I never thought we’d be in danger. That was never a real, conscious thought. After all our adventures to ghost houses, séances, or abandoned asylums, none of us had never actually run into something dangerous. But a couple of years ago, that changed. It was all because of something called the Foursacrowd.
Let me explain.
In my early 20’s, I fell in love with the dark corners of the internet. Video essays discussing various spooky threads and unexplained phenomenon of the rural Midwest. Clips showing seemingly impossible things, done to ordinary people, by mysterious creaturs. Some which would be revealed as hoaxes, others that wouldn’t.
I’ve always had a particular love for local legends and rumors. There’s something very real and raw about those special little whispers that exclusively travel by word-of-mouth.
I’ve found a couple of friends through this hobby, first of which is my buddy, Paul. We’ve been friends ever since we dressed up as the same version of Penguin (the villain) at a Halloween party in our late teens.
I thought our time exploring haunted houses would be over when he started to date this girl, Veronica (or more commonly known, ‘Vera’). My fears were unfounded though, as she turned out to be just as weird as he is – making a great addition to our club of hobby horrors.
This excursion started because Vera told us about this thing from her hometown, some left-of-nowhere kind of place in rural Minnesota. She said there was a local legend, but that there’d been so many sightings that it was nothing short of a miracle that it hadn’t been more widely acknowledged. Paulie and I were all ears.
“I can’t believe you haven’t heard about it,” she laughed. “None of you know about the Foursacrowd?”
Yeah, no, we hadn’t.
So, turns out this thing is a bit of a tall tale in her neck of the woods. The Foursacrowd had been around for decades, and it was apparently so well-known that most locals didn’t even find it fascinating anymore. Still local law enforcement had an official warning out. And by warning, we mean a chain-linked fence and an angry sign.
So the year I turned 24, we all packed ourselves into Paulie’s car and set our sights towards rural Minnesota. If this thing was as prominent as we’d been told, there was no way we were gonna miss it.
It’s not as stupid as it sounds. Paulie and I had been on dozens of excursions to places people had sworn were horrifying and “actually haunted”. But up until that point, we hadn’t seen anything but creepy paintings, a couple of weirdly colored sunflowers, and felt a sudden cold chill or two. The idea of something physical and tangible was laughable.
Vera called up one of her local friends ahead of our arrival. This guy was sort of a tour guide, specializing in what they call ‘dark tourism’. It’s a thing, but it’s often pretty grim stuff. Still, he seemed capable enough. He had a couple of YouTube videos that we checked out. He used to be easy to find back then; his YouTube-channel bordered on about 200k subs.
We packed for a sleepover. Snacks, tents, sleeping bags, a couple of cameras – the usual. Vera told us a little to nothing about wat to expect. She wanted Neil to get a chance to give us the complete tour.
“I don’t wanna spoil it,” she chuckled as we drove past St. Cloud. “It’s a thing. It’s a great thing.”
“Give us a hint,” Paulie begged. “Like… the name. What’s that about?”
“You know, three’s a crowd. But this is like… four.”
“Great,” he sighed, taking left turn back out on the highway. “Helpful.”
We met our guide, Neil, on a cloudy afternoon in mid-May. With high summer right around the corner, the air was moist, and the ground was muddy. There was the first sprinkling of rain in the air, and we could hear rumbling from the east. Bad weather drawn in from Lake Superior.
Neil was this peppy 30-something man. Khaki shorts, a small rucksack, a baseball cap, and a long-sleeved grey t-shirt. No hair, a trimmed beard, and a sunny disposition; the opposite of what I imagined a ‘dark tourism’ tour guide to look like. Meanwhile, Vera looked like one of her parents was a Hot Topic. Paulie was hard to miss too - not even a turtleneck and camo pants could cover all his tattoos.
We’d pulled into a parking lot near an old hiking trail, bordering an abandoned parking lot. There was a broken gate protecting an overgrown road. Neil’s car, a sensibly priced sedan, was parked just a bit further down the road.
He welcomed us, and Vera sorted out the introductions. With that said and done, the tour was on. Neil immediately stopped us.
“First stop is actually right here,” Neil said, pointing at the ruined gate. “The entrance to the Hatchet Paper Mill. Shut down since the 80’s. Folks didn’t take kindly to the whole Clean Water Act.”
“We’re technically trespassing,” chuckled Vera. “Cool, huh?”
“Local folks have known about this place for decades. While going inside is sort of frowned upon, no one really cares.”
“So this thing isn’t that dangerous then?”
“Both yes and no,” Neil chuckled. “It usually stays away, but we might catch a glimpse. But yeah, it’s not a big fan of people.”
As we put on our boots, Neil started telling us about what the hell we were to expect, and why this might turn out to be one of our most interesting excursions yet.
See, the Foursacrowd is not a supernatural specter, or alien visitor. According to locals, it’s a very real creature. It’d been around for decades, keeping to itself within the old paper mill.
“Most lawmen in these parts know about it, but there hasn’t been any immediate need to deal with it. It’s kept to itself, and the owners of the land aren’t very government friendly.”
“So… what does it look like? What can we expect?”
“Vera… she didn’t tell you?” Neil chuckled. “Really?”
“Really.”
Paulie turned to Vera, but she just grinned. Neil shrugged.
“It looks like four people. Just… four regular people. Two taller people in the back, two shorter or crouching people in the front. Like they’re posing for a picture.”
It was about as stupid as it sounded. Suddenly I could see why this wasn’t a big thing. To an outsider, this thing would just look like four people. Even if I saw it with my own eyes, what was there to see? I couldn’t help but to think that Neil probably had a couple of people ready to scare us a little.
“Are you telling me we’re trekking to some tetanus-covered shithole to watch four kids in Halloween masks stand at the end of a corridor?” I whispered to Paulie.
“Fuck it, might be fun.”
“I’m not buying it.”
Being skeptical about this sudden reveal, Paulie and I started asking a whole bunch of questions. Like… how it could just look like four people, and what it actually was. What it ate, where it lived, all kinds of stuff. I admit, we weren’t very polite. Neil didn’t seem to mind, and tried his best to keep up with us.
“It needs chlorine as part of its diet,” Neil patiently explained. “That’s why it moved into the mill. There’s an adjoining chlorine extractor, which they used to bleach the paper before the shutdown. There’s still loads of the stuff around. It’s in the water, too.”
“So it just eats old paper?”
“No, it munches up white-tailed deer and rodents,” he continued. “Not birds though. Damn thing loves birds.”
Vera was having trouble containing her glee. We were giving her the ‘are you real’ look, and she couldn’t stop grinning. Neil, on the other hand, seemed perfectly happy answering our questions.
“So how big is it?” I asked as we entered a clearing in the forest. “It’s gotta be sizable if it eats deer.”
“Large enough to be mistaken for four people. It is a bit of a mimic.”
“Trick people into what?”
“Well, either to look a little closer, or scare them off. Depends.”
“And you’ve seen this?”
“Sure have,” Neil nodded. “We’ll probably see it off in the distance, if we’re lucky. It moves around a lot.”
Making our way out of the clearing, we got a clear view of the abandoned paper mill. Six large buildings and a couple of chemical silos lining a dying river. All of it looked worse for wear. Most of the outside was decorated with elaborate graffiti and rust. There wasn’t a single window that hadn’t been vandalized.
Still, Neil didn’t skip a beat. As we made our way closer, he kept telling us interesting factoids.
“You can kinda notice it by the sound of bird song,” he explained. “The thing rolls around in saw dust as a sort of dust bath, and it gets a lot of parasites stuck. Birds love it, so they’re usually close by, ready to pick up little maggots and parasites. Sort of like a crocodile.”
“I’m hearing bird song right now,” Paulie laughed. “You think that’s the forest or the… Fivesacrowd?”
“Foursacrowd,” Neil responded, giving him a cold look. “And no, that’s… that’s just birds. There are usually red ones flocking to it, making a sort of trilling noise.”
“Exciting,” sighed Paulie.
To that, Neil said nothing.
We entered the mill through one of the truck entrances, stepping over a collapsed garage door. I could practically taste the mold and residual chemicals, but Neil swore that we’d be fine. It was just moisture, apparently. Vera wasn’t convinced, it seemed.
We made our way up to the second floor, walking across a rusted-out catwalk with a loose railing. Beams of light made its way through holes in the roof; slowly fading from the overcast. Overlooking the mill, we could tell this place wasn’t just some empty building – it must’ve been abandoned in a hurry. There were still some expensive machines left on the floor, most of which had been rusted to the core by decades of neglect.
“It roams a lot,” Neil explained as we slowly made our way forward. “I don’t think it nests unless it finds a partner, and I can tell there aren’t many of them around.”
“How come?” I asked.
“I think they have no means of finding one another, suggesting they might’ve once lived in colonies where you could just… throw out an arm and grab a mate. There are a couple of holes around here where it’s burrowed, suggesting it might be subterranean.”
“I’d love to see that,” Paulie chuckled. “Really. I’d love to.”
“Alright,” shrugged Neil. “Let’s go see one.”
Neil guided us through the factory floor, down a corridor, through a ransacked lunchroom, and out the back near one of the silos. There was a massive room containing vast piles of sawdust. Easily the largest pile I’d ever seen. Paulie’s instinct was to try and climb it, but Neil recommended against it.
“That thing is crawling with parasites. I wouldn’t touch it,” he explained. “And you see that indent there, on the left flank? That’s where it’s been.”
“Just looks like a dent to me,” Paulie said.
Vera elbowed him, and Paulie made a lip-zipping motion. Neil did his best not to roll his eyes.
Neil continued to explain the many findings of the locals over the years. For example, that the Foursacrowd had a larger body than one might think, but it hides it behind the “crowd of four”, much like an insect shielding its body. He claimed they had a sketchy view of this back part from a side photo taken in the late 90’s. Of course, it was blurry at best. You could barely tell there were people in the picture at all.
There had also been a steep decline of white-tailed deer in the area. While many claimed this was due to illegal hunting, Neil argued that it coincided with the growth of the creature in the early 90’s.
This was a returning pattern with the Foursacrowd. Everything about it could be explained by the most mundane things. It just looked like people at a distance. Its main food source was abundant. There was nothing immediate and apparent about it – the Foursacrowd could just as well be nothing.
Maybe that’s why we’d never heard about it.
Neil continued the tour, showing us the various buildings around the complex. He told us about the different stations and the early history of the strange creature rumored to live there. We were shown a couple more points of interest, mostly relating to early history of the creature, and by extent, the community at large. For example, there had been a few people that’d gone missing around the mill, but that was attributed to failing safety standards. Again – it was unclear. It could be blamed on a large monstrous beast, but the far more likely cause was just an accident. Occam’s razor.
As we reached the rear exit, Neil clapped his hands together.
“This is where I usually spot it,” he said. “It moves through the old chemical storage, right over there.”
“So… what do we do?” I asked. “Do we lure it out?”
“I suggest we wait,” Neil smiled. “Put your feet up, take in the sights. It’s a magnificent place, huh?”
Paulie walked over to me, carefully elbowing me for attention. Leaning in, he whispered.
“The kids he hired to scare us aren’t here yet.”
Still, it was nice to just be out with friends for a change – break up the monotony of work. We put up our tents and had a couple of hot dogs. Vera took a nap listening to her favorite podcast. Paulie went for a jog on the catwalk, making little dust particles rain on the factory floor. It echoed through the entire building.
I got a chance to sit down with Neil for a bit, just the two of us. He seemed like a genuinely nice guy, but I could tell he was putting on a show. Then again, that was sort of his job. Vera had known him since high school, so he’d given her a good price for this.
In a quiet moment, I asked him;
“So what’s the deal? Why’s this so… interesting?”
“You know, it’s… it’s a funny thing,” he smiled. “It’s right there for all to see. And everything about it just looks like a whole bunch of nothing.”
“Come on,” I smiled. “I mean, it’s a great story. You’ve put a hell of a lot of thought into it, and I appreciate that. Most place just say it’s like… a ghost, or an alien.”
“Look,” he nodded, raising his hot dog from the open fire. “I’m not bullshitting you. This thing is real.”
We just looked at one another for a moment. I could tell there was no hesitation behind those eyes. Either this man was a born liar, or a true believer.
For the next couple of hours, the sky grew darker. The rain passed us by, but not without scattering a few drops our way. The overcast drowned the rusty walls in black, making the shadows from our campfire long and alien. Spending the night there was impressive in and of itself. The uneasy sounds of groaning metal, combined with the Minnesota wilds slipping in through the cracks in the building veneer.
We set up our tents on the outskirts of the old administration building; no risk of setting fire to anything. We could tell it was frequented by a lot of rebellious teenagers. The graffiti spoke for itself.
Neil assured us that the Foursacrowd didn’t mind people, and that it would keep its distance. In his experience, it wasn’t interested in hunting people. Paulie just rolled his eyes. The charade was going strong.
I had a surprisingly restful sleep, nodding off the moment my head hit the pillow. I didn’t get to sleep for long, however.
A few minutes to midnight, I heard a rustling noise coming from Paulie and Vera’s tent. At first I thought they were just doing what consenting adults might be inclined to do in a secluded tent, but after I heard the tent open, I peeked out. I was a bit embarrassed to see Vera and Paulie sneak out with a roll of toilet paper, obviously going off to mind their own business.
I lay back down to sleep when, after a couple of minutes, there was a whisper outside my tent. Peeking out again, I could see Vera and Paulie – now looking a bit more awake.
“Holy shit,” Paulie smiled. “They’re here. You gotta see this.”
I looked over at Neil’s tent. The man was fast asleep. Had he planned this in advance? How did he know we’d be skulking around at night?
Grabbing our flashlights, a camera, and putting on some proper boots, the three of us left to get a better look – leaving Neil behind in his tent.
“Right around the corner,” Vera whispered. “They’re just standing there.”
There was a hole in the wall, leading to the outside. Paulie went first, then Vera. The moment I stepped outside, I was hit by an immediate chill; maybe the storm was turning back.
Slowly raising their flashlights eastward, it came into view for the first time.
The Foursacrowd.
Four people, standing out in the middle of the night. A man, a woman, and two younger men in their late teens. A family, seemingly. All stood huddled up together, wearing identical white shirts and navy-blue pants. They all had the same hair color; just different lengths. The “parents” stood shoulder-to-shoulder, while the younger ones stood about a step ahead, and with a bit of space between them.
I couldn’t help but to stare. Vera took a picture with her digital camera – making sure the flash was off. It was eerie. Even Paulie could feel it, even if he’d never admit it.
“That’s fucked up,” he whispered. “Why’d they come so late?”
“Maybe he heard us sneak out,” Vera whispered back. “Either way, this is insane.”
I wasn’t so sure. The way Neil spoke about it seemed a bit too honest to be so simple. As Paulie kept his flashlight fixed on them, they slowly began to move. With arms firmly at their sides, the four of them slowly stepped sideways. It was eerily coordinated; moving in a sort of diagonal tandem. Almost like they were gliding.
We followed them a bit, just to see what they were doing. They were walking backwards towards one of the chemical silos, always keeping their eyes firmly fixed on us. As they got further away, they seemed to speed up.
Vera barely got a chance to say “hold on” before they hurried inside the silo; still maintaining that perfect cohesion. As they disappeared, I could even hear Paulie sigh with relief.
“Freaky,” he gasped. “That was… that was freaky.”
Turning back towards our makeshift camp, we rounded the corner – only to suddenly stop.
More people.
Another group of four – these a lot smaller. Children, maybe 6 or 7 years old. Two who were a little taller, and two who were a little smaller. All with their arms straight, and their feet moving in that same strange diagonal tandem.
Before we got a chance to speak, they made a strange whistling noise and disappeared into a crack in the wall.
That wasn’t part of the plan. I’d never agreed to have kids roam around a place like this – it was dangerous. Whether this was Neil’s idea or someone else’s, this was just… a bad idea.
“We gotta wake him up,” I whispered. “Now.”
Then again, something in the back of my mind was telling me that this was too strange to just be a couple of stray kids. The rational part of me insisted that this was nothing more than a spook, or a misunderstanding.
But another part of me was starting to wonder what the fuck I’d stepped into.
Whispering for Neil to wake up, we could hear him murmuring to himself. He looked out of his tent with a wide yawn.
“They’re here now,” Vera said. “But the kids are a little much.”
Neil just blinked, looking back and forth between us.
“What kids?”
Vera told him what we’d seen outside. It didn’t seem to give Neil any pause until she clarified the group of kids that’d hurried inside. Neil just sat there, putting his clothes on with a furrowed brow. If he’d been playing the act of a tour guide up until now, this was the point where something changed.
He asked her to clarify several things. Their height, their speed, their reaction, their sounds. Paulie didn’t seem to know what to think about this, flip-flopping between diehard skepticism and genuine concern. I was somewhere in-between.
“Well, uh…” started Neil. “It’s been rumored that the Foursacrowd is a sort of arachnid. It might be parthenogenetic.”
“What kind of… what? Genetic?”
“Par-the-no-gen-et-ic,” he clarified. “Able to… effectively breed without a mate.”
“What would that even mean?”
Neil paused for a moment, then sprang into action.
“It means we have to leave. It’s nesting.”
As we hurried to bring down our tents and pack up our things, I noticed something overhead. In and out of the holes in the roof, little red birds fluttered about. About a dozen of them. Thinking back on what Neil had said earlier, I was sure he’d mentioned something about birds.
I tapped him on the shoulder, pointing upwards. His face went pale as he held up a finger to his lips. Vera and Paulie noticed, and we all fell silent – moving at a snail’s pace, as to not make any unnecessary noise.
Every now and then, the birds would land, making little chirping noises, and then return upwards.
Vera gasped.
We all stopped to look at her, as she pointed further down the hall.
There it was.
It slowly sidestepped into view; only the legs of the four people moving, their arms remaining straight. Their heads wobbled a little as it moved, looking more like bobbleheads than people. They still looked like they were floating forward, held up by some unseen force.
But most worrying of all; they were coming towards us. Slowly.
I didn’t know what to do. Part of me wanted to run. Another part wanted to stand there and fully believe that this was, somehow, still a lie. It had to be. There is no such thing as monsters – I’ve checked. Over all the years of laughing at the dark, I’d learned that there really was no such thing as monsters.
But as these four strange people crept closer, I wasn’t so sure anymore. And Neil seemed just as, if not more, confused.
“Nobody moves,” he whispered. “Let’s see what it-“
Out of little cracks and nooks, I could see more faces. The four children, for one, but another set of four further down. They didn’t look at all like children – more like… miniature adults. All moving in that same strange pattern, alternating their steps among each other.
These just… didn’t look finished. Hair growing out of their eyes. One leg too short, another too long. A drooping mouth that wouldn’t stop twitching. Two of them were conjoined at the shoulder, making an awful gurgling noise.
I counted six groups in total. And some of those groups… they weren’t people. They couldn’t be. That’s not what people look like.
The largest one, as it got closer, was bigger than I’d anticipated. Easily 7 feet tall. Still, they all looked at us with these glassy-eyed nothings. They didn’t really have eyes; it was more like white globes with accidental spots.
One of the red birds gently landed on the shoulder of the tall creature – gently pecking at its eye.
It didn’t even flinch.
Paulie held Vera tight as we all slowly backed off – leaving what little we’d brought behind. The campfire had long since burned out, but the tall one still daintily stepped over the embers. It did so in a strange manner; having one of the front “people” lift its legs straight out; seemingly levitating in the air.
But that’s when the illusion broke.
As it got closer, it seemed to let go of its mimicry. One of the two front people split in half, revealing a set of arachnid legs with the same color as their hair. Impossible tall and thick legs, hiding an all-black creature with dark, beady eyes. They’d been there all along; folding into vertical rows, acting as the back row’s shirt buttons.
They unfolded like origami, wordlessly tearing themselves apart, breaking whatever image I had of it; revealing a creature stretching out to its full size; easily breaking 9 feet tall with arms in every direction. Every leg was camouflaged as half a person, that when put together would form the illusion of a group of four.
Fake bodies, nothing more than membrane and skin, writhed back and forth lifelessly; morbid appendages.
I barely even heard the others screaming. Paulie grabbed Vera, heading for one of the side exits. Neil just kept repeating “no no no” over and over; not even running. And I, well… I was frozen. Staring into the slight reflection of eight eyes, arranged in two perfect columns of four. White-clothed arms had unfolded into mandibles, creeping closer.
In that moment, I thought I was going to die. I wasn’t accepting that this was actually happening. A hundred thoughts were running through my mind at once, painting all the strange possibilities that might explain this. A prank show. A bad dream. Something. Anything.
I could’ve died that day.
Suddenly, it turned away from me.
Paulie had run a hot dog stick straight through its right front leg.
Looking back at this, it was all so fast. Using two of its legs, the Foursacrowd hurled him straight across the room, and up one level; slamming into the upstairs catwalk railing. Paulie wasn’t moving. Vera was panicking, doubling back to get to him. Neil grabbed her, heading for the side exit.
I could’ve tried going with them, but there was no way I’d get by the angered creature. Instead, we had to split up; force it to pick a lane.
Of course, it went after me.
I went straight ahead, in the wrong direction. Down a long corridor, my steps pounding the dusty concrete. A dozen little feet following me; even their steps sounding human. Like they were wearing shoes.
The large one contracted, crawling forward with its four front legs first; furiously tapping its way forward. It was so fast, so twitchy. Like it had abandoned all attempts at mimicry. All pretense.
I managed to make my way up the catwalk. The moment I reached the top, the stairs collapsed behind me; deafening me with a flood of metal crashing to the floor. The creature couldn’t make its way up these old walkways. There was too much concentrated weight.
That didn’t stop it. Moments later, the tips of its arms would wrap around the catwalk as it hung upside-down beneath; trying to bite through the metal. And while I was fast, it could keep my pace. I could feel the mandibles poking through the steel, scraping against the bottom of my boots. Its arms reached for me, tearing at my jacket with little claws at the end.
A section of railing gave out, unbalancing the creature and nearly knocking me to the floor below. Instead, it lost its grip, and fell. It’d just be a few seconds before it got back up to try again. This was a creature – hungry to feed its young. This wasn’t a docile attraction. Not anymore.
There was a short platform connecting two of the buildings. The thing had once looked like a sort of glass tube, but now it was just a set of unstable open-air platforms. Still, I didn’t have much choice. I went for it. I couldn’t think straight anyway.
I have these brief memories of the chase. It felt like hours, even though it was just a matter of minutes. In my mind, I can picture every corner, every bump, and every skip – but it’s hard to put it into words. It was just this long, wiry passage – weaving together into one singular adrenaline-rushed madness; with death following close behind.
Reaching the other end of the platform, I could see the Foursacrowd retreating into the dark. It was clever. It knew that platform couldn’t support its weight, and that the fall would hurt.
I ended up the way I came; on the same walkway as Paulie, overlooking our previous campsite. Running up to him, I could tell he was breathing, but badly concussed. His one eye was blood-filled and swollen, and his left arm was bent the wrong way. There was no way I’d get him to walk out of there anytime soon.
I considered my options. I could leave him. I could run. I could try to pick him up and pull him along. None of it was plausible.
Especially not leaving him.
Instead, I propped us up against the wall. Somehow, he was still conscious – if barely. Together we sat there, listening to the red birds fluttering in and out of the broken roof.
Turns out, the Foursacrowd couldn’t reach us. It couldn’t use the adjoining platforms, and there were no remaining stairs. Instead, it stood beneath us, desperately reaching upwards.
In a sort of… fear-induced bravado, I stood up to look down at it. The catwalk groaned but held firm. For a moment, our eyes met. This button-eyed creature, completely emotionless. A creature that understood nothing but meat and offspring.
It still reached for me, carefully. Even tenderly. As if asking me to be a friend - to surrender.
I sat back down next to Paulie. He panted heavily. Maybe he had a few broken ribs.
“I’mb… gonnba… gonnba get a new tattoo,” he blurted out. “A s-sbider.”
“Please don’t,” I muttered back. “V-Vera… she’s gonna kill you.”
“No, s-she… she lubs sbiders,” he wheezed through a half-broken nose. “Just n-not… dat one.”
As he pointed at it, the arachnid legs slowly came back down. And little by little, the creature retreated into the compound; it’s young scuttling back and forth between its legs. And from a distance, even then, it was still hard not to see it as just a group of four people; standing around in the dark.
The two of us stayed up there, nodding in and out of exhaustion. I tried to keep Paulie stable, frantically looking up at the sky, waiting for the overcast to drift away. The morning had to come at some point. That was the deal.
Paulie and I spent hours up there, waiting for Vera and Neil to come back. They eventually did, bringing a couple of local law enforcement officers along. They managed to help Paulie back down, and to tend to his wounds. He would end up losing the eye in surgery, but would otherwise make a full recovery. He actually did get a tattoo of a spider later on.
We’ve talked a lot about uploading our pictures and videos. But even now, looking back at what little footage we have, it just looks like people standing around in the dark. There’s no attack, or monstrous transformation. It doesn’t look like anything, just… people. Strange people, but people nonetheless.
Neil talked to them about reinforcing the fence. As he suspected, the Foursacrowd had gone through a sort of self-fertilization, reproducing without a mate. We’d done the equivalent of standing between an angry mother bear and her cubs.
But then again, we lived to tell the tale.
They didn’t do much to prevent this happening again. They fixed parts of the fence and put up a new sign. I think the owners also came in to make some kind of statement, but I haven’t found anything about it.
It’s been a few years since then. I’ve tried my best to find a good time to talk about it, but I just never got it right. It was too important to just blurt out, and too difficult to think about.
Neil has taken down his YouTube channel and removed his videos, not wanting to get any more people to come look for the Foursacrowd. In fact, a lot of it has been scrubbed from the net. Even the Wikipedia page, I think. I think he works with some kind of river boat rentals out east.
But in a couple of months, Vera and Paulie are getting married. I think it’s time we all put this behind us and look to the future. As best man, that’s all I can do, really.
Because, even if there are monsters waiting outside, we can choose where we spend our nights.
I choose to spend it here, far away, where the fire burns bright.
Far from the Foursacrowd.