Dogface Boy Caught A Train Out West

 

Petijean State Park, AR.  

In the daylight he was forced to run on all fours, so the people would think he was just a large dog in case anyone thought they saw him. It offended him to do so. Even so, the local farmers had begun to suspect that this was not a normal canine. Too many calves and lambs went missing during the nights. Scent markings were found six feet up on walls! Housewives worried and kept a sharp eye out when digging a potato or hanging out the wash. 

Things began to get hot for him in the villages and in the fields. Farmers were going about their work armed with shotguns. Merchants and shoppers in towns whispered about an arcane howling beast frequenting their streets at night. Children were admonished by reference to his probable dining preferences. At last, his sheltering place was found in the basement of an abandoned farmhouse. The house was burnt down by the townspeople and the farmers. A priest sprinkled the ground there with special water and a farmer strewed rock salt where the building had stood. They left him nothing to come back to.

Therefore, the Dogface Boy decided to leave his natal home in the hollers of the Ozark mountains. He wanted to go where a beast could be free and un-noticed to predate at will. Let’s give him a name, shall we, for convenience’s sake? I believe I shall call him Louis.

Now, Louis understood trains as a way to get out of the area and he had a pretty good notion of the cardinal directions. He decided to travel westward, riding the rails as it were. Louis leapt on freight cars to ride unseen during the dark hours, yellow eyes burning out into the fields and towns while the wind blew his shaggy dark fur back, as he grinned his vulpine grin. Then he hopped off to do a bit of hunting and find a place to sleep during the light hours. He had luck with him, for no one saw the shaggy dark form sleeping in this or that deep shadow.

First, he rode the trains to Arizona. It glowed. It was hot. He couldn’t settle there. No amount of panting made it any more endurable.

He had to keep moving. Louis knew that the north was cooler, so he hopped on a freight car heading north. He worked his way up through Utah, Idaho, the corner of Oregon and at last he came to the cool green lands of the upper left-hand corner of the country. Louis could breathe here. No one watched him vanish into the deep stands of Douglas Firs, Alders, and Maples. Louis had no trouble finding food there. He could grab a robin out of the air if he couldn’t catch something bigger, like someone’s calf or sheep perhaps.

Sooner or later, he made his wandering way to the Baker National Forest. It had been raining there since October, when it wasn’t snowing, not that Louis knew it, but it was now April. He had never seen anything like it.

It was dim. It was gloomy. Heavy fog filled the distant tree tops. There was not a hint of sunshine. Water dripped on his head from the branches of those two hundred foot tall firs out there. It smelled funny. Fungi and rotten wood were all around him. He sensed alien buglife.

Louis was pissed.

He raised his muzzle to the sky and howled. It was a howl such as had never been heard in Ralph’s domain before. It was chilling. It was piercing! It was protracted.

Ramona heard it. Twigg heard it. He wanted to go see who was making so much noise. Twigg was not allowed to leave the cave. GOTO, children were admonished by reference to his probable dining preferences.

All at the same time Ralph heard this dismal yawping howl and Louis burst into the clearing where Ralph’s special log lay invitingly. Right behind Louis came Ralph. (Ralph makes three of Louis in size. In case you wonder.)

Louis leapt up on the log, airing his grievance to the upper forest and sky with a hell of a howl. The scene was Wagnerian!

“Say Buddy,” began Ralph, “um, what’s up?” Ralph loomed out of the gloom over Louis.

“Ya’all talk?” Louis was astounded by the sight of Ralph.

“Yeah, Bud, but don’t tell anybody. How about you hop down and sit on the log?”

Louis climbed down and sat, all shaggy and dark and glowering.

Ralph sat beside him. He radiated calm. His breathing was deep and regular. Ralph had a kind of zone around himself. He just sat there for a long while. At last, he said, “if you’re feeling better, how about we smoke a cigar and take it easy?”

“OK,” said Louis. “No one has ever offered me a cigar before.” He looked a little sorry for himself.

“The life of an English-speaking Cryptid is an odd one Buddy,” said Ralph, from a cloud of expensive smelling smoke. “See, we exist as a sort of interface between the Hairless and the Unspeaking. You have to learn to swing with it. Especially if you want to stay here.”

“You feel like a beer, Buddy,” offered Ralph. Ralph fished out from under his log a couple of bottles of Shaggy Dog Dunkel Brau and opened them, handing one to Louis.

They talked for a couple of hours. Neither one asked the other’s name. But guys are like that, even forest guys.

Louis agreed to come back in a couple of days to meet the family, after he had found a cave for himself.

Ralph said, “anytime Buddy. Take it easy!”