Speaker 1: Now one of your pudding. I got a string going
Speaker 1: on here, something just because my dog. Something killed your dog,
Speaker 1: My dog. We're flying through the air over the tree.
Speaker 1: I don't know how it did it, Okay, Damn, I'm
Speaker 1: really confused. All I saw was my dog coming over
Speaker 1: the fence and he was dead. And once you hit
Speaker 1: the ground, like, I didn't see any cars. All I
Speaker 1: saw was my dog coming over the fence. Sat, what
Speaker 1: are you putting? We got some wonder or something crawling
Speaker 1: around out here? Did you see what it was or
Speaker 1: was it was? Standing enough? I'm out here looking through
Speaker 1: the window now and I don't see anything. I don't
Speaker 1: want to go outside. Jesus Quice, you better hello, hit
Speaker 1: thebody out here when I'm out there. I thought of
Speaker 1: a bitch about Tex forty nine. I don't know. Easy
Speaker 1: him out there. Yeah, I'm walking right head uh.
Speaker 2: Part three Into the Dark, Chapter twelve Lines in the Sand.
Speaker 2: Zach arrived at the house just after sunrise. He looked
Speaker 2: like he hadn't slept either, dark circles under his eyes,
Speaker 2: coffee in a thermos that he kept refilling, that same
Speaker 2: intensity burning in his gaze that I'd come to recognize
Speaker 2: as obsession, the good kind, the kind that keeps you
Speaker 2: going when everything else tells you to stop. Daniel made
Speaker 2: breakfast while I filled Zack in on what had happened,
Speaker 2: the men in black, the threats, the photographs proving they'd
Speaker 2: been watching us for weeks. By the time I finished,
Speaker 2: Daniel had stopped cooking and was just standing at the stove,
Speaker 2: spatula in hand, staring at me. They threatened you, he said.
Speaker 2: His voice was flat, controlled, but I could hear the
Speaker 2: anger underneath. They came to our home and threatened you.
Speaker 2: They threatened both of us, you specifically. What are we
Speaker 2: going to do? I looked at Zach, He looked at me.
Speaker 2: We'd already had this conversation in the driveway in low voices,
Speaker 2: while Daniel was still getting dressed. We knew what we
Speaker 2: had to do. The question was whether we could bring
Speaker 2: Daniel along for the ride. We're not backing down, I said.
Speaker 2: Daniel set down the spatula.
Speaker 1: Brian.
Speaker 2: I know it's dangerous, I know what's at stake. But
Speaker 2: if we let them scare us into silence, nothing changes.
Speaker 2: People keep disappearing, the cover up continues, and they win.
Speaker 2: I reached across the counter and took his hand. I
Speaker 2: didn't become a cop to look the other way when
Speaker 2: bad things happen. I can't start now. Even if it
Speaker 2: gets you killed, it won't come to that. You don't
Speaker 2: know that, no, I admitted, I don't, But I know
Speaker 2: that I can't live with myself if I walk away
Speaker 2: from them us, can you? Daniel was quiet for a
Speaker 2: long moment. Then he squeezed my hand and let out
Speaker 2: a breath. What do you need me to do? The
Speaker 2: first thing we did was make copies of everything, all
Speaker 2: the evidence we'd collected, the trail camera footage, the footprint casts,
Speaker 2: the hair samples, Austin's phone, Zach's files going back twenty years.
Speaker 2: We duplicated it all multiple times, physical copies, digital copies,
Speaker 2: copies stored in locations that only we knew about. If
Speaker 2: they came for the originals, we'd still have backups. If
Speaker 2: they came for the backups, we'd have backups of the backups.
Speaker 2: Then we started reaching out. Zach had contacts in the
Speaker 2: cryptozoology community, researchers, investigators, people who'd been studying these creatures
Speaker 2: for decades. They operated on the fringes of mainstream science,
Speaker 2: dismissed as crackpots and true believers. But they had resources
Speaker 2: and connections that we didn't. More importantly, they had experience
Speaker 2: dealing with government suppression. There's a network, Zach explained as
Speaker 2: we sat around the kitchen table with laptops open and
Speaker 2: phones charging. People who've been gathering evidence for years. Most
Speaker 2: of them have had run ends with the same kind
Speaker 2: of men you met last night. They know how to
Speaker 2: operate under the radar, how to protect their sources, how
Speaker 2: to get information out without getting caught. Can we trust
Speaker 2: them as much as we can trust anyone. They want
Speaker 2: the truth out as badly as we do. I thought
Speaker 2: about it, thought about the risks, the potential for infiltration,
Speaker 2: the possibility that reaching out would just paint a bigger
Speaker 2: target on our backs. Do it, I said, make the calls.
Speaker 2: While Zach worked his contacts, I focused on the official investigation.
Speaker 2: The men in black had told me to close the
Speaker 2: Mercer case. They told me to destroy the evidence and
Speaker 2: move on, but they hadn't actually done anything yet. They'd
Speaker 2: made threats, but threats weren't action, and the he took action.
Speaker 2: I was still the Sheriff of Caldwell County. I still
Speaker 2: had a job to do. Austin Mercer was still missing.
Speaker 2: His family was still waiting for answers, and regardless of
Speaker 2: what was really responsible for his disappearance, I owed it
Speaker 2: to them to conduct a thorough investigation. So that's what
Speaker 2: I did. I assembled a search team, deputies, volunteers, anyone
Speaker 2: willing to hike into the back country and look for
Speaker 2: signs of the missing student. We spent three days combing
Speaker 2: the area around his campsite, expanding our search radius until
Speaker 2: we'd covered nearly ten square miles of forest. We found
Speaker 2: traces a torn piece of fabric caught on a branch,
Speaker 2: a shoe just one the left, one lying in a
Speaker 2: creek bed half a mile from the camp. More footprints
Speaker 2: the same impossible size as the ones we'd found before,
Speaker 2: leading deeper and deeper into the wilderness, but we didn't
Speaker 2: find Austin. On the third day, I called off the
Speaker 2: official search. We'd done everything we could with the recent
Speaker 2: sources we had. The case would remain open, classified as
Speaker 2: an active missing person investigation, but without a body or
Speaker 2: more evidence, there wasn't much else to do, at least
Speaker 2: not officially. Unofficially, the real investigation was just beginning. The
Speaker 2: forty eight hour deadline the men had given me came
Speaker 2: and went. I half expected them to show up again,
Speaker 2: to follow through on their threats, to make good on
Speaker 2: all the dark promises they'd implied. But nothing happened. No
Speaker 2: midnight visitors, no mysterious phone calls, no sudden career ending scandals.
Speaker 2: It made me nervous. They're watching, Zack said, when I
Speaker 2: mentioned it to him, waiting to see what we do.
Speaker 2: They won't move until they have to. And when will
Speaker 2: that be when we become a real threat, when we
Speaker 2: start making enough noise that they can't ignore us anymore.
Speaker 2: So what do we do? Keep our heads down? Zack smiled.
Speaker 2: It wasn't a nice smile. No, he said, we make noise.
Speaker 2: The documentary was Zack's idea. He'd been contacted by a filmmaker,
Speaker 2: a woman named Amanda, who'd made several well regarded documentaries
Speaker 2: about unexplained phenomena. She'd seen the news coverage of the
Speaker 2: Mercer disappearance, heard the rumors about strange circumstances, and wanted
Speaker 2: to know more. She's legitimate, Zach assured me. I've seen
Speaker 2: her work. She's not one of those sensationalist hacks who
Speaker 2: makes everything about aliens and conspiracy theories. She takes this
Speaker 2: stuff seriously, she does real investigative journalism, And you think
Speaker 2: we should talk to her. I think we should do
Speaker 2: more than talk. I think we should give her everything.
Speaker 2: I stared at him, everything, the footage, the files, the
Speaker 2: whole twenty years a cover up, all of it on
Speaker 2: the record on camera. He leaned forward. Think about it, Brian,
Speaker 2: If we try to go public ourselves, we get dismissed
Speaker 2: as crackpots, two guys in the woods chasing Bigfoot. But
Speaker 2: if a respected documentary filmmaker tells the story, if she
Speaker 2: brings in experts, corroborating witnesses, all the evidence we've collected,
Speaker 2: suddenly it's not just us anymore. Suddenly it's a real
Speaker 2: story that people have to take seriously. And suddenly we're
Speaker 2: in the crosshairs of whoever those men work for. We're
Speaker 2: already in the crosshairs. At least this way, we're not alone.
Speaker 2: I thought about it for a long time, thought about Daniel,
Speaker 2: about the life we'd built here, about everything we stood
Speaker 2: to lose, thought about Austin Mercer's parents, about the families
Speaker 2: of all those missing people, about the truth that had
Speaker 2: been hidden for so long set up a meeting, I said, finally,
Speaker 2: let's hear what she has to say. Amanda arrived in
Speaker 2: Caldwell County two weeks later. She was younger than I expected,
Speaker 2: mid thirties maybe, with sharp eyes and a no nonsense
Speaker 2: demeanor that I recognized from my years in law enforcement,
Speaker 2: the kind of person who asked hard questions and didn't
Speaker 2: accept easy answers. We met at a coffee shop in
Speaker 2: Lenore neutral ground where we could talk without being overheard.
Speaker 2: She listened while Zack and I laid out the basics,
Speaker 2: the disappearances, the evidence, the cover up, the visit from
Speaker 2: the men in black. She didn't interrupt, didn't react, just
Speaker 2: listened and took notes and occasionally asked a clarifying question.
Speaker 2: When we finished, she sat back and looked at us
Speaker 2: for a long moment. Do you have proof of any
Speaker 2: of this? She asked? Some of it, I said, the
Speaker 2: trail camera footage, the footprints, the video from Austin's phone,
Speaker 2: the rest, the cover up, the government involvement. That's harder
Speaker 2: to document, but you believe it's real. I know it's real.
Speaker 2: I've experienced it firsthand. When I was twelve years old,
Speaker 2: I had an encounter with one of these creatures. I
Speaker 2: didn't see it, but I heard it, smelled it felt it.
Speaker 2: It's been with me ever since Amanda studied me. I
Speaker 2: could see her assessing, weighing, trying to decide if I
Speaker 2: was credible or just another true believer with a story
Speaker 2: to tell. And You're willing to go on camera with this,
Speaker 2: knowing what it could do to your career, your reputation.
Speaker 2: I'm the sheriff of this county. A young man is missing,
Speaker 2: probably dead, and I know what happened to him. Even
Speaker 2: if I can't prove it. I'm not going to stay
Speaker 2: silent because it's easier, even if it puts you in danger,
Speaker 2: especially if it puts me in danger. That's when it
Speaker 2: matters most. Amanda nodded slowly. Then she reached into her
Speaker 2: bag and pulled out a contract. Let's talk terms, she said.
Speaker 2: Chapter thirteen, The Gathering Storm. The documentary crew arrived in
Speaker 2: early November. There were five of them, Amanda, two camera operators,
Speaker 2: a sound guy, and a researcher who spent most of
Speaker 2: her time buried in documents and databases. They set up
Speaker 2: shop in a rental house outside Lenore, and for the
Speaker 2: next several weeks. They were a constant presence in our lives.
Speaker 2: Amanda in interviewed everyone, me Zach Daniel, though he was
Speaker 2: reluctant at first, Harold Whitmore, the old man who'd first
Speaker 2: encouraged me to run for Sheriff, park rangers who'd had
Speaker 2: their own experiences, families of the missing, researchers who'd been
Speaker 2: studying the Pizgah for years. She was thorough. I'll give
Speaker 2: her that. Every claim we made she verified. Every piece
Speaker 2: of evidence we showed her. She had analyzed by independent experts.
Speaker 2: Every witness we produced, she cross examined until she was
Speaker 2: satisfied they weren't lying or crazy. And what she found
Speaker 2: confirmed everything we'd suspected. The cover up goes back decades,
Speaker 2: she told us one evening, Spreading documents across the kitchen table,
Speaker 2: I found references to suppressed reports going back to the
Speaker 2: nineteen forties. The Forest Service, the Park Service, the Army
Speaker 2: Corps of Engineers. They all have files on these creatures,
Speaker 2: and they've all been systematically buried. Who's behind it? That's
Speaker 2: harder to pend down. It's not one agency, it's a
Speaker 2: network people in different departments who coordinate to keep this quiet.
Speaker 2: Some of them are true believers who think they're protecting
Speaker 2: the public. Others are just following orders. And at the top,
Speaker 2: she shook her head. I haven't been able to identify
Speaker 2: who's running the show. Whoever they are, they're very good
Speaker 2: at staying hidden, like the creatures themselves, Zach said, exactly,
Speaker 2: like the creatures themselves. The filming took place over several weeks.
Speaker 2: They followed me on patrol, documented the ongoing search for
Speaker 2: Austin Mercer, interviewed witnesses and experts. Amanda pushed for access
Speaker 2: to the original campsite, and after some hesitation, I agreed
Speaker 2: to take her team out there. It was different in daylight,
Speaker 2: with cameras rolling and people talking, less ominous, more like
Speaker 2: any other crime scene I'd worked over the years. But
Speaker 2: I could still feel it, that sense of being watched,
Speaker 2: of something lurking just beyond the edge of perception. You
Speaker 2: feel it, too, Amanda said, coming up beside me while
Speaker 2: the camera crew filmed the clearing. Feel what that presence,
Speaker 2: like something's out there, just out of sight. I didn't answer.
Speaker 2: I didn't need to. I've been doing this work for
Speaker 2: ten years. She continued, investigating, unexplained phenomena talking to witnesses,
Speaker 2: trying to separate fact from fiction. And in all that time,
Speaker 2: I've never felt anything like this. She turned to look
Speaker 2: at me. They're real, aren't they? The creatures? They're actually real.
Speaker 2: I've known they were real since I was twelve years old,
Speaker 2: and the government knows too, They've known for decades, at
Speaker 2: least that long, maybe longer. Amanda was quiet for a moment,
Speaker 2: then she shook her head. This is going to change everything,
Speaker 2: she said, when this documentary comes out, when people see
Speaker 2: the evidence, everything's going to change. I wanted to believe her.
Speaker 2: I wanted to believe that the truth would come out,
Speaker 2: that the cover up would end, that all those families
Speaker 2: would finally get answers about what happened to their loved ones.
Speaker 2: But I'd been around long enough to know that the
Speaker 2: truth doesn't always win. Sometimes the people in power are
Speaker 2: too strong, too connected, too willing to do whatever it
Speaker 2: takes to keep their secrets. Sometimes the darkness wins. I
Speaker 2: just hoped this wasn't one of those times. The first
Speaker 2: sign of trouble came two weeks into filming. Amanda's researcher,
Speaker 2: a young woman named Jessica, was working late at the
Speaker 2: rental house when someone broke in. They didn't take anything valuable,
Speaker 2: didn't touch her laptop or her phone, or the cash
Speaker 2: she had in her purse. All they took was a
Speaker 2: box of documents, physical copies of some of the files
Speaker 2: Zach had shared with US, records of disappearances, internal memos,
Speaker 2: evidence of the cover up. They knew exactly what they
Speaker 2: were looking for, Amanda said when she called to tell
Speaker 2: me what had happened, and stay tuned for more sasquatch
Speaker 2: oat to see. We'll be right back. After the these messages,
Speaker 2: they went straight for that box and left everything else untouched.
Speaker 2: Is Jessica okay? Shaken up but fine. She was in
Speaker 2: the other room when it happened, didn't hear anything until
Speaker 2: it was over. Did she see who did it? No,
Speaker 2: whoever it was. They were professionals, in and out in
Speaker 2: less than five minutes, No witnesses, no evidence. I felt
Speaker 2: a chill run down my spine. The men in black,
Speaker 2: that's what I'm thinking. They're sending a message, letting us
Speaker 2: know they can get to us whenever they want. What
Speaker 2: do you want to do, Amanda's voice hardened. I want
Speaker 2: to keep going. I didn't get into this business to
Speaker 2: be scared off by thugs and suits, did you no, ma'am,
Speaker 2: I did not. Then let's give them something to really
Speaker 2: worry about. We doubled down on security after that, changed locations,
Speaker 2: varied our routines, made sure someone was always with the crew,
Speaker 2: always watching for signs of surveillance. It wasn't enough. A
Speaker 2: week later, one of the camera operators, a guy named Marcus,
Speaker 2: found a tracking device on his car, small, sophisticated, the
Speaker 2: kind of thing law enforcement uses for surveillance. He found
Speaker 2: it by accident, only because he dropped his keys and
Speaker 2: had to get down on the ground to retrieve them.
Speaker 2: They've been following us, he said, turning the device over
Speaker 2: in his hands, probably since we got here, at least
Speaker 2: since the break in. Amanda agreed. They want to know
Speaker 2: who we're talking to, what we're finding, how much we know.
Speaker 2: Should we get rid of it? Amanda thought for a moment,
Speaker 2: then she smiled No. She said, let's use it. Let
Speaker 2: them think they know where we are and what we're doing,
Speaker 2: and meanwhile we'll do our real work somewhere they're not watching.
Speaker 2: It was risky. Everything about this was risky, but we
Speaker 2: were past the point of playing it safe. We were
Speaker 2: committed now. The interview continued. Amanda sat down with Zach
Speaker 2: for a full day, going through his files piece by piece,
Speaker 2: documenting every disappearance, every suppressed report, every piece of evidence
Speaker 2: that pointed to a systematic cover up. She interviewed former
Speaker 2: park service employees who'd been forced out for asking too
Speaker 2: many questions. She talked to scientists who'd analyzed hair samples
Speaker 2: and footprint casts and couldn't explain what they'd found. And
Speaker 2: she interviewed me. I told her everything. The move to
Speaker 2: Lyarley when I was twelve, the feeling of wrongness in
Speaker 2: that corner of the woods, the encounter, the huffing, the growling,
Speaker 2: the bluff charge that stopped just twenty feet away, The
Speaker 2: creature I never saw but knew was there, knew was watching,
Speaker 2: knew could have ended me if it had wanted to.
Speaker 2: I told her about Mama's cancer, about Daddy's abandonment, about
Speaker 2: the clan burning across in our front yard. I told
Speaker 2: her about growing up poor, about working my way through life,
Speaker 2: about becoming a because I wanted to help people, and
Speaker 2: discovering that the people who were supposed to help were
Speaker 2: often the ones making things worse. I told her about Daniel,
Speaker 2: about loving him, about building a life with him, about
Speaker 2: the fear that all of this would destroy everything we'd
Speaker 2: worked so hard for. Why are you doing this, Amanda
Speaker 2: asked near the end of the interview. You could walk away,
Speaker 2: close the case, forget what you've seen, go back to
Speaker 2: your quiet life. Why risk everything? I thought about the
Speaker 2: question for a long time before answering, because I spent
Speaker 2: thirty years pretending it didn't happen, I said, finally, thirty
Speaker 2: years telling myself that what I heard in those woods
Speaker 2: was just a bear, just my imagination, just a trick
Speaker 2: of the light. And in all those years, I never
Speaker 2: stopped wondering, never stopped questioning, never stopped feeling like there
Speaker 2: was something wrong with the world, something hidden, something that
Speaker 2: I was supposed to understand but couldn't. I looked directly
Speaker 2: into the camera. I'm not pretending anymore. I know what's
Speaker 2: out there. I know what happened to Austin Mercer, I
Speaker 2: know what happened to all those people who disappeared over
Speaker 2: the years, and I'm not going to be quiet about it,
Speaker 2: not anymore, not ever again. Amanda held my gaze for
Speaker 2: a moment, then She nodded and signaled for the camera
Speaker 2: operator to cut. That was good, she said, that was
Speaker 2: really good. I didn't feel good. I felt exposed, vulnerable,
Speaker 2: like I'd stripped away all my armor and left myself
Speaker 2: open to attack. But I also felt free. For the
Speaker 2: first time in thirty years, I felt truly free. Whatever
Speaker 2: came next, at least I'd told the truth. At least
Speaker 2: I'd finally told the truth. Chapter fourteen, Things that Lurk.
Speaker 2: Thanksgiving came and went without much celebration. Daniel and I
Speaker 2: had a quiet dinner at home, just the two of us,
Speaker 2: a turkey breast instead of a whole bird, all the
Speaker 2: fixings Mama used to make when I was growing up.
Speaker 2: We didn't talk about the investigation, or the documentary or
Speaker 2: the men who were watching our every move. We just
Speaker 2: ate and talked about nothing important and tried to remember
Speaker 2: what normal felt like. It wasn't easy. Normal felt very
Speaker 2: far away. After dinner, we sat on the back deck
Speaker 2: with glasses of wine, watching the stars come out over
Speaker 2: the mountains. The air was cold enough to see our breath,
Speaker 2: and we huddled together under a blanket, drawing warmth from
Speaker 2: each other. Do you ever regret it? Daniel asked, regret
Speaker 2: what all of this running for sheriff, starting this investigation,
Speaker 2: stirring up things that maybe should have stayed buried. I
Speaker 2: thought about it, really thought about it. No, I said, finally,
Speaker 2: I regret that it's put you in danger. I regret
Speaker 2: that our lives aren't what we thought they'd be when
Speaker 2: we moved up here. But do I regret trying to
Speaker 2: find the truth. No, I can't regret that even if
Speaker 2: the truth destroys everything, the truth is the only thing
Speaker 2: worth destroying everything. For. Daniel was quiet for a long moment.
Speaker 2: Then he reached over and took my hand. I love you,
Speaker 2: he said. Whatever happens, whatever comes next, I love you.
Speaker 2: I love you too. We sat there in the darkness,
Speaker 2: holding hands, watching the stars, and somewhere out there, in
Speaker 2: the vast wilderness that surrounded our little patch of land,
Speaker 2: something watched us back. I could feel it, that familiar
Speaker 2: sensation of being observed, of something large and intelligent, taking
Speaker 2: note of our presence. It wasn't threatening, not exactly, more
Speaker 2: like a reminder, a reminder that we weren't alone out here,
Speaker 2: a reminder that the forest had eyes. They're out there tonight,
Speaker 2: I said, quietly. Daniel tensed beside me. How do you
Speaker 2: know I can feel it the same way I could
Speaker 2: feel it back and lirely all those years ago. Should
Speaker 2: we go inside? I shook my head. They're not going
Speaker 2: to hurt us. If they wanted to hurt us, they
Speaker 2: would have done it already. Then what do they want?
Speaker 2: I don't know. Maybe they're just curious. Maybe they're watching
Speaker 2: to see what we do next. I squeezed his hand.
Speaker 2: Maybe they know we're trying to help. That's a lot
Speaker 2: of maybes. Yeah, I agreed it is. We stayed on
Speaker 2: the deck for another hour, watching and waiting. Nothing happened,
Speaker 2: no vocalizations, no movement in the trees, just that presence,
Speaker 2: that weight, that feeling of being observed by something we
Speaker 2: couldn't see. When we finally went inside, I locked the
Speaker 2: door behind us and checked all the windows. Not because
Speaker 2: I was afraid of the creatures. I wasn't, but because
Speaker 2: there were other things out there to be afraid of.
Speaker 2: Human things, things in black suits who made threats in
Speaker 2: the middle of the night. Those things scared me a
Speaker 2: lot more than anything in the forest. December brought snow,
Speaker 2: not a lot, just a few inches, enough to turn
Speaker 2: the mountains wide and make the roads treacherous. The documentary
Speaker 2: crew had finished their initial filming and headed back to
Speaker 2: California to start editing. Amanda called every few days with updates.
Speaker 2: Said the footage was amazing. Said this was going to
Speaker 2: be bigger than anything she'd ever done. We're looking at
Speaker 2: a spring release, she told me, maybe earlier, if we
Speaker 2: can get everything cut in time. The network's excited, they
Speaker 2: think this could be huge. What about the people watching us?
Speaker 2: Have they made any moves? Nothing overt A few attempts
Speaker 2: to access our servers, some suspicious activity around the editing facility,
Speaker 2: but we've got good security. They're not going to get
Speaker 2: to the footage. I wanted to believe her. I wanted
Speaker 2: to believe that we'd outmaneuvered them, that the truth was
Speaker 2: going to come out, no matter what they did to
Speaker 2: stop it. But I'd been in law enforcement long enough
Speaker 2: to know that powerful people have ways of making problems disappear.
Speaker 2: Be careful, I said. They're not going to give up
Speaker 2: just because we've made it hard for them. I know
Speaker 2: we're being careful. You be careful too. Always. The call
Speaker 2: came on a Tuesday afternoon, two weeks before Christmas. I
Speaker 2: was at the office working through a stack of paperwork
Speaker 2: that had piled up during the investigation when my personal
Speaker 2: cell phone rang unknown number. I almost didn't answer, Sheriff Patterson,
Speaker 2: I said, Sheriff. The voice was familiar, smooth, controlled, with
Speaker 2: an undertone of menace that I recognized immediately. It was
Speaker 2: one of the men from that night, the one who'd
Speaker 2: done most of the talking. What do you want to
Speaker 2: give you? One final warning? The documentary you're helping produce
Speaker 2: it needs to stop. The footage needs to be destroyed,
Speaker 2: The investigation needs to end or what or there will
Speaker 2: be consequences, consequences for you, for your partner, for everyone
Speaker 2: involved in this project. You've already threatened me once it
Speaker 2: didn't work, then it's not going to work.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: This isn't a threat, Sheriff, it's a promise. The voice hardened.
Speaker 2: We've been patient. We've given you multiple opportunities to walk away,
Speaker 2: but our patience has limits, and you've reached them. Then
Speaker 2: do what you have to do. I'm not backing down
Speaker 2: A long pause. Then you have no idea what you're
Speaker 2: dealing with. The creatures in that forest, they're not the
Speaker 2: only things you should be afraid of. There are forces
Speaker 2: at work here that you can't begin to understand, Forces
Speaker 2: that have been managing this situation for longer than you've
Speaker 2: been alive. Managing it how by covering up disappearances, by
Speaker 2: threatening anyone who gets too close to the truth, by
Speaker 2: keeping the public safe, by maintaining order, by ensuring that
Speaker 2: certain complications don't destabilize society. Complications you mean bigfoot. I
Speaker 2: mean things that are better left unknown, things that would
Speaker 2: change the way people see the world, things that certain
Speaker 2: interests have decided should remain hidden. And you're the ones
Speaker 2: who decide what people get to know. You're the ones
Speaker 2: who get to play god. Someone has to The alternative
Speaker 2: is chaos, I laughed. I couldn't help it. Chaos. A
Speaker 2: few big hairy creatures in the woods, and you think
Speaker 2: that's going to cause chaos? People have been reporting these
Speaker 2: things for centuries. The world hasn't ended. It's not just
Speaker 2: about the creature's sheriff. It never has been. The creatures
Speaker 2: are just one piece of a much larger puzzle, a
Speaker 2: puzzle that you're not equipped to understand. Then explain it
Speaker 2: to me. Another pause. When the voice came back, it
Speaker 2: was softer, almost sad, I can't. Even if I wanted to,
Speaker 2: I couldn't. You'd never believe me. And even if you did,
Speaker 2: the voice stopped started again. Walk Away, Sheriff, for your
Speaker 2: own sake, for your partner's sake, walk away while you
Speaker 2: still can. I can't do that. Then I'm sorry for
Speaker 2: what's going to happen. I truly am. The line went dead.
Speaker 2: I sat there for a long time, staring at my phone,
Speaker 2: trying to process what I'd just heard, trying to understand
Speaker 2: what he meant about larger puzzles and things. I couldn't understand.
Speaker 2: What wasn't he telling me? What was so big, so dangerous,
Speaker 2: that the existence of sasquatch was just a small piece
Speaker 2: of it? I didn't know, but I had a feeling
Speaker 2: I was about to find out. That night, I told
Speaker 2: Daniel about the call. He listened without interrupting, his face
Speaker 2: growing more concerned with every word. When I finished, he
Speaker 2: was quiet for a long moment. Maybe we should listen
Speaker 2: to them, he said, finally, What I'm serious, Brian, Whatever
Speaker 2: this is, whatever they're protecting, it's bigger than us, bigger
Speaker 2: than this investigation. Maybe they're right, Maybe some secrets are
Speaker 2: better left buried. You don't believe that. I don't know
Speaker 2: what I believe anymore. All I know is that I
Speaker 2: don't want to lose you. I don't want to wake
Speaker 2: up one morning and find out that you've disappeared like
Speaker 2: all those other people. That's not going to happen. You
Speaker 2: don't know that. You can't know that. He reached from
Speaker 2: my hand, Brian, I love you, I love our life together,
Speaker 2: and I'm terrified that this investigation is going to destroy
Speaker 2: everything we've built. I pulled him close, held him, felt
Speaker 2: his heart beating against mine. I know, I said, I'm
Speaker 2: scared too, but I can't walk away from this. I've
Speaker 2: spent my whole life running from the truth, pretending things
Speaker 2: didn't happen, burying my head in the sand. I can't
Speaker 2: do it anymore. I won't even if it kills you,
Speaker 2: even if it kills me. Daniel pulled back and looked
Speaker 2: at me. His eyes were wet. Then, I guess we're
Speaker 2: in this together, he said, Whatever happens, whatever comes next,
Speaker 2: we're in it together. Always, I said always. We held
Speaker 2: each other for a long time after that, and outside
Speaker 2: in the darkness, something howled. Chapter fifteen, The Pieces Fall
Speaker 2: Christmas was quiet. We spent it alone, just Daniel and me,
Speaker 2: trying to pretend that everything was normal, even though nothing
Speaker 2: was normal anymore. Mama called from Georgia. She was doing well,
Speaker 2: still in remission, living her best life with the new
Speaker 2: husband she'd met a few years back, a good man, finally,
Speaker 2: someone who treated her the way she deserved to be treated.
Speaker 2: You sound tired, she said, her voice crackling through the
Speaker 2: phone line. You working too hard, just busy, I said,
Speaker 2: share of stuff? Uh huh. She wasn't fooled, she never was.
Speaker 2: You know, you can tell me anything right, whatever's going on.
Speaker 2: I'm here. I wanted to tell her, wanted to unload
Speaker 2: all of it, the investigation, the threats, the creatures in
Speaker 2: the forest, the men who watched our every move. But
Speaker 2: I couldn't bring myself to do it. She'd been through enough.
Speaker 2: She'd spent her whole life worrying about me, taking care
Speaker 2: of me, putting my needs ahead of her own. She
Speaker 2: deserved peace now, she deserved to enjoy her retirement without
Speaker 2: her son's problems weighing her down. And stay tuned for
Speaker 2: mor sasquatch yat to see. We'll be right back. After
Speaker 2: these messages, I know, Mama, I said, everything's fine, just
Speaker 2: the usual craziness. If you say so, I love you, baby,
Speaker 2: You know that, right, I know I love you too.
Speaker 2: After we hung up, I sat by the window for
Speaker 2: a long time, watching the snowfall and thinking about everything
Speaker 2: that had led me to this moment. The move to Liary,
Speaker 2: the encounter in the woods, Mama's cancer, daddy's abandonment, coming out,
Speaker 2: becoming a cop, meeting Daniel, moving to North Carolina, running
Speaker 2: for sheriff. Every step of the journey had brought me
Speaker 2: here to this house on this mountain, in the middle
Speaker 2: of an investigation that might get me killed. Was it fate?
Speaker 2: Was it coincidence? Or was it something else, something larger,
Speaker 2: something I couldn't understand. I didn't know, but I had
Speaker 2: a feeling I was about to find out. New Year's
Speaker 2: came and went. The documentary editing continued, and then in
Speaker 2: the second week of January, everything changed. It started with
Speaker 2: a phone call from Zack. You need to come see this,
Speaker 2: he said, I found something, something big. What is it?
Speaker 2: I can't explain over the phone. Just get here as
Speaker 2: soon as you can. I grabbed my jacket and headed
Speaker 2: for the door. Daniel was at work. He'd taken an
Speaker 2: extra shift at the pizza place to cover for someone
Speaker 2: who was out sick. I texted him to let him
Speaker 2: know where I was going, then climbed into my truck
Speaker 2: and headed for the ranger station. Zach was waiting for
Speaker 2: me in his office, pacing back and forth like a
Speaker 2: caged animal. When I walked in, he closed the door
Speaker 2: behind me and locked it. This can't leave this room,
Speaker 2: he said, not yet, not until we figure out what
Speaker 2: it means. What did you find? He sat down at
Speaker 2: his computer and pulled up a document, a PDF heavily
Speaker 2: redacted but still partially readable. The header said Department of
Speaker 2: Defense classified. How did you get this? One of my
Speaker 2: contacts she's been digging through old archives looking for anything
Speaker 2: related to the cover up. She found this buried in
Speaker 2: a file that was supposed to have been destroyed in
Speaker 2: the nineteen seventies. I leaned in to read. Most of
Speaker 2: the text was blacked out, but a few passages remained visible.
Speaker 2: Ongoing surveillance of subject populations in designated wilderness areas evidence
Speaker 2: suggests intelligence levels significantly higher than previously estimated. Recommendation to
Speaker 2: maintain current containment protocols until further study can be completed,
Speaker 2: potential implications for national security cannot be overstated. I looked
Speaker 2: up at Zach, what is this. It's from nineteen sixty two,
Speaker 2: a report on a military operation called Project Threshold, and
Speaker 2: from what I can piece together, it was all about them,
Speaker 2: the creatures. The Department of Defense was studying Bigfoot, not
Speaker 2: just studying managing controlling. Zach pulled up another document. I
Speaker 2: found references to similar programs going back to the nineteen forties.
Speaker 2: After World War II, when the government started getting serious
Speaker 2: about national security, they became aware of these creatures, and
Speaker 2: they decided to keep them secret. Why That's the part
Speaker 2: I'm still trying to figure out. But based on what
Speaker 2: I've read, it wasn't just about public safety. It was
Speaker 2: about something else, something bigger. He scrolled to another passage,
Speaker 2: this one even more heavily redacted than the first. Connection
Speaker 2: two redacted confirmed through redacted analysis. Implications for understanding of
Speaker 2: redacted and redacted remain under investigation. Recommend continuation of suppression
Speaker 2: protocols until redacted can be contained. What is that, I asked,
Speaker 2: What are they talking about? I don't know, but whatever
Speaker 2: it is, it scared them enough to spend sixty years
Speaker 2: covering it up. Zach leaned back in his chair. Brian,
Speaker 2: I think we've stumbled into something much bigger than Bigfoot,
Speaker 2: something that the government has been hiding since before we
Speaker 2: were born, and whatever it is, they're willing to do
Speaker 2: anything to keep it secret. I stared at the screen,
Speaker 2: trying to make sense of what I was seeing. A
Speaker 2: sixty year cover up, military involvement, national security implications. What
Speaker 2: the hell had we gotten ourselves into? I took copies
Speaker 2: of everything. Zach had already made backups. He wasn't stupid,
Speaker 2: but I wanted my own set. If something happened to him,
Speaker 2: if something happened to his files, I wanted to make
Speaker 2: I'm sure the information survived. On the drive home, I
Speaker 2: kept turning it over in my mind. The creatures were real.
Speaker 2: We knew that the government was covering them up. We
Speaker 2: knew that too, But there was something else, something they
Speaker 2: were even more afraid of than the creatures themselves. What
Speaker 2: could be scarier than Bigfoot? The answer came to me
Speaker 2: as I was pulling into my driveway, and it stopped
Speaker 2: me cold. What if Bigfoot wasn't the only thing out there?
Speaker 2: What if the creatures we knew about were just the
Speaker 2: tip of the iceberg. I thought about all the strange
Speaker 2: things that had happened since we'd moved to North Carolina,
Speaker 2: the vocalizations, the lights in the night, the sense of
Speaker 2: being watched by something we couldn't see. What if it
Speaker 2: wasn't just sasquatch watching us? What if there was something else.
Speaker 2: I didn't tell Daniel about the documents that night. He
Speaker 2: came home exhausted from his shift, and I didn't want
Speaker 2: to pile more worry on top of his fatigue. Instead,
Speaker 2: I made dinner and we watched TV, and I tried
Speaker 2: to act like everything was fine. But I couldn't sleep.
Speaker 2: I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, listening to
Speaker 2: Daniel's steady breathing beside me. My mind was racing, jumping
Speaker 2: from thought to thought, trying to connect dots that didn't
Speaker 2: want to be connected. The creatures, the cover up, the
Speaker 2: men in black, the redacted documents, the references to things
Speaker 2: that the government considered national security threats. What wasn't I seeing?
Speaker 2: What piece of the puzzle was I missing? Around two
Speaker 2: in the morning, I gave up on sleep. I got
Speaker 2: out of bed, quietly, trying not to wake Daniel and
Speaker 2: went to the living room, pulled up my laptop started searching.
Speaker 2: I searched for Project Threshold, for government programs related to
Speaker 2: unexplained phenomena, for military involvement, ENCRYPTID research, for anything that
Speaker 2: might explain what I'd seen in those documents. What I
Speaker 2: found shook me to my core. There were others, not
Speaker 2: just Zach and me, not just Amanda and her documentary crew.
Speaker 2: There were researchers all over the country who'd been piecing
Speaker 2: together the same puzzle. Some of them had been doing
Speaker 2: it for decades, and they'd all come to the same conclusion.
Speaker 2: The cover up wasn't just about Bigfoot. It was about
Speaker 2: everything UFOs, cryptids, paranormal phenomena, everything that mainstream science said
Speaker 2: was impossible, everything that the government officially denied. It was
Speaker 2: all connected, all part of the same vast system of
Speaker 2: suppression that had been operating for more than half a century.
Speaker 2: And at the center of it all was something that
Speaker 2: nobody understood, something that the people in charge were desperately
Speaker 2: trying to keep hidden, something they were afraid of. I
Speaker 2: sat in the dark, staring at my laptop screen, feeling
Speaker 2: the weight of it all pressing down on me. This
Speaker 2: was bigger than I'd ever imagined, Bigger than Austin Mercer,
Speaker 2: bigger than the missing people, bigger than everything I thought
Speaker 2: I knew, and I had no idea what to do
Speaker 2: about it. The knock on the door came just before dawn.
Speaker 2: I was still in the living room, still staring at
Speaker 2: my laptop when I heard it, three sharp raps, deliberate
Speaker 2: and precise, the same knock i'd heard before. I closed
Speaker 2: the laptop and stood up, grabbed my rifle from where
Speaker 2: it rested against the wall, moved to the door. Who's there?
Speaker 2: No answer. I opened the door, the rifle raised and ready.
Speaker 2: Nobody was there. The porch was empty, the driveway was empty.
Speaker 2: The morning was gray and cold, the mountain still shrouded
Speaker 2: in pre dawned darkness. But there was something on the
Speaker 2: door mat, A thick Manila envelope, no markings, no indication
Speaker 2: of where it had come from, just a single word
Speaker 2: written on the front in block letters, truth. I scanned
Speaker 2: the tree line, looking for movement, looking for whoever had
Speaker 2: left this package. Nothing, no sound except the wind in
Speaker 2: the pines, no motion except the gentle swaying of branches.
Speaker 2: I picked up the envelope and carried it inside, set
Speaker 2: it on the kitchen table. Stared at it for a
Speaker 2: long moment, wondering if this was some kind of trap,
Speaker 2: a bomb maybe, or anthrax or some other threat designed
Speaker 2: to take me out before the documentary could air. But
Speaker 2: my instincts said otherwise. Whoever had left this wanted me
Speaker 2: to see what was inside, wanted me to know something
Speaker 2: that someone had gone to great lengths to keep hidden.
Speaker 2: I got a knife from the drawer and carefully slit
Speaker 2: the envelope open, taking care not to touch the contents
Speaker 2: directly in case there were fingerprints worth preserving. What I
Speaker 2: found inside would haunt me for years. The envelope contained
Speaker 2: a stack of documents, maybe fifty pages, some original, some photocopies,
Speaker 2: all of them bearing the stamps and classification markings of
Speaker 2: official government records. The first page was a cover sheet.
Speaker 2: The header read Project Vulcan Classified Eyes Only. Below that
Speaker 2: a date May eighteenth, nineteen eighty. I felt the hair
Speaker 2: on my arms stand up. May eighteenth, nineteen eighty, The
Speaker 2: day Mount Saint Helens erupted, The day that fifty seven
Speaker 2: people died in the largest volcanic event in United States history,
Speaker 2: The day that changed the landscape of the Pacific Northwest forever.
Speaker 2: But according to these documents, something else had happened that day,
Speaker 2: something that had been hidden from the world for over
Speaker 2: forty years. Daniel came into the kitchen, rubbing sleep from
Speaker 2: his eyes. What's going on? I heard you up. Someone
Speaker 2: left this on the porch. I held up the envelope.
Speaker 2: You need to see this. He sat down beside me,
Speaker 2: and together we began to read. The document was a
Speaker 2: field report from something called the Biological Containment Unit, a
Speaker 2: team I'd never heard of, operating under the authority of
Speaker 2: agencies I didn't recognize. The report described a deployment to
Speaker 2: the Mount Saint Helen's disaster zone in the immediate appa
Speaker 2: after math of the eruption, but they weren't there for
Speaker 2: the human casualties. Following confirmation of multiple Type B biological
Speaker 2: entities within the primary blast zone, the report read BCU
Speaker 2: teams were deployed via helicopter to conduct recovery and containment operations.
Speaker 2: Initial surveys identified seventeen deceased specimens and three specimens exhibiting
Speaker 2: signs of life but severe trauma consistent with exposure to
Speaker 2: pyroclastic flows and associated volcanic phenomena. I read the sentence
Speaker 2: again and again and again. Seventeen deceased specimens, three severely injured.
Speaker 2: The report continued with clinical precision. Living specimens were extracted
Speaker 2: to Field Hospital Delta for emergency medical treatment. Standard containment
Speaker 2: protocols were implemented. Two specimens expired during transport due to
Speaker 2: severity of thermal injuries and respiratory damage. One specimen survived
Speaker 2: initial triage and remains under observation at the field facility.
Speaker 2: All deceased specimens were transported to redacted for analysis and
Speaker 2: long term storage. Jesus Christ Daniel whispered. I kept reading
Speaker 2: the document described in clinical detail the physical characteristics of
Speaker 2: the specimens. Height seven to nine feet, weight estimated six
Speaker 2: hundred to nine hundred pounds, covered in dense hair like follicles,
Speaker 2: coloration ranging from dark brown to reddish auburn. Bipedal locomotion,
Speaker 2: opposable thumbs, cranial capacity significantly exceeding Homo sapiens parameters. There
Speaker 2: were photographs, grainy, washed out images that looked like they'd
Speaker 2: been taken in field conditions. Helicopters in the background, men
Speaker 2: in military uniforms standing beside shapes, covered in tarps. The
Speaker 2: quality was poor, but the scale was unmistakable. Whatever was
Speaker 2: under those tarps was massive. But one photograph was different, clear, unmistakable.
Speaker 2: A creature on a stretcher being carried by four men
Speaker 2: in hasmat suits. Its eyes were closed, its massive chest
Speaker 2: was wrapped in bandages, soaked through with something dark. One
Speaker 2: arm hung limply over the side of the stretcher. The
Speaker 2: hand five fingered, with thick black nails, nearly touching the ground.
Speaker 2: The face was visible in profile, heavy brow, ridge, flat nose,
Speaker 2: lips pulled back to reveal large teeth. Hair covered most
Speaker 2: of the visible skin matted and singed in places from
Speaker 2: the volcanic heat. It was real, it was documented, it
Speaker 2: was undeniable, and the United States government had covered it
Speaker 2: up for over forty years. This changes everything, Daniel said,
Speaker 2: This changes everything. I agreed. I turned to the next page,
Speaker 2: and the next, and the next. Each one added another
Speaker 2: piece to the puzzle, another layer to the cover up.
Speaker 2: Another reason why the men in black had been so
Speaker 2: determined to keep us silent. Weren't just hiding the existence
Speaker 2: of these creatures. They'd been studying them for decades, and
Speaker 2: according to these documents, they'd learned things that would shake
Speaker 2: the foundations of everything we thought we knew about the
Speaker 2: natural world.
Speaker 1: The play