The last time I saw my dad, we were waiting silently by the river banks while he spear-fished our dinner. When he finally caught one and screamed victory, something sucked him under water like he was nothing.
I was petrified, my mouth dry, as I tried to understand what was going on and my mom pulled me next to her. I looked at her, and she was as lost as me, her incredulous eyes fixated on the moving water, both of us waiting in disbelief and expectation that he would just come back up and start laughing.
Instead, a massive splash of water sprayed us both as we saw his limp body swing in the air in the mouth of… something. I couldn’t tell what it was because it was so grey and strange that my brain couldn’t pick up on it.
My mom lifted me by the arm, and hugged me around the waist. She hauled me away like an empty barrel, weeds whipping me in the face while I tried to look back and screamed for us to go back for dad.
My mom had turned into mama bear mode. These days, she’s a typical old lady, moves slow and talks slowly and patiently, but back then you wouldn’t have dared mess with her cubs!
When she finally put me down, my uncle was dropping all the wood he had gathered for our campfire and stepping over the unfinished tents while asking what the hell was going on. My aunt was there too, unseen until she realised there was some kind of commotion and I could see her blonde head and elf-ears sticking out from behind a tent that was already half built.
“Where… where’s Brian?” - she asked hesitantly after realising my mom was starting to tear up and there was no sign of my dad.
While my mom started to explain, my heart started to beat faster. I could hear… something. Something was walking around, heading straight to us and everyone else was too distracted to hear it. I tried to say it, but my words were stuck somewhere in my gut, so I tugged at my mom’s shirt.
She didn’t even notice it.
Suddenly, a massive curved blade burst out from the middle of the weeds, making us all jump and my aunt weep.
A park ranger stepped out of the dense forest, his face angry at what he was seeing. He had a ruff beard built around his jaw and chin, a ranger hat on and a pair of sunglasses hanging down into his jacket’s opening with thick pants and heavy boots crushing any plants and rocks under him. He asked us what the hell we were doing there.
When my uncle tried to talk, the ranger whispered to us between gritted teeth that this was not a camping ground and that we needed to go. There were no signs anywhere that said that, which is what my uncle tried to say, but the man’s eyes were filled with a mix of rage and panic. He stopped my uncle, came really close to his face with his massive knife pointed at my uncle’s chest and said:
“Leave, right now, or die here.”
Then he made a “shush” gesture, stepped aside and pointed with his knife at the pathway he’d created.
My uncle and my mom both opened their mouths to speak, but the guy just shushed them again and pointed at the path like this was now an order. My mom couldn’t take this, and instead shouted at him that my dad was in some kind of danger and that he had been taken by something in the river.
When she did, the guy lunged at her and covered her mouth so hard that they both almost fell, my uncle lunged at both of them to try to get him off my mom. I took two steps back, starting to feel tears come because of the panic everyone was causing me, and my aunt took several steps back while she shrieked and hugged the farthest tree with her back.
Suddenly, the guy shouted for everyone to stop, and at the same time, a heavy, crushing step was heard coming from somewhere in between the trees leading the way the river was.
I felt my breath being sucked out of me while I looked around like a lone twig stuck on the ground, completely clueless as to what to do next. My mom was pinned to the ground under the ranger, who now looked like he was about to die of fright, so she couldn’t have helped me or my aunt.
As my aunt stood there, crying and trying to somehow merge with the tree and disappear, the fastest grey mass I have ever seen sucked her away into its nothingness, giving everyone else no time to even understand what just removed her. It did take its time to allow us all to hear my aunt’s bones being crushed with hollow cracks and breaks while her juices were squeezed away. With each step, smaller trees and bushes were heard being crushed mercilessly around our chosen camping site.
Now in the purest form of panic, I let myself slide to the ground while tightening my hand around my mouth and nose and slithering under one of the flat tents for cover. I could see my uncle’s gaping mouth, him spinning around in shock and lost, his chest going up and down uncontrollably.
When he looked around the creak his last time, a twig betrayed him, falling in his foot’s way and creating a loud crack noise that echoed around us. My heart stopped, all the air was expelled out of me, when this fast, almost impossible to see grey mass darted out of the treeline, flew straight past the ranger and my mom and crushed my uncle at such a speed that only a red cloud of blood was left behind, slowly floating onto our faces and clothes in the form of a red mist.
For a while, we just lay there, a massive footprint right between me, my mom, and the ranger, who, despite what felt like the hour we waited without moving or almost even breathing, kept his hand on his mouth in a permanent order of silence.
It was some time until we stopped hearing the same heavy footsteps crushing innocent bushes around our camp. When they finally seemed to go away. The ranger slowly stood up, letting go of my mom, who came up off the floor as slowly as him. I just refused to uncover myself, permanent panic keeping me pinned under the tent like it was the safest place to be.
The ranger looked at my mom and pointed at me. Then he whispered as low as he could that we needed to go and that my mom needed to get me. My mom retaliated, asking him what the hell that was.
He shook his head, and pointed at me again, indicating he was done talking. Then he turned his back on her and started to slowly and silently pace towards his path while looking around, scanning the forest around us.
My mom tip-toed my way, slowly slid the tent off me, the cloth scratching on the floor and the pebbles, whispering and taunting me. My face was completely wet at this point, and the floor under me had turned to mud.
As my mom helped me stand up, more noises sounded from somewhere inside the woods. By now the ranger was already by the treeline, waiting for us. We stepped slowly through the path he had cleared earlier, all the way to the cars. When we finally saw the opening to the road, the ranger whispered to my mom that she should go start the car and he would wait behind. Once we were out, he would use his cruiser to leave.
I was about to follow my mom into the car, when she told me to wait for her to start it and make sure everything was ok. I would follow after.
I think she saved my life for the first time that night with that decision.
The moment she turned the key inside the car and the engine coughed awake, the woods came alive to my right as I watched in horror and stepped back only to ball up next to a tree. It was two seconds from the moment the movement started, until the moment the same ball of grey broke out of the woods and smashed front-first into the back of our car, making it spin out of control with my mom inside and slide into the opposite side of the woods.
There was a steep decline that way, and I could hear the car stumble down the side of the hill, a feeling of loss taking over my heart. When it finally stopped, an ear piercing screech echoed through the woods and made my belly squeeze up from the inside.
Suddenly, I felt a heavy force coming down on my shoulder, and I was lifted up and propped on the ranger’s shoulder like a sack of potatoes. What was the worst moment of loss for me, after the last member of my family was just thrown off the hill in front of my eyes, the ranger saw as an opportunity, and he was now carrying me out of there as fast as he could while the commotion kept this thing busy.
When everything quieted down and the wind was no longer shaking the trees around us, he finally put me down and dropped down to my level. Then he whispered in my ear that there was a cave nearby which would take us five minutes to get to, but that I had to be really quiet and walk as slow as I could.
I didn’t even feel like walking, but at this point, he was making me.
He towered over me, my height barely getting me to half of his body. He picked up a big dead tree branch and started breaking the path ahead, slowly moving the bushes aside almost without making a sound.
It didn’t take us long to reach the cave entrance, and it was impressive how hard it was to see even though it was big. Enough to fit the both of us through the entrance.
When we stepped inside, the sun was dropping behind the trees of the park and it was starting to be harder to see.
The cave was deep. Even with the ranger’s flashlight, we couldn’t see the end of it, one tunnel slowly leading farther into the rocks after the first large open area. In my sadness, with my head hanging down, he pushed me to a corner inside and told me to stay there while he investigated a little further in. There were slight water noises and rustling coming from inside, so he wanted to check that it was only wind and the beginning of a river echoing on the cave walls or if there was something else hiding in there.
As I stood there in a dark corner, and he slowly walked into the cave, I started hearing movement coming from outside. I wanted to warn him, because it was faint. I didn’t think he could hear it, but I couldn’t say anything. I couldn’t make any noise!
I tried to wait for the right time to signal him to stop, but all I could see was his back, slowly advancing into the hill.
When I took one step forward out of my hiding spot, my blood froze and my whole body was petrified.
Slowly and heavily, against the faint light coming from outside, a massive, grey, hairless thing was moving my way. It had eyes after all, but these were tiny, disproportionate, compared to the toothy gaping mouth and the ears, and were completely sealed shut, tiny lashes lining the area where they should be. Its long, thin limbs moved slowly, the tips squashing whatever was under them. On the sides of its head, two massive ears stuck out, completely covered in thin hairs on the inside, the earholes almost as deep as the tunnel the ranger was still walking into.
It was going to squash me, if I kept in its way, but making myself move out of the way felt like someone had hung a bag of rocks on my back.
At first with difficulty, and then suddenly, I stepped back against the wall. But it was way too fast.
When I hit the wall, everything happened at the same time. I slipped and stabbed my back against the rocks on the wall. Surprised, the thing turned its head in my direction as the ranger spun around and saw what was happening. The thing seemed to lock up its limbs, ready to jump at me, and as it did, a loud shot echoed in the cave and a spray of grey blood splashed out of the creature’s ear.
It screamed in pain, as it swung around with one of its limbs trying to fight whatever had just attacked it. With this, it accidentally smacked the ranger, who was now coming closer to try to get to me, into one of the cave walls. The sound of bones cracking that his body made when it hit the cold stone will never leave my memory. He was dead as he hit the ground, and two, three, four more shots sounded, all hitting their marks and splashing blood everywhere inside the cave.
The thing was screeching, howling, crying out like it was begging for its own life, but there was no mercy anymore.
When it finally stopped squealing and went still, silence took over.
Whoever had shot it was not showing up, and I didn’t dare move anymore. I would have stayed there until someone picked me up.
Then, after a full minute of quiet, a figure showed up at the cave entrance and I cried of joy. I never thought I would be seeing anyone again.
I never thought I would be seeing my mom ever again.
To this day, she counts herself lucky for having survived the tumble down the hill. She was lucky enough not to get hit by that thing when it smashed against the car, and there was so much vegetation in that area, that the car’s fall ended up being slowed down and reducing her injuries, but it made everything so noisy, that the creature had given up after attacking the car’s rear once or twice.
Her mama bear instincts were ever present, though, and she came back to the ranger’s car, found a pistol inside it and had now used it to make sure this thing would never have the chance to get to me.
She found me and gave me a big hug, but we were still not out of the woods, literally. She checked on the ranger, who was completely gone. His name tag read T. Robinson. He would be remembered, just as the rest of my family.
She took the keys to get his cruiser running, and then came back to me to drag me out of that place, forever.
As she did, I still looked back once. What I saw will keep me away from camping trips for the rest of my life, and the same goes for everyone else who I can give warning to. Next to the dead creature, three small grey things were approaching, hesitantly. They were the size of baby elephants, and looked like smaller versions of the same horrifying thing. They were her babies.
We managed to get to the cruiser. My mom didn’t care about the noise now, as much as she did about getting out fast. She turned the cruiser on and feeling the tires slip in dry dirt powder and then taking and speeding the car out of there is one of the best feelings I can recall.
After she was sure we were safe, we finally got to the closest ranger station. We tried to talk to the rangers there, but they just seemed to ignore us and want us on our way. Looking back at it now, I don’t blame them.
I’ve never seen that area of the park again, or any other area, but we never saw any news about any of what happened, and the only proof we have apart from our memory are my dad’s, my uncle’s and my aunt’s empty graves. We still visit them, and we still try to know if Ranger Trevor Robinson has ever been found and buried.
We have now received numerous threats from the government, trying to stop us from knowing more about him, but I don’t think my mom will stop. She probably thinks that as an old lady, she’s unstoppable. The problem they have is… she actually is!