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The two boys knew these woods better than the squirrels scurrying along the maze of branches overhead. As little kids, they used the tall oak trees to play hide and go seek until darkness crept into the game and forced them to quit. When they got older, Bobby’s dad helped the two best friends build their first tree house in the very center of the grassy wilderness. And now, as teenagers, both Bobby and Jed used the forest as a laboratory to explore the growing urges of adolescent rebellion.
It was here that Bobby smoked his first cigarette, drank his first beer, and shot his first raccoon. It was here that Jed first kissed a girl, hid the evidence from his first petty theft, and helped his best friend bury a dead raccoon. On this day, Bobby and Jed were innocently tossing a football back and forth, getting Jed’s arm loose for the upcoming football season. Jed’s accuracy was more refined than Bobby’s hands, causing many passes hit the ground, but blame could rarely be given to Bayberry High School’s star quarterback. Bobby was the kicker, and kickers use their feet for a reason. Not to mention, it was after midnight, and the moonlight didn’t provide much help.
This is where our story begins – in a little town along the coast of Maine called Bayberry Cove. A paradise that had thrived for almost four hundred years because its people were kind and its ambiance was romantically old-fashioned. Bayberry Cove had computers, the internet, cell phones, and every other modern luxury enjoyed by the rest of the world, but its small-town values seemed to keep the unwanted evils of modernity away. Bayberry Cove was a Norman Rockwell painting on crack. A utopia that had been miraculously protected from the virus that seemed to infect the outside world. No one ever seemed to leave Bayberry Cove, and no one new ever seemed to arrive.
But Bayberry Cove was about to be torn apart by a secret that had held the town hostage for far too long. A secret that, when revealed, would change everything. And it all began with the sound of a tree limb snapping in the distance.
“What was that?” asked Jed.
Bobby dropped the football and walked toward the sound. Jed jogged after his friend, but Bobby turned to hush him. “Be quiet,” he insisted.
“What is it?” Jed asked in a hushed tone.
“I don’t know. It’s too dark to see anything.”
Bobby crouched down and looked into the distance, his view obscured by trees and darkness. Jed finally caught up and took a similar position next to his friend. They heard another cracking sound, but this one was different, louder. Then, a piercing, blood-curdling yelp that made Jed’s skin crawl.
Bobby seemed excited. “Come on, let’s go check it out.”
“Are you crazy?” asked Jed. “Something just got its neck snapped in two, and I’m not going to be next.”
“A deer probably stepped in a hole and broke its leg, you paranoid freak. You watch too many horror movies.”
“Dude, we have heard all the same stories in this town. Since we were little kids, it’s all we ever hear about,” said Jed.
“You can’t be serious. They’re stories. Urban legends. We’ve been hangin’ out in these woods since we could walk. In the last fourteen years, don’t you think we would’ve seen the infamous beast that supposedly roams this forest?”
“Well, now we are seeing it,” Jed replied.
Bobby rolled his eyes and emerged from their hiding place.
“What are you doing?” shouted Jed.
“I’m goin’ to go introduce myself to the beast. Want me to put in a good word for ya?”
“Very funny, jerk. I’ll stay here so I can identify the body after the beast is done snacking on you.”
Bobby stepped out from behind the tree and started walking toward the scene of the earlier commotion. Jed also stood, but still hung about twenty feet behind Bobby as he approached the thicket. Bobby was approaching casually – too casually – and before he realized what was happening, something sprung from the mass of shrubbery to his right and tackled him to the ground. Bobby’s arms and legs flailed in panicked protest as he screamed in terror. The creature’s rancid breath was hot on Bobby’s skin, and its razor-like claws dug into the fabric of his denim jeans. As Bobby prepared to be devoured by the urban legend, only the sound of Jed’s hysterical laughter broke the trance and snapped Bobby back to reality.
Bobby opened his eyes and realized the beast of the forest was a harmless squirrel defending his home against an unwelcomed intruder. Jed had fallen to the ground, his stomach aching from the laughter, tears of joy streaming down his face. Bobby jumped to his feet and brushed the squirrel aside, then dove on top of Jed and pinned his arms to the ground. Jed was taller and more muscular, but Bobby had a distinct weight advantage.
“Get off of me!” Jed screamed, but Bobby continued to hold his best friend down, trying unsuccessfully to smash his face into a nearby mud puddle.
Between the intense wrestling match with the squirrel and the finishing move he had placed on Jed, Bobby was drained, eventually rolling off of his friend and collapsing into a pile of soggy maple leaves. Jed sat up and started laughing again, this time covered in dirt and grass. “The stories were pretty scary, but I had no idea the beast would be so terrifying,” Jed joked. “Should I take you to the hospital to get that scratch looked at? They may need to amputate!”
Bobby was not amused, but instead of fighting back, he simply stuck out his right hand and extended his middle finger. Jed laughed even louder as the forest seemed to chuckle with him. After Bobby caught his breath and shook off the embarrassment, he and Jed stood and started their walk for home. As they turned the corner, they finally found the source of the yelp from earlier.
There, behind a thicket of bayberry bushes, a giant elk lay dead; its neck snapped like a twig; its eyes black and empty. Bobby avoided stepping in the pool of blood that encircled the carcass, but moved in closer for a better look. “No squirrel did this,” he said.
“No, no squirrel did this,” Jed confirmed, gagging from the stench of death creeping up his nostrils.
