Yellow

There was a time when this town wasn’t afraid of much. Before the women and young girls started to go missing. Before the town launched a witch hunt against the wrong person. We were always a quaint and quiet little town, you couldn’t even find us on a map.

Then women right around my age started disappearing. First, it was a young lady from a couple of towns over. Everyone thought the usual things, that she’d run off with a boyfriend, or gotten caught up with drugs. Anything to not have to face a harsher reality. Then it started moving closer to us. The next town lost two young women, and that’s when the FBI moved in. There wasn’t much to connect the women, unfortunately. They didn’t share any features, the only thing that made them similar was that they were all a few years apart in age.

And then the “evil” came to our town, little Voyage in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. And it was as if the “evil” decided it wanted to call our town home as well.

The police put out a curfew long before the FBI decided to roll in, in their pressed suits and their noses turned up at us. They treated anyone and everyone as a suspect. Only I wish they’d have listened to us better. This wasn’t the first time women had started to go missing around these parts. Every seven years at the fall equinox it starts again. You can almost feel it in the air. Everyone calls it the “evil” though no one has seen its face. A long time ago, everyone sorta just agreed that whatever it was, wasn’t human. And of course, you’d have the people saying it was a demonic force sent to make us all repent for our sins. But I guess that just depends on what you believe in.

You see, no one believes me, but when I was young, I saw it. I was about seven years old, and it decided it wanted to take my Mama. I watched as she stood up from our couch, eyes glazed over, and she walked through our house. I followed her through the kitchen and stood on the porch as I watched her walk down the stairs and towards the woods. I tried to wake her up, and damn near made myself sick with crying. But it was no use. She didn’t wake, and that’s when I saw it. It was an ugly thing, hunched over, but still taller than any man I’d ever seen. Yellowed talons that drug against the grass. Where it had skin, it was leathery looking and dry. Parts of it were cracked and weeping thick dark blood. It had tufts of frizzly, almost wiry grey hair. It breathed like it was constantly sucking air in through a straw, even though it was missing its bottom jaw. But the thing about it that stuck with me was the eyes. They were a piercing, glowing yellow and they were fixed on my Mama.

I couldn’t look away as my Mama approached it. It took one of those yellow talons and slashed open her stomach. I think I retched when I watched the blood pool out, staining her pajama top. It licked the blood from its nails before it devoured her. Mama didn’t even scream, not once. I stood frozen as I watched it drag her into the woods by her long dark hair. I had to have fainted when it fixed its yellow eyes on me because that’s where my Daddy found me when he got home from his night shift at work.

Naturally, the police tried to blame my Daddy for Mama going missing. But he had an airtight alibi, seeing as he was at work all night. I couldn’t help but feel as if the police were getting frustrated with me telling them what I saw. I heard someone tell my Daddy that my brain must have made the man who took Mama into a monster to protect me from the trauma. But I know what I saw that night. I remember it staring at me with nothing but pure hatred in its eyes.

I spent years trying to track down any information I could about yellow-eyed creatures. Everything I found only fit certain parts of what I'd seen. Nothing gave me a definite answer besides needing silver to protect myself from it. My Daddy never really questioned it when I wanted to learn how to hunt. Never questioned all the time I spent practicing so I’d be a good shot. Daddy kind of shut down on me after Mama disappeared, so so long as I wasn’t in jail, he didn’t give a damn what I did.

“You need to let go of it being a monster Clara!” Daddy screams at me, slamming his fist against the table.

“There are no such things as monsters.” He tells me as if I’m a child who told him there was one under my bed. I stare at Daddy blankly, he wouldn’t understand anyway. He wasn’t there, he didn’t see what I saw. I clench my hand into a fist so tight, my knuckles turn white. Pure white-hot rage bubbling up in my chest.

“Please, Clara, I need you to tell me it wasn’t a monster. You need to give up this hunt.” He pleads with me, tears threatening to spill over onto his wrinkled cheeks. Daddy never did move on after Mama disappeared like he was holding out hope that she’d walk through that back door at any moment.

“Daddy, you know I can’t say that. I told you what I saw! I don’t know why you don’t believe me!” I yell back at him, my voice nearly cracking under the weight of all the different emotions I’m feeling.

“Clara, we can’t keep doing this. Your Mama was taken by a real person. Monsters do not exist.” He says in a clear tone like I’m still a child. But the face of that creature lives in my dreams. It wreaks havoc on my mind. He doesn’t have to live with the guilt of wondering if I had just been a little louder would Mama still be here. He isn’t the one who’s looked at like they’re crazy for telling everyone they need to be looking out for a yellow-eyed monster.

I stand from the table so quickly that my chair topples over. Daddy tries to grab me, but I skirt around his grasp and out the back door. I walk the same path I remember Mama did that night to the woods. It’s worn down to the dirt from all the times I’ve retraced it. Daddy doesn’t know how close I am to finding its den. I’ve been tracking it for years, following the cases of all the women who have disappeared. Finding the pattern to it, narrowing it down to about a five-mile stretch of woods. It takes a while to hike out there, but it's gonna be worth it when I bring back this monster to Daddy and show him I was right.

I walk for a while, and the light in the woods starts to turn a little yellow like the sun is about to set. I stumble and hit the forest floor, tiny rocks digging into the heels of my hands. I curse quietly to myself as I brush the mud from the bottom of my jeans. I scan the ground for whatever tripped me when I see it. A small metal hatch in the middle of the woods, covered in decaying leaves. Frantically, I brush them aside and wrench as hard as I can on the handle but it doesn’t budge. I dig through the pockets of my coat until I manage to dig out my phone. I take a picture of the hatch, and then the hair on the back of my neck stands on end. Like something is watching me just out of sight.

Without thinking, I start running in the direction I think I came from, leaping over downed trees and praying to God that I don’t trip. I finally have my proof to show Daddy that the monster is real, and I can’t lose it now. I stop after a few minutes to catch my breath from running, and to see if I can the sounds of something following me. It’s almost nearly completely dark in the woods now, but I don’t dare turn on the flashlight. I don’t need to draw unnecessary attention to myself. Instead, I walk at a brisk pace in a straight line until I can see the end of the trees and the light from my house in the distance. I take up running again, as fast as I can. I stumble on the first step of the back porch but still race up them. I throw open the back door to see my dad still sitting at the table looking as sad as I’ve ever seen them.

“Daddy! I found something in the woods! I found the monster’s den.” I tell him and I can see a brief flash of anger on his face.

I frantically type in the passcode to my phone and pull up the picture I took, shoving it in his face.

“Clara, what the hell is this? Where did you find this?” He asks any anger he had replaced with worry. My face falls because this wasn’t the reaction I was hoping for.

“In the woods, as I told you,” I tell him as he picks up the landline. I watch as he dials a string of numbers.

“Detective Greene? I think you should come over. My daughter found something in the woods you probably want to see.” He says into the receiver, he’s quiet for a moment. Save for a couple of “mhmm's” before hanging up and turning his attention back towards me.

“The cops are on their way, Clara. They’re gonna need you to show them exactly where you found that bunker.” He says and I nod obediently and join him at the table.

What feels like hours later, there’s a knock at our door. Daddy opens it and invites the people inside. It seems like a whole team of people are out here to help me catch the monster who killed my mom.

“Clara, I’m Detective Greene,” A man introduces himself to me. He’s a younger guy, sandy blonde hair and the complexion of someone who spends way too much time in the sun.

“I’m gonna need you to show me that picture.” He says and I nod. I pull up the photo quickly and show it to him.

“I couldn’t get it open,” I tell him with a shrug.

“Do you think you could take us there?” He asks and I nod enthusiastically. Once again I find myself on the worn dirt path to the woods. This time with a while forensic team trailing me. Although I don’t understand what forensics would need with this monster. Maybe they’re gonna study it? Or maybe Daddy didn’t tell them about the creature because he doesn’t believe in it.

This time the woods are filled with the sterile white light of about fifteen flashlights. There are whispers of conversation as we walk, and just like before, my foot hits the hatch before I see it. Only this time, Detective Greene catches me before I fall. He pulls a gun from his waistband and pushes me behind him. There’s a loud ping noise as he shoots off the lock I didn’t see the first time in my excitement. Daddy’s hand closes around my upper arm as he pulls me out of the way of the team.

“Oh dear god.” Someone says as the smell wafts out of the tunnel. It smells like death, for lack of a better term. Daddy suddenly pushes me behind him as several guns get drawn and pointed at the hatch. A man’s head emerges, and he’s dragged up by one of the FBI agents.

Daddy and I get ushered out of the woods, which is now apparently a crime scene. Daddy has tears streaming down his face as we walk, only we don’t get to go home. They take us to the police station where we’re put in an interrogation room. We sit for hours until the door opens and Detective Greene steps into the room. He shares a look with my Dad that causes him to start crying again.

“Did you find the monster that killed Mama?” I ask Detective Greene as he slides into the chair across from me.

“We found remains identified to be your mother’s. Clara.” He beings and then heaves a huge sigh.

“Clara, those eyes you saw that night, those were flashlights. Flashlights belonging to the two men who killed your mother. James Clark and David Burnes lured your mother out that night and killed her. They took her to their underground bunker in the woods to hide her body.” He says and I shake my head, refusing to believe him. But then the pieces all fall together.

That night, lights were coming from the woods. I had begged Mama to let me stay up and watch a monster movie with her. She only agreed because it wasn’t a school night and I promised not to be scared. She got distracted by lights flashing in the woods. She thought it was some teenagers messing around. When she went out to yell at them, the lights retreated further into the woods. She told me to stay on the porch while she went to the tree line to yell in that she was calling the cops. Only she never got the chance to yell. The nails I thought I saw were a knife. Mama was really dragged into the woods, and I did actually pass out. But I guess my brain made it out to be a monster because it was easier than it being a person. The yellow eyes were flashlights, and there wasn’t a monster in the woods after all. Just two incredibly evil men who took my Mama from me.