The Sas-Quest: The Journal of a Cryptid Hunter (Part 2)

September 29th, 1996

Last night’s outing is exactly why I work alone. I should have never let those kids get involved. If they were to go out on their own, though… let’s just say, I don’t think I’d be hearing from the WCCIS ever again.

At the present moment, that isn’t the case. I was working through the past research when Jake came knocking on the door. He had obviously not slept the night before. (Honestly, who can blame him?) It wasn’t one second after I opened the door to ask how he found me when he went in a frenzy of explanations:

“- and it wasn’t like this has happened before. People around here talk all the time about Bigfoot and how scary he looks but never any disappearances! To be frank, I kind of thought this one was just a student looking to stir up some trouble. And that noise! It was so loud, I couldn’t even think. And -”

“Snap out of it!” I yelled, shaking him to get him out of this panic cycle. “Look, I’ve dealt with things like this before and the worst thing you can do is panic. Kid, I don’t know how you found me, but you seem too deep in it now.”

I sat him down on the couch in Claude’s living room. Grabbing him a glass of water, I start to explain. 

“I apologize for your friend, and… I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before, but my friend also went missing recently hunting this thing.” Shockingly, Jake didn’t seem surprised at this. He seemed almost guilty, even.

“Did you… happen to know about his disappearance?” I asked.

After a moment, Jake confirmed with a nod. “I ran into him in town. He was asking all these questions and he seemed like he knew what he was doing, so I told him about the sightings recently.”

“Did he say anything to you? Anything you haven’t told me yet?”

“No, not really. Except that…”

“Come on. The more information we have, the better.”

“Okay… it didn’t seem that important at the time, but he mentioned that this was a ‘special’ case. I didn’t think he meant, extraordinarily special. Just, not-a-regular-animal-in-the-woods special.”

“‘Special’...” I thought for a moment, and then it clicked. Of course! Oh, this is bad. This is very bad.

—--

Here’s the thing about Cryptids. They don’t just come out of nowhere. Some might think they’re these ancient beings that have been around since before humans. The truth is, a lot of them are fairly recent creations.

Well, relatively recent. For example, in the early 1900s, in Scotland, the Loch Ness monster was made. It was created by a unique combination of a widespread rumor, and the belief of a few ‘Special’ individuals. 

Most of the time, these people don’t know they can create Cryptids. They can go about their lives clueless about their abilities. Only when a few of these people imagine the same creature, does it finally come into existence. Kind of like a witches’ coven except they don’t know they’re witches, and they don’t know each other, and instead of casting spells, they create Cryptids. So, not really like a witches’ coven at all.

I’ve only met one of these people in my life. It was a kid. In Bellingham. He and a couple others had imagined the Tree Octopus I was hunting the last time I was in the area. 

Turns out, he and the rest of the ‘Special’ people in the area had come up with another beast. 

And it had Claude and Chip. 

—--

After talking through it with Jake, I was certain this was a newly created Cryptid. New Cryptids tend to be scarier and more aggressive than the others. They haven’t had time to adjust to modern society and its distaste for the unusual. I’m kicking myself now for not having considered it. It seems so obvious now what with all the noise and sightings. It also explained why Claude was scared enough to bring something lethal with him.

Luckily, I had a lead on who to talk to for more information. 

Jake called the rest to meet us at Western Washington University. Apparently, since the last time I saw the Special kid, he’d started his degree in Environmental Science there. 

The kid, Otto, agreed to meet with us under the pretense that we were interviewing students about the surrounding forests for an upcoming article. Hey, it was a little true.

I didn’t think he’d recognize me. After all, he was only a child the last time I spoke to him. Apparently, I’d made an impression, because as soon as he opened the door and saw me, his face went pale.

“You. Get out.” I guess it wasn’t a good impression. “You’re the one who blamed me for those pine squids.”

“Tree octopus, actually. And -”

“Whatever. I don’t want to talk to you.”

If Otto wanted the hard way, he was getting the hard way. And the hard way, for me, was to apologize.

“Look,” I said, putting on my kindest face. “I’m sorry. We really need your help with something.” It didn’t seem to do much until Winnie spoke up.

“Hey, uh… Otto, is it? I just lost my boyfriend and I’m told you’re the only chance we have to get him back. Just give us 5 minutes of your time? Please.”

Otto softened a bit and finally agreed to answer some questions. At first, he was confused why we would be asking such strange questions, but eventually he gave us a resource.

“So you’ve seen the forum?” he asked after a couple minutes. The rest of us shook our heads, not quite sure what he was talking about.

“It’s this website that us students share stuff on,” he explained. “Recently, there’s been a few of us joking about a Bigfoot guy that protects the woods of Bellingham. We call him The Palmer. Like, instead of just walking all weird, he has cool powers like reading people’s minds and making dudes vanish if they don’t say ‘I plan on writing an epic poem about this gorgeous pie.’” Otto chuckles.

“Um… ‘pie’?” I asked.

“It’s a Twin Peaks reference,” Otto explained. 

“Right, and how many people are on this thing?” I inquired. 

“I don’t know, like half the school?”

That’d do it. The chances of more than one Special person increase at universities even without the World Wide Web helping bring them on the same page. 

After a couple more clarifying details, it was time for us to leave Otto alone. 

“Oh, one more thing, before you leave,” Otto interjected during our exit. “If I’m really responsible for this, can I fix it? Like, if I put on the forum that it’ll give people back, will it?”

“I’m sorry,” I responded, patting him on the shoulder. “It doesn’t really work like that. You see, once something exists, you can’t really change it after that. You’ve helped us plenty, though. We’ll figure it out.”

Otto looked sad and a little guilty, but nodded. It seemed like he’d finally understood the consequences of his gift. 

The rest of us left. We had some planning to do.

September 30th, 1996

While there wasn’t a simple way for us to get this thing, The Palmer, out of the way and our friends back, we had a couple ideas. 

Since it was a new Cryptid, the easier thing would just be to wait until it got used to hiding and hope no one wandered into the forest after dark. But, this was Bellingham, so there were plenty of people going into the woods and it was only a matter of time before one of those people went a little too far. 

So, we decided that we’d fight fire with a louder fire. The majority of the day, the Society and I gathered all the noise-making things we could. The idea being we could disorient The Palmer and hopefully shock it into hiding. It wasn’t the most humane thing, I admit, but the risk of leaving it alone was too high. 

There was no way I could anticipate what actually came of our plan.

—--

That night, we got together for (hopefully) the last time to enter into the forest where Chip and Claude went missing. Among many things, Jake was equipped with a megaphone, Manny had a drum strapped to his chest, and Winnie had a necklace full of whistles. I went in with the loudest thing I could think of, a cowbell. 

We decided on these things, not only because they were loud, but because they would keep quiet until we needed them. So, we trekked once more, deep into the trees.

Otto told us that you can sense The Palmer is near when you feel in your gut that you must turn back. He said it was because he’s just protecting the forest and doesn’t actually mean to harm people, but will if necessary. This explains why I was almost ready to call our last outing off when it showed. 

Not long after we passed the spot where Chip vanished, we could feel it. We wanted to give up. 

I looked at the others and got a nod. Then, we made some noise. I rang my cowbell as much as I could while the others went to work on their respective methods. We were loud, but definitely not louder than The Palmer. We heard a shriek that reverberated in our skulls. Then, in the center of our band, we saw it. 

Otto was right, it was kind of like the Sasquatch. It was ape-like with massive feet and a hunched over posture. However, this one seemed much more disheveled and irritated. Angry, really. Regardless of its unsettling presence, we didn’t let up. He looked from one person to another as if deciding which one annoyed him more. Finally, his eyes caught my bell. 

Now, I’d been in scary situations before, but this was a whole other version of scary; I had no idea what to expect.

Suddenly, out of the dark of the trees surrounding us, came a massive winged creature. It tackled The Palmer to the ground. Manny had to step to the side to avoid the crash. The two beings began fighting each other. Everyone stopped making their noises and watched.

The mystery creature was a little bigger than The Palmer, but was just as hairy. Its largest difference was the huge wings on its back. The creature used the wings to pivot its body to flip The Palmer over. If this were a different circumstance, I’d have thought we had front row seats to a weird underground wrestling match. Eventually, the larger beast bit and scratched The Palmer so much that it ran away. 

When it decided it was satisfied with this outcome, the winged wrestler faced us and fled with a flash. 

The remaining Society members and I looked at each other, not knowing what to say about what just happened. By the time we caught our breaths, the mystery monster returned, carrying 2 familiar shapes: Claude and Chip.

Now that I could get a good look at it, I could tell it was new. It was confused by our presence and didn’t seem to know much about how to handle living people as both rescued individuals were held in awkward positions.

Winnie, Jake, and Manny immediately got to work retrieving the rescued men while I observed the creature more. It noticed my gaze and looked me in the eyes. And you know what? I could’ve sworn it winked at me. Then, it vanished again. 

—--

Later, I found out that the forum had called this creature the Bat-Squatch. Otto had one more creation left in him after The Palmer, and he used it to save us and our friends. After that day, I haven’t heard from him. I like to think that’s a good thing.

**This blog was written by someone paid by The Eureka Room and Cryptid Escapes. While intended to be informational, it also acts as promotional material. All contents in this piece are fictional. Thank you for reading and staying media literate. :)