The Beast of Kingland Forest: Prelude to Starfall

A skeptical young man needs a topic for his college research paper. His 'believer' sister suggests investigating the mysterious creature in the forest.

November 1995

 

John heard the snapping of a twig and ice shot up his spine, one thought flashing through his mind.

The Beast!

He whipped his head from side to side, taking in the thick trees and dark brush of Kingland Forest. He dove behind a row of shrubs to his side and crouched on the bed of twigs. He peered through the space between the bushes and tried to stay still and silent, something almost impossible to do because of the thundering of his heart.

Another crunch, louder this time. John’s mind was filled with thoughts of the Loch Ness Monster swimming through the water or Bigfoot smashing down trees.

He shook his head; there had to be another explanation. It was a squirrel knocking down a dead tree branch or a deer or another large animal, though the thought of a bear didn’t fill him with confidence. 

More crunching, repeating and louder. Whatever it was, it was getting closer! John should have grabbed the camera from his backpack, should have taken out his small notebook, should have done a dozen other things to document his investigation, but all he could do was stare at the path leading through the gnarled trees.

A figure walked through the trees and John held his breath, frozen in place. Yet, instead of a Jersey Devil-like being with cloven hoofs or a Bigfoot-like beast with legs covered in thick hair, John saw a pair of very human legs in denim shorts and black hiking boots with pink trim!

John exhaled, almost groaned, and jumped upright. At nearly sixfeet tall, the top of the shrubs didn’t quite reach his chest, leaving him in full view of the teenage girl. She screamed and grabbed at her chest. “John! You scared the crap out of me!”

“You?” he snapped. “Allison, you almost gave me a heart attack.”

“Serves you right,” she sneered. “Why’d you run out without me?”

He blinked. “What? Wait, you wanted to come?”

“It was my idea, remember?”

“Why didn’t you say anything?” He paused. “Aren’t you scared?”

She planted her hands on her hips. “Are you?”

“I, uh….” He rolled his eyes and threw up his hands. “All right, fine.”

She grinned in triumph and pulled a disposable camera from the front pocket of her flannel shirt. “I’m gonna get a picture of the Beast to go with your research paper!”

“Research papers don’t have�"”

She marched past without glancing in his direction. John heard his father’s words echo in his mind. “Fearless and focused. Your sister got that from your mother.”

That thought brought forth another memory, just as it had for the past few months, of Allison hugging John, staring down at the wooden casket while saying, “she’s watching down on us.”

“Hey! Hurry up or I’ll leave you behind!”

Allison’s taunt brought John back to the present. She was waving at him from further down the path, a challenging smile on her face. John studied the thick treetops and dense overgrowth as he sprinted to catch up. “Aren’t you scared?”

“Can’t worry about that,” she answered. “We’re going to find proof that an alien creature’s wandering the woods!”

John shook his head. “That’s not what I’m�"”

He trailed off as Allison ignored him once again and trotted further down the path. He followed, thinking back to yesterday.

***

“It’s average.”

John felt the color drain from his face. “What do you mean?”

“The Effects of Ultraviolet Light on Native Plants,” his professor said, stating the title of John’s research proposal without looking at the thick stack of pages in his hand. “Your research methodology is sound and your experiment procedure is well thought out. The problem is your hypothesis. It’s been done already.”

He reached into the top drawer of his desk and pulled out two magazines. “Scientific American, July, nineteen twenty-six, and March, nineteen sixteen. I assume you read both issues?”

John cleared his throat. “Only the July issue.”

“Mr. Hawkins, you are one of my brightest students, so I was expecting something more from you.” He paused. “The reason I ask my students to hand in proposals at the beginning of the term isn’t just to give them experience for when they’ll be doing it in their career, it’s so I can guide them for the research paper due at the end.”

He gestured to the pages. “This proposal is acceptable, but that’s all. You can proceed with your experiment if you want, but I would suggest thinking of something…more.”

“I spent a week thinking up that experiment,” John complained later that night at the kitchen table while drowning his sorrows in layers of cheese and tomato sauce.

Allison shrugged slightly. “You did flip though those magazines you got at the library the night before that proposal-thingy was due.”

 “It wasn’t the night before,” John protested, though he did pale slightly. He hadn’t given himself enough time to think of a hypothesis, come up with an experiment to test that hypothesis, and write up the proposal for that experiment.

“Well, anyway,” Allison said, plopping a heaping spoonful of lasagna onto her plate, “you did the work, right? So why’s your teacher giving you a hard time?”

“College is a little different than high school,” John said, “especially a research course.”

Their father pointed at him with his fork. “Your teacher’s giving you a chance to get a better grade. You should take it.”

“I will,” John said. “I’m not the only student he’s giving a chance to rework their proposal but I’ve only got a week.”

“Oh!” Allison cried, her eyes lighting up, “it’s a biology class, right?”

He nodded. 

“Then you should prove the Kingland Beast is real!”

He blinked. “The what?”

“The creature that’s been in the woods since the Queen Lake Incident? It’s been in the paper.”

“Oh, that.” He’d read the first article, written by Walter Andros, who reported on the strange fireball a few weeks ago, but stopped reading the follow-up investigations after Andros started claiming the fireball was a crashing UFO.

Allison’s mouth dropped. “You really have that attitude? People are calling it a second Roswell.”

John rolled his eyes. “Did something crash into Queen Lake a few weeks ago? Yes. Was it a UFO? No! It was a spy satellite or a meteor or�"”

“I don’t know,” their father said. “Your grandfather said that he saw weird things in the sky during the second World War.”

Allison pointed at their father. “There! You see? The paper said that people started hearing weird noises in the forest right after the Queen Lake Incident! Like howls and screams and stuff like that. Plus, other witnesses claim that their watches stopped, and compasses started going crazy!”

John shook his head. “Why are you even bringing this up?”

“You can go into the woods and try to prove there’s a weird creature running around.”

“I’m not a reporter.” 

“I know that, but don’t you scientists investigate stuff like that?”

“Well, yeah, I guess but�"”

“Then what do you do as a biologist?”

John couldn’t think of an answer beyond research and more research. Still, this was one of the reasons why biologists went into the field. “All right, I’m interested. But, ” he said as his sister’s face lit up, “it’s not some alien creature. More than likely it’s just an animal that’s not native to this region.”

Allison frowned. “You’re no fun at all. Aren’t scientists supposed to look for new things or whatever?”

“Within reason. If there were aliens on earth, don’t you think we’d have more proof?”

She waved him off and carried her plate to the sink. “Whatever.”

John grunted and held back the rest of his argument. The idea of an alien spacecraft visiting earth was absurd, but Kingland Forest wasn’t some unknown chunk of land. It had been known and documented since the city of Anne Falls was founded, close to two hundred years ago. If people started reporting strange, unknown noises, then maybe there was an unknown, not new, animal in the forest. 

In any case, he’d need to do a preliminary investigation first and see if he found anything strange, such as hair samples or footprints, before thinking of another research proposal.

At least it’d give him an excuse to procrastinate before flipping through more science journals.

***

The fog of memory faded as John returned to the present. He continued to follow Allison down the path. Soon, the Hawkins siblings crested the hill and stared across the massive clearing in the forest’s center, which containing the sprawling Queen Lake. The water was still as blue and calm as it had always been.

“Over there,” Allison said, pointing to the row of trees lining the southern side of the lake. The row of thick, green-top trees extended in either direction except for the space behind the shimmering blue water. If the region hadn’t been suffering a drought, he’d have guessed the trees were felled in a severe thunderstorm.

His sister smirked with an accusatory expression. “See?”

“See what?” he asked. “All that proves is that something crashed here, which I’m not denying.”

Allison crossed her arms. “If it was a satellite or whatever you said, wouldn’t we have known about it?”

“Not if it was a spy satellite, which would explain why the military was supposedly here.”

She frowned but didn’t respond. She started snapping pictures while John studied the area. What should he do? Check for paw prints? Yes, that was a good idea.

He walked cautiously toward the lake, surveying the ground. Some areas of grass were flat while other areas were high and lush. Maybe if he was a hunter, he’d know what he was doing.

“John! Come here.”

John walked to where Allison stood in front of a shrub at the edge of the clearing. A wisp of gray fur clung to the thorns. “What kind of fur is this? Bet you never saw it before.”

He narrowed his eyes at her smirk and then turned his attention to the hair. It was a long clump of gray and white. “Hmm, strange. It’s not deer and no native bear has this color….”

“Ha!” Allison laughed.

He frowned. “It just means the animal isn’t native, which I said from the start. It could’ve been someone’s exotic pet, like a tiger or something.”

“Tiger fur is this long?”

“Um, no.” He leaned closer. “It actually looks like primate fur.” He turned to his sister before she could speak. “It’s not Bigfoot.”

She huffed. “So what do you think it is then? A gorilla or something?”

“No, but some kind of�"”

“Oh come on! Just admit it!”

He turned to her. “I’m not admitting anything.” Realizing how that sounded, he clarified: “I mean, there’s a rational explanation.” 

“But�"”

John felt his anger starting to rise and his patience slipping away. “You’ve got to start living in the real world.”

She huffed. “Oh, do I?”

“Yes! There isn’t some alien creature in the woods and there wasn’t an alien spaceship that crashed here. Heavenly beings aren’t staring down at us from the clouds.”

He watched the color drain from his sister’s face. “I didn’t mean it like that,” John stammered, “I-I should’ve said celestial or something rather than….”

He trailed off as Allison turned around. “Yeah,” she said, almost to herself, “I guess it makes sense. I thought it was just because it was Mom’s funeral, but you couldn’t stand listening to any of it, could you? You thought everyone at the service was…what? Delusional? Crazy?” She narrowed her eyes, “not living in the real world?”

“Allison, I�"”

His sister spun back around to face him. Her eyes were large, almost red, but her cheeks glistened. “Well, sorry that me and Dad don’t live in the real world!”

He reached for her but she turned again and sprinted up the path, vanishing over the crest of the hill. 

He started after her but the energy drained and he slowed to a stop. What was he supposed to say? It wasn’t necessarily that he didn’t believe; but he was a scientist and science was observation, not blind belief.

It wasn’t his fault that Allison didn’t understand. He started down the path in the direction his sister went but then turned the other way. She was sixteen; she was more than capable of getting home on her own. 

He pushed a low-hanging tree branch out from his path and it gave way, crashing to the ground. “Damn it!” he cried as he jumped. He rested a hand on his thumping chest. That scared the�"

He snatched the fallen branch and studied the edge. It’d been hanging on by strands of tree fiber, almost like someone had tried to break it off.

He tossed it onto the ground, harder than he’d intended. Due to his outstanding athletic abilities, he lost his balance and fell into a pile of black nuts. No, shells. A pile of black nut shells. Something had pried them open and pulled out the seeds. Birds? Racoons? 

He twisted his arm around to grab a handful when he noticed that the red second hand of his watch wasn’t moving. It was working before and it didn’t look scratched, like he’d hit the ground with it when he fell.

Then a chill crept up his spine as his sister’s words shot into his head. Hadn’t she said something about magnetic fields stopping watches?

“John!”

Allison? He jumped to his feet, spinning around but seeing only the serene Queen Lake and the lush green of Kingland Forest.

“John!”

He snatched the branch and ran up the path, past Queen Lake to crest the hill. He started to shout his sister’s name but it died in his throat. In the distance, at almost the farthest point of the path he could still see, stood…something. A hairy, large, bulky, something. John stood, frozen, his mouth dropping open. It couldn’t be! 

A scream filled the air, coming from the opposite fork in the path, a female-sounding scream. Allison!

John twirled to where the path forked to the right and then back. Almost predictably, the something was gone. Great! Now he was seeing things!

He pushed his legs and he ran faster then he’d ever run before. He launched through a wall of thick grass and landed in the center of a small clearing, swinging the branch overhead. “Get away from my…”

He trailed off and lowered his arm. He blinked a few times before he burst out laughing.

“Stop it!” Allison shouted. “Help me!”

She was on her rear, using her legs as leverage while playing tug-of-war over her backpack with a small, black and white monkey. She pulled on the strap she held within in her white-knuckled hands. “Let go!”

The monkey screeched and pulled on it’s strap.

Allison pulled harder. “It’s mine!”

John laughed harder. Now it made sense. Gray fur, weird noises, nut shells, of course it was a monkey.

“Help me!” his sister cried.

John walked up to the monkey and tapped its back with the tree branch in his hand. The animal howled and released its grip. Allison gave a shout as she fell onto her back while the monkey scampered up the nearest tree and rested on a branch.

Allison jumped to her feet and brushed the dirt from her backside. “I was pulling a granola bar from my bag when it dropped down.”

It screeched again. Allison yelled and jumped behind John. “Stop laughing!”

“Sorry,” John managed to say between heaves of laughter.

Allison swung the bag onto her back. “What kind is it? Where’d it come from?”

“Colobus.” He focused on a thin, silver square on its ear. “And it’s tagged.”

“What does that mean? It’s a pet or something?”

He frowned and crossed his arms. “No, it’s a research specimen.” 

“From that research lab?”

He nodded. Xenon LLC. 

“We’re going to let it go, right?”

He turned to her. “What? Allison, it won’t survive.”

Allison shifted on her feet. “We can’t let it go back to being a lab rat.”

John studied the animal, who was staring at the two of them with large eyes. “Someone’s going to find it eventually.”

“Then let’s call animal control. They might turn it over to a zoo or something, right?”

John wasn’t sure about that, but he nodded. “Yeah, okay.”

His sister grinned and snapped a picture. The monkey screeched and then leaped to another branch before darting deeper into the forest.

“Jerk!” Allison called after it. Then she glanced at John and her face turned red. “Thanks, uh, for coming to help.”

He nodded slightly. “Well, when you screamed my name like that�""

She blinked. “What? I didn’t scream your name. That thing jumped out, I screamed in surprise and then you were there.” She paused. “Anyway, are you still going to write your paper?”

“No, probably not,” he answered slowly, his mind racing. If Allison hadn’t called him, then who�"

He spun around, taking in the lush trees and shrubs, but saw nothing. 

“You okay?” Allison asked.

“Y-yeah,” he said, placing his hand on her shoulder to guide her out of the clearing and onto the main path.

“So,” she said, “looks like you were right. It was just some stupid monkey.” She sighed. “I guess I’ve just got an overactive imagination.”

John looked over his shoulder. For a moment, he saw a flash of a hairy mass at the farthest end of the path before it vanished. “Y-yeah,” he muttered to himself. “Overactive imagination.”

***

The Beast watched through a space in the shrubs as the humans finished pushing the black and white monkey into the cage. It had thought about helping, the two had escaped from that place of pain together, but those humans were not the same as the ones that caused them pain. These humans wore brown while the others wore black. Besides, those two humans from before didn’t want the black and white monkey to go back to that place of pain and so must have sent for those two humans.

It wasn’t sure how it deduced that through words and gestures it had only begun to understand. All it knew was that its mind was expanding ever since that fireball fell from the sky.

It thought back, remembering how, shortly after it and the black and white monkey had escaped from the place of pain to the forest, that sphere of light fell from the sky and smashed into the water. It remembered the black and white monkey running in fear while it bravely approached. It was rewarded by a bright flash of light that seemed to enter its body shortly before it passed out.

When it woke, it knew something was different. Its mind was expanding, its body growing and changing. When it approached the black and white monkey, its friend ran in terror, sensing something was different, alien, yet the Beast knew its friend couldn’t survive alone here. So, it took a chance with those two humans from before.

The Beast watched the humans in brown take away the black and white monkey. It watched its friend head for, hopefully, a safer life before turning to walk deeper into the forest. It pushed through tall grass and knocked aside branches before reaching the largest tree in the woods.

It felt the familiar spasm of pain through its body and began heaving with each breath. Somehow it knew that while the fireball from the sky gave it the gift of intelligence, it also brought the curse of death. It lay down in front of the tree and rolled itself in mud and leaves until it was buried. Hopefully, its body wouldn’t be found by scavengers or humans. It stared at the setting sun, its eyelids drooping until finally closing forever.

Starfall is available from Amazon.

Read more about the world of Starfall at the author’s webpage: bccharles.com

Reviews

[QRoels]

Wow! That was really cool. I don’t usually read this type of book but it really drew me in.

I like the conflict between the brother and sister. It’s very relatable. Does your book keep going afterwards! Does the beast make it? Does it keep changing and does it stay kind hearted? I really want to find out! Thanks for the read.

[BC Charles]

Thanks for the review. If you're interested in learning more about what fell in the forest and what it did to certain towns people, why not check out my book Starfall? It's available on my website bccharles.com