The Breaking of Bones

   I have two 50 pound dogs. They were litter mates and have always been opposites in many ways, like brothers and sisters often are. My girl dog is the shy, timid one, laid back... until it storms, then she's really quite annoying. But I love her!  

Here she is hiding in the bathroom after hearing a little thunder rumble.

She loves car rides, swimming, and is a piggy who wants to eat everything (like me)! My boy dog is the one who tugs me along on his leash, does not go near the water unless it's on his own terms, and is a complete spaz when it comes to car rides. I've even tried taking him to the park in the car, which he loves-- the park, not the car. By doing this, I thought he'd start to enjoy car rides, but no change so far.
   Anyway, my girl dog, Rolie, the one who is afraid of everything but car rides, belly rubs and food, was outside in the backyard one night. I think it was about 1 am when I heard a faint barking. I recognized it to be hers, but it didn't sound like she was in the back yard. I walked out onto the screened porch and scoped the fenced in yard.
   I pooched my lips to one side, then mumbled a few curse words. Once again, she'd found a spot to get out through along the fence's bottom. I grabbed the flashlight and headed up the driveway where there were woods to my left and across the narrow road. I could hear her in the trees about 50 yards down the road, incessantly barking at something.
   Past my driveway, there were no other homes, and in the night, the tall pines, red maples, and aged oak trees cast a darkness over the road from both sides. I was never scared to go out there in the middle of the night, even though it could easily be the back drop of a teen horror campsite flick taking place on a secluded lake. There weren't many homes along the road and some of them were vacant vacation homes, so there weren't many people in the area. However, I'd seen a coyote before and I'd read that black bears live in North Carolina, but both of those don't usually bother people, or so I'd read.
   So, as I approached Rolie, I kept calling for her to come, but she ignored me as she kept barking. It was unusual for her as both of my dogs aren't really big on barking that much. They have a brief bark for when someone is at the door, and they have a bark for when there's a critter in the backyard. I can tell the difference between both. This bark was not one of those.
   There was something there which I think she must've perceived as a threat. At least, that's what I got from her tone. As I got close, she darted out of the woods and looked back to where she'd just come from, then ran back in to where I couldn't see her again.
   I shone the flashlight into the trees, but it didn't go very far as it happened to be getting weak. Am I setting the scene for something scary to happen? Yeah, I was getting a bad feeling in my stomach, too. That was when I heard a growl, a low rumbling and heavy growl that vibrated through my ears. I stopped breathing for a few seconds to listen and to completely still myself. The growl hadn't come from my dog. She was too busy barking.
   I cautiously backed away a few paces, still hearing the creature's amplified warning. It was a deep growl and just inside the woods across from where I stood. My imagination didn't have to do any work. It sounded... big. As I wondered what it might be, I heard a loud, thick break, then several more quick snaps. Maybe the surrounding woods somehow intensified the sound, but it didn't sound like a canine crunching on the bones of a carcass. It sounded like the breaking of bones, or possibly branches, but bones was what I heard. I don't know how I determined that they were being broken, but I remember that thought going through my head as I started to get really scared. I told myself it was probably a coyote because that was a lot less horrifying. And though I didn't like the possibility that my dog could get attacked if she was going to hang out and bark at it, I wasn't going to stick around anymore.
   I backed away a few more steps, keeping my eyes on the trees where the sound was coming from, then I turned and headed for the fence at the top of my driveway. Once I got close enough to feel like I could make a mad dash to the house in time should something come out of the woods to chase me, I called for Rolie a couple more times, and thankfully, she came running home.
   After I closed the door and locked it, I went back to that sound. I kept hearing it in my head and it creeped me out. This happened not too long after I'd first seen the face in the trees. As much as it had stood out, I'd told myself that my eyes and imagination had just been messing around with me. But the more I thought about what I'd just heard, the way it sounded as if the bones had been broken by hand and not by gnawing, I had to ask myself what it could've been. It occurred to me that maybe what I thought I hadn't really seen that night, I really did see.
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It's Not Just Me, It's Bigfoot.

   My 15 year old niece moved in with me about a year after I'd moved to the lake house. I didn't like the idea of leaving her at home when I was at work on the night shift, but I trusted my neighbors to help should anything go wrong, and I was only 15 minutes away and had some flexibility to leave if she really needed me.

   At this point, I'd had a few strange things happen around the house, but I'd never mentioned it to her except once in a, sort of, joke. I think it went something like "Yeah, and there's a Bigfoot living in the woods."

   So one night, I get a call from Taylor who tells me she's scared and doesn't know what to do. She went on to tell me that she'd heard someone knocking at the side of the house and it was really loud.

   "Does it sound like it's over by the outdoor trash can," I asked. I'd heard it several times myself and suspected it was the same thing... er, or person.

   She told me it was at the corner of the house where the outdoor trashcan was, which was by the woods, but divided by a chain link fence and a storage building. The gate back there was always open since the driveway came in by that part of the house, so it wouldn't have been hard for someone to just walk right in. I, however, grew up with a stalker in my late teens and early twenties and had learned not to be afraid when I heard a bump in the night. I packed a gun when necessary and had an array of weapons for the more inexperienced users, like an aluminum bat or one of those kna-ives like Crocodile Dundee carried. I used to be into archery too, but that's more of a long range weapon. And anyway, that was in the storage building.

   So, I kind of laughed, trying to ease Taylor's fears, then told her it was probably just Bigfoot. I explained some of the things I'd heard before, and how every so often, the banging on the side of the house would happen. And like I was saying, I wasn't the fearful type, so that first time I'd heard it, I'd gone outside with the flashlight to check it out. The creaking screen door on the porch at the opposite corner probably alerted whoever or whatever it was, though I tried to be quiet. By the time I got around to creeping up to the back of the house, there wasn't anything there.

   Taylor thought it was amusing, the idea of a Sasquatch living in the woods, playing drums against the side of our house on lonely nights, but I told her I would come home real quick just to be on the safe side. I'd already instructed her on what to do should there be any real danger but we reviewed that as I headed out.

   When I got home, I noticed the trashcan lid on the ground, and not handle locked like I'd left it. I walked around the area with a flashlight, but of course, there was nothing out of the ordinary.

   Not that I'd thought it had been my mind playing tricks on me, but at least I'd gotten some confirmation that I wasn't just hearing things. After that, I told Taylor about some of the weird things that had been happening every so often. So, it became a joke whenever there was a place for it, "it's just Bigfoot." Get the book here!

   

Did I Just See That?

   Everything about this story was a surprise to me. I've had a few people look at me strangely and ask, "You don't really believe in Bigfoot, do you?" Years ago, I might have asked someone the same thing, and in fact, I actually did ask myself this same question when the incidents started happening.
   I'd lived in the country all of my adult life, always having had lots of woods around. Even as a teen, my younger siblings and I used to run rampant through the woods, playing games and telling stories around campfires. My imagination may have gotten the better of me more than a few times, (sometimes I scared even myself and had to hightail it back to the house when we were camping in the backyard), but in all of my story telling, I never really thought about the legend of the Sasquatch.
   It wasn't until I moved to North Carolina to a large lake area that I started questioning if Bigfoot could actually be real. I'd rented a small, one bedroom cottage in a cove where the water overran into the woods, making a marshy spot around a stream that fed into the lake. I was working 3rd shift at the time and on my nights off, it wasn't unusual for me to sit outside and listen to the night.
   The lighting from a post opposite of the woods cast a dim orange glow on the trees, and maybe the lighting was partly to blame, but something caught my ear, and I started scanning the edge of the woods, expecting to spot a deer on the trail to the water. It was one of those moments you don't see coming at all and you're caught off guard. For the instant my eyes moved along the stance of trees in one area, something stood out. It was a long, furry face hugged against a tree, but my eyes continued past it until my brain realized what it thought it had seen. My eyes darted back to the tree, but the face was gone. Of course, I questioned it, but there was no denying it, I thought it looked like what I'd always heard described as a Bigfoot.
   "Okay? Amusing," I mumbled to myself. At the time, I didn't just suddenly believe I'd seen the face of a Bigfoot. It wasn't until the other things started happening that I began to think there might actually be some truth to the legend.
   I was between books with a series I was working on, and decided I would just write a short story based on the things that had happened at the lake house. I didn't plan an outline around the incidents, I just wrote, which is how I usually do things anyway, but it turned into more than I'd expected and, though it's a simple story, I really enjoyed writing it because it was based on things that had happened and it all came out so effortlessly.
   I decided to publish it, and didn't do a damn thing with it afterwards. Meanwhile, I finished up another novel in the series I'd mentioned, and busied myself with marketing research in an attempt to get those books noticed, plus I worked on a couple of other stories. This was the one book I hadn't given any attention to, but it was the one people were buying. Go figure, right?
   The story and people are fiction, but the repeated incidents with banging noises at the backside of the house, the sound of breaking bones when I was trying to get my dog to come out of the woods, among a lot of other strange occurrences were true. Even though it was in the back of my mind, I still didn't really believe in Bigfoot. I have to say though, that night I was on the back porch when the rock throwing and clapping happened, I started leaning towards the believer's side.
   So, now if someone asks if I really believe in Bigfoot, I don't usually give a 'yes' or 'no' answer. I tell a story.