Speaker 1: The Devil's Not by Nilma finn Well, I can't say
that me and Bobby Domeier we was buddies. I don't
reckon anyone was buddies with Bobby, but we's classmates. The
old man leaned forward and injected a long stream of
spit into a can between his feet. Then he closed
his eyes and wrinkled his forehead in an effort to
pull something from deep inside his memories. A quick smile
creased his old cheeks, and he continued, Bobby lived over
on the other side of the Devil's Knot. Most of
us boys stayed away from there. We have legends about
that place, stories kids tell around the camp fire. He
leaned into the young man sitting beside him on the
park bench and said, now listen here, I won't deny
that kill blow anything up to scare each other, but
there really was something wrong with that holler. For one thing,
it may not be at all that wide, but they
say it goes all the way from here to Canada
without a single break in the woods. The young man's
stifled to grin. Google Maps would have put an end
to the old man's belief in that myth, but he
was right about one thing. The hollow may have only
been a mile and a half wide by three miles long,
but it did spill into a patch of land that
was more than two hundred and forty square miles of
nothing but trees, brambles, gullies, vines, undergrowth, snakes and spiders
and blood sucking insects. The sun never saw the floor
of that forest. Bobby's daddy disappeared into that place, you know.
The old man said, I understand that story, mister high Tower.
But all the police reports state that he ran off
and left his wife and kids fin for themselves. The
young man offered he had been to the courthouse and
gone through all the old reports that he could find.
Back in the nineteen forties, when Truman County was a
lot less populated, reports were written without as much as
official language as they are today, and several times the
man found notes indicating that the woman was crazy and
that the husband probably couldn't take anymore. That's not so,
the old man growled, and miss Dumeyer was a good woman.
She grew up with my mama, and not a better
woman ever lived. And that's my mama's word, not mine.
He gave his companion a side eyed stare, as if
challenging him to question his mother. What's your name, boy,
he asked, for what the young man thought was probably
the eighth time. Martin Chesterfield, he answered as politely as
a man who was running out of patience could. But
you can call me Chig. Everyone does. Chig, old Man grumbled,
as if the name didn't sit well on his tongue. Well,
my name's Gordon high Tower, he said, having forgotten that
he had already introduced himself a half a dozen times.
Chig worried that the story he was getting wasn't going
to be very accurate, given the advanced age of the
man and his inability to remember simple facts. However, there
weren't many people left who knew Bobby Dumyer personally, and
most of those who did were already too far gone
with dementia to get any facts out of them at all.
Now you wasn't here, and you don't know, mister high
Tower spoke resentfully. Mister Dumier wasn't a bad man and
his wife was a good woman. Now that's a fact.
Their farm was over on the other side of Devil's Knoight,
it siddled right up alongside it. Most folks around here
wouldn't go near that place, so the Dumayers were left
pretty much to themselves. That suited mister Dumer just fine.
He liked being left alone, and he was fearless as
all get out. He hunted that holler all the time.
He'd take his gun and head down into those woods
and bring out some of the finest bucks you ever
laid eyes on. One of the few pictures I own
of my own daddy was of him standing next to
Will Dumar and a ten point buck he killed and
devils not mister high Tower set up a little straighter
with those words, as if it was his father who
had shot the deer. Yes, but the police reports say.
I don't give a one eyed jack what those reports say.
Will Dumer would not have run out on his family. Now,
I know Miss Dumier wasn't quite right in the head,
but that wasn't until after her husband disappeared. Of course,
she lost her mind. Then that holler swallowed him up,
and not one member of this community was willing to
go in there looking for him. What about the reports,
Chig asked, what reports? Oh, you mean the ones when
she complained that something was attacking their livestock, taking their chickens,
getting in the barn and tearing it up. Well, yes,
those reports all state that she wasn't I know what
those dang reports saying. I'm telling you she wasn't wrong.
I won't say she was right. Like I said, the
woman's husband had up and vanished. I don't blame her
for being a little squirrely, but that don't mean there
ain't something in those woods and that it didn't get
her husband. And then later mister high Tower let his
voice trail off. He wasn't ready to share the latter
half of the story yet, and Chig didn't push it.
They sat for silence for a few minutes, and the
old man was lost in his memories. His eyes already
clouded with cataracts, welled with tears as he remembered you
spent with his friends, swimming in the cold water creeks,
green hills and valleys, and hunting patches of timber. Chigg
used the time to mul over the information he already
knew about Bobby Dumyer and his family. In nineteen forty five,
will Dumeyer returned from World War II to resume running
the farm that he and his wife had started shortly
after their marriage in nineteen thirty three. The farm was
a two hundred acre stretch of land that bordered the
infamous Long Hollow on the west and Cinder Creek on
the north, the Edward River on the east, and Postal
Route forty four hundred north on the south. Several decades later,
the road was renamed one seventh Avenue North. The nearest
town to the Dumyrs was winter Rest. It sat on
the other side of a holla and had a booming population,
with a grand total of five hundred and seventeen people,
half of which were the rural farmers that lived all
around it. In every direction. No larger towns existed for miles.
The Dumayers had two children, Bobby, who was born in
nineteen thirty six and Cassandra, who came along in nineteen
forty one. Georgia Dumayer was from all reports a good farmer.
While her husband was away fighting the war, she never
missed putting in a crop in the three and a
half years her husband was away. She maintained the livestock,
kept milk production, raised enough chickens to sell eggs at
the market, managed a large victory garden, from which she
was able to give produce to some of the less
fortunate people in town, and did all of this while
keeping her house clean and the children in order. Chig
could not argue with mister high Tower's assertion that Georgia
Dumer wasn't crazy before her husband vanished, but once he
was gone, there was more than enough evidence that she
was insane. It all happened on a cold November morning
in nineteen forty seven. It was the opening day of
deer season, and because no one else was willing to
so much as passed through the devil's knot, Will Dumar
had the veritable paradise of hunting opportunities. He left the
house that morning, certain that he would be successful on
the first day. As he crossed the hayfield that separated
his house from the hollow, he might have been thinking
about the strange events that had taken place recently. It
had been only a week ago that he had been
startled awake by the sound of the animals in the barn.
Clearly something was attacking them. Without a second thought, he
jumped up, dressed and grabbed his gun, and he ran outside.
As he crossed the barnyard. He could hear the milkcows
bleeding in a high pitched frenzy of anxiety and panic,
and hogs screamed in fright, and geese honked and cackled
in alarm. Will was almost there when the door flew
open and something ran across the opening between the barn
and the tractor shed that his mind would not allow
him to accept. Inside the barn, he found a mass
of carnage that tore his heart out of his chest.
One of his best sous was lying on the ground,
her tongue hanging out of her mouth as she struggled
to inhale enough air to breathe. The entire contents of
her abdominal cavity were spilled out on the ground around her.
Will looked down into poor thing, who stared back in
wild disbelief, and with a tear in his eyes, he
placed the barrel of his rifle behind her ear and
pulled the trigger. Two nights later, Will found himself running
back out into the night, this time to his chicken house,
where he discovered a half a dozen hens torn to pieces.
Another half dozen were missing. Whatever got to them tore
the door off the pin like it was a cardboard
flap on a box. This time he noted the tracks
that it left behind. The large, padded footprints were a
solid twelve inches in length and just as wide, and
the nailmarks at the end of each toe print indicated
non retractable claws. K nine. Will muttered, except this canine
walked on two legs. The night before hunting season, Will
sat in his front parlor reading a book while his
wife mended socks in her chair. Beside him. At a
small table in front of the window, Bobby and Cassie
were engaged in a game of dominoes. It was a
kind of family scene that Norman Rockwell might have painted
for the Saturday Evening Post. There was nothing special about
this night. Will's preoccupation with his anticipated hunt in the
morning might have required him to reread a page or
two of his book, but aside from that, it was
a peaceful evening. Then something thumped hard on the front porch.
Georgia looked up from her sewing and asked, what's that.
I don't know, Will answered as he slipped a bookmark
into the pages of the book he was reading and
laid it down. Bobby jumped up and crossed the room
ahead of his father, anxious to see who or what
was outside their front door. Georgia was right behind him,
calling for him to wait for his father. Everyone was
in motion at that moment except for Cassie. She sat
quietly staring out the window. Her eyes grew wide and
her little body trembled. Before stepping into the front hall,
Will decided to stop at his guncase and grab his rifle.
He had no answer for the inquisitive look on George's face,
so he only shrugged. Bobby was at the door, already
wrenching it open when Will grabbed his shoulder and pulled
him backward. Georgia reached over and flipped on the switch
that sent power to the small light that hung beside
the front door. The porch was empty. Will stepped out
onto the board and walked first to his left across
the long stretch of wooden planks to that end of
the house. Here the porch terminated into a set of
steps that led to the side yard. He saw nothing.
He then turned and retraced his path to the front
door and beyond to the other end of the house.
Here the porch turned and wrapped around the parlor without
a flashlight, something he had not thought to grab. He
couldn't make out much in the dark shadows beyond the
white picket fence that surrounded the yard. At the end
of the side porch, where another set of steps led
down into the night, Will turn and faced the house. There,
sitting silently in the window, her eyes full of images
too frightening to describe, was Cassie. Her little mouth was
formed into an oh, but nothing was coming out. Will
tapped at the window, bringing her from her trance. She
glanced at her father for only a moment before pouring
into the yard, and finally, with a kind of exquisite
agony that can only be achieved when every limit has
been reached, she released a long, ear piercing scream. It
was a long night, and Cassie couldn't voice what she saw.
Georgia had tried to put her to bed, but she
refused to be left alone. In the end, Georgia was
only able to soothe her daughter by crawling into the
bed beside her and holding her until she fell asleep.
Even that wasn't enough. She tried to go back to
her own bed several times in the night, and every
time Cassie woke up, crying and begging not to be
left alone with the monster. Will had slept a little better,
but not much. Several times he had gotten up and
gone downstairs to pace the front poor with his rifle,
certain that whatever was there earlier was still lingering near Bobby,
unfazed by any of it, slept like a baby. After
a few nights of peace, Will woke up early that morning. Georgia,
exhausted and sore from several nights of sleeping in her
daughter's cramp bed, managed to put on a pot of
coffee and fry up some eggs and bacon for her
husband while he prepared himself for his hunt. Together, they
ate and talked about the sort of things that most
couples discuss at the breakfast table. The events of the
previous week were pushed out of mind. Will hadn't told
his wife everything yet. He thought maybe he would eventually,
but first he had to find the right words. How
does a man tell his wife that he had seen
something that looked like a cross between line Cheney and
the wolf Man and an actual wolf with a snout
and large canine. Furthermore, it was nearly seven feet tall.
All Georgia knew was that some wild animal was getting
at their livestock. For now, he figured that's all she
needed to know. All of these things might have been
on Will's mind as he crossed the hayfield and entered
the Devil's Knot. There would be much to consider and
a lot to take care of, But first he needed
to put a deer in the freezer. Venison was always
an excellent alternative to beef during the long winter months
of the year. That night, Georgia Doomera contacted the Truman
County Sheriff's office. It was almost ten pm when she
made the call. Her husband had not come back from hunting.
The sheriff's deputy came out to investigate the situation. She
explained that her husband had left shortly before daylight. She
pointed out the route he took across the hayfield into
the woods, showed the deputy where she had stood on
the porch, drinking a cup of coffee and watching him
until he had vanished behind the tree line. The deputy
took notes positive theories and offered assurances that will Wood
come walking back out of those woods at any moment,
maybe dragging with him a record buck. The next morning,
Georgia made another call. Her husband was not back. Yet
another deputy came to the house. He wrote all the
same things the first deputy wrote. He formed all the
same theories the first deputy form, and he provided the
encouragement the first deputy gave. But like the first deputy,
he did not go down into the woods to search,
nor did the next deputy who came out to the house,
nor the next When Will Dumayer was reported missing, a
lot of the men in Truman County got together to
form a search party for him. They searched every meadow field,
pass patch of timber Lake and pond in the county,
but they did not search the devil's knot. Some of
the men even walked around town, thinking maybe they'd find
him hiding in an alley or drunk at the only
town bar. He wasn't there either. A few days after
Will Dumyer disappeared, Georgia Dumar made one more frantic phone
call to the Sheriff's department. This time she claimed some
sort of animal was in her barn, tearing up her livestock.
She was hysterical as she screamed into the phone that
someone needed to come out to the house and kill
it before it killed everything else. And in the background,
a dog could be heard growling and snarling and barking.
A pounding could be clearly heard that sounded like something
was trying to tear the doors off the house. And
suddenly Georgia screamed, Oh my god, it's a were wolf,
and the phone went silent. No one can say for
sure what happened after that night. Her claim that the
house was being attacked by a werewolf gave the sheriff's
department a reason to dismiss her claim as being delusional.
After all, the poor woman's husband was missing. It was
then that people began to formulate the theory that Georgia
Dumarer was insane, and that perhaps her husband had secured
his own disappearance to get as far from her as possible.
Additional calls to the sheriff's office for protection from the
werewolf went unanswered. You wanted to know about Bobby, the
old man said, interrupting Jiggs's thoughts. Yes, I did. His
reply sounded as flustered as he felt at the moment. Well,
I'll tell you about him. He was a kind of
kid who never had to find trouble. Trouble just seemed
to find him. Back in those days, if you was
a boy, you owned the world. When we wasn't in
school or doing chores, we were free to roam and ways.
These young people today would never understand. Rivers and creeks
were for swimming and fishing. Woods were for hunting and
making forks. We all had bicycles, and those bikes took
us everywhere we wanted to go. Mister high Tower felt
silent again, wondering down the roads that no longer existed,
or that had changed so much that they were no
longer recognizable. After a minute, Chig said softly, mister high Tower.
The old man turned and stared at the youth beside him.
What was your name again, he asked, I'm Chig. Chig answered,
no longer capable of the patients to provide his whole name.
That's an odd name for a boy, Mister high Tower said, yes, sir,
you were saying about Bobby Dumier. Oh yeah, Bobby. He
didn't have the free them the rest of us boys had.
With his daddy gone, He had all the chores of
a grown man to tend to you before and after school.
If that wasn't bad enough. He couldn't never sit still
in school. If he wasn't squirming in his chair, he
was wandering around the room, couldn't hold his attention for
five minutes. You'd have thought he'd be too tired for
shenanigans with all the work he had done at home.
But no, not Bobby and the trouble he got into.
If there was a frog in the teacher's desk, I
guarantee it was Bobby put it there. The old man
chuckled to himself. He likeed kids in the outhouse put
glue on their hair and filled the water jugs with minnas,
and he would soak the chalk in water. Chick didn't
understand the last two statements, so mister high Tower had
to describe the big stoneware jugs of water that stood
in the hallway with ten cups hanging on hooks beside them,
where kids could get a t drink before the water
fountains were installed. He then had to explain that chalk,
when soaked in water, becomes soft and unusable. When Chig
explained that the schools he had gone to as a
kid didn't have chalkboards, but dry erase boards, Gordon felt
confused and uncomfortable. Yeah, it's a different world we live
in now, he muttered, Yes, Sir Jigg said, before adding
now about Bobby. Bobby, Gordon echoed, trying to focus. Now.
He was a handful, and that meant that Bobby spent
most nights after school writing his penance out on the chalkboard.
Because he spent so much time paying for his sins
after school, he rarely made it home before dark once
winter set in. Gordon took a hard look at Chig
before continuing. The tall young man seated beside him could
not have been more than twenty two or twenty three
years old. His pink face, splattered with apricot freckles, was
a harsh contrast to the carrot red hair that wouldn't
lie flat on his head. He was tall, with very
little meat on his bones. As perhaps a misguided attempt
to wear his profession like a badge, he had chosen
a dark corduroy jacket with leather sleeve patches to wear
over his button collar shirt and khaki pants. It only
served to make his shoulder blades look more angular and
his stomach punched to appear more prevalent and his long,
bony fingers to look more skeletal. It occurred to Gordon
that were this young man's hair a darker shade of red,
he might have been Bobby dumer all grown up. Are
you related to Bobby? He asked, No, sir, not that
I know of. And what do you want to know
so much about them? For? Well, my editor asked me
to do a Halloween piece on odd legends in this area.
It was not the first time that Chig had explained this.
I remember hearing about Bobby Dumier when I was a kid,
so I decided to find out if it was a
real person. Well he was real, the old man assured him,
before leaning forward and sending another stream of spit into
the can, real as you and me. Well, if Bobby
had to stay after school every night, how did he
manage to get home to his family's farm clear over
on the other side of Devil's Knot, Jig asked, Well,
he walked, Gordon answered, matter of factly. I guess the
better way to say it is that he ran the
road there where Devil's Knot starts, curves around hard to
the south, and then back again to the north in
a great, big s curve. Now Bobby knew if he
cut off the road there ran down through the hollow
and then follows cinder Creek to where he could jump
over it before the waterfall and scramble back up the
hill to the other side, that he'd come out in
the hayfill that separated his house from the Knight and
himself saved twenty men. It would still take him more
than half an hour, but he had a lot of
work to do when he got home. He used to
brag about it to us boys, who were afraid of
that place. As the old man Chig found it easy
to imagine Bobby Dumer walking down the gravel road that
took him to the Devil's Knot. As it made the
first turn to the south, it rose up and crawled
along the edge of a bluff. An open meadow covered
the top of that hill. The grass that grew there
was dotted with tall prairie flowers, and blues and pinks
and yellows and whites. Patches of clover spread across it
in drifts of purple, and here and there the large, velvety,
soft blossoms of thistle reached upward and burst out of
deep green pineapple shaped cones. The northern side of the
road was a devilish contrast, with massive trees draped in
vines that hung over the world beneath them, like crippled
old teachers hovering over classrooms full of children. The undergrowth
of that hollow was stick with poisonous plants, thorny bushes,
and anemic looking saplings that beg for their chance at
the sun. But there was no shoulder between the road
and the hollow, just to drop off that fell quickly
into the black mire of green hell. Here and there
a small gap revealed a game trail. Those gaps were rare,
it was otherwise impenetrable, and then the road would turn
sharply and make its way back to the north. As
it did so, it fell well below the bluff on
its right and slid through the portal of tree branches
and vines into the hollow itself. This was as close
as anyone ever came to entering the Devil's Knot, and
even here it wasn't truly inside. After a quarter mile
looping in and out of the knot, it turned again
and went due east past du Meyer's farm. Those who
rode their horses do here held their breath and prayed. Later,
when people drove their cars through, they did so as
quickly as the curves would allow. It was on the
first curve where the occasional game trail opened small gateways
into the primordial world of Devil's Knot that Bobby would
slip into the mire. He had to pick his way
carefully down that first hillside. Rocks jutted out here and
there that he could place a foot on or grab
with a hand to slow his descent. With each step forward.
The world grew darker during the second half of November
and all of December and January. In the first part
of February, he was nearly always making his trek in
the dark. He didn't like it. There were chores to
be done at home. He had no choice. At the
bottom of the hill lay a flat expanse divided in
two by cinder creek. Although the stream was never deep,
there was always fresh water running here. Rocks and stones
provided ledges for it to trip over and gurgle out
a natural melody. Bobby liked to stop when he could
and looked for minnows in the occasional hole where the
water would get two or three feet deep. He never
lingered long, but he wasn't really afraid either, and in
his mind his father lived here, he felt protected by him.
The eyes that he always felt were on him when
he walked through this place he attributed to being the
eyes of his father. The long walk down the creek
bed ended where the world dropped off and a small
waterfall trickled down into a pool of water stretching a
dozen feet in diameter. Here, Bobby always liked to stand
on the ledge and look down into the black water below.
It was too dark to make out anything down there,
but he often suspected that someone or something was looking back.
He liked to imagine that it was his dad. After
a minute, he would then turn and head back up
the hill on a zig zagging pattern through the trees
and pass the boulders until he reached the fence that
formed the barrier between the farm and the hollow. Then,
and only then would Bobby feel the need to run.
He always felt that he had to get as far
from that tree line as possible because he was sure
that something was back there, waiting for the exact moment
when it could reach out and pull him back in.
Like his father, forever. Halfway across the pasture, he would stop,
his lungs burning for fresh oxygen and his legs cramping
from the climb and then the run, he would double
over and hold his gut for a second, silently reassuring
himself that he was safe always. He turned his head
at that moment and looked to the house. He knew
his little sister, Cassie would be sitting on the front
porch waiting for him, or maybe she'd be playing in
the grass in the house yard, surrounded by the white
picket fence. No matter how cold it was, no matter
what the weather was like, Cassie was always there. Bobby
walked Cassie to school every morning, but his eternal bad
behavior left her to walk home alone at night. In
the twenty first century, that might seem like an awful
thing to ask a child so young, after all, she
was only seven, but this was a different time. Back then,
most children were expected to walk themselves to and from school,
whether they had an older sibling to take them or not.
Traversing the road that passed through the hollow terrified her.
Unlike her brother, she had seen what lived there, so
once she got home, she waited for him and prayed
that he would be safe, and when she spotted him
crossing the hayfield, her eyes would always light up, and
she'd come to the gate and wait there for him.
Then came the night that Bobby stood in the middle
of the field and looked for his sister, but she
wasn't there. He would never have admitted it out loud,
but he was deeply disappointed that he had lost his
importance to her. Trying not to feel too bad, he
reminded himself that she wasn't a baby anymore. She was
in the first grade. Now. He should have expected this
day to come, but even so, as he opened the gate,
he couldn't help but look around to see if maybe
she had chosen to hide from him and jump out
and scare him. Bobby was still reeling in the disappointment
of a sister who was growing up when the front
door opened and his mother stepped out. A year had
passed since his father disappeared, it looked more like ten
years on his mother's face. Her hair was graying, and
her eyes were bathed in dark circles, and her frown
lines were becoming permanent. She was showing signs of mental
distress as well. Sometimes she would wake up up in
the middle of the night calling for her husband, and
then she would run out into the yard and stare
at the hollow like she was going to run in
there and find him. Bobby would always catch up with
her by then and direct her back inside. He was
afraid that she was slipping away from him, and he
worried about what he and Cassie would do when the
day came that their mother was gone too. Where is
your sister, Georgia yelled, huh, Bobby stupidly answered, isn't she home? No,
she isn't home. She didn't come home from school. I
was hoping that she was with you. Georgie said, not
bothering to mask her fears. She always comes straight home.
Bobby turned and looked back at the hollow. Cassie would
never have taken his shortcut. She wouldn't have known the route,
and even if she had, she wouldn't have gone into
that hollow alone. She was terrified of it. He looked
back at his mother, who was now visibly trembling and
staring at the dark patch of timber on the other
side of the hayfield. The memory of that day when
his father didn't come home washed over him. The thought
of all those men from all over the county being
too afraid to search inside the Devil's Not hit him hard.
If Cassie was in there, he was going to have
to find her himself. Mama, he said, with the most
grown up voice he could muster. Call the sheriff's office.
Tell them that Cassie didn't come home from school. Tell
them I went into the Devil's Not to find her,
so they don't have to. But they need to search
the roads and everywhere else while I'm looking, in case
she isn't in there. Georgia Dumayer looked at her son
in disbelief. Tormented by the loss of her husband, the
possibility that her daughter may have also been swallowed up
by that horrible place, and the unimaginable choice of letting
her son enter that place of hell or keeping him
with her as her last remaining piece of happiness tore
at her from all directions. She didn't move, Mama, do
what I said, Do it now, Bobby ordered as sternly
as he could. For a minute, he thought that his
mother wouldn't move at all. He thought he was going
to have to waste time making that phone call. But
he couldn't do that. There wasn't any time. He had
to find Cassie and Mama had to make the phone call.
Just as he was about to open his mouth and
scream at her, Georgia turned and ran inside, taking one
deep breath to help bolster his courage. Bobby turned and
faced the woods. Of course, no one knows for sure
what happened that night, mister high Tower said, breaking through
Chig's reverie. I suppose this is as close to the
events as anyone can get. Jigg answered politely, mister high
Tower was right, It was all conjecture. He made a
mental note to Clara that when he wrote the story,
didn't missus Dumer know that Bobby used the Devil's Knot
as a shortcut every day. He asked, Mister high Tower
only shrugged and continued his tale. She had closed his
eyes and followed the story with his imagination. Bobby had
turned and faced the dark hollow, knowing that he was
going to have to enter it unarmed. Somewhere in there
was a rifle that belonged to his dad. He doubted
that anyone would ever find it now. Unfortunately, it was
the only gun the Dumayer family owned. He had expected
to get a shotgun for Christmas the year's father disappeared.
Most boys his age got one for Christmas or a
birthday back then, but by Christmas his father was gone.
Eyes appeared at Bobby from inside the tree line that
glowed brilliant and red, as if lit from within. He
didn't see them. His focus was on entering where he
it Each day. These eyes were farther down as he walked.
He set a silent prayer that his father would be
with him and protect him. The eyes blinked and moved away.
By the time the sheriff arrived with some deputies, Georgia
Dumer was inconsolable. She was crying that her children were
in the knot and that they were going to be
eaten by the werewolf. A doctor was summoned to administer
sedatives to keep her calm. Two deputies volunteered to follow
Bobby's path into the hollow, and although they were clearly terrified,
how could they refuse to go when a twelve year
old boy had so bravely gone in alone. They were
in there for nearly three hours. Others who had gathered
at the Dumayer farm stood in small groups around the
barnyard or warm their hands on the fire someone had
started in the burning barrel. And while Georgia Dumyer laid
in her bed under the influence of heavy medication, other
women from the area arrived with food for the men
and boiled coffee on the stove. Every minute that ticked
by on the clock felt like a hammer blow to
Bobby and Cassie's chances of survival. Inside the knight, Bobby
searched for his little sister in the dark, Cassie. He
called as he walked up and down cinder Creek, Cassie.
After each call, he stopped and listened. Sometimes he thought
he heard her frightened voice answer back, and he would
move in that direction. Other times he heard footsteps snapping
twigs and crushing nearby leaf matter, and he would turn
and he would follow that sound. Wasn't long before he
heard the deputies in the hollow, looking for both him
and his sister. He tried to call back to let
them know where he was, but sound plays a devilish
game in places like that. The dampness from the underbrush
and the thousand captured rainstorms will absorb sound and deaden
it before it has time to travel. What little noise
that escapes bounces around on petrified bark jutting stones until
it's difficult to tell the direction of its origin. And
Bobby knew this even as he turned again and tried
to follow his sister's pleading cries. Fear is the only
true enemy of courage. It always outweighs it. It is
louder and more convincing, and it never relents. Courage is fleeting.
It stands strong against the task before it, but often
crumbles in the undertaking. Bobby felt his courage struggling to
leave him, and again and again he had to remind
himself that this was his baby's sister that he was
looking for. She relied on him. Her father was gone,
their mother was losing her mind. She was all that
he had He had to push forward. Lord. No atheists
ever entered the Devil's Knot, or if they did and survived,
they came out knowing God. The deputies saw things and
heard things inside that patch of woods that they would
spend the rest of their lives talking about to their
children and their children's children. Red eyes glowed at them
from behind trees. Footsteps followed them up and down the
creek bed. Growling sounds from animals too big to be
the wolves they sounded like, came at them from every direction.
The smell of blood and death burned in their nostrils,
and neither spoke except to give direction. But both men
held one thought in his mind. As frightened as they
were here together, what those two children were feeling alone
must have been unbearable. As the moon rose over the
hollow and the hope slipped away, the deputies turned and
headed back to the house. They knew that neither of
those children, whatever come out of that hollow alive. The
batteries on their flashlights were losing power, and their legs
ached from climbing up and down the slippery, rocky hillsides.
The moonlight reflecting on the hay stubble of the field
before them was a welcome sight to their shame. Each
was proud that he had survived that place, despite not
finding Bobby or Cassie. Less than two steps outside of
that hollow, they froze in their tracks as a crack
of a rifle shot followed by a long, menacing howl,
split the night. People in the barnyard turned and stared.
The two deputies turned and stared. Georgia Dumer sat up
in her bed and screamed her own tormented howl. Afterwards,
the sound of a child's cry could be heard. Everyone watched,
No one breathed. Then little Cassie, her long red hair
having come loose from its braids and now tumbling down
her back, stepped out of the Devil's Not alive, Cassie
was covered in blood. The doctor who was attending Georgia
Dumayer gave her a full examination. Some of the neighbor's
women helped to wash her up. She was bruised and scratched,
but no major cuts existed to account for that much blood.
Her frightened blue eyes swam and unshed tears that spilled
out only when they laid her beside her mother on
the bed. She never spoke again, except to utter one sentence,
He saved me. When the morning came, most of those
who had gathered at the du Meyer farm went home,
a few of the ladies stayed to care for Georgia
and Cassie, but most people, seeing that they had no
real duties to fulfill, now decided that they would do
better to go home and get out of the way. Besides,
they might accidentally stick around so long that someone might
ask them to go into the devil's for one more look.
A dozen local farmers in the sheriff himself did exactly that.
They searched the woods in daylight, not that it made
any difference. They still had the use of their flashlights
in the dense foliage, informed a grid pattern to ensure
that they covered everything. No sign of Bobby was ever found.
Over the years, many have questioned the events at that night.
Did Bobby perhaps find his father's rifle and rescue his
sister by killing something that was chasing her? Could a
rifle that had been left in the woods for a
year even work Everyone who was there that night swore
that they heard the rifle shot. Was it Bobby who
pulled the trigger? Likewise, they all knew they heard a
wolf's howl. No wolves were known to be in that area.
Had every person there, lifelong hunters, experienced lawmen and farmers alike,
mistaken the sound of a tree branch cracking for that
of a rifle shot? And how did Cassie come out
of those woods alive when her brother was never seen again?
It wasn't long after that night that the Welfare of
People came and took Cassie away. Chigg found evidence that
she lived out her life in a sanitarium, a mute
with haunted eyes who lived in a tormented past. Georgia
Dumayer was taken away as well. Her mind snapped that night.
The loss of her husband and son was more than
she could mentally accept. The farm was sold and new
people moved in. Legends about the night grew over time.
There had always been the stories, but now they had
names to put with them, Bobby, Cassandra, will and Georgia
the Dumyer family. By the time Chigg was a kid
growing up in Truman County, there was another legend. It
was the one he was most familiar with. It was
the reason he chose this story to write about. Children
whispered about the terrors of the Devil's Knot at sleepovers
and around campfires. They said, if you enter that place,
something will chase you. They say it's a wolf, but
not a wolf. But not to worry. If Bobby Dumer
knows that you're there, he'll chase it away. So when
you enter the Knot, you called out the greeting to Bobby.
Don't look at him because he's covered in blood. Just
know that he'll get you safely to the other side.
It was a legend that Chig knew better than most
because Chig tested it out. He was twelve, the exact
age that Bobby was when he entered the Knot and
never came out. It started as a dare when he
and some of his friends were camping out in a
pasture of his family's farm. In the middle of the night.
The boys got on their bicycles and rode over to
that same place where Bobby's supposedly always entered the Knot. There,
Chig got off his bike and walked inside, flashlight in hand,
and called out a greeting to Bobby Dumar. It was
a full hour before the other boys would see Chig again.
They had ridden their bikes to the other side and waited.
When he came out, his face was pale and his
body shook violently with fear. He never told them what
he saw. Who would have believed him? How do you
tell your friends that a bloody, torn to piece's ghost
carrying a rustic rifle led you through a little piece
of hell on earth? Inhabited by creatures that should exist
only in the movies.