Speaker 1: They never gave the road a name. On state maps,
Speaker 1: it appeared as a thin gray line that ended without
Speaker 1: explanation mil marker, stopping at one two, as if the
Speaker 1: surveyors had decided there was no reason to go farther.
Speaker 1: Locals referred to it indirectly, the closed stretch, the bad
Speaker 1: ten miles, the old cut, phrases spoken with a glance
Speaker 1: towards the trees. Naming it outright felt unnecessary, almost rude.
Speaker 1: The highway ran through a pocket of Pacific Northwest forest
Speaker 1: so dense the canopy rationed. Daylight, cedar, fir and hemlock
Speaker 1: crowded the shoulder. Sword ferns grew waist high in drifting waves.
Speaker 1: In the wet months, fog pulled low and turned head
Speaker 1: lights into dull colored cones. Even before the barricades went up,
Speaker 1: drivers said the place felt tight, as if the forest
Speaker 1: leaned inward. The land had been intact for thousands of
Speaker 1: years before the road arrived. Construction began in nineteen fifty nine,
Speaker 1: approved as a practical short cut meant to shave time
Speaker 1: and fuel off regional travel to the state. It was
Speaker 1: a straightforward project, blasting grating, paving to the men working
Speaker 1: it the job changed once the nights set in. When
Speaker 1: the machines shut down, sound carried down the valley in
Speaker 1: ways no one expected. Men later described cries rising from
Speaker 1: the timber after dark, long rough sounds that didn't resemble
Speaker 1: any animal they could name, lower than elk, heavier than cougar,
Speaker 1: with a straight quality that made conversation stop mid sentence.
Speaker 1: Some called it screaming, others said it sounded like something
Speaker 1: being forced to speak against its will. At first, they
Speaker 1: laughed it off, proud men don't admit fear easily. But
Speaker 1: small things began to stack up. Tools went missing overnight
Speaker 1: and reappeared set carefully on rocks or tucked beneath roots.
Speaker 1: Fresh saplings were snapped and laid across access tracks, not
Speaker 1: blocking equipment outright, just placed where they could not be ignored.
Speaker 1: Near a shallow ravine between what would later become mile
Speaker 1: marker one forty one and one forty two, they began
Speaker 1: finding what they called calamity smears, broad streaks of blood
Speaker 1: pressed flat across soil and rock, sometimes showing the suggestion
Speaker 1: of a shoulder dragged sideways. There were no bodies, no
Speaker 1: tracks that matched the smear, no scat, just churned mud
Speaker 1: and the darkness of the shine to it. Injuries followed.
Speaker 1: One worker clearing brush near the ravine was found on
Speaker 1: his back an impossible distance from where he'd been standing.
Speaker 1: His hard hat was split, his boots were gone. He
Speaker 1: couldn't explain how he'd moved, only that something had hid
Speaker 1: him from the side with enormous force. Another man swore
Speaker 1: he felt hands on his shoulders, hands too large, before
Speaker 1: he flew, landing in BlackBerry with bruises blooming across his ribs.
Speaker 1: Accident reports blamed uneven ground and fatigue. Privately, the men
Speaker 1: believed otherwise. Near the end of the project, fear stopped
Speaker 1: being quiet. A construction worker brought a rifle to the site.
Speaker 1: He had stopped going home, sleeping in his truck instead.
Speaker 1: He claimed something paced the tree line at night, just
Speaker 1: outside the floodlights, and that the cries always came from
Speaker 1: the ravine. One afternoon, he raised the rifle and shouted
Speaker 1: into the woods. Then he fired several rounds, hard and fast.
Speaker 1: No one saw what he hit. No body was found,
Speaker 1: but the valley changed. The screaming stopped immediately, as if
Speaker 1: a switch had been thrown. Birds fell silent, even the
Speaker 1: wind seemed to hesitate. The rifleman stood shaking, staring at
Speaker 1: the trees as if expecting something to step out. He
Speaker 1: quit the next morning and left town without collecting his
Speaker 1: full pay. Some of the crew believed he had killed
Speaker 1: a creature. Others believed he had killed the wrong one,
Speaker 1: its mate, its mother, something whose voice had carried through
Speaker 1: the valley night after night. No proof ever surfaced. The
Speaker 1: state finished the paperwork, paved the last section, and opened
Speaker 1: the road. For years, traffic moved through without incident. Then
Speaker 1: slowly the pattern returned. Cars did not stop because engines
Speaker 1: failed without reason. They stopped because the road forced them to.
Speaker 1: A dear cargo left in the lane just beyond a
Speaker 1: blind curve, A pine trunk dragged partially into the roadway,
Speaker 1: a rock striking glass high and sideways. Sometimes a shape
Speaker 1: crossed the road at blinding speed, too tall, too broad,
Speaker 1: gone before the mind could frame it. Drivers panicked, some swerved,
Speaker 1: some braked hard and stopped, and sometimes people got out
Speaker 1: of their vehicles. Those were the ones who fared worst.
Speaker 1: Not every encounter ended an injury. Many drivers escaped with
Speaker 1: damaged vehicles and no explanation that satisfied insurance adjusters. Windshiels
Speaker 1: cracked inward as if punched rather than struck. Doors caved laterally,
Speaker 1: not head on head lights broken cleanly, with no corresponding
Speaker 1: debris on the road. One pick up was found spun
Speaker 1: sideways near the ravine, its tires leaving black marks across
Speaker 1: the asphalt at a ninety degree angle. There was no
Speaker 1: skid leading into the turn, no reason the truck should
Speaker 1: have moved that way at all. If a vehicle was
Speaker 1: damaged badly enough that it would not start, most people
Speaker 1: did not stay with it. The forest pressed close on
Speaker 1: both sides, and realization came quickly. There were no houses,
Speaker 1: no lights, no cell service. The nearest place where the
Speaker 1: canopy pulled back and the sky opened again was nearly
Speaker 1: ten miles in either direction, so people fled. They ran
Speaker 1: along the pavement, sometimes in shock, sometimes in blind panic,
Speaker 1: looking back more often than they looked ahead. Later searchers
Speaker 1: found abandoned cars with broken glass, bent frames, and deep
Speaker 1: dens that suggested force applied from the side. Drag marks
Speaker 1: were rare, more often, there was nothing at all beyond
Speaker 1: panic and distance. There was only one confirmed fatality. It
Speaker 1: happened late near the ravine, when a sedan left the
Speaker 1: roadway and rolled down an embankment. The driver was killed instantly.
Speaker 1: Investigations ruled it an accident, speed over correction, poor visibility,
Speaker 1: but the reconstruction raised quiet questions. Tire marks indicated lateral
Speaker 1: movement before the vehicle left the pavement. The car had
Speaker 1: shifted sideways, not spun. No one could explain how law
Speaker 1: enforcement never suggested a mysterious cause. They couldn't. Instead, they
Speaker 1: searched for vandals, delinquents, thrill seekers. Investigators debated whether fear
Speaker 1: itself was driving the incidents, whether rumor and suggestion were
Speaker 1: causing drivers to panic. Outreach programs were discussed. Statements emphasized
Speaker 1: rational thinking. The law was very good at small things.
Speaker 1: They were statutes left over from agricultural disputes that protected
Speaker 1: against the defamation of milk. There were ordinances allowing citations
Speaker 1: for criminal negligence if someone threw a candy wrapper from
Speaker 1: a moving car. The legal system could punish litter, rumor carelessness.
Speaker 1: It had no language for a car pushed sideways. Privately,
Speaker 1: some officers understood exactly what they were seeing. Rocks were thrown,
Speaker 1: not fallen. Logs were placed, not washed in. Trees appeared
Speaker 1: in lanes where gravity alone could not explain them. Damage
Speaker 1: repeated at the same heights, the same angles. It was vandalism,
Speaker 1: undeniable vandalism, but vandalism without a person to charge. They
Speaker 1: kept it on record. Cracked windows, dented doors, broken head lights,
Speaker 1: vehicles shoved just far enough to terrify, not destroy. Every
Speaker 1: report ended the same way. Cause undetermined, incident considered accidental.
Speaker 1: The language was deliberate. To write anything else would have
Speaker 1: meant admitting intent without a suspect, warning without a statute,
Speaker 1: forcing without a name. So the truth stayed where it
Speaker 1: was safest, unspoken. In the early nineteen eighties, after too
Speaker 1: many damaged vehicles, too many frightened drivers, and one death
Speaker 1: no one liked thinking about, the state closed the road officially,
Speaker 1: erosion and cost made it unsafe. Unofficially, deputies refused to
Speaker 1: patrol it after dark. Concrete barriers went up, signs were removed.
Speaker 1: The ten mile cut was left to weather. The forest
Speaker 1: reclaimed it patiently, and the incidents stopped, mostly because fewer
Speaker 1: people tested the route. He had been there before. The road.
Speaker 1: The valley was not sacred in human way. It was
Speaker 1: useful cover pass it a place where paths overlapped, and
Speaker 1: life moved quietly. Elk used it, Bear used it. Others
Speaker 1: like him moved through it in seasons, following memory older
Speaker 1: than speech. When the machines arrived, he watched from shadow.
Speaker 1: Humans moved predictably. Their lights created blindness as much as vision.
Speaker 1: Their noise made them careless. They cut trees with intent,
Speaker 1: and intent mattered. The ground shook when they blasted. The
Speaker 1: smell of hot metal replaced rain and cedar. The scream
Speaker 1: came from deeper timber. At first, another of his kind,
Speaker 1: answering the destruction, The voice mated, uttered, it spoke for
Speaker 1: the valley, then it ended, the scream that never returned.
Speaker 1: He felt the absence immediately, a silence that did not belong.
Speaker 1: Something had been taken, not moved, not chased away, ended.
Speaker 1: He searched the ravine afterward and found blood, but little else,
Speaker 1: no body, no clear trail, only the knowledge that the
Speaker 1: voice was gone. After that, the boundary hardened. When the
Speaker 1: road opened, the metal beasts rushed through the valley. Most
Speaker 1: passed without issue. That was tolerable. That corridor was scarred,
Speaker 1: but not constantly violated. He stayed hidden and let the
Speaker 1: forest work, moss creeping over stone, roots, splitting rocks, alder,
Speaker 1: reaching back for ground. Trouble came when humans lingered, They stopped,
Speaker 1: they stepped out, They wandered toward the ravine. Some carried fire,
Speaker 1: some carried pointed sticks. Some laughed to prove they were
Speaker 1: not afraid. He did not hurt them. Most nights, he
Speaker 1: did nothing. When action was needed, he escalated carefully. A
Speaker 1: log rolled from higher ground, A rock thrown near not
Speaker 1: at a crossing, timed at a blind curve, so fear
Speaker 1: bloomed before contact. Panic usually saw the problem. When vehicles
Speaker 1: stopped and people stayed inside, they were allowed to leave.
Speaker 1: When people fled on foot, the forest swallowed them, and
Speaker 1: he did not pursue. Only when someone advanced toward the
Speaker 1: ravine did force become necessary. He did not ram vehicles.
Speaker 1: He braced and leaned, driving weight through legs and shoulder
Speaker 1: using ground and momentum. Cars moved sideways because physics allowed it.
Speaker 1: Because mass beat traction, the marks curved where they should not,
Speaker 1: metal bent inward without impact scars. Death was never the goal.
Speaker 1: When one happened, it happened because humans panicked, because speed
Speaker 1: and terrain aligned badly. He did not follow the fallen
Speaker 1: he did not take what the forest did not claim.
Speaker 1: He left prince rarely, and only where the ground demanded it.
Speaker 1: When they appeared, they were warnings written in weight. The
Speaker 1: boundary was not held by one alone. Paths were watched,
Speaker 1: lessons repeated. What the road had taken was remembered by
Speaker 1: more than a single mind. When the state finally closed
Speaker 1: the road, relief came, but not forgiveness. The scar remained,
Speaker 1: and scars remember. Pressure. Silence returned in layers, and the
Speaker 1: boundary held. Years later, curiosity reopened it in small ways.
Speaker 1: An explorer seeking a legend, a hunter who believed he
Speaker 1: could outwalk anything. A driver convinced the stories were exaggeration,
Speaker 1: He still warned them first. Most turned back. The ones
Speaker 1: who did not because part of the valley not out
Speaker 1: of cruelty, but because the scream that ended would never
Speaker 1: be answered, and the road that took it could not
Speaker 1: be allowed to take anything else. He remained because someone
Speaker 1: had to. And that's the end of tonight's story, The
Speaker 1: road that took a scream. Remember not every road wants company,
Speaker 1: and not every sound in the woods is just the wind.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening, explorers, keep your eyes open, your imagination
Speaker 1: wide and if you hear something strange on the trail,
Speaker 1: remember it's just Bigfoot saying good night, sleep tight, and
Speaker 1: we'll see you next time in Bigfoot's wilderness,