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, get
Speaker 1: somebody out here. Quin. I'm out there. I thought of
Speaker 1: a bit about Tech forty nine. I don't know easy
Speaker 1: out there. Yeah, I'm walking right head.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know. I already dropped an episode today, But
Speaker 2: it's Friday, and the woods don't sleep on Fridays, so
Speaker 2: this one's a bonus. No daylight, no distractions, just shadows,
Speaker 2: questions and the things that don't like being talked about.
Speaker 2: If you're listening alone, good, Let's get into it over
Speaker 2: the next few weeks, I'm going to be sharing my
Speaker 2: new book with you start to finish the whole thing.
Speaker 2: It's called Bigfoot Country. All told, it's around eight hours
Speaker 2: of narration. So I'll be putting it out in multiple episodes,
Speaker 2: and honestly, I've been sitting on this for a long time.
Speaker 2: I'm excited and a little nervous to finally put it
Speaker 2: out there. But before we jump in, I want to
Speaker 2: take a minute just you and me. What you're about
Speaker 2: to hear is loosely based on my life. Some of
Speaker 2: it happened exactly the way I tell it, no embellishment,
Speaker 2: no polish. Other parts are rooted in real experiences, real people,
Speaker 2: real moments, real emotions, but maybe stretched a bit or
Speaker 2: reimagine to help the story breathe. And then there are
Speaker 2: parts where, well you get to decide what you believe.
Speaker 2: I also want to be upfront about something early on
Speaker 2: you might find yourself wondering where this is all headed.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of groundwork, family, childhood, personal history. Just
Speaker 2: know this, it's going somewhere. This book is about Bigfoot.
Speaker 2: That's the destination, I promise. Just trust me long enough
Speaker 2: to get there. At its heart, this is a story
Speaker 2: about my earliest experiences with the strange and unexplained. It
Speaker 2: starts with something that happened to me when I was
Speaker 2: twelve years old, and encounter with what I believe was
Speaker 2: a sasquatch. That moment stayed with me. It shaped a
Speaker 2: lot of who I became, and for years I struggled
Speaker 2: with how or even if I should ever tell that story,
Speaker 2: because how do you talk about something the world insists
Speaker 2: isn't real? How do you open yourself up like that
Speaker 2: knowing people are going to judge you, doubt you, or
Speaker 2: dismiss you entirely. But these stories have always mattered to me.
Speaker 2: This book has always mattered, and at some point I
Speaker 2: realized I was done keeping it all tucked away. Here's
Speaker 2: the thing, though, I didn't just write about Bigfoot. I
Speaker 2: wrote about me, all of me, my childhood, my parents,
Speaker 2: my failures, my struggles, and yeah, Danny, I know that
Speaker 2: part isn't going to sit well with everyone. I get
Speaker 2: that some folks are going to have opinions, and that's
Speaker 2: their right, But for me, leaving any of that out
Speaker 2: would have been dishonest. I can't ask you to trust
Speaker 2: me with these experiences and then hide pieces of who
Speaker 2: I am. I can't tell my story with that, including
Speaker 2: the person who stood beside me through the hardest parts
Speaker 2: of it. That's just not how I live, and it's
Speaker 2: not how this book was written. Believe me. I thought
Speaker 2: about sanding down the rough edges, making it cleaner, safer,
Speaker 2: easier to swallow, cutting out the parts that might make
Speaker 2: people uncomfortable. But I couldn't do it. I've spent too
Speaker 2: much of my life holding back, and I'm done with that.
Speaker 2: So this is me. This is my story, all of it.
Speaker 2: Some of what you'll hear happened exactly as I describe it.
Speaker 2: Some of it is how I imagine things might have gone
Speaker 2: if the timing had been different, if I'd pushed harder,
Speaker 2: if the world worked the way I think it sometimes should.
Speaker 2: And one last thing before we start. This is book one.
Speaker 2: There's more coming, a lot more. This is just the beginning.
Speaker 2: I hope you enjoy Bigfoot Country as much as I
Speaker 2: did writing it. Bigfoot Country based on a true story,
Speaker 2: well sorta. Part one, the hollow Chapter one, the Road
Speaker 2: to Nowhere. The truck rattled down the dirt road like
Speaker 2: it was trying to shake itself apart, and I pressed
Speaker 2: my face against the window, watching the trees close in
Speaker 2: around us, Georgia pines, mostly tall and straight as telephone poles,
Speaker 2: their branches starting way up high, like they couldn't be
Speaker 2: bothered with the ground between them. The hardwoods were just
Speaker 2: starting to turn, splashes of orange and red mixed in
Speaker 2: with all that green. It was September of nineteen eighty four,
Speaker 2: just a few months before my twelfth birthday, and everything
Speaker 2: I'd ever known was disappearing in the side mirror. Daddy's
Speaker 2: hands gripped the steering wheel like he was strangling it.
Speaker 2: He hadn't said more than ten words since we'd left
Speaker 2: the old place in Somerville, and that suited me fine.
Speaker 2: When Jerry Patterson got quiet, it usually meant the storm
Speaker 2: was building. Better to let it build than to be
Speaker 2: the one who set it off. Mama sat between us,
Speaker 2: her hip pressed against mine every time Daddy took a
Speaker 2: curve to fast. She smelled like the Jurgen's lotion she
Speaker 2: rubbed on her hands every night, and the faint sweetness
Speaker 2: of the doctor pepper she'd been nursing since we stopped
Speaker 2: for gas an hour back. Jean Patterson was a small woman,
Speaker 2: barely five foot two, but She had a way of
Speaker 2: taking up space when she wanted to. Right now, she
Speaker 2: was trying to make herself invisible, same as me. How
Speaker 2: much further, I asked, not really expecting an answer. When
Speaker 2: we get there, We get there. Daddy's voice sounded like
Speaker 2: gravel mixed with cigarette smoke. He reached for the pack
Speaker 2: of Winston's on the dashboard without taking his eyes off
Speaker 2: the road. Mama put her hand on my knee and squeezed.
Speaker 2: That was her way. She couldn't fix things, couldn't make
Speaker 2: Daddy any different than he was, but she could let
Speaker 2: me know I wasn't alone. In the silence, the road narrowed.
Speaker 2: What had been two lanes of cracked asphalt became one
Speaker 2: lane of packed red clay, and the trees pressed in
Speaker 2: even closer. Spanish moss hung from the branches of the oaks,
Speaker 2: like old gray ghosts, reaching down to touch the truck
Speaker 2: as we passed. I'd seen plenty of woods in my
Speaker 2: twelve years, but nothing like this. This felt old, This
Speaker 2: felt like the kind of place that had been here
Speaker 2: long before people came, and would be here long after
Speaker 2: we were gone. Then the trees opened up, and there
Speaker 2: it was. The house sat at the end of the road,
Speaker 2: like something that had crawled there to die. It was
Speaker 2: white once, I think, but years of Georgia weather had
Speaker 2: turned it the color of old bones. The porch sagged
Speaker 2: in the middle, and one of the upstairs windows was
Speaker 2: covered with a piece of plywood that had started to warp.
Speaker 2: A rusted propane tank squatted in the sideyard like a
Speaker 2: beached submarine. Home, Sweet Home, Daddy said, and laughed. It
Speaker 2: wasn't a nice laugh. I climbed out of the truck
Speaker 2: and stood there in the dirt driveway, trying to make
Speaker 2: sense of what I was seeing. Behind the house, the
Speaker 2: land rose up in a gentle slope before disappearing into
Speaker 2: woods so thick and dark they looked like a wall.
Speaker 2: Eighty acres, the landlord had said, eighty acres of woods
Speaker 2: and howlers and creek bottoms, and all of it was
Speaker 2: ours to use, as long as we paid the rent
Speaker 2: on time. Daddy was already carrying boxes inside, his boots
Speaker 2: heavy on the porch steps. Mama stood beside me, her
Speaker 2: arms crossed over her chest like she was cold, even
Speaker 2: though the September heat was thick enough to chew. It'll
Speaker 2: be all right, she said, I couldn't tell if she
Speaker 2: was talking to me or to herself. Yes, ma'am, she
Speaker 2: turned and looked at me, really looked the way she
Speaker 2: did when she wanted me to hear something important. Brian,
Speaker 2: I know this isn't what you wanted. I know you
Speaker 2: had friends back in Somerville at your school, had your life,
Speaker 2: but sometimes we got to play the hand. Where dealt
Speaker 2: you understand? I nodded, even though I didn't understand, not really.
Speaker 2: I didn't understand why Daddy couldn't hold down a job
Speaker 2: for more than a few months at a time. Didn't
Speaker 2: understand why we had to keep moving, keep running from
Speaker 2: landlords and creditors and all the messes he made. Didn't
Speaker 2: understand why Mama stayed with him, why she kept believing
Speaker 2: things would get better when everything I'd seen in my
Speaker 2: twelve years told me they never would. But I was twelve.
Speaker 2: Understanding wasn't my job yet. My job was to keep
Speaker 2: my head down, stay out of Daddy's way, and wait
Speaker 2: for the next storm to pass. Go on and pick
Speaker 2: out your room, Mama said, top of the stairs. Take
Speaker 2: your pick, Just leave the big one at the end
Speaker 2: of the hall for me and your daddy. I grabbed
Speaker 2: my duffel bag from the truck bed and headed inside.
Speaker 2: The house smelled like dust and old newspapers and something
Speaker 2: else underneath, something sour and wrong. I tried not to
Speaker 2: think about what might have happened here before we came,
Speaker 2: what kind of people might have lived and died within
Speaker 2: these walls. The floorboards creaked under my feet as I
Speaker 2: climbed the stairs, and I swear I could feel the
Speaker 2: house shifting around me, settling into its bones, like an
Speaker 2: old man easing into a chair. There were three bedrooms upstairs.
Speaker 2: The big one at the end of the hall had
Speaker 2: two windows that looked out over the backyard and the
Speaker 2: woods beyond. The one next to it was barely bigger
Speaker 2: than a closet with a single window that faced the driveway.
Speaker 2: But the third room, the one at the front of
Speaker 2: the house that one called to me. It wasn't much
Speaker 2: to look at water stains on the ceiling, wallpaper peeling
Speaker 2: at the corners, a closet door that hung crooked on
Speaker 2: its hinges, But the window, the window was something special.
Speaker 2: It looked out over the front porch roof, and beyond
Speaker 2: that I could see the dirt road stretching back through
Speaker 2: the trees, toward the highway, toward civilization, toward the world
Speaker 2: I'd left behind. I dropped my duffel bag on the
Speaker 2: floor and sat down on the bare mattress that someone
Speaker 2: had left behind. Springs poked through the fabric in places,
Speaker 2: and it smelled like mildew, but I didn't care. This
Speaker 2: was mine now, this little room at the top of
Speaker 2: this dying house, at the end of this dirt road,
Speaker 2: in the middle of nowhere mine. From downstairs, I could
Speaker 2: hear Daddy cursing at something, a box he'd dropped, probably,
Speaker 2: or maybe he'd found the bottle he'd hidden in the
Speaker 2: truck and was just getting started on his evening. Either way,
Speaker 2: I knew better than to go back down, better to
Speaker 2: stay up here where it was quiet, better to wait
Speaker 2: until Mamma called me for dinner. I laid back on
Speaker 2: the mattress and stared at the water stains on the ceiling.
Speaker 2: If I squinted just right, they almost looked like a map,
Speaker 2: rivers and mountains in vast empty spaces where anything could
Speaker 2: be hiding anything at all. Outside, the sun was going
Speaker 2: down behind the trees, and the shadows were getting long.
Speaker 2: Somewhere in the distance, a whipper wheel started calling over
Speaker 2: and over, like it was trying to tell me something.
Speaker 2: I closed my eyes and listened. This was home now,
Speaker 2: for better or worse. This sagging house, these endless woods,
Speaker 2: this family that was coming apart at the seams. This
Speaker 2: was all I had. I just didn't know yet how
Speaker 2: much it would cost me. Chapter two, The Woods Have Eyes.
Speaker 2: The first few weeks lyrely passed in a blur of
Speaker 2: unpacking boxes and learning the rhythms of a new place.
Speaker 2: School started, and I found myself sitting in the back
Speaker 2: of classrooms, surrounded by kids who'd known each other since birth,
Speaker 2: kids whose families went back generations. In this little town
Speaker 2: that didn't even have a stoplight. I was the outsider,
Speaker 2: the new kid, the boy from somewhere else, who didn't
Speaker 2: know the history, didn't know the stories, didn't know which
Speaker 2: families had been feuding since before the Civil War. I
Speaker 2: kept my head down and my mouth shut, answered questions
Speaker 2: when teachers called on me, ate my lunch alone at
Speaker 2: a table in the corner of the cafeteria, and every
Speaker 2: day when the bus dropped me off at the end
Speaker 2: of that long dirt road, I walked home through the
Speaker 2: trees and felt something in my chest, loosen something that
Speaker 2: had been wound tight all day, finally letting go. The
Speaker 2: woods were my salvation. I started exploring them that first weekend,
Speaker 2: when Daddy was off somewhere doing god knows what and
Speaker 2: Mama was too tired from unpacking to notice I was gone.
Speaker 2: I took my bb gun, a daisy that Daddy had
Speaker 2: given me for my tenth birthday, back when he still
Speaker 2: did things like that, and I headed into the trees
Speaker 2: behind the house. It didn't take long to realize that
Speaker 2: eighty acres was more land than I'd ever imagined. The
Speaker 2: woods went on forever, or at least it seemed that
Speaker 2: way to a twelve year old boy. Hardwoods gave way
Speaker 2: to pine thickets. Pine thickets gave way to swampy bottoms,
Speaker 2: where the creek ran slow and dark, and everywhere everywhere
Speaker 2: there was life. Squirrels chattered at me from the branches.
Speaker 2: Birds I'd never seen before flashed through the underbrush. Once
Speaker 2: I came around to bend in a deer trail and
Speaker 2: found myself face to face with a dough and her fawn,
Speaker 2: all of us frozen in surprise before they bounded off
Speaker 2: into the trees. I started making maps, crude things drawn
Speaker 2: on notebook page with a pencil that I kept sharpening
Speaker 2: with my pocket knife. I marked the big landmarks, the
Speaker 2: lightning struck oak that had split down the middle but
Speaker 2: kept on living, The boulder field where granite pushed up
Speaker 2: through the red clay, like bones breaking through skin. The
Speaker 2: swimming hole where the creek widened out into a pool
Speaker 2: deep enough to dive into. I gave them names, the Sentinel,
Speaker 2: the graveyard, the baptism. And I built forts. Lord, did
Speaker 2: I build forts. The first one was simple, just some
Speaker 2: fallen branches leaned against a big oak to make a
Speaker 2: lean to, But it got more complicated as the weeks
Speaker 2: went on. I found an old tart behind the house,
Speaker 2: half rotted but still mostly waterproof, and I stretched it
Speaker 2: over a frame I built from saplings I cut with
Speaker 2: my pocket knife. I dragged logs over for seats. I
Speaker 2: dug a fire pit, even though I never lit a
Speaker 2: fire in it, because Mama would have killed me. I
Speaker 2: stashed supplies out there, a rusty coffee can full of matches,
Speaker 2: a canteen i'd found it, a yard sale, some beef
Speaker 2: jerky i'd stolen from the kitchen. That fort became my home,
Speaker 2: my real home, and stay tuned for more sasquatch out
Speaker 2: to see. We'll be right back after these messages. The
Speaker 2: place I went when Daddy was drinking and the tension
Speaker 2: in the house got so thick you could cut it
Speaker 2: with a knife. The place I went when I needed
Speaker 2: to think, or when I didn't want to think at all.
Speaker 2: The place I went to be Brian, just Brian, not
Speaker 2: the quiet kid in the back of the classroom, or
Speaker 2: the boy who flinched when his father raised his voice.
Speaker 2: Mama knew I was spending time in the woods. She
Speaker 2: didn't say much about it, just made sure I was
Speaker 2: home before dark and that I had something in my
Speaker 2: belly before I went out. I think she understood in
Speaker 2: her way. She knew what it was like to need
Speaker 2: a place to escape to. She just didn't have one
Speaker 2: of her own. By October, I thought I knew those
Speaker 2: woods pretty well. I'd mapped maybe forty or fifty acres,
Speaker 2: criss crossing back and forth until the trails were worn
Speaker 2: into the dirt from my footsteps alone. I knew where
Speaker 2: the deer bedded down, I knew where the squirrels nested.
Speaker 2: I knew which trees were good for climbing and which
Speaker 2: ones would snap under your weight. But there was one
Speaker 2: section I hadn't explored, one corner of the property, way
Speaker 2: back at the far edge, where our land butted up
Speaker 2: against the National forest, that I'd been avoiding without really
Speaker 2: knowing why. It started with a feeling. The first time
Speaker 2: I got close to that area, maybe two hundred yards
Speaker 2: from the property line, I felt this wrongness wash over me,
Speaker 2: like walking into a cold spot in a warm room,
Speaker 2: like the moment before a thunderstorm breaks, when the air
Speaker 2: gets thick and electric and every hair on your body
Speaker 2: stands up. I stopped dead in my tracks, my heart
Speaker 2: pounding for no reason I could name, and I turned
Speaker 2: around and walked back the way i'd come. I told
Speaker 2: myself it was nothing, told myself, I was being stupid,
Speaker 2: being a baby. There was nothing in those woods that
Speaker 2: could hurt me. Bears maybe, but I'd never seen sign
Speaker 2: of any snake. Sure, but I knew to watch where
Speaker 2: I stepped. There was nothing to be afraid of. But
Speaker 2: I stayed away. Weeks passed, the leaves changed and fell.
Speaker 2: Daddy came and went, sometimes gone for days at a time,
Speaker 2: and when he was home, he was either drunk or
Speaker 2: getting there. I learned the signs, the way his eyes
Speaker 2: went flat when he was two drinks in, the way
Speaker 2: his hands shook when he needed another one. I learned
Speaker 2: to make myself scarce. I learned to be invisible. Mama tried,
Speaker 2: she really did. She cooked dinner every night, even when
Speaker 2: Daddy didn't come home to eat it. She helped me
Speaker 2: with my homework, asked about my day, did all the
Speaker 2: things a mother is supposed to do. But there was
Speaker 2: something fading in her, something going dim behind her eyes,
Speaker 2: the light that had always been there, the spark that
Speaker 2: made her gene instead of just daddy's work. It was
Speaker 2: getting harder to see. I escaped to the woods whenever
Speaker 2: I could, and that section i'd been avoiding it started
Speaker 2: calling to me. I don't know how else to describe it.
Speaker 2: It was like an itch. I couldn't scratch a song
Speaker 2: I couldn't get out of my head. Every time I
Speaker 2: was out in the woods, I'd find myself drifting in
Speaker 2: that direction, getting a little closer, before that wrongness pushed
Speaker 2: me back. It was like the world's worst game of Chicken,
Speaker 2: me against whatever was back there in the dark. Finally,
Speaker 2: on a Saturday in late October, I decided I'd had enough.
Speaker 2: I was twelve years old, almost thirteen, too old to
Speaker 2: be scared of the dark, too old to let my
Speaker 2: imagination run wild. I was going to go back there
Speaker 2: and prove to myself that there was nothing to be
Speaker 2: afraid of. Just trees, just woods, just another part of
Speaker 2: the property that I hadn't mapped yet. I grabbed my
Speaker 2: bb gun and headed out after breakfast, telling Mama i'd
Speaker 2: be back before lunch. She barely looked up from the dishes.
Speaker 2: Daddy was still asleep, sleeping off whatever he'd been doing
Speaker 2: the night before. The house was quiet in that heavy
Speaker 2: way it always was on weekend mornings, and I was
Speaker 2: glad to get out. The walk took about half an hour.
Speaker 2: I followed my usual trails past the sentinel and around
Speaker 2: the edge of the graveyard until I hit the deer
Speaker 2: path that led back toward that forbidden corner. My heart
Speaker 2: was already beating faster, and I made myself slow down,
Speaker 2: take a breath. There's nothing out here, just trees. The
Speaker 2: wrongness hit me when I was about one hundred yards
Speaker 2: out that cold spot, feeling that electric tingle. Every instinct
Speaker 2: I had was screaming at me to turn around, to
Speaker 2: go home, to stay away from this place. But I
Speaker 2: gritted my teeth and kept walking fifty yards. The trees
Speaker 2: were thicker here, older, less underbrush, but more shadows. The
Speaker 2: ground sloped upward toward a ridge I couldn't quite see
Speaker 2: twenty five yards. The hair on the back my neck
Speaker 2: was standing straight up. My hands were sweating on the
Speaker 2: stock of my bb gun. I could hear my own breathing,
Speaker 2: ragged and fast, and underneath it the woods had gone quiet.
Speaker 2: No birds, no squirrels, nothing moving, nothing making a sound.
Speaker 2: That should have been my warning. That silence should have
Speaker 2: sent me running, But I was twelve and stubborn, and
Speaker 2: I had something to prove, so I kept going. I
Speaker 2: pushed through a thick patch of briers that tore at
Speaker 2: my jeans and scratched my arms. On the other side
Speaker 2: was a small clearing, maybe thirty feet across, carpeted with
Speaker 2: dead leaves and ringed by trees so tall I couldn't
Speaker 2: see their tops. In the center of the clearing, there
Speaker 2: was a depression in the ground, like something big had
Speaker 2: been bedding down there. And the smell, God, the smell
Speaker 2: like a wet dog mixed with a dumpster behind a
Speaker 2: butcher shop, thick and organic and wrong. I stood at
Speaker 2: the edge of the clearing, frozen in place, trying to
Speaker 2: make sense of what I was seeing, what I was smelling,
Speaker 2: what I was feeling. And then I heard it. Footsteps,
Speaker 2: heavy footsteps, not the delicate step of a deer or
Speaker 2: the scrabble of a squirrel. These were big, These were bipedal.
Speaker 2: These were something walking on two legs, something that weighed
Speaker 2: as much as a man. And then some They were
Speaker 2: coming from somewhere behind me, from the thick stand of
Speaker 2: trees and briars i'd just pushed through. I spun around,
Speaker 2: my bb gun raised like it could do anything against
Speaker 2: whatever was making that sound. But I couldn't see anything.
Speaker 2: The underbrush was too thick, the shadows too deep. I
Speaker 2: could only hear it, hear it getting closer, Hear those footsteps,
Speaker 2: those impossibly heavy footsteps, crunching through the dead leaves. Then
Speaker 2: it stopped. For a long moment. There was nothing, no sound,
Speaker 2: no movement, just me and the silence and the pounding
Speaker 2: of my own heart. And then it huffed. I don't
Speaker 2: know how to describe that sound, except to say it
Speaker 2: was the most primal thing i'd ever heard, Like a
Speaker 2: horse snorting but deeper, like a bear, growling but not quite.
Speaker 2: It was a challenge, a warning, a get out of
Speaker 2: my territory that needed no translation. Another huff closer now,
Speaker 2: maybe forty feet away, hidden somewhere in that wall of
Speaker 2: green and shadow. And then a growl that started low
Speaker 2: and built until I could feel it vibrating in my chest,
Speaker 2: vibrating in my teeth, vibrating in my bones. I wanted
Speaker 2: to run. Every cell in my body was screaming at
Speaker 2: me to run, but my legs wouldn't move. They felt
Speaker 2: like they'd been planted in the ground, like four by
Speaker 2: four fence posts, driven deep into the red Georgia clay.
Speaker 2: I couldn't run. I couldn't even breathe. More sounds now, snorting, heavy, breathing,
Speaker 2: something that sounded almost like words but wasn't Runts and
Speaker 2: clicks that rose and fell in patterns that seemed to
Speaker 2: mean something, even if I couldn't understand what. And underneath it,
Speaker 2: all those footsteps again, circling, moving around the edge of
Speaker 2: the clearing, getting closer. I couldn't see it. That was
Speaker 2: almost worse than if I could. I strained my eyes
Speaker 2: against the shadows, tried to catch a glimpse of whatever
Speaker 2: was out there, but the underbrush was too thick. All
Speaker 2: I had were sounds, sounds, and that god awful smell,
Speaker 2: and the absolute certainty that something was watching me, something big,
Speaker 2: something that could end me if it wanted to. Then
Speaker 2: it charged. I heard the explosion of movement through the underbrush, branches, snapping, leaves, scattering,
Speaker 2: something massive coming straight at me through the trees. The
Speaker 2: sound was like nothing I'd ever heard, like a freight train,
Speaker 2: like a landslide, like the end of the world. It stopped,
Speaker 2: maybe twenty feet away. I still couldn't see it, and
Speaker 2: the shadows hid it from view, but I could hear
Speaker 2: it breathing heavy, ragged breaths. I could smell it stronger
Speaker 2: than ever now, that rank animal stink, filling my nostrils
Speaker 2: until I thought I might gag. We stood there like
Speaker 2: that for what felt like forever, me frozen in the clearing,
Speaker 2: clutching my useless BB gun, It hidden in the trees,
Speaker 2: breathing and watching and waiting. I don't know what it
Speaker 2: was deciding. I don't know why it didn't finish what
Speaker 2: it started. All I know is that. After a long,
Speaker 2: terrible moment, I heard those footsteps again, but this time
Speaker 2: they were moving away, fading into the distance, getting quieter
Speaker 2: and quieter, until they were gone. For another long moment,
Speaker 2: I couldn't move. My legs were still fence posts, my
Speaker 2: lungs were still locked, my heart was still trying to
Speaker 2: beat its way out of my chest. And then all
Speaker 2: at once, something broke loose inside me.
Speaker 1: I ran.
Speaker 2: I don't remember much about that run. It's all a
Speaker 2: blur of trees and briers and my own panicked breathing.
Speaker 2: I fell once, twice, maybe more. My jeans ripped, my
Speaker 2: arms bled from the thorns. But I didn't stop, couldn't stop.
Speaker 2: I ran like something was chasing me, even though I
Speaker 2: knew in some deep part of my brain that it wasn't.
Speaker 2: It had let me go. Whatever was out there had
Speaker 2: looked at me, or smelled me, or sensed me somehow
Speaker 2: and decided I wasn't worth the trouble, and it had
Speaker 2: let me go. I ran until I saw the house
Speaker 2: through the trees, ran until I hit the barbed wire
Speaker 2: fence at the edge of the backyard. I didn't stop
Speaker 2: to find the place where the wires were loose enough
Speaker 2: to slip through. I just jumped, catching my leg on
Speaker 2: one of the barbs and leaving a piece of my
Speaker 2: jeans and a streak of blood on the rusty wire.
Speaker 2: And then I was in the yard, falling to my
Speaker 2: knees on the patchy grass, gasping for breath and shaking
Speaker 2: so hard I thought I might fly apart. Mama was inside.
Speaker 2: I could see her through the kitchen win standing at
Speaker 2: the sink, washing dishes or peeling potatoes, or doing one
Speaker 2: of the thousand things she did every day to keep
Speaker 2: our broken little family running. I could have gone to her,
Speaker 2: could have told her what I'd heard, what had happened,
Speaker 2: what was out there in those woods. But I didn't.
Speaker 2: I couldn't. How do you tell someone that you've heard
Speaker 2: a monster? How do you explain that everything you thought
Speaker 2: you knew about the world is wrong, that there are
Speaker 2: things out there that aren't supposed to exist? But do
Speaker 2: how do you put that into words that won't make
Speaker 2: you sound crazy? So I didn't say anything. I sat
Speaker 2: there in the grass until my breathing slowed, until my
Speaker 2: heart stopped racing, until my hand stopped shaking. Then I
Speaker 2: got up, brushed myself off and went inside. Mama looked
Speaker 2: up from the sink. You're back early. Everything okay, yes, ma'am,
Speaker 2: I said, just got tired. She nodded, accepting this. Why
Speaker 2: wouldn't she It was just another Saturday, other day. She
Speaker 2: didn't know that everything had changed. She didn't know that
Speaker 2: her son had heard something impossible, something that would live
Speaker 2: in his nightmares for years to come. I went upstairs
Speaker 2: to my room and closed the door, sat on my
Speaker 2: bed and stared at the wall. Tried to make sense
Speaker 2: of what had happened. I couldn't, so I did what
Speaker 2: I'd learned to do with all the things I couldn't
Speaker 2: make sense of. I buried it, pushed it down deep,
Speaker 2: locked it away in a box in my mind, and
Speaker 2: told myself it didn't happen, told myself it was just
Speaker 2: a bear, just my imagination, just the wind playing tricks
Speaker 2: on me. But I knew, deep down, in the place
Speaker 2: where the truth lives, even when you don't want to
Speaker 2: look at it, I knew what i'd heard, and I
Speaker 2: knew I'd never forget it. Chapter three, What Darkness Knows.
Speaker 2: After that day in the woods, something shifted, not just
Speaker 2: in me, though that was part of it, the whole
Speaker 2: world seemed different, like I was looking at it through
Speaker 2: a lens that had been slightly out of focus my
Speaker 2: whole life and had suddenly snapped into clarity. Everything I
Speaker 2: thought I knew was wrong, everything I'd been taught about
Speaker 2: what was real and what wasn't wrong, And I couldn't
Speaker 2: tell anyone about it. So I did what kids do
Speaker 2: when they can't talk about something. I read about it.
Speaker 2: The Chattooga County Library was a small brick building in
Speaker 2: the middle of Somerville, about fifteen miles from Lyarly. Mama
Speaker 2: took me there on Saturdays when she went to do
Speaker 2: her shopping, and while she was at the Pigly Wiggly
Speaker 2: loading up on groceries we could barely afford, I was
Speaker 2: in the stacks hunting for answers. At first, I didn't
Speaker 2: even know what to look for. I wandered through the sections,
Speaker 2: running my fingers along the spines, waiting for something to
Speaker 2: jump out at me, And then I found it. A
Speaker 2: book with a dark cover and yellow letters. The title
Speaker 2: was simple Bigfoot. I pulled it off the shelf with
Speaker 2: shaking hands. The first chapter talked about sightings going back
Speaker 2: hundreds of years. Native America tribes had stories about these creatures.
Speaker 2: They called them different names, Sasquatch, Ti, Zamech, west oh Ma,
Speaker 2: but the descriptions were always the same. Tall Harry walking
Speaker 2: on two legs, incredibly strong, incredibly fast, and incredibly good
Speaker 2: at staying hidden. I read until Mama came to pick
Speaker 2: me up, and then I checked out the book and
Speaker 2: read it again at home. Then I went back for
Speaker 2: more books about the lock Ness Monster, books about the Yetti,
Speaker 2: books about creatures that science said didn't exist, but that
Speaker 2: people kept seeing, kept reporting, kept swearing were real. I
Speaker 2: devoured them all. The librarian, a gray haired woman named
Speaker 2: missus Hendricks, started to notice my interests. She'd save books
Speaker 2: for me, set them aside behind the counter with a
Speaker 2: little sticky note that said Brian on it. She never
Speaker 2: asked why I was so interested in monsters. Maybe she
Speaker 2: thought it was just a phase. Maybe she underst stood
Speaker 2: more than she let on. And stay tuned for more
Speaker 2: sasquatch ot to see. We'll be right back after these messages.
Speaker 2: But here's the thing about reading those books. They didn't
Speaker 2: make me feel better. If anything, they made me feel worse,
Speaker 2: because now I knew I wasn't the only one. Now
Speaker 2: I knew that people had been encountering these things for centuries,
Speaker 2: had been reporting them, had been laughed at and dismissed
Speaker 2: and called crazy, and nothing had changed. The creatures were
Speaker 2: still out there, and the world still refused to believe. Meanwhile,
Speaker 2: life at home was getting worse. Daddy's drinking had always
Speaker 2: been bad, but that fall it got dangerous. He'd switched
Speaker 2: from beer to the hard stuff, bourbon, mostly though he'd
Speaker 2: drink anything with alcohol in it if bourbon wasn't available,
Speaker 2: and he'd started taking pills downers, I learned later quaeludes,
Speaker 2: pain pills, anything that would slow down the world, make
Speaker 2: it soft and fuzzy around the edges. When he was
Speaker 2: on that stuff, he was unpredictable. Sometimes he'd go quiet,
Speaker 2: sitting in his recliner for hours, staring at the TV
Speaker 2: with glassy eyes. Those were the good times. Other times
Speaker 2: he'd get mean. He'd pick fights with Mama over nothing,
Speaker 2: the way she'd cook the potatoes, the fact that I'd
Speaker 2: left a light on, the noise the floorboards made when
Speaker 2: we walked across them. He never hit her, not while
Speaker 2: I was around, anyway, but he came close. I saw
Speaker 2: him get right up in her face, screaming so loud
Speaker 2: that spit flew from his lips. I saw him punch
Speaker 2: holes in walls. I saw him throw a plate of
Speaker 2: food across the kitchen because it wasn't hot enough. Mama
Speaker 2: took it. That's what kills me looking back. She just
Speaker 2: took it. She'd clean up the broken dishes, patch the
Speaker 2: holes in the walls with spackles she bought from the
Speaker 2: hardware store, and go on like nothing had happened, like
Speaker 2: this was just the price you paid for having a family.
Speaker 2: I hated him for it. I hated him so much
Speaker 2: it scared me. Sometime I'd lie in bed at night
Speaker 2: and imagine all the ways I could make him pay,
Speaker 2: make him hurt the way he hurt us. But I
Speaker 2: was twelve years old and he was a grown man,
Speaker 2: and there wasn't anything I could do. Not yet, so
Speaker 2: I escaped to the woods, not to that corner of
Speaker 2: the property. I never went back there, but to my forts,
Speaker 2: my trails, my secret places. I'd spend hours out there
Speaker 2: alone with my thoughts and my bb gun and the
Speaker 2: animals that didn't judge me, didn't expect anything from me.
Speaker 2: It was the only place I could breathe, and sometimes
Speaker 2: late at night when I couldn't sleep, I'd sit by
Speaker 2: my window and look out at the tree line and
Speaker 2: wonder if that thing was out there, listening, waiting, if
Speaker 2: it knew I'd stumbled into its territory, if it remembered
Speaker 2: me the way I remembered it. I never heard it again,
Speaker 2: but I never stopped believing. November came, and with it
Speaker 2: the cold. Not cold like up north, where the snow
Speaker 2: piles up the temperature drops below zero. Georgia cold is different.
Speaker 2: It's wet and raw, the kind of cold that gets
Speaker 2: into your bones and stays there. The old house had
Speaker 2: no insulation to speak of, and the heating system was
Speaker 2: an ancient oil furnace that rattled and coughed and barely
Speaker 2: put out enough heat to keep the pipes from freezing.
Speaker 2: We wore layers inside. Mama knitted me a sweater from yarn.
Speaker 2: She'd bought it a yard sail, and I wore it
Speaker 2: over my regular clothes every day after school. At night,
Speaker 2: I piled every blanket I could find on my bed
Speaker 2: and still woke up shivering. But the cold wasn't the
Speaker 2: worst thing about that November. One night I woke up
Speaker 2: to voices, not Daddy's voice, not mama's. These were different,
Speaker 2: whispery and indistinct, like someone talking in another room. But
Speaker 2: my room was at the end of the hall, and
Speaker 2: there was no one else up here. I lay in bed,
Speaker 2: perfectly still and listened. The voices seemed to be coming
Speaker 2: from the walls. From inside the walls, I could hear
Speaker 2: them murmuring, chattering, having conversations in a language I couldn't understand.
Speaker 2: Sometimes they laughed, sometimes they cried, sometimes they screamed. I
Speaker 2: pulled the covers up over my head and told myself
Speaker 2: it was just the house settling. Old houses made noises,
Speaker 2: That's what Mama always said. Old houses had stories to tell,
Speaker 2: and sometimes they told them at night. But this didn't
Speaker 2: feel like a house settling. This felt like something else,
Speaker 2: something alive, something that was aware of me, that knew
Speaker 2: I was listening, that wanted me to hear. The voices
Speaker 2: stopped around dawn. I got out of bed, with dark
Speaker 2: circles under my eyes, and went downstairs to find Mama
Speaker 2: already up making coffee in the kitchen. You look tired,
Speaker 2: she said, couldn't sleep. She nodded, understanding she'd been having
Speaker 2: trouble sleeping too. I could see it in her face,
Speaker 2: in the way she moved. The house was wearing her down,
Speaker 2: same as it was wearing me. I didn't tell her
Speaker 2: about the voices. What was the point. She had enough
Speaker 2: to worry about without adding her son's nightmares to the list.
Speaker 2: The voices came back the next night, and the night
Speaker 2: after that, and the night after that. But that wasn't
Speaker 2: the worst of it. No, the worst was what started
Speaker 2: happening around the end of November. I woke up one
Speaker 2: night to the feeling that I wasn't alone. You know
Speaker 2: that feeling everyone does, that prickle on the back of
Speaker 2: your neck, that certainty that someone is watching you. I
Speaker 2: felt it, and my eyes snapped open, and there it
Speaker 2: was a figure standing at the foot of my bed.
Speaker 2: It was tall and dark, darker than the darkness around it.
Speaker 2: I couldn't see its face, couldn't see any features at all.
Speaker 2: It was just a shape, avoid a place where the
Speaker 2: light refused to go, and it was staring at me.
Speaker 2: I knew it was staring at me, even though I
Speaker 2: couldn't see its eyes. I tried to scream, nothing came out.
Speaker 2: I tried to move. I couldn't. My body was locked
Speaker 2: in place, frozen like it had been in the woods
Speaker 2: that day, like those fence posts I'd become when I
Speaker 2: heard the thing charging me. I couldn't move, couldn't speak,
Speaker 2: couldn't do anything but lie there and stare at this
Speaker 2: impossible figure at the foot of my bed. It stood
Speaker 2: there for what felt like hours, just watching, just waiting,
Speaker 2: and then without any sound or movement, it was gone.
Speaker 2: One moment it was there, and the next moment I
Speaker 2: was alone in my room, gasping for breath, my heart
Speaker 2: hammering so hard I thought it might crack my ribs.
Speaker 2: I didn't sleep the rest of that night or the next.
Speaker 2: The figure came back, not every night, but often enough.
Speaker 2: Sometimes it stood at the foot of my bed. Sometimes
Speaker 2: it stood in the corner. Once I woke up to
Speaker 2: find it looming over me, so close I should have
Speaker 2: been able to feel its breath on my face. But
Speaker 2: there was no breath, no heat, nothing but that impossible darkness,
Speaker 2: that void where a person should have been. And I
Speaker 2: could never move, never speak, never do anything but lie
Speaker 2: there and wait for it to go away. I know
Speaker 2: now that there's a name for what I was experiencing.
Speaker 2: Sleep paralysis, night terrors. The medical explanations are very tidy,
Speaker 2: very scientific. Your brain wakes up before your body, and
Speaker 2: you hallucinate, and it's all perfectly normal. But here's the thing.
Speaker 2: Those explanations assume that what you're seeing isn't real. They
Speaker 2: assume that the figure at the foot of your bed
Speaker 2: is just a trick of your mind, a remnant of
Speaker 2: a dream, a misfire in your neurons. They don't account
Speaker 2: for what happened next. It was a week before Christmas
Speaker 2: when I heard the scratching. I was lying in bed,
Speaker 2: trying to fall asleep, despite the cold and the fear
Speaker 2: and the weight of everything that was happening in that house.
Speaker 2: Mama had been tired lately, more tired than usual. She'd
Speaker 2: been having headaches, been feeling weak. Daddy was gone off
Speaker 2: somewhere for three days now, and part of me hoped
Speaker 2: he'd never come back. The scratching started in the wall
Speaker 2: next to my bed. At first I thought it was mice.
Speaker 2: We had mice. Every old house in Georgia had mice.
Speaker 2: I'd heard them scurrying in the walls before, their tiny
Speaker 2: claws clicking against the wood. But this wasn't the sound
Speaker 2: of tiny claws. This was bigger, heavier. Something was in
Speaker 2: that wall, something that was scratching at the plaster like
Speaker 2: it wanted to get out. I lay perfectly still, holding
Speaker 2: my breath, listening. The scratching moved from beside my bed
Speaker 2: to the corner of the room, from the corner of
Speaker 2: the room to the closet, from the closet to the
Speaker 2: other wall. It was circling me, moving through the house
Speaker 2: like it owned the place, like I was the intruder
Speaker 2: and it was just trying to scare me off. And
Speaker 2: then it stopped. I waited one minute, two five, nothing.
Speaker 2: I just started to relax when three loud knocks shook
Speaker 2: my bedroom door. I shot up in bed, my heart
Speaker 2: in my throat. Mama wouldn't knock like that. Mama barely
Speaker 2: knocked at all. She'd just tap lightly and call my name.
Speaker 2: These knocks were heavy, deliberate, demanding Mama. My voice came
Speaker 2: out as a whisper. No answer. I got out of
Speaker 2: bed and crossed to the door on legs that didn't
Speaker 2: want to cooperate. My hand was shaking as I reached
Speaker 2: for the doorknob. I turned it, pulled the door open.
Speaker 2: The hallway was empty, but not dark. There was a
Speaker 2: light coming from downstairs, a flickering orange glow that threw
Speaker 2: shadows on the walls. I could smell smoke. Something was burning.
Speaker 2: I ran down the stairs to find Mama standing in
Speaker 2: the living room, staring at the fireplace. We never used
Speaker 2: the fireplace. Daddy had said the chimney was blocked, that
Speaker 2: it wasn't safe. But there was a fire burning in
Speaker 2: it now, a big fire, flames licking up toward the flue,
Speaker 2: casting dancing shadows across the ceiling. Mama, she turned to
Speaker 2: look at me, and her face was pale, paler than
Speaker 2: I'd ever seen it. I didn't light it, she said, Brian,
Speaker 2: I didn't light it. We stood there together, mother and son,
Speaker 2: watching that impossible fire burn in our block chimney. And
Speaker 2: I knew then, with a certainty that went beyond reason,
Speaker 2: that there was something in this house, something that had
Speaker 2: been here before us, something that didn't want us here,
Speaker 2: something that was just getting started. Chapter four, The slow Fade.
Speaker 2: Christmas came and went without much fanfare. Mama did her best,
Speaker 2: she always did her best, putting up a small tree
Speaker 2: in the corner of the living room, wrapping a few presents,
Speaker 2: in newspaper because we couldn't afford real wrapping paper. I
Speaker 2: got a new pocket knife and a pair of jeens
Speaker 2: that actually fit. Daddy showed up on Christmas Eve sober
Speaker 2: for once, and for a few hours it almost felt
Speaker 2: like we were a normal family. Almost. But January brought
Speaker 2: something we weren't prepared for. Mama had been scratching at
Speaker 2: her arms for weeks. I'd noticed it, the way she'd
Speaker 2: dig at her skin when she thought no one was looking,
Speaker 2: the red marks that appeared on her forearms and stayed there.
Speaker 2: She said it was dry skin, the winter air, nothing
Speaker 2: to worry about. But it kept getting worse. The scratching
Speaker 2: became constant, the red marks became welts, and then the
Speaker 2: welts became something else entirely. I came home from school
Speaker 2: one afternoon to find her sitting at the kitchen table,
Speaker 2: staring at her arms. The skin was raised in patches,
Speaker 2: red and angry, like something was trying to push its
Speaker 2: way out from underneath Mama. She looked up at me,
Speaker 2: and I saw fear in her eyes, real fear, the
Speaker 2: kind of fear I'd only seen in my own reflection.
Speaker 2: After nights, when the dark figure visited. I need to
Speaker 2: see a doctor, she said. The doctor and lyrely, took
Speaker 2: one look at her arms and sent us to a
Speaker 2: specialist in Rome. The specialist took one look and sent
Speaker 2: us to Atlanta. And the doctors in Atlanta a whole
Speaker 2: team of them. It seemed like ran test after test
Speaker 2: after test. I remember sitting in the waiting room of
Speaker 2: Emory University Hospital, watching Mama disappear through door after door,
Speaker 2: coming back looking more tired and more scared each time.
Speaker 2: Daddy was there for the first visit, but after that
Speaker 2: he started finding excuses not to come work. He said,
Speaker 2: bills to pay, couldn't take time off. We both knew
Speaker 2: it was lies. Finally, after two weeks of tests, a
Speaker 2: doctor sat us down in a small room with no
Speaker 2: windows and told us what they'd found, myacosis fungoids. I
Speaker 2: didn't know what that meant. The words sounded foreign, clinical,
Speaker 2: like something out of one of those medical shows Mama
Speaker 2: liked to watch. The doctor explained it in terms I
Speaker 2: could understand, but even then it took a while to
Speaker 2: sink in skin cancer. Mama had skin cancer, a rare
Speaker 2: kind that started in the white blood cells and showed
Speaker 2: up in the skin it had been growing for a while,
Speaker 2: he said, maybe years. By the time it showed itself
Speaker 2: on the surface, it was already everywhere underneath. How long
Speaker 2: Mama asked? Her voice was steady, but I could see
Speaker 2: her hands shaking in her lap. The doctor didn't want
Speaker 2: to answer. I could see it in his face, the
Speaker 2: way he looked away, the way he shuffled his papers.
Speaker 2: How long, Mama asked again? Six months? He said, maybe
Speaker 2: a year. With treatment, the world stopped. I know that
Speaker 2: sounds dramatic, but it's true. In that moment, everything I
Speaker 2: thought I knew about my life, about my future, about
Speaker 2: what would happen next, all of it just stopped, like
Speaker 2: someone had hit pause on a tape player and forgotten
Speaker 2: to hit play again. Six months. My mama had six
Speaker 2: months to live. They admitted her to the hospital that day,
Speaker 2: started treatment immediately, chemotherapy. They called it poisoned to kill
Speaker 2: the cancer, but the poison killed everything else too, her hair,
Speaker 2: her appetite, her strength. Day by day, I watched my
Speaker 2: mama fade away, watched her become someone I barely recognized.
Speaker 2: I was fourteen years old. My birthday had come and
Speaker 2: gone in December without much celebration, fourteen years old, and
Speaker 2: I was losing the only person in the world who'd
Speaker 2: ever really loved me. Daddy disappeared.
Speaker 1: Oh.
Speaker 2: He came by the hospital a few times in the beginning,
Speaker 2: stood in the corner of Mama's room with his hands
Speaker 2: in his pockets, not knowing what to say or do.
Speaker 2: But as the weeks went on, his visits got shorter
Speaker 2: and less frequent, and then they stopped altogether. I found
Speaker 2: out later that he checked up with some woman over
Speaker 2: in trying. Found out he was spending his days drinking
Speaker 2: and popping pills and doing whatever else people do when
Speaker 2: they're too much of a coward to face reality. But
Speaker 2: at the time, all I knew was that he was gone,
Speaker 2: just gone, like I didn't matter, like Mama didn't matter.
Speaker 2: And stay tuned for more sasquatch ot to see We'll
Speaker 2: be right back after these messages, like we were just
Speaker 2: problems he could walk away from. I hated him for it.
Speaker 2: I hated him more than I'd ever hated anything in
Speaker 2: my life. But I didn't have time for hate. I
Speaker 2: had to survive. The Henderson saved my life. Brad Henderson
Speaker 2: was my best friend, my only friend really. We'd met
Speaker 2: at school a few months after we moved to Liary,
Speaker 2: bonding over a shared love of comic books and a
Speaker 2: shared hatred of the bullies who made our lives miserable.
Speaker 2: He was a skinny kid with red hair and freckles,
Speaker 2: quiet like me, the kind of kid who faded into
Speaker 2: the background and liked it that way. His parents, Bill
Speaker 2: and Angie, were good people, the kind of people who
Speaker 2: went to church on Sundays and actually meant it, the
Speaker 2: kind of people who saw a kid in trouble and
Speaker 2: stepped up without being asked. When they found out about mama.
Speaker 2: When they found out that Daddy had vanished and I
Speaker 2: was living alone in that house at the end of
Speaker 2: the dirt road, they didn't hesitate. Angie showed up at
Speaker 2: our door one evening with a casse role in her
Speaker 2: hands and a look on her face that said she
Speaker 2: wasn't taking no for an answer. You're coming to stay
Speaker 2: with us, she said, just until your mama gets better.
Speaker 2: I wanted to argue, wanted to say I could take
Speaker 2: care of myself, that I didn't need charity, that I'd
Speaker 2: be fine. But the truth was I wasn't fine. I
Speaker 2: was fourteen years old and terrified and alone, and the
Speaker 2: house I was living in had something wrong with it,
Speaker 2: something that came alive at night and whispered in the
Speaker 2: walls and stood at the foot of my bed with
Speaker 2: no face and no mercy. So I went. The Henderson
Speaker 2: house was small but warm, two bedrooms, one bathroom, a
Speaker 2: kitchen that always smelled like something baking. Brad gave up
Speaker 2: his room for me and slept on the couch, even
Speaker 2: though I told him he didn't have to. You need
Speaker 2: it more than me, he said, And that was that.
Speaker 2: I went to school, I did my homework, I ate
Speaker 2: dinner with the Hendersons every night and pretended that everything
Speaker 2: was normal. And on weekends Bill drove me to Atlanta
Speaker 2: to visit Mama. Those visits were hard. The chemotherapy was brutal.
Speaker 2: Mama lost all her hair within the first month, and
Speaker 2: she was so weak she could barely lift her head
Speaker 2: off the pillow. The cancer was everywhere now. The doctors
Speaker 2: talked about it in hushed voices, using words I didn't understand, spreading, aggressive,
Speaker 2: resistant to treatment. But Mama fought, God did she fight.
Speaker 2: I'm not going anywhere, she told me one Sunday afternoon,
Speaker 2: her voice barely more than a whisper you hear me, Brian,
Speaker 2: I'm not leaving you. I held her hand so thin now,
Speaker 2: the bones standing out like sticks under paper, and I
Speaker 2: believed her. I had to believe her, because if I didn't,
Speaker 2: if I let myself think for even one second that
Speaker 2: she might really die, I would fall apart completely. Yes, ma'am,
Speaker 2: I said, She squeezed my hand. That's my boy. The
Speaker 2: months crawled by. Spring came, and with it the first
Speaker 2: signs that maybe the doctors had been wrong. Mama's numbers
Speaker 2: started improving. The cancer wasn't growing anymore. It wasn't shrinking either,
Speaker 2: but it wasn't growing. The doctors called it a plateau,
Speaker 2: a holding pattern. They said it was rare, but not
Speaker 2: unheard of. They said we shouldn't get our hopes up.
Speaker 2: We got our hopes up anyway. Summer came. I turned
Speaker 2: fifteen in a hospital room, eating cake that Angie had baked,
Speaker 2: and watching Mama smile for the first time in months.
Speaker 2: She was still weak, still bald, still a shadow of
Speaker 2: the woman she'd been, but she was alive. She was fighting,
Speaker 2: and she was winning. Fall came. The leaves changed outside
Speaker 2: Mama's hospital window, and she watched them with something like
Speaker 2: wonder in her eyes. I didn't think i'd see another fall.
Speaker 2: She said, you'll see a lot more. I told her.
Speaker 2: She smiled. Promise. I couldn't promise. I couldn't promise anything,
Speaker 2: but I nodded anyway, because that's what she needed, That's
Speaker 2: what we both needed. December came, My birthday came and went,
Speaker 2: and then three days before Christmas, almost a year to
Speaker 2: the day after she was diagnosed, the doctors called a meeting.
Speaker 2: I sat in that same windowless room where they'd first
Speaker 2: told us about the cancer. Bill and Angie sat on
Speaker 2: either side of me, their hands on my shoulders like anchors,
Speaker 2: keeping me from floating away. The doctor who came in
Speaker 2: wasn't the same one who'd given us six months a
Speaker 2: year ago. This was someone new, someone younger, someone with
Speaker 2: a smile on her face that I didn't dare interpret.
Speaker 2: Jeane's cancer is in remission, she said. I didn't understand.
Speaker 2: The words, didn't compute. I just sat there staring at her,
Speaker 2: waiting for the other shoe to drop. The tumors have
Speaker 2: shrunk significantly, the doctor continued. Her blood work is improving.
Speaker 2: She's not out of the woods yet. She'll need monitoring,
Speaker 2: follow up treatments, regular checkups. But for now the cancer
Speaker 2: is retreating. She's going to be okay. My voice came out,
Speaker 2: cracked and strange. The doctor's smile widened. She's going home, Brian,
Speaker 2: your Mama's coming home for Christmas. I cried. I'm not
Speaker 2: ashamed to admit it. I sat in that windowless room
Speaker 2: and I cried like a baby, and Bill and Angie
Speaker 2: held me, and for the first time in almost a year,
Speaker 2: I let myself believe that everything might actually be okay.
Speaker 2: Mama came home on December twenty second. She weighed maybe
Speaker 2: eighty pounds. Her head was bald and smooth, covered with
Speaker 2: the scarf that Angie had knitted for her. She was
Speaker 2: so weak she could barely walk, and Bill had to
Speaker 2: carry her from the car to the house while I
Speaker 2: held the door open and tried not to cry again.
Speaker 2: But she was home. She was alive. She'd beaten the odds,
Speaker 2: beaten the doctor's predictions, beaten death itself. And the first
Speaker 2: thing she did once she was settled on the couch
Speaker 2: with a blanket over her legs and a cup of
Speaker 2: tea in her hands, was look at Daddy's empty chair
Speaker 2: and make a decision. We're leaving, she said. I thought
Speaker 2: I'd misheard her. What we're leaving, Brian, This house, this marriage,
Speaker 2: all of it. She turned to look at me, and
Speaker 2: despite everything she'd been through, despite how weak and frail
Speaker 2: she was, there was steel in her eyes, the steel
Speaker 2: I remembered from before she got sick, the steel that
Speaker 2: had always been there, hiding under the surface, waiting for
Speaker 2: its moment. Your daddy isn't coming back, she said, And
Speaker 2: even if he did, I wouldn't take him. I spent
Speaker 2: a year fighting to stay alive, and I'll be damned
Speaker 2: if I'm going to spend whatever time I have left
Speaker 2: living like this. She reached out and took my hand.
Speaker 2: It's just you and me now, baby, you and me
Speaker 2: against the world. You're ready for that. I looked at
Speaker 2: my mama, this small, fierce woman who'd stared down death
Speaker 2: and won, and I nodded, yes, ma'am, I said, I'm ready.
Speaker 2: But I wasn't ready for what happened next. Nobody could
Speaker 2: have been ready for what happened next. Chapter five, Fire
Speaker 2: in the Night. The hospital had sent Mama home with
Speaker 2: pain medication, strong stuff, oxycodone, morphine. Things I didn't know
Speaker 2: the names of Back then, she was supposed to take
Speaker 2: them for the lingering pain from the cancer and the
Speaker 2: treatment to help her sleep, to make the transition back
Speaker 2: to normal life a little easier. She never took them,
Speaker 2: not because she didn't hurt. Lord knows she hurt. I
Speaker 2: could see it in the way she moved, the way
Speaker 2: she held herself, the way she sometimes stopped in the
Speaker 2: middle of doing something and just stood there with her
Speaker 2: eyes closed, waiting for a wave of pain to pass.
Speaker 2: But she'd seen what pills did to Daddy. She'd watched
Speaker 2: him disappear into bottles and baggies, watched him choose chemicals
Speaker 2: over his family. She wasn't about to follow him down
Speaker 2: that road. I'd rather hurt than not be here, she
Speaker 2: told me once, when I asked why she didn't take
Speaker 2: her medicine. Pain means I'm alive. I can live with pain.
Speaker 2: So the pills sat in the medicine cabinet, a whole
Speaker 2: pharmacy's worth of narcotics, just waiting. Daddy found them within
Speaker 2: a week. I don't know how he knew we were back.
Speaker 2: Maybe someone in town told him, maybe he'd been watching
Speaker 2: the house. Maybe he just got lucky but two days
Speaker 2: after Christmas, he showed up at the front door like
Speaker 2: nothing had happened, like he hadn't abandoned us for almost
Speaker 2: a year, like he hadn't left his wife to die
Speaker 2: and his son to fend for himself. He looked bad,
Speaker 2: worse than I'd ever seen him. His face was gaunt,
Speaker 2: his eyes were bloodshot, and his hand shook so bad
Speaker 2: he could barely hold his cigarette. Whatever he'd been doing
Speaker 2: for the past year, it hadn't been good to him, Jeane,
Speaker 2: he said. When Mama opened the door, Baby, I'm so sorry,
Speaker 2: I'm so don't Mama's voice was ice. Don't you dare?
Speaker 2: I know I messed up. I know I shouldn't have
Speaker 2: you left. Mama stepped forward, and even as small and
Speaker 2: frail as she was, Daddy took a step back. I
Speaker 2: was dying, Jerry, I was dying, and you left. You
Speaker 2: left me alone, you left Brian alone, and now you
Speaker 2: show up at my door with sorry on your lips,
Speaker 2: like that's supposed to fix anything. I was scared. Daddy said,
Speaker 2: I didn't know how to handle it. You were a coward.
Speaker 2: Mama said, You've always been a coward, and I'm done.
Speaker 2: You hear me, I'm done. She tried to close the door,
Speaker 2: Daddy stuck his foot in it. Just let me get
Speaker 2: my stuff, he said, I'll be out of your hair.
Speaker 2: I just need my stuff. Mama stared at him for
Speaker 2: a long moment, then she stepped back and let him in.
Speaker 2: I watched from the hallway as he moved through the house,
Speaker 2: gathering things, clothes, tools, a few bottles of boo he'd
Speaker 2: hidden in place his mama hadn't found. And then he
Speaker 2: went into the bathroom, and I heard him rummaging around
Speaker 2: in the medicine cabinet. And when he came out, his
Speaker 2: pockets were bulging. He'd taken mama's pills, all of them, Jerry,
Speaker 2: Mama started, I need them more than you do, he said,
Speaker 2: And then he was out the door, climbing into his truck,
Speaker 2: disappearing down that long dirt road. We never saw him again.
Speaker 2: Well that's not entirely true. We saw what he did
Speaker 2: with those pills. In a town as small as Liarly,
Speaker 2: word travels fast, Liarly was the kind of place where
Speaker 2: everybody knew everybody's business. Population maybe a thousand, no stoplight,
Speaker 2: one gas station, one grocery store, two churches, the kind
Speaker 2: of place where you couldn't sneeze without three people asking
Speaker 2: if you were coming down with something. Word got around
Speaker 2: quick about what Daddy was doing. He wasn't just taking
Speaker 2: the pills, he was selling them, trading them, using them
Speaker 2: to buy more of the downers he really wanted. He'd
Speaker 2: become a small time dealer, operating out of whatever hole
Speaker 2: he was living in, feeding his habit by feeding other peoples.
Speaker 2: And word got around about us too, about Mama's cancer,
Speaker 2: about how the church had taken up a collection to
Speaker 2: help with medical bills, about how the community had rallied
Speaker 2: around us while Daddy was nowhere to be found. People
Speaker 2: were angry, not at us, at him, at this man
Speaker 2: who'd taken their charity and their goodwill and thrown it
Speaker 2: away for pills, and booze, at this husband who'd abandoned
Speaker 2: his dying wife, At this father who'd left his child
Speaker 2: to fend for himself. I didn't know how angry until
Speaker 2: that night in January. I was asleep when the noise started.
Speaker 2: At first, I thought I was dreaming. The sounds were muffled,
Speaker 2: distant voices, vehicles, the crunch of tires on gravel. But
Speaker 2: then Mama was shaking me awake, her hand on my shoulder,
Speaker 2: her face pale in the darkness. Brian, Brian, wake up,
Speaker 2: what's wrong. Something's happening outside. I got out of bed
Speaker 2: and followed her to the window. What I saw there
Speaker 2: is burned into my memory like a brand. The front
Speaker 2: yard was full of people, twenty maybe more, all of
Speaker 2: them dressed in white robes, all of them wearing masks
Speaker 2: or hoods that covered their faces. And in the center
Speaker 2: of the yard, right in the middle of the dead
Speaker 2: winter grass, was a wooden cross, twenty feet tall at least,
Speaker 2: and it was burning. The Ku Klux Klan had come
Speaker 2: to our house. I'd heard of the Klan, of course
Speaker 2: everyone in Georgia had. They were supposed to be a
Speaker 2: relic of the past, something from the bad old days
Speaker 2: that didn't exist anymore. But here they were standing in
Speaker 2: our front yard, their robes glowing orange in the firelight,
Speaker 2: their faces hidden behind white cloth. Get away from the window,
Speaker 2: Mama said. Her voice was steady, but I could see
Speaker 2: her hands shaking. Get down, Crouch beneath the windowsill, listening
Speaker 2: to the crackle of the flames and the murmur of
Speaker 2: voices outside. I couldn't make out what they were saying.
Speaker 2: It was just a low rumble, a crowd noise, punctuated
Speaker 2: by the occasional shout or cheer. Why, I asked, why
Speaker 2: are they here? Mama didn't answer for a long moment.
Speaker 2: When she did, her voice was barely a whisper. Your daddy,
Speaker 2: She said, this is because of your daddy. I learned
Speaker 2: later what had happened. The clan in that part of Georgia,
Speaker 2: what was left of it, anyway, had gotten wind of
Speaker 2: Daddy's activities. They'd heard about the collection the church had
Speaker 2: taken up for us. They'd heard about Daddy abandoning his family,
Speaker 2: about him stealing the pain medication meant for his dying wife,
Speaker 2: about him selling drugs in a community that had shown
Speaker 2: us nothing but kindness. They didn't approve. Now, I want
Speaker 2: to be clear about something. The clan is evil, always
Speaker 2: has been, always will be. What they did that night
Speaker 2: wasn't justice. It was terrorism. Burning across in someone's yard
Speaker 2: isn't a warning. It's a threat, a promise of violence
Speaker 2: if you don't fall in line. But I also understood
Speaker 2: even then that this wasn't really about us. Mama hadn't
Speaker 2: done anything wrong. I hadn't done anything wrong. This was
Speaker 2: about Daddy, about his choices, about the shame he'd brought
Speaker 2: on his family, and a community that took such things seriously.
Speaker 2: We stayed huddled under that window for what felt like hours,
Speaker 2: listening to the fire burn and the crowd murmur, And
Speaker 2: then just as suddenly as they'd appeared, they were gone.
Speaker 2: The headlights of their trucks were seated down the dirt road,
Speaker 2: the murmur of voices faded into the night, and we
Speaker 2: were alone with the smoldering remains of a twenty foot
Speaker 2: cross in our front yard. Mama called the sheriff. He
Speaker 2: came out, took some notes, shook his head a lot,
Speaker 2: said he'd look into it, but we all knew nothing
Speaker 2: would come of it. The clan protected their own and
Speaker 2: the law, and that part of Georgia wasn't exactly eager
Speaker 2: to go poking around in their business. Y'all might want
Speaker 2: to think about moving, the sheriff said, before he left,
Speaker 2: might be healthier. Mama looked at the burned cross, than
Speaker 2: at me, then back at the sheriff. We're already planning
Speaker 2: on it, she said.
Speaker 1: We left.
Speaker 2: Liarly two weeks later, Mama had already filed for divorce.
Speaker 2: Turns out it's not hard to get a divorce when
Speaker 2: your husband has abandoned you for a year and has
Speaker 2: multiple witnesses to his drug dealing. The paperwork went through quick,
Speaker 2: quicker than I'd expected, and just like that, we weren't
Speaker 2: the Pattersons anymore. Well, I was still a Patterson. I
Speaker 2: kept Daddy's name because it was the only name I'd
Speaker 2: ever had, but Mama went back to her maiden name,
Speaker 2: Jeene Turner, like she was reclaiming something that had been
Speaker 2: taken from her. We couldn't afford much. What little money
Speaker 2: we had went to first and last month's rent on
Speaker 2: a tiny apartment in the low income housing complex over
Speaker 2: in Somerville. Two bedrooms, one bathroom, the size of a closet.
Speaker 2: The walls were thin enough to hear our neighbor's TVs,
Speaker 2: and the carpet was stained in ways I didn't want
Speaker 2: to think about. But it was ours, and it was safe,
Speaker 2: and most importantly, it was far away from that house
Speaker 2: and lyrely, far away from the woods and the things
Speaker 2: that lived in them, far away from the darkness that
Speaker 2: had followed us for too long, or so I thought.
Speaker 2: The thing about trauma is that it doesn't care where
Speaker 2: you live. You can move across town or across the country,
Speaker 2: but you can't outrun the things that live inside your head.
Speaker 2: I know that now. I didn't know it. Then the
Speaker 2: nightmares followed me to Somerville. The dark figure that had
Speaker 2: stood at the foot of my bed, and lyrely he
Speaker 2: came with us, appearing in my new room at random intervals,
Speaker 2: standing in the corner or looming over me while I
Speaker 2: lay frozen and unable to scream. The voices in the
Speaker 2: walls were gone, and the scratching was gone, but the
Speaker 2: dreams remained vivid, terrible dreams of something chase seeing me
Speaker 2: through endless woods, something that huffed and growled and never
Speaker 2: quite let me see its face. I didn't tell Mama,
Speaker 2: she had enough to worry about. After we got settled,
Speaker 2: she started looking for work. It wasn't easy. She was
Speaker 2: still weak from the cancer treatment, still bald under the
Speaker 2: scarf she wore, still dealing with follow up appointments and
Speaker 2: medications and all the aftermath of almost dying. But Jean
Speaker 2: Turner wasn't the kind of woman to sit around feeling
Speaker 2: sorry for herself. She got a job at the grocery store. First,
Speaker 2: part time, minimum wage, standing on her feet for six
Speaker 2: hours a day, bagging other people's groceries. It wasn't much,
Speaker 2: but it was something. And then she got a second job,
Speaker 2: cleaning offices at night. And then, because apparently two jobs
Speaker 2: weren't enough, she enrolled in classes at the community college.
Speaker 2: I'm going to get my degree, she told me one night,
Speaker 2: her textbook spread out on the kitchen table while she
Speaker 2: drank coffee to stay awake. I'm going to make something
Speaker 2: of myself for you, for us. I wanted to tell
Speaker 2: her to slow down. I wanted to tell her that
Speaker 2: she didn't have to do this, that we'd be fine,
Speaker 2: that her health was more important than any degree. But
Speaker 2: I saw the determination in her eyes, the same steel
Speaker 2: that had helped her beat cancer, and I knew better
Speaker 2: than to argue yes, ma'am, I said instead, And because
Speaker 2: I was my mother's son, I got a job too.
Speaker 2: I was fifteen years old and working at the Dairy
Speaker 2: Queen after school, flipping burgers and making blizzards and mopping
Speaker 2: floors at the end of the night. The pay was terrible,
Speaker 2: but I didn't complain. Every dollar I earned was a
Speaker 2: dollar that Mama didn't have to worry about school, clothes,
Speaker 2: lunch money, the electric bill when it got too high.
Speaker 2: These were the things I bought with my minimum wage paycheck,
Speaker 2: and every one of them felt like a victory. I
Speaker 2: didn't have time for the woods anymore, didn't have time
Speaker 2: for forts, or maps or reading about cryptids in the library.
Speaker 2: My life had narrowed down to three things, school work
Speaker 2: and taking care of Mama. Everything else was a luxury
Speaker 2: I couldn't afford. But I never forgot what I'd heard
Speaker 2: in those woods, back and lirely, never forgot the huffing
Speaker 2: and the growling, and the footsteps that sounded too big
Speaker 2: to be real. Never forgot the thing that had charged
Speaker 2: at me and stopped just twenty feet away, hidden in
Speaker 2: the underbrush, breathing and watching and deciding whether I was
Speaker 2: worth killing. I knew it was real. I knew it
Speaker 2: was out there, and someday, when I had the time
Speaker 2: and the resources and the freedom to look for answers,
Speaker 2: I was going to find it again. But first I
Speaker 2: had to grow up. First, I had to survive
Speaker 1: Di