Chasing the Demon

by Paul Sating

  He would have found Bigfoot.

  And then he would be able to devote his life to the wife who gave everything, who was his everything.

  Jared was in a mental haze the rest of the drive to camp. The talk with Maria went so much better than he anticipated. After he shut off the recorder they talked for another hour. Some of it was about them and the work they had to do if, and it was a huge 'if' on Maria's part, they were going to try and work through this. But a lot of their conversation was light-hearted; fun, Jared wasn’t used to this optimistic perspective. The further he drove from her the more he wished they had another hour together to catch up. It was almost like they were dating again, with the familiarity that only years of intimacy and vulnerability brought. Some of the things they talked about he'd heard a thousand times over, met the people involved, like her family, a million times and once again, yet it all felt fresh. There was energy in her words, in their interaction, that he hadn't felt in years. Since the beginning. She was the same woman and he hoped he was becoming a different man, but the way they conversed, it was like life-long friends who finally realized there was something more there.

  Jared realized that a lot of that was in his head and she may feel differently. He wasn't so tactless as to ask her while they sat at the table, getting the ugly looks from the waitress for taking up a spot without ordering more food to increase their bill and her tip, but he did wonder. Was the spark shared? It was difficult to deny the urge to call her and only the lack of a cell signal stopped him.

  Once the camp was set up and the fire breathed to life, Jared sat and thought, tapping a stick against his thigh, reveling in how easy it was to be vulnerable with her at the café.

  He grabbed the recorder. "I don't know why it took me so long or took her leaving for me to be able to see things more clearly. I'm sort of encouraged. I mean, I don't know where her head is at right now, but at least I know she's thinking and I can't ask for anything more from her. Maybe there's hope for us. I mean, we didn't even talk about how we were going to split stuff up and that was the entire reason for the lunch. She didn't commit to anything, either way, but the fact that she didn't push to have that conversation is better than I could have hoped for at this point."

  He looked up into the night sky. The feeling of transcendence wasn't lost on him. He could reach, stretch out, and touch that luminous blanket of twinkling light; it would be so easy now. She had given him hope.

  "Ah man," he exhaled a light cloud of cold breath, "I hope so.”

  Sudden hope helped him see the beauty of the world once more. To see the end of this path. “I've set up camp near Hurricane Ridge. There have been reports out of this area and it's not hard to understand why. It's isolated, it's elevated, and it can be extreme. But it's very peaceful. I love it out here. I'm going to miss places like this after I'm done."

  That wasn't a lie either.

  "I got the coordinates of a sighting this past weekend from some local outdoorsman and I'll head out first thing in the morning," he continued. "Their report, plus what I've been getting recently from my sources, leads me to believe there's something strange going on in this specific part of the National Park that might validate my hunch about this species’ behavior."

  He thought about his last conversation with Peter, the look in his friend's eyes. Peter wasn't easily jostled or bothered. But there was something there, something Peter danced around for whatever reason that he couldn't or wouldn't come out and tell Jared. And Jared, for his part, wasn't naive; he knew about the community of researchers and hunters. He was all-too-aware of the pockets of problem children and the cliques that formed over time.

  "I think Peter was right to warn me," he said, the weight of the real threat weighed him down. Jared drew a deep breath and admitted, for the first time, that he was making real enemies. "Before I left Olympia I received another phone call. It wasn’t the first, but I haven't been documenting them here because ... I don't know why. I think if I did and Maria knew what was happening; it would be the last straw for her. For us. But I can't hide this stuff any longer."

  Once he started, it was impossible to stop. He documented his thoughts about the fraudsters, driven by television money, that tainted the community. Money always did that, didn’t it? It felt good to name them.

  It was all so disgusting.

  "I've always been careful about who I associated and shared information with. Not because of vindictive people, the scammers or the envious investigators, but the legitimate groups as well. It probably sounds crazy to any of you listening who aren't aware of the politics within this subculture, but you've got to figure that it's made up of people. And people are people. Fact is, there's a darker side to all of it."

  He stared up into the night, clinging to that sensation of hope, of an ending and a future. “For the past few months, I've been getting harassed. Phone calls in the middle of the night. Threatening notes slipped under my windshield wipers. Letters to the office with bogus return addresses. Voice messages. I can't tell you how many times something like that has happened; far more often than I care to count. This last one though, I've got to say I'm glad I made the decision to release these sessions after I'm all done with this. I wouldn't want anyone knowing how rattled they have me right now. Let me play the call for you."

  He made a note to insert the call as a clip in the final audio file and pressed the pause button on the recorder, guilt washing over him. How long was he going to let it go on before he let Maria know? This recording was the first time he'd formally made mention of it and even that wasn't very impressive. He could erase the file tomorrow, right now, and the world would never know what he'd been subjected to over the past few months. On one hand, he was promising Maria a changed man, and on the other, he was doing the same type of stuff that had broken her heart for years.

  Trust.

  How did you build trust if you hid things from the most important person in your life?

  Jared thought about the most recent call. “You need to stop this investigation, Mr. Strong,” the high-pitched, raspy male voice on the other end of the phone said. “We’re not interested in toying with you. Stop now. You've got other things to concern yourself with, like your marriage. Focus on that. It’s in your best interest. Don’t make us prove that. Don’t compound your regrets.”

  He'd frustrated them to the point that this man was willing to leave a permanent record via a voicemail. Whoever he was, whether he was working for someone else or working alone, he'd been pushed to the point of aggression. Jared took notice. The wise didn’t ignore desperation painted as aggression.

  This message unnerved him more than he could even admit to himself. How did the caller know that much about his life? How did they know he even had regrets about what he was doing? How much were they watching and how familiar with him and his life were they? How did they have that much access?

  They promised that if he didn't stop he'd have regrets, but what kind? What would he regret more than what he'd already done to himself and his marriage? What did they know about him that they could leverage to get him to do what they wanted? As if he didn't have enough on his mind, this was one more thing he had to give serious consideration to, even if that meant hitting the pause button on his work. He thought he could do both, he could think while in the backcountry, away from all the other distractions, but his situation with Maria clouded it. Thinking about more than Maria right now was a struggle. The messages might be legitimate. They might not be. But what he'd lost with her was. And it wasn’t what he wanted at all. There was only so much time in a day and each time he was forced to decide where to invest his efforts, Maria would win out.

  She would always win.

  So where did that leave him and this mysterious caller who wouldn't let go of this pursuit to scare him away? He had no idea. But if the caller was legitimate, Jared was going to find out soon, very soon.

  “You've got a week to make the right decision. If we find out you're still in
the game after that, you'll regret it,” the caller had said.

  One week.

  Less now.

  Jared picked up the recorder again. "I have no idea who that was or even what organization they're from, if any. But getting that call bothered me. A number of Bigfoot hunters, investigations, whatever you want to call us, have had bad things happen because they were on the trail of a find. Vandalism, threats, harassment, break-ins at their homes. There's no line when it comes to intimidating people. A few investigators have even been assaulted when they refused to give up. Almost every single one of them quits. They drop everything and you never hear from them again. There have been a lot of investigators who've been close to important finds who have suddenly given up the chase and walked away. We would have seen something from this field by now if it weren't for people in this field."

  He could feel the fire burning in his gut like it did every time he thought about this. "I'm not stopping though. I'm not quitting. I'm going to finish this and then live my life. People like that aren't going to frighten me. I need to do it for ... him."

  That was the crux of Maria's pain and frustration. It was all about the one person who wasn't even involved in their marriage and if Jared did what he needed to do then he could understand himself and the reasons why he continued more clearly than ever before. Like losing your marriage and still plowing ahead when there's obviously someone out there who doesn't want you to.

  Jared switched the recorder off and looked into the night sky. "Dad," he choked back the sudden throat-clenching sob, "why?"

  He sat there for another two hours, thinking.

  About Maria.

  About the threatening phone calls.

  And about his father.

  11

  Sleep came hard. The spot he'd picked to camp was a flat area with plenty of soft moss to provide a thick layer of comfort between him and the hard earth. It wasn't the physical conditions that made it uncomfortable; the night was ideal, seasonably cool with only a slight wind, an odd condition for this part of the Olympic Mountains especially at this time of year.

  It wasn't the outside world that kept him awake. Everything that prevented him from sleeping was happening within the confines of his head. One after another, problem following problem, he wondered if he'd ever find the peace he sought. He tried. He pursued it and never gave up, never gave in. It might have taken him a long time to see the problems he'd constructed for himself but he wasn't the type to create problems and then whine to anyone who would listen about how they were powerless to change their situation. He was a fixer. He got things done. And he was trying to get things done for himself but sometimes it felt like no matter what he did he was never going to get ahead. He could skip meals, showering, and sleeping and still not outrace the bitch that was fate, which seemed determined to put another roadblock in his way each time he overcame a challenge.

  It was a bitter reality, one that kept him awake far later than he wanted, especially since he had a hike in the morning. Every time something hindered his investigation it was a direct assault on what he wanted for his life. Maria.

  It was a long time before the anger and frustration faded enough for him to sleep.

  If he ever met the man who was leaving him threatening messages it wouldn’t end well for one of them. There was no telling what he might do. It was unfortunate he couldn't say the same about his father.

  *****

  Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!

  Jared tossed and turned.

  Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!

  A dream. Go back to sleep. It's a dream.

  Silence.

  The wind released a low howl.

  Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!

  Much closer.

  Jared bolted upright. Much closer! "Jesus Christ!"

  Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!

  Jared turned, looking over his shoulder. It wasn't that he thought one of the Sasquatch was in camp with him, the sounds came from too far away for that. The reason for his thudding heart was because the response call came from a different direction. "Damn, there's two of them!"

  He fumbled for the recorder, his hands not yet as awake as his brain. The red recording light indicator stared back at him. "Good ... I'm getting these recorded. They're close!"

  He listened.

  Tunk!

  Stilled, he didn't dare move. Had he heard what he thought he did?

  Tunk! Tunk!

  Yep, exactly what I thought.

  Tunk!

  From the other direction now.

  "Dammit, this is good!" he whispered into the recorder. "Tree knocks. They're communicating. They've got to be no more than a quarter mile off. Those knocks are crystal clear. Closer than I've been to them in a long time."

  Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah! Distant now, the caller was moving away from where he camped.

  "Still makes my skin crawl, even after all these years, and I've heard dozens of calls and knocks ... I don't think I'll ever get used to them," he said. "I don't think anyone can. There's something primal, nightmarish, about an unseen animal screaming like that. Something so deeply entrenched in our instinctual psyche that we can only react like an animal."

  Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!

  This call was further away still, almost imperceptible.

  "Even though I think Sasquatch are passive creatures, that doesn't mean they wouldn't respond violently to something or someone they see as a threat," he said, listening. "I think the Sasquatch have moved on or got bored with each other. Maybe they're busy hooking up. I'm going to try and get some sleep so I can track them in the morning. As if I can sleep after that."

  He set the recorder down as silence fell over the mountainside. The Sasquatch never called again as he drifted off into yet another round of restless sleep.

  *****

  In the morning, the sun was bright and teased a warmness that never quite reached the ground. That was the way of life in the Pacific Northwest; he was pleased to have that glowing orb accompany him on his hike. His favorite place in the world became much more beautiful on days like this, when the sun's rays illuminated the mist rising off the wet earth. The landscape was a mix of bright white and brilliant emerald that rose and fell with the peaks and valleys of the mountains. It made hiking first thing in the morning that much more enjoyable.

  Not that he needed the motivation to pack camp and get out early. The calls last night had set him on edge, stimulating and encouraging him. The pair, if it were two of them, were close enough to get a decent vector on from their calls. This part of the mountain range near Hurricane Ridge was open, the sound didn't echo around walls of rock like it would in other parts of the Olympics, allowing Jared to be confident of the direction he needed to hike. It wouldn't be direct. He was already looking for traces of clues to indicate one of them had traipsed through here last night. At least it wasn't going to be an endless search for nothingness because of the misdirection of echoes. He was fortunate that the Sasquatch didn't care or were careless in their previous night's conversation. That sloppiness, that lack of awareness on their part, was going to hopefully lead him to them. The potential of a find was massive, impossible to ignore, especially if what he heard last night was some sort of mating ritual.

  It was time to record.

  "Man, what a night," he said. "I didn't sleep worth a damn. Actually got up a little earlier than I planned but laying in that sleeping bag wasn't an option. The reports from this area are too consistent and hearing those distinct calls last night leads me to believe there's more than a solitary creature out here. How many, though? That's what I'd like to find out. I'm inclined to believe there are possibly more. Even a community."

  There had to be more of them, his nest theory led him to that conclusion. They were primates, social creatures, so they'd depend on one another for survival. And in a world that was crowding them out with new housing tracts, strip malls, and massive d
iscount retailers who put mom-and-pop stores out of business two decades ago, it should be easier to find them and they should almost have been forced to clump together. Expansion of the human domain reduced accessibility of all species except for those born of the air or water. Sasquatch wasn’t so lucky.

  They would also clump together to protect each other from this voracious species. Two Sasquatch could watch for threats more effectively than one; four would be safer together than two; eight would be able to provide safety and stability in a community much more effectively than four. Jared's thoughts fell back to Frank Hollenbeck and the trip to Forks. In logic, one didn’t bother proving a negative proposition; that wasn’t how it worked. So he wouldn’t bothered attempting to prove the structures he found out there weren’t a Bigfoot nest community. He was only interested in finding out what it was. If it wasn't Sasquatch, then what the hell made those structures? The lazy answer was humans and his brain kept circling back to that. He knew he had a bias against thinking that humans would live like that, they would; humans lived in worse conditions across America's cities, so a few individuals living in natural structures shouldn't be outside the scope of possibilities, and it wasn't. But it was damn hard to think humans would choose that when a reliable witness had just seen a Bigfoot no less than four hundred yards from where he found the nest.

  Bigfoot wouldn't be so comfortable about hunting that close to a small collection of humans, they were more careful than that, even when they were desperate. The river Frank had taken him to wound all the way back up into the Olympics. The Sasquatch, if it needed to feed on the salmon in the river, could have done so much further upstream, away from the highway and a small encampment of humans.

  I'll be damned if that was a human encampment.