Cryptozoology

Cryptozoology?

I grew up in a rural area near Palm Springs, California, in a small housing tract that sat at the base of the San Jacinto Mountains. There were few homes in the tract, and the area was pretty much undeveloped, but what we did have in abundance was the surrounding desert wild life.

I spent many hours as a child exploring the desert because I loved it; but I also spent a lot of time outdoors because my family didn't have a television. The area was so remote that cable TV was not available to us.

Cable TV notwithstanding, my step-father could have erected an antenna on the roof, but both my parents were eccentric artists who spent all their time working in the studio. They could have cared less about TV. But I had my peers at school to keep up with, peers who spent a good deal of their recess time discussing their favorite television shows. Suffice it to say, I was outside the loop. And to make matters worse, I was something of an egg-head, and a voracious reader. In short, I was a nerd, an outsider, a weirdo.

And so begins my strange story …

My house was situated at the foot of an alluvial fan that spread out from the base of the San Jacinto range, and gave rise to a vast, three-mile stretch of primeval desert. The crotch of the mountain from which this fan unfolded hosted a gushing, pristine spring, which in turn fed a swatch of lush plant life, something that was a rarity in the parts.

This rare and lovely place was aptly dubbed “the Springs” by the locals; but those few souls who ventured the three miles by foot it took to get there, so that they might experience the beauty of the place up-close-and-personal, always returned with the same story: they felt as though they were being watched the entire time they were there.

I even heard from one group of intrepid teenagers who had hiked up there one time that something had chased them out, but when they were asked what it was that had chased them, they couldn't say. All they knew was that it was big, mean, and had made a lot of noise in the underbrush as it charged them.

And so the stories went for years about the Springs: you had only to go up there once to know you'd never go up there again.

Now, I loved taking long walks by myself when I was a kid—still do—and because I was a nerd, a weirdo, an outsider, it occurred to me that I should explore this magical place on my own, never mind all the silly stories I had heard from people who really had no appreciation for the earth and her wild places (or so I told myself). And because I had looked longingly at the Springs for years from the limitations of my bedroom window, dreaming of its beauty and wondering what it was like up there, I resolved one autumn day in 196— at the curious age of fifteen to hike up there to see for myself what it was like.

It was a warm day, the hike was a steep one, and I hadn't taken any food or water with me. But half way up I did find a trickle of water that flowed down from the Springs in a narrow track of rocks and sand.

It was the sweetest and coldest water I had ever tasted.

Two hours later I finally arrived at my verdant destination, and I found it was every bit as lovely as I had imagined it would be; leafy trees draped with green vines, plant life so thick the ground couldn't be seen, and stair-stepping pools of cold water caught between giant bed-like boulders. I took a long drink from one of the pools, and then settled down on a boulder to catch my breath. It was then that I first noticed the overwhelming silence of the place.

Now, I realize the absence of city noise can be defined as silence by those who live in the city. But to those who live in the country, it is the absence of the sounds of nature that defines silence, and this was silence in the strictest definition of the word: Except for the noise of trickling water, there were no birds singing, no frogs croaking, no crickets chirping; even the earth failed to sigh in this lonely place. All I heard was the sound of my own breathing. It was then that I realized this was indeed a strange place, and that something was indeed watching me, something that was entirely inimical to human life, something completely hostile to my presence there.

Whatever this thing was, I knew it wanted me to leave. And I did just that. After a grueling two hour hike up to the Springs in the heat, I had stayed there but a mere five minutes before running out of the place so fast I didn't take time to look around to see if there was anything following me.

I got home a few hours later, looked back at the Springs from where I stood in the driveway, and wondered why a beautiful place like that—a place devoid of humans—could be so ominous in spirit.

But this isn't the end of my story.

One night two weeks later, I took a walk by myself on the neighborhood road hemming that particular stretch of the alluvial desert. It was a dark and moonless night, and I didn't have a flashlight. My only light was what spilled over from the streetlamps that sparsely dotted the desert-side of the road.

I was approaching one of those lamp-posts fifty yards up ahead when I saw a very large dog sitting directly beneath the lamp in a pool of light.

I am a dog lover, so the presence of this very large canine didn't alarm me (though at the time it never occurred to me that a human might be attached to this dog, and was at that very moment lurking somewhere out of my range of sight! Luckily, that was not the case) I simply kept walking in the animal's direction, though I hugged the opposite side of the street.

It was when I was twenty feet away from the beast that I realized it was not a dog at all; though what species of animal it was I couldn't tell. What I could tell was that it had the reddest eyes I'd ever seen, eyes that unflinchingly stared at and burned right through me. I recognized intelligence in those burning red eyes, an intelligence that far exceeded the simple smarts of feral cunning.

I resolved to keep on walking, to not break my stride, to not show any fear as I approached the animal. As I closed the gap between us, our eyes locked, and I knew that my instincts were right on-the-money; if I were to have faltered in my stride, if I were to have felt or exhibited fear in the slightest degree, if I had wavered at all and run in the opposite direction, the beast would have attacked me.

As I walked on, still hugging the opposite side of the road, I kept my sight fixed on the animal; and then as I passed directly in front of it, I nodded my head as though in greeting, letting it know that I recognized it. I even smiled at the animal. It maintained its stony watch of me, and thus we studied each other as I walked by.

It was a bear-like creature with a bear-like snout; sharp, snub ears that sprung up on the side of the head rather than the top; short dark fur that was not bear-like, and a muscled, massive body with long fore-legs. It sat on its haunches in the pool of light; not outside the pool of light, mind you, but in the very center where I was sure to see it. I would guess that the thing might have stood as tall as a Great Dane, had it stood. But thankfully, it hadn't.

I had two short blocks yet to walk to my house, but I never altered my pace. After nodding my head at the beast in passing, I turned my attention back to the road, and told myself to remain confident and calm. I must control my emotions or die, I told myself. Of this I was certain.

As I headed up the home-stretch, I felt the creature's sighted-bead on my back. Nevertheless, I maintained a steady, confident stride. It was when I reached the foot of the driveway that I bolted for the front door, opened it, ran inside, and then slammed and locked it behind me.

My mother looked up from where she was sitting on the couch and asked me, "What are you doing?"

I guess I had slammed the door a bit too hard.

"I got the heebie-jeebies out there," was all I said to her. Then I went to my bedroom and looked out the window.

There was nothing under the lamp down the street, nothing in the light that pooled beneath it. But I know what I saw. To this day I refer to the animal as a were-bear, for lack of a better name, but from where this animal came I cannot say.

I never took another night-time stroll in the old neighborhood after my encounter with that strange creature.

I now believe the Springs might be a portal to some other place, a power place, and that maybe this creature is its guardian. I've never been back there. I moved away in 1970, and though the surrounding desert is now developed, the Springs remains untouched and remote. No homes or buildings crowd the borders there.

Postscript: This true account first appeared in the online ezine Guardian Tales.

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