The woods beside the KFC became a hotbed of rumors when I was in middle school. Why? Because our town was dull, our lives were boring, and at the beginning of seventh grade, they found a body under the bridge nearby. It wasn’t a noteworthy corpse–some old guy who had drowned during some flooding–but it was in a time before the internet ruled and at an age where gossip and childhood lies mixed together like peanut butter and chocolate. It was a perfect storm of bullshit. The “KFC Forest” became our Camp Crystal Lake.
And while everyone and their sister seemed to have a story about serial killers and vengeful ghosts lurking amongst the trees, not a kid in our class was better at hyping up this mess than Beatrice.
Before the horror tales began spreading, Beatrice was the last person you’d suspect of hopping on that particular bandwagon. Beyond the old lady name, at face value she was perhaps the most boring, conservative person you’d ever meet. Her family were members of a church that believed in passing around copperheads more often than the collection plate, and her fashion sense relied heavily on floor length denim skirts and turtlenecks. There was a Bible in her backpack, a crucifix around her neck, and a prayer before every bland, home-packed lunch. She was so offbeat and pure that she wasn’t even a subject of ridicule since she barely existed in the same reality as everyone else, and I believe the only argument I ever saw her get into was over whether or not Pokemon was of the devil.
Yet, when people started making up tall tales about ghouls and murderers and whatever else could have killed that old man, Beatrice rabidly threw herself into the middle of it. With a fervor that was nearly religious, she started preaching to anyone who would listen about “the Gatorgoat.” The coroner’s report be damned, she was adamant that this creature had something to do with it.
What was the Gatorgoat, you ask? A monster. To be more specific, it was a drooling, fanged beast that rested somewhere in the evolutionary line between reptile and mammal. It was huge and shaggy with soulless, white eyes and teeth like tusks, the body of a werewolf, and horns like Satan himself. Its tail was long and hairless and slithered like a snake, and its face was some unholy cross between a goat and an alligator. Whenever it made a sound, it was loud and violent, a rumbling roar that would shake your windows.
And, for whatever reason, this cryptid had made its home beside the KFC back when Beatrice was a baby. She’d seen it before, she said, with her own two eyes.
Of course, it rang of bullshit. But Beatrice was Beatrice, the conservative Christian girl who flinched whenever anyone uttered a swear word and who would never tell a lie, lest God strike her down. There was a power in her reputation that supercharged her words. By virtue of being virtuous, she became the most believable source for information about the KFC Forest, and the Gatorgoat itself became something to be feared.
Unlike the girls who’d laugh and then be too scared to go into dark hallways alone, or the boys who’d tease before swearing up and down they saw a monster at the KFC drive-thru, I was a skeptic. It wasn’t a lack of a belief in monsters since I was a superstitious kid who spent my entire childhood convinced my house was haunted, more than I didn’t equate “religious” with “honest.” Beatrice may have seemed nice, but I grew up in a family of holy rollers who I knew were capable of being liars, and nothing about her story added up. Not the sightings, not the biology. Nothing.
I was pretty good at keeping my opinions to myself for a while, up until one Friday at lunch. Beatrice, who’d spent the whole school year sitting alone at a corner of the “loser” table, had developed a habit of migrating from clique to clique with each passing day. One afternoon she’d be with the jocks, the next she’d be with the preps, and on that day she’d found herself at my table, with the rest of the painfully average kids who didn’t fit into an ‘80s movie archetype. My best friend, Kendra, had apparently been the one to invite her over because she had questions about our resident cryptid, and I was an unwilling passenger who would be taking this ride with her.
Beatrice herself was polite and underwhelming. She came bearing gifts of homemade cookies, clad in her pastel pink sweater and carrying her inoffensive plain lunch box. Her initial attempts at conversation were awkward and stilted, since she didn’t really have hobbies that overlapped with ours. We failed to tactfully resist questioning her about her church and snake handling, which she nervously answered in the vaguest terms possible. She was quiet and boring and equally unsure of how to dance around small talk when we all knew why she was there.
In the end, it was Kendra who broke the subject open, belting, “So, have you really seen the Gatorgoat?”
Immediately, and suspiciously, Beatrice’s bright green eyes lit up. Her anxious tittering was replaced with a tone I can best describe as “gossipy housewife with the hot new drama.” She struggled to keep her voice down, but she was grinning ear to ear. The attention was delicious and she was eating it with a spoon.
“Oh, I haven’t just seen it once. I’ve seen it dozens of times!”
According to her story, she lived not far from the KFC Forest. Her house was practically devoured by trees and rested on the opposite end of the corpse bridge, where she had gotten a front row seat to all sorts of monster shenanigans from the time she was old enough to hold a memory. For years, she’d kept it a secret because nobody would believe her but now, in this enlightened age, she could open her heart to her classmates and spill the truth. It was like a weight being lifted off her shoulders, she said, even if it didn’t solve the problem of there being a monster in her backyard.
“Is it big?” Kendra asked.
“Massive.”
“What is it?”
“I don’t know! We’ve always just called it the Gatorgoat! My dad thinks it’s a demon.”
“Your dad has seen it?”
“My dad’s had to chase it from the window!”
“If it’s so big and scary, how did he manage to chase it away without getting mauled?” I interjected. My tone was maybe a bit more biting than I meant it, but I was beginning to get annoyed. I appreciated the cookies, but I wasn’t a fan of being lied to to my face, nor was I particularly thrilled that my closest, dearest friend was accepting it all as gospel. Beatrice recoiled as if I’d tried to slap her. She stammered and laughed.
“I mean, can’t people scare bears away?” she asked. “What’s the difference?”
“You said it was a demon. Would demons be as easy to spook as a bear?”
“I, uh, I said he thinks it’s a demon. I didn’t say that it was.”
“If it killed that old man, why’d it drown him? Wouldn’t it have tried to eat him or something?”
“I… I don’t have an answer for that. I…”
“Why does it–?”
“Leslie, enough!” Kendra’s whining was loud enough to cause a temporary pause in the cafeteria. “You’re upsetting her!”
When the bell rang, it was a blessing. Beatrice, teary eyed, gathered up her things and quietly shuffled away while Kendra berated me the whole time back to our lockers. I won’t lie and say I didn’t feel bad because I felt absolutely awful, but I couldn’t understand why I was somehow the villain for pointing out an obvious lie. Maybe I should have handled it better, sure, but weren’t you supposed to call out bullshit? Wasn’t lying the actual sin here?
The rest of the day passed by slowly. Kendra, angry, didn’t say a word to me after her initial scolding and, in between classes, I’d catch Beatrice watching me apprehensively from a sea of our preteen peers. Every time our gazes would meet, I’d consider apologizing, but she wouldn’t give me the opportunity. If I looked like I was going to open my mouth, she’d scurry off like a mouse. Eventually, I gave up.
While packing up my things at the end of the day, though, I couldn’t help but feel a presence bearing down on me. Stooped on the floor in front of my locker, trying to shoehorn a ridiculous stack of textbooks into my backpack, I looked up expecting to see Kendra and maybe get an apology. What I saw instead were freckled cheeks and a pink sweater, the innocent face of Beatrice gazing down at me from the center of a halo of hair that had likely never been touched with scissors. She was smiling, but it was uneasy and sad, as though it were taking every ounce of her being to not burst into tears.
“Oh, hi,” I greeted, attempting to sound as nice as I possibly could. I probably sounded mockingly saccharine, but I was honestly trying.
“Hey.” She paused. “Um, can I ask you a weird question?”
“Sure?” I was as confused as I was scared. Weird questions in middle school never really ended up being good ones, and almost every “weird question” I’d heard had been from boys who were barking up the wrong tree. That, or from mean girls who were trying to shake me up with fake rumors that, thankfully, never seemed to stick.
“You’re really not scared of it?”
“It?” I echoed.
“The Gatorgoat. You don’t think it’s real, so you’re not scared of it… right?”
You’d think the question would be spoken with a hint of sinisterness, like I was being set up for a big fall and a jump scare. That wasn’t the case, though. There was nothing short of relief in her voice, like I was some kind of angel sent down from on high to answer her prayers. Still, I was suspicious. After quietly looking up and down the hall to make sure I wasn’t on the receiving end of a mean-spirited prank, I finally honored her with a reply.
“No, I ain’t scared of no made-up alligator dog.”
“You mean that?” she pressed. “You’re not just saying that like Ashley Lynch? You’re really not scared?”
“I just said I ain’t,” I snapped. My patience was wearing thin. Immediately, her hand flew to her chest and she turned her head skyward, thanking Jesus, Joseph, Mary, the choirs of angels, and God Almighty. Maybe I was an answer to her prayers, though I was still pretty suspicious that somebody with a mask was looming around a corner. Beatrice had a lot of new friends with mean streaks, so who was to say she didn’t develop one herself?
“Then, can I ask you a favor? Please, Leslie, I need you to do me a favor.”
I hesitated, threw my backpack over my shoulder, and considered excusing myself from the situation, but the look in her eyes was pleading. Combined with how I’d hurt her feelings earlier, I couldn’t help but feel a pang of remorse.
“Leslie, can you please spend the night with me on Saturday?”
Her hands were clasped together, but this time she was praying to me. Uncomfortable, I took a step backwards, ready to make my exit. Whenever I put a little distance between us, however, she bounded ahead to bridge the gap. Those sad eyes never faded, those praying hands never fell.
“Please, I need your help. I really do. I really need somebody who isn’t afraid of the Gatorgoat .”