by Sean Little
I went into the second bedroom and froze. I hadn’t expected what I found in there. All over the walls, as complete as any wallpaper would be, were newspaper clippings, articles printed from the Internet, and dozens and dozens of photographs. There were two six-foot bookshelves and every shelf was stuffed with books and binders. Everything had the same topic. Everything in the whole room concerned Bigfoot.
Sasquatch. Bigfoot. The Old Man of the Hills. Swamp-Ape. The Ohio Grassman. All the various names for the creature were represented on the walls. A dusty laptop computer was open on a desk in the room, the owner’s research station. I made a casual survey of the articles. Many of them had to do with sightings in Pennsylvania. Whoever lived here had been a Bigfoot hunter, that much was clear. I played Dungeons & Dragons and spent a lot of time reading fantasy novels—so, I couldn’t fault his hobby; at least he went outdoors and did some hiking.
It was fascinating to go over the articles. Many of the articles had highlighted lines marking sightings by police officers or multiple witnesses at the same time. There was a map of Pennsylvania on the desk with the spots where there had been Bigfoot sightings marked with an X. There were two marks just outside of Clintonville.
Great. I had to fear feral dogs, escaped apex predators, any gun-wielding psychos who watched Mad Max too many times, and now Bigfoot. The Flu had affected all primates the same. Man, monkey, and ape were all eradicated—myself and perhaps a few select others being the exception. If there were any apes with the virus immunity, they might have been freed from their zoos or even escaped on their own, and they might be building a life in the woods or plains around America. I like that idea. I liked the idea of the apes being given a chance to build their own community in the plains of Texas or something. It would be like Planet of the Apes, but hopefully without me being chased down by some apes on horseback and netted like a fish. I could not do a decent Charlton Heston impression, so if that did happen, I feel like a potential great moment would be wasted. Damned, dirty apes.
After finding the Bigfoot hunter’s headquarters, I didn’t feel like being in that house anymore. It didn’t feel like Aunt Mimi’s house anymore. I didn’t even go check out the basement. I just continued my walk through town. As much as I tried to laugh off that guy’s Bigfoot room, I found myself looking into the hills around town more than I would have otherwise.
When dark came, I had a good-sized bonfire roaring. I usually only burned enough wood to ensure I could cook a decent evening meal. Anything more felt wasteful. This was a vacation day, though. I was trying to have fun. I racked up a pile of dried hardwoods and stacked it in a pyramid shape. It went up quickly, the flames growing exponentially until the blaze was shooting ten feet into the air. Tongues of flame and ember leapt into the sky and fizzled to nothingness in the night wind. The heat and the smoke helped to keep the ravenous mosquitoes at bay. I rooted through the shelves of the grocery store and found marshmallows. They were a little hard, but still toasted nicely. I also found a few bars of chocolate and some graham crackers. Outside of being alone, it was fun to be a little irresponsible with my fire, and it was also fun to eat fifteen S’mores for dinner, but I imagined I’d regret that in the future. I still brushed and flossed obsessively after dinner, but giving in to some base impulses for a little while was incredibly enjoyable.
When I felt sick from hogging on S’mores, and the fire had died down to a respectable level, I sat in the deck chair with my feet propped on a log in front of me warming in the heat of the flames. The warmth of the fire was causing me to drowse. My eyelids were heavy. The book I’d been reading was forgotten on the pavement of the store parking lot next to my chair. I was halfway asleep, hovering in that twilight state where part of my brain just wanted to sleep and the other part wanted me to get up and do responsible things like making sure the fire was extinguished and putting on pajamas for bed. The Fall Asleep-part of my brain was winning the battle.
And then I heard the crack of a branch.
Nothing propels you from sleep to wakefulness like having had a snootful of Bigfoot articles earlier in the day and then hearing the sound of a nearby branch breaking. A branch breaking meant someone stepped on it. A branch breaking meant that an excessively hairy ape-man with size 27 feet was rounding the corner to feast on man-flesh. I launched out of my chair and had the shotgun in my hands. My heart went from a sedate, sleepy-time slow-bongo rhythm to the opening drum solo of “Sing, Sing, Sing” by Benny Goodman.
When I get scared, I tend to freeze. I tend to not want to hide. I think it’s the same fight or flight response that rabbits have. They hope the coyote won’t see them if they don’t move at all, and when they know for certain that they’re seen, they bolt and hope their speed can carry them faster than the predator. I was standing, half-blind from staring into the flames of the fire, with my senses on overdrive. The crack sounded like it had come from behind me, from somewhere near the grocery store. I didn’t want to check it out, but I knew I had to. I knew that was part of being an adult, of defending myself and my possessions. No matter how much I didn’t want to do it, no one else was going to do it.
I made a wide arc around the corner of the store. Whatever was there, I didn’t want it to get an easy jump on me. I kept the shotgun at hip level. If it was a Bigfoot, I didn’t want to scare it. If it wasn’t, I didn’t want to kill whoever or whatever it might be, but I certainly didn’t want it to kill me, either. I moved well outside the circle of light made by the fire. My night-sight returned slowly. I was spot-blind for a while, blinking away afterimages of the flames.
I moved to the side of the grocery store and saw nothing. I froze again and listened hard to the night. There were no sounds outside of crickets and the spitting crackle of flames on wood. I continued around the store, moving behind it. Highway 280 ran along the side of the little mart. I walked down the middle of the street, moving as quietly as I could manage with a slow heel-to-toe step. I couldn’t hear anything fleeing. I couldn’t hear any footsteps.
I relaxed. I must have imagined the branch. Or maybe in my drowsy state, one of the logs in the fire cracked and echoed off the building behind me and threw me off. I was just about to turn around and go back to the RV when I heard something moving through the grass behind one of the houses.
My heart began to race again, and I felt a cold sweat break out across my body. I moved toward the sound. There was definitely something moving through the grass, something big, something heavy. My throat felt tight. I moved across the asphalt and toward the sound. Whatever was moving started to pick up speed. It must have heard me. I ran after it for a few steps, but stopped. Whatever had broken the stick was moving away from me at speed. I wasn’t going to catch it, whatever it was, and I was certain that I didn’t want to. It was moving faster than any human person would or could outside of an Olympic sprinter.
I backed away from the houses to the road. I didn’t want to stay in Clintonville anymore. I didn’t want to stay anywhere anymore. I hate to say it, but at that moment my eighteen-year-old burgeoning man/adult-self wanted my mommy. I wanted to be safe and warm and protected. I ran back to the RV, made sure Fester was inside, and got the hell out of Dodge. I hated driving through the dark, especially when the quality of the roads were in constant question. I was on edge, my eyes straining to watch for animals along the roads, sweeping constantly for buckles and upended chunks of highway. I drove as fast as I could to the next town, a place called Emlenton. There, I stayed on the highway and shut down the RV.
The second the RV was shut down, I pulled every curtain in the thing. I’d never done that away from the city before, but I was shaken. Badly. It felt like the night had eyes. The skin on my body was creeping. What little hair I had on my head was standing on end. I sat down at the table of the RV and turned on a little LED lantern. I didn’t want to be in the dark. I couldn’t find Fester. He was hiding. He only did that when he was scared. Did I scare him, or was it something else? Was he picking up on my fear? I
would never know.
I had to talk myself down. I had to tell myself that Bigfoot wasn’t real. It was a deer, I told myself. Or an elk. A moose. Maybe even a bear. It could have been any of a dozen or more animals. It could have been my imagination. It could have been a hallucination. I repeated this to myself over and over. It could have been anything except Bigfoot. My heart was pounding. I hadn’t ever worried about anything like Bigfoot. It was silly that I was doing it now. Ludicrous, even. I could worry about any of a dozen other things, serious things that had a likely chance of happening, like a bear attack, but at that moment, the only thing that played through my head was pulling one of those curtains around the RV and seeing the roughly humanoid face of an ape-man staring back at me. I didn’t want to ever have that happen. At that moment, I felt extremely vulnerable, extremely alone, and I wanted more guns, bigger guns. I wanted an assault rifle with a fully automatic setting. I wanted knives, machetes, swords. I wanted anything that would give me even a false sense of security. I wanted to be back in the safety of my little library back in Sun Prairie where Bigfoot would never, ever visit.
I could feel the paranoia creeping through my brain like a tarantula, light, hairy-footed steps just spread more and more fear. I pulled the fleece blanket from my bed in the back and covered myself with it. I lay down on the floor in the center of the RV, scared to go back to the bed area where windows were so close to the mattress. The floor felt safer. No one could see me on the floor. I held my shotgun in my hands, my right hand resting on the stock, fingers brushing the metal trigger-guard. Fear was making me tremble. My head started to ache from being on alert. A new fear pulsed down my spine at that moment, one that I had not considered before. I started to worry that fear could drive me insane. I couldn’t be on alert at all times. I had to sleep. The thoughts of what might happen while I was sleeping began to claw at my mind with long, sharp talons. I tried to breathe. I tried to push all thoughts of anything scary out of my head. I tried to visualize pleasant things. Nothing was working. My heart was in my throat. I thought of how much people depended on each other for things other than simple companionship. I thought about how people depended on each other for protection, for safety. I might never have another person to watch my back. If I couldn’t gather myself and get a grip on my fears, I might never sleep again. I didn’t know much about sleep, but I knew that going without it for a long time would lead to further paranoia, and uncontrolled paranoia would lead to insanity.
The most terrifying picture of all forced itself into my brain at that second. I saw myself crouched in the corner of a filthy house. My skin was unwashed. My hair was wild and matted. I was holding guns and muttering to myself, eyes wide and darting. I saw myself going insane. Alone. In a wasteland devoid of human contact and protection.
I didn’t want to live in that world.
I didn’t sleep that night. I lay on the floor, every muscle tense, until dawn came. Even when the sun rose and banished any demons or monsters from outside the RV, I was scared to pull the curtains and look outside. In the end, my bladder forced my hand. I had to piss like a racehorse, and I’d never gotten around to rigging up the tiny little camper toilet in the Greyhawk. Why have an indoor toilet in a moving vehicle that you’d have to clean and empty when the world was your toilet?
Even with the sun providing ample light, I was terrified to open the side door to my RV. I unlocked it, took a deep breath, and then slammed it open, banging the door to the side of the RV’s body, hoping any creatures within a half-mile would hear the noise and run. I stuck my head out just far enough to look to the right and left and see that Sasquatch wasn’t hanging around. I stepped onto the road and circled the RV, shotgun at the ready. After one full revolution, I even dropped to my knees and looked under the vehicle just to make sure there wasn’t some sort of monster circling around the Greyhawk. Only then did I venture to the edge of the road to relieve my straining bladder.
When I got back into the RV and opened all the curtains, I felt a flood of relief. A surge of dopamine and endorphins calmed me. I was able to laugh at myself a little. I had been stressing out over the highly improbable chance that I was going to meet a Bigfoot. In the safety of the light of day, it seemed ridiculous. However, I knew that night would come again soon. I knew that night would return, and with it the fear would return, as well. I didn’t know how to alleviate that fear. It was so absurd that it made me angry while I performed my morning rituals. The more I thought about the fear, the angrier I got with myself. Part of it might have been lack of sleep. I hated the fact that I was getting angry, and that only made me angrier. I was so angry that I couldn’t eat.
I put a Coke in the drink holder in the front of the Greyhawk for the road. I took a couple of bottles of water and some soap and gave myself a quick, chilly shower in the middle of the road. I dried off, dressed, and got ready to drive. Fester was on the passenger seat waiting for me. He sat and regarded me with his dark green eyes. I looked back at him. “Fester, am I losing my mind?”
Fester gave a meow and flopped on his side. He rolled to his back and looked at me expectantly. I reached over and gave his belly a couple of scratches. He immediately curled into a ball and bit my wrist gently, holding it in place to make sure I didn’t stop rubbing his belly. His eyes closed and he started his husky purring. I turned the key to the RV with my left hand and the engine roared to life. It scared him, and he relinquished my arm.
We continued east on Highway 80. I had no desire to explore towns or homes out in the rural areas of Pennsylvania. The hills and vales that I had enjoyed so much the day before were now areas of suspicion and required frequent scans for roaming cryptid monsters.
I crossed most of Pennsylvania over the next five hours. I didn’t stop. I didn’t leave the highway. While I was moving, I felt safe, protected. It wasn’t until the middle of the afternoon, when I ran low on gas, and I needed to pee again, that I consented to stop.
I pulled off the highway at a gas station near the exit for highway 380 north. There were signs for the Poconos everywhere. The sun was still high in the sky. It was only mid-summer. The sun wouldn’t be setting until at least nine. I figured I had a good five hours of daylight, maybe a bit more. I wanted to see the Poconos. I wanted to check out the fabled mountain resorts. If nothing else, I thought that maybe forcing my way into a solid building for the night, being able to curtain the windows and bar the door, might make me feel safe enough to sleep. I wasn’t certain I’d sleep in the RV that night. I knew I would have to get over the fear at some point, but for the moment, it felt like an impossibility.
After I’d done everything I needed to do at the gas station, I got back in the RV and headed north into the Poconos. My gut got tight. My skin got itchy. The fear was crawling back into me. Thinking about staying somewhere overnight made me remember that the dark was coming back. I didn’t feel safe in large cities. I didn’t feel safe in the woods. I didn’t know how to get through the night, anymore. I didn’t have much of a choice, though. Time and tide wait for no man. I think Chaucer said that. The sun was falling toward the western horizon. The light was beginning to wane, changing from the clear, white light of day to the hazy, yellowed afternoon light. Time certainly wasn’t waiting for me.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The Pocono Resorts
There were resorts aplenty in the Poconos. The rolling mountains were dotted with unbelievable castle-like hotels filled with hundreds of luxury rooms. There were also amazing homes dotting the countryside, palatial mansions and cute little weekend cabins—places for which my mother would have cut off her right leg to own. The whole area reeked of money and prestige. I pulled off the road at the first massive mega-hotel I saw, a place called the Buckskill Lodge and Conference Center. In the light of day, it didn’t look too intimidating. At night, with every window dark, I imagined the place would look like a haunted asylum, the kind a group of dumb teens would visit, and six of the seven of them would be dead by dawn. It did not feel, at
first glance, like the type of place where I wanted to spend the night.
I drove up to the covered entry. At least if it stormed, the RV wouldn’t suffer more hail damage. Gripping the shotgun, I left the Greyhawk and approached the front doors of the hotel. The lobby was lit through the side windows by the afternoon sun. When I cracked the door, the smell of old death was thick. People had died in this hotel. A lot of people. That struck me as strange. The world is ending, people are dying left and right, and some people decided to spend their last days in a luxury hotel. I suppose I couldn’t fault them: If you’re going to go anyway, you might as well go in style.
The lobby was expansive and done up in a faux-rustic style. It was supposed to look like a rugged mountain cabin, but the decoration didn’t look anything like what I knew of mountain cabins. It looked like someone had some snooty New York designer remake a cabin in what they thought a rustic cabin should be. There were expensive pieces of art on the walls and a large marble sculpture near the expansive front desk. Where were the taxidermied animal heads and the mounted trophy fish? If a rustic cabin doesn’t have a singing plastic fish on the wall, can we really call it a rustic cabin?
The lobby squelched all sound. The wood timbers along the walls swallowed any noise and the carpeting and acoustic ceiling tiles created a very quiet room. It was very strange to find a place that was even quieter than the hushed, ambient world. I’d grown used to the noise of nature and winds, but this room lacked either. It was the kind of quiet that pressed on my eardrums. I found myself coughing occasionally just to hear something, to break the silence.