Beware The Devil's Knot - Dogman

us boys stayed away from there. We have legends about that place, stories kids tell around the camp fire. He leaned into the young man sitting beside him on the park bench and said, now listen here, I won't deny that kill blow anything up to scare each other, but there really was something wrong with that holler. For one thing, it may not be at all that wide, but they say it goes all the way from here to Canada without a single break in the woods. The young man's

stifled to grin. Google Maps would have put an end to the old man's belief in that myth, but he was right about one thing. The hollow may have only been a mile and a half wide by three miles long, but it did spill into a patch of land that was more than two hundred and forty square miles of nothing but trees, brambles, gullies, vines, undergrowth, snakes and spiders and blood sucking insects. The sun never saw the floor of that forest. Bobby's daddy disappeared into that place, you know.

The old man said, I understand that story, mister high Tower. But all the police reports state that he ran off and left his wife and kids fin for themselves. The young man offered he had been to the courthouse and gone through all the old reports that he could find. Back in the nineteen forties, when Truman County was a lot less populated, reports were written without as much as official language as they are today, and several times the man found notes indicating that the woman was crazy and

that the husband probably couldn't take anymore. That's not so, the old man growled, and miss Dumeyer was a good woman. She grew up with my mama, and not a better woman ever lived. And that's my mama's word, not mine. He gave his companion a side eyed stare, as if challenging him to question his mother. What's your name, boy, he asked, for what the young man thought was probably the eighth time. Martin Chesterfield, he answered as politely as a man who was running out of patience could. But

you can call me Chig. Everyone does. Chig, old Man grumbled, as if the name didn't sit well on his tongue. Well, my name's Gordon high Tower, he said, having forgotten that he had already introduced himself a half a dozen times. Chig worried that the story he was getting wasn't going to be very accurate, given the advanced age of the

man and his inability to remember simple facts. However, there weren't many people left who knew Bobby Dumyer personally, and most of those who did were already too far gone with dementia to get any facts out of them at all. Now you wasn't here, and you don't know, mister high Tower spoke resentfully. Mister Dumier wasn't a bad man and his wife was a good woman. Now that's a fact. Their farm was over on the other side of Devil's Knoight,

it siddled right up alongside it. Most folks around here wouldn't go near that place, so the Dumayers were left pretty much to themselves. That suited mister Dumer just fine. He liked being left alone, and he was fearless as all get out. He hunted that holler all the time. He'd take his gun and head down into those woods and bring out some of the finest bucks you ever

laid eyes on. One of the few pictures I own of my own daddy was of him standing next to Will Dumar and a ten point buck he killed and devils not mister high Tower set up a little straighter with those words, as if it was his father who had shot the deer. Yes, but the police reports say. I don't give a one eyed jack what those reports say. Will Dumer would not have run out on his family. Now, I know Miss Dumier wasn't quite right in the head,

but that wasn't until after her husband disappeared. Of course, she lost her mind. Then that holler swallowed him up, and not one member of this community was willing to go in there looking for him. What about the reports, Chig asked, what reports? Oh, you mean the ones when she complained that something was attacking their livestock, taking their chickens, getting in the barn and tearing it up. Well, yes, those reports all state that she wasn't I know what

those dang reports saying. I'm telling you she wasn't wrong. I won't say she was right. Like I said, the woman's husband had up and vanished. I don't blame her for being a little squirrely, but that don't mean there ain't something in those woods and that it didn't get her husband. And then later mister high Tower let his voice trail off. He wasn't ready to share the latter half of the story yet, and Chig didn't push it. They sat for silence for a few minutes, and the

old man was lost in his memories. His eyes already clouded with cataracts, welled with tears as he remembered you spent with his friends, swimming in the cold water creeks, green hills and valleys, and hunting patches of timber. Chigg used the time to mul over the information he already knew about Bobby Dumyer and his family. In nineteen forty five, will Dumeyer returned from World War II to resume running the farm that he and his wife had started shortly

after their marriage in nineteen thirty three. The farm was a two hundred acre stretch of land that bordered the infamous Long Hollow on the west and Cinder Creek on the north, the Edward River on the east, and Postal Route forty four hundred north on the south. Several decades later, the road was renamed one seventh Avenue North. The nearest

town to the Dumyrs was winter Rest. It sat on the other side of a holla and had a booming population, with a grand total of five hundred and seventeen people, half of which were the rural farmers that lived all around it. In every direction. No larger towns existed for miles. The Dumayers had two children, Bobby, who was born in nineteen thirty six and Cassandra, who came along in nineteen forty one. Georgia Dumayer was from all reports a good farmer.

While her husband was away fighting the war, she never missed putting in a crop in the three and a half years her husband was away. She maintained the livestock, kept milk production, raised enough chickens to sell eggs at the market, managed a large victory garden, from which she was able to give produce to some of the less fortunate people in town, and did all of this while

keeping her house clean and the children in order. Chig could not argue with mister high Tower's assertion that Georgia Dumer wasn't crazy before her husband vanished, but once he was gone, there was more than enough evidence that she was insane. It all happened on a cold November morning in nineteen forty seven. It was the opening day of deer season, and because no one else was willing to so much as passed through the devil's knot, Will Dumar

had the veritable paradise of hunting opportunities. He left the house that morning, certain that he would be successful on the first day. As he crossed the hayfield that separated his house from the hollow, he might have been thinking about the strange events that had taken place recently. It had been only a week ago that he had been startled awake by the sound of the animals in the barn.

Clearly something was attacking them. Without a second thought, he jumped up, dressed and grabbed his gun, and he ran outside. As he crossed the barnyard. He could hear the milkcows bleeding in a high pitched frenzy of anxiety and panic, and hogs screamed in fright, and geese honked and cackled in alarm. Will was almost there when the door flew open and something ran across the opening between the barn and the tractor shed that his mind would not allow

him to accept. Inside the barn, he found a mass of carnage that tore his heart out of his chest. One of his best sous was lying on the ground, her tongue hanging out of her mouth as she struggled to inhale enough air to breathe. The entire contents of her abdominal cavity were spilled out on the ground around her. Will looked down into poor thing, who stared back in wild disbelief, and with a tear in his eyes, he placed the barrel of his rifle behind her ear and

pulled the trigger. Two nights later, Will found himself running back out into the night, this time to his chicken house, where he discovered a half a dozen hens torn to pieces. Another half dozen were missing. Whatever got to them tore the door off the pin like it was a cardboard flap on a box. This time he noted the tracks that it left behind. The large, padded footprints were a solid twelve inches in length and just as wide, and the nailmarks at the end of each toe print indicated

non retractable claws. K nine. Will muttered, except this canine walked on two legs. The night before hunting season, Will sat in his front parlor reading a book while his wife mended socks in her chair. Beside him. At a small table in front of the window, Bobby and Cassie were engaged in a game of dominoes. It was a kind of family scene that Norman Rockwell might have painted for the Saturday Evening Post. There was nothing special about

this night. Will's preoccupation with his anticipated hunt in the morning might have required him to reread a page or two of his book, but aside from that, it was a peaceful evening. Then something thumped hard on the front porch. Georgia looked up from her sewing and asked, what's that. I don't know, Will answered as he slipped a bookmark into the pages of the book he was reading and laid it down. Bobby jumped up and crossed the room ahead of his father, anxious to see who or what

was outside their front door. Georgia was right behind him, calling for him to wait for his father. Everyone was in motion at that moment except for Cassie. She sat quietly staring out the window. Her eyes grew wide and her little body trembled. Before stepping into the front hall, Will decided to stop at his guncase and grab his rifle. He had no answer for the inquisitive look on George's face,

so he only shrugged. Bobby was at the door, already wrenching it open when Will grabbed his shoulder and pulled him backward. Georgia reached over and flipped on the switch that sent power to the small light that hung beside the front door. The porch was empty. Will stepped out onto the board and walked first to his left across the long stretch of wooden planks to that end of the house. Here the porch terminated into a set of steps that led to the side yard. He saw nothing.

He then turned and retraced his path to the front door and beyond to the other end of the house. Here the porch turned and wrapped around the parlor without a flashlight, something he had not thought to grab. He couldn't make out much in the dark shadows beyond the white picket fence that surrounded the yard. At the end of the side porch, where another set of steps led down into the night, Will turn and faced the house. There, sitting silently in the window, her eyes full of images

too frightening to describe, was Cassie. Her little mouth was formed into an oh, but nothing was coming out. Will tapped at the window, bringing her from her trance. She glanced at her father for only a moment before pouring into the yard, and finally, with a kind of exquisite agony that can only be achieved when every limit has been reached, she released a long, ear piercing scream. It was a long night, and Cassie couldn't voice what she saw. Georgia had tried to put her to bed, but she

refused to be left alone. In the end, Georgia was only able to soothe her daughter by crawling into the bed beside her and holding her until she fell asleep. Even that wasn't enough. She tried to go back to her own bed several times in the night, and every time Cassie woke up, crying and begging not to be left alone with the monster. Will had slept a little better,

but not much. Several times he had gotten up and gone downstairs to pace the front poor with his rifle, certain that whatever was there earlier was still lingering near Bobby, unfazed by any of it, slept like a baby. After a few nights of peace, Will woke up early that morning. Georgia, exhausted and sore from several nights of sleeping in her daughter's cramp bed, managed to put on a pot of coffee and fry up some eggs and bacon for her

husband while he prepared himself for his hunt. Together, they ate and talked about the sort of things that most couples discuss at the breakfast table. The events of the previous week were pushed out of mind. Will hadn't told his wife everything yet. He thought maybe he would eventually, but first he had to find the right words. How does a man tell his wife that he had seen something that looked like a cross between line Cheney and the wolf Man and an actual wolf with a snout

and large canine. Furthermore, it was nearly seven feet tall. All Georgia knew was that some wild animal was getting at their livestock. For now, he figured that's all she needed to know. All of these things might have been on Will's mind as he crossed the hayfield and entered the Devil's Knot. There would be much to consider and a lot to take care of, But first he needed to put a deer in the freezer. Venison was always an excellent alternative to beef during the long winter months

of the year. That night, Georgia Doomera contacted the Truman County Sheriff's office. It was almost ten pm when she made the call. Her husband had not come back from hunting. The sheriff's deputy came out to investigate the situation. She explained that her husband had left shortly before daylight. She pointed out the route he took across the hayfield into the woods, showed the deputy where she had stood on the porch, drinking a cup of coffee and watching him

until he had vanished behind the tree line. The deputy took notes positive theories and offered assurances that will Wood come walking back out of those woods at any moment, maybe dragging with him a record buck. The next morning, Georgia made another call. Her husband was not back. Yet another deputy came to the house. He wrote all the same things the first deputy wrote. He formed all the same theories the first deputy form, and he provided the

encouragement the first deputy gave. But like the first deputy, he did not go down into the woods to search, nor did the next deputy who came out to the house, nor the next When Will Dumayer was reported missing, a lot of the men in Truman County got together to form a search party for him. They searched every meadow field, pass patch of timber Lake and pond in the county,

but they did not search the devil's knot. Some of the men even walked around town, thinking maybe they'd find him hiding in an alley or drunk at the only town bar. He wasn't there either. A few days after Will Dumyer disappeared, Georgia Dumar made one more frantic phone call to the Sheriff's department. This time she claimed some sort of animal was in her barn, tearing up her livestock. She was hysterical as she screamed into the phone that someone needed to come out to the house and kill

it before it killed everything else. And in the background, a dog could be heard growling and snarling and barking. A pounding could be clearly heard that sounded like something was trying to tear the doors off the house. And suddenly Georgia screamed, Oh my god, it's a were wolf, and the phone went silent. No one can say for

sure what happened after that night. Her claim that the house was being attacked by a werewolf gave the sheriff's department a reason to dismiss her claim as being delusional. After all, the poor woman's husband was missing. It was then that people began to formulate the theory that Georgia Dumarer was insane, and that perhaps her husband had secured his own disappearance to get as far from her as possible. Additional calls to the sheriff's office for protection from the

werewolf went unanswered. You wanted to know about Bobby, the old man said, interrupting Jiggs's thoughts. Yes, I did. His reply sounded as flustered as he felt at the moment. Well, I'll tell you about him. He was a kind of kid who never had to find trouble. Trouble just seemed to find him. Back in those days, if you was a boy, you owned the world. When we wasn't in school or doing chores, we were free to roam and ways. These young people today would never understand. Rivers and creeks

were for swimming and fishing. Woods were for hunting and making forks. We all had bicycles, and those bikes took us everywhere we wanted to go. Mister high Tower felt silent again, wondering down the roads that no longer existed, or that had changed so much that they were no longer recognizable. After a minute, Chig said softly, mister high Tower. The old man turned and stared at the youth beside him.

What was your name again, he asked, I'm Chig. Chig answered, no longer capable of the patients to provide his whole name. That's an odd name for a boy, Mister high Tower said, yes, sir, you were saying about Bobby Dumier. Oh yeah, Bobby. He didn't have the free them the rest of us boys had. With his daddy gone, He had all the chores of a grown man to tend to you before and after school. If that wasn't bad enough. He couldn't never sit still

in school. If he wasn't squirming in his chair, he was wandering around the room, couldn't hold his attention for five minutes. You'd have thought he'd be too tired for shenanigans with all the work he had done at home. But no, not Bobby and the trouble he got into. If there was a frog in the teacher's desk, I guarantee it was Bobby put it there. The old man chuckled to himself. He likeed kids in the outhouse put glue on their hair and filled the water jugs with minnas,

and he would soak the chalk in water. Chick didn't understand the last two statements, so mister high Tower had to describe the big stoneware jugs of water that stood in the hallway with ten cups hanging on hooks beside them, where kids could get a t drink before the water fountains were installed. He then had to explain that chalk,

when soaked in water, becomes soft and unusable. When Chig explained that the schools he had gone to as a kid didn't have chalkboards, but dry erase boards, Gordon felt confused and uncomfortable. Yeah, it's a different world we live in now, he muttered, Yes, Sir Jigg said, before adding now about Bobby. Bobby, Gordon echoed, trying to focus. Now. He was a handful, and that meant that Bobby spent most nights after school writing his penance out on the chalkboard.

Because he spent so much time paying for his sins after school, he rarely made it home before dark once winter set in. Gordon took a hard look at Chig before continuing. The tall young man seated beside him could not have been more than twenty two or twenty three years old. His pink face, splattered with apricot freckles, was a harsh contrast to the carrot red hair that wouldn't lie flat on his head. He was tall, with very

little meat on his bones. As perhaps a misguided attempt to wear his profession like a badge, he had chosen a dark corduroy jacket with leather sleeve patches to wear over his button collar shirt and khaki pants. It only served to make his shoulder blades look more angular and his stomach punched to appear more prevalent and his long, bony fingers to look more skeletal. It occurred to Gordon that were this young man's hair a darker shade of red, he might have been Bobby dumer all grown up. Are

you related to Bobby? He asked, No, sir, not that I know of. And what do you want to know so much about them? For? Well, my editor asked me to do a Halloween piece on odd legends in this area. It was not the first time that Chig had explained this. I remember hearing about Bobby Dumier when I was a kid, so I decided to find out if it was a real person. Well he was real, the old man assured him, before leaning forward and sending another stream of spit into

the can, real as you and me. Well, if Bobby had to stay after school every night, how did he manage to get home to his family's farm clear over on the other side of Devil's Knot, Jig asked, Well, he walked, Gordon answered, matter of factly. I guess the better way to say it is that he ran the road there where Devil's Knot starts, curves around hard to the south, and then back again to the north in

a great, big s curve. Now Bobby knew if he cut off the road there ran down through the hollow and then follows cinder Creek to where he could jump over it before the waterfall and scramble back up the hill to the other side, that he'd come out in the hayfill that separated his house from the Knight and himself saved twenty men. It would still take him more than half an hour, but he had a lot of work to do when he got home. He used to brag about it to us boys, who were afraid of

that place. As the old man Chig found it easy to imagine Bobby Dumer walking down the gravel road that took him to the Devil's Knot. As it made the first turn to the south, it rose up and crawled along the edge of a bluff. An open meadow covered the top of that hill. The grass that grew there was dotted with tall prairie flowers, and blues and pinks

and yellows and whites. Patches of clover spread across it in drifts of purple, and here and there the large, velvety, soft blossoms of thistle reached upward and burst out of deep green pineapple shaped cones. The northern side of the road was a devilish contrast, with massive trees draped in vines that hung over the world beneath them, like crippled

old teachers hovering over classrooms full of children. The undergrowth of that hollow was stick with poisonous plants, thorny bushes, and anemic looking saplings that beg for their chance at the sun. But there was no shoulder between the road and the hollow, just to drop off that fell quickly into the black mire of green hell. Here and there a small gap revealed a game trail. Those gaps were rare, it was otherwise impenetrable, and then the road would turn

sharply and make its way back to the north. As it did so, it fell well below the bluff on its right and slid through the portal of tree branches and vines into the hollow itself. This was as close as anyone ever came to entering the Devil's Knot, and even here it wasn't truly inside. After a quarter mile looping in and out of the knot, it turned again and went due east past du Meyer's farm. Those who

rode their horses do here held their breath and prayed. Later, when people drove their cars through, they did so as quickly as the curves would allow. It was on the first curve where the occasional game trail opened small gateways into the primordial world of Devil's Knot that Bobby would slip into the mire. He had to pick his way carefully down that first hillside. Rocks jutted out here and there that he could place a foot on or grab with a hand to slow his descent. With each step forward.

The world grew darker during the second half of November and all of December and January. In the first part of February, he was nearly always making his trek in the dark. He didn't like it. There were chores to be done at home. He had no choice. At the bottom of the hill lay a flat expanse divided in two by cinder creek. Although the stream was never deep, there was always fresh water running here. Rocks and stones provided ledges for it to trip over and gurgle out

a natural melody. Bobby liked to stop when he could and looked for minnows in the occasional hole where the water would get two or three feet deep. He never lingered long, but he wasn't really afraid either, and in his mind his father lived here, he felt protected by him. The eyes that he always felt were on him when he walked through this place he attributed to being the

eyes of his father. The long walk down the creek bed ended where the world dropped off and a small waterfall trickled down into a pool of water stretching a dozen feet in diameter. Here, Bobby always liked to stand on the ledge and look down into the black water below. It was too dark to make out anything down there, but he often suspected that someone or something was looking back.

He liked to imagine that it was his dad. After a minute, he would then turn and head back up the hill on a zig zagging pattern through the trees and pass the boulders until he reached the fence that formed the barrier between the farm and the hollow. Then, and only then would Bobby feel the need to run.

He always felt that he had to get as far from that tree line as possible because he was sure that something was back there, waiting for the exact moment when it could reach out and pull him back in. Like his father, forever. Halfway across the pasture, he would stop, his lungs burning for fresh oxygen and his legs cramping from the climb and then the run, he would double over and hold his gut for a second, silently reassuring himself that he was safe always. He turned his head

at that moment and looked to the house. He knew his little sister, Cassie would be sitting on the front porch waiting for him, or maybe she'd be playing in the grass in the house yard, surrounded by the white picket fence. No matter how cold it was, no matter what the weather was like, Cassie was always there. Bobby walked Cassie to school every morning, but his eternal bad

behavior left her to walk home alone at night. In the twenty first century, that might seem like an awful thing to ask a child so young, after all, she was only seven, but this was a different time. Back then, most children were expected to walk themselves to and from school, whether they had an older sibling to take them or not. Traversing the road that passed through the hollow terrified her.

Unlike her brother, she had seen what lived there, so once she got home, she waited for him and prayed that he would be safe, and when she spotted him crossing the hayfield, her eyes would always light up, and she'd come to the gate and wait there for him. Then came the night that Bobby stood in the middle of the field and looked for his sister, but she wasn't there. He would never have admitted it out loud, but he was deeply disappointed that he had lost his

importance to her. Trying not to feel too bad, he reminded himself that she wasn't a baby anymore. She was in the first grade. Now. He should have expected this day to come, but even so, as he opened the gate, he couldn't help but look around to see if maybe she had chosen to hide from him and jump out and scare him. Bobby was still reeling in the disappointment of a sister who was growing up when the front

door opened and his mother stepped out. A year had passed since his father disappeared, it looked more like ten years on his mother's face. Her hair was graying, and her eyes were bathed in dark circles, and her frown lines were becoming permanent. She was showing signs of mental distress as well. Sometimes she would wake up up in the middle of the night calling for her husband, and then she would run out into the yard and stare at the hollow like she was going to run in

there and find him. Bobby would always catch up with her by then and direct her back inside. He was afraid that she was slipping away from him, and he worried about what he and Cassie would do when the day came that their mother was gone too. Where is your sister, Georgia yelled, huh, Bobby stupidly answered, isn't she home? No, she isn't home. She didn't come home from school. I was hoping that she was with you. Georgie said, not bothering to mask her fears. She always comes straight home.

Bobby turned and looked back at the hollow. Cassie would never have taken his shortcut. She wouldn't have known the route, and even if she had, she wouldn't have gone into that hollow alone. She was terrified of it. He looked back at his mother, who was now visibly trembling and staring at the dark patch of timber on the other side of the hayfield. The memory of that day when

his father didn't come home washed over him. The thought of all those men from all over the county being too afraid to search inside the Devil's Not hit him hard. If Cassie was in there, he was going to have to find her himself. Mama, he said, with the most grown up voice he could muster. Call the sheriff's office. Tell them that Cassie didn't come home from school. Tell them I went into the Devil's Not to find her,

so they don't have to. But they need to search the roads and everywhere else while I'm looking, in case she isn't in there. Georgia Dumayer looked at her son in disbelief. Tormented by the loss of her husband, the possibility that her daughter may have also been swallowed up by that horrible place, and the unimaginable choice of letting her son enter that place of hell or keeping him with her as her last remaining piece of happiness tore

at her from all directions. She didn't move, Mama, do what I said, Do it now, Bobby ordered as sternly as he could. For a minute, he thought that his mother wouldn't move at all. He thought he was going to have to waste time making that phone call. But he couldn't do that. There wasn't any time. He had to find Cassie and Mama had to make the phone call. Just as he was about to open his mouth and scream at her, Georgia turned and ran inside, taking one

deep breath to help bolster his courage. Bobby turned and faced the woods. Of course, no one knows for sure what happened that night, mister high Tower said, breaking through Chig's reverie. I suppose this is as close to the events as anyone can get. Jigg answered politely, mister high Tower was right, It was all conjecture. He made a mental note to Clara that when he wrote the story, didn't missus Dumer know that Bobby used the Devil's Knot as a shortcut every day. He asked, Mister high Tower

only shrugged and continued his tale. She had closed his eyes and followed the story with his imagination. Bobby had turned and faced the dark hollow, knowing that he was going to have to enter it unarmed. Somewhere in there was a rifle that belonged to his dad. He doubted that anyone would ever find it now. Unfortunately, it was the only gun the Dumayer family owned. He had expected to get a shotgun for Christmas the year's father disappeared.

Most boys his age got one for Christmas or a birthday back then, but by Christmas his father was gone. Eyes appeared at Bobby from inside the tree line that glowed brilliant and red, as if lit from within. He didn't see them. His focus was on entering where he it Each day. These eyes were farther down as he walked. He set a silent prayer that his father would be with him and protect him. The eyes blinked and moved away. By the time the sheriff arrived with some deputies, Georgia

Dumer was inconsolable. She was crying that her children were in the knot and that they were going to be eaten by the werewolf. A doctor was summoned to administer sedatives to keep her calm. Two deputies volunteered to follow Bobby's path into the hollow, and although they were clearly terrified, how could they refuse to go when a twelve year old boy had so bravely gone in alone. They were

in there for nearly three hours. Others who had gathered at the Dumayer farm stood in small groups around the barnyard or warm their hands on the fire someone had started in the burning barrel. And while Georgia Dumyer laid in her bed under the influence of heavy medication, other women from the area arrived with food for the men and boiled coffee on the stove. Every minute that ticked by on the clock felt like a hammer blow to Bobby and Cassie's chances of survival. Inside the knight, Bobby

searched for his little sister in the dark, Cassie. He called as he walked up and down cinder Creek, Cassie. After each call, he stopped and listened. Sometimes he thought he heard her frightened voice answer back, and he would move in that direction. Other times he heard footsteps snapping twigs and crushing nearby leaf matter, and he would turn and he would follow that sound. Wasn't long before he heard the deputies in the hollow, looking for both him

and his sister. He tried to call back to let them know where he was, but sound plays a devilish game in places like that. The dampness from the underbrush and the thousand captured rainstorms will absorb sound and deaden it before it has time to travel. What little noise that escapes bounces around on petrified bark jutting stones until it's difficult to tell the direction of its origin. And Bobby knew this even as he turned again and tried to follow his sister's pleading cries. Fear is the only

true enemy of courage. It always outweighs it. It is louder and more convincing, and it never relents. Courage is fleeting. It stands strong against the task before it, but often crumbles in the undertaking. Bobby felt his courage struggling to leave him, and again and again he had to remind himself that this was his baby's sister that he was looking for. She relied on him. Her father was gone, their mother was losing her mind. She was all that

he had He had to push forward. Lord. No atheists ever entered the Devil's Knot, or if they did and survived, they came out knowing God. The deputies saw things and heard things inside that patch of woods that they would spend the rest of their lives talking about to their children and their children's children. Red eyes glowed at them from behind trees. Footsteps followed them up and down the

creek bed. Growling sounds from animals too big to be the wolves they sounded like, came at them from every direction. The smell of blood and death burned in their nostrils, and neither spoke except to give direction. But both men held one thought in his mind. As frightened as they were here together, what those two children were feeling alone must have been unbearable. As the moon rose over the hollow and the hope slipped away, the deputies turned and

headed back to the house. They knew that neither of those children, whatever come out of that hollow alive. The batteries on their flashlights were losing power, and their legs ached from climbing up and down the slippery, rocky hillsides. The moonlight reflecting on the hay stubble of the field before them was a welcome sight to their shame. Each was proud that he had survived that place, despite not

finding Bobby or Cassie. Less than two steps outside of that hollow, they froze in their tracks as a crack of a rifle shot followed by a long, menacing howl, split the night. People in the barnyard turned and stared. The two deputies turned and stared. Georgia Dumer sat up in her bed and screamed her own tormented howl. Afterwards, the sound of a child's cry could be heard. Everyone watched,

No one breathed. Then little Cassie, her long red hair having come loose from its braids and now tumbling down her back, stepped out of the Devil's Not alive, Cassie was covered in blood. The doctor who was attending Georgia Dumayer gave her a full examination. Some of the neighbor's women helped to wash her up. She was bruised and scratched, but no major cuts existed to account for that much blood.

Her frightened blue eyes swam and unshed tears that spilled out only when they laid her beside her mother on the bed. She never spoke again, except to utter one sentence, He saved me. When the morning came, most of those who had gathered at the du Meyer farm went home, a few of the ladies stayed to care for Georgia and Cassie, but most people, seeing that they had no real duties to fulfill, now decided that they would do

better to go home and get out of the way. Besides, they might accidentally stick around so long that someone might ask them to go into the devil's for one more look. A dozen local farmers in the sheriff himself did exactly that. They searched the woods in daylight, not that it made any difference. They still had the use of their flashlights in the dense foliage, informed a grid pattern to ensure that they covered everything. No sign of Bobby was ever found.

Over the years, many have questioned the events at that night. Did Bobby perhaps find his father's rifle and rescue his sister by killing something that was chasing her? Could a rifle that had been left in the woods for a year even work Everyone who was there that night swore that they heard the rifle shot. Was it Bobby who pulled the trigger? Likewise, they all knew they heard a wolf's howl. No wolves were known to be in that area.

Had every person there, lifelong hunters, experienced lawmen and farmers alike, mistaken the sound of a tree branch cracking for that of a rifle shot? And how did Cassie come out of those woods alive when her brother was never seen again? It wasn't long after that night that the Welfare of People came and took Cassie away. Chigg found evidence that she lived out her life in a sanitarium, a mute with haunted eyes who lived in a tormented past. Georgia

Dumayer was taken away as well. Her mind snapped that night. The loss of her husband and son was more than she could mentally accept. The farm was sold and new people moved in. Legends about the night grew over time. There had always been the stories, but now they had names to put with them, Bobby, Cassandra, will and Georgia the Dumyer family. By the time Chigg was a kid growing up in Truman County, there was another legend. It was the one he was most familiar with. It was

the reason he chose this story to write about. Children whispered about the terrors of the Devil's Knot at sleepovers and around campfires. They said, if you enter that place, something will chase you. They say it's a wolf, but not a wolf. But not to worry. If Bobby Dumer knows that you're there, he'll chase it away. So when you enter the Knot, you called out the greeting to Bobby. Don't look at him because he's covered in blood. Just know that he'll get you safely to the other side.

It was a legend that Chig knew better than most because Chig tested it out. He was twelve, the exact age that Bobby was when he entered the Knot and never came out. It started as a dare when he and some of his friends were camping out in a pasture of his family's farm. In the middle of the night. The boys got on their bicycles and rode over to that same place where Bobby's supposedly always entered the Knot. There, Chig got off his bike and walked inside, flashlight in hand,

and called out a greeting to Bobby Dumar. It was a full hour before the other boys would see Chig again. They had ridden their bikes to the other side and waited. When he came out, his face was pale and his body shook violently with fear. He never told them what he saw. Who would have believed him? How do you tell your friends that a bloody, torn to piece's ghost carrying a rustic rifle led you through a little piece of hell on earth? Inhabited by creatures that should exist only in the movies.