Night Noise
The sounds I heard that night in Snoqualmie couldn't have been made by a cougar. The sound of a woman screaming, yes, but whatever it was stank and cougars don't crash through brush like that.
Snoqualmie is set against the middle fork of the Snoqualmie River, about forty-five minutes from Seattle. It was a small town in the late seventies with a high school, which I attended, several churches, which I did not, a police station, grocery store, and feed store. The main economy along with the lumber mill was the falls, which tourists could visit via an old steam train.
I lived about two miles north of the town proper. Reinig road runs parallel to the river and is long, cold and dark even in late August due to huge oak trees which run the entire length on either side.
My buddy John and I had met up in town earlier that night for our weekly poker game. There were five of us and it wasn't unusual for the game to last long into the night. It was around two o'clock in the morning when John and I parted ways at the bridge, which runs across the river connecting Reinig road and logging property to the rest of the town. There are no street lights- I don't think they put any out there until the mid-nineties- and it's scary as hell at two a.m.
I make it a habit not to look over my shoulder when I'm on that road because I never know what I might see. Legends abound in logging country and I had spent many a night camped on the river, telling ghost stories with my friends. Tonight, however, warm August air blew across my cheek and I did look back, just for a second, to watch the moon wink out of sight behind the first oak.
It was absolutely quiet on the road. The darkness caught me up in a blanket of sticky summer night time. I couldn't see very far in front of me, but I could sense the movement of the river off to my right. It was very peaceful until I heard a crashing sound coming from the tree line on the other side of the river.
I stopped walking and held my breath.
It sounded like a really big dog. When I heard it again the noise was closer and whatever it was, it was too big to be a dog. Could it be a bear? I thought frantically, It's a bear-a wet bear- by the smell of it. I walked a little faster.
Okay, I wasn't actually afraid of the possibility of a bear, who gets eaten by a bear two miles from town anyway?
Geez the thing stank. Like a big wet dog and rotting meat, like when we found a deer carcass up on the clear cut. I walked a little faster, too stubborn to break into a run and a little curious to see what this thing was...
Then it screamed.
When cougars cry it sounds like a woman screaming. This did not sound like a cougar. It started out high and shrill and ended in a growl and moan. The hair on my arms stood up as I panicked, looking for a break in the shrubbery to dive into, instead, I began to run.
I was on the other side of the tunnel of oaks by now, back out into the moonlight. As I slowed to a jog I listened, forcing myself to breathe normally and straining my ears. I started to move along and heard it again, crashing through the brush.
It had kept pace with me along the riverbank!
It was directly across the river from where I now stood!
It could smell me!
I changed from jog to sprint the rest of the quarter mile to the house.
When I reached the house I bent over by the mailbox at the end of the driveway and gulped air. Holding my sides and panting I could feel the blood rushing through my ears. Slowly I stood up and listened again.
Nothing.
I stained my ears to hear.
Still nothing.
That's when the light over the porch went on and Sylvia opened the screen door.
Sylvia had taken me in as a foster kid a few years back. She was married to Jim and they had five kids. I guess they figured one more wasn't going to make any difference. She works swing shift at the nursing home in the next town over so it wasn't unusual for her to be up at this hour.
"Is that you back from your card game?" She came out onto the porch, "You won't be up this late when school starts, you know, now get in here."
I came up on the porch and asked her if she'd heard anything. I told her my story and she got this funny look on her face.
"You go on in and tell Jim what you told me," she said.
She stood on the porch for and few minutes after I had gone in. I heard her sigh as she locked the screen door behind us.
Jim was in the living room working on one of his jig saw puzzles. The walls in the room were crowded with years of putting together jig saw puzzles when he couldn't sleep. He had a tumbler of whiskey next to him and a Pall Mall red in his mouth. I must've looked the way I felt because he offered me a smoke. I sat at the card table with him and carefully moved puzzle pieces aside. I told my story again. Sylvia leaned against the doorway.
"Don't like you kids out on that road this late in the summer," Jim finally said, "how long did the scream last?"
"Seemed like forever, but maybe half a minute," I reached for the pack of Pall Malls.
"Wait in here," Jim got up and went in the bedroom. I could hear boxes being shuffled, the sound of a closet opening, more shuffling. Finally he came out with a tape recorder and a box. He motioned for me to sit on the ottoman at the foot of his chair. He fooled with the tape recorder for a minute and hit the rewind button. Slyvia had excused herself and I could hear her banging around in the kitchen.
Jim hit the play button. Nothing at first, then a sound I'd already heard that night set my hair on end. The sound of something crashing through brush. Then that scream, that high pitched scream that ended as a growl and moan. It was on the tape several times.
"We recorded that on a camping trip a few years back. Me and Jimmy. It had been screaming for awhile before either one of us remembered the tape recorder," Jim leaned back in his chair.
"Up on logging property?" I asked. Jim always forbade us to camp up there, maybe this was why.
" Roslyn. Up by the old mining camp."
"In August?" I mused, "Around the same time of year?"
"Here," Jim passed me the shoebox, "this is why I don't like you kids out so late in the summer, especially on those back roads."
I opened the box. Inside was a heavy plaster cast of a foot. Well it was kind of a foot. It took up the entire box and it was hard to tell how many toes were on it. Bits of grass and dried mud still stuck to the top of the toes.
"I never show it to anyone," said Jim, "it's nobody's business and I don't want the place crawling with camera crews and weekend Bigfoot hunters."
"Yeah, but you got this in Roslyn. Why don't you get it checked out up at the university and let Roslyn deal with the tourists?" I waved Jim away as he tried to hand me another cigarette.
"Oh no," He said and looked right at me, "we recorded the screams in Roslyn, I got this track from across the river."
