Speaker 1: Now one of your pudding. I got a string going
Speaker 1: on here, something just cause 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 when I'm out there. I thought of
Speaker 1: adventures about tex forty nine. I don't know easy ann
Speaker 1: out there?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm walking right head uh Part two, Finding Myself,
Speaker 2: Chapter six. The years between the next several years passed
Speaker 2: in a blur of work in school and the slow,
Speaker 2: steady process of healing. Mama got her degree. It took
Speaker 2: her four years of night classes and weekend study sessions,
Speaker 2: four years of working multiple jobs while her body slowly
Speaker 2: recovered from the cancer. That had nearly killed her, but
Speaker 2: she did it. I remember sitting in the audience at
Speaker 2: her graduation ceremony, watching her walk across that stage and
Speaker 2: her cap and gown, and feeling something I hadn't felt
Speaker 2: in a long time. Pride, real honest pride in someone
Speaker 2: I loved. She cried when she got her diploma. I
Speaker 2: did too. I graduated high school without much fanfare. My
Speaker 2: grades were decent, not great, but decent, good enough to
Speaker 2: get into the local state college if I'd wanted to go.
Speaker 2: But college costs money we didn't have. And besides, I'd
Speaker 2: spent the last few years working. I knew how to
Speaker 2: hold down a job, how to show up on time,
Speaker 2: how to do what needed doing without being told twice.
Speaker 2: That seemed more valuable than any degree, so I kept working.
Speaker 2: The dairy queen gave way to a convenience store, which
Speaker 2: gave way to another convenience store, which eventually led to
Speaker 2: a management position at a gas station on the edge
Speaker 2: of town. I was good at it, good at dealing
Speaker 2: with people, good at handling problems, good at keeping my
Speaker 2: cool when things got hectic. By the time I was twenty,
Speaker 2: I was running the place. By the time I was
Speaker 2: twenty two. I was managing multiple locations for a restaurant chain.
Speaker 2: I was making money, I was building a life. I
Speaker 2: was doing everything society said I was supposed to do,
Speaker 2: and I was absolutely miserable. I need to talk about
Speaker 2: something now that I didn't talk about then, not to anyone,
Speaker 2: not for years. I knew I was different from other
Speaker 2: boys pretty early on, even before I knew the words
Speaker 2: for it. I knew something about me didn't fit the mold.
Speaker 2: While my classmates were chasing girls and bragging about their conquests,
Speaker 2: I felt nothing, no interest, no desire. The whole performance
Speaker 2: of teenage masculinity felt like a foreign language I was
Speaker 2: supposed to speak but had never learned. I told myself
Speaker 2: it would change, told myself I was just a late bloomer,
Speaker 2: that the right girl would come along and everything would
Speaker 2: click into place. But the right girl never came. The
Speaker 2: right person did eventually, but it wasn't a girl. His
Speaker 2: name was Marcus, and he worked at the restaurant with me.
Speaker 2: We started as co workers, became friends, and then one
Speaker 2: night after closing, became something more. It was terrifying and
Speaker 2: exhilarating and absolutely right in a way that nothing in
Speaker 2: my life had ever been before I was gay. There
Speaker 2: I said it, three words that seemed so simple now
Speaker 2: but felt like a death sentence back then. This was
Speaker 2: rural Georgia in the early nineties. People didn't talk about
Speaker 2: things like that, and if they did, it wasn't with kindness.
Speaker 2: Marcus and I kept our relationship secret for as long
Speaker 2: as we could. We were careful, always meeting in private,
Speaker 2: never showing affection in public, maintaining the fiction that we
Speaker 2: were just good friends. But secrets have a way of
Speaker 2: getting out, especially in small towns. Someone saw us, someone talked,
Speaker 2: and within a week everyone knew. I lost friends. People
Speaker 2: I'd known for years suddenly couldn't look me in the eye.
Speaker 2: Coworkers who laughed at my jokes and shared their lunch
Speaker 2: with me started avoiding me in the break room. Even
Speaker 2: some of my family, aunts and uncles and cousins I'd
Speaker 2: grown up with stopped calling, stopped coming around, stopped acknowledging
Speaker 2: that I existed. It hurt, Lord did it hurt. But
Speaker 2: it all so clarified something for me. The people who
Speaker 2: left weren't people worth keeping. The ones who stayed, Mama Brad,
Speaker 2: a handful of others those were the real ones. Those
Speaker 2: were the ones who loved me for who I was,
Speaker 2: not for who they wanted me to be. Marcus and
Speaker 2: I didn't last. He moved to Atlanta. I stayed in Somerville,
Speaker 2: and the distance proved too much, but I don't regret
Speaker 2: any of it. He helped me figure out who I was.
Speaker 2: That's worth more than I can say. By my mid twenties,
Speaker 2: I'd settled into something resembling a stable life. I had
Speaker 2: a decent apartment, a reliable car, a job that paid
Speaker 2: well enough. Mama was doing better than ever. The cancer
Speaker 2: had stayed in remission. She'd gotten promoted at her company,
Speaker 2: and for the first time in my memory, she wasn't
Speaker 2: struggling just to survive. But I wasn't happy. I was comfortable.
Speaker 2: Sure I was getting by, but there was a restlessness
Speaker 2: in me that wouldn't go away, A feeling that I
Speaker 2: was meant for something more than counting invne and scheduling
Speaker 2: shifts and dealing with customer complaints. I'd always wanted to
Speaker 2: be a cop. I know that sounds strange, given everything
Speaker 2: I'd been through, given my experiences with the sheriff back
Speaker 2: in Liarly, with the system that had failed us again
Speaker 2: and again. But that was exactly why I wanted it.
Speaker 2: I'd seen what happened when the people in charge didn't care,
Speaker 2: when they let problems fester because solving them was too hard,
Speaker 2: or too dangerous, or too politically inconvenient. I wanted to
Speaker 2: be different. I wanted to be the kind of cop
Speaker 2: who actually helped people. The problem was I didn't know
Speaker 2: how to make that happen. I was twenty six years old,
Speaker 2: with no college degree and no law enforcement experience. The
Speaker 2: idea of starting over, of going through academy training and
Speaker 2: working my way up from the bottom, seemed impossible. And
Speaker 2: then I saw an ad in the paper corrections officer wanted.
Speaker 2: It said Georgia Department of Juvenile Justice. It wasn't exactly
Speaker 2: what I'd imagined, but it was a start. The Youth
Speaker 2: Detention Facility was a maximum security lock up about an
Speaker 2: hour from Somerville. The kids inside, and they were kids,
Speaker 2: some as young as thirteen, had done terrible things. Murder, rape,
Speaker 2: armed robbery, gang violence, the worst of the worst, locked
Speaker 2: away from society until the courts decided what to do
Speaker 2: with them. My first day on the job, I watched
Speaker 2: a sixteen year old try to stab another kid with
Speaker 2: a sharpened toothbrush. My second day, I broke up a
Speaker 2: fight that left two teenagers bleeding on the floor. By
Speaker 2: the end of my first week, I'd been threatened, spat on,
Speaker 2: and called names I won't repeat here. I loved it.
Speaker 2: Not the violence, I never loved that, but I loved
Speaker 2: the work. I loved trying to reach these kids, trying
Speaker 2: to find the human beings underneath all that anger and pain.
Speaker 2: Some of them were beyond reaching, too far gone into
Speaker 2: whatever darkness had claimed them, but some of them weren't.
Speaker 2: Some of them just needed someone to see them, to
Speaker 2: listen to them, to treat them like people instead of
Speaker 2: problems to be managed. I worked at that facility for
Speaker 2: seven years, started as a corrections officer, worked my way
Speaker 2: up to supervisor, then assistant director, and finally director. By
Speaker 2: the time I left, I'd overseen a complete transformation of
Speaker 2: how the place operated. Less punishment, more rehabilitation, less isolation,
Speaker 2: more counseling. The recidivism rates dropped, the violence decreased. Kids
Speaker 2: who came in as monsters started leaving as something closer
Speaker 2: to human. I was proud of what I'd accomplished, but
Speaker 2: I still wasn't satisfied, because the whole time I was
Speaker 2: working at that facility, I was thinking about the streets,
Speaker 2: about the real work, about being a cop the way
Speaker 2: I'd always imagined out there in the world, making a
Speaker 2: difference where it counted. I was in my early thirties
Speaker 2: when I finally made the leap. It was time Chapter seven,
Speaker 2: Badge and Blue. The police academy was harder than I expect.
Speaker 2: Not the physical stuff. Seven years in juvenile corrections had
Speaker 2: kept me in pretty good shape. It was the mental
Speaker 2: stuff that got to me. The laws and procedures and protocols,
Speaker 2: the endless acronyms and forms and codes. I'd spent my
Speaker 2: career learning how to handle kids who'd already been caught.
Speaker 2: Now I had to learn how to catch them in
Speaker 2: the first place. But I made it through, graduated in
Speaker 2: the middle of my class, which wasn't bad for a
Speaker 2: guy who'd never been to college. And then I got
Speaker 2: my first assignment, such as Georgia, population maybe a few
Speaker 2: hundred depending on who was counting, elevation three thousand feet
Speaker 2: up in the Blue Ridge Mountains, where the air was
Speaker 2: thin and the winters were cold, and the nearest backup
Speaker 2: was forty five minutes away. It was the kind of
Speaker 2: place that time had forgotten, the kind of place where
Speaker 2: people came to get away from everything or to hide.
Speaker 2: The police department consisted of me, the chief, and one
Speaker 2: other officer. We covered an area the size of some counties,
Speaker 2: all of it mountains and hollers and dirt roads that
Speaker 2: turned to mud every time it rained. Most of our
Speaker 2: calls were domestic disputes and drunk drivers, with the occasional
Speaker 2: drug bust or burglary thrown in to keep things interesting.
Speaker 2: I loved it. After years in the youth facility dealing
Speaker 2: with the concentrated misery of incarcerated teenagers, such us felt
Speaker 2: like freedom. I spent my days driving through the mountains,
Speaker 2: checking on residents, getting to know the community. The people
Speaker 2: were suspicious at first, mountain folk always are with outsiders,
Speaker 2: but I worked to earn their trust. Showed up to
Speaker 2: church suppers and community meetings, learned who was related to who,
Speaker 2: which families had been feuding for generations, which houses to
Speaker 2: approach carefully, and which ones to avoid altogether. And I
Speaker 2: met Daniel. Daniel was a deputy with the Union County
Speaker 2: Sheriff's Office, which overlapped our jurisdiction in places. We met
Speaker 2: at a multi agency training exercise, spent the whole old
Speaker 2: day partnered up for scenario work, and by the end
Speaker 2: of it, I knew there was something there, something I
Speaker 2: hadn't felt since Marcus all those years ago. He was tall,
Speaker 2: dark haired, with a smile that could light up a
Speaker 2: room and a laugh that made you want to join in,
Speaker 2: even if you didn't know what was funny. He was
Speaker 2: from the area, his family had lived in these mountains
Speaker 2: for generations, but he'd spent a few years in Atlanta
Speaker 2: before coming back home. Like me, he'd found his way
Speaker 2: into law enforcement almost by accident. Like me, he discovered
Speaker 2: it was what he was meant to do. We started
Speaker 2: slow coffee after shift dinner on our days off, long
Speaker 2: conversations about everything and nothing, the kind of talking you
Speaker 2: do when you're getting to know someone you hope to
Speaker 2: know for a long time. And then one night, parked
Speaker 2: on an overlook with the whole blue ridge spread out
Speaker 2: below us like a crumpled blanket, he kissed me. I've
Speaker 2: been wanting to do that for weeks, he said, what
Speaker 2: took you so long? I asked, He laughed, and that
Speaker 2: was it. That was the beginning of us. We moved
Speaker 2: in together after six months, got a little cabin outside
Speaker 2: of town. Nothing fancy, just a place where we could
Speaker 2: be ourselves without the whole world watching. Being gay in
Speaker 2: rural Georgia was easier than it used to be, but
Speaker 2: it still wasn't easy. We weren't hiding, exactly, but we
Speaker 2: weren't advertising either. The people who needed to know knew,
Speaker 2: the people who didn't could mind their own business. Work
Speaker 2: was good. Life was good for the first time, and
Speaker 2: as long as I could remember, I was genuinely happy.
Speaker 2: But there was still that itch, that restlessness that had
Speaker 2: never quite gone away, and it had a name now,
Speaker 2: a shape, a direction, Bigfoot. I'd never stopped thinking about
Speaker 2: what had happened in those woods back in Lirely, never
Speaker 2: stopped wondering what I'd heard that day, what had charged
Speaker 2: at me, and stopped just short of what killing me,
Speaker 2: scaring me off. I didn't know, and that not knowing
Speaker 2: had haunted me for almost two decades. I started researching again,
Speaker 2: reading everything I could find about sasquatch, about encounters, about
Speaker 2: the long history of sightings throughout the Appalachians the mountains
Speaker 2: of North Georgia. It turned out were a hotspot reports
Speaker 2: going back centuries, native American legends, modern encounters from hikers
Speaker 2: and hunters and forest rangers who'd seen or heard things
Speaker 2: they couldn't explain. I started keeping files, newspaper clippings, interview transcripts,
Speaker 2: maps marked with siding locations. Daniel thought I was crazy
Speaker 2: at first, but he humored me. Your bigfoot stuff, he
Speaker 2: called it with a smile that said he didn't quite believe,
Speaker 2: but didn't quite disbelieve either. And then a few years
Speaker 2: into our relationship we started talking about the future. I
Speaker 2: want to own land, I told him one night we
Speaker 2: were sitting on the porch of our cabin, watching the
Speaker 2: sun go down behind the mountainuntains, real land, somewhere we
Speaker 2: can build something that's ours. I've always wanted that too,
Speaker 2: Daniel said, Somewhere quiet, somewhere away from everything North Carolina.
Speaker 2: I said, I've been looking at properties up there. Land's cheaper,
Speaker 2: and there's I hesitated, there's what. There's a lot of forest,
Speaker 2: a lot of wilderness, the kind of place where things
Speaker 2: might still be hiding. Daniel looked at me for a
Speaker 2: long moment, then he smiled, Let's do it. He said
Speaker 2: it took two years to make it happen. Two years
Speaker 2: of saving every penny of me cashing out my retirement account,
Speaker 2: of Daniel picking up extra shifts whenever he could. We
Speaker 2: looked at dozens of properties, drove thousands of miles on
Speaker 2: our days off, rejected one piece of land after another
Speaker 2: because it wasn't quite right. And then we found it.
Speaker 2: Forty acres in Caldwell County, North Carolina, rolling hills covered
Speaker 2: in hardwood forest, a creek running through the middle name
Speaker 2: for a mile in any direction, and stay tuned for
Speaker 2: more sasquatch ott to see. We'll be right back. After
Speaker 2: these messages. The property backed up to thousands of acres
Speaker 2: of national forest, the Pisga, one of the largest wilderness
Speaker 2: areas on the East Coast. It was perfect. We closed
Speaker 2: on a cold day in November, drove up that afternoon
Speaker 2: and walked the property line, breathing in the clean mountain air,
Speaker 2: listening to the silence that was somehow fuller and richer
Speaker 2: than any silence I'd heard before. We did it. Daniel said,
Speaker 2: we did it. I agreed. That night, we pitched a
Speaker 2: tent near the creek and slept under the stars, and
Speaker 2: I dreamed for the first time in years of something
Speaker 2: moving through the trees, something big, something watching. But this
Speaker 2: time I wasn't afraid. This time, I felt like I
Speaker 2: was home. Chapter eight, Whispers in the Wilderness. We lived
Speaker 2: off grid while the tiny house was being built. That
Speaker 2: first winter was brutal. We'd set up a temporary camp
Speaker 2: with a heavy duty tent and a propane heater, but
Speaker 2: there were nights when the temperature dropped into the single
Speaker 2: digits and we huddled together under every blanket we owned,
Speaker 2: wondering if we'd made a terrible mistake. Daniel had left
Speaker 2: the Sheriff's office. He tried to transfer to a department
Speaker 2: closer to our new property, but nothing was available, and
Speaker 2: the commute from Caldwell County back to Union County would
Speaker 2: have been three hours each way. So he turned in
Speaker 2: his badge temporarily, he said, and taken a job at
Speaker 2: a pizza place in Lenore, the nearest town of any size.
Speaker 2: It gets me out of the house, he said, when
Speaker 2: I asked if he was okay with it. And I
Speaker 2: don't want you to worry about me out here alone
Speaker 2: while you're still figuring out what you're going to do.
Speaker 2: What I was going to do. That was the question,
Speaker 2: wasn't it. I'd left law enforcement too, at least for
Speaker 2: the moment. My plan was to take some time off,
Speaker 2: help build the house, settle into our new life. Maybe
Speaker 2: eventually I'd look for work with a local department, or
Speaker 2: maybe I'd try something completely different. For the first time
Speaker 2: in my adult life, I didn't have a job waiting
Speaker 2: for me. It was terrifying and liberating in equal measure.
Speaker 2: But I wasn't idle, not by a long shot. The
Speaker 2: first strange thing happened about three weeks after we arrived.
Speaker 2: I was alone at the camp. Daniel was at work,
Speaker 2: wouldn't be home until after midnight. I'd spent the day
Speaker 2: clearing brush and marking trees for the construction crew that
Speaker 2: would arrive in the spring. Exhausting work but satisfying. By
Speaker 2: the time the sun went down, I was ready for
Speaker 2: a hot meal and an early night. I was heating
Speaker 2: up some soup on the camp stove when I heard it.
Speaker 2: A howl. It came from somewhere behind the property, deep
Speaker 2: in the national forest. It started low and rows and pitch,
Speaker 2: hanging in the air for what felt like forever, before
Speaker 2: trailing off into the darkness. It wasn't a coyote. I
Speaker 2: knew what coyotes sounded like, had heard them plenty of
Speaker 2: time in Georgia. It wasn't a wolf. There were no
Speaker 2: wolves in these mountains, hadn't been for one hundred years.
Speaker 2: It wasn't anything I could identify. But I'd heard it before,
Speaker 2: years ago, back when I first started researching Sasquatch, I'd
Speaker 2: come across an audio recording from Ohio, The Ohio Howell.
Speaker 2: People called it a sound captured in the woods in
Speaker 2: the early nineties, never explained, never identified. It had sent
Speaker 2: chills down my spine when I first heard it. This
Speaker 2: sound was the same, not similar, the same. I stood
Speaker 2: there in the darkness, my soup forgotten, my heart pounding,
Speaker 2: and then I did something that probably wasn't smart. I
Speaker 2: howled back. Not a perfect imitation. I couldn't have matched
Speaker 2: that sound if my life depended on it. But close,
Speaker 2: close enough to be understood as a response, maybe close
Speaker 2: enough to say I'm here, I hear you, what are you?
Speaker 2: For a long moment, nothing, just the wind in the
Speaker 2: trees and the distant sound of the creek. And then
Speaker 2: from a different direction, closer this time, maybe half a
Speaker 2: mile away, the howl came again. I didn't tell Daniel
Speaker 2: about the howl, not right away. I wasn't sure what
Speaker 2: to say, how to explain it. Hey, honey, I think
Speaker 2: there might be a sasquatch living behind our property. Isn't
Speaker 2: exactly normal dinner conversation, even in a relationship as unconventional
Speaker 2: as ours. But over the next few weeks, more things happened.
Speaker 2: Rocks appeared in places they shouldn't be, not thrown I
Speaker 2: never saw or heard anything throwing them, but placed stacked,
Speaker 2: sometimes in little towers near the edge of our camp,
Speaker 2: other times scattered in patterns that seemed almost deliberate. I
Speaker 2: found footprints along the creek, big ones, much bigger than
Speaker 2: any human foot, much wider than any bear track. They
Speaker 2: were partially obscured by dead leaves, like whatever made them
Speaker 2: had been t trying to hide its trail. But they
Speaker 2: were there. And then there were the lights. The first
Speaker 2: time it happened, I thought I was dreaming. I woke
Speaker 2: up in the middle of the night to a brightness
Speaker 2: that shouldn't have been there. Not moonlight. This was something else,
Speaker 2: something that lit up the inside of our tent, like
Speaker 2: someone was shining a spotlight directly at us. I scrambled
Speaker 2: out of the tent, expecting to see what a car,
Speaker 2: a helicopter, I didn't know, but there was nothing, just
Speaker 2: the trees and the stars and a darkness that seemed
Speaker 2: somehow deeper than it should have been. The second time
Speaker 2: Daniel was with me, he woke up too, saw the
Speaker 2: same light, stumbled outside to find the same nothing. What
Speaker 2: the hell was that, he asked? I don't know, I said,
Speaker 2: and I didn't, but I was starting to have suspicions.
Speaker 2: The tiny house was finished in late spring. It wasn't
Speaker 2: much five hundred square feet, barely enough room for the
Speaker 2: two of us and our stuff, but it had running
Speaker 2: water and electricity from a solar setup, and after months
Speaker 2: of living in a tent, it felt like a palace.
Speaker 2: We celebrated our first night in the new house the
Speaker 2: way you'd expect, a nice dinner, a bottle of wine,
Speaker 2: and then a long soak in the hot tub we'd
Speaker 2: splurged on as a housewarming gift to ourselves. It sat
Speaker 2: on the back deck facing the forest, and as we
Speaker 2: relaxed in the warm water and watched the stars come out,
Speaker 2: I felt a peace I hadn't known I was missing
Speaker 2: this was worth it, Daniel said, all of it, the saving,
Speaker 2: the planning, the freezing our asses off all winter, this
Speaker 2: was worth it. Yeah, I agreed it was. And then
Speaker 2: from somewhere in the darkness behind our property, that howl
Speaker 2: rose again. Daniel froze, what was that? Listen? I said?
Speaker 2: The howl held, rose, fell and faded, and then from
Speaker 2: another direction, another howl answered, and then another another. A
Speaker 2: chorus of voices rising and falling in the night, surrounding
Speaker 2: us with sound. Brian Daniel's voice was barely a whisper.
Speaker 2: What is that? I didn't answer. I just listened, my
Speaker 2: heart full of something that wasn't quite fear and wasn't
Speaker 2: quite joy, something more like recognition, like coming home after
Speaker 2: all these years. I'd found them again, or maybe they'd
Speaker 2: found me. Chapter nine, The Man and the Badge. Word
Speaker 2: travels fast in small towns, and Caldwell County wasn't that big.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure how it started. Maybe someone at the
Speaker 2: hardware store mentioned my background, maybe one of the construction
Speaker 2: workers looked me up. Maybe it was just the kind
Speaker 2: of rumor that takes on a life of its own.
Speaker 2: But within a few months of settling in, people started
Speaker 2: approaching me at the grocery store, at the gas station,
Speaker 2: at the little diner in Lenore, where Daniel and I
Speaker 2: had Sunday breakfast. Heard you used to be a cop,
Speaker 2: Heard you ran a juvenile facility. We could use someone
Speaker 2: like you around here. At first I brushed it off.
Speaker 2: I was retired, I said, taking time off, enjoying life.
Speaker 2: I'd done my time in law enforcement, paid my dues,
Speaker 2: earned my rest. The last thing I wanted was to
Speaker 2: get back into the game. But the more I learned
Speaker 2: about Caldwell County, the more I understood why people were asking.
Speaker 2: The current sheriff was a man named Vernon Oates. He'd
Speaker 2: held the position for sixteen years, running unopposed in the
Speaker 2: last three elections, and in those sixteen years, the department
Speaker 2: had become well, let's just say, it wasn't what it
Speaker 2: should have been. Response times were slow, cases went unsolved,
Speaker 2: there were rumors of corruption of deputies on the take
Speaker 2: of evidence disappearing when it inconvenienced the right people. People
Speaker 2: were frustrated, people were scared, and they were looking for
Speaker 2: someone to do something about it. The first time someone
Speaker 2: explicitly asked me to run for sheriff, I laughed. I
Speaker 2: was in the feed store picking up supplies for some
Speaker 2: landscaping work when an older man approached me. His name
Speaker 2: was Harold Whitmore, and he owned about one hundred acres
Speaker 2: adjacent to the National Forest. He'd introduced himself a few
Speaker 2: weeks earlier, told me about a problem he was having
Speaker 2: with trespassers on his property. Asked if I had any advice.
Speaker 2: You should run against Oats, He said, without preamble, what
Speaker 2: the elections next year? He's going to run again, but
Speaker 2: nobody wants to go up against him, nobody except you.
Speaker 2: I'm not I don't even know if I want to
Speaker 2: be in law enforcement anymore. Harold fixed me with a
Speaker 2: look that made me feel like I was twelve years
Speaker 2: old again, caught doing something I shouldn't have been son,
Speaker 2: He said, I've lived in these mountains my whole life.
Speaker 2: I know what's happening up in that forest. People going missing,
Speaker 2: strange things happening, and I know the Sheriff's office isn't
Speaker 2: doing a damn thing about it because they don't want
Speaker 2: to look too close. He leaned in, you're the kind
Speaker 2: of man who looks close. I can tell we need
Speaker 2: someone like that. I wanted to ask what he meant
Speaker 2: about strange things happening, about people going missing. I wanted
Speaker 2: to ask a lot of things, but he just patted
Speaker 2: me on the shoulder and walked away, leaving me standing
Speaker 2: there with a bag of mulching my hands and a
Speaker 2: head full of questions. I went home and told Daniel
Speaker 2: about the conversation. You should do it, he said, without hesitation.
Speaker 2: I don't know the first thing about running for office.
Speaker 2: You know how to be a good cop, you know
Speaker 2: how to lead people, you know how to get things done.
Speaker 2: He shrugged. The rest is just logistics. The rest is politics, fundraising, debates,
Speaker 2: shaking hands and kissing babies. Daniel smiled, you're good at
Speaker 2: shaking hands, and I've never seen you kiss a baby,
Speaker 2: but I bet you'd be okay at that too. I'm serious,
Speaker 2: so am I. He crossed the room and took my
Speaker 2: hands in his. Brian, you've been restless ever since we
Speaker 2: got here. See it in you, even when you're pretending
Speaker 2: everything's fine. You need something to do, something that matters.
Speaker 2: And this, he gestured vaguely at the walls around us,
Speaker 2: at the forest beyond them. This place needs you, Those
Speaker 2: people need you. Maybe it's time to stop hiding and
Speaker 2: start doing something. I didn't have an answer for that,
Speaker 2: so I didn't answer. I just held his hands and
Speaker 2: thought about what he'd said. That night, I dreamed about
Speaker 2: the woods again, about something moving through the trees, something
Speaker 2: that watched and waited, and new things that shouldn't know.
Speaker 2: And in the dream I wasn't running away from it.
Speaker 2: I was running toward it. I announced my candidacy for
Speaker 2: Sheriff of Caldwell County in March. The response was well mixed,
Speaker 2: would be an understatement. Vernon Oates wasn't happy. He'd gotten
Speaker 2: used to running unopposed, gotten used to the power and
Speaker 2: prestige and all the little benefits that came with being
Speaker 2: the only game in town. Having someone actually challenge him
Speaker 2: was an insult he wasn't prepared to handle gracefully. He
Speaker 2: started spreading rumors, digging into my past. The fact that
Speaker 2: I'd never lived in the county before. I was an outsider,
Speaker 2: a carpetbagger, someone who didn't understand how things worked around here.
Speaker 2: The fact that I was gay, which he never said directly,
Speaker 2: of course, but he made sure everyone knew the fact
Speaker 2: that I'd spent seven years working with juvenile offenders. Clearly
Speaker 2: I was soft on crime, bleeding heart liberal, probably wanted
Speaker 2: to hug criminals instead of arresting them. I won't lie.
Speaker 2: It got ugly. There were times when I wanted to quit,
Speaker 2: when I wanted to tell everyone to go to hell
Speaker 2: and retreat back to my forty acres and my tiny
Speaker 2: house and the piece I'd worked so hard to find.
Speaker 2: But I kept thinking about what Harold Whitmore had said,
Speaker 2: people going missing, strange things happening, a sheriff's office that
Speaker 2: didn't want to look too close. I needed to know
Speaker 2: what he meant, and the only way to find out
Speaker 2: was to win. The election was closer than anyone expected.
Speaker 2: Oates had been in power for sixteen years. He had
Speaker 2: name recognition, he had funding, He had the backing of
Speaker 2: pretty much everyone who benefited from the status quo. I had. Well.
Speaker 2: I had me and Daniel and a handful of people
Speaker 2: who believed that things could be better. We knocked on doors,
Speaker 2: We attended every community event we could find. We talked
Speaker 2: to anyone who would listen about what kind of county
Speaker 2: we could have if we just tried a little harder,
Speaker 2: looked a little closer, cared a little more, and On
Speaker 2: election night, by a margin of less than two hundred votes.
Speaker 2: I won. Brian Patterson, Sheriff of Caldwell County, North Carolina.
Speaker 2: I called Mamma that night to tell her. She cried,
Speaker 2: of course, told me how proud she was, how far
Speaker 2: I had come from that scared little boy, and liarly,
Speaker 2: how proud Daddy would have been. And then she caught
Speaker 2: herself remembering who Daddy really was, and we both laughed
Speaker 2: at the absurdity of it. You did good, baby, she said,
Speaker 2: you did real good. Thanks Mama. I couldn't have done
Speaker 2: any of it without you. Yes, you could have, you
Speaker 2: just might not have wanted to. She was right as usual.
Speaker 2: My first day as sheriff, I met Zach. He was
Speaker 2: a ranger with the US Forest Service assigned to the
Speaker 2: Pizga National Forest. We crossed paths at a jurisdictional meeting,
Speaker 2: the kind of boring administrative thing that happens when multiple
Speaker 2: agencies operate in the same area. I was expecting a
Speaker 2: stuffy bureaucrat, someone who'd want to talk about forms and
Speaker 2: procedures and staying in our respective lanes. What I got
Speaker 2: was a young guy in his early thirties with the
Speaker 2: intensity in his eyes that I recognized immediately, the intensity
Speaker 2: of someone who'd seen something he couldn't explain. We were
Speaker 2: making small talk after the meeting when he said, almost casually,
Speaker 2: so you're the new sheriff. Heard you're interested in weird stuff.
Speaker 2: I kept my face neutral. Weird stuff, you know, explained phenomena,
Speaker 2: things that go bump in the night. Stay tuned for
Speaker 2: more sasquatch ott to see. We'll be right back after
Speaker 2: these messages. He smiled, but it wasn't a joking smile.
Speaker 2: Things in the woods that aren't supposed to be there.
Speaker 2: I looked at him for a long moment, made a decision.
Speaker 2: Let me buy you a cup of coffee. I said.
Speaker 2: It was the beginning of a partnership that would change everything.
Speaker 2: Chapter ten. The missing Zach's office was a cramped room
Speaker 2: in the ranger station near blowing Rock walls covered with
Speaker 2: maps and photographs and charts tracking everything from wildlife populations
Speaker 2: to trail maintenance schedules. But behind his desk, hidden from
Speaker 2: casual visitors, was another set of documents, a filing cabinet
Speaker 2: that he unlocked with a key he kept on a
Speaker 2: chain around his neck. This is off the record. He
Speaker 2: said as he pulled out the first folder. Way off
Speaker 2: the record. If anyone asks, we never had this conversation,
Speaker 2: I nodded. I knew how to keep secrets. What he
Speaker 2: showed me that afternoon changed everything I thought I knew
Speaker 2: about the Pisga National Forest. People were going missing, a
Speaker 2: lot of people, more than the official statistics showed, more
Speaker 2: than the news reports mentioned, more than anyone outside of
Speaker 2: very small circle was willing to acknowledge. Over the past
Speaker 2: twenty years, according to Zach's files, at least forty seven
Speaker 2: people had vanished in or around the Pisgo without explanation.
Speaker 2: Not all of them were in Caldwell County. The forest
Speaker 2: spanned twelve counties in western North Carolina, but a disproportionate
Speaker 2: number were hikers who went out for a day trip
Speaker 2: and never came back, Hunters who disappeared during deer season,
Speaker 2: Campers whose tents were found empty, their gear undisturbed, no
Speaker 2: sign of struggle or animal attack, or anything that would
Speaker 2: explain where they'd gone. Jesus I said, flipping through the files,
Speaker 2: How was this not national news because the parks are
Speaker 2: doesn't want it to be. Zach's voice was bitter every
Speaker 2: time someone goes missing, there's pressure to keep it quiet.
Speaker 2: Don't scare the tourists, don't hurt the local economy. Just
Speaker 2: file it as a missing person case. Assume they got
Speaker 2: lost or fell off a cliff, or decided to start
Speaker 2: a new life somewhere and move on. But you don't
Speaker 2: think that's what happened. I know it's not. He pulled
Speaker 2: out another folder, thicker than the first. Look at this.
Speaker 2: It was a collection of photographs, crime scene photos, mostly
Speaker 2: showing abandoned campsites and empty trails and all the places
Speaker 2: where people had last been seen. But there were other
Speaker 2: photos too. Photos of footprints, huge footprints, much bigger than
Speaker 2: any human. Photos of trees with strange markings, like something
Speaker 2: had clawed at the bark. Photos of hair samples, reddish
Speaker 2: brown and coarse, collected from branches and bushes throughout the forest.
Speaker 2: I've sent those samples to three different labs, as said,
Speaker 2: they all came back the same unknown primate, not human,
Speaker 2: not any known ape, something else. I stared at the
Speaker 2: photos for a long time. You're saying what I think
Speaker 2: you're saying. I'm saying there's something out there, something that's
Speaker 2: been out there for a long time, and I'm saying
Speaker 2: that the Park Service knows about it and they're covering
Speaker 2: it up. Over the next few weeks, Zack and I
Speaker 2: spent every spare moment going through his files. He'd been
Speaker 2: building this case for years, ever since his own encounter
Speaker 2: in the forest, and encounter he was reluctant to talk
Speaker 2: about in detail, but which had clearly shaken him to
Speaker 2: his core. The pattern was unmistakable. The disappearances clustered in
Speaker 2: certain areas of the forest, areas that were remote and
Speaker 2: hard to access. They happened most often in spring and fall,
Speaker 2: during the transitional seasons when the forest was changing, and
Speaker 2: in almost every case, there were reports of strange sounds
Speaker 2: in the days before the disappearance, howls, screams, wood knocking,
Speaker 2: things that didn't match any known wildlife. They're territorial, Zach
Speaker 2: said one evening, spreading a map across his desk. See
Speaker 2: how the disappearance is cluster. These aren't random points. They
Speaker 2: follow a pattern, a boundary. This is their territory, and
Speaker 2: anyone who enters it. He didn't finish the sentence. He
Speaker 2: didn't need to. So what do we do, I asked?
Speaker 2: We can't exactly go public with this not yet, not
Speaker 2: without more evidence. He looked at me, his eyes intense.
Speaker 2: But we can investigate, we can document, and when the
Speaker 2: time is right, we can blow this whole thing wide open.
Speaker 2: I thought about my encounter back in Lyrely, all those
Speaker 2: years ago, the huffing, the growling, the bluff charge, the
Speaker 2: creature that had let me go when it could have
Speaker 2: killed me. They're not all aggressive, I said, the one
Speaker 2: I encountered. It could have hurt me. It didn't. Maybe
Speaker 2: some of the maybe some of them are Zack shrugged.
Speaker 2: All I know is people are going missing, and someone
Speaker 2: needs to find out why. The call came in on
Speaker 2: a Thursday morning in October. A twenty year old student
Speaker 2: from Appalachian State University had failed to return from a
Speaker 2: solo hiking trip in the Pizga. His name was Austin Mercer,
Speaker 2: and according to his roommate, he'd been planning to spend
Speaker 2: a week camping in a remote area of the forest.
Speaker 2: Something about researching local legends, something about looking for proof
Speaker 2: of bigfoot sounds like one of yours, the dispatcher said.
Speaker 2: I didn't respond to that. I just grabbed my jacket
Speaker 2: and headed for the door. Zach met me at the trailhead.
Speaker 2: Two hours later, we hiked in together, following the route
Speaker 2: Austin had logged with the ranger station before he left.
Speaker 2: It took us most of the day to reach the
Speaker 2: area where he'd planned to set up camp. What we
Speaker 2: found there stopped us both in our tracks. The tent
Speaker 2: was shredded, not collapsed, not blown over by wind, shred
Speaker 2: like something had ripped through the fabric with claws or teeth.
Speaker 2: Austin's gear was scattered around the campsite, his backpack, his
Speaker 2: sleeping bag, his cooking supplies, but there was no sign
Speaker 2: of Austin himself. Over here. Zach called. I joined him
Speaker 2: at the edge of the clearing. He was pointing at
Speaker 2: the ground footprints, huge footprints, easily nineteen inches long and
Speaker 2: eight inches wide. They led from the tree line to
Speaker 2: the tent and back again, a clear trail that any
Speaker 2: tracker could follow. Jesus Christ, I whispered. But that wasn't
Speaker 2: the worst of it. We found the trail cameras next,
Speaker 2: three of them, positioned in a triangle around the campsite.
Speaker 2: Austin had been smart, setting up surveillance to catch anything
Speaker 2: that approached. Zach pulled the memory cards and We reviewed
Speaker 2: them on his laptop right there in the field. The
Speaker 2: first camera showed nothing unusual, just woods, trees, the occasional
Speaker 2: deer or raccoon wandering past. The second camera showed the same,
Speaker 2: but the third camera the timestamp said two forty seven am.
Speaker 2: The image was grainy, shot an infrared, but clear enough
Speaker 2: to see what was moving through the trees. It was big,
Speaker 2: eight feet tall, maybe more, with broad shoulders and arms
Speaker 2: that hung past its knees. It was covered in dark hair,
Speaker 2: brown or black, hard to tell in the infrared. And
Speaker 2: it was walking upright on two legs, moving with a
Speaker 2: fluid grace that seemed impossible for something that size. It
Speaker 2: was a sasquatch, and it was walking directly toward Austin's tent.
Speaker 2: We found his phone near the fire ring, half buried
Speaker 2: in leaves. The screen was cracked, but it still worked.
Speaker 2: I picked it up with gloved hands, careful not to
Speaker 2: disturb any potential evidence, and navigated to the video folder.
Speaker 2: There was one video recorded the same night as the
Speaker 2: trail camera footage. I pressed play. Austin's face filled the screen.
Speaker 2: He was young, early twenties, with the kind of eager
Speaker 2: energy that reminded me of myself at that age. But
Speaker 2: there was something else in his expression, something that made
Speaker 2: my stomach clench fear. I don't know if anyone will
Speaker 2: ever see this, he whispered, his voice barely audible over
Speaker 2: the background noise. But something's out there. I've been hearing
Speaker 2: it all night, howls, screams, something big walking around in
Speaker 2: the trees. I thought I was prepared for this. I
Speaker 2: thought I was ready. But he stopped, turned toward the
Speaker 2: wall of the tent. In the background, I could hear
Speaker 2: it too, those vocalizations I knew so well, the huffing
Speaker 2: and the growling, and the strange almost speech that had
Speaker 2: haunted my dreams for thirty years. Oh God, Austin said,
Speaker 2: it's coming closer. It's And then the tent ripped open.
Speaker 2: The phone spun, capturing glimpses of movement, dark shapes, thrashing fabric,
Speaker 2: Austin's screaming face, and then he was dragged out a frame,
Speaker 2: still screaming, his voice getting fainter and fainter as he
Speaker 2: was pulled into the darkness. The phone landed face up,
Speaker 2: pointing at the ceiling of the ruined tent. For the
Speaker 2: next forty three minutes. It recorded nothing but silence until
Speaker 2: the battery died. Zach and I stood in that clearing
Speaker 2: for a long time after the video ended. Neither of
Speaker 2: us spoke. There wasn't anything to say. We had our proof.
Speaker 2: After all these years, we had undeniable evidence that these
Speaker 2: creatures existed, evidence that they were dangerous, evidence that they
Speaker 2: had taken a young man who might still be alive somewhere,
Speaker 2: or might already be dead. But what were we supposed
Speaker 2: to do with it? If we went public, We'd be
Speaker 2: laughed out of the room. Sasquatch doesn't exist. Everyone knew
Speaker 2: that we'd be mocked, discredited, probably fired, all our work,
Speaker 2: all our evidence, dismissed as hoax or hallucination. But if
Speaker 2: we stayed silent, more people would die, More family would
Speaker 2: never know what happened to their loved ones. The cover
Speaker 2: up would continue, and the creatures would keep claiming victims
Speaker 2: in the deep woods where nobody was watching. We have
Speaker 2: to do something, I said finally. I know Zach's voice
Speaker 2: was hollow, but what I thought about it? Thought about
Speaker 2: everything I'd learned since becoming sheriff, everything Zach had shown me,
Speaker 2: everything I'd experienced myself, going back to that day in
Speaker 2: the woods behind our house, and liarly we go public.
Speaker 2: I said, not with everything, not yet, but we start
Speaker 2: asking questions. We hold a press conference, talk about the disappearance,
Speaker 2: mention that there are some unusual circumstances. We plant seeds,
Speaker 2: see what grows. That's dangerous, Zach said, if the wrong
Speaker 2: people find out what we know. I know, but I'm
Speaker 2: the sheriff of this county. It's my job to protect people.
Speaker 2: I can't do that if I'm keeping secrets that might
Speaker 2: get them killed. He looked at me for a long moment.
Speaker 2: Then he nodded, Okay, he said, let's do it. We
Speaker 2: started packing up the evidence. Neither of us knew it then,
Speaker 2: but we just set in motion something that couldn't be stopped.
Speaker 2: And something was watching us from the trees even then,
Speaker 2: waiting to see what we'd do. Next chapter eleven, Visitors
Speaker 2: in the Dark. The press conference was a calculated risk.
Speaker 2: I didn't mention Bigfoot, didn't mention the trail camera footage,
Speaker 2: or the footprints, or the video of Austin being dragged
Speaker 2: from his tent. I just stood in front of a
Speaker 2: handful of local reporters and said that we were investigating
Speaker 2: unusual circumstances surrounding the disappearance, that we were pursuing, all leads,
Speaker 2: that we were asking anyone with information to come forward.
Speaker 2: It was enough. The story got picked up by a
Speaker 2: few regional outlets, then some national ones. Small town sheriff
Speaker 2: hints at strange circumstances in hiker disappearance. The headlines wrote themselves,
Speaker 2: and in the comments sections, in the forums on the
Speaker 2: social media pages that sprang up overnight, people started talking
Speaker 2: about Bigfoot, about the Pisga, about all the other disappearances
Speaker 2: that had never been explained. I watched it all unfold
Speaker 2: from my home office, feeling like I'd lit a match
Speaker 2: next to a powder keg. This was bigger than me, now,
Speaker 2: bigger than Caldwell County, bigger than anything I'd anticipated. And then,
Speaker 2: exactly one week after the press conference, they came. It
Speaker 2: was after midnight. Daniel was asleep beside me. I was
Speaker 2: half asleep, myself, drifting in that liminal space between consciousness
Speaker 2: and dreams. The driveway alarm woke me. We'd installed a
Speaker 2: simple system, just a censor that triggered a chime inside
Speaker 2: the house whenever anything larger than a deer crossed the
Speaker 2: property line. It had gone off a few times since
Speaker 2: we'd moved in, usually for black bears or the occasional
Speaker 2: lost hiker, nothing to worry about. But this time something
Speaker 2: felt different. I slipped out of bed and moved to
Speaker 2: the security mind we'd set up in the corner of
Speaker 2: the bedroom. The camera showed the driveway, clearly lit by infrared.
Speaker 2: Two men were walking toward the house. They were dressed identically,
Speaker 2: black suits, black ties, white shirts. Their faces were hard
Speaker 2: to make out in the infrared, but something about their
Speaker 2: movements was wrong. Too smooth, too coordinated, like they were
Speaker 2: moving according to a choreography they'd practiced a thousand times.
Speaker 2: I felt a chill run down my spine. Daniel, I
Speaker 2: shook him awake. We've got company. By the time I
Speaker 2: got to the front door, the men were already on
Speaker 2: the porch. I'd grab my rifle, a Henry forty five,
Speaker 2: seventy heavy enough to stop a bear or anything else
Speaker 2: that might come at me, and I held it ready
Speaker 2: as I stepped outside. That's far enough, I said. They
Speaker 2: stopped two men in their forties maybe fifties, clean shaven, expressionless.
Speaker 2: They looked like government agents or what you'd imagine government
Speaker 2: agents to look like if you'd only seen them in movies,
Speaker 2: Sheriff Patterson. One of them said, it wasn't a question.
Speaker 2: That's right. You want to tell me what you're doing
Speaker 2: on my property in the middle of the night. We're
Speaker 2: here to have a conversation at one in the morning.
Speaker 2: The timing was necessary. I kept the rifle pointed at
Speaker 2: them start talking. The man who'd been speaking, the one
Speaker 2: on the left, reached into his jacket. I tensed my finger,
Speaker 2: tightening on the trigger, but all he pulled out was
Speaker 2: a folder. Your press conference last week created some complications,
Speaker 2: he said. People are asking questions that shouldn't be asked,
Speaker 2: looking into things that shouldn't be looked into, things like
Speaker 2: what you know what? I didn't respond, just waited. The
Speaker 2: creatures in the forest, the man continued, the ones you've
Speaker 2: been investigating with Ranger Holloway, the ones you seem to
Speaker 2: think are responsible for the mercer boy's disappearance. You know
Speaker 2: about that. We know about a lot of things, Sheriff.
Speaker 2: We've known about them for a very long time. And
Speaker 2: stay tuned for more, sasquatch ot to see. We'll be
Speaker 2: right back after these messages who's we The man smiled.
Speaker 2: It didn't reach his eyes. That's not information you need, Sheriff.
Speaker 2: What you need is to understand that this investigation is over.
Speaker 2: You will not hold any more press conferences. You will
Speaker 2: not discuss the Mercer case with the media. You will
Speaker 2: close the file and move on to other matters. I
Speaker 2: stared at him. And if I don't, then your career
Speaker 2: as sheriff will come to an abrupt end. And your partner,
Speaker 2: Daniel isn't it may find himself facing some legal difficulties
Speaker 2: that would be inconvenient. Is that a threat? It's information, Sheriff.
Speaker 2: What you do with it is up to you. He
Speaker 2: extended the folder toward me. I didn't take it. The
Speaker 2: evidence you've collected, he said, the trail camera footage, the
Speaker 2: hair samples, the footprint casts. You're going to destroy all
Speaker 2: of it, and you're going to forget this conversation. Ever happened?
Speaker 2: What about Austin Mercer? What happened to him? The Mercer
Speaker 2: boy got lost in the woods. It happens. His body
Speaker 2: will be found eventually or it won't. Either way, it's
Speaker 2: no longer your concern. His family deserves to know. His
Speaker 2: family will know what we tell them to know. The
Speaker 2: man's voice hardened. You're out of your depth, Sheriff. You've
Speaker 2: stumbled into something that's bigger than you, bigger than this county,
Speaker 2: bigger than you can possibly imagine, And if you have
Speaker 2: any sense of self preservation, you'll step back and let
Speaker 2: the people who understand these things handle them. He set
Speaker 2: the folder on the porch railing and stepped back. You
Speaker 2: have forty eight hours to make your decision. Choose wisely.
Speaker 2: And then they turned and walked away, disappearing down the
Speaker 2: driveway into the darkness. I stood there long after they
Speaker 2: were gone, the rifle still in my hands, heart pounding
Speaker 2: in my chest. Behind me, the door opened, Daniel stepped out,
Speaker 2: his face pale in the moonlight. Brian, who were those men?
Speaker 2: I looked at him, this man I loved, this life
Speaker 2: we'd built together, and I didn't know how to answer,
Speaker 2: because I didn't know if I could protect him anymore.
Speaker 2: I didn't know if I could protect anyone. I didn't
Speaker 2: sleep the rest of that night, just sat on the
Speaker 2: porch with my rifle across my lap, watching the tree line,
Speaker 2: thinking about everything that had happened and everything that might
Speaker 2: happen next. The folder of the men had left contained photographs,
Speaker 2: surveillance photographs of me, of Daniel, of Zach, of our
Speaker 2: movements over the past several weeks, every meeting, we'd had,
Speaker 2: every piece of evidence we'd collected. They'd been watching us
Speaker 2: the whole time, watching and waiting for us to become
Speaker 2: a problem, and now we were. I thought about backing off,
Speaker 2: thought about doing what they said, destroying the evidence, closing
Speaker 2: the case, pretending none of this had ever happened. It
Speaker 2: would be easy, safe, the smart play. But then I
Speaker 2: thought about Austin Mercer, twenty years old, his whole life
Speaker 2: ahead of him, dragged screaming into the darkness by something
Speaker 2: that wasn't supposed to exist. I thought about all the others,
Speaker 2: the forty seven names in Zack's files, the families who
Speaker 2: never got closure, the people who would keep disappearing year
Speaker 2: after year while the government covered it up and the
Speaker 2: creatures in the forest kept hunting. I thought about that
Speaker 2: twelve year old boy and liarly frozen with fear as
Speaker 2: something charged at him through the trees, the boy who'd
Speaker 2: spent his whole life wondering what was out there, what
Speaker 2: he'd escaped from, what he was supposed to do about it.
Speaker 2: Maybe this was what I was supposed to do. Maybe
Speaker 2: this was why everything had led me here. The childhood encounter,
Speaker 2: the dysfunctional family, the years in law enforcement, the move
Speaker 2: to North Carolina, the run for sheriff. Maybe it was
Speaker 2: all building to the moment, this choice, this chance to
Speaker 2: finally do something about the secrets that had been hidden
Speaker 2: for far too long. As the sun came up over
Speaker 2: the mountains, I made my decision. I wasn't backing down,
Speaker 2: whatever came next, whatever they threw at me. I was
Speaker 2: going to see this through. For Austin, for all of them,
Speaker 2: for that scared little boy I used to be. I
Speaker 2: picked up my phone and called Zach. We need to talk.
Speaker 2: I said, they've made their move, now it's time to
Speaker 2: make hours.
Speaker 1: Did did