READERS TALES
Cryptozoology?
(NOTE:) The
following tale occurred in October, 1967.)
I grew up in a rural area
near Palm Springs, California, in a small housing tract that sat at the base
of the San Jacinto mountains. There were few homes in the tract, and the
area was pretty much undeveloped, but what we did have in abundance was the
surrounding desert wild life.
I
spent many hours as a child exploring the desert because I loved it, but I
also spent a lot of time outdoors because my family didn't have a
television. The area was so remote that cable TV was not available to us.
Cable TV notwithstanding,
my father could have erected an antenna on the roof, but both my parents
were eccentric artists who spent all their time working in the studio. They
could have cared less about TV. But I had my peers at school to keep up
with, peers who spent a good deal of their recess time discussing their
favorite television shows. Suffice it to say, I was outside the loop. And to
make matters worse, I was something of an egg-head, and a voracious reader.
In short, I was a nerd, an outsider, a weirdo.
And so begins my strange
story...
My house was situated at
the foot of an alluvial fan that spread out from the base of the San
Jacintos and gave rise to a vast, four-mile stretch of primeval desert.
The crotch of the mountain from which this fan unfolded hosted a gushing,
pristine spring that in turn fed a swatch of lush plant life, something that
was a rarity in the parts.
This
rare and lovely place was aptly dubbed 'the Springs' by the locals; but
those few souls who ventured the four miles by foot it took to get there so
that they might experience the beauty of
the Springs up-close-and-personal, always returned from the place with the
same story: They felt as though they were being watched the entire time they
were there.
I even heard from one
group of intrepid teenagers who had hiked up there one time that something
had chased them out, but when they were asked what it was that had chased
them, they couldn't say. All they knew was that it was big, mean, and
had made a lot of noise in the underbrush as it charged them.
And so the stories went for
years about the Springs: You had only to go up there once to know you'd
never go up there again.
Now, I loved taking long
walks by myself when I was a kid--still do--and because I was a nerd, a
weirdo, an outsider, it occurred to me that I should explore this magical
place on my own, never mind all the silly stories I had heard from people
who really had no appreciation for the earth and her wild places. And
because I had looked longingly at the Springs for years from the limitations
of my bedroom window, dreaming of its beauty and wondering what it was like
up there, I resolved one autumn day in 1967, at the tender age of
fifteen, to hike up there to see for myself.
It was a warm day, the hike
up was a steep one, and I hadn't taken any food or water with me. But half
way up I did find a trickle of water that flowed down from the Springs in a
narrow track of rocks and sand.
It was the sweetest and
coldest water I had ever tasted.
Two hours later I finally
arrived at my verdant destination, and I found it was every bit as lovely as
I had imagined it would be; leafy trees draped with green vines, plant life
so thick the ground couldn't be seen, and stair-stepping pools of
cold water caught between giant bed-like boulders. I took a long drink from
one of the pools, and then settled down on a boulder to catch my breath. It
was then that I first noticed the overwhelming silence of the place.
Now I realize the absence
of city noise can be defined as silence by those who live in the city. But
to those who live in the country, it is the absence of the sounds of nature
that defines silence, and this was silence in the
strictest definition of the word: Except for the noise of trickling water,
there were no birds singing, no frogs croaking, no crickets chirping; even
the earth failed to sigh in this lonely place. All I heard was the sound of
my own breathing. It was then that I realized this was indeed a strange
place, and that something was indeed watching me, something that
was entirely inimical to human life, something completely hostile to my
presence there.
Whatever this thing was, I
knew it wanted me to leave post-haste. And I did just that. After a grueling
two hour hike up to the Springs in the heat, I had stayed there but a mere
five minutes before running out of the place so fast I didn't take time to
look around to see if there was anything following me.
I got home a few hours
later, looked back at the Springs from where I stood in the driveway, and
wondered why a beautiful place like that--a place devoid of humans--could be
so ominous in spirit.
But this isn't the end of
my story.
One night two weeks later,
I took a walk by myself on the neighborhood road hemming that
particular stretch of the alluvial desert. It was a dark, moonless night,
and I didn't have a flashlight. My only light was what spilled over from the
streetlamps that sparsely dotted the desert-side of the road.
I was approaching one of
those lamp-posts fifty yards up ahead when I saw a very large dog sitting
directly beneath the lamp in a pool of light.
I am a dog lover, so the
presence of this very large canine didn't alarm me (though at the time it
never occurred to me that a human might be attached to this dog, and was at
that very moment lurking somewhere out of my range of sight! Luckily, that
was not the case...) I simply kept walking in the animal's direction, though
I hugged the opposite side of the street.
It was when I was twenty
feet away from the beast that I realized it was not a dog at all, though
what species of animal it was I couldn't tell. What I could tell
was that it had the reddest eyes I'd ever seen, eyes that unflinchingly
stared at and burned right through me. And I recognized intelligence in
those burning red eyes, an intelligence that far exceeded the simple smarts
of feral cunning.
I resolved to keep on
walking, to not break my stride, to not show any fear as I approached the
animal. As I closed the gap between us, our eyes locked, and I knew that my
instincts were on-the-money; if I were to have faltered in my stride, if I
were to have felt or exhibited fear in the slightest degree, if I had
wavered at all and run in the opposite direction, the beast would have
attacked me.
As I walked on,
still hugging the opposite side of the road, I kept my sight fixed on the
animal; and then as I passed directly in front of it, I nodded my head as
though in greeting, letting it know that I recognized it. I even smiled at
the animal. It maintained its stony watch of me, and thus we studied each
other as I walked by.
It
was a bear-like creature with a bear-like snout; sharp, snub ears that
sprung up on the side of the head rather than the top; short dark fur that
was not bear-like, and a muscled, massive body with long fore-legs. It sat
on its haunches in the pool of light; not outside the pool of light, mind
you, but in the very center where I was sure to see it. I would guess that
the thing might have stood as tall as a great dane, had it stood. But
thankfully, it hadn't.
I had two short blocks yet
to walk to my house, but I never altered my pace. After nodding my head at
the beast in passing, I turned my attention back to the road, and told
myself to remain confident and calm. I must control my emotions or die, I
told myself. Of this I was certain.
As I headed up the
home-stretch, I felt the creature's sighted-bead on my back. Nevertheless, I
maintained a steady, confident stride. It was when I reached the foot of
the driveway that I bolted for the front door, opened it, ran inside, and
then slammed and locked it behind me.
My mother looked up from
where she was sitting on the couch and asked me, "What are you doing?"
I guess I had slammed the
door a bit too hard.
"I got the heebie-jeebies
out there," was all I said to her; then I went to my bedroom and looked out
the window.
There was nothing under the
lamp down the street, nothing in the light that pooled beneath it. But I
know what I saw. To this day I refer to the animal as a were-bear, for lack
of a better name, but from where this bear came I cannot say.
I never took another
night-time stroll in the old neighborhood after my encounter with that
strange creature.
I believe 'the
Springs' was, and still is, a portal to some other place, and maybe this
creature was its guardian. I've never been back there. I moved away in
1970, and though the surrounding desert is now developed, 'the Springs'
remains untouched and remote. No homes or buildings burgeon the borders
there.
-Calli.
