Document notes:
Account comes to me in the form of a witness statement, and if the header is to be believed, from the Killaloe Ontario Provincial Police department. Fairly local. I don’t recall this incident when it happened but a cursory web search uncovers several news articles about a bear attack in the Madawaska Valley that claimed the lives of a small group of young backpackers. According to this document, it wasn’t a bear that killed those kids. I’ve changed names and redacted sensitive information, including phone numbers and addresses.
“KILLALOE ONTARIO PROVINCIAL POLICE DEPARTMENT
Date: Sunday, July 27, 2008. Time of incident: late evening to early morning of the 27th. Type of incident: wild animal attack. Please describe what you saw:
I saw my friends dying. I saw a lot of blood. I saw a neat pile of guts on a stump. That one didn’t have any blood on it, actually, but I saw where one end of the intestines was packed with shit. I don’t think someone should have to see something like that. The insides of one of their friends just lying on a stump like a birthday cake.
We were out camping for the weekend. It was me, Casey, Theo, Chantelle, and Sylvain. It was a nice time. Before, you know. The “animal attack.”
We wanted to backpack a little rougher that weekend. We’re pretty much broke so we used that as an excuse to have a bit more of a wild experience. Figured that the hiking would give us a little extra muscle in time for most of us to go to university. I was taping a going-away video for everyone, too, so I brought my camcorder. Me and Sylvain were both headed to Brock but I wanted to give everyone a DVD at the end of summer to remember the good times. So we bushwhacked to Brule lake. Even borrowed my dad’s sat phone but with the cell towers they just put up I don’t know why we bothered. Brought a map and compass, too, but Chantelle had just gotten one of those iPhones with the huge screen so she just used that as a GPS. We found the lake just fine. Swam a bunch. Fished a little. Drank some beers. Blasted some music. God, when I write it all down I feel like a chick from a slasher. Titties out and wearing a sign that says “kill me!”
We’ve all done plenty of time in the woods, though. For fuck’s sake, I was in scouts, and if there’s an institution that drills a more insufferably fussy set of camping habits into your brain then I’d love to see it! I had us set up with a pully for hanging our food and garbage, I had us a latrine dug, I had us four pairs of pantyhose for draining the solids out of our grey water and I even had a really old can of bear mace from one of my friends that works with the Ministry of Natural Resources. It was expired but I figured it couldn’t hurt. We knew what we’re doing and we were being safe.
We hiked out Friday at lunchtime and got there mid-afternoon, set up camp, did our stuff, hung out, whatever. Overnight was fine, probably heard the normal amount of wildlife you hear near a lake but didn’t really see anything much bigger than a chipmunk.
Second night… second night also started fine. Chantelle went to bed early but me, Casey, Theo and Sylvain stayed up around the fire and just talked about school. We wanted to finish the rest of the beers so we wouldn’t have to carry the liquid weight out, and Chantelle usually wore earplugs to sleep so we didn’t worry too much about keeping really quiet. I got the idea that I’d have everyone around the fire tell her something like “don’t worry, we’re going to school but we’ll come back to this crappy little town all the time because we love you so much!” I don’t think her folks could afford college or anything so, yeah, hence the fancy little iPhone as a consolation prize, I think.
We ran low on firewood eventually so I went to scrounge a little more and brought my camera to see if I could get a nice shot of the lake in moonlight. Theo followed me out that way too for just about the same reason, he wanted to get a nice view of the lake in moonlight while he took a leak. We separated somewhere along the shore, I got my shot of the lake, and I didn’t see him alive again.
I was heading back and picking up some pieces of deadwood as I went. I was goofing around with taping myself doing some lame tricks with the bits of wood so I was taking my time and being loud, laughing and stuff. I was pretty tipsy at that point. I thought I heard Theo coming back from his piss break so I called out to him to get some sticks and start, I dunno, juggling them or something for the camera, but I don’t see him when I look through the trees.
I call out for him. I’m thinking he maybe forgot his flashlight and he’s wandering around a little lost so I step off the really light path we had going from our camp to the water and look around for him. Nothing. So I figure I’d just heard a raccoon or something moving around the woods and he’s already made it back to the fire without me. I turn around to do the same and I realize I can’t see the fire from where I am. Now that’s already crazy to me. I didn’t go that far and I am seriously not so drunk that I’d lose my way like that. So then I remember, duh, the fire went out, you are literally out here to collect firewood, don’t freak out. So I start walking a little ways in the direction I know the campsite was. Nothing. Okay. No big deal. I reorient myself to the moon, which was rising on the far side of the lake literally five minutes ago when I got my footage, and start walking towards that.
I start freaking out a little then because it was taking a lot longer than five minutes and I didn’t even catch a glimpse of the lake through the trees, even though I could feel the downslope to the shore. So I smarten up and stop, get ready to have everyone back at camp laugh at me for getting lost, and am just about to call out when I see it.
That stump. The one with a pile of intestines and a bag that I think was Theo’s stomach just sitting on top of it as neat as you please.
The breath goes outta me. First I think I’m looking at parts of a dead deer or something. Hell, for all I know maybe it was and Theo is still out there. I’m looking at this pile and I see its steaming. I realize I can smell it. I’m still thinking it’s a deer at that point, but I knew that something pulled the thing apart so I drop my camcorder and most of the wood. I have my survival knife in one hand, a big piece of wood from my pile the other, and I’m looking around with my headlamp in case the bear or coyote or wolf is still around. I’m out there on high alert and I hear panting from somewhere in the trees. Dog panting. Coyote or wolf panting. I have my eyes everywhere. I know I should start yelling to get my friends attention and to frighten away whatever is making the sound but I’m so scared. I can smell that pile of guts and another on top of that, a thick, fishy stink and it’s getting worse. I back into a tree and the panting is so loud. I turn around and it was a tree I bumped into but there’s something standing right behind it with half it’s face staring out at me.
I’m so close that I don’t even see the edges of it’s head in the circle of light from my headlamp. One yellow eye glares back at me from a wall of fur. It doesn’t even blink when the light hits it. The pupil is so dark. The thing behind the tree doesn’t move but I fall to my knees anyway and just stare at the ground at it’s feet. It’s breath is like a waterfall and it’s so, so cold. It washes down my throat through my open mouth and I think I start crying but I stay silent. My eyes stay down. It’s front feet are dug into the leaf litter like tree roots. They’re flexing and kneading the earth and I know one swipe would open me up. I hear saliva snapping above me and I know the grin I glimpsed on my way down to my knees has turned into an open maw. It lowers it’s long snout until I can see its front teeth and tongue and lips and it starts speaking to me in a low, buzzing growl. It’s tongue flickers over it’s teeth and there are huge engorged ticks crusted around the strip of skin where coarse dark fur transitions to the pebbled surface of it’s nose. Saliva drips from its mouth and I see small animal bones captured in each drop like bugs in amber.
It’s been talking but I don’t have the shape of the words. I knew I was going to be killed and eaten by this thing the second I came face-to-face with it, that this short moment between being spotted and being torn apart was just an appetizer. That’s why it so carefully draped the least edible parts of Theo on the stump for me to see. It wants me to marinate. Like a nice piece of meat.
While I wait for the teeth to close around my neck I start getting a notion. Not even a thought, just an impression. That maybe I can appease it. Do a little dance as I slide down it’s throat. That even though I’m caught, I’m dead, I’m eaten, I can still somehow earn just the faintest touch of mercy from it if I just… do something to amuse it. So I did. I got to my feet and it stopped speaking. It just stared and grinned and panted. It panted so fast you’d think it was dying.
I walked back to camp. I felt it right behind me the entire time. At the edge of the trees I had another one of those notions so I took off all my clothes and put them into a pile. I walked up to the firepit with my three friends and the embers of our campfire and I killed them all with my buck knife. It was no trouble. I went into Chantelle’s tent after that and I killed her too. It watched me from the edge of camp. It had found a tree to stand behind and watch with only one eye. It panted. It grinned. After they were all dead I walked to the lake and waded out to my neck and stayed there until dawn. It watched me from the shore until it wasn’t anymore. Then I put all my clothes back on and walked out of the woods.
I did it. I killed my friends at Brule Lake. I did it because I thought it might amuse the thing from the woods. Now I want you to lock me up. I’m guilty. And I’m still somewhere in it’s mouth. Alive. But just waiting for it to bite down.”
Closing notes:
Signatures, dates, a declaration of the statement being the whole truth and nothing but the truth followed the above.
The witness is still alive. I found her in a maximum-security mental hospital but I’ve been unable to reach her for any comments on the case, nor the families of those involved. The police are also no help at all. They say this was just a particularly brutal animal attack and the lone, traumatized survivor has been institutionalized. To pry further might compromise my… privacy so I’m left alone wondering whether or not the investigators truly believe the story they told the press. I wonder if the witness’s camcorder was recovered and if it stayed recording through the attack. The things I would do get my hands on it.