The name's Paul. I turn wrenches for a living. Four wheelers, tractors, small engines.
You name it, I work on it. I have a little shop out back at my place, just a tin roof
and a wood stove, but it works just fine for me. I've lived my whole life in the same patch
of hills here in Kentucky. And around here, you're not famous unless you want a bunch of blue
ribbons for your pie at the fair. Or you own a tow truck. Well, shoot, I don't have either.
So I'm not famous and nobody's looking my way. Now before I get down into the weeds with this story,
I'm going to tell you I've changed some names of the people, and I did change the name of exactly
where this happened. I'm calling it Harlan Hollow. That's not the real name, but it sure could be.
Sounds exactly like some of the Hollow's near here. That Thursday in late October,
I was working late at my buddy Tim's barn. He'd gotten behind on an ATV rebuild,
and dear season was just three blinks away on the calendar. We stood around a lot more that day
than we did turning bolts. We kept coffee on a parts train nearby. And there was a ballgame playing
on a dusty little radio over on a workbench. The kind that makes whatever it's playing sound like
it was ran through a tin can. It's the kind of night that happens a lot to me. I'll tinker with this
and tighten that, swap an old something for a new something, skip my lunch, do a few more things,
and next thing I know, the clock reads 8.42 pm, and I have no idea how that happened.
I felt like I just pulled up a minute ago. As I was packing up, Tim said,
"You heading home the long way?" I said, "Nah, quick way." Of course, that meant Harlan Hollow.
Now folks that are not from around here will confuse a Hollow and a Holler. A Holler is an area
where people live. I'm not going to go deep in that, but it's where people live. A Hollow is a road.
It's a really old road usually, and it was made way back when.
Has trees go up tight to both sides, making it feel like a tunnel. And Harlan is just that.
Its narrow is all get out. There are no painted lines, no reflectors, and haven't helped you when it
rains, because you can't see where the road is. Now I have driven that road hundreds of times in my
life, day and night, in all kinds of weather, with everything from a two and a half tonne load of
fence posts on my F450 flatbed, to just me and my old dog riding shotgun with me, with an empty
bed on my F250 daily truck. That road is very familiar to me. I know all the curves. I know winter
break, and when I can hit the pedal. That evening I pulled out of tims in my truck,
fresh coffee from tims wife's washing around in one of those to go, coffee cup she gave me.
The temperature outside had dropped drastically with the sun, making every breath a faint white puff
when I talked. Now I don't bother with the radio most times when I'm driving. All I get down in those
hills is some static or some preacher on fire about something or the other. Every now and then the
local high school will broadcast a game. But that's about it. I really don't mind. I like the quiet
when I'm driving at night. The first mile in, the ditch water on the side of the road, look black
as coal tar. Usually I can spot a few porch lights up on the ridge backs, but not that night.
Seemed every house was already asleep, lights out everywhere. Nothing to it, just something I remember
that's all. Now right about the fork by the rusted mailbox with the bullet hole, which I swear
I think has been there since I was a little kid. Something stepped across the road up ahead,
just inside where my high beams reached. Then it went out again. One, two, three strides gone.
I don't spook easy, and I'm not the dramatic kind, but it was tall and broad and upright.
I've seen bears stand up. I know their shape. This was not that shape. Nothing like it.
I laid off the pedal and let the truck slow to a crawl. Then to a dead stop.
"What was that?" I wondered. I scanned both shoulders of the road for movement.
There was nothing but a wall of dark timber on both sides. I told myself it was a trick of the
lighter, maybe some big fella cutting across to go put up a deer stand. There was nothing there,
so I took my foot off the brake and slowly put it back on the pedal.
I eased forward, and another half mile I got the feeling that somebody was staring holes at me
from somewhere. I cracked both windows and inch to let the cold come in. I figured I
needed some air to wake me up a little more. That's when I smelled it. It was wet carpet and dog.
Specifically, I was reminded of when my first wife used a carpet cleaner. Then left the dirty
water in it for a month. Yes, we had dogs. And when we finally emptied out that carpet cleaner,
my goodness, that smell was gag-inducing. Now that smell is what rode with me for a few seconds.
Then it got carried away on the wind through the open window. I figured I must have passed some kind
of roadkill. It didn't smell like roadkill, but it really didn't smell like anything else I knew,
except wet dog carpet water. Then I heard a small neat tink. It was like a pebble hitting metal.
Then came a few more. What in the world, I thought? I was thinking I had picked up gravel in my
tread from Tim's gravel driveway, but that didn't seem right. It was hitting somewhere on the front
and the side. That's not where a tread would throw gravel. I was only doing about 20 to 25 because
there's some wicked curves on that old road. There's no use in accelerating. You'll be breaking again
within 20 seconds after you've accelerated. Then something hit the passenger door hard.
The whole cab shuddered. This wasn't like a branch that scraped the doors I went by it. I know that
shivery sound. This was a huge thud. You don't mistake a scrape for a thud. Every instinct I had
told me to hurry and go, and I listened. I hit the pedal as much as I dared through that area,
enough that I felt the rear kick. Then Lord helped me. I heard footfalls in the ditch,
keeping pace with the truck. It wasn't an animal that was galloping along. This wasn't four feet I
was hearing just two. I looked right, half expecting to scold my own nerves for being so stupid,
but there in the edge of the headlights I caught something dark moving. It was there for just a second,
then it melted over into the trees. Just then the road opened into one of the straight pieces
and the headlights painted the shoulders of the road just right. That's when I really saw it.
Have you ever seen something your brain tries to split into pieces that it understands?
But none of the pieces fit. This was tall as a doorway and wider. Easy three feet across the chest.
The hair was dark brown with Auburn glints when the light broke through. This wasn't fur like a bear.
This was hair, longer on the arms and the shoulders and shorter across a chest that showed some gray
black skin underneath and patches as it moved. The head was not a cone like I've heard some say.
It was rounded up top with a heavy brow ridge and there were cheekbones with jaws below them
that looked like they'd been made for crushing. The mouth was parted, the lips darker than the skin,
and teeth they were square and way too big. The eyes caught my lights showing dull copper.
They weren't the bright, dear white of eye shine and they were locked on to me.
No, I couldn't believe what I was seeing, but I couldn't deny it.
And no, I couldn't accelerate much more because of the road getting into the curves.
Last thing I wanted was to go off the road and flip, knowing that thing would be right there.
It ran beside me for a stretch. Long, easy strides like running was no work for it at all.
The arm swing put those hands low enough. I swear it could have dragged knuckles if it wanted to.
And the hand, it was a hand, not a paw. I caught clear glimpses as the arms arct wide while it ran.
I looked from the road to it in a constant half-second cycle. I saw it,
but I still couldn't believe it. Right there was a wood booger, a big foot running along my truck.
And it was keeping speed with me. Then it veered off the shoulder and cut through
saplings without breaking stride. It was hidden in the darkness in less than two seconds.
And I was strangely relieved. Okay, Mr. Bigfoot took a look at me and my truck.
Now he's heading home just like I am because it's late and we neither one have had our denners.
I took the first breath I'd had in probably 30 seconds and I realized my hands tingled from gripping
the wheel so tightly. Harlan Hollow has a place that folks call Dead Man's Curve. Big surprise.
It drops fast and there's a creek right on the right and there's a dirt bank on the left with
the roots that stick out from the dirt like they're coming to grab you. I figured I'd be through that
area and gone before the wood booger remembered I was on the road. I had no choice, though, to slow down.
I had that hairpin coming up. If I didn't slow down, I was pretty sure my truck would be down
on the creek on its roof as I had seen others over the years. So I slowed down. I came round that
first hairpin bend and there it was standing in the road. It was Dead Center right in the middle of
my high beams breathing steam out into the cold like its lungs were furnaces. I hit the brakes
and locked them up. There was no skitter to them because I wasn't probably going more than 15 or
20 miles an hour but the truck came to a dead stop with the high beams blasting every detail of
that creature into my skull whether I wanted it to or not. It felt like time stopped for a couple of
heartbeats. Then it stepped forward. One slow step then another. Heels digging, toes rolling.
The hands flexed like somebody stretching their fingers before getting ready to throw hands in a fight.
The mouth was squared. The brow dropped and then it roared. This wasn't a Hollywood version and
it was nothing like I'd ever heard. It was loud and it resonated like a hot rod engine being
revved right next to you. I felt it under the seat and up in my chest. This wasn't angry like a
rage roar. This sounded more like it was telling me. It was telling me, "Here, mine, you move." I scrambled
for reverse and hit neutral first by mistake. The engine revved up like I was mocking its roar,
challenging it. It came forward a half step and that was all I needed to break whatever paralysis
had my hands forgetting how to properly work my gear shift. I found reverse stomped on my pedal
and the truck leaped backward up the slope. I was looking back to guide the truck and still trying
to look forward to see what it was doing. Charge wasn't the right word for it, not like it charged me.
It did advance. The hands were out like it was going to grab the corners of the truck front.
For a second, I thought maybe it would, and then it stopped. When I saw it stopped, I stopped
backing up the truck too. I have no earthly idea why, but I did. We both just hung there
with headlight and breath fog between us. Then, just like a man done with a chore,
it turned and walked off the road and it was gone in two steps like some magic trick.
I blinked and got back to work. I backed up the last 20 feet of that curve, then backed up another
30 yards blind right up the straight road. I wanted out of that hollow, pronto. The trees up the
sides of the road were terrifying to me for the first time. Five miles later, I was out of the hollow
and I was on real black top. I was even rolling under real street lights. I found a small safe place
not far from the actual hollow. I felt safe there, and I got out on shaky knees and looked down the
passenger side under one of those street lights. The door had a dent like something really big
to hit it with a lot of force. When I got home and split into my kitchen that night, my wife looked
up from across to it she was working. Her eyes sharp the way they get when I'm late and I haven't
called her. She had a perfect view of my truck's passenger side from where she sat, and yeah, I
pulled up and parked right by the house under the light so she saw it. "Dear?" she asked, seeing the
big dent. "It ran into me," I said. "Didn't you see it?" I kissed her hair as I walked by.
"No, not in time." "You see, I didn't lie," and I was very careful with my answers.
I said, "It ran into me," and I didn't say it was a deer, and I didn't lie because I didn't see it
in time. I slept and sliced as that night jerking awake at small noises,
pops from the wood stove pipe in the living room. The sound of the neighbor's dog and its muffled
woof down the way. All of them kept me awake. In the morning I told myself how it would be all
different and less scary in the daylight. Maybe I should go check it out. So I made coffee strong enough
to stand the spoon up in and took my truck back down to Harlan Hollow. But you know what? The sun
can't fix everything, but I thought it just might fix how spooked I had been the night before.
Everything seemed just like it should. Maple leaves made a confetti of rust and gold all along the
ditches. Squirrels yelled at me as I passed, like I owed them some money. And for a while it all seemed
all right. Dead man's curves still had that wicked hairpin. I parked right where I had stopped the
night before. I cut the engine. It didn't feel like the night before, but I still checked the trees
every few seconds. The shoulder there was heavily compacted dirt. Tracks aren't easy to see on hard
dirt. But there it was. One print with a clean look. Heel and toe. Five toes plain. The heel had flattened
a few stones down into the hard dirt. I measured with what I had, my hand. My palm is a bit under five
inches from the heel to the base of my middle finger. I counted how many hands I thithed against it.
So roughly about 15 inches give or take, and it was about six wide. The depth in the hard dirt
told me another unsettling story. It told me there's no way that some human faked it last night to scare me.
People, at least around there, don't weigh 800 pounds or more. Now up the bank piece, half in the mud,
they're lay a hand print. I put my palm next to it, and I felt like a tiny neck compared to what
this creature is. The fingers were longer. The pad heavier. The thumb set far lower on the hand.
It read like a clear blueprint for powerful hands. To the left, a sapling the size of my wrist
showed a twist. I don't mean it was snapped with a clean break, but it had been run, fibers opening
like a rope end. I'd seen enough. I left the area and I didn't look back. I didn't talk about it for a
real long spell, not because I was shy about it, but because I was still mulling it over for myself.
As October went on, the nights got longer, and they were tinged with wood smoke all around the valley,
same as every autumn. One night I woke up feeling panicked. Didn't know why for a second. Then I heard it.
Somewhere out in the hills away from my house, I heard that same roar that I had heard out on the
road that night. It was smaller sounding, but I knew that's what it was, even from that distance.
I knew that roar was as big as it ever was. That morning I sat at the kitchen table.
I started making a list. Replace the old motion lights for newer ones with a wider, brighter light
spread. Put bear spray in my truck. There were all kinds of things on the list of that nature.
None of it was really going to help me do anything, but feel better about it. I felt like I was
at least doing something, and I did feel a little better, well for a little while. And it's funny,
how there's people in these parts that just have a way of knowing things, even things you've never
told a soul. Take Jim. Jim down at the gas station near the river is just like that. I stopped in for gas
and some coffee one morning. And Jim started in right on me the second I walked to the counter.
No one else was in there at the time. There was no "how you doing?" Or "morning, Paul?"
There was none of that. Jim came right to it and asked me if I was still running up Harlan Hollow
after dark. He asked me with a suspicious and a cautious tone.
I non-shallotly said sometimes. Jim looked at me, and with a voice not much louder than a whisper,
he told me that the county had to tow a deputy's unit out from the creek bank down there just the week
before. He knew the deputy, he said. Well, of course he did. Jim knew everybody in the county.
Well, he said. The deputy told him he hit black ice. But see, nobody had any black ice conditions
anywhere in the county that night. Nobody else saw any anywhere. Jim told him the tow guy,
because, well, Jim knew him too, of course. The tow guy told him he said the cruiser had a dent on it
like a big bull had rammed it. The deputy and the tow guy both told him that the sheriff
told them to stay quiet about it. I told Jim I was mostly using the ridge road now. I didn't like all
those curves real early in the morning or late at night. He waited two or three seconds, just looking at
me. Then he nodded, and then he took my money. After that night on the Hollow Road, I cleaned up the
dent in my passenger door the best that I could. I wanted to get the dent popped out, but the guy told
me it was just too far gone, too creased. It wasn't going to flex back out. All right, well, so be it.
I let it go as much as I could. I noticed I didn't make the decision, but it seemed that I always parked
where I didn't have to see the passenger side of my truck when I walked back to it.
After a while, life mostly went back to normal. But my driving changed. I watched my mirrors more.
I rolled my windows up at night even when I preferred the cold on my face. I went far out of my way.
I would take the long way if I had to, but I stayed off a lot of the smaller roads after dark.
But you know what happens with time, don't you? You lose the vigilance that you'd been keeping.
You get a little too comfortable all over again. And one night you get a little short on time,
and you decide to go ahead and take that short road that you said you would never take again.
And that was my mistake in early December. I thought I was good. I thought I was past that. I thought I
was all better. Plus it was daylight. And I knew I had to be at one of my kids' choral shows at school
that night, around 6 p.m. So I was pressed on time. So I took Harlan Hollow at four in the afternoon
to deliver a chainsaw back to the fellow who lived near the creek. The sun was good. Late light
was still bright. I dropped the chainsaw, got my money, then headed back out. I wanted out of the
hollow before darkness, and that came pretty early in December. Right before Dead Man's Curve,
there was a messy line across the road. I was confused. It hadn't been there on the way in,
which was maybe 15 or 20 minutes before. I slowed down, and my gut began to twist.
It was clearly blood and other gore from a fresh kill that had been dragged across the road.
I know exactly what a kill pull looks like. Now there wasn't a hunter in the county that would have
dragged a kill over a hard road like that. I only knew of one, though, that might. A wood booger.
I suddenly stopped thinking I was better. A week after that, Tim told me that he came through
round dusk, and there was a dark shape that ran the creek beside his truck for a hundred yards,
keep him pace with him. He said he thought about stopping to see what it was after it had ran off.
But then he remembered the old stories, and he said he liked living.
We had a cold snap that winter that blew frigid air in for weeks. That's when you really can hear
everything. You know, sound carries a lot in silent winter air. On one of those nights,
sometime near Christmas, I was watching television with my wife. Far away, I heard that roaring sound.
I think my hair stood up on my arms. Even my wife looked up from her cross stitch.
"What was that?" she asked. I looked at her, and all I could say was
something went up in the hills I reckon. Again, I made sure I didn't lie.
That was four years back now, and that's the last I've heard from that creature.
I don't know if it's moved on or not, but Jim tells me a story every once in a blue moon
that could maybe be that wood boogers doings. I listen, I pay attention,
but I don't take Harlan Hollow at night anymore.
In the daylight, I will do it sometimes because, well, I tell myself it's a nocturnal creature.
I tell myself all sorts of other things because Harlan Hollow saves me a lot of time.
But if I'm alone in the light's fading, you know I go the long way to wherever I'm heading.