he and his company were doing was very much old school. The mine tunneled into the earth like a mole. The rough-cut entrance was shorn up with heavy-cut timbers and steel girders. It was something out of an old movie.
“What are you digging for here?” I asked Johnson’s foreman, Richard Gryb.
Pulling out a handkerchief, Richard wiped his entire face off before answering me. He motioned to the mine and said, “His nibs would say we’re looking for copper, but it’s a gold mine. Nothing good ever came from lying to the government. It’s an old mine started by the boss’s father. We ran a few tests last year confirming the presence of quartz and a minor trace of gold. Whoever it was that started this mine was on the right track.”
“Have you found any?” I looked around the area. “Gold, that is?”
“Some. Lots of quartz and a few gemstones as well as garnets. Not enough to bring in the really heavy equipment just yet. We’d just hit a good vein when all the trouble began. At first it was little stuff, sugar in the gas tanks, cut brake lines, things left to spoil. We didn’t think much of it except for the gas part. Then the footprints appeared. They were everywhere around the camp. A rockslide closed shaft two and partially covered the main one.” Richard made a stop motion with his hands. “Before you say it, we did have protections in place. Netting was placed all around the entrances as a precaution. Someone or something removed them first. My boys didn’t find neither hide nor hair of the nets.”
I scratched my head. None of what was being described sounded like a mindless beast. To open a gas tank and insert sugar meant some sort of mechanical knowledge. The same with the nets. “The locals were questioned?”
“First thing. We had guards posted early on and they didn’t see anything. Johnson doesn’t know this, but we’d placed lights all around the mine entrances beforehand and somehow like magic the nets disappeared! That isn’t the worst of it.” Richard shook his hands. “How did they flood the mines? Even my engineers can’t figure that one out.”
“How so?” I asked him.
“There’s a creek about a mile north of this site, way over on the other side.” Richard waved past the large rocky hill. “It used to flow into the Klamath river, but someone or something diverted it underground. How is that possible? My guys say it’s something they couldn’t do overnight with all the equipment in the world at their fingertips. So how did the bigfooted things do it? This place is haunted. It’s the only answer that fits.”
“What about the logging part?” I asked him.
Richard snorted. “That operation is more screwed than mine is. Some of the same issues mechanically, but add in lost loads and trees falling the wrong way and you have more injuries and utter disaster.”
“Lost loads?” I asked him.
“Sure. Basically, they load the cut trees onto flatbeds and haul them out to the main roads and then on to the sawmill. The boss had his own operation, but too many spiked trees shut it down for weeks. I think they’re using one in Hoopa now. The loads are supposed to be strapped down, but somehow the straps fall off or are cut. They have trucks with braces like this.” Richard held up his hands like forks. “The braces holding the trees in fail somehow and it all falls off the truck onto the highway. So then the state and the local police get involved. It’s a big ass mess I’m glad I don’t have to deal with. This is enough.”
I nodded. This was so much more than the good doctor had failed to mention. “Just how flooded are the mines?”
Richard frowned. “Pretty bad. This valley we’re in is about a hundred feet above sea level. Go down, like our mines, more than that, and there’s water. My guys have enough to worry about without having to do their jobs in ankle or waist high water. I’ve got pumps being brought in, but unless we can dam up the creek, we’re screwed.”
“And you can’t do that because…” I started to ask.
“...it’s part of the reservation and Indian land.” Richard finished. “They claim they didn’t do it but as I’ve said before, they won’t help fix it. BIA won’t help either.”
Thanking Richard, I stepped away and walked back to my van. Almost none of what I’d learned read as Bigfoot to me. It was either an outside influence, members of the Yurok tribe, or the Fae. I did consider that there could be combinations of the three as well. Fake footprints were nothing new. Ever since the 1958 news article, there’d been prints found all up and down the state.
Heading back to the Johnson estate, I heard the sirens and smelled the smoke before I saw the actual fire.
“It’s a complete loss! A hundred years of history, gone in an instant! Who would do such a thing?” Johnson rubbed his temples with both hands, his eyes clenched shut as if in pain.
There wasn’t all that much left of the house. A couple of antiquated fire engines were pulling away, heading back to the towns they’d come from. Park Department tankers were hosing down the surrounding acres to prevent wildfire flare-ups but from the looks of things, it was really bad.
“It’s a god damn conspiracy is what this is! Everyone is involved, too. You, the Yuroks, BIA, Bigfoot, and the damn parks department. Everyone!” Johnson pointed at me as he raged.
Leaving Johnson to his madness and his children, I walked past him, surveying the fire. The house and everything within a ten-foot radius was burned. Interesti
ngly enough, it didn’t look as though it had spread farther than that. You would think sparks coming off the structure would have ignited the woods and fields.
“You’d think that, wouldn’t you,” a man behind me replied.
“Oops. I didn’t realize I said that aloud,” I told him. Holding out my hand, I said, “Jack Dalton, FBI.”
“Bradshaw, Ted Bradshaw. I’m the county’s fire marshal and I know who you are. News around here travels fast. Johnson over there should just quit now. He’s pissed off the forest people enough.”
Interested, I turned and looked him in the eyes. “How so?”
“I grew up here. My people are here. Folks like Johnson don’t understand. They come with their money and their influence and they lord it over us all. You don’t ignore local customs and people. This plan of his,” Bradshaw paused and looked at the smoldering ruins, “It was doomed to fail. They won’t stand for it. He should have asked first, made an offering. Tried to accommodate them first.”
“So not Bigfoot then?” I asked.
Bradshaw burst out laughing. Slapping me on the back, he chuckled. “Only city folk believe that hokum. If you want tourist money, you have to do...things. Big shaggy monsters that live in the forest that no one ever sees? Hollywood, the town drunk, swears he saw one once, but he also says he saw a dragon once. Trust me, they’re a myth. This was caused by something else.”
“If someone wished to make an offering to the forest people and possibly meet with them, how would you go about it?” I asked the man.
Bradshaw shut up, immediately realizing he had said way too much. “I…”
I held up my hand and shook my head. “You aren’t in trouble. I don’t work for Johnson, regardless of what the rumors might be. It’s my job to police the supernatural in this country. If the forest people are causing trouble, then they are who I need to contact.”
“This won’t get back to him, then?” Bradshaw nodded toward where Johnson stood.