Devolution: A Firsthand Account of the Rainier Sasquatch Massacre

Chapter 8

Screams! They woke us up tonight. I felt the bed bounce as Dan jumped over to the window. I got up groggily and followed him out onto the back balcony. The first thing I noticed was the night’s chill, coldest yet. Then more screams, echoing clearly from the woods. Not human. The same hissing growls I’d heard from the mountain lion that afternoon.

Rrraaawww. Rraaaawwww.

But they weren’t alone. Another sound, underneath, like the bass in a song. Deeper, fuller. At first, I couldn’t make it out, but then it rose to the same howls I’d heard before. That first time when I’d been hiking, the second time when I’d been chased. But it was much louder now, as powerful as the heavy, spoiled smell. Again, familiar. This was real. Not a figment in my head, not a spot in my eye. There was definitely another animal out there with that cat.

Those screams, the sharp hisses. The puma sounded angry or scared. The howls boomed, then rose to high chatters. I’d never heard anything like it. No, that’s not entirely true. I’d never heard anything exactly like it.

I’ve heard monkeys before. From nature shows, and at the zoo. Monkeys or apes. But much louder, much more powerful. It was like I could feel the sound waves hitting me, like the windows might rattle if they’d been any closer. The cat’s screams suddenly changed, from growling rage to rapid, staccato yowls.

Rawrawraw!

Fighting.

Quick, sharp. Grunts of muscles working and muffled growls trying to escape a full mouth?

Then a roar, rising above the rest. Deep, bellowing, as the puma’s voice cracked into this horrible wail.

And then it was all over. Utter silence. I realized that Dan and I had been holding hands tightly, so tight that I could feel the blood rush back into my fingers when he let go. He said, “Wait,” and went downstairs. I started to say something after him. He paused at the bedroom door. “I’ll be right back.” It was so quiet I could hear him locking the front and back doors. I’m not sure why. Not like animals can open a door. Can a bear? Can they use their paws or claws or whatever they have to manipulate a knob? It has to be a bear. At least I know I’m not crazy. What else could fight a mountain lion?

And how did it end? Did one chase the other away? Or are they both out there now, circling our houses?

I’ve just gone to the bedroom’s front windows. Lights are on all over the village. Everyone except the Durants. No one is coming out though. Dan just came in and closed and locked the balcony door, then got back into bed. “Nothing more to do,” he said to me, just, I think, to reassure me. I asked if we should go knock on Mostar’s door, maybe ask her if she’s heard sounds like that before. Dan’s against it. What’s the point? Wait till morning light to see. Maybe he’s just scared. Nothing wrong with that. So am I. Also noticed he locked the bedroom door. No argument there.

And he just turned over like everything’s fine. Jealous. He’s exhausted from cleaning our roof and Reinhardt’s. All I did was catalog the man’s kitchen. A lot of frozen diet meals. Maybe I should copy them down here from my other list. Something to do to help me sleep? Boring enough.

No, screw it. Time for half an Ativan. No, Ambien.

Bad idea. I still couldn’t sleep. I tried. So easy for Dan. Zero to sixty. He just crashed out, snoring away. I was so pissed. At myself this time. It was my idea to get rid of all our DVDs when we moved. All uploaded to the cloud.

Cloud.

What a beautiful image, something pretty and puffy way up in the sky. Heaven. What a lie. I remember one of Dan’s former business partners talking about the “data parks,” the real cloud. I remember him saying that the Pacific Northwest was packed with data parks because of the cheap hydroelectric power. I wonder if one of those parks was buried under boiling mud. People’s personal data: work projects, financial records, priceless photographs they scanned because someone told them it was safer than leaving them in a house that could burn or flood. That was just one of ten thousand thoughts that kept me awake last night.

I should have felt bad for all those people, but right then, all I could do was miss the new Downton Abbey. It’s supposed to be set in the ’40s! They even showed those teaser shots of Lady Mary in a uniform with that bombed out London backdrop. Could Granny Dowager still be alive? What about Robert and Cora? They specifically didn’t show the whole cast because they wanted to torture us about who was still alive by then. Bastards!

Even just one classic. Just Princess Bride. Of course, I never thought to download it. Losing the cloud was “incontheivable.”

No TV, and no books! Again, my genius. No more paper novels because they’re all on my Kindle, which I hadn’t charged to save power. Yay.

So, I took half of an Ambien and got back into bed to wait for it to kick in. And it did, but I didn’t know that yet. I sat there in the dark, waiting for delicious sleep to roll over me, and when it didn’t, I got back up for the other half. I didn’t know how stoned I was. That’s why I lit the candle.

All my stuff is in the guest bathroom. Old habit from our last house. Different sleep schedules. I didn’t want to disturb Dan… when I’d get up for work to support us both. Never thought I deserved the master bath. Again, old habit.

I didn’t need the scented candle for light. Or to chase away the stink from a few hours ago. I was so wasted, I probably confused the memory with the real thing. That reek. I thought I could still smell it in the air. I fumbled for the matchbook, lit the candle, slid it to the side, then opened the medicine cabinet for the pills. I didn’t realize the flame was resting right under the towel rack.

The flicker, the smoke.

Fire!

A cold, waking snap hit me and I threw the flaming towel into the shower. Water, steam, smoke. A lot of smoke. The alarm. Piercing through my skull. I opened the window, hit the fan, climbed frantically onto the sink to pull the physical disc off the wall. I forgot it was just a sensor wired into the whole house. I pulled and yanked and probably shouted, “C’mon! Goddamn it! C’mon!” before slipping and falling into Dan’s arms.

He got out half of a “what the hell did…” before seeing the charred towel in the tub. Then his arms were around me, a soft “It’s okay” in my neck.

That’s all it took. I burst out crying. Melting into him, sobbing, babbling about everything that was happening, everything that could happen.

Dan just held me, stroking my back, kissing the top of my head, whispering, “It’s okay, it’s okay.”

He switched everything off, led me back to bed.

And.

All I’m going to say is that it’s been a very, very long time.

Nice to be home again.

We slept late. About nine A.M. I probably would have slept a lot later if Dan hadn’t shaken the bed when he got up. I opened one eye to see him putting on his pants. When I asked where he was going, I meant it in a lazy, flirty way.

But when he tried to answer, “I… I’m gonna…” His face. So busted! That’s one of the things I’ve always loved about Dan, even in our worst moments. He can’t lie.

“I was thinking, I’m just gonna check out what we heard last night.” He noticed that I saw he’d tucked that stabby thing, the Boothes’ coconut opener, into his belt.

I said, “Okay,” and started grabbing my clothes.

“No, it’s okay,” he said, and raced to get his shoes on.

I repeated, “It’s okay,” and did the same.

We got into this little “it’s okay” ping-pong, trying to convince each other not to bother. We must have done it, like, three or four times, racing to get dressed.

I won.

“Kate.” Dan’s voice deepened. His hand raised. “No.”

I stood there, kind of stunned. There was this man, back straight, shoulders squared, looking just the tiniest bit taller than I remember. It’s nice, yes, nice, to know that he has this protective instinct. Maybe it was always there, or maybe it’s just grown out of what we’re going through. But there it was, for the first time, trying to keep me safe. I’m proud of him for trying, and I’m even more proud of him for not totally deflating when I smiled, kissed him on the cheek, and said, “C’mon, let’s go.”

We headed out the back door and up onto the trail. I could see Palomino watching us from her upstairs window. Not creepy, expressionless. But not smiling either. She kept glancing at the woods behind us, like a lookout, I think, and gave us an “all clear, good luck” wave.

And Vincent gave us a thumbs-up when we passed his house. I’m sure he meant to be encouraging, but his nervous face, the way he darted from the window afterward. I took it as, “Better you than me.”

“Wait!” We stopped at Mostar shouting from down the trail. She came huffing and puffing after us, carrying her javelin. “Here!” I could see that she’d cleaned and tried to straighten the blade. “I’m making a better one,” she said, and stuck it into my hand. Looking at Dan, she said, “Don’t stay out there too long.”

The stink hit us as soon as we crossed over the ridge onto the downward slope. Strong, pungent. I smelled it on the palm of my hand, coming off a tree I’d just touched. I put my nose to the bark. Rotten eggs. My hand also came away with something else. Plant fiber, probably. It was long and black. Thick like a horse’s mane. I’m not sure if it stank, it could have just been my fingertips. Animal hair?

Then we saw the white specks, standing out in a patch of turned-up earth and reddish leaves.

Reddish from blood. It was everywhere. On the bushes, the bark, soaked into the ground, mixing with ash into these solid, rusty pebbles.

The white specks were shattered bones. It was hard to even recognize them at first. Most were just chips. They looked like they were smashed with a hammer. I found a few rocks, nearby, with blood on one side. Not splatters. Deep, thick stains mixed with fur and bits of flesh. And this is weird, but they looked, okay, painted? I know that sounds funny, but the blood on the rocks, on the trees and leaves, there were no droplets. Other than in the ash, all the other stains looked like they’d been smeared with a brush, or a tongue. Like whatever killed the cat went around licking every last spot.

Even the bones. They were clean. The marrow’d been scrubbed out. In fact, there wasn’t any meat anywhere. No organs, muscle, brain. I found what had to be the remains of the skull; just a curved, polished fragment next to a collection of broken teeth. That’s how I knew it had to be the cat. Those yellow fangs. I found one, intact, still stuck to a piece of upper jaw.

What could have done that?

If my mind wasn’t already shaken by what we saw, Mostar’s reaction made it worse.

She just listened, without judgment, eyes off to the side, taking in every detail without the slightest reaction. It scared me, scares me, that she didn’t immediately respond with, “Oh well, what you saw was…” She always has an answer for everything. That’s why I didn’t like her at first. Bully. Know-it-all. “Go here, do this, believe me when I say…” This is the first time I’ve seen her genuinely perplexed. No, that’s not right. The first time was when I’d been chased, when she turned her eyes on the woods.

Does she suspect what I’m trying to dismiss? The smell, the howls, the large “boulder” I’d seen on the road. Now this. I’m sure I’m just trying to come up with an explanation for something that doesn’t make any sense. That’s me. A place for everything and everything in its place. I’m just grasping on to what I’ve heard. And I haven’t heard much. I’m not into that stuff. I’m the practical one. I’ve never been interested in things that aren’t real. I’ve never even watched Game of Thrones. Dragons and ice zombies? Really? When Yvette was going on about Oma, she was speaking metaphorically! It can’t be real or else everyone would know. That’s the world we live in, right? Anyone can know anything. We’d know about this.

And yes, I know I saw something. We both did. But knowing you saw something is different from knowing what you saw.

I spotted the first one, the first clear footprint. It was next to the skull fragment, so deep it pressed right through the ash into the soft earth. It couldn’t be a wolf or another puma. The shape was all wrong. Maybe a bear? I don’t know. I’ve never seen a bear track, so maybe that’s the simple answer. But the print looked almost like a shoeless person right down to the five toes. But it couldn’t have been. Dan took off his hiking boot. He wears a size 11. He took off his sock as well, and placed his bare foot right next to the print. The toes matched, the overall shape. But the size. That’s impossible. It must have been a trick of the ash, or maybe the way it was planted.

Nothing could have such a big foot.