Devolution: A Firsthand Account of the Rainier Sasquatch Massacre(80)

Alpha! That was my first thought, hugging Pal closer as I looked nervously for some dark hairy shape hiding behind a corner. I noticed the scorch marks on the wall at the bottom of the stairs, followed the trail of cinders out to the hole in the window. Through the waving curtains, I saw what had to be the black, charred lump of the towel resting in the ash.

“Pal, what ha…,” I started to ask, but she broke away from my grasp, keeping my hand in hers, and tried to lead me toward the door.

“What…where?” I asked, but she was insistent, a silent pleading in her eyes. I took a few steps, felt my ankles pop, then caught sight of the caved-in garage door.

The garden.

She’d destroyed it.

Alpha had torn the irrigation hose right out from the sink, which was still gushing into the dirt. The dirt, all our carefully sculpted rows were gone, replaced by the thrashed lumps and holes of a kindergarten sandbox. Our seedlings. I saw a few lying among the debris, torn up by the roots, or probably just lifted along with all the other backhoe-sized handfuls.

She’d tried to eat a few, I guessed by the small, slimy green nodules. The tomatoes, the cucumbers, all of Pal’s precious little beans. Chewed up and spat out like miniature horse droppings. Not her droppings though. She’d left that behind as well.

A large, slick pile sat right in the middle of the room. An involuntary function? Just an animal doing its business? Or was there a conscious message?

“Fuck you, Little Prey. Here’s what I can do to your nest.”

I’m just glad I couldn’t smell it. My broken nose was too swollen. Pal could though, with nostrils buried in her sweater. She kept pulling my hand, leading me away.

At first, I resisted. “Don’t you see this? All our work! Everything we tried to do!”

She wasn’t listening, wasn’t even looking. Her face was fixed on the entrance hall, the open front door, something beyond it that I absolutely needed to see. When she looked back toward me, I could see the tears begin.

“Okay, okay.” I gave up the fight, let her lead me out into the falling ash.

At least I thought it was ash. But when the first flake landed just under my right eye, I blinked hard at the icy surprise.

Snow.

Must have been early. I didn’t think we’d have snow for a few more weeks. It wasn’t heavy. It evaporated before hitting the ground, before it could cover the large footprints leading away from my house. Or the blood trails leading to Mostar’s.

Red footprints amid spatters, a track leading from her kitchen door around the front. Pal let go of my hand then, running on to Mostar’s house, disappearing through—through?—the garage wall. I thought there was something wrong with my eyes, or maybe Mostar had opened her garage. I couldn’t see from that angle, or even as I stopped at her open front door.

More blood in the entrance hall, tracking back to the kitchen among a sparkling carpet of broken glass. So much glass. So many colors. Mostar’s artwork. All those intricate pieces. I could recognize little bits; a pink petal, the blue head of a bird, and the cleanly broken leaf of the fire piece I’d been so taken with earlier. All gone. That’d been the popping sound I’d heard during the attack. One by one they’d been hurled against the floor. Not by the creature, not like my garden. I suspected then, and I confirmed it later, that Mostar and Dan had smashed them in a last-ditch defense.

That had been the howl of pain I’d heard from my bathroom hiding place. The blood trail. And the hollow boom. I finally saw the source of that sound after a few more steps. The garage’s sliding aluminum wall had been bashed in. That’s how Pal had seemed to walk through the wall. She was waiting for me inside, along with everyone else. Effie held her. Carmen held Effie. Bobbi leaned against the back wall, hand cupped against her puffy, darkening cheek. Their collective, red-rimmed eyes told me where to look.

The body was lying facedown. Flat, smooth, tremendous feet glittering with so many embedded shards they looked like a treasure trove of rubies. The blood trickling from those wounds mixed with the large red circle that spread from the breathless torso, from the knife-topped bamboo that sprouted from its silver back. Consort. I could see my reflection in his blood, following another trail that led to the far corner of the room.

Dan, sitting against the wall, cradling Mostar’s limp form. For a second, just a second, I thought she might be sleeping. The rise of her body under Dan’s heaving chest. I should have known right away that no human neck can twist so far to one side. But the closed lips, the gently shut eyes. She looked peaceful, alive.

Dan told me later what had happened, how she’d pulled him inside the house and ordered him to start smashing her art. She’d disappeared into the workshop as he’d grabbed all her sculptures off the shelves. One after the other he’d hurled them against the floor. He wasn’t sure how many he’d destroyed, half a dozen maybe, when the kitchen sliding door had toppled down. Mostar must have heard it too. She shouted from the garage, “Keep smashing!” And he did.

He told me that the beast had half stepped, half leaped at him, and come down hard on a floor of broken pieces. The whole village must have heard the roar. Dan watched the giant stumble backward, tread on more shards, then disappear back outside. He told me he felt like cheering, even crying, but Mostar had shouted, “Don’t stop! Expand the minefield!”

Her word, “minefield.” Always with the war metaphors.