other than probably fireflies, and listened into the woods, but he could hear nothing—not even the sounds of the insects. It was completely silent in the area again. Craig decided to call it a night and picked up his equipment from the table and stuck it in the storage compartment of the trailer, a large space next to the door that fit storage under the floor of the trailer. Once Craig had put all his equipment away for the night, he locked the door to the storage area with a padlock and entered into his trailer. He left the table outside the trailer. He was just going to turn around and put his equipment right back on the table for the next day anyway. Once Craig was in the trailer he shut and locked the door behind him. Craig turned on a small lamp in the trailer for some light. He took his jacket off and hung it up in the small closet of the trailer by the door. His dog, Max, was loyally sleeping on the foot of the bed of the trailer. Craig crawled onto the top covers of the bed fully clothed and, laying on his back, stared up at the ceiling of the trailer. While he lay there in silence, Craig thought to himself how incredible it will be someday when he can bring actual physical proof and evidence that the creatures he has spent so much time studying for the past couple years are real. Drowsiness began to creep into the eyes of Craig as he lifted his wrist up to his face and read the time. It was now 10:58 p.m., and Craig slowly slipped into a deep slumber.
*****
Thump! It was the sound that the loud bang on the outside of the trailer had made that had woke Craig up in the middle of the night. He rubbed his eyes with the backs of his hands and looked at his wristwatch. The glowing numbers on his wristwatch said that the time was now 2:12 a.m. He had slept for about three hours. Craig laid in bed still disoriented, trying to fall back to sleep when the sound of another loud thump was made that shook the trailer. Craig woke up and looked toward the windows in the front of the trailer. He wasn’t certain, but Craig thought that he had seen a pair of red glowing balls of light in the front window. Craig instantly sat up in bed but did not see the red glowing balls of light in front of the trailer anymore. Craig got up and out of bed and stood in the middle of the trailer looking around. His dog, Max, began to wake up too. Raising his head up, Max began to growl. The hairs on the dog’s back began to stand on end. Craig listened intently for another loud thump to come. He wasn’t disappointed. He heard another loud thump and the trailer rock on its wheels from whatever hit the side of the trailer. A light turned on from behind Craig. He slowly turned around to see where the source of the light was coming from. It was his security cameras from outside. The monitor had turned on as it had caught movement on the south side camera, the one pointing toward the forest. Craig looked at the lit monitor and saw a large dark shadow moving toward the trailer from the darkness of the forest. Craig could faintly see the outline of what appeared to be a very strong upright bipedal creature, tall as it was wide. Craig couldn’t be certain what he was looking at, but he could see a set of two small red eyes glowing in the darkness. Craig turned the TV off, careful not to emit any light from within the trailer to indicate to whatever it was out there that he was in the trailer. Craig was in a position where he couldn’t defend himself; being away from civilization didn’t help his matters much either. Craig knew in that moment that he may have to defend himself and his dog in any way that he could. He had a baseball bat in the clothing closet where he hung his jacket up. He could grab that and keep it close. His cell phone. Craig just remembered that he had his cell phone with him too. It was up toward the front of the trailer, in the glove compartment. Craig first grabbed the bat from the clothing closet, then made his way toward the front of the trailer. Craig cautiously looked out the windows of the front of the trailer. He could hear Max, still lying in bed and still growling as if an intruder was outside. Craig reached past the passenger seat and opened the glove box where he found his cell phone. Craig grabbed his phone and checked that his phone had exactly 73 percent battery power.
“Thank God,” whispered Craig to himself as he backtracked his way back into the middle of the trailer.
In that moment though, something had run into the side of the trailer from the side, nearly tipping it over. The trailer shook and loose notepads and pens fell from the dining table onto the floor. Pots and pans fell out of the cupboards by the kitchen area. The trailer shocks creaked under the pressure of the impact and was moving up and down. Craig nearly fell over from the trailer moving, bracing himself on the opposite side wall of where the impact from the outside hit the trailer. Craig didn’t know who he could call for help. No one knew that he was out here in the forest. He tried to remember how he had exactly got to where he was. He could call for the sheriff to come out and help. It was his only chance. Craig turned his phone on and began to dial when he heard a loud noise from outside the trailer. The noise sounded like humans talking, but Craig could tell they weren’t humans. It didn’t sound exactly like humans. The vocalization sounded deep, guttural, but worst of all, it sounded as if it was coming from all around the trailer. The sounds sounded like the creatures in his recording and what he had heard deep in the forest earlier in the evening. Craig turned around and looked at the security monitor that he had turned off. Grabbing his jacket from the closet, Craig put the jacket over the top of the monitor and ducked his head under the jacket. Craig turned the security monitor back on. The screen glowed brightly back to life. It took a moment for Craig’s eyes to adjust from the darkness to the light of the monitor again, but when they did, he regretted ever coming out to these woods. From the monitor Craig saw large humanoids standing around the trailer, looking at the outside of the trailer. All three of the cameras outside were powered on from motion. The creatures were walking around the outside of the trailer, and to Craig’s horror they appeared as if they were trying to see into the trailer through the windows. Craig knew if the creatures saw the light of the security monitor, they would know for sure he was in there, if they didn’t already. Craig reached under the jacket and powered off the monitor. Craig could hear weird animal sounds coming from outside the trailer. Grunts, squawking, chatter, all filled the early morning darkness. Craig slowly took his jacket and set it down on the floor. Craig laid down on the floor, stuck his head and hands with his phone under the jacket, and turned his phone on to get an exact location on the GPS he had on his phone. While his phone was loading the coordinates though, Craig looked up from under the jacket and toward the front of the trailer and out the windows. There he saw a set of red glowing eyes, watching him through the glass. In a moment he locked eyes with the red glow, and in a brief moment, the eyes backtracked and disappeared back into the darkness. Craig knew that the creatures knew he was in the trailer now. Craig watched as a large branch slammed into the glass of the front of his trailer. Craig got out from under the jacket and crawled backward toward the bed. Max, the dog, jumped off the bed and onto the floor, crawling under the bed to hide. Max had an intuition that whatever was outside the trailer was a predator that he wanted no part of. Craig knew now for sure that the creatures knew he was in the trailer. He grabbed the baseball bat lying on the ground by him and took his phone and dialed 911. The phone rang twice before being picked up by an emergency service operator.
“911, what is your emergency?” said the operator.
“Yes, hello,” whispered Craig. “I need help. I’m out camping in the woods, by the Elwha River, and I need help.”
“What is the nature of your emergency, sir?”
“I was sleeping in my trailer, and someone is trying to break into my trailer from the outside.”
“Is someone threatening you, sir?”
“Something is…outside my trailer.”
“Something, sir?”
The operator could distinctly hear loud growling coming through Craig’s receiver in his phone.
“Yes, something.”
“Sir, what was that noise in the background?”
“That is them. Look, please send the sheriff, send help. They’re outside my trailer, and my dog and I are in very serious danger.”
“Sir, you need to be more specific on what is
