The Lie

It was well past midnight, and on any other night of the year, I would have been dead asleep, but this was Christmas Eve, so I was wide awake when I heard my dad’s patrol car crunching the gravel in our drive. Softly, I crept along the hall until I stood, silent as a shadow, peering into the kitchen. It felt like one of those Norman Rockwell moments; my mom, still young, sitting up with her crosswords in our bright yellow kitchen, waiting for my dad to come home at the end of his shift. I’m not sure how, but I knew that this image of her, which I carry with me like an old photograph, would never be the same again.

The screen door slammed behind her. She smiled, looking up to greet my dad, but the smile twisted into horror.

Two men she did not recognize stood at her kitchen door. The smaller of the two sags near to collapsing. The other supported his weight. Both were covered in blood.

“Help me, Laura.”

She leaped to my dad’s side. Together they heaved my uncle, Joe, onto a chair. They came away bloody. “My God, Bill. What happened?”

Joe flopped over onto the table his chest heaving with great gasping sobs. Everything he touched turned bright red.

“Bill, what happened?”

“I found him up on Chilhowee. He was on Highway 9, lying in the ditch at the entrance to Powerline Road.”

“What was he doing way up there?”

“How the hell should I know?”

At this, Joe renewed his weeping. “He told me to. He knew my name. Oh, Jesus, you got to believe me...”

My dad grabbed a fistful of Joe’s flannel shirt and yanked him up straight in his chair. He slapped him hard. The smack flew across the kitchen and stung my own cheek. My dad never did care much for Joe, but I thought he was going to kill him right there at our kitchen table.

“Bill, please. He’s hurt.”

“Hurt hell, he’s only got a gash on his chest. Most of that blood’s not even his.”

You should see the inside of my cruiser. There’s blood all over. Ask him, Laura. Go ahead. Ask him who he was with tonight.”

“Joe, what happened? Whose blood is this?”

Joe covered his mouth as though to keep from being sick. He tried to rise, to escape, but my dad would not let him go. He pushed him back down hard and answered my mom’s question for him.

“Jenny Orland, that’s who.”

My mom stepped back reflexively. She turned on Joe. “What happened to Jenny Orland?”

At this, Joe wailed even louder. “I can’t.”

My dad reached up to the cupboard and pulled down a dusty mason jar of what looked like water. My mom glared at him.

“Stop looking at me like that, Laura. I haven’t touched this stuff in months.”

He pulled a chipped coffee mug from the dish drain, filled it, and shoved it into Joe’s shaking hands. Joe drained it in one desperate gulp. My dad refilled the cup and set it on the table out of Joe’s reach. “Tell her.”

“I can’t.”

My mom sat down next to her younger brother and began wiping the blood and the dirt from his face.

“Joey, sweetie, tell me what happened.”

“I can’t.” Joe fixed his eyes on the mug in the center of the table. He made a grab for it, sloshing half of it across the blood-smeared table, but my mom was quicker. She seized it before he could bring it to his lips.

“Joseph Conrad Walker,” she said in the same tone she used with me when I misbehaved. “You want this cup; you tell me what happened. Right now, you hear?”

Joe bowed his head and wiped his eyes. He held out his hand. “Ok.”

Too frightened to move, I stood alone in that dark hallway, listening to Joe’s tale. My childhood ended that night. It’s a hell of a thing, for a child to learn on Christmas eve monsters are real. When he was spent, my mom leaned in and said to him real quiet, “It was a bear, Joe. You hear me? Nothing else. You tell them it was the biggest bear you ever saw. You say otherwise, and they’ll give you the chair.

*****    *****    *****

Christmas morning, Sheriff Orland went up there with eight armed men and three dogs.

They found Joe’s truck where the road ended, halfway up Chilhowee mountain. The entire area around the truck was shattered. The trees looked like they had been hit by a tornado, only tornadoes don’t stain branches crimson. The soil beneath the truck was rutted with deep furrows as though something large had tried to get at prey hiding under the chassis. Orland strangled a cry when they found Jenny’s left shoe in the mud beneath the truck. A trail of destruction climbed straight uphill before disappearing.

They spent three nights on that mountain, searching for Jenny Orland. The fourth day dawned with an icy wind that pounced upon them with a biting vengeance. As they broke camp, Rand Hollis’s hounds caught a scent and turned as one to face uphill, their tails tucked, and their teeth bared.

The men froze, watching the dogs. The sheriff racked his shotgun, breaking the spell, and every weapon turned to point into the trees directly above them. The air turned sour with the tang of fear and something else, something animal.

“Smell that?” Hollis whispered through clenched teeth. “That ain’t bear.”

A branch snapped.

Two men fired instinctively.

“Dammit!” Orland cursed them.

The hounds sprang forward, racing up the mountain. Hollis ran after them but could not bring them to heel. The brush swallowed them instantly, their bays dying on the wind.

They chased Hollis’ dogs for hours. At noon, they found two of them. One was dead. The other was bloodied and cowering in a tangle of brambles. They gave up the search after that, no matter how much Orland cursed them for cowards and begged them to stay and help him find his daughter. Heading back down, a yelping cry brought them to black crevasse in the earth. With their flashlights, they pierced the darkness below. At the bottom of the pit, Hollis’ last dog looked up at them, frantically wagging his tail. On the ground next to him lay what was left of Jenny Orland.

*****    *****    *****

During the trial, Sheriff Orland allowed that whatever had killed his daughter could not have been human and had to have been a bear. The coroner concurred, and the judge agreed. Joe was acquitted and walked out of the courthouse on that bright cold morning a free man, yet he was not truly free. Three days after the trial, they found Joe’s truck at the entrance to Powerline Road. Joe was nowhere to be found. Footprints showed that he had stepped out of his truck and walked straight up the mountain. Whatever got Jenny Orland, got Joe too.

That happened ten years ago, and we had all managed to put it out of our minds, that is until last Saturday. That’s when Saundra Prescott and her boyfriend, Jeremiah Owens, went hiking on Chilhowee mountain. Two days later, Jeremiah was found staggering along the highway 9, bloodied and disoriented with the shredded remains of Saundra’s sweater clutched tightly against a seeping chest wound. Saundra was never seen again. Jeremiah’s trial is set for the Tuesday after next.