The Sizemores were fairly hands off which Penny took full advantage of once Spring Break started. She went out every morning after a quiet breakfast, and only returned for a quick lunch and dinner. She spent most of the time wandering the woods that surrounded their neighborhood, sometimes alone and sometimes with Gage, Levi, and Colton. Destiny and Whitney were enamored with a stall at the farmers market full of knitted creatures, and had taken to hanging around there to learn how to crochet. Brooke stopped by to join them from time to time, but mainly bounced between the Wilcox house and tagging along after Aaliyah.
Penny would catch whispered words from them whenever she passed them; always started by Aaliyah and never anything kind. They typically fell in the area of calling her a baby or weird, and once, when she was rushing off to meet the boys on the sidewalk, she clearly heard Aaliyah call her a slut. Brooke had gasped at that rather than snigger, which was a small comfort.
It was too early for lunch at the Sizemore house, but her friends had already headed off to their lunches, leaving Penny to lay under the hedge that separated the Wilcox yard from the Lambert yard. She had her phone out and ready in case the gnome made an appearance.
“There she goes being a freak again,” Aaliyah mocked. “Ugh, ignore her. Let’s try that eyeshadow we just lifted.”
She hung out long after their voices disappeared. The gnome refused to show, so she headed in to eat the peanut butter sandwich that was growing stale on the counter. She was halfway through when Aaliyah’s voice sounded from the front hall. She tried to eat the peanut butter quicker.
Aaliyah sneered at Penny’s overstuffed mouth. “Gross.” She waved nonchalantly at the table. “See, Brooke, even pretty Penny looks ugly eating. Just keep that image in your mind.”
Brooke–wearing too much black eyeshadow–forced a giggle and followed Aaliyah to the fridge. Aaliyah showed her something on her phone as it chimed, both of the giggling madly–Brooke beet red and nervous. Aaliyah grabbed a bottle of water, and stalked from the kitchen.
“Come on, Brooke,” she ordered. “You can help me send a full-bodied reply.” She paused to give Penny a piteous head shake. “Poor you. Your baby brain has no idea what I’m talking about.”
Brooke laughed before Aaliyah at that comment, and scurried after the older girl without giving Penny another look.
She set the rest of her sandwich aside, poked at it a bit, and tossed it in the trash. She sent Colton–the most likely to check his phone–a message saying she would be at the library if they were looking for her.
The library was not very large. It was in an old, gray stone building that at one time must have served as a church going off the spires. The first floor was open and dedicated to children’s picture books, audiobooks, and cushy reading and sensory corners. The second floor was lined with old shelves filled with more mature books: nonfiction, biographies, politics.
Penny sat on a hard, wooden chair tucked in a corner of the second floor. She flipped through a thick book on the War of the Roses. A collection of mythology and two thin volumes of local folklore sat on the little table beside her.
From her private lessons with Aisling and Mother Mary Clare, she knew the War of the Roses to be the beginning of the split between the Realm and the rest of the world. England ended up an extremely influential country, and then empire, but without the line of true English kings. The Protector of the Realm became colloquial, if at all mentioned, while the true meaning slipped into secrecy.
Mother Mary Clare had said in one of their last meetings that the role of Protector of the Realm–the role of King–was still alive and well, but they ran out of time for Penny to ask more about that.
She lifted her head as the floor creaked. Colton was inching towards her, eyeing the shelves of books as if afraid they would fly off the shelves at him.
“Why d’you hang out in here,” Colton complained. “It’s all musty and stuffy.”
“And air conditioned, and full of reading material,” Penny said. She flipped a few pages before shutting the book and setting it on the others. “What’s the plan now? Back to the woods?”
Colton smirked. “My mom decided to go visit my mamaw at the home.” His smirk grew. “I know we’d done all the logistics for Saturday, but… ATVs?”
Gage and Levi were already waiting at Colton’s house. Colton’s older brother Garrett was standing between two mud-dried ATVs with an impish grin. He looked like a slightly older, thinner, and wirier Colton.
“We’ve got maybe two hours,” Garrett said. “Should be more than enough for a fast ride through the woods.” He winked. “Emphasis on fast.”
“There aren't helmets,” Levi asked warily.
“Okay, so, scaredy cat and Gage will be with me,” Garrett said. He swung his leg over the ATV like it was a horse. “Levi, you hold onto me. Gage, you get behind Levi. We’ll sandwich him. Does that make you feel safe?”
Levi glared but made no objections. He slowly climbed on, stared at Garrett’s back with his hands hovering in the air before deciding on the shoulders, and inched up as Gage jumped on after him.
Penny scrambled on after Colton. She also opted to grab his shoulders.
“Don’t be afraid of holding on real tight,” Colton said cheekily. “I won’t tell anyone if you get scared.”
“You wish,” Penny teased.
They started off slow, easing from the yard out onto the well-worn trails in the woods. Garrett gradually gained speed; Colton doing the same behind him. Eventually, the five of them were whooping and hollering as the ATVs zoomed around the woods, jumping in the air on larger bumps.
They dismounted after a few laps. Colton took Gage with him as he and Garrett raced each other, doing bigger and bigger jumps. Penny roamed a clearing a safe distance from the tracks with Levi at her heels. He seemed less than enthused at how deep into the woods they were, and routinely smacked his arms or legs with a mumble about bugs.
“You are having fun, right,” Penny asked, moving her phone slowly towards a resting butterfly.
“...Yes,” Levi said. “When I'm not being eaten alive. Or afraid I'm going to break my neck.”
The butterfly took flight. Penny groaned and went after it, taking long and high steps to get through the weeds. She heard Levi taking similar steps–but with more grumbling–behind her. She shushed him as the butterfly lighted on a flower, holding her breath to inch closer.
Her heart gave a happy skip as she snapped the picture just before the butterfly floated off. She studied the little screen, her smile fading. There was a clump of dead, stringy moss in the bottom corner that threw the picture off.
“Or, it adds character,” she muttered.
“What was that?”
“The picture,” she said. She looked around the flower, grabbing for the moss but quickly recoiling. “That… is not moss….”
“What?” Levi looked at the clump. “Course it is. What else would it be?”
Penny pulled the clump from the brambles and held it to Levi. He hesitantly touched it with a single finger, ripped his hand back as if burned.
“It feels like wet dog fur,” Levi said, cringing. “Gross.”
She ignored him frantically wiping his hands on his shirt. She spied more clumps, a clear trail, and started following. The hair was few and far, but Penny was locked onto them too much to notice.
The trail ended.
She sighed in disappointment and turned back. Her green eyes caught an imprint in the mud, just below the leaves and undergrowth. Her heartbeat started quickening as she ripped the undergrowth aside. She gave a small gasp, scrambling to free her phone from her pocket.
It was a footprint, a clear footprint that was over two feet at least in length. She walked backwards with her phone out until the entire thing fit on the tiny screen, and clicked.
“Do you see—? Levi?” She spun around, finding herself alone. “Levi?”
It wasn’t difficult to find the hair and retrace her steps, but she didn’t see or hear Levi. She didn’t want to wander too far from the fur trail, but it seemed that was what happened with her friend.
“Levi,” Penny called out. “Levi! Can you hear me?”
“P-Penny?”
She exhaled and headed for his voice, calling out every few steps and urging him to stay put so they wouldn’t get more lost. She was confident she would still be able to get them back to the fur trail, and back to the others.
A pungent smell, like burnt hair and wet garbage, drifted before her, causing her to stop and gag. Her heart plummeted.
“Levi,” Penny called out again, “don’t move! I’m—.”
A roar similar to a gorilla’s ripped through the area. Penny ran towards the sound, thorns and branches tearing at her exposed arms, legs, and face.
“Penny! Penny, what was that?”
“It’s a bigfoot,” Penny yelled out. “Don’t move, Levi! I’m coming!”
The bigfoot roared again, sounding much closer to her than to Levi. She stopped and started rustling the trees around her. Footsteps stomped towards her, heavy enough she could feel them in her chest the closer they got. She hurried away, a crash coming from where she’d just stood.
“Levi,” Penny called out. “I’ve got the bigfoot! Don’t come over here! Run!”
The bigfoot looked to be twenty feet tall although Penny knew from her lessons that they rarely crested eight feet. It was a shaggy, brownish-green with a gorilla-like face; a more pronounced underbite caused its bottom fangs to poke out of its lip.
It eyed her with its dark, beady eyes, then slowly started towards her, arms swinging faster and faster as it picked up speed.
She raised her phone, hit the flash, and clicked.
The bigfoot roar, stumbling semi-blinded towards her, undeterred by the flash. She leapt aside, rolled behind a tree, and took another picture.
Penny’s mind flipped between trying to not get pummeled and what Aisling had told her when they covered these creatures. It had been the first one, shortly after learning about magic and the Realm years back, due to the prevalence of them. Huge but elusive, and very adaptable, it was a shorter list to name where they hadn’t been spotted.
She snapped a picture as she ducked a swing. Her heart was going so hard and fast she was shocked it hadn’t burned out.
They were omnivores, but really relished a good chunk of meat which went to explain their stink. They could sweat like humans, or at least mostly, and the raw, unwashed meat did a number on their body odor. Aisling had said a common theory was that the smell was to drive off predators.
“What predators,” Penny breathed, pressing her back to a tree. She peaked out at the bigfoot wildly swinging at the bushes only a few yards away. “That thing could fight a bear if it felt like it.”
Bigfoot didn’t pick fights with bears, not that she could remember learning. Hikers and hunters would have found bodies if they fought–and lost–against any large predator. Other animals wouldn’t find the smell as offensive either, seeing how they each had their own habits that were less than savory to humans.
Penny leapt out from her hiding spot. She jumped up in the air, screaming and waving her phone’s flashlight around. She held firm as the bigfoot charge, yelling and roaring madly. She jumped at it as it slowed; it abruptly stopped. She grabbed a branch and ran at it, still screaming, and swinging the whippy stick wildly. She lashed the bigfoot across the knee as it stumbled back, swinging again and again until it turned and hurried off with big, lumbering strides.
She collapsed, breathing hard, her legs shaking. She stared at the clump of trees where the bigfoot disappeared, gulped, and started bawling.
---
It was hard to know how long it took for Penny to collect herself and return to the guys. Garrett was visibly annoyed and quickly headed back to the house with Gage and a very distressed Levi. Colton didn’t allow her to talk, just ordered her to get on and took off.
Colton’s mom was scolding Garrett when they arrived; Gage and Levi had already fled the scene. Penny slipped off the back of the ATV and backed away. Colton backed off with her.
“Why’d you run off like that,” Colton asked. “Now we’re in trouble.”
“I was taking pictures—.”
“You scared Levi half to death with that bigfoot act,” Colton said coolly. He crossed his arms and narrowed his eyes at her. “It’s not hard to scare him. Why’d you do it?
“I wasn’t–No, look!” Penny pulled out her phone and went into her images. Her heart sank. The pictures were blurry, unrecognizable unless she really searched for individual features like hands or legs. “No…. Colton, wait, look! Th-that’s a han—.”
“Colton!”
He gave her one more glare before walking off to get his shouting.
Penny felt an ache in her middle. Her eyes welled up, and she took off running. She was long out of Colton’s neighborhood before she stopped to catch her breath. A terrible, sinking feeling rooted her to the cement sidewalk.
There was nowhere for her to go.
With no options, she wandered around until long after the street lights came on before returning to the Sizemore house. Mrs. Sizemore’s car was gone; she most likely was off working a nightshift at the distribution center in the next town. A cold dinner was left on the table.
She climbed into bed. The shadows played across the ceiling. She stared, feeling a heavy pit in her stomach. Her eyes slid closed to stop the pricking in the corners. She thought she heard Aaliyah sob from the next room as she gulped down her own misery.
----------------------------------
The library is based on the old one in Dryden, NY. I never set a town for where Penny is since I'm nit that familiar with WV. Dryden is an offputting town with a decade of dark, grisly murders, so I figured pulling some from there for the town, and half the ATV trails works. The ATV trails and woods are a combo of Dryden and Virgil in NY and Dyersburg in TN. The neighborhood is based on Dyersburg and Smyrna, TN.
I had to put in a bigfoot. Almost every state as bigfoot stories. the WV tales are like the TN ones (both Appalacia based), so if Nellie had run into a bigfoot when in TN, it would be the same variety/subspecies as this guy.
The Castle of the Sunbird, September 2005
Where the Fault Lies, Part II, 2006
Mioko Del Mar, 2007?
Mioko, Sept 2002
Fire & Steel, 2005
