#blackaspitch

One of the scents he detected was almost identical to the omnipresent aroma of green and growing things, and towards this scent he felt only feelings of warmth and safety, though through the veil over his memories he got the vaguest inkling that this scent had once meant danger. But that didn’t make sense. He hadn’t been able to smell things like this before. Later, later. The now was for experiences, not questions.

As for the other scent…it drew his attention deeply. It stirred his memory in more concrete ways than the other. Here was danger, yes, undeniable danger, but it did not incline him to run like frightened prey. He was not prey, not anymore. Now, he had been changed. The dangers that had been were not the dangers of now. He closed his eyes slightly against the bright, bright sunlight, and let himself learn what was beyond terror in the emotions this scent roused.

First, the scent fascinated him, not as something brand new, but as something that was fascinating even after it was known. The being noted that layer of feeling, and waited for the next to be revealed.

Revulsion. Oh, yes, that was undeniably there. Curious, though, as the scent itself wasn’t that of death or decay; it didn’t smell like anything that would make him sick. But still he felt revulsion, and it was tied to the sense of danger in his first reaction. Whoever this scent belonged to, had they done something both repulsive and dangerous? The answer was there, beneath his senses and feelings, so he didn’t let the question worry him, as it would no doubt become clear in time.

As for now, revulsion wasn’t the end of his feelings. There was also…there was also desire. Now, why had that been buried so deeply? There was nothing about the scent that seemed too much like his own.

Perhaps it had something to do with the revulsion, though if the revulsion hadn’t been enough to entirely prevent the desire, then how could it also be significant enough to bury it? Well, he wouldn’t act on it until he’d learned more or remembered more.

Now, there were still so many more sensations to sort through. His skin on the clover—he’d never felt clover like this. He could feel how cool the leaves were even in the sunlight, and he could feel their lives as plants, but he could also feel something much more difficult to define. He sat and thought and felt, and eventually he came to understand that what he felt was the way some humans had felt about the clover, not too long ago. They felt that the clover was lucky. Or, that it might be lucky if the clover had four leaves. And it was faint, so faint…but someone had thought that maybe you could make a wish on a four-leafed clover. The being liked the evidence of such thoughts, and wished there was more. He wished he was closer to the source of these wish-feelings. Ah, he thought, and this was his most coherent thought yet, in its absolute necessity, this is what I need to survive. Human wishes. Human dreams. If the residue in the clover was so delightful, what would it be like to encounter the source? Bliss, pure bliss.

He lay back and rolled in the clover, and in this way learned a little more about his changed body. He was covered in soft, tawny fur, all quite short except for that on his head. That was a little longer, like a mane, though it was still shorter in the front than it was in the back. This was good because it wouldn’t get in his eyes this way, but there was some lingering part of him that was amused by it, though why the growth pattern of a mane should be funny, he wasn’t sure. It didn’t seem very important to remember, not now when there was so much to experience in the present. It was easy to move in the body he had now; he felt strong and free, maybe even stronger than he suspected—stronger than he had experience being, anyway. His arms and legs were still soft, still thick, but now they had far more muscle at their cores. His whole body was like that, in fact. Powerful, but deceptively (and comfortably, he also thought) soft. His fingers and toes were a bit longer than he thought he remembered, but since he would be living in the forest and among its trees, such a change was good, very good. He stretched out and looked down at himself. It hadn’t been his most pressing concern, but he was relieved to note that his sexual organs didn’t seem to have changed too drastically. He did have what could only be called a sheath protecting his most delicate organs, now, though. Was that a significant change? Perhaps he remembered less than he thought. Perhaps he was quite different now. It was something he would need to investigate, but only once he was away from the being who had the green, growing scent.

He rolled over onto his front and looked down at the clover. Would he have noticed so many different shades of green, before? Did he not have the eyes or not have the time to notice, before? Would all daylight be so bright? If so, he couldn’t be diurnal anymore. But he didn’t think he was nocturnal, either. Perhaps crepuscular. Or perhaps he was meant to dwell in the cool twilight of shade. The thought was so appealing that he knew at once that it must be right.

He rolled over to his back again, closing his eyes as he did. So, smell, the other sense, sight and touch—he hadn’t even thought about hearing, yet. How strange! He’d listened so much to…to…something. The exact name of that thing wasn’t coming to him, but that was all right. The important thing was that his ears had been very important, and now everything else was so overwhelming that he’d hardly remembered he had them until now.

But then, it wasn’t very loud in the clearing. There was wind, and birdsong—louder than before, and was that thanks to his ears or thanks to the fact that there weren’t any humans around anymore? There was also, at last, a voice.

“Sandy,” it said. It paused. “Sandy,” it said again. It was a voice that he’d heard before, but what a difference, now! Harmonies and undertones and, oh, this was a voice he’d like to have pressed into his very being. And the word, Sandy? He knew that, too. It was his name. A good name for someone tawny and soft. He smiled and turned toward that wonderful voice that also knew his name. And when he turned, he saw, as he expected, the two beings that owned the scents he’d noticed when he’d first woken.

But seeing them didn’t bring simple recognition. The one with the green scent, he trusted absolutely; he felt sure she would help him if he needed help, and he need not fear for his survival when she was near.

But the other! The other was the one who had drawn his hidden desire, but now he remembered, and remembered well, what had inspired his revulsion. The other, Pitch Black, had killed his companions. This was what he had to do to survive, and Sandy now had more sympathy for that constraint, but it was still awful. Sandy remembered that he’d let himself be changed (wonderfully changed) because he wanted to protect his surviving friend. Any desire that he also felt for Pitch had to be balanced against that.

Pitch was an incredible being, and Sandy was indeed a suitable match for him, but Sandy’s transformation didn’t mean that everything was going to be easy for Pitch now.

Pitch gazed at him with wonder from where he crouched on the nearby clover. How sweet. But that wasn’t going to do him any good, yet.

When Pitch took a slow, crouching step forward, Sandy rose to his feet and retreated to open the same distance as before between them. “Pitch Black,” he said. “I think this change is good; I think it makes us a match. What do you think?”

“I think you are magnificent,” Pitch said.

Sandy laughed, and was immensely glad to find he still could. It was enough to let him not worry too much about the realization that this brief conversation now hadn’t been in any language he’d ever heard.

“That’s wonderful! Wonderful!” Sandy said, letting the words flow naturally. “But I remembered everything I needed to remember, too. You killed my friends! You will not have me so easily.”

Pitch at once sat back on his haunches, blinking. “But you…” he began. “You know…”

The green-scented one’s eyes crinkled in amusement. “I will leave you to figure this out between yourselves,” she said, then turned to face Sandy. “If you need me, you will be able to find me.” She vanished into the woods with what Sandy was almost sure was a wink, even if that was so human a gesture. Maybe changing him had made her remember some things about being human? Well, Sandy would have time to ask her later. He need not pursue her now. It was time to make things clear to Pitch.

Sandy grinned when he turned back to him. “I want you to pursue me,” he said. “I want you to show me exactly how much you want me. How does that sound?” Sandy asked, exulting at both the fact that he’d retained the inclination to smile, and at the bewilderment growing on Pitch’s face, at the lost and longing expression blooming there.

Sandy wasn’t as constrained by anxiety and ideals as he’d been before, but he still marveled at the freedom he felt to tease Pitch like this, to dare him to chase him. Before—when he was a human, when there was no monster in front of him, he would’ve always assumed that if he’d played hard to get at all, whoever had thought to pursue him would’ve immediately ceased their pursuit.

But now, now he was changed. Now he knew that he was wonderful, amazing, new. Pitch should want to chase him. And he did! He did!

“Can’t you already see how much I want you?” Pitch said, inching forward again. “I chose you. I disregarded the wishes of my offspring to change you right away. She is angry, and I have lost prey, because I wanted you sooner.”

“Yes, yes, yes,” Sandy said. “I knew that your desire for me could let my friend escape!”

Pitch raised his head now, blinking rapidly. “But…I know that you desire me as well.”

“Yes, that’s true, too,” Sandy said. “I knew I couldn’t deceive you, and I did my best to make my desire for you grow, even despite the terrible things you’d done.” Sandy let his smile grow wider. “If you thought things would be simpler once I changed, think again!”

Pitch blinked slowly once, twice, three times. The hair on the back of his neck and down his spine stood on end. Sandy hadn’t yet become an expert in reading Pitch’s body language, but he’d already started to read wishes and desires as well as Pitch read fears. Pitch wanted to hold him close, Pitch wanted to take him to his favorite secret places, Pitch wanted to take him there and take him, touch him everywhere and learn everything he could about this new and lovely body Sandy now had. The deep and visceral heat that Pitch felt towards Sandy was incredible, intoxicating, and Sandy wanted to bask in it. But he couldn’t ignore the other desires he also felt in Pitch. The desire not just to have Sandy as a mate, but also to grip him with sharp claws, to rend him, just a little, just a little, for having the impertinence to make him wait, after everything that had already happened.

Pitch didn’t rely on Sandy’s new powers to make this clear. “I do not understand why you are acting like this,” Pitch said, a growl of frustration beneath every word. “I want you, and you want me. You are no longer afraid of me. There is nothing that should hinder us. I know what I felt when you touched me.”

“You know some of what I felt, but not all,” Sandy said. “I feel all of what I felt then, even if some of it seems strange now. I’m happy to know that my friend got away, but that doesn’t mean that I’m ready to just fall into your arms. I want you to chase me. I want you to chase me so that all I can think about is my new body and my new senses, until I forget everything that came before. If you can chase me that hard…then I’ll be your mate.”

“What is this, what is this?” Pitch muttered, though he sounded less displeased than before.

“This is play,” Sandy said. “This is a game.”

“Then I…I will play this game with you,” he said, and then, he did something that truly astonished Sandy: He smiled. And even with the sharpness of his teeth, Sandy could tell that this was a true smile, the expression in all its complexity rather than a mere baring of teeth.

Ah, thought Sandy. So you are changing, too. A flutter of thrill passed along his spine and through his belly, and he gave Pitch a mischievous wink.

Pitch growled again, but this time Sandy could hear playfulness in it.

We’re both so new, now, Sandy thought, his muscles tensing, getting ready to run. I wonder what we are? I wonder what we’ll become?

And then the chase was on.

 ***

 When Brick, Hodgins, and Marless reached the van with the axle ripped out, Brick was given cause to reflect on how Marless had no idea how this investigation was supposed to go. Marless took one look at the van, and then he took a second look, as well. “What…what could possibly have done that?” he asked, stepping toward it in a curious way that Brick didn’t care for at all, and in truth, could possibly even be dangerous for Marless.

“Let me ask you another question,” Brick said. “Whatever caused that, do you think it’s something you could arrest?”

Marless looked at him, incredulous, as if he couldn’t quite believe that there were bad things that happened that couldn’t be solved by him making an arrest or two. Brick idly wondered how long he would last as a small town cop, where the job was less about making arrests and more about making people confident that if there ever was any real trouble, someone was around who could make the proper arrests (i.e. someone else, as they weren’t troublemakers).

Or maybe Marless’ look didn’t mean anything like that at all. Maybe Marless was incredulous that Brick would suggest that whoever—that whatever—did this was unable to be arrested, and if unable to be arrested, then not human. Brick didn’t say anything to push him either way. There was never any convincing anyone of the existence of the monster. Everyone knew that monsters didn’t exist. People had to remove themselves from “everyone” on their own, or not at all.

And, besides, it was always a fascinating opportunity to watch the battle between what someone was seeing and what they knew.

“No…” Marless said slowly. “I…it’s a dramatic piece of damage, but that’s why people aren’t supposed to drive anywhere but on the paved roads.”

Brick smiled a little. True, as far as it went. And what everybody knew won the day once again, though Marless did seem warier as they proceeded onwards.

Both Marless and Hodgins had brought cameras with them, and once they entered the cabin, they started taking pictures, Hodgins speaking into a small recorder about their findings.

“Door unlocked and left open. Furniture has been moved from standard configuration, but this appears to have been purposeful movement, not signs of a struggle. Beds from the bedrooms have been moved to cover the windows. Bedroom doors are of the simple lock style where one can set the lock, exit the room, and lock oneself out. This has been done with all bedroom doors. In my opinion, it appears that the persons occupying this cabin were attempting to block intruders from entering. According to the story related by Riti Khan, this was done after Jackie Frost and Nick Kringle had been killed. There is no evidence that any intruder attempted to break into the cabin, which also matches Miss Khan’s story.” He paused. “Marless, can you continue documenting the cabin? Brick and I are going to go to the lakeshore, where the first alleged murder occurred.” He turned to Brick. “That is, if you think that makes sense.”

Marless agreed, so involved in photographing what was mainly the debris of an ordinary college Saturday night that he didn’t even notice Hodgins’ deference to Brick. So much for the better, Brick thought, following Hodgins outside. We don’t need him making any more fuss.

At the shore of the lake, Hodgins didn’t say anything at first as he looked at a spot near the pier. He took a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket—had he forgotten, Brick wondered, or was he feeling especially grim at the moment? Brick would stop him before he lit one, of course; he’d seen the aftermath of broken rules in forms far more grisly than a damaged car, and he wouldn’t want Hodgins to face such a fate.

Hodgins tapped the pack on his palm. “Almost forgot,” he said, throwing Brick a solemn glance. “But of course, I wouldn’t dare break a park rule with the head of the park standing right next to me.”

“Of course,” Brick said. “What do you see that almost made you forget?”

“Oh, what should be nothing much,” Hodgins said. He gestured toward the mud next to the pier. “Some churned up mud, some broken water weeds, some ripped-out grass. It’s the kind of scene you would expect to find if a drunk person had fallen off the pier and then struggled to climb out on the bank.” But that wasn’t what had happened here. Here, someone had been taken into the water, and she hadn’t come out again.

“This is another of them strange ones, isn’t it,” Hodgins said.

“Yes,” Brick acknowledged. “We’ve seen a few of these in Burgess together, now haven’t we?”

“Yes,” Hodgins said. “A few, certainly. And none of them were easy to deal with. This one…well, do you think we’ll find the murderer?”

“Truth be told, no,” said Brick. This familiar conversation. How many times had they had it? Not too often, surely, surely what he’d done had made it rare. What Katherine had accused him of…it had to be false. He had reduced the deaths. He had. What would he have been doing if he hadn’t been reducing the deaths?

Well. He could worry about that when he wasn’t beset by more pressing practical matters.

“That kind of pessimism won’t be appreciated by the parents of the victims,” Hodgins said.

“It’s never been loved,” Brick said. He put his hands in his pockets.

“The parents of the victims will resent that Khan lived and their kids didn’t,” Hodgins said.

“That’s a problem for them and their therapists,” Brick said. “It’s astonishing that Miss Khan was able to survive. She should be celebrated for it.”

Hodgins made a noncommittal noise. He brought out his camera again and snapped a picture of the churned up shore, not bothering to adjust the aperture or focus when he did. It was the kind of photo that wouldn’t mean anything when developed. Compared with the interior photos, it would just look like a mistake. Brick didn’t think it was. There were a few (but only a few, surely only a few) files full of blurry pictures in the archives of the Burgess police department.

Brick wouldn’t draw Hodgins’ attention to it, though. Hodgins’ place in all this was a delicate one, and he was too valuable to push. The current police chief had only been in Burgess since the previous incident, after which the former police chief had resigned and moved himself and his family somewhere far away. Brick thought they might have gone somewhere in Maine, but that seemed like such a curious choice that he doubted his memory on that count. Regardless, the point was that the old police chief was gone, and now Burgess had a new police chief, and that new police chief was the kind of person who hired officers like Marless for a town like Burgess. Brick couldn’t afford to lose someone of the old guard, not when things like this still happened.

“Since the girl made it back to town, it’s clear that this…isn’t the same as the other weird ones,” Hodgins said, bringing Brick back to the present. “It clearly wasn’t a freak accident. Like the others.”

Brick nodded slowly.

“I’ve never been part of a murder investigation,” Hodgins said. “Deaths by animal attacks, I’ve seen. Car accidents, I’ve seen. Deadly accidents in this park, I’ve seen. I’ve seen suicides. But not homicide.”

Homicide. The word was sharp and cold as it pressed itself into Brick’s mind, and he instinctively pushed it away. “It’s possible, isn’t it,” he said, “that Miss Khan’s story was primarily a…confabulation…that she used to try to make some sense of the senseless accidents that claimed her friends’ lives?”

Hodgins looked at Brick with an opaque expression. “No,” he said, and Brick realized that he had almost pushed Hodgins too far without meaning to. “The other strange cases were accidental deaths, all right, but this time we have a witness to tell us that these were murders, not accidents.” He paused. “I guess I’ll find out what a murder investigation is like. There’s going to be a big one, there has to be, for this. I wonder what it’ll turn up, even if you think the murderer won’t be found.”

“Nothing,” Brick said. “As you well know, it’ll turn up nothing.”

Hodgins made another noncommittal noise and took another picture of the lake shore. This time, he adjusted the camera carefully.

After a couple more minutes, Hodgins and Brick returned to the cabin, Hodgins taciturn as a stone, and Brick getting more and more irritated with him and his refusal to believe in monsters with every step. If Hodgins would just listen to what had actually happened, they’d both have far fewer problems. They could reach an obvious agreement about how the investigation needed to be kept small. They could reach an agreement on what should happen in a few years with the next strange case.

Brick kept his brain busy with these thoughts until he and Hodgins reentered the cabin. There, something else served to draw his attention away from troubling speculation: Marless was nowhere in evidence.

“Marless?” Hodgins called to the empty living room, his hand dropping to his weapon. “Marless?”

Brick followed Hodgins down the hallway, though he didn’t think the monster or his mate was here right now. He was sure he’d notice something, that the mystic feeling of years ago would return.

So he wasn’t surprised when Hodgins’ voice was irritated rather than wary when he next spoke.

“Marless!” he snapped, upon looking into one of the bedrooms. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

Brick looked into the bedroom just in time to see Marless groggily pushing himself into a sitting position.

“I was—” Marless blinked, bewildered. “I was dreaming. Can’t remember what it was about, now, though.”

“Who cares what it was about?” Hodgins asked angrily, stepping in and hauling Marless to his feet. He stumbled into the wall when Hodgins let go of him, still not seeming completely awake. “And I repeat, what the hell,” said Hodgins. “We’re investigating four alleged murders, and you fall asleep on the floor of what might very well be a crime scene. You’re no super cop, but I thought you were a lot better than that.”

Marless gingerly pushed himself away from the wall, and this time he didn’t need to lean on it again. He rubbed his face with one hand, his expression settling into a deep frown. “I remember feeling tired,” he said. “I remember yawning. But I don’t remember lying down on the floor, or even deciding to.”

“If I may offer my opinion,” Brick said, “despite Officer Marless’ apparent health, this little incident seems medically suspicious.”

Marless gulped and nodded, and Hodgins gave him a long look. “You willing to take a sick day to go to the hospital in Leary to get checked out?” Marless agreed, and this time Hodgins was the one to pass his hand over his face. “And when that would mean missing part of this investigation, too,” he muttered. “Well, all right. Marless, I don’t think you just had a sudden attack of laziness.” He looked around the room, cramped-seeming even without the beds inside it, the dresser and the space around it scattered with the possessions of the unlucky campers. “Let’s get out of here for now. This isn’t where the investigation should be focused, anyway. It’s just easier to document than the fucking woods.” He turned to Brick. “We’ll start a report and come back up here again tomorrow. You don’t need to be present for that. We’ll call you if we need you.”

It was clearly a dismissal, and Brick felt it had been directly meant to get his back up, but at his age anger took longer to arrive. Today, it made only a brief, distant drive-by, playing the familiar tune that went Hodgins, of course you need me! Without me you’d be up to your neck in mysterious disappearances, and they’d be people from town! Maybe one of them would even be you, because that monster you refuse to acknowledge doesn’t give shit one about your gun and badge! If you don’t want to believe in the monster, someone has to, and if it’s going to be me I deserve some respect for protecting Burgess and your precious ignorance!

That tune had been playing since the day Brick had been appointed director of Burgess parks, however, and he could easily ignore most of it. He still hated having to work through insinuations and implications with Hodgins, but that state of affairs was unlikely to change in the course of his lifetime. There were other things that should worry him more. “I’ll keep my phone with me,” he said. “Now, you do plan to follow the park’s rules as you conduct your investigation, yes?”

“We won’t be here to destroy anything,” Hodgins said, moving to subtly push Brick and Marless toward the cabin door. Marless moved, but Brick didn’t. Not yet.

Hodgins sighed when he realized Brick wasn’t budging. “What more assurance do you want from me? Look, I’ll even see if I can round up a volunteer crossing guard or two to start working at those fallen trees—and yes, with hand tools.”

Brick nodded and finally took a step towards the door. “And you won’t stay out here after dark.”

Hodgins sighed again. “Luckily, we won’t need to be out here after dark, at least not for the first part of the investigation.” The three of them passed from the porch to the path and started on the long walk back to the car. “But after that—and there will be an after, even if the investigation is fruitless we’ve got to follow it to the end—I don’t know. I can’t promise how people will react. I can’t honestly say I know where this will lead. I have to tell the chief about this.” He paused.

Brick knew what that pause was about. It was Hodgins saying he wouldn’t lie, but he wouldn’t say that in front of Marless, because of course, in an investigation of four deaths, lying to the chief shouldn’t even be an option for a good police officer.

“The new chief,” Brick said, again working from tiresome insinuation.

“Yeah. The new chief. He’s got connections. Connections that could really help if we really do have a quadruple murder on our hands.”

But we don’t! We don’t and you know it! Brick kept his peace for the time being, though. He’d been keeping his peace for a long time, and he could keep it until he figured out how to get through to Hodgins without trying to force him to believe in monsters. “A thorough investigation ought to make everyone happy,” he said.

“Yeah,” said Hodgins. “The FBI won’t treat the park rules as set in stone, though. And they’ll try to develop a profile of the killer.”

Brick almost brayed a laugh at that. His knowledge of profiling was limited to how it was portrayed in a few books and movies, but even if it was more serious and methodical in real life, it wasn’t going to do any good here. For one thing, an FBI profile would assume from the start that the killer was human. And since Mulder was only a television character, it was unlikely that any FBI that got involved here would be willing or able to see where their profile had gone wrong. “Then I wish them luck,” Brick said. He wasn’t willing to play his part for Hodgins right now. If he wanted confirmation that there was a monster in the woods, he should’ve listened carefully to everything Brick had said and hadn’t said over the past few decades. He should’ve been brave enough to bring it up to Brick plainly.

He would do something to save the FBI agents from their own arrogance if they did come, but they weren’t here yet.

To Brick’s relief, Hodgins didn’t respond to his stone wall of a remark, and Marless remained silent as well. That was how it should be, given that none of them had anything to say to the others right now. Brick spared a thought to hope that there wasn’t anything seriously wrong with Marless, though he knew he wouldn’t be upset if Marless ended up doing a lot more desk work until all this was over.

That thought passed, and left Brick finally able to appreciate the burgeoning spring around them. He took a deep breath as they walked by the ruined van, not giving it even the briefest look.

Even Marless ignored it, worried as he was that he was on the brink of some neurological catastrophe. Him! A man in his prime! Falling asleep without remembering it, on a hard floor, on the job, at a potential crime scene! That wasn’t like him, and it wasn’t like any adult he knew, either. He was too young for any mild or expected problems. In this case, the most likely explanation was most likely to be a bad one.

Sandy, watching him, could have told him not to worry, that his mind was really quite healthy. Look at everything he was imagining now! Sandy was tempted to send him to sleep again, to see what those imagined fears tasted like, but Pitch would be drawn to this man as well.

And Sandy wasn’t quite ready for Pitch to catch him yet.

But he was getting there.

 ***

 Why hadn’t the park been listed before? People wondered. Why did it seem like such a small place based on the kind of ads it had, but so many amenities listed once you looked into it? Why was a campsite there so inexpensive? So inexpensive. Ah. Well…you couldn’t expect a small town parks department to have the savviest of advertising teams. You couldn’t expect them to know what they had, not like well-seasoned travelers who were expert seekers of the right balance between novelty and frugality.

Burgess Wilderness Recreation Area balanced those things like a stack of river rocks.*

With proper links in the ads, few people needed to do any internet search for the recreation area. Those who did found the park’s website as the top result, and since that was what they were looking for, most didn’t bother looking at the rest of the results. And even those who did, well, of course the more sensational news was what was recorded and reported.

And just look at the price you could get a cabin for!

Now, there were a few who did pause for a moment or two when they saw that Burgess Wilderness Recreation Area aimed to become popular—the avid hikers that had never abandoned the park in the first place, mostly. They remembered hiking in the park, and they remembered, too, the way the trails made them feel. Watched. Uneasy. It always took a little more courage than should’ve been necessary to finish out a trail in Burgess. Conversations about such things were rare, however, and when they did take place, they were private. A strange feeling isn’t often something one wants to share widely. So those who’d been to Burgess before mostly kept their peace, and perhaps they resolved never to return to Burgess again…and perhaps they resolved the opposite. Obscure parks attract obscure folks, sometimes.

The park did grow more popular. Not a lot more popular, nothing that would make it stand out (nothing but those low, low prices) and if people noticed anything that would make the park exceptional, they didn’t say anything about it. Not immediately, anyway. Later, though, later a few would talk to their friends, and the nature of friendship these days is that when distant friends talk, sometimes their private conversations are able to be found by anyone who looks.

The rumors that sometimes odd things happened in the Burgess Wilderness Recreation Area spread.

But they didn’t spread too far. After all, the rumors were that there was something in the woods. Such legends were too common to be given credence by those who had seen the film industry, cold-bloodedly, and the internet, chaotically, create their own variations on this tale out of mere nothing. And those who did claim first-hand experience? Taken together, the tales weren’t coherent. Some imagined they’d had a hippy-style encounter with some sort of Earth goddess. (Ridiculous, ridiculous! Just a symptom of reading too many books with a poor understanding of ancient history and reading too much into the carefully preserved ecosystem of the area.) Some imagined they’d seen glimpses of a tall and slender humanoid figure with glowing eyes, the presence of which caused astounding, unbelievable terror to overwhelm their senses. (Even more ridiculous! Just a copycat kind of story from people who’d spent more time online than in the woods, and freaked out when their flashlights swept over a raccoon in a small tree.) Some imagined they’d seen some kind of strange creature, humanoid but shorter than most people, silent, huge-eyed, fat, and fast.

To connoisseurs of such things, this last was most unsettling because it was the most unusual. It didn’t fit the tropes that the others did. But, unfortunately, those who did share their rare stories of this creature also had to admit that shortly after seeing it, they fell asleep. This, for most who hadn’t seen the creature, pushed it into the realm of a less terrifying than usual hypnagogic hallucination. However, after a few people added the tawny color of the creature to their descriptions, someone suggested that perhaps the strange creature was actually a very large and massively misinterpreted Maine Coon cat. It wasn’t like the people who saw it had had the chance to measure it.

This suggestion made the hypnagogic hallucination idea seem both more interesting and more plausible, and most people from the debates that had been active before said suggestion—true believers and rationalists and witnesses—joined together to argue that the creature had certainly not been a cat.

And they were right.

But while they could agree on that, they could agree on little else, and so the question of what this creature was remained unanswered.

This was unsurprising. Even the creature himself was taking much time to answer it, and he had help from another being who regularly and delightedly assured himself of the fact of his physical existence.

And so more people went to Burgess Wilderness Recreation Area than had gone there in decades. Enough people went there that most of them neither saw nor felt anything strange. And for those that did? Well, an incident that made for a good story on the internet was quite different from something that could make someone abandon what they’d known all their adult lives: There are no monsters in the woods.

And maybe they were right about that. The three beings occasionally observed there would certainly agree.