There are things in this world we cannot explain, creatures and occurrences of the most dark and twisted nature, they haunt our very souls. I speak of the stuff of nightmares, not fleeting meaningless musing of morbid imagination, but what lurks within the darkest crevices of our world. Such ancient evils do exist, whether you believe the ramblings of an old fool, makes no difference to this horrifying truth. I have witnessed unspeakable evil from the dregs of humanities morose souls, but this too is not what I speak of.
As a youth I was quite the skeptic when it came to matters of the paranormal and other such monstrosities, and even authored several books attempting to dissuade others of their beliefs in such things. One day, I received a telephone call from a resident of the rural town Aladdin, Wyoming. This rather backwoods fellow, by the name of Richard Dowells, told me of such unspeakable evil which haunted the densely wooded areas surrounding the town.
He referred to the creature as the Hyena Man and told me such demented tales of the creature’s exploits, a lesser man would have run in fear. This being had terrorized the small town since its establishment in 1896, according to the poor fellow. Over the course of the previous hundred years or so, countless men, women, and children have disappeared without any logical explanation or traces of their whereabouts.
The attacks grew in such ferocity and frequency, people began to abandon the town until the population dipped drastically. I was not unfamiliar with the idea of mass hysteria and other powers of delusion in otherwise sane minds, and due to these beliefs, I assumed a scientific explanation could be made regarding the disappearances of various members of Aladdin. Surely some logical conclusion could be found to explain the melancholy situation, so I agreed to travel to Wyoming to review the case. I was searching for a new subject for my next book anyway, and this seemed to fit perfectly with my typical interests.
The flight to Wyoming left the next morning, and within 24 hours I found myself standing in front of the general store/post office awaiting the man’s arrival. He drove up within 30 minutes in a beat up, nearly antique blue Chevy truck. The rusted vehicle blew billows of blackened smoke as he slammed her into park and hopped out to greet me with a toothy grin on his wizened face. He sported a long white beard that fell just past his chest, and similar hair that ran to his lower back. The man wore coveralls, and a red plaid, buttoned up shirt.
Immediately we began to arrange accommodations for my stay, and the man gave me the choice of staying with him in his family’s four-bedroom home or staying at the Aladdin Motel, the towns only accommodation for weary travelers. I elected to take the second option, and he drove me just down the street to the cozy little motel. He waited for me in the parking lot, as I made arrangements with the owner, and brought my bags to my room, the interior of which was covered in wood paneling and smelled mildly of cigarette smoke. This did not bother me much though, because I would likely only use the room to sleep and not much else.
I emerged from the room and walked back to my new comrade’s truck, who was blasting “The Man in Black” by Johnny Cash, and bobbing his slightly head to the beat of the song. He waved at me and gave me the same toothy smile as before, and I jumped into his rusty old beast of a truck. The door creaked shut and he popped the truck in drive with one quick fluid motion and we headed to the local café for a bit of food and coffee.
We arrived at the Aladdin Café within a few minutes, and we took a seat near one of the few windows. It was a small unassuming place, with limited menu options but I have never been a picky man, so none of this bothered me. The server approached us, a portly blonde woman in her late 30s, and we ordered our food: burgers, fries, and two cups of hot coffee. She was polite, but she did look at me oddly for a moment as I ordered, but such is life in small towns. Newcomers are always looked upon with an odd mixture of fear, curiosity, and defensiveness.
Once the woman left to prepare our orders, we got around to discussing the matter at hand, the Hyena Man and the disappearances surrounding the town. As always, I attempted to discover similarities in the individual vanishings, but there appeared to be none. In the early years of the town’s establishment, droves of men disappeared at random, upwards of 15 per year, an incredibly high number for such a low population of individuals. As the coal mine expanded, families began to inhabit the area and women and children began to disappear as well.
The frightened population began to dwindle as a result, and the disappearances diminished as well. This can partly be explained by the coal mining industry’s decline, but I figured mass hysteria, over the Hyena Man, played a pivotal role in addition. Now there is only a missing person’s case every few years or so, but something different happened this year. Over the last few months five people had vanished inexplicably, two of them were young girls of seven and eight and the other three were men in their mid to late twenties dropping the already dwindling population to just 15 poor souls.
I enquired as to the last known whereabouts of the missing persons, and Richard was unsure of this fact. He did, however, point me in the direction of their homes, almost a mile to the east of the town, near the old Aladdin Coal Tipple, now a park of sorts for the local populace. I found it odd all five individuals lived so near to the same location and told the man my thoughts on the matter. We agreed to visit the victim’s homes, and perhaps the old mine if time allowed. It was around 2pm in October, so our available daylight was limited, and I did not want to explore the mining area in the dark. Despite my lack of belief in the supernatural, something was causing these people to disappear, and I had no desire to confront it in the dark.
At this point the server arrived with our food and drinks and set them gingerly upon our table. She looked me up and down for a moment and then asked if I was investigating the Hyena Man. I told her I was, and her eyes softened a bit. She must have over heard us talking in the tiny café, but this did not bother me.
The large woman placed her calloused hand on mine, and looked into my eyes, tears forming in the corners of her eyes. “Just be careful, we have lost so many people already.” She moved away immediately after this, tears pouring down her face as she turned away.
I gave Richard a questioning look and he told me the woman lost her son a few months ago. With such a low population, surely everyone I met in this little town, would have lost someone dear to them in recent years. The thought saddened me deeply, and I looked at Richard and imagined the people he must have lost. I did not comment on the matter out of fear of upsetting him. We finished our food quickly, left the little café, and got in his old truck. It started up immediately and we headed east for a few minutes to the few remaining houses out that way.
A barbed wire fence adhered to wooden posts surrounded the property, and Richard had to get out of his truck to unchain a large gate before we could enter. Six houses sat around a dirt roundabout, and we parked the truck in the driveway of the first home. It was an older construction, with a green steel roof and a wraparound porch. The siding used to be white at some point in its lifetime, but it was now a yellowish color and was cracked from sun exposure in several places.
A woman in her early 40’s with brown, speckled grey hair walked out of the house as we pulled up, and stood there staring at us with her hands on her hips, an uneasy look spread across her face. We both got out and approached the house, and the woman seemed to soften a bit when she recognized Richard. We greeted her, and I introduced myself, extending my hand in a friendly gesture. She took it cautiously, and we shook hands briefly, before she inquired as to the reason for our visit. I told her of my career as an investigative journalist and told her of my intention to get to the bottom of the supposed Hyena Man.
As she looked at me for a few moments, I could see a series of thoughts play across her face in such an obvious manner, it was almost as if I could read her mind. First, she gave me an incredulous look, then it turned to disdain, as if she thought I were stupid, then a small glimmer of hope, followed by an immense sadness that stayed plastered on her prematurely wrinkled face. She beckoned us inside, and Richard and I took a seat at a large wooden table, in the center of an older kitchen plastered in horrid wall paper depicting images of roosters and other farm animals. The place smelled of burnt coffee, with just a hint of cow manure but I did not mind the aroma, in fact it was rather pleasing for some odd reason.
The woman joined us at the circular table and we began to discuss the most recent disappearances with some degree of difficulty for the poor lady. Both her son and her daughter disappeared within the last four months. First her daughter, a girl of only eight years old, vanished without a trace four months ago while playing near the Aladdin Coal Tipple. Her son took her loss particularly hard, likely because he felt some degree of responsibility. He was supposed to be watching her at the time and had spent months searching for his sister with no avail. He disappeared last month, during one of his daily searches, and as with the other cases, they found no evidence to indicate his whereabouts.
I inquired of the men in the area, and asked her if she noticed anything suspicious, outside of the obvious facts of the case. She was taken aback by the question and assured me nobody in the area was capable of anything as demented as kidnapping multiple people. The woman left it at that, since she still possessed some modicum of hope that her son and daughter remained alive. I asked her of suspicious vehicles in the area, but once again she told me nothing was amiss that she had observed. Few traffic passed through the area and abnormal vehicles were noticed quickly by the frightened populace.
Feeling like we were at a dead end, we left the poor woman’s house and checked in with the other residents. They gave much the same answers. Their loving husbands, siblings, sons, and daughters all seemed to vanish near the Aladdin Coal Tipple. My thoughts were beginning to tend towards the idea, these people were finding their way into the old mine and perishing one way or another, but if this were the case, why had they not sealed the way in shut? Perhaps there was another entrance the general populace was unaware of and thus had not been sealed. I settled on this line of thought as we left the last house, and the sun began to set on the morose little town of Aladdin.
Not once did my mind lend credence to any monster or creature described as the Hyena Man. Richard seemed to read my mind, as we opened the doors of his truck and stepped inside, because he began to recant tales of sightings of this creature in the area. Though I did not buy into it, I let him speak and listened well. An old urban legend goes that as workers dug the mine in the late 1800’s, they stumbled upon a previously unmapped cave system. A group of miners began to explore the cave under orders from their foreman, and though they took many precautions to prevent it, they became lost in the cave and were never seen again.
The foreman sent another miner in after them, but this time they attached a considerable length of rope to the man, so he could find his way back. At some point, the rope pulled very quickly into the cave system, as if he fell into an immense ravine or something pulled him into the dark depths. The tough rope snapped, and the remaining workers pulled the remaining slack out of the cave, and found the frazzled end covered in blood and an unknown black substance. The foreman called authorities, and they arrived with a search party, a group of experts on cave mapping and search and rescue, within 24 hours of the first group’s disappearance.
The party consisted of five men, armed with climbing equipment, rope, and various other things needed to explore a dangerous cave system. Of the group, only one man returned, covered in deep gashes and bruises all over his body. The man seemed delirious from exhaustion and lack of blood, and he spoke of a creature who attacked the party, and he was only narrowly able to escape as the monster fed upon his coworkers.
Richard and I arrived at the motel, but sat in his truck still discussing the Hyena Man. I inquired of the lone survivor’s description of the creature, and Richard continued with his story. A few men immediately helped the man out of the mine and set him 20 meters away from the entrance because the darkness of it now frightened him. After some time, the rescuer finally gathered his wits, and told all the men to seal the entrance to the cave, or it would be their doom.
He described a creature that stood on two feet like a man and had a long narrow snout with rows upon rows of sharp jagged teeth. Thick, noxious, black drool poured from its mouth and sat in puddles on the floor. At first the men thought the creature was one of the lost workers, and a few of them approached it calling out. It roared at them sending forth such an unnatural sound they all quivered in terror. Then, in an instant the monster jumped upon two of the rescuers and ripped their throats out, splattering blood all over the walls.
The man even described the smell of the creature, which he compared to a month-old rotting corpse. Its eyes were immense, stark black saucers, like other dark dwelling creatures. According to the legend, the foreman ordered the cave system sealed away behind a brick wall, but it was too late, and miners began to vanish with regularity, year after year. By the time we finished our conversation, the night had fully taken hold of Aladdin and I bid my host good night. I walked into my motel room and fell into bed, exhausted from today’s exploits, and fell into a deep slumber within a few short minutes.
A loud rapping at the door jolted me awake, and the sun’s rays were just beginning to peak over the horizon. I lay there for a few seconds, wondering if the sound was some trick of my dream state when the knocking returned with more ferocity and vigor. I yawned loudly and stubbled towards the door in a mild haze. It was Richard, and he had a look of such terror spread across his face, I immediately inquired as to what was the matter. He told me another child, the last child in the town, disappeared sometime in the night. This time from a trailer on the very edge of town, a full mile from Aladdin Coal Tipple.
This information quickly jolted me to by senses, and I rushed out the door still in my clothes from the previous night. Richard did not seem to care about my disheveled appearance, and neither did I at this point. We both knew our destination, and we did not talk as Richard sped east towards the old mine. We pulled into the parking lot of the mine/park in just under a minute, thanks to Richard’s aggressive driving. We both got out of the truck and Richard grabbed two flashlights, a hefty length of rope, and two hard hats. He handed me a flashlight and a hardhat, and the pair of us hurried through a 12-foot-tall wooden gate. A plaque sat on one side of the fence stating simply ‘Aladdin Tipple: Historical Interpretive Park’.
We hurried down the graveled path and I could see an ancient wooden coal chute rising high in the distance, a true monstrosity of a begone age. Soon we approached the chute, and I could see a concrete archway about fifty feet further on. It was sealed shut solidly from appearances, but I walked forward and inspected its strength by applying force to each brick. None gave a single centimeter as I inspected them, and I looked at Richard in dismay.
He told me of a mine ventilation shaft that may grant us entrance into the dark hell. I agreed to try it, and he pointed out a small construction 30 feet to the right of the stone archway, and we reached it within a few moments. A small wooden structure, closely resembling a chicken coup covered the entrance to the shaft, probably built to keep water from flooding it. I flashed my light within the small building and found the duct closely resembled a well. It had a diameter of perhaps four feet, and the sides of it were built up using large, white bricks.
Cool air blew up from the shaft invading my nostrils with the smell of rot and decay. I looked closely at a marking on the side of the well like structure, and upon closer examination found it to be a small bloody handprint, with a single broken finger nail lodged into the stone. My heart began to pound as I reached down and grabbed the broken nail and found it to be about the size of a young child’s nail. It was painted pale pink, and I grimaced as I handed it to Richard. He tossed it to the ground and busied himself tying off the rope to a nearby sturdy tree.
Once finished, we tossed the length of rope down the shaft and after a few seconds we heard it hit solid ground. This eased our discomfort mildly, since the abyss couldn’t be very deep. We agreed to enter the mine one at a time, to minimize the stress on the rope, and I, for some unknown reason, volunteered to go first into the dark, decrepit hole. I donned the hardhat and grabbed the rope, before lowering myself into the depths of that hell.
The putrid stench grew, the further I descended into the chamber, and I could not tell you how long it took me reach the bottom, but when I looked upward to call to Richard, the amount of light shining down upon me appeared miniscule. I grabbed the flashlight and turned it on and was met immediately with a gruesome scene. Scattered all around me were piles of bones, many of which were broken in half, so something could drink the rich marrow from within them. Dried blood coated every inch of the walls, of the small square structure. The roof was only about 10 feet high, once I walked out of the air shaft, and the chamber was around 20 feet wide and 20 feet long. At the far end of the chamber a large hole burst through the wall, large enough to accommodate any person or creature who wanted to enter it. I shined my light within its depths but could not discern much from this distance.
Richard dropped the last few feet of his downward journey, creating a loud echo throughout the chamber. He grimaced at the sight of the piles of bones and I motioned to the large hole in the opposite wall. We approached it cautiously, and as we walked deeper into the chamber, I noticed signs of fresher remains. A small pile of intestines, and other vile entrails sat in a corner, previously out of view. The smell almost overwhelmed us, and I felt myself gag more than once, but managed to keep the contents of my stomach within my body. Richard was not so lucky, he vomited within a few seconds of enduring the vile sight. He looked up weakly and shrugged at me, and we continued our journey.
We came to the hole in the rock wall, and I shined my light within its depths, and found we were standing at the entrance to an immense cave system. The stories were true, and what morbid creature would we face to save this young girl? The thought would have frozen me in place, so I pushed it to the back of my mind the best I could. I inquired of Richard if he had any weapons, and he pulled a .38 revolver from his side, hidden before under his shirt. He handed it to me, and then pulled another revolver from his other side with a longer barrel. I could have hugged the man, but I refrained from making a fool of myself, and we headed into the cave.
The cave floor sloped downward at a steep decline, and we had to be cautious not to slip upon the wet rock. This creature must have a lair, and if the previous room was not it, I did not want to imagine the gruesome contents within its actual chamber. I voiced my opinion to Richard, who did not say anything in response, instead he glanced around the cave looking for signs of movement, his firearm ready in his hand.
The roof lowered to around seven feet as we continued our journey and grew lower the further we descended into the abyss. In the darkness we heard an unnatural howl echo through the cave, and we both froze in place, flashing our lights around wildly. As we traveled deeper, the smell of rot and decay subsided a bit but did not disappear completely. It still lingered there, a morbid testimony to the tomb we now travelled in.
I wondered briefly as to the nature of the howl, and even speculated that the creature perhaps used some sort of sonar to see, but this thought like the others had to be pushed to the back of my mind, out of fear it would freeze me in place. Our pace slowed but regardless we continued onward, with only thoughts of saving this young girl. Soon we had to squat to move forward but we still had plenty of room to walk side by side. The walls started to narrow as well though, and we feared we would have to walk single file, but this never came to be.
Closer this time, the creature howled again, and I thought for a moment I could make out a shape in the darkness, but it was just my imagination playing tricks on me. We moved onward at a snail’s pace, our hearts beating so loudly, I thought for a moment I could hear both Richard’s heartbeat and my own. This too was only my imagination though, just another powerful delusion of the mind. I laughed out loud at the thought. My entire adult life so far, I had spent convincing my self and others of the lies of our minds, when I was the one who was the liar. How many things was I wrong about up to this point? What evil creatures lurk in the deep, dark crevices of this ancient world? I shuttered at the thought of it. Soon we came to a fork in the path, and upon the inspection of the walls on the right-hand path we found deep gouges in the rocky surface.
We decided to take the right-hand path, based on the evidence and as we travelled further down the tunnel, the deep smell of rot and death returned twice as strong as before. This simple fact told us we were close, and this thought was not at all comforting. We came upon a dead end in the path, and we approached the wall blocking our path. We noticed a large hole in the rock floor with a five-foot diameter, and it dropped off about seven feet into an unknown chamber. Richard volunteered to go first this time, to even the odds I suppose, and instead of jumping straight into the hole, he attempted to lower himself into the crevice, using his hands as support.
As he dropped down, his eyes grew wide as something grabbed him by the waist and pulled him into the hole. He let out a portion of a scream and then was gone. I jumped into the hole after him, scraping my arms badly against the sharp jagged rocks on each side of the crevice, but adrenaline coursed through my veins and I barely noticed the pain or the trickles of blood flowing down my arms. The creature ate greedily, rending flesh from bone producing such a sickening sound. I pointed my flashlight at the creature and saw that it had ripped Richard into several pieces in the short period of time it took me to jump into the cavern.
The creature did indeed walk upon two legs like a human, but it resembled man very little. Its body was covered in course hair, and its arms were so long they touched the ground as it moved. Its hands were large and strong enough to crush a human skull, and razor-sharp claws extended from each of its fingers, that were at least six inches long. My shaking hand raised the pistol, and I fired a shot into the back of the creature. It turned its massive head, and I looked into its massive black eyes. I steadied the pistol as best I could and fired again this time hitting it in the shoulder.
It fell back for a moment, and I fired again, hitting it dead between the eyes. The monster dropped to the floor and sat for a moment on its hands and knees. I ran up to it, nearly slipping on the wet floor and fired the remaining bullets into the creature’s brain. It fell completely to the floor, and I looked around the cavern for the remaining pistol. I located it strapped to Richard’s dismembered torso, and I pulled it out and fired all six shots into the Hyena Man’s brain, before falling to the floor in exhaustion as the adrenaline finally ran its course. I looked around the room after a few minutes of breathing heavily, fresh blood soaked every inch of the rock floor and I found myself covered in the thick substance. Skulls and bones stripped of every morsel of meat littered the cavern floor.
Then I noticed a small hand in the corner of the cave, and I approached it wearily. Its nails were painted pale pink, and tears began to pour from my face. My eyes met a large opening in a previously unnoticed wall, and I shined my light inside of it. A howl pierced my ear drums, and my heart began to pound once more. I ran to the crevice and pulled myself up into the previous chamber, and quickly made the ascent to the cavern air shaft. I grabbed the rope and climbed to the surface and bolted to Richards truck.
No one believed my dark little tale, who would have been capable of ending the foul creatures. I called countless newspapers, politicians, and the like but every single person laughed at me. The little town of Aladdin is doomed to suffer, for as long as those monsters exist, and there is little that can be done to end them. I suggested to the 14 remaining residents that they move, but it is their home, and they are too set in their ways to move. On top of this, the owners sold the town last year for just under half a million dollars.
What new victims will the new owners bring to that circle of hell? Time will tell, I suppose, but I am just a crazy old man, nobody listens to anymore. I suppose it is better that way. In a few days I will reenter Aladdin with as much dynamite as I can manage to find. I will reenter that treacherous cavern and do what I can to end the vile creatures. My mind is not delusional enough to believe I can escape that hell more than once, but regardless my time is near, and it is always better to go out with a bang rather than a whimper.
[bctt tweet=”OCTOBER TERROR 2018 Short Story Award – Entry #63 ‘What Dwells Beneath’ by Tommy Jarrett – Enjoy all this terrific, disturbing material you have in your hands, lots of horror stories at your disposal for your dark delight and vote!” username=”theboldmom”]
On October 23rd we’ll close submissions and open a poll for the readers to choose their favourite one! You’ll have a week to make your choice and on October 31st we’ll announce the winner!!!
