The Beast of Bone Mountain
By: Keith Adam Luethke
March 1 st
It was late February when the beast from the mountain slaughtered my wife and only son. Spring had yet to come, the mornings were bitter cold, the trees sleeping their dead slumber, and the frogs croaked ceaselessly down by the creek bank and along the muddy, sleepy hollows of Mascot, Tennessee. Our life had been a sedated and mundane affair, and I took all of the trivial times of the past for granted.
My wife’s name was, Linda, and my son’s was Adam. We’d only been married for a year, but had been together for four. We had lived in a secluded cabin resting on ten acres of backwoods nestled between a swamp and ridgeline prior to their murder. We had bought the land first, unable to purchase a house, and slowly saved up the money to put a manufactured home on the site which I then converted into a cabin. I spent tireless days in the summer sun cutting wood, measuring, nailing, and screwing everything together; it was hard work, but eventually we moved out of her parent’s basement and into our new home. Unknown to us at the time, we were not alone. Someone, or should I say something was lurking in the forest, stalking, hiding, blending in like a twilight shadow, and staying just out of reach. We felt watched, observed, and unsafe.
My wife kept a small garden. In early March she would turn the soil and plan what crops she wanted to watch grow for the season, but that year she didn’t want a garden. She was afraid of the lurking shadow in the woods and stayed shut in the cabin with our son much of the time.
I tried to buy her a gun but she wanted no part of it; firearms just weren’t for her. I bought a large serrated hunting knife for her instead; it was made of surgical steel, sharp as hell, and with a fine bone handle. She liked the knife and kept it close to her under the pillow, but in the end it did her no good.
I left early one Saturday morning to go to work at a scrap metal yard like I always did. I kissed her goodbye, watched my son sleeping for a minute and left.
I was only twenty minutes into my hour long drive to work when my wife called. She told me she’d heard a loud bang at the front door, like somebody trying to get inside.
I told her that it was probably just a plank of wood falling from the pile that I’d stacked on the porch the day before. She insisted that nothing had fallen and that someone was there. She told me she was turning on the porch light and then her phone cut off. I called her back over and over again but she never answered. I considered calling the police but decided to just drive back home and check on her.
I called my boss and told him that I’d be late. He wasn’t happy but I promised it wouldn’t take long.
When I arrived, the front door was broken apart, smashed inward by an unfathomable force. Pieces of wood and glass were everywhere I looked.
I ran inside, screaming for Linda and Adam. The cabin was in chaos; our living room suffered the worst of the attack: large claw marks adorned the walls, the couch was torn in half, and the pictures on the mantle were shredded.
I stepped over broken toys and a family portrait lying on the floor like worthless trash, and made my way into the bedroom. There I discovered our master door torn off the hinges and wet pools of blood seeped into the carpet. My family was nowhere to be found.
My heart sank as I frantically shouted their names again and looked for them. I discovered the kitchen window broken and the hunting knife I’d given Linda for protection embedded in a cupboard.
I
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