Original Short Fiction: How to Hunt Bigfoot for Fun and College Credit, Part 3 The Guided Tour
We'd been told we were about to meet a pair of bigfoot's kids, but Phil was dubious.
If you haven't followed the rest of the story, Part one is here, Part two is here, thanks for reading!
“Are you sure this is the place?” Phil asked.
We’d been blindfolded for our two hour journey, the cameras and recording equipment left behind with the van. It was pitch black and must have been close to eleven pm.
Luis had stopped outside a small brick church, with a tall staircase rising up to the sanctuary doors, a wooden steeple that had seen better days, and a wrought iron fence surrounding a small cemetery on one side.
I looked around, the only structure in view was a metal shed, with a hand painted sign, lit by a single flickering bulb, under a rusty, wide metal shade that used to be green.
It looked like the place dive bars go to die. In the window, a
“Michelob Light” carton had been cut out and taped in place with red rope light running around it’s outside edge, poor man’s neon, I
guessed.
We waited with Luis’ cousin, who had finally introduced himself as Angel.
“We’ll wait here while the locals decide whether to shoot us, or welcome us.” He grinned, the moonlight gleaming off his gold tooth. Phil and I exchanged glances, with him nodding meaningfully to my “button hole camera” there was no way we were going into this with no way to make a record of it.
We could be making history.
The sign in front of the church read, Bluebird Hollow, First Freewill, Pentecostal, Baptist of the Firstborn. Say that three times fast, I thought. A rusty squeak sounded from the direction of the church and Phil, Gwen and I spun to find an ancient teeter-totter, rising on its own, then settling back into the dust. Angel laughed.
Luis exited the bar and came across the street smiling. He held what looked movie tickets in his hand.
“We’re in. What you guys are about to see will make you question everything you’ve ever believed,” he said, passing out the tickets.
We walked across the street and under a sign that read, “Bluebird Holler, Bar and Grill, But Mostly Bar” and into the building.
On the right, an old butcher counter, with a glass front, held a cash register, a jar of pickled eggs, another jar of beef jerkey and a hand lettered menu sign I couldn’t read from here. On the left, sat a large, round, oak dining room table which was currently serving as a poker table.
At the head of the table, a white haired, balding dealer, who turned out to be woman, was spitting into a Mason jar.
Six other card players eyed us with suspicion. Outside our party, it seemed that no one in the room was a minute under 65.
Luis led the way through a curtain divider that had once been a pair of bed spreads, into a back room stacked high with chairs and broken tables. A collection of cutout beer carton art was taped along one wall.
A thin man in a white banded collar shirt, with a low, black leather gambler’s hat greeted us with a smile, indicating a stair case that led down, concealed behind a waste high railing, with a red velvet curtain hanging down from it to the floor.
Below the bar, the space widened out. It was over ten feet high and at least a hundred chairs were spread across the room, mostly filled. There were three seats right down front, our usher took Phil, Gwen and I to them, while the cousins stood in the back.
A girl in a black dress came by and served kettle style popcorn in
heavy crockery bowls and iced tea in mason jars, which I skipped, on the off chance that granny upstairs might have formerly used one of them as her spittoon.
“What is this place?” Phil whispered, looking back across the room.
The gathered audience looked like the cast of a horror film set in a small West Virginia mining town, hard, thin and unsmiling, except for a little blonde girl with a lollipop, who laughed every time we glanced her direction.
After a few minutes, the man in the gambler’s hat stepped between us and a makeshift bedsheet video screen. He seemed to be the master of ceremonies.
“Welcome, everyone to the Bluebird Holler Cinema. Tonight’s program is a documentary about one of the most amazing sites I ever seen. The Miracle Bears, as they were called, as many of you know, were a pair of orphaned Sasquatch babies, raised and schooled right here in Bluebird Hollow. I was only six when they left us for their natural habitat, but over the years, I’ve collected memorabilia, photos, home movies and artifacts and what you are about to see tonight is the culmination of that work.”
He went on to explain that it could never be shown outside of this room and the three of us would be the first outsiders ever allowed to even watch the film, for fear of the powers that be and their invasive methodologies and what they might do to the “community spirit” they held so dear.
Without further explanation the film started and for two hours, I don’t think I breathed.
Our host was pretty good with a camera and his efforts were remarkable. He’d added a soundtrack of local music, and filled the screen with interviews of town’s people who remembered the Miracle Bears, two girls, they thought, named Maggie and Ursula.
In between the interviews and narration, found footage showed the two girls. They played with other children on a playground, pushing the merry-go-round up to impossible speeds. They rode tricycles down a paved driveway. One of them ate an ice cream. It was incredible.
Any doubt I might have had, viewing this in a mainstream theater was almost overcome by the setting, but a part of me was still skeptical. After all, we’d just set through a two hour lecture about bigfoot frauds that morning.
When the movie was over, the basement cleared out.
Luis indicated that we should stay. The man in the gambler came over to introduce himself. “I’m Esau Crane,” he said, extending a hand to each of us in turn.
“Jack Bannister.”
“Phil Johnson.”
“Gwen Cannon.”
“If you meet me back here at sunup, I think I can help you find what you’re looking for,” he said, then turned and left us wondering exactly what he meant.
We slept under the open sky, since we didn’t have enough time to go back to our campground and get back by dawn.
When we woke up, Angel had a fire going in an empty lot next to the church. The smell of bacon frying drifted over the whole area. The sun was just peeking over the horizon by the time I’d finished my second plate of eggs.
An ancient black Willy’s Jeep rolled up, just as the sun broke from the horizon and Esau Crane climbed out. He walked over to our little encampment and set on an abandoned tire, warming his hands at the fire. Luis made him a plate of eggs.
“Thank you sir. I want to explain exactly what I’m offering,” Esau said.
“I know where this new pair of sasquatch twins are being held and I can get you there. I don’t agree with how they’re being held, but here’s the thing. We’re simple people out here and we like it that way. It’s got to stay secret. I take you there, you can never reveal where they are. I don’t even want you to breathe a word of what county you went through on your way home, agreed?”
I looked from Phil to Gwen and and we all nodded in agreement.
“Yes, sir. We agree. We don’t think anyone wants the state stomping through and tearing up your land looking for bigfoot, or taking these two for research.”
“All right, Luis, Angel, you two vouch for these three? You know where we’re goin, you know what’s at stake here, this goin be okay?” Esau Crane looked concerned.
Angel looked at his younger cousin and turned to Esau, “We don’t know these people from Adam, but, the spirits seem to be with them.”
“Well, that’s good enough for me.” Esau Crane drew something in the dirt with a stick, “Here’s my price. Not to me, to the church there,” he said.
I stood up and moved to get a better angle on his scratching, it read $ 3000.00 USD.
“What? You’ve got to be kidding, that’s 25% of our budget,” Phil said.
“Huh, you might be right,” Esau scratched out the 3 and edited his price, it now read $ 5000.00. Phil spit coffee in surprise, scalding himself.
“Agreed,” I said, before he could change his mind. “But, we need an ATM, half now, half after.”
Then something happened I did not see coming, Esau Crane, this “simple” man pulled out an iphone, with a PayPal card reader. “I got this, if you can pay with a debit or credit card,” he said.
Then, addressing our surprise, “Don’t think simple means stupid, boys and girls, and I will have my eyes on you.”
“Fine, but at that price, we get to bring our cameras,” Phil said.
Esau got up, walked to his Jeep and climbed in, he looked prepared to leave. I walked over to the Jeep.
“Is that a deal breaker?” I asked him.
“It might be, but, I am not unreasonable. It’s a lot of money and could help a lot of folks around here. How about a compromise, no big cameras, but you can shoot photos with your phones, agreed? As long as they don’t see you. If they do, I can’t protect you,” Esau said.
“All right, agreed,” I shook his hand and waved Phil and Gwen over.
Gwen took the front seat and we headed out of Bluebird Hollow, up into the hills. Several miles in, we turned off onto a side road, and Phil and I had to help shift a road block camouflaging the entrance to another road.
Once the Jeep was through, we shifted it back. It felt like the entrance to another world. The road was old, but paved, although it was too steep in spots and the narrow track of the Jeep barely fit around some of the hairpin turns.
After two hours, we pulled over and had sandwiches, dangling our feet over the edge of the road. Esau assured us, there would be no traffic, his was the only motorized vehicle that had traveled this road in 30 years.
The road backtracked, across the face of the mountain, crossing streams with no bridge, cutting through a pasture at one point for over two miles where two narrow strips of concrete were the only road. They passed at least four towns, completely empty, ghostly, the buildings nothing but shells.
“This whole area was condemned, considered poisoned from the lead mining through here. They move thousands of people out of here back in the 80s,” Esau explained.
Finally, in the last of the four towns, Esau got out and went into an abandoned general store.
I followed, watching through the window as he approached an antique payphone and dropped in a nickel. He dialed and talked for a few minutes, then turned to leave. I scrambled to the Jeep and crawled back in, before he could see me.
“Okay, they’re ready for us. Now remember, make sure they do not see you take any pictures. It won’t end well,” Esau said, climbing back into the Jeep. “This bunch is an interesting community. They live by their own rules and you don’t want to piss them off.”
It was another twenty-five minutes of driving to our destination, a tiny mountain town. The sign read, Welcome to Billsburg. We parked at the end of a town square. A narrow, brick paved street ran around a rectangular green and wood frame buildings, neatly painted and maintained surrounded it on the three sides opposite us.
At the end was a white church, on the right was a townhall and on the left stood the Billsburg General Store, barter only.
“What’s that mean, barter only?” Phil asked, quietly.
Esau overheard, “They don’t use money here. Don’t even allow it in the town at all. Everything is done by barter exchange, with established rates for common things like eggs, bread, or sides of bacon.”
“What if they need something they can’t grow or make?” Gwen asked, looking around, as curious towns people began to gather on the green, around a white gazebo.
“Well, so far, they’ve traded with outsiders. They make cheese and wine that’s pretty well known in these parts,” Esau said.
He turned and walked to the gazebo and stepped onto the platform in its center.
“Friends, I have brought you some visitors. They have come to see the Miracle Bears. I want you to make them welcome,” he said, and from the way everyone responded, I was beginning to wonder about who he was here. He definitely was not an outsider.
“So, when do we get to see them?” I asked him as he stepped down.
“It’s getting close to sundown and I don’t think a drive down that mountain in the dark sounds like a good idea.
“Well, you’ll be staying here, with my family,” he said.
Gwen, who had been watching a group of women gathering on the board porch outside the general store, stiffened and turned and Phil shot me a look. He hadn’t mentioned anything about living here.
“You live here?” Phil asked, “I kind of got the impression you were an outsider.”
Esau Crane said nothing. He pulled two sacks of groceries from the back of the Jeep and turned, expecting us to follow.
He walked with his head down, through the square, as people watched him, sharply, talking quietly among themselves as he passed. It wasn’t much of a welcome. We passed one street and another, finally Esau turned right and walked up to a large white house.
From the style, it seemed a hundred years old, but it looked like it had been built recently. He opened the door and ushered them in, lighting oil lamps with matches as he went, until the room had a warm glow.
“Esau, what is going on here? We just came to see the sasquatch pups,” I said, “and I’m not too comfortable feeling like I don’t have a choice in being your guest here tonight.”
By now, there was a crowd of townspeople on the porch, looking in the window with curiosity.
“Keep your voice down and follow me, everything is not quite what it seems here,” he said.
We followed him through the kitchen and out through a neatly kept back yard to a big white, dutch barn behind the house. He dug a set of antique keys out of his pocket and put one into a lock on the door, grabbing a lantern hanging by the door on a hook, which he lit, before entering the barn.
It smelled of hay, and it was hot. Esau led the way to a huge cage, running at least 15 feet tall, and the whole length of the barn.
Inside, tree limbs and rocks had been arranged to mimic a mountainside like the one we had come up that afternoon.
And, there, huddled in one corner, were two hairy little lumps that looked up with dark eyes as we approached.
Esau handed out sugar lumps to each of us and offered one to the cubs. They came up to the front of the cage and took one each, scurrying back a few feet to enjoy their treat.
Less than a week before, I'd been ready to pull scam telling a story about a creature I was relatively certain didn't exist, now one of them was taking sugar out of my fingers. This was amazing!
Phil, always the cynic, didn't quite join me in my reverie, "First, you say you know where they are, now it turns it out you don't just know, you own the barn they're caged inside of? I don't like this, something is off here Jack."
"He's right," Gwen added, kneeling beside the cage stroking one of the sasquatch pups.
"Just be patient, all will be explained in due time," Esau said, overly loudly.
He put an arm around me and drew me close.
“Take this,” Esau murmured, shoving a paper into my pocket, “don’t read it here, they’ll be watching,” he said, lifting his chin. I looked up, and there, around the sides of the barn, on a balcony, was a row of townspeople.
They had come in so silently none of us had heard them and they stood, motionless, watching our every move.
“What the hell?” Phil said, a little too loud. This drew a hiss from our audience.
“What are we doing here?” Gwen asked, through clenched teeth, her eyes flashing as she turned her gaze on Esau. “Tell me you’ve got an exit plan,” she murmured.
Summary by @tldr:
A thin man in a white banded collar shirt, with a low, black leather gambler's hat greeted us with a smile, indicating a stair case that led down, concealed behind a waste high railing, with a red velvet curtain hanging down from it to the floor.
A girl in a black dress came by and served kettle style popcorn in heavy crockery bowls and iced tea in mason jars, which I skipped, on the off chance that granny upstairs might have formerly used one of them as her spittoon.
The gathered audience looked like the cast of a horror film set in a small West Virginia mining town, hard, thin and unsmiling, except for a little blonde girl with a lollipop, who laughed every time we glanced her direction.
He'd added a soundtrack of local music, and filled the screen with interviews of town's people who remembered the Miracle Bears, two girls, they thought, named Maggie and Ursula.
A narrow, brick paved street ran around a rectangular green and wood frame buildings, neatly painted and maintained surrounded it on the three sides opposite us.
Everything is done by barter exchange, with established rates for common things like eggs, bread, or sides of bacon." "What if they need something they can't grow or make?" Gwen asked, looking around, as curious towns people began to gather on the green, around a white gazebo.
Gwen, who had been watching a group of women gathering on the board porch outside the general store, stiffened and turned and Phil shot me a look.
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Yeah, not so much, you need to tweak your bot, but nice try.