Chapter 1

In the winter of 1996 I was 25 years old and had been working as an officer for five years in a small town east of Saginaw, Michigan. The winter that year was rough, and most things in town were closed for a few days as we shoveled the snow out of the roads. We had our fair share of dumb 911 calls, drunk people, a car crash, those sorts of things. One night at around 11 pm we got a call about a possible home intruder, but the house address was a few minutes out of town in the cornfields, and with the snow on the roads not fully plowed away it took even longer to get there. It took me 20 minutes to drive from the station to the farm house. I parked my cruiser and stepped out, keeping my hand ready by my holster, my other hand grabbing the flashlight from my coat pocket.

From the street the house looked entirely normal, the lights upstairs were off but a small bit of light was visible through the glass of the front door. I kept my head down, partially in the collar of my thick jacket to keep the freezing wind from my face but as I looked down and turned my flashlight on I saw long, bare, footprints in the snow. I froze briefly,

“What the…?”

My tire tracks had obscured some of them, but I followed what remained and they seemed to go from the field to the right of my cruiser, across the street, and into the house. I leaned back into my cruiser, grabbed the radio and called in, “arrived at scene, requesting assistance, footprints in snow… I don’t know what to make of it, heading inside.”

I closed the door to my cruiser, drew my pistol, and followed beside the footprints towards the house. The front door was ajar but without signs of forced entry, like the intruder had simply walked in. I pushed open the door and stepped inside, but nothing looked wrong. The TV in the living room was left on, as was the kitchen light. After finding nothing, I make my way upstairs. The top of the stairs came to a hallway, to the left was one door and to the right were another two. The door to the left was wide open with the lights off, the room was small and seemed like a spare bedroom, furnished and organized but dusty and untouched.

I turned to the other end of the hall and stalked down it, keeping my footsteps as quiet as I could on the hardwood. I checked the closer door on my left, closed but unlocked. The mirror on the wall shone the light of my flashlight back at me and as I lowered it I saw a counter and a sink and then the toilet and shower beside it. The bathroom was short and narrow between the spare bedroom to the left of it and whatever waited for me behind the door to my right. I grabbed the door knob and turned it slowly as I tried to push the door open, but it wouldn’t budge.

It felt like someone was leaning against the door, but not trying to keep it shut. I pushed it open and as the door gave in I heard a wet thud and a long squelch as I opened it further. I lifted my flashlight to see that where I had pushed open the door there was an immense, streaked puddle of blood. My heart pounded as I stepped around the pool and further into the room to look behind the door. In a limp and blood stained hand laid the landline phone, but as I looked further the rest of the body was unrecognizable, mauled and broken.

I wretched and ran to the bathroom, unable to keep from puking at the sight of the eviscerated victim. I fell to my knees in front of the toilet and dry heaved for what felt like an eternity. As I sat up to catch my breath, there were loud footsteps and something dashed past the open doorway in my peripheral. I startled but quickly found my bearings and got off of the floor, grabbing my pistol and flashlight from the counter to give chase. By the time I stepped out of the bathroom and pointed my flashlight down the hallway, whatever had sprinted past was already down the stairs. I gave chase, practically leaping down the stairwell to keep up, but halfway down I heard the crash of glass shattering. I reached the living room again and the backdoor was broken through. I stood there, confused and frightened, as whatever had killed the caller escaped into the pitch black of a moonless winter night.

I looked down and now saw that there was a new trail of thickly splattered blood and footprints, but the footprints were distorted, they were thicker and pawlike, with only the balls of the feet and clawed points in front of them making up the bloodied prints. I stood frozen, not knowing what to do, before in the distance I heard a siren blaring. I stared out of the smashed backdoor a few seconds longer before I returned to the front porch and waved down the back up.

I don’t remember much of the rest of the night, mostly paperwork and reporting, but the last thing that has stuck with me after all these years is hearing two of my fellow officers mentioning the body of the victim had been taken. I stayed working there for a few months longer, but the weight of what I had seen and the fact nothing ever came of it – no answers, no investigation, like the entire thing had been swept under the rug – took a toll on me, and I ended up quitting by the spring of 1997.