The Cabin at the End of Herrick Road. Derek Wachter
sounds of the creatures were getting louder. They continued to bang at the sides and now the undercarriage of the trailer. The creatures screamed and growled as they worked on destroying the outside of the trailer. Craig looked toward the back of the trailer, by the window where the bed was. Craig watched as a large hairy arm with a balled-up fist broke through the window glass.
“Please send help!” said Craig in the phone.
“Sir, remain calm. We’ve found your location using the GPS function in your phone. Stay on the phone with me. There are sheriffs on their way to your location right now. They are coming from just outside Port Angeles, so it will be a bit before they get there. Can you hide somewhere in your trailer until the deputies can get to your location?”
“There is nowhere to hide! They already know I’m here! Get the hell out of here! Leave me alone goddamn it!”
The creatures were more vocal and more audible than ever before now, growling, squawking back and forth with one another, and screaming. The screaming was horrendous. The creatures began to tear parts of the trailer walls apart.
“Go away! Leave me alone! Get out of here!” Craig continued to yell at the creatures.
“Sir, you need to do your best to find a safe place to go in your trailer. Somewhere you can hide in your trailer. Sheriff deputies are on their way. They’re trying to get there as fast as they can.”
Over the phone the operator could hear the sounds of metal being torn apart, along with the sounds of breaking glass. The operator continued to hear the creatures’ sounds, although she didn’t know what to make of it. The operator then heard the sounds of Craig screaming through the phone, yelling at the creatures.
“They’re almost through the trailer wall,” said Craig as he dropped the phone on the ground and took his bat into both hands and started swinging at the creatures. From the other end of the phone, the operator could hear the sounds of bone breaking, a man screaming, and then silence.
“Sir,” said the operator. There was nothing but silence for a few seconds and then there was another sound the operator had never heard in her life. It was a deep, guttural growl that came through the receiver of the phone—maybe a foot or two away from the receiver of the phone that the operator would never forget for the rest of her life. The growling was followed by a loud audible scream and then a crunching sound from the phone being crushed.
*****
About half an hour later, Clallam County Sheriff Deputies responded to the small town of Elwha, Washington. Three trucks in total drove through the main street of Herrick Road until the road ended. They found the small dirt road where they believed Craig must have taken down to get to the bank of the river. They noticed a road sign that said Wapiti Way. Deputies took the road down toward the river that did eventually turn into a dirt road that led all the way down to the river. Here the deputies came to a clearing by the riverbank and found the torn apart remains of what was left of Craig’s trailer. Equipment and personal effects were scattered all across the campsite. One deputy stepped out of his truck and walked up to the trailer that was pushed over and torn apart. There he found blood and tattered human remains of what he thought could have been the caller to 911—part of a human arm and a hand. Deputies looked around the trailer and found multiple large footprints in the mud and in the ground around the trailer, along with pieces of hair that were left behind in the torn metal walls of the trailer. The other two deputies joined the first in viewing the area. The first deputy reported in.
“319 to dispatch,” said Deputy Fox.
“Dispatch to 319, go ahead,” replied the dispatch operator.
“319 observes the campsite of the location or origin of the 911 call. Observed a camper trailer has been pushed over. Upon observation of the trailer it does appear that there are some human remains from the trailer, as well as large human like footprints outside the trailer.”
“Dispatch to 319, clean up the campsite, whatever human remains that are there as well. Write this up as a missing person investigation and report back no signs of human life.”
“319 to dispatch, that doesn’t seem like the right thing to do. Should we call Detective Cameron to investigate?”
“Dispatch to 319, these were the orders of Sheriff Mitchell. He’s on his way out to the location as well and said you would say that. Sheriff Mitchell wanted me to ask you when you did if you wanted chaos and a pandemic of media to report that a group of unknown creatures killed a man. Elwha is already a small enough town, and we want to keep it that way.”
“319 to dispatch, but to completely ignore a human life?”
“Dispatch to 319, the man shouldn’t have been out there anyway.”
“319 to dispatch, yes, sir. 319 and 827 and 828 will clean up the site, dispose of human remains in the Elwha River. What of the trailer, dispatch?”
“Dispatch to 319, leave the trailer. It won’t be the first trailer abandoned by the edge of a river. Over.”
“319 to dispatch, will follow through with orders. Over.”
A fourth white sheriff’s truck pulled into the opening by the river. A rustic, older sheriff stepped out of the car. Sergeant Mitchell had seen his fair share of action in the field during his tenure as sheriff of Clallam County for the past thirty-two years. His beard hung down his chin, touching the Kevlar chest protector he wore under his light tan-colored uniform. His belly hung over the front of his belt as if he enjoyed a beer each night for those past thirty-two years too.
“You boys clean this fucking mess up. No traces,” said Sheriff Mitchell.
“But, sir, this doesn’t seem right. There was obviously a human life lost here,” replied Deputy Fox.
“Do you see a fucking body?”
“No, sir. But there’s a human arm and a human hand inside the trailer. Looks as if they were appendages violently ripped off the caller’s body too.”
“Forget that shit. You boys didn’t see shit out here. Clean the damn mess up, and like I said, no traces of anything human. Last thing I want around this goddamn town is a group of crazed asshole hunters, claiming themselves to be fucking Sasquatch scientists, like this fucking fruit loop. The dipshit shouldn’t even have been up here in the first place.”
Sergeant Mitchell spat his wad of chewing tobacco onto the ground, reaching into his back pocket, and grabbed his chew cup to get more. Sergeant Mitchell opened the cup, took a dip out, and stuffed a fresh wad of chewing tobacco between his brown-colored teeth and bottom lip.
“Now then. Clean the fucking mess. There was no sign of anything here. The call. The call was a fucking prank. We get them all the time. Drunk dumbass college kids coming up here to drink and smoke jayne, and fuck. Nothing more than that. Move, men.”
“What about the human remains?”
“Toss that shit into the river. No one will know either way. Now move your asses and clean this shit up!”
With that, the deputies followed the orders of their superior and began to clean up the campsite. Sergeant Mitchell got back into his patrol truck, backed up, and drove out of the clearing and back up the dirt trail, leaving the deputies to clean up the scene. The deputies picked up garbage and small pieces of what was left of the trailer. Deputies also cleaned up what they presumed was all that was left of Craig, tossing pieces of his body into the Elwha River as they were ordered to do—a grim demise to the biology professor from South Puget Sound Community College. After the deputies finished cleaning up the campsite, they abandoned the trailer and went back to their squad cars. Here Deputy Fox wrote in his report that upon responding to the scene they observed an old abandoned trailer that appeared to have been left along the riverbank for years, no campsite, and no Craig Irving. Craig was now officially a missing person with the Clallam County Sheriff’s Department—one of many that were reported missing around the Olympic Highway 101, Port Angeles suburbs, and the small town of Elwha, Washington. When he finished his report and reluctantly