Short Horror Stories

46. Remembering

A decade ago, when I was about 13, my dad got a call from a friend of his.
His friend had shot a huge, 8 point white tail buck, and lost it the night before in the woods. The deer was shot with a bow at sunset, and ran into the woods across a road. My Father’s friend called him at 8 at night, and told him he’d need help finding it the next day. My father asks if I wanna learn about tracking deer. I’m all for it, because hunting is amazing, and off we go the next morning. This is out on Maryland’s eastern shore. Lots of woods, lots of hills, lots of walking. I was tired and trying to retain what these two hunters are telling me, but still having a blast. We found a really long blood trail, fur, the whole thing was fun for me, and my dad.

We’d been out there for maybe an hour or two. I take a break near a small thing of trees that connect to the massive woods where the blood trail went. My Dad’s friend goes into the woods, and I’m just looking at the trees, trying to spot a white belly, or part of a rack… Then, I saw something, perched on four limbs.

It was hard to see it, and it’s been about a decade since, but I saw what looked like a fox, with a short muzzle, no tail, and really long limbs. Like, deer length, deer thin limbs. It’s just standing there, maybe 20 yards from me. I can’t tell what it is, or what color, I just know it’s strange looking and it’s not moving.

That’s not the weird part. That thing kinda just… loped away. Like, those cat videos where the cat is scared, lifts its front feet off the ground, and runs off on its back legs? Like that, only it held its front legs higher, and it ran like that was the way it had run its entire life. Like that was natural for it to do. Hunched and hurried, but not wobbly.

I only saw it for a few seconds. Dad scared the shit out of me by shouting about the 8 pointer being found. I told dad I saw a weird animal. He said it may have been a fox. I told him about the legs being weird and long. He gave me ‘the look’. The look that says stop making shit up. I got that look a lot.

Well, I learned how to gut, drag, and track a deer that day. We took a trip to the butcher, I got to watch them begin processing, and that was that. As for what I saw? I’ve always had a big imagination. I could have just been sleep deprived, because 6am on a Saturday at 13 years old is bullshit. Maybe it was just a fox that moved weird. Maybe it was a deer with a messed up head. I don’t know. I only saw it for a few seconds.

But what I do know is that deer and foxes don’t run on their back legs.