Speaker 1: John Mercer heard the mountain the first week after they
Speaker 1: moved in from his bedroom window. Blackthorn Mountain looked peaceful,
Speaker 1: a dark ridge beyond the narrow strip of woods at
Speaker 1: the back of the Northern Vermont subdivision. His parents loved
Speaker 1: the view, nice and quiet. His dad said, it wasn't.
Speaker 1: One afternoon, while John lay on the bed staring at
Speaker 1: unpacked boxes, a voice exploded out of the trees behind
Speaker 1: the houses. The sound punched through the glass, deep, sharp, furious.
Speaker 1: More syllables followed, fast and guttural, rolling over one another,
Speaker 1: like men shouting through static. Underneath. He thought he heard
Speaker 1: smaller voices trying to cut in and getting steamrolled. Then
Speaker 1: it cut off. The TV murmured downstairs. John sat frozen,
Speaker 1: heart pounding. That wasn't a dog, That wasn't a TV.
Speaker 1: He pushed the blinds aside. The backyard sloped to the
Speaker 1: tree line. A couple of bikes lay in the grass.
Speaker 1: No one was out there yelling. Did you hear that?
Speaker 1: He asked in the kitchen, hear what his dad said,
Speaker 1: not looking up from his laptop. Someone was screaming, like
Speaker 1: like in Japanese or something. His dad chuckled, Probably someone's
Speaker 1: TV cranked up, sound bounces off the hill. You'll get
Speaker 1: used to it. John didn't. That night, he lay awake
Speaker 1: replaying the sound. His grandfather used to watch old samurai movies.
Speaker 1: The rapid clips of voices in those films flickered through
Speaker 1: his mind. This had felt like that, but bigger, angrier,
Speaker 1: as if the speaker was standing in the woods behind
Speaker 1: their fence. He imagined a huge, furious, Japanese looking guy
Speaker 1: living out there, shouting at people he couldn't see. It
Speaker 1: should have been funny. It wasn't. A few days later,
Speaker 1: he followed the narrow path behind the house down to
Speaker 1: the woods. Up close, the trees at the base of
Speaker 1: blackthorn pressed together, the light thinned and the air cooled.
Speaker 1: The dirt smelled of wet leaves and something musky underneath,
Speaker 1: like a dog that lived outdoors all year. He hesitated
Speaker 1: at the edge. One more step would put him under
Speaker 1: the branches. He stepped graw too rock eye A sorry. Sorry.
Speaker 1: The voice hit him like a slam door. It was
Speaker 1: echoing off the mountain. Now it was ahead of him, somewhere,
Speaker 1: just beyond the first curtain of trunks. Small little voices
Speaker 1: flared up in response. Higher quicker, tumbling over one another,
Speaker 1: jah ra high ll. They sounded like an argument. He
Speaker 1: couldn't understand a word, but the tone needed no translation. Furious, panicked, insistent.
Speaker 1: The deep voice snapped across the others like a drill sergeant.
Speaker 1: They're yelling because of you. The thought slid into his
Speaker 1: mind and lodged there. Hello, he called, because doing nothing
Speaker 1: felt wrong. The words went dead still. Then branches shook.
Speaker 1: Something heavy hit a tree, a loud thump, hard enough
Speaker 1: to knock woodloose, bark, that is. The big voice roared again,
Speaker 1: and the smaller ones climbed over it in a chaotic tangle.
Speaker 1: John backed toward the light, his heel snapping a twig.
Speaker 1: Instant's silence, the feeling of being watched closed around him
Speaker 1: like a hand. He didn't turn around and run. He
Speaker 1: walked back out to the grass as calmly as he could.
Speaker 1: The back of his neck the skin was crawling. Only
Speaker 1: when he was half way up the slope toward the
Speaker 1: house did he look over his shoulder, just trees, quiet, ordinary.
Speaker 1: It became a pattern. Whenever he walked down toward the
Speaker 1: woods and came within a few steps of the tree line,
Speaker 1: the chatter started up somewhere inside. Sometimes it was a low,
Speaker 1: angry grumble. Sometimes it flared into a full, booming argument.
Speaker 1: The deep voice always came back the loudest. The smaller
Speaker 1: voices sounded scared, defiant, pleading, depending on the day. He
Speaker 1: started marking the times in a note book and nicknamed
Speaker 1: the speakers to make sense of it. The two fast,
Speaker 1: higher voices were snaps and click. The lowest tense one
Speaker 1: he called soft step. The huge, chesty one that shook
Speaker 1: his ribs was chief. He tried to record the sounds
Speaker 1: on his phone. Each time the chatter dropped to a murmur,
Speaker 1: more vibration than voice. On playback, it sounded like distant
Speaker 1: highway noise. His mom said it was probably logging equipment.
Speaker 1: The neighbor waved off his question with sound. Does weird
Speaker 1: things up here? You'll get used to it. He didn't.
Speaker 1: He got curious instead. At the same time, John walked
Speaker 1: to the edge of the trees and stared in. Something
Speaker 1: stared out from the shadow of a spruce. At the
Speaker 1: base of blackthorn, A broad shouldered figure watched the thin
Speaker 1: human boy pick his way down the hill alone. The
Speaker 1: boy's scent was always the same, sharp, young edged with worry.
Speaker 1: No other human sense clung to it. No mother scent,
Speaker 1: no father scent, no pack. The younger male snaps, though
Speaker 1: he didn't know that name. Paced heavy footsteps, pressing hollows
Speaker 1: into the wet ground. Shah, he burst out, voice crackling
Speaker 1: in the air. Ray. He jabbed a long, thick finger
Speaker 1: toward the bright strip of yard beyond the trees. He comes,
Speaker 1: he sees, we end him. The older male beside him
Speaker 1: barely moved. Scar tissue ridged his arms where fur refused
Speaker 1: to grow. His eyes stayed locked on the boy at
Speaker 1: the edge of the woods. Cold, no foil translated lone
Speaker 1: young one, no fire, no group. Let him walk soft step.
Speaker 1: The female shifted her weight, one hand resting on her belly.
Speaker 1: Her eyes moved from the boy's hunched shoulders to her own.
Speaker 1: Too offspring, small, she said, quietly, scared, But he bring
Speaker 1: others later. Click. The slighter adolescent made a nervous chattering noise.
Speaker 1: He remembered thundersticks, rifles, and metal teeth in the ground.
Speaker 1: Snaps snarled, we kill now, No others come, he insisted.
Speaker 1: One scream, one rush done. The older male chief led
Speaker 1: out a breath that rumbled his chest. He had seen
Speaker 1: what happened when a human vanished. Now sirens, lines of people, flying, machines,
Speaker 1: combing the hills. Kill lone cub, he said in his
Speaker 1: own tongue, And many ones come with thunder, with fire,
Speaker 1: with sky eyes, no place, hide, no food, no peace.
Speaker 1: He kept his gaze on the boy, who had stopped
Speaker 1: just inside the first drift of leaves. We stay, we hide,
Speaker 1: he walk, we watch. Snaps bared his teeth, but fell quiet.
Speaker 1: Chief's decision had kept them alive this long, so they
Speaker 1: argued loudly. Whenever the boy came on purpose, Snaps shouted
Speaker 1: to scare him back. Soft step fretted, click, darted, and mutter.
Speaker 1: Chief's voice rolled through everything, setting invisible lines. From John's side,
Speaker 1: all he heard was chaos from theirs. It was strategy.
Speaker 1: He tried not to type the word bigfoot. He'd always
Speaker 1: thought of it as a joke, a cartoon, footprints, taurist traps,
Speaker 1: the guy at the flea market with Squatch watch merch.
Speaker 1: But late one night, phone under the covers, he finally
Speaker 1: searched weird forest voice Samurai chatter. Page after page talked
Speaker 1: about odd, foreign sounding speech recorded in the woods hunters
Speaker 1: describing samurai chatter audio clips that sounded eerily like an
Speaker 1: argument in some unknown language. The same word kept popping
Speaker 1: up around the edge, bigfoot sasquatch. He shut the phone
Speaker 1: off and stared at the ceiling. The next afternoon was
Speaker 1: cold enough that breath smoked in front of him. He
Speaker 1: walked straight past his front door after school and headed
Speaker 1: down the hill. At the tree line, he stopped and
Speaker 1: planted his feet on that leaf litter. I know you're there,
Speaker 1: he said. The woods answered as if they had been waiting.
Speaker 1: Ay ay. Snaps tried to roar, sometimes heavy, striking a
Speaker 1: trunk and saying kill kill. Clicks chatter skittered over his
Speaker 1: high and frightened. Soft step hissed a warning. Then chiefs
Speaker 1: bark crashed over them, all sh which meant know or stop,
Speaker 1: and the others fell into a tense mutter. John took
Speaker 1: three steps in the houses slid out of his peripheral vision.
Speaker 1: The air under the branches was colder. Somewhere ahead, something
Speaker 1: vast shifted its weight, the soft thump of a foot,
Speaker 1: the scrape of fur against bark. Why are you yelling?
Speaker 1: He called? What do you want? Within the shadows, the
Speaker 1: family argued one more time, and him snaps, snarled, voice
Speaker 1: low now aimed at Chief. He come, he come close,
Speaker 1: He sees too much. Later he bring thunder and trouble.
Speaker 1: Now Chief's reply was calm and grinding. If he vanish,
Speaker 1: he said, they scour valley, they burn, they cut, They
Speaker 1: bring metal eyes that never sleep. We kill one, we
Speaker 1: call many. Soft step added a soft note about winter coming,
Speaker 1: about the new life she carried. Klik whispered that the
Speaker 1: boy walked with his head down, like a lonely youngster,
Speaker 1: not a hunter. Chief listened, then exhaled. We move, he decided,
Speaker 1: higher stone, new den, We live, lone cub live valley quiet.
Speaker 1: He stepped forward from between two spruce trunks, half veiled
Speaker 1: by shadow. A shape rose. John saw it in a
Speaker 1: narrow gap, wider than his dad's truck, taller than the
Speaker 1: garage door. Fur hung in heavy streams from long arms,
Speaker 1: shoulders bunched under a thick neck. A head turned, and
Speaker 1: two deep set eyes caught the silvery light and sent
Speaker 1: it back in flat amber gleam. Every part of his
Speaker 1: brain tried to fix it bare costume, tree stump, but
Speaker 1: nothing held. He couldn't move. Chief held his gaze for
Speaker 1: a full thin second. The boys sent stank of terror now,
Speaker 1: but there was no iron, no gun, oil, no other humans.
Speaker 1: Lone cub. Chief said to his family, scared, curious, Snaps
Speaker 1: shifted the earth till leap. Burning in his chest, last chance,
Speaker 1: he grated, End him. Chief's jaw tightened, end him, he said, slowly,
Speaker 1: and we and ourselves. Then, drawing on the one human
Speaker 1: word he trusted himself to form, he let his lips
Speaker 1: shape it go. He rumbled. It came out rough and crackled,
Speaker 1: but the warning, the meaning was unmistakable. John flinched. I
Speaker 1: won't tell, he whispered, grote dry, I swear, I won't
Speaker 1: tell any one. You're here. Chief didn't understand the words,
Speaker 1: but he understood tone, soft pleading, not a threat. He
Speaker 1: snorted once a low gust of breath, and stepped back
Speaker 1: into shadow. The branches swallowed the outline. John walked out
Speaker 1: of the woods. He didn't remember deciding to move. His
Speaker 1: legs just carried him up the hill, through the thinning trees,
Speaker 1: on to the opening and the strip of grass. Only
Speaker 1: at the first back yard did he turn. The gap
Speaker 1: between the trunks was just darkness. Now that night, the
Speaker 1: strip of woods behind the subdivision stayed quiet. John sat
Speaker 1: on his bed with the blinds up, lights off, staring
Speaker 1: at the black line of trees. His heart still kicked
Speaker 1: whenever his mind replayed those eyes. He whispered bigfoot once
Speaker 1: into the dark, and it didn't feel like a joke
Speaker 1: at all. Up on a higher shoulder of blackthorn, a
Speaker 1: family moved through spruce and shadow, leaving their old hollow behind.
Speaker 1: Soft step, trudge, set up, click, kept the lancing down
Speaker 1: slope at the faint glow of houses, Snaps walked stiffly,
Speaker 1: but followed. Chief led, the rhythm of his steps matching
Speaker 1: the slow decisions in his head. Moved now before snow
Speaker 1: grew deep, find a new pocket of quiet, Let the
Speaker 1: valley below forget the days when voices rolled from its trees.
Speaker 1: And as they settled into a new crease of rock
Speaker 1: and root higher on the mountain, Chief looked one's back
Speaker 1: toward the subdivision of lights. Lone cub, he murmured down below.
Speaker 1: John wandered to the back of the yard in his jacket,
Speaker 1: breath puffing white, and stood at the edge of the
Speaker 1: now silent trail. The woods felt lonelier now. He realized
Speaker 1: standing there that as scared as he'd been, he never
Speaker 1: truly felt alone when the shouting started. Every time he
Speaker 1: stepped toward the trees, someone on the other side had
Speaker 1: been aware of him, weighing him, arguing over him, choosing
Speaker 1: again and again not to hurt him. Watching his trail,
Speaker 1: he looked up at the mountain, at the darker shape
Speaker 1: against the night sky. I hope you're okay up there,
Speaker 1: he said softly. From then on, whenever he walked past
Speaker 1: the path or glanced at Blackthorn's shoulder from his window,
Speaker 1: he thought less about monsters and more about a family
Speaker 1: he'd never seen, properly pushed a little higher because of him,
Speaker 1: a stubborn old giant who had chosen wisdom over fear.
Speaker 1: He never wrote Bigfoot in his note book. On the
Speaker 1: last page, where he tracked the dates in Times of
Speaker 1: the Strange Arguments, he printed the only name that felt right,
Speaker 1: neat block letters pressed deep into the paper, the Lonesome
Speaker 1: trail Watcher. The trail didn't disappear after that night. It
Speaker 1: stayed exactly where it had always been, cut through leaves
Speaker 1: and pine, leading straight into the quiet. The boys stopped
Speaker 1: walking it, not out of fear, but out of understanding.
Speaker 1: Some things aren't meant to be chased, photographed, or even proven.
Speaker 1: They exist because they choose to, and they stay hidden
Speaker 1: because they must. The mountain kept its secret, the woods
Speaker 1: kept their watcher, and the silence returned, thick, watchful, alive.
Speaker 1: Years later, when the wind moves through the trees just right,
Speaker 1: the trail still seems to wait, not for footsteps, but
Speaker 1: for restraint, Because not every mystery asks to be solved.
Speaker 1: Some only ask to be respected.