El Cucuy

The growling came out of nowhere and was much closer than the campers felt comfortable with.

The campers, two men and two women, had finished putting their tents up just as the sun set behind the mountains. They'd found a backwoods campsite near a clearing in the thick pine trees, and figured it would be a perfect staging point for a couple of days of hiking.

Though they weren't seasoned campers, they'd managed to get the tents up and were about to start a fire when one of them thought they heard a branch break.

"Come on, Kelly, all the bears are still hibernating," David, the most experienced of the group of friends, said with a scoff. "You're just being paranoid."

Kelly was about to berate him when they all heard the growl. "Then what's that?" she hissed at him.

David held up a finger, which would have annoyed Kelly further if she wasn't currently worried for her life. They all listened in silence for a moment, but didn't hear anything else.

Kelly finally let out the breath she was holding and said, "I'm getting in the tent now. You have fun making the fire." Her friend, Joyce, agreed with her, and the two of them climbed in, leaving the guys to the fire.

A few minutes later, the two women heard the growl again, and it was even closer this time. They paused their chatting and froze in place.

"You don't think that was David, teasing you?" Joyce asked.

Kelly quickly shook her head. "That definitely wasn't David."

A moment later, more twigs began to break, this time a lot more than one, and they heard another growl, longer and angrier sounding than it had been before. Then large branches began to break, just outside the campsite, and Kelly let out a scream. Suddenly, the door of the tent flew open, causing both women to scream this time.

"Come on!" David shouted, sounding as frightened as they were. "We gotta get out of here!"

He grabbed Kelly's hand, yanking her out of the tent, and Joyce was hot on their heels. The four friends tore through the camp, not bothering to grab any of their belongings, and ran into the woods.

It had been a crisp spring morning in the Carson National Forest of northeast New Mexico. The sky was clear, though, and the sun was quickly starting to warm the trees and bright green meadows. Summer was coming early this year, as it so often did these days.

With the warming, the quiet of the cool morning was replaced by the sounds of wildlife going about their routines. Song birds chirped as they hopped from tree branch to tree branch, while hawks screeched as they soared high on the wind.

From the tall pines emerged a small figure with a pair of binoculars strapped around his neck. The figure moved carefully and deliberately, as if trying to disturb as little as possible in the meadow.

After a moment, he stopped and lifted the binoculars to his eyes. He watched, enthralled, as one of the hawks glided effortlessly on an updraft. Then he let the binoculars dangle from his neck again, slipped a small notebook from his shirt pocket, and quickly scribbled some notes.

Parker Boucher's hands were tanned and weathered from years of working in the dry and often unforgiving New Mexico climate, but they still moved delicately across the page as he wrote.

After a moment, he looked up, dark, inquisitive eyes scanning the big, blue sky for the hawk. When he didn't find it, he went back to his notebook and continued describing the bird as best he could. Then, he slipped the notebook back into his pocket and continued his trek through the meadow.

The grass was already knee-deep, so Parker was careful to watch for rattlesnakes that might be doing some morning hunting. Soon enough, wild horses or a local rancher's cattle would be grazing the meadow to keep the grass under control.

As he walked, he made a mental note of other bird species and bugs already hatching out in the warmer air. There were signs of other, larger, animals too; trails through the grass made by deer and antelope. He kept his eyes open for signs of their predators, but the area was calm and peaceful.

After crossing the meadow, Parker made his way through the trees to a primitive trail in the forest. He followed it until it widened into a mostly passable road. At the head of the road, a lone truck sat, and Parker climbed into the driver's seat.

He slipped the notebook back out of his pocket and pulled a small cooler across the seat. Though he was hungry, he hesitated, looking out his windshield at the beautiful day. After a moment, he took the cooler and got back out of the truck.

At a nearby picnic table, he set his lunchbox down and took off his hat. It was wide-brimmed with the official Forest Service logo on the front.

Parker swept off a section of the table before setting his hat down. He was very proud of his hat, keeping it clean and well-maintained despite not actually being required to wear it. Though Parker worked for the Forest Service, he wasn't a Ranger and didn't wear the rest of the uniform.

Parker was a wildlife ecologist and tracked the health and well-being of the plants and animals in the forest. It was a career he loved and was good at. There was a peace in the forest he'd never found around buildings or other people.

After setting his hat on the table, he took a sandwich from his cooler along with a small bag of homemade trail mix. Then he pulled the two pieces of bread from his peanut butter sandwich apart and dumped a handful of trail mix between them. He put the sandwich back together with a smile.

As he took the first crunchy bite, his radio came alive with static, almost causing him to choke. He frowned and tried to ignore the sound, but after a moment, the static was replaced by a voice.

"Parker!" the male voice said playfully. "Put down that trail mix sandwich and answer your radio."

Parker chuckled through his mouthful and then swallowed before grabbing the radio on his belt and answering, "What is it, Zack?" He tried to make his voice sound as unenthusiastic as possible.

"Am I interrupting your lunch?" Zack asked.

"Zack..."

"Okay, okay, but listen. You're not gonna believe this crazy story."

Parker was well aware of some of the crazy things people got up to in the woods, and he knew that Zack couldn't tell a short story, so he went ahead and continued with his lunch while he listened.

After a while, Zack stopped and said, "Are you listening?"

"Mmhmm," Parker answered through a mouthful of peanut butter and trail mix.

"So, anyway, these campers said that they were attacked in the middle of the night, said something big was growling and stomping around their tents."

"Sounds like a bear," Parker pointed out.

"Yeah, that's what I said," Zack agreed. "But this dude insisted it wasn't a bear. He said it sounded way too big, and moved funny."

"Moved funny?"

"He said it was like the thing was everywhere, all at once, you know?"

They were both quiet for a moment, and then Zack said, "Anyway, they were so scared, they ran all the way back to the station in the dark. They were still hyped up when they got here."

Parker thought for a moment. "You think maybe they took something? You know, some kind of drug?"

Zack laughed over the radio. "Yeah, that's my bet."

Parker chuckled and went back to his lunch. When he was finished, he glanced out at the now warm forest. Dotted among the thick pines and spruce were a few deciduous trees. The branches had budded out early, and now young, bright green leaves seemed to glow in the sunshine. He sat for a few more minutes, then packed up his trash and headed back to his truck.

This time, when he got back to work, he took a small suitcase with him. It was his field kit, complete with all manner of vials, tubes, and chemical agents. These would allow him to take soil and water samples and immediately test them for things like acidity, contaminants, and pollution.

Equipped with his binoculars, notebook, and field kit, Parker hiked back into the one and a half million acres of the Carson National Forest.

He walked for about a mile past the picnic area and came to a patch of trees whose health appeared to be struggling. Bark beetles, an insect that fed on the soft, inner bark of conifers, had become a plague throughout the southwest.

Parker set his kit down, and then stripped away a small bit of outer bark from one of the affected trees. He should have found tell-tale holes or rot underneath, or even some of the beetles themselves, but there was no evidence of them.

He frowned and looked the tree over. The needles were browning, and the trunk looked darker than it should. It was almost as if the tree had gotten too hot or been burned by fire, but the temperatures were still plenty cool, and there were no signs of a fire.

As he looked around, though, he did notice something else. Something was peeking up out of the undergrowth and pine needles. He rubbed his chin, and then knelt down to see what he had found. He brushed the pine needles away and slowly pulled a piece of nylon out of the dirt. The edges were frayed, as if it had been ripped, but it looked new and unweathered by time in the wilderness.

Parker squinted through the trees around him and spotted something to the west. He trekked ahead and noticed that the damaged trees followed the same path. Before long, he found himself in a small clearing, just big enough to set up a couple of tents. What he saw made him stop in his tracks.

There were two tents in the clearing, and one of them matched the color of the piece of nylon he'd dug up. The entire site was in disarray, though. There was a small, overturned grill, a flattened camp chair, and the tents looked like someone had struggled to quickly get out of them.

Parker knelt at one of the tents and compared it to the scrap of material in his hand. Near the zippered door, a piece of the tent had been ripped away, and it perfectly matched the piece Parker found in the woods.

He slipped his radio from his belt and called in to the ranger station. "Zack? I think I just found your campsite."