The Saw Dog Mountain Monster
by Gary Clifton
The front glass on Uncle Ted’s Grocery clattered ominously as the screen door slammed shut behind Slow Joe Neb, Jr.
Theodore Grooter, the pudgy, fiftyish store owner, grimaced like an advanced hemorrhoid victim. “No need to knock down the place, Joe. You needin’ to grow up some.”
“Anuthern, Mr. Grooter, they done found anuthern!” Slow Joe bounced around like he’d just laid a fresh egg.
Grooter stared blankly at the shoulder-length haired teen. “Where? Any idee who?”
“’Nuther girl, Mr. Grooter. She a stranger. Deputy Clapsaddle say the monster musta grabbed her down on the interstate some whurs around that rest area.”
“Damnation, Joe, that’s four. The high sheriff gotta catch this fella... If he’s still up to it.”
“You right ’bout catchin’ this fella, Mr. Grooter, but Deputy Clapsaddle, he say they’s only God a-knowing how many others that never got found, neither.”
* * *
Sheriff Wilder C. Buck sat, size thirteen, lizard-skin boots planted on his battered desk. Nearing seventy, with his Stetson tipped on the back of his balding head, he was fond of saying he didn’t look a day over sixty-nine and a half. He was genuinely worried.
As sheriff of Smith County for nearly twenty-eight years, he’d seen his share of crime in the rugged mountainous territory. He’d cleared six murders and a passel of other violent incidents committed by the universally ignorant inhabitants of Mama Ridge Pass, which split Saw Dog Mountain like a hotdog at the county fair.
A single gravel road, called the “Shaft” from earlier days when Mama Ridge had a mining industry, connected Mama Ridge and the peak of Saw Dog Mountain to the Interstate. The Shaft Road had potholes that would swallow a Volkswagen.
“Yeah, Clapsaddle, but them was humans doin’ them earlier crimes. Whut we dealin’ with here jes’ ain’t human. If one man was doin’ this, he’d hafta drive in on the Shaft.” He plopped both feet to the floor. “An’ we been watchin’ close. Gotta be some kinda werewolf.”
Clapsaddle, tall, rangy, and prone to talk too much, slouched in a straight back chair across the sheriff’s desk, followed the sheriff’s cue and dropped his feet to the floor. “Sheriff, if it’s a haint, and it be hidin’ out in them trees... maybe don’t need no car.” His dark eyes expanded to silver-dollar size at the thought.
“Clapsaddle, it wouldn’t take no spook to hide in the forest. Man with a little camping gear... Nights ain’t too cold this time o’year. Maybe we oughta get out them bloodhounds?”
“Good idea, sheriff, but two dogs and they’s a hell of a lot of forest, to search. Maybe you get started on usin’ them dogs first thing in the morning. I’ll patrol the Shaft tonight. No peckerwood monster gonna get by me.”
* * *
Rosy Beth Bracket lived with her mama in a dingy cabin just off the Shaft roadway near the Saw Dog Mountain peak. Mama’s mind was gone from drinking too much ’shine. Rosy Beth, seventeen, sweet, pretty as a picture, and a loner with few friends, worked the evening waitress shift at the truck stop down on the interstate.
For the past month, she’d borrowed Uncle Penrod’s old GMC to make the ten-mile one-way trip up and down the Shaft. This evening, the truck sputtered on her way to work, but she arrived just fine. Then the manager told her she had to work until midnight.
Deputy Clapsaddle drove up and down the Shaft for hours, eventually pulling into the truck stop for gas on the county’s account. On the way back, he saw potential paydirt. A man, alone in a new Ford F150 was parked in the rest area, appearing to be doing nothing. Clapsaddle drove partly up the Shaft, then back past the rest area several times. The man never moved.
At just past midnight, he saw Rosy Beth leave the truck stop and head toward the GMC. Then he caught sight that her car apparently wouldn’t start. Caught going the wrong direction, he raced down the Interstate, U-turned and sped back to the truck stop. The GMC was parked there, but Rosy Beth was nowhere in sight. Next door in the rest area, the F150 was also gone. My God, he’d grabbed her when she tried to start her GMC!
The burly man, holding Rosy Beth down on his pickup seat by her throat wheeled the F150 up the potholed Shaft and randomly into the Widow Johnson’s driveway. “Looks like you needin’ help, babe.”
“I ain’t needin’ no help,” she screamed. “Jes’ lemme go! I’m bad sick! Lemme go!”
“Well, you gonna get some, sweetheart. I watched your twitchy little ass down at that truck stop. Come here!” He ripped at her uniform blouse.
Clapsaddle nearly drove past the F150’s taillights before skidding into Widow Johnson’s driveway. Yanking open the driver’s door, he saw a large man struggling atop Rosy Beth who was screaming something about being sick. Clapsaddle piled in atop the man. He had found the monster and intended to take it alive.
* * *
The Medical Examiner leaned in for another photo. Nearby, another EMT vomited.
The M.E. said, “Sheriff, I gotta agree. In my twenty-four years I’ve never come anywhere close to seeing carnage like this. Clapsaddle musta stopped this F150 for some reason. The guy pulled into Widow Johnson’s driveway and then a cougar got inside the cab and ripped them both to pieces.”
“No way, Fred. This is the work of that Saw Dog Mountain Monster. And the little girl who musta been kidnapped last night, Rosy Beth Bracket, has disappeared. The monster must have drug her up into the hills.”
The M.E. shuddered as he held up the torn, bloody remnant of a truck stop uniform collar. “What a horror. I bet we never see Rosy Beth again.”
The lingering wail of a wolf wafted down the mountain.
Copyright © 2024 by Gary Clifton
