Hope was Lost

Word Count: 7,092

Hacking away with my freshly sharpened axe, chopping firewood to keep our house bearable through the icy cold winter, I watched the first snowflakes of the year trickle softly down from the cloud covered sky. It was early in the year for the picturesque ice crystals to be blanketing the ground, but not incredibly so. Normally we would have a few more weeks before the snow started to fall, so it was not shocking to see it a little sooner than normal. 

What remained a light snowfall for several hours turned heavy without any warning. People in our small widespread town scrambled to get their things inside and their livestock into barns. This town had a population somewhere in the neighborhood of five hundred people. Those who had nothing with which to attend helped others who did. Everyone helped until all the livestock was inside. 

As she stood in the doorway, Momma hollered at me to stop splitting the wood and retrieve a few loads of water in case our well pump froze. I lugged in four loads of two buckets, so eight buckets of water before she told me that was enough. I was relieved to hear that because, when I was pumping the water, I got it all over my hands and the cuffs of my coat. My fingers were progressing from throbbing pain to frozen numbness. I barely managed to carry in those last two pails. 

I crossed the room to the fireplace to warm my hands, but there was no time for sitting. Momma told me to add some wood to the pipe stove so she could begin preparing dinner. I was not allowed to take from what was already inside, so I had to go back out into the windy cold to retrieve more wood. 

I carried in as much as I could, which was about three times as much as it took to cook a meal. I always tried to bring in as much as I could regardless of how much we needed. While I was at it, I decided to go ahead and replenish the stacks beside both the fireplace and the stove. 

When I finished with that, I jogged over to the old widow lady’s house where my father was helping prepare her for the snow. She was a very nice old woman, and I was more than happy to go lend her a hand. Her only child was a daughter, and she married and moved away. Daddy was finishing up with getting her horses into the stables when I arrived. Basically, all that was left was to carry in some firewood for her. Daddy pitched in with the firewood as soon as he finished with the horses, and we got the job done very quickly. 

We made sure Widow Harper had everything she needed before we left. Depending on how long the snow continued to fall, it might be a few days before we could get over here and check on her again. The next closest neighbors were a thirty-minute walk away. The two houses in between were abandoned nearly a decade ago when the silver mine ran dry. My family took on watching over the widow woman as our responsibility. 

As my father and I walked back home, the falling snow was so dense it obscured the visibility of our house until we were only twenty-five feet away. I was so happy I went ahead and brought in the firewood. I was done with being outside for the night, unless I needed to use the outhouse, which is never a pleasant task to perform in freezing weather like this. 

I sat by the fireplace helping Daddy clean and reload the guns as Momma finished cooking supper. We shot a couple of rabbits today, which incidentally we were having for supper, so the muskets needed to be maintained. It was a bad idea to not have your guns loaded around here. Wild animals, and some say things much more sinister inhabited the forest that encompassed the homes of what we called a town. 

I was so happy when supper was ready. Momma was a wonderful cook, and I could not wait to eat her meals. She had five mouths to feed, including herself, so she always cooked a lot. My sisters never seemed to eat much, not by my standards anyhow. It did not matter how much Momma cooked, I never left anything over. Most times I had the wooden spoon, using it to scrape the last bit of food out of the pot. 

After dinner, while Momma and my sisters washed the dinner dishes, Daddy and I went out and got some more wood. We did not use much of it yet, but we wanted to make sure we had two full stacks before we went to bed. 

Momma and Daddy had a bed, and my sisters had a bed, but I slept on a down filled mattress on the floor near the fireplace. I didn’t mind it at all. I was closest to the warming glow of the fire, and my heavy goose down blanket and thick quilt kept me cozy and warm. It unofficially became my job to make sure the fire did not burn out during the night, but we were all supposed to check it if we got up for any reason. 

There were gaps in the boards making up the walls of our house, and the cold air seeped in quickly. We tried patching them up with mud during the early part of autumn, but it did not take but a few weeks to crumble and fall once it dried. If the fire burned out on a cold enough night, we could quite possibly freeze to death. 

Daddy woke me up before sunrise to go out hunting for today’s dinner. The snow was almost two feet deep and was still falling. I hoped we would be able to bag us some game quickly, so we did not have to stay out in this hauntingly beautiful weather. 

The moon was still out when we started on our way this morning. I stopped at a blind we placed at the edge of our property, but Daddy went further into the forest. I hoped I could get a couple of rabbits again today. I liked eating them, and the pelts were comfortable and warm when prepared properly. 

Daddy was hoping to get a deer today. He did not say as much, but he brought his long barrel musket and some rope. I could not think of anything else he would use those things for on a cold dark morning like today. 

I sat there patiently, sitting on my hands to keep them warm, as I waited for some unsuspecting prey to cross my path. The sun was starting to rise above the horizon when I heard the sound of a gunshot coming from the direction my father went. I hoped that was a good sound. A decent sized deer would feed us and the old widow woman for several weeks, and the cold weather would keep the meat from going rancid. 

The sun fully broke above the horizon line, which meant about three quarters of an hour passed since I heard the gunshot. I continued to wait for Daddy to appear between the trees deeper in the forest as I stayed hidden behind the hunting blind we made this summer. 

Finally, I saw movement in the forest. It was my father, but he was moving too fast to be pulling a deer. I wondered why he did not reload and hunt for another hour or two, then I noticed the haste with which he approached me. He was running as fast as he could through the trees with his discharged gun in his hand. 

I stood up and was going to yell at him to ask him what was happening. He started waving his hand, motioning for me to run toward our house. He yelled in a whisper for me to go. That was all he would say was “Go, go” as he swiped his left hand toward home. I jumped up with my rifle in hand and ran through the deep snow as fast as I possibly could. Daddy caught up with me and then stayed behind me and to my right. 

When we reached the house, my dad opened the door and shoved me inside. Following me in, he slammed the door shut and put a board across the bars to lock it. He even went around to all the shudders to make sure they were all latched. 

Momma was asking him what was going on, but he was too focused on securing the house to answer. She asked me, but all I could do was hold up my hands and shrug my shoulders in ignorance. When Daddy finished running around the house, Momma grabbed him by the shoulders and demanded he tell her what was happening. This was the first time I got a good look at his face. I never saw such a look of terror on my father’s face as I did this time. 

He almost seemed to be in a daze. Momma shook his shoulders and hollered out his name. This finally snapped him out of whatever spell he was under, and he began looking around the house frantically. Again, my mother asked him what was going on, and this time he finally answered. 

“There-there was something out there,” he said. 

Momma asked him what and he simply shook his head slowly and said, “I don’t know.” 

“What do you mean, you don’t know?” Momma asked. 

Looking more confused now than frightened, Daddy replied “I mean just that. I don’t know what it was. It weren’t no creature God made, that’s for sure.” 

My baby sister started crying at this point, and Momma ran over to her, knelt down and took my sister in her arms. My other sister ran over to them and joined their huddle. Father hastily reloaded his gun and took another short-barreled gun off the wall and handed it to my mom. 

Daddy took two muskets off the wall, tucked one in his belt and handed me the other. I accepted the musket from my dad and tucked it into the section of rope that I use for a belt as he took down a third musket and handed it to my oldest sister. 

I guess Daddy felt better making sure we were all armed, because he did seem to calm down after that. He checked the door one more time, then went over to the dinner table and pulled up a chair. He wiped his flushed face with his handkerchief and finally started giving us more detail on what had him running scared. 

“I’z sittin’ there watching this buck, a big eight pointer, waitin’ for it to come close enough for me to shoot. It’z working its way toward me and then this thang came out of nowhere,” he said. At this point he looked off into the distance and became silent. He remained this way for several moments before he continued. 

“It picked that buck up with one hand, with one hand, and swallowed it whole,” he explained. 

I asked my father what the thing looked like. The look on his face became one of confusion. Shaking his head slowly, he said he did not know. 

Momma told him, “You looked at it didn’t ya? What’d it look like?” 

Daddy almost appeared as if he were about to cry when he said, “I can’t remember what it looked like. I don’t, I don’t think it wants to be remembered.” 

The more he tried to explain, the less about the situation Daddy could remember. Eventually he stopped talking altogether. He sat in his chair at the table staring at the door. 

Mother got my sisters working on one of their puzzles before she resumed cooking breakfast. I sat with my sisters and helped them with their puzzle after hanging my rifle and musket on the wall. We had a lot of the picture assembled when Momma told us to clear the table for breakfast. 

As my father hung his rifle on the wall he said, “It sure is a shame I missed that buck this morning. It’a been nice to get a big hunk of meat like that.” 

“Oh well,” Momma replied. “Maybe you’ll have better luck this evening.” 

We were not expecting this snow to come upon us so soon, so there were a lot of things from the store we still needed. We were almost out of flour and molasses, as well as many other things. Father and I were going to have to borrow ole’ Widow Harper’s wagon and horses to get to town. We always pick up anything of hers waiting at the store and deliver it to her when we returned her wagon. This was the routine we followed ever since old man Harper passed away. 

It was cold, that’s for sure, but it was not as cold as it was this morning when Daddy and I went hunting. The snow really slowed the horses, and it took a lot longer than usual to get to the general store. I guess we really expected it to take us longer, but we still both hoped the horses could pull the wagon through the snow faster than this. 

On the way back Daddy pointed out that it was a shame so many people were moving away from our scattered community. There were three empty houses, the residents either moved away or passed on, and no one ever bought the homes after them. My father told me when I turned sixteen, on my next birthday, I should go and buy the deed for one of those homes. The first one we passed was in the best shape, its owner only passed away last year. The other two were abandoned for nearly a decade. 

Widow Harper was dependent on help from others in town to survive. She was old and frail, and there was not a lot she could do on her own. That was how the people in the town of Hope functioned; everyone pitched in and helped where they could. A person could always count on the help of their neighbors when really needed. 

This time we returned from the store with two bolts of cloth and various sowing supplies. Widow Harper could not do much, but she was still a spectacular seamstress. Every dress my sisters had were created by the hand of the old widow woman. All the clothing I possessed before the age of thirteen was her work as well. When I turned thirteen, my parents bought me a suit and nice shoes to wear to church, but beyond that there was not much that I had to wear that she did not make for me. 

We passed her house on the way to ours, but our homes were not very far apart. Our things were loaded in the wagon on top so we could get all our stuff out before returning Widow Harper’s wagon and delivering her things. My father, mother, oldest sister and I unloaded the wagon together, so it did not take long at all to get our things inside. 

When I got back to the widow’s house, I parked her wagon beside her home where she wanted it, unfastened the horses and led them into the barn. I got back to the wagon to unload Widow Harper’s sewing supplies and other various goods when I saw something that made my blood run colder than the snow on the ground. 

I did not know what it was, but I would never forget the horrible beast. It had to be something from the depths of Hell, because God would not create something so ghastly. It had four insect-like legs spaced equally around its round bulbous body. The horrible creature had two arms on each side of its torso, one human sized set and one gargantuan set, and no head sat atop the thing. Instead, the top of its body contained a large, razor fang filled mouth. 

Blood dripped from its mouth onto its body, and in one of its hands it held the lower half of Widow Harper’s corpse. I grabbed my rifle from the front of the wagon and shot the thing. It let out a tortured moan before leaping into the air and bounding away. 

Without thinking, I ran toward my house as fast as I could make my legs move. With all the snow on the ground, that was not a very good idea. I lost my footing and plunged face first into the ground. The impact did not knock me unconscious, but it did knock the wind out of me. Stunned from the pain, I could not help but lay there on the ground for many seconds before the sparks began to clear from my eyes. 

I picked up my rifle and dusted the snow from my clothing as I continued to walk the rest of the way home. When I walked in the door, Momma asked me what I was shooting at. I had to think about it. I remembered shooting at something, but I could not for the life of me remember what. After thinking about it for a moment, I was quite sure it was a bobcat that was the target at which I fired. I remember something startled me when I was next to the wagon beside the house ole’ Widow Harper left me when she passed away. 

Still a bit unsure of what happened, I told my parents it was a bobcat we thought was killing people’s chickens and other small animals. I don’t think I hit it because it managed to get away very quickly. I must have startled it before I fired my gun because I remembered it being close, too close for me to miss a clean shot like that. 

Over dinner we discussed what we would do with Widow Harper’s personal belongings. She passed away recently and left everything she had to me in her will, but there were bound to be some items, some family heirlooms her daughter may come to retrieve one day. I knew I was going to keep all the furniture, but there were a lot of things for me to sort through before I turned sixteen and moved into the house. Until then we continued to keep the horses in the barn on the far side of the property. 

The next day started out rather warm, so I decided to take the wagon to the general store. I needed to ask the owner to keep a few shipping crates and possibly an empty oat barrel in which I could store the late Widow Harper’s things. I needed to see if I could buy some things on credit to start getting ready to farm the land once spring came back around. Surely, I could hunt enough furs this winter to pay off my debt before I needed to buy seed. 

The sun was shining brightly, and by the time I reached the general store most of the snow on the road was melted. Unfortunately, that meant it was muddy, and I was going to have to clean the horses and wash down the wagon after I returned home. I worked with these horses a lot when they belonged to old lady Harper, so they were very familiar with me. That made the task of washing all the mud off of them much easier since they were at ease around me. 

When I reached the cluster of shops that made the center of the town of Hope, I found there were nearly a dozen wagons parked along the street. Saturday was normally the day most folks tried to come resupply, but I thought the nasty roads would keep people away. I guess I was wrong on that account. That was totally fine by me, as I cannot remember the last adult conversation I had that was not with my parents. 

Several of my friends were hanging around in front of the small saloon that served as a barber shop on Friday and Saturday mornings, so I decided to join them once I took care of my business at the general store. They were having a conversation discussing who would like to purchase what properties to be their homes when they went out on their own. 

I was rather shocked to hear the number of people who moved away or passed on recently. So many properties in fact became available recently, the bank was selling off the deeds for pennies on the dollar. I already had the land on which I would live and farm, so I was the only one who was not trying to devise some honest way of coming up with the down payments so they could acquire some land of their own. 

I began to wonder if I might be able to buy the land next to mine. I did not have any need for the house, although I suppose I could use it for chickens during the cold months of the year. I would have to discuss it with Daddy and see what he thought. He may be interested in trying to buy some more land for himself. The way the value of real property was dropping due to all the vacancies, it would be a bad idea not to try to increase the size of one’s land. 

It was only a few years ago the population of Hope was around five hundred people, but now it dropped to somewhere in the area of three hundred folks still living in these parts. I wondered if the population would continue to decline, or if the empty houses would one day again see families dwelling within. 

I thought about this as I passed by the three abandoned houses on the road before getting to my new house. If the price of the property came down enough, I could possibly expand the boundaries of my land three or even four times over. If I could do that, I would have enough land so that I could hire workers to help me tend the farm. Perhaps I could use the existing houses as quarters for my farmhands. This was probably nothing more than a dream, but it gave me something bigger to wish for. 

It took me several hours to clean the horses, get them in their stalls and fed. The wagon was not as dirty as I thought it would be, so I cleaned around the axels but did not bother to spend the time cleaning the rest of it. Daddy would probably give me an earful if he saw I left it in this condition, but it was my wagon. 

I spent as much of my free time over the next several weeks packing the things of old Widow Harper’s that I was not planning to keep for myself. When I could, I was out in the woods hunting. We could always use the meat, and the furs and hides I traded to the general store to pay off my debt. By the time my sixteenth birthday arrived the next month, my new house was ready to move into. 

Initially, I found the solitude to be very relaxing, but it was not long before solitude became loneliness. Even though my parents and my two younger sisters were no more than a seven-minute walk away, and I still worked with Daddy during the day, being separated and alone in this house took some time to get used to. 

It gave me time to think about what exactly I was going to do with my future. I was sweet on the same girl starting when we met in the first grade, and she was sweet on me. I always thought we would get married when we grew up, but when I was thirteen her family moved away. She never even told me she was leaving; I had to find it out from some of the other kids at school. I suppose the idea of saying goodbye was simply too painful, so she never mentioned she was leaving Hope forever. 

I did not know very many other girls my age who did not already have a boy courting them. The two that always seemed to be available were one very homely girl, and one pretty but deaf girl. No boys ever took much of an interest in either of them. Perhaps it was time I called on one of them to join me for a picnic. 

I was at that age where I had a few years to marry if I wanted to start fathering children and raising a family, so I decided I would ask Mary, the homely girl, to join me for a picnic next time I saw her. She was not a lot to look at, but I did not know how to talk with that sign language and didn’t know if I could learn how. Charlotte could read lips, but I did not know if I could live the rest of my life with someone who could only converse with me if I was looking directly at her. 

Every chance I got during the next few months, I found a reason to go to the center of town. If my folks needed something from the store, I would volunteer to go get it for them all in the hopes I would run into Mary while I was there. If I did not cross her path soon, I would have to go to her house and ask her there. That put me in the position of having to ask her father for his permission to court his daughter, and he was not the most cordial individual one might meet. More times than not he was riding high on his moonshine. 

I really did not want to go through that until I was sure if I was going to ask Mary to be my bride. If we found we were not compatible, there would be no point in going through the formality of asking her father for her hand. If I found that I really did like Mary and thought I could grow to love her, then the conversation with her drunken father would be worth it. 

On the very day I finally decided I would go to Mary’s house, I spotted her with some of the other girls her age sitting around in front of the parlor. I had to come through the center of Hope to get to her father’s land, and to my fortune here she was. I was so relieved to find Mary here, and suddenly a wave of nervousness passed over me. Until now I felt no anxiety about calling on Mary, but I felt an intense fear of rejection when I saw her and the other girls. It dawned on me how serious of a decision I was about to make. 

A lot of people came to the center of town today as it was a Saturday and a nice, cool spring day. The closest place I could find to park my wagon was on the outskirts of the buildings by the blacksmith shop. By the time I got back to the parlor, I saw Mary and the others headed on in their different directions. I jogged up the gradual hill and caught Mary as she was getting on her horse. 

My nerves were so frazzled as I tried to ask Mary to join me for a picnic, all I heard were the bumbling words of a fool. I think she was impressed by my nervousness, because she smiled the cutest smile as I tried but failed miserably to sound confident. I honestly thought she would start laughing at me, but to my elation she said she would be happy to join me. We set a date to meet back here in town next Saturday morning if the weather was nice. As she rode away on her horse, she turned around and gave me another big smile. 

I walked back to my wagon with an unexpected spring in my step. Mary and I were friends for as long as I could remember, but I never really thought of her as a girl. She used to run around and play in the dirt with the boys, so I always saw her as one of the boys. That was why I got so nervous. Mary and I got along and played together since we were both out of diapers. It was a good feeling asking her out for a picnic. 

The next week passed unbearably slowly. My father’s ox broke its leg and had to be put down. I let him use one of my horses to pull his plow, but since the harness was made for an ox it took us a lot of work to get it adjusted for the different beast of burden. We both had to get our gardens tilled and our seed planted soon if we wanted to take advantage of the spring rains. 

I paid my debt through the winter by hunting and trapping. I was ready to put in a bid for the property adjacent to my own, but I needed to have a better idea of how well my crops would yield this year before I got anything else on credit. As it was, I already owed for the seed I bought to sow. I did not need to lose my property over a debt I built and could not dig out from underneath it. I could not really see the bank foreclosing on a house right now with all the vacant ones scattered around town. 

I had Momma fry a chicken for me early Saturday morning. I would buy a loaf of bread from the bakery when I got to the center of town to meet Mary. She was bringing tea, biscuits and her delectable peach cobbler. Mary was famous in Hope for her peach cobbler. Four years in a row she won the blue ribbon at the county fair for her magnificent dessert. 

Momma loaded the chicken into a woven reed picnic basket I got as part of late Widow Harper’s estate, and I headed off for the center of town while the air was still a bit nippy. By the time I met up with Mary, the temperature was about perfect. We agreed to meet a couple of hours before noon, and we planned to go out to Round Meadow. It was a beautiful open patch in the forest with an apple tree in the center surrounded by three large oak trees that were perfect for shade. 

Mary arrived on her horse as I was leaving the bakery. I took her basket from her then helped her down from her horse. We tied her horse to the back of my wagon, then I politely helped her into the front seat. Climbing in behind her, I grabbed the reins and was about to drive my horses onward when I turned and looked Mary in the eyes. She looked so happy to be having lunch with me under the shade trees, it made my heart feel warm. All these years we knew each other, and I never imagined she could be the one until now. 

We had a pleasant conversation during our ride about what I was planting, and what her father and brothers were planting. This was the first year I planted my own crops, but I was confident in my abilities after all the years I helped Daddy farm his land. The conversation was not a lot of forced small talk. We actually talked as freely and openly as we did when we played as children. Our words were not strained; we genuinely enjoyed each other’s company. 

We were pleased to find no one else chose Round Meadow as a picnic spot today, at least not as of the time we arrived. I tied the horses to a post someone put there long ago underneath one of the oak trees. Mary and I spread out a blanket and set our baskets near the center. Taking a seat close to each other, but not inappropriately close, we continued the conversation we were having in the wagon. Every time she smiled that cute smile of hers, it made me gush. I really could imagine myself spending my life with her. 

Mary did not live far from Round Meadow, so when our picnic was at an end, I rode her home in my wagon. As I untied her horse and handed her the reins, Mary gave me a sweet little peck on the cheek. I obviously blushed like an apple, and it made Mary giggle the sweetest little giggle. I watched her as she walked her horse up to her house. She turned around about halfway there and waved goodbye to me. I smiled wide and waved back. 

Mary’s house was on the other side of town from mine, so it was a long ride back. I did not mind. I did not mind one bit at all. I even found myself whistling for most of the ride. At this moment I felt happier than I ever felt. Our plan was to meet again next Saturday for another picnic. This time we both planned to bring our rifles and do some target shooting. She was probably the only person my age who was a better shot than me. 

It felt nice to get home, get out of my clothes and into my pajamas. I lit a lamp and a hanging lantern to light up the room since it was going to be getting dark soon. I laid down on my bed and stared up at the wooden plank ceiling. I was already sixteen and owned a significant plot of land complete with a house and barn. I was left twenty chickens, two horses and three dairy goats. I was even considering the possibility of purchasing the land adjacent to mine. It seemed like I had everything in my life except a woman to love. 

There were not very many girls my age in town who were not currently being courted by someone else. I thought of asking one girl I knew for as long as I could remember, but the guys in town today told me that Mary moved away with her family a few weeks ago. I was sad to hear that because we always got along so well. We probably would have made the perfect couple. 

The only girl left in town I could think of was a pretty girl named Charlotte. The problem was, because of a case of scarlet fever when she was little, she was completely deaf. I did not know how to use her sign language, but she was very adept at reading lips. I did not know if I could live with someone who could not hear me unless they were looking directly at my face. 

I had a lot of thinking to do. In only a few short months I would reach the age of seventeen years, and I had no girl in my life. If I did not decide I wanted to marry Charlotte, I was going to have to go somewhere else to find a bride. I knew some others who found wives outside of Hope, but those cases are very few and far in between. Before I dozed off, I decided I would call on Charlotte to go out on the lake or something to see how well we could get along. 

I made it to the center of town five times over the next two weeks. Some were trips to get food and supplies for me and my family, but I made as many trips as I could in hopes of running into Charlotte. I knew I would probably have to go to her home to ask her to spend a day with me, as it was very rare that she left their family property. 

People tended to avoid her like they were afraid they were going to go deaf by being around her. She already had difficulty being social and making friends, and with the way so many people of the town of Hope shunned her, Charlotte did not come to the center of town very often. I decided I would make the long ride out to her house and ask her there if she would like to spend the day with me sometime next week. 

The day came for me to ride out to Charlotte’s house in hopes of beginning my courtship of her. I picked some roses from one of the many rose bushes old Widow Harper planted around the outside of the house. I thought Charlotte might enjoy the beautiful blossoms, and it would be a good way to break the ice. 

As Momma helped me snip the stems and assemble a small bouquet of beautiful red roses to present to Charlotte, my youngest sister was playing in the open space between my father’s crops and my own as she did often. Momma put the last of the roses into a flower basket and was in the process of handing it to me when we heard my baby sister scream. 

I turned to look to see why she screamed, and I saw the most horrific thing I ever saw in my life. In my worst nightmares I did not think things this horrid existed. It had two sets of arms that extended out of what could best be called a torso. The lower set of arms was human sized, but the upper set was enormous. The round fleshy, bloated body was encircled by four long insect-like legs. The atrocious beast had no head, nor any eyes or ears that I could see, but instead had a large gaping mouth between its shoulders. I would never forget this creature, the image of this thing from another place burned itself into my memory. 

I grabbed my rifle where it was propped against the wall of the house and began running to help my sister. She continued to scream as the unholy demon scuttled closer and closer towards her. Overcome by panic, I pushed myself until I ran at a speed I never achieved before this. The thing was going to get to her before me, and I did not have a clear shot. 

I heard my mother’s screams behind me as the ungodly monster grabbed my sister with one of its giant arms, turned, took a few steps, and then leapt high into the forest. My sister’s screams faded as the creature bound away with her held tightly in its grip. 

I desperately kept running, but since I was watching the creature carry my seven-year-old sister away to God knows where, I was not paying attention to the ground in front of me. I did not know if it was a stick, dirt or a rock, but something was in the way of my foot. I kicked it hard and went flying to the ground. 

I got up and continued running with an intense sense of urgency. I moved through the woods as fast as I possibly could for another five minutes or so before I realized I had no idea why I was running. I knew I was chasing after something, but what that something was I could not say. 

From far behind me, I heard my mother yell out, “Did ya get that coyote? It’s done run off with another one of our chickens.” 

That was right; I was chasing after a coyote that snagged one of our chickens and ran. I did not understand why I chased it so far rather than simply shooting it. It was not like I had to worry about shooting and killing the chicken. Chances were, it was already dead at that point anyway. 

I knew, I thought I knew something was not right. I asked my mother where my sister was, and Momma told me she was inside doing her schoolwork. She was about to turn fourteen and was going to be finished with school soon. In a couple of more years, she would be getting married off, and Momma and Daddy would have their house back to themselves again. 

If I finally ever met a girl who took an interest back in me, I would one day give them grandchildren. There were so few girls left here in town my age, and all of them were already involved in a courtship with someone. I was going to have to go off somewhere to find a wife unless someone moved in soon. I was nearly seventeen years old, and it was time I started my family if I ever planned to start one. 

Unknown to us, the population of this former mining town would never grow because the townspeople were being devoured one by one. Some horrible beast from a hell unknown hunted the people for lord knows how many years. The retched beast possessed the best camouflage any creature could possibly possess. No one or nothing that saw it, that ever ran across its path retained any memory of what transpired. 

Not only did nothing remember what transpired, no one and nothing remembered anything that had to do with the beast. When it ate someone or carried someone off, everyone suddenly remember that person moved, or died, or forgot about them all together as was the case with my youngest sister. The horrid creature was not gone with her for more than a few minutes, and we lost any memory that my baby sister ever existed. 

How it did what it did, no one would ever know. No one could remember the creature long enough to even know what it does. It may rearrange time or possibly reality to erase any sign it exists, but whatever it did it left absolutely no sign, no trail, and no memory that it ever existed. For decades it fed on the game animals, livestock and people in and around the region. It continued to feed, completely unknown to everyone, until the entire population of the town of Hope was lost.