Page 71 of Silent Shadows

At first, I honestly thought someone was standing out there. Then the light hit it and it was way too big to be a person.

I don't know exactly how tall because it's hard to judge at night, but it was near enough to trees that we had some context and it had to be at least seven feet. Maybe more. It was broad. Like SO broad. Covered in dark reddish-brown hair that looked clumpy and matted with mud or something.

The face is the part I can't quit thinking about. It had gray skin around the eye and nose area, kind of wrinkly. No hair there really. Didn’t look like an animal or a human. The eyes reflected a gold-ish when the spotlight hit it. It never moved toward us. It just stood there looking back.

My husband has hunted his whole life and is afraid of nothing. I've seen him walk toward wounded elk and scare bears out of camp. But when he told my brother "Get in the truck," he sounded terrified.

Before we got back in the truck, we heard three loud knocks farther up the canyon. Somebody on here called them "tree knocks," I think? I don't know. It sounded like someone hitting a baseball bat against a tree or something. My husband put the truck in drive before I even had my seatbelt on.

The part that really bothers me happened before all this… Earlier that evening I'd been calling the missing girl's name into the canyon. A couple of times I thought I heard something answering back, but I figured it was echoes doing weird things. I even joked, "Watch it be Bigfoot."

The girl was found alive the next morning about a mile away. She’d fallen into a wash. One of the women helping the medics said the girl kept talking about lights moving through the trees before they managed to calm her down. I don't know if that's connected. I don't know if any of it is connected.

I'm not saying it was Bigfoot. I'm just saying there was something out there that night, and I know what I saw wasn't a bear.

If anybody around the Chuska area has heard those knocking sounds (if that's what they're called) or heard strange yelling in the woods, I'd really appreciate hearing from you.

I haven't slept much since.

Hunters don’t scare easily. People familiar with wilderness don’t usually misidentify things, and when they do, it’s confusing elk calves for fawns. It’s not confusing animals with cryptids. This lead also sounds eerily familiar to six other reports I’ve cataloged over the last four years. Not identical, but pattern-adjacent. Enough to itch at the back of my brain when we’ve shifted gears for other non-Bigfoot cases.

The passenger door flies open.

I look up fast enough to almost drop my phone.

Daisy climbs into the seat beside me, holding two coffees.

“Did I scare you?” she asks.

“Um, yes. I’m on page 412 of a conspiracy forum.”

She hands me one of the coffees. “Sounds healthy.”

“Skim milk?” I ask.

“One sugar,” she says.

I stare at her.

She smirks over the rim of her cup. “See? I can remember things, too.”

Something like butterflies rises in my chest.

Awesome. Great. Love being emotionally compromised before seven in the morning.

“What are you doing up?” I ask.

“You disappeared.”

“You watching me?”

“Hard not to when you sleep three feet below me.”

I snort despite myself and lock my phone.

Outside, dawn breaks over the desert, pale gold bleeding into red rock and distant mountain silhouettes.

The Chuska range sits dark against the horizon.