“Did you hear that?” six-year old Tim asked his four-year old brother Tony who was already beneath the blanket.
“Yessss…” Tony groaned.
“Someone’s outside our window. I saw a face.”
Tony’s low groan turned into a high-pitched whine of fear. He was afraid of things that went bump in the night. His active little imagination pictured a loathsome creature intent on eating him and his brother.
Tim pulled the blanket away and slithered down to the carpet. Moving cautiously, he crawled over to the window. Peeked through the lower part. Full moon. Lot’s of shadows. Something was out there.
He didn’t believe in the boogeyman. That was a four-year old’s fear. Nothing to it. But there were other things. Bad things. Bad men. Thieves.
He thought about the baby-sitter in the living room. She probably had her cell phone glued to her ear talking with her dumb boyfriend. He bet she didn’t hear anything. Someone would have to kick the front door down to get her attention, Tim grimly thought.
Just then he spotted a hulking figure picking apples off their tree in the backyard. Tim had sharp eyes. Everyone said that. Right now they were wide open trying to make out what the figure was.
A big man wearing a furry coat? Could be. It could also be something else. Something his dad once told him about living where they did in northern California. “It’s Bigfoot Country,” he told Tim ever since he could remember.
But Mom and Dad said Big Foot was just a legend that everyone liked to talk about in these parts. He was never sure. More than once he caught a couple of oldtimers sitting outside Lud’s General store talking in serious tones about a Big Foot sighting.
Was that the real thing eating their apples out there?
Suddenly he heard the back door open. Then to his utter amazement the babysitter, Lulu, walked right up to the hairy hulk who had stopped eating an apple and turned her way. Before Tim could gasp the hairy thing enveloped her in it’s shaggy arms!
Without thinking, Tim grabbed his baseball bat and ran out the back door. He heard funny noises as he came up on the thing that had Lulu. Babe Ruth, Hank Aaron, Mickey Mantle…all of them would have been proud of Tim the way he weilded that bat!
Screams. Lulu’s high-pitched screech tore the night in half and the Bigfoot made some wounded sounds then staggered off into the forest grunting in pain.
The next day when Tim and his family went to the local football game – his parents were volunteers – there was a short announcement about the school mascot not being able to perform tonight, but don’t worry, the doctor’s said he’ll recover in a week or so.
As It Stands, as the school mascot found out, life is full of surprises.
The Creative Chronicles of Dave Stancliff 