Nighthawk

by Alan Monroe

  Clint smiled at Jared. “You want to know what my ancestors did to child molesters.”

  Davis interrupted before Jared could speak. “I don’t think even I want to know the answer to that question. Now could we get back to the trail so we can find Tom and get out of here?”

  Wednesday, May 15 5:34 a.m.

  Darkness covered every corner of the ghost town. Of all the buildings in town, only the Nighthawk had electricity and Curtis never make a habit of waiting electricity or anything else for that matter. He saved every drop of bacon grease and each flake of unused flower, but he served the best all you can eat breakfast in the county at a cost of less than eight dollars.

  Curtis did not see how he needed that much light outside at night. He always left on porch light right by the front door and one light on by his inn’s sign just in case he had a customer after dark. The sides and back of Curtis’ inn along with the rest of the ghost town sat in darkness as black as the far side of the moon. The only change in the blackness occurred where the jagged outline of Little Chopaka Mountain met the star filled sky.

  The pull string for the light bulb in the pantry had deer antler tied to its free end; a single tiny bulb illuminated the four refrigerators on the left wall. Curtis opened the door to each one and counted eggs, bacon, sausage, steaks, vegetables, and every other food item know to man; shevles on the other three walls stood packed with canned food and condiments. He ran his finger along each item mentally buliding the menu for the Okanogan County Sheriff's Department. Just as Curtis prepared to turn of the light, he stopped and picked up enough cans of coffee to keep twenty police officers filled for a few hours.

  He stacked the cans of coffee in a pyramid next to the already percolating coffee maker. The rows of cabinets in the large kitchen were packed with clean plates and glasses; Curtis set up an extra table in the den to make room for the sheriff’s men. A well sharpened ax sat next to the woodpile, and a roaring fire already raged in the huge stone fireplace.

  Curtis glance around the inside of the inn and mumbled. “Pays to be prepared.”

  He filled his tin cup full of the hot black coffee and stepped out onto the front porch of his inn. A loud creak escaped from the oversized rocking chair when he sat down and began sipping the coffee as he straitened his bad leg out with a pop from the hip. His lips curled into a smile when he smelled the fresh mountain air; his only company for the quiet morning remained the mist that hovered just above the ground. The closest of the Nighthawk area’s five other residents lived two miles outside the old town limits.

  Leaning forward, he glanced at the stairs leading up from the parking lot to look for the rabbits that played there before his dog awoke, but the rabbits were not there. His eyes rose to the field across the road where he watched deer feed in the dew covered grass every morning, but the field sat empty. He turned his head to the right and left while placing a finger in each corner of his mouth and whistling; the old dog did not respond.

  Curtis stood and slowly walked to the edge of the porch, “Duke? Here boy!”

  Silence continued as Curtis moved down the stairs; he slowly walked through the small gravel parking lot in front of the inn. Due to his limp, it took him several minutes to arrive at the dog house near the edge of the woods behind his inn. Only an empty dog food bowl along with a pail half full of water greeted him.

  Curtis called the dog again. “Duke, get over here you big stupid dog!”

  Silence persisted. As Curtis scanned the area behind his inn, he noticed an unfamiliar mound just at the edge of his eyes’ ability to see in the dark. Curtis slowly approached the mound. The dim morning light had not even begun to cut away the mist that shrouded his vision. He took four steps towards the wood pile and put the heavy ax over his shoulder.

  As he moved closer, the mound began to resemble a small grassy pile of dirt. When Curtis moved within arm’s reach, the grass on the mound began to favor thick hair standing on end. Only touching the mound revealed the dog he had hunted with for twelve years; Curtis shook Duke gently. He closed his eyes and stroked the dog’s still warm back. The head moved freely in his hands barely still attached to its body, but the bones in the dogs thick neck felt like shattered glass.

  Curtis’ eyes fell on the huge footprint cut cleanly into the wet mud next to the dog; in eighty-seven years he had never seen that track. He always verbally denied its existence, but he always knew in the deepest part of his heart that the creature existed. Far enough away that Curtis felt its presence when he hunted around the base of Little Chopaka Mountain, but not so near that it gave Curtis any reason to fear, until now. Denial never meant the Sasquatch did not exist.

  As Curtis stood and faced the trees, a rotten stench assaulted him from the forest only a few feet away. Curtis felt the presence only a few yards away; he placed both hands low on the ax handle when he lifted form his shoulder. The wise old man had no illusions about what the next few moments held for him, but he widened stance and took a bold step toward the eyes he could now see glowing in the darkness.

  Wednesday, May 15 12:03 p.m.

  Each man quietly followed Clint through a gap in the trees as mid-morning slowly stretched into noon. The moisture that clung to each man’s skin no longer stemmed from exertion alone; the temperature had been rising all day. Thunder rolled across the sky in the distance, and the clouds slowly marched toward the mountain like a great wall stretching from horizon to horizon.

  After hiking uphill for the past seven hours, the ground abruptly leveled off into narrow plane that stretched for miles around the base of the mountain peak. The plane itself stood covered by scrub brush and small thorny trees rather than the old growth forest. Occasionally they walked through small clearing with a dry dead looking grass that rose to their waste. A one hundred foot tall granite wall formed the base of the mountain peak to their right; above that the craggy mountain continued to rise devoid of plant life until it tapered into a huge square summit capped with snow.

  Tom’s trail led to the rock wall as if his party had slammed into it before making a sharp left and traveling parallel to it. Davis paused briefly to massage the knots in his lower back; he looked up at the mountain peak and back down the miles they had traveled to the distant Nighthawk cradled in the valley below. He shook his head as he paused and allowed Jared to pass him and move several yards ahead. A slight tap on Hugh’s shoulder stopped the big man in his tracks.

  The sheriff took off his hat and rubbed his forehead. "We’re running out of mountain; better find them soon.”

  “You’re right, but you didn’t let Jared get out of earshot to say that,” Hugh said.

  “Hugh, something is bothering me here."

  Hugh allowed smile to creep across his face. “It's taken this long for something to bother you?”

  “I’m serious.”

  "What's up sheriff?"

  "I'm starting to think this thing is a lot smarter than I gave him credit for."

  "How smart you figure?"

  "Well, it doesn't just wander around up here. It knows exactly where it is going. There is no hesitation, no indecision. I’ve chased criminals that are not as decisive in what direction they take."

  "Criminals on the run don't think clearly," Hugh said. “Are you saying this thing does?”

  "That's because he's not on the run. If anything, we’re on the run."

  "I think you are taking things a little far."

  Davis looked up the rock face. "No, I don't think so. Just because we haven't suffered a loss doesn't mean we’re in control of the situation. Right now we have no idea where that thing is or what it’s doing. I bet it knows exactly where we are. And I bet it knows we're following Roundtree's expedition."

  "We’re probably moving deeper and deeper into his territory like Clint said."

  "That makes me nervous too. It's taking us forever to find them. Even if we locate what's left of Tom's party today, we may still be looking at one or more nights out here with the Sasquatch.
"

  Hugh checked the safety on his shotgun. "You know, we were talking about how crazy the thing is acting. Maybe it’s not crazy, just smart."

  "We don't really know anything about them; maybe this behavior is normal when humans invade its space."

  "So since you always know the answer before I ask the question, is it smart or crazy?" asked Hugh.

  "All three."

  Hugh looked puzzled. "I only gave you two choices."

  Davis looked Hugh in the eye. "Smart, crazy, and angry."

  Clint and Jared arrived at the edge of the rock face, and they motioned for Hugh and Davis to catch up. Once all four men stood at the rock face Clint pointed at the tracks. “Looks like they’re still paralleling the wall. North.”

  Davis looked straight up at the cliffs. “Well they sure didn’t climb over this thing. How far ahead of us do you figure they are?”

  Clint thought for a moment. “If they haven't moved since last night, we should find them anytime now.”

  Jared shook his head. “What are the chances that they haven't moved?”

  Davis scanned the rock face along Roundtree’s trail. “If they heard our gunshot last night, they may just have stayed put. If I was in their position, that’s what I would do.”

  Hugh said, “If our friendly neighborhood Sasquatch let them stay put.”

  “All the more reason to get moving”

  Wednesday, May 15 1:00 p.m.

  Undersheriff Howard Thomas typically spent the last half hour of his workday removing every file from his desk and organizing them neatly inside one of the six filing cabinets in his office. Pencils and pens belonged in his center desk drawer or in the Seattle Seahawks coffee cup near the phone. He used a yellow legal pad to create a list of no less twenty tasks to taken care of before noon the next day. The basket on his desk marked “in” had been emptied at least two hours prior to the end of his work day, and he personally made sure any item in the “out” box was either picked up or delivered to the appropriate location. When he returned to his office by six the next morning, the office was immaculate except for a half a dozen papers stacked inside his “in” box.

  Sixty hours after the early morning planning session with Davis and Hugh, Thomas had file folders stacked on his desk two feet tall not to mention seven different piles of folders scattered across the floor. The shattered remains of the Seattle Seahawks mug lay on the floor in the corner, and he could not locate a single pen besides the one in his hand. A mound of crumpled yellow paper overflowed from the metal trash can next to the desk; the “in” box on the corner of his desk contained a stack of papers twelve inches high.

  The red marks on his jaw and right ear boar tiny indentations that matched the holes in his telephone. He spent the entire first day trying to find someone in the state forest service who knew the placement of deputies and volunteers from any specific county. Four hours of phone calls to state bureaucrats lead him to a round of calls with the National Forest Service and then back to the state forest service. Thomas explained Okanogan’s desperate situation, without using the term “Bigfoot”; but no matter who he talked to they responded with a description of just how desperately they needed more men to contain the blaze.

  At six o’clock in the morning on the beginning of his third day of phone calls, he finally managed find a phone number for a mobile kitchen unit where fifteen of Okanogan’s deputies sat down much needed meal. The ranking deputy only spoke to Thomas for a total of five minutes before all fifteen men left the mobile kitchen and returned to their home county much to the disappointment of the forest service who threatened to file a formal complaint against the sheriff’s department in Okanogan.

  Thomas’s old swivel chair creaked as he leaned back; he ran his hand through the remains of his hair and let out a tired sigh. Thomas stood up and walked out the back door of the sheriff’s department and looked at the mobile command unit. Before Davis took office, tall grass and a bit of loose gravel covered the parking lot behind the sheriff’s office, but under Davis’s leadership the area had been paved, neatly organized and fenced in. He walked next to the thirty foot motorhome allowing his hand slide along the aluminum skin. Even with the multiple substations scattered throughout the county, the sheriff’s department needed the capability to set up a command post in remote areas. The county commission soon saw the logic in Davis’s suggestion to purchase the MCU when they realized they could purchase one mobile command unit for a fraction of the cost of building and staffing more police substations throughout the county.

  The MCU consisted of only two rooms. Various maps of the county covered the walls of the aptly named map room while countless more detailed maps sat filed away ready to be pinned to wall at any time. The second room housed a computer connected to a high speed satellite internet feed that gave access to information from across the country even in the most mountainous terrain. The back room also held radios, a weapons locker, and a general supply of rescue and law enforcement equipment.

  As Thomas walked to the MCU’s door he looked at various improvements that Davis had brought to the sheriffs department in Okanogan County. The previous sheriff had been a good and popular man, but Davis introduced more modern concepts including a mission statement and individual standards to the department. When the county refused to clear the lot and tear down the rotten garage built in the thirties, Davis started cleaning off the lot by himself on the weekend. Soon he had half the department voluntarily helping him, all on their own time. In two years’ time, Davis organized and cleaned up the department; Okanogan County now had a sheriff’s department as good as or better than any in the state of Washington.

  Thomas opened the side door to the MCU and sat down in one of the soft chairs inside the map room. The MCU did not require any additional preparations; the department kept the vehicle in a ready condition constantly. He leaned back in chair and stared at the ceiling while he drummed his fingers on the arm rests. After several moments, he removed his cell phone from a case and dialed a number.

  “Hey Dale, this is Howard,” Thomas said.

  “Good to hear from you Tom. How are you?”

  “Not too good if you want to know the truth.”

  “Tell me what’s on your mind,” Dale responded. “The newspaper and I are at the undersheriff’s disposal.”

  “We’ve actually got quite a mess on our hands up in the Nighthawk area.”

  “Couldn’t be much of a mess; there’s hardly anybody up there.”

  “Are three dead bodies enough of a mess?”

  Dale paused. “This sounds like a big story.”

  “One way or another, it will be. You can have it if the sheriff lives through it.”

  “If Davis lives? What do you need?”

  “I need to see any records you have missing persons, disappearances, deaths, or anything else unusual in the Nighthawk area.”

  “I’ll have Irene start pulling the old papers and microfilm right away.”

  Thomas hesitated. “You better have her pull anything related to… Bigfoot as well.”

  “You’re serious Howard?” This is not some big joke?”

  “Dale, I wish it was a joke.”

  “Alright. We’ll get started.”

  “I’ll be over there when I can get there.”

  Thomas pressed end button on his phone but he immediately dialed the phone number for the Nighthawk Inn, but the phone rang until the answering machine picked up just like it had done the past three times he called.

  Wednesday, May 15 1:30 p.m.

  Davis took the oilskin cowboy hat off and let the strong wind blow across his scalp. The breeze dried the sweat from his shaven head in seconds. He placed the hat firmly back on his head to keep the mass of air pushed forward the storm clouds from blowing it away. Thin scrubby trees bent with the wind; countless branches and pieces of grass pummeld all four men. The time between lightning strikes and thunderclaps decreased each time a bolt of lightning lanced across the sky.
/>   Clint’s eyes never left the ground, but his paced quickened with each gust of wind and bolt of lightning. The four men stomped through the scrubby plateau terrain at a trot.

  “Clint,” Davis said. “Slow down.”

  “Can’t,” Clint responded.

  “Why not?” Hugh breathed heavily.

  Clint pointed at the storm clouds without stopping. “This storm is going to hit anytime now, and it’s going to wash away every track on this mountain.”

  The scream that exploded out of the thin forest ahead of them vibrated every bone in Davis’ body. Despite the breeze, a cold sweat broke out across his body as he stopped in his tracks. They stood in a roughly circular clearing filled with grass up to their waist and surrounded by dead snags and the thorny brush that choked the life from the small trees. The pitch of the scream rose and fell, but the high screeching howl never stopped. Davis dropped his pack to the ground and brought the double rifle to his shoulder pulling both hammers back.

  Limbs cracked in unison with thunderclaps while whatever was producing the scream circled the four men without exposing any part of itself to their field of vision. The stench crept out from the woods surrounding them. Thunder rolled across the sky, and the howl became a low growl punctuated by an occasional hiss. It crashed through the brush at a faster and faster pace until Davis could no longer pinpoint source of the growling at any one time; his ears throbbed constantly until growl and thunder became one large barrage to his senses.

  Trees parted when the burst of brown fur left the undergrowth with a renewed howl that carried for miles and barreled right for Davis. The one thousand grain bullet left the rifle with a crack heard over the thunder and howl striking the creature in the sternum and snapping its charging body off the ground and backwards until it lay still in the tall grass.