While living in North Carolina you hear stories handed down from centuries before. If you listen closely, you can sometimes hear a repetitive subject in the stories. Whether you come from Native American heritage or your family comes from the British Isles, the stories are a part of who you are. My county has several mountains in it. Usually with mountains, you get forests or heavily wooded areas. We use to have Catawba and Cherokee tribes in the area before the Europeans arrived. Though few stayed, some of their stories have remained.
One particular mountain has tales of murder, arson, open graves from 1800's, you get the idea. Of course there's expensive housing and a golf course now. Most of the mountain has become well populated, but they managed to keep a good amount for a state park. There's a lovely lake and hiking trails to the top. That part is for another time. This takes place on the backroads taking someone home. I was with someone I don't talk to anymore. The falling out was long after this, but it was an experience we unfortunately share. She was driving about midnight on a back road taking someone home. I only knew the person as an acquaintance but she knew her pretty well. She was a straight edge person and I don't drink with people I don't know. So everyone was fully cognitive of their functions. We were sitting in silence, relaxing after a party and so the driver could see. This particular area had no street lights. The darkness was a blanket around the car. We were going 20 mph around the turns for safety reasons. One side of us was an old stone wall about 6 feet high and on the other was a steep embankment to the golf course. The moon was bright but for some reason, the light couldn't break the trees to the road. The driver slowed down to about 10 when the road wouldn't be shown under the high beams anymore. (This was before LED headlights became popular.) We were all looking out of the windshield when we saw it. A black streak raced out from the trees next to us and in front of the car. The driver slammed on the breaks and I felt the bump as we hit whatever it was. All of us were buckled in and it was enough to throw us around in our seats. The back passenger looked behind us in the window. I was staring into the mirror on the side of the car. The driver was doing the same. We were all quiet. I could hear my heart beating in my ears. What was that thing? Before anyone could say anything, the most angry high pitched scream to ever be emitted in my life shredded the silence. Unfortunately it was on my side. I covered my ears. The back passenger started screaming and kicking back to the door on the driver's side. The driver is white knuckling the steering wheel. She probably could have ripped it off in her fright. I look beside of me to see what's caused their reaction. I saw it. It had to have been over 6 feet tall. It soaked in the moonlight. It was still screaming at us. I could hear popping from joints rubbing against each other as it started to move toward us. The driver, in her panicked state, slammed her foot down on the gas. We didn't take that person home. Instead she stayed where we were. The next morning when we decided none of us could sleep and the sun was nice and high in the sky, we went back to the road where it happened. A few cops had the road blocked in both directions. There was an animal control vehicle, a forestry truck, and a tow truck. They wouldn't let us pass. The cop said there had been an accident and the road was closed. We turn around and pull off to the side where they can't see us. Being idiots, we decided to park at the golf course and hike across it to the accident site. We stand in the shadows of the evergreens and watch a group of badges and authorities scratch their heads. "Its been dead for at least a month." "Look at how big it is. That's not right" "Those eyes are unnaturally blue." "I followed the trail to the trees. The dog ran here on its own. No drag marks, no nothing." There was a moment of silence as they tried to understand what the man was saying. "I wonder what happened to the driver of the car?" "No clue, Steve, but with that amount of blood and the amount of debris, I'd say it was a bear attack." "We have black bears around here and I have yet to see any of them rip a jeep's hinges off. Besides, that doesn't explain where the eff this thing came from." He patted the black dog's head sitting on the back of a forestry truck. "Maybe it had rabies." I could tell from the animal control guy that he didn't think it was rabies. It was indeed massive. Its head dwarfed the man's torso. Its eyes were a human blue. Half of its skull was exposed. The smell was terrible. Its fur was matted and some of it was left in clumps on the ground where we hit it. The maggots are what got me. Unless it was a gangrenous wound already, there shouldn't have been maggots. We had witnessed enough. We went back to the car and sat in silence for an hour as our mental health tried to understand what was going on. We took the girl home. The driver and I stopped hanging out as much. Shortly after all of this, the girl moved out of the state. I have a pretty good idea as to what I saw that night but I refuse to say its name out loud. I still have to live here you know.
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Author34 years of life below the Mason Dixon line leads to a lot of stories of old and new. Archives
March 2023
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