Speaker 1: You're listening to Part two of The Missing Hunter. The
Speaker 1: Search that wouldn't Settle. The search for Wade Harlan didn't
Speaker 1: fail all at once. It failed slowly in pieces, the
Speaker 1: way things do when too many people are involved and
Speaker 1: no one wants to admit what they're really afraid of.
Speaker 1: It failed in the pauses between shouted names, in the
Speaker 1: way radios crackled and then went dead in the creek bottom,
Speaker 1: in that long look that men gave the tree line
Speaker 1: when they thought no one was watching them watch. On
Speaker 1: the second morning after Wade vanished, the number of people
Speaker 1: on some late ridge doubled. Word traveled the old way,
Speaker 1: through kitchens, through diner booths, through phone calls made from
Speaker 1: wall mounted handsets, where the cord twisted tighter the longer
Speaker 1: you talked. By mid morning, trucks lined the logging spur,
Speaker 1: not official vehicles, mostly pickups with mud on the tires,
Speaker 1: and coolers in the bed. Men brought their sons, Brothers
Speaker 1: brought brothers. A few wives showed up too, handing out
Speaker 1: thermoses and trying not to ask questions that might be
Speaker 1: misconstrued that would lead somewhere they didn't want to go.
Speaker 1: Deputy Harold Finch stood near his truck, with the legal
Speaker 1: pad tucked under one arm and a folded paper map
Speaker 1: spread across the hood. He drawn gridlines and nothing fancy,
Speaker 1: just enough to give the impression of order. This isn't
Speaker 1: a rescue mission anymore, Finch said quietly to Cal Morrison,
Speaker 1: as the crowd gathered. We're looking for answers. Cal didn't respond,
Speaker 1: he was watching the ridge. Finch noticed, you expecting something,
Speaker 1: Finch asked. Kl shook his head slowly. No, he said,
Speaker 1: I'm hoping not to. They'd split the search into loose groups,
Speaker 1: not enough manpower for anything more disciplined. Finch paired men
Speaker 1: who knew the woods with men who didn't, hoping familiarity
Speaker 1: would keep panic from spreading if things went sideways. It
Speaker 1: didn't work. The woods had other ideas. By late morning,
Speaker 1: the first argument broke out near the creek bottom. A
Speaker 1: handler tried to force his dog forward, cursing under his
Speaker 1: breath as the animal dug in and refused to move.
Speaker 1: Another man said they should try a different approach angle.
Speaker 1: A third suggested the dogs were reacting to old scent,
Speaker 1: nothing more. Then the smell returned stronger than before It
Speaker 1: rolled in low, heavy, like a wet blanket throne over
Speaker 1: the ground. Conversations stopped mid sentence. Men wrinkled their noses,
Speaker 1: some covering their mouths, as if it would help. Who died,
Speaker 1: someone asked, Cow's jaw tightened. Nothing died, he said, not here.
Speaker 1: The dogs backed away completely, now tails low, whining. One
Speaker 1: sat down and refused to move it all. Finch rubbed
Speaker 1: his forehead. He was already behind. He knew it. The
Speaker 1: sun wasn't cooperating, the terrain wasn't co operating, and whatever
Speaker 1: was happening down there wasn't playing by rules. He understood,
Speaker 1: all right, he said, loudly. Pull back from the creek.
Speaker 1: We'll circle higher ground. No one argued that alone worried him.
Speaker 1: Higher up near the ridge, the woods felt different, not better,
Speaker 1: just watched. Finch couldn't explain it. He'd been in woods before,
Speaker 1: He'd tracked drunks, lost kids, even a couple of armed men.
Speaker 1: None of that prepared him for the sensation crawling up
Speaker 1: his spine. Now. It fell like walking into a room
Speaker 1: where someone had just stopped talking. By early afternoon, someone
Speaker 1: shouted over here. Men converged on a small clearing not
Speaker 1: far from the ridge, trail. A broken sapling, ly twisted
Speaker 1: at an unnatural angle, snapped clean, nearly eight feet off
Speaker 1: the ground. The wood inside was pale and fresh. That
Speaker 1: wasn't weather, someone muttered. Finch measured it with his eyes,
Speaker 1: then raised his hand to compare height. That's about shoulder level,
Speaker 1: he said. Cal nodded once. Yeah, bear, Finch asked, though
Speaker 1: he already knew the answer didn't fit. Cal didn't reply. Instead,
Speaker 1: he pointed across the clearing. Faint impressions marked the ground
Speaker 1: where the soil stayed damp longest, not deep enough for
Speaker 1: clear prints, but enough to suggest weight movement. Someone crouched.
Speaker 1: Looks like big boots, he said, trying to keep it light.
Speaker 1: No tread, another man said, and too wide. The word
Speaker 1: wasn't spoken yet, but it was there waiting. By dusk,
Speaker 1: the search stalled again. Light faded quickly under the canopy,
Speaker 1: turning shapes into guesses and guesses into threats. Finch called
Speaker 1: it for the night, ordering everyone back to camp. That
Speaker 1: decision came too late. As men gathered their gear, someone screamed,
Speaker 1: it was Danny. He came running out of the trees,
Speaker 1: face pale, eyes wild. He tripped over roots nearly fell,
Speaker 1: then staggered into the firelight. Something followed me. He gasped.
Speaker 1: Cal grabbed him by the shoulders, slowed down. He said,
Speaker 1: tell it clean. Danny swallowed hard. I was up on
Speaker 1: the trail, he said, I heard footsteps. Thought it was
Speaker 1: Reese or someone else. But every time I stopped, it
Speaker 1: stopped every time I moved parallel. Cal asked quietly. Danny
Speaker 1: stared at him. Yeah, he whispered, how did you know?
Speaker 1: Cal didn't answer. Finch stepped in. Did you see it?
Speaker 1: Danny shook his head violently. No. I didn't want to.
Speaker 1: That night, the Knox came again, not three, this time four.
Speaker 1: The extra strike landed wrong, like a word mispronounced on purpose.
Speaker 1: Men jumped, a few cursed. Someone reached instinctively for a
Speaker 1: rifle before thinking better of it. Cal stood up slowly.
Speaker 1: Nobody fire, He said, you fire, you own what happens next.
Speaker 1: The Knox didn't repeat. Instead, something moved along the ridge,
Speaker 1: not crashing, not running, walking. Bootsteps sounded wrong out there,
Speaker 1: too heavy Two measured the sound crossed behind the tree line,
Speaker 1: staying just far away enough to be felt but not seen.
Speaker 1: Finch stood rigid, hand resting on his belt, his flashlight
Speaker 1: stayed off. Is that a man? Someone whispered, cal listened,
Speaker 1: head tilted slightly. No, he said a man would be louder.
Speaker 1: That was the first night. Finch slept in his truck
Speaker 1: with the doors locked. The third day brought reporters, not many,
Speaker 1: just one from the county paper and a stringer from
Speaker 1: a regional outlet who smelled something worth printing. They asked
Speaker 1: polite questions and took notes. Finch gave careful answers. Search
Speaker 1: on going, no evidence of foul play, multiple possible abilities
Speaker 1: being explored behind him, men muttered someone laughed too hard
Speaker 1: and said Bigfoot probably got them. The reporter's pen paused,
Speaker 1: what makes you say that? She asked. The man shrugged,
Speaker 1: just stories, he said, tracks knocks. You know how it is.
Speaker 1: She nodded slowly that sentence would appear in print two
Speaker 1: days later, and once it did, something shifted. The search
Speaker 1: changed tone. People started talking louder about things they'd once whispered.
Speaker 1: Stories poured out, sightings from years past, screams heard during
Speaker 1: winter hunts, silhouettes crossing roads at dawn. A woman from
Speaker 1: town claimed she'd smelled something foul near her clothesline one
Speaker 1: night and heard footsteps circling her house. Finch interviewed them all.
Speaker 1: None of it helped. What did help, what made things easier,
Speaker 1: was the narrative forming around the search. People stopped asking who,
Speaker 1: they started asking what and what had already made answer.
Speaker 1: On the fourth day, they found Wade's hat. It hung
Speaker 1: on a low branch near the creek brim, facing outward,
Speaker 1: as if placed there deliberately, not snagged, not crushed. Placed.
Speaker 1: Finch stared at it for a long time. That hat
Speaker 1: didn't fall, he said, No one contradicted him. By now,
Speaker 1: the dogs refused to come near the area at all.
Speaker 1: One handler packed up and left, claiming illness. Another followed,
Speaker 1: unwilling to argue. That afternoon, Finch pulled Cal aside. Talk
Speaker 1: to me, Finch said, off the record, Cal looked tired,
Speaker 1: older than he had a week ago. You don't want
Speaker 1: what I have, Cal said, I already have it, Finch replied.
Speaker 1: Cal exhaled that thing on the ridge, he said, it's
Speaker 1: been there longer than any of us. It doesn't hunt people.
Speaker 1: Then what does it do? Cal thought? For a moment,
Speaker 1: It watches, he said, and sometimes it lets people see it.
Speaker 1: Why Cal shook his head. I don't know, but it
Speaker 1: never comes into camp, never crosses certain lines. Finch frowned.
Speaker 1: What lines the creek cow said, and whatever happened to
Speaker 1: wade The implication hung heavy. That night, Finch walked alone.
Speaker 1: He shouldn't have, he knew that, but the noise of
Speaker 1: the camp, voices, arguments, speculation had begun to drown out
Speaker 1: his instincts. He needed quiet. He followed the ridge trail
Speaker 1: until the firelight was gone, the lantern glow swallowed by trees.
Speaker 1: His boots crunched softly on gravel and leaves. The moon
Speaker 1: was thin, offering just enough light to be misleading. Halfway
Speaker 1: along the ridge, the woods went still. Finch stopped. He
Speaker 1: didn't move for a long time. Then he heard it,
Speaker 1: a breath not behind him, beside him. Finch turned slowly, nothing,
Speaker 1: but the sensation remained thick and undeniable, like standing too
Speaker 1: close to a heat source you couldn't see. He swallowed
Speaker 1: and spoke softly, more to himself than anything else. I
Speaker 1: know you're there. The woods didn't answer, But when Finch
Speaker 1: turned back toward camp, he noticed something on the ground
Speaker 1: near the trail, a single impression, large deep facing the ravine.
Speaker 1: He didn't photograph it. He didn't measure it, he didn't
Speaker 1: mark it. He stepped around it and walked away. By
Speaker 1: the end of the week, the search was officially scaled back. Unofficially,
Speaker 1: it had ended days earlier. Men returned to work, the
Speaker 1: camp was dismantled. Trucks pulled away one by one, leaving
Speaker 1: ruts that would fill with water and leaves and disappear
Speaker 1: by spring. Wade Harlan was declared missing, presumed dead. The
Speaker 1: paper ran a final story, local hunter vanishes near Slate Ridge.
Speaker 1: Search on going theories very the word theories did a
Speaker 1: lot of work in town. People said the woods took him.
Speaker 1: Said it with a shake of the head and a
Speaker 1: sigh that meant these things happen. They said it because
Speaker 1: it allowed life to continue without looking too closely at
Speaker 1: the men around them. Cal stopped hunting Slate Ridge after
Speaker 1: that season. Finch transferred two years later. The ridge remained,
Speaker 1: and whatever stood on it remained too. Because the search
Speaker 1: hadn't failed for lack of effort. It failed because something
Speaker 1: else had already decided how the story would be told,
Speaker 1: and the woods, ancient, patient and watching, let it happen.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to Big Fittzwilderness Part three coming next Sunday.
Speaker 1: Have a great night,