A small town football star in the Arkansas hills finds himself running from more than his opponent this Friday night.
Beyond the high school football end zone, through that little gap in the fence, and all the way down the hill into the trees is where locals believe the legendary ghost hog lives. Landry, the small town football star, may find himself running from more than his opponent this Friday night.
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You never forget the sound of it.
Grunts and cries. Half-words hammered into silence by thunderous collisions.
Your own breath, sucking in and hissing out. Your own heart, pounding. Your own blood, rushing in your ears. You can taste the copper of it, your blood, on the back of your tongue. But you bite down harder. And you keep running. Expecting every step to be your last. Mown down, blown over. Hit so hard you’ll never remember. The fear lifts your feet so fast you must be flying. You hope you’re flying. You’re afraid of the earth.
Up ahead-- a glimpse of daylight. You stretch every fiber of yourself toward it, just as the world breaks down around you. Collapsing, colliding, slamming shut. Crushing you-- crushing you. Crushing the life out of your lungs. You struggle, but you can’t-- you can’t take it. You break-- you fall forward-- a distant roar rises in your ears, louder than the rushing blood. The ground jumps up to meet you-- hits harder than you’ve ever felt it. And you lie there-- gone-- empty-- gasping in nothing-- unable to remember. Until… many hands pull you up, stand you on your feet, slam you on the shoulders, lift you in the air, screaming that you made it-- you did it-- you won.
You’re a running back. You’re a high school running back. And you’ve just won the big game. But on this week’s episode… you’ll have more to run from than the opposing team.
This is the Camp Monsters podcast.
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There it is. You can’t miss it. Shining up there like a jewel on the black velvet night-- the brightest thing for a hundred miles around. The stadium, in a small town out here in the Arkansas hills. It’s nothing much to look at during the day-- just some grandstands and goalposts. But on a Friday night in fall… with the lights on, and the stands full, and bands playing… it’s the biggest thing in the county.
I know normally we tell these stories around a campfire, but since football runs right through the middle of this one I thought a setting like this might be more appropriate. So let’s rub shoulders up to the very top of the stands, where we might be able to hear ourselves think. And say hi to everybody in town along the way. You want a hot dog?
This story starts… quite a few years ago now. In this very stadium. Well… just outside it, I guess. You see that stand of cottonwoods over there, down the hill past the corner of the end zone? See their leaves shimmering in the lights, with nothing but darkness behind them? Out beyond there is a kind of swampy scrubland for a few acres-- scrappy trees, thick brush, a little grass-choked stream that drains down toward the river. That gap in the fence is just so the groundskeeper can get out to keep the bushes back. There’s nothing out there. Unless… unless you believe the stories some people tell. Stories like this one.
It was the dragtail-end of one of those fever-hot days when nobody has bothered to tell summer that fall is coming. Man, it was hot-- so muggy you couldn’t tell where your sweat ended and the air began. You felt like a catfish trying to breathe boiling water. We were supposed to be sprinting to that end zone down there-- the one by those trees. But it was the very end of a two-a-day practice, and nobody had a sprint left in them. The only thing that kept us going was the knowledge that it was almost over. It had to be. The shadows were long and the light was going deep gold, like it does just before the sun disappears. It wouldn’t be long now. One or two more drills and they’d let us go. They had to.
We ran down there in our imitation sprint, and right away they had us line up. “A” team offense and defense, red zone drills, trying to score. Coach was yelling that this was how we’d feel at the end of a long, hard game, now he wanted us to execute!
I played tight end because I’m tall and big, and coach said I didn’t have enough brains to worry about getting them knocked out. I don’t remember the play call, but it didn’t matter much because everybody on the field knew that one way or another Landry was going to get the ball. The center snapped it and I hit the guy across from me and tried to make my shaking legs keep driving. I swear I felt a cool breeze go by behind me-- that’s how fast Landry was running by. Then I got tripped up, hit the ground and rolled in time to see him run right by two tacklers and over a third, into that corner of the end zone down there. He made it look easy, like he always did. Effortless. Like he wasn’t even running full-out
But Landry didn’t stop in the end zone. He flipped the ball away in the back corner of it, then let his momentum carry him across the track, through that little gap in the fence, and all the way down the hill into the trees. That was just like Landry, too. He could tell we were sucking wind, feeling down, needed someone to do something a little ridiculous. It wasn’t much, but… it doesn’t take much when you’re that tired. Seeing Landry lope through that fence spread a little ripple of laughter through us. Nervous laughter maybe– wondering how coach was going to punish him.
But while we were chuckling… he was down in those trees. He told me about it later. Said after he made it through the fence the hill fell away so steep, he let the stubbly ground carry him down until he was right in among the cottonwoods. He was surprised how dark it was when he got down there-- the hill blocked out the sunlight and the night was already creeping dark blue between those thick, rough tree trunks. And quiet. All the shouting and whistles seemed far away down there, he said. The rustle of a breeze he couldn’t feel flickered the thousand cottonwood leaves in a rippling rush, and seemed to drown out all the other sounds.
The leaves whispered so loud that at first he didn’t hear the other sound of movement. The hiss of something shifting in thick, dry grass. But when a twig snapped he looked that way, off to one side, into the gloom under the criss-crossing limbs of low brush. And he thought he saw something move behind a big, dark, rotten log over there. Then he saw a large, round, shiny red object… tried to figure out what it was… and he’d only just realized it was an eye, when the thing moved again. And he saw that it wasn’t hiding behind that huge log. It couldn’t be. Not when the log itself stood up-- on short, thick, powerful legs-- and turned toward him with a face full of tusks and both eyes glowing red.
I was the first one over to the fence, after Landry had gone through it. Other guys were closer, but coach was hollering so loud at Landry for his stunt that I think they were a little shy of going over there. I couldn’t see Landry right away, down there in the dark under the trees, but that changed soon enough. He burst out of those bushes and came running up the hill quicker than he could have run down it. I laughed again-- thought he was showing off, thought it was all part of the gag.
But as he came up to me I saw different. His eyes were so wide-- white all the way around, like I’d never seen them. And his face-- you ever seen Tiger’s Eye, the stone? It’s got a glow that seems to simmer up inside of it, shifting and shimmering its color from the warmest blackness on up to a high honey gold, ever-changing. Landry’s face was like that: like Tiger’s Eye… usually. But not coming back up that hill. Racing back up that hill into the last golden light of the evening, his face looked gray and flat. The light had gone out of it. And back there… down under the trees… something was moving. Something was coming. I saw it. Something big. Coming like… Even at the top of that hill, I took a step back from the fence. What was it? What was coming?
Landry came through the gap in the fence and whirled around like he expected something to be right behind him, then stood staring down into the trees. “Hog down there,” was all he said at first, quiet, and I looked back where he was looking-- squinted down under the trees again-- but I couldn’t see anything moving any more.
And before Landry could get control of himself… Before he could find his way back into the big smile that always protected him… Before he could laugh the whole thing off, he told us about what he’d seen down there. About the hog as long as a car-- taller than his waist-- tusks big as his three fingers-- eyes burning red. He kept looking behind him as he stuttered the story out-- like he was afraid the hog was about to bust out of the bushes and charge up the hill after him. And the more he told, and the scarier it was, the more all the guys around us started to… laugh.
The more they laughed, the calmer Landry got. The less he looked behind him. The more he leaned into the story. And the hog got bigger, and wilder, and… more ridiculous. Pretty soon everyone was laughing at the idea of the big football star, surprising a big wild boar and high-tailing it away faster than he’d ever run. Even the coaches started laughing at his tall tale, which I guess saved Landry from a punishment lap. The guys started calling Landry “Hogzilla,” after the legendary demon-hog that some folks claim is really out there somewhere. And the name stuck… though I don’t think Landry actually liked it. I’d been the first one to that fence. I’d seen his face when he sprinted up the hill. I knew… I knew there was more to it than the jokes he told. He’d seen something down there…
And Landry kinda changed after that. I didn’t link it up at first to the scare he’d had. I thought it was the pressure. Everybody did. Maybe part of it was. I mean, he came out that season running red hot: the best back in the state-- some people said the country. Big-time college scouts were coming around all the time, his highlights were on the local news, he was getting interviews on TV. People were already talking about the pros. And everyone in town was always stopping him, talking to him, telling stories, giving advice and encouragement before every game. And we were winning. He carried us-- he kept us winning.
But it was a heck of a load for anyone to carry. A lot of pressure. And those of us who knew him noticed-- saw that the better he ran, the grayer he looked. Worn, tired-- transparent almost. He could still turn the lights on-- still glow like his old self when other people were around. But I’d catch him in a quiet moment by his locker, when no one else was looking… and when he tried to turn that old smile on me it looked brittle, like it would shatter if he dropped it.
He’d always been a great runner, but… that season… he was like nothing anybody’d ever seen. Every team knew what was coming, every team game-planned for him, but… there was nothing they could do. And it’s funny, when you’re that good, that gifted… the way some people will talk. Some folks just couldn’t believe his talent was natural, I guess… they started to tell stories on him. About why he was so good-- what he did to get that way. Some of the things they said were… really strange. Folks said they… saw him in the woods at night. Running. Caught a glimpse of him dashing fast across some lonely country road… saw him in the headlights just long enough to know for sure it was him.
Well of course I never believed those kind of stories. Until…
Until one night I couldn’t sleep. The big cross-county rivalry game was coming up, the big grudge match, and every time I closed my eyes I was playing it, over and over again. About an hour before dawn I decided I might as well get some exercise while I worried.
So I went on a run. It was still dark out, but there was most of a moon and the sky in the east was starting to get pale-- plenty of light to run by. Down our long driveway and across the field… along the moonlit shoulder of the rural route… when I got out by the creek I veered off the road onto that old railroad grade-- long abandoned now, tracks and ties all torn up or rotted away: just a gravel track through the trees. The rocks shone white under the moon.
I’d gone maybe a half mile along that pale, lonely path when I heard something in the bushes just beside the trail. An explosion of movement, something crashing through thick brush. I thought I might have started a deer, and I turned my head to see-- just in time to see a figure, a person in light-colored shorts and tee-shirt, bursting out of the woods and leaping up the slope onto the top of the grade.
It startled me-- scared me a bit-- never expecting to see anyone out there, much less racing full-speed out of the brush right toward me. I veered off a step, slowed down, got my guard up and said something like “Hey!” But the figure didn’t make a sound, and as he gained the top of the grade I could see it was Landry, running as fast as I’d ever seen him go. And with a look on his face… a look of pure, blind terror.
As he passed me-- running flat out, going by me like I was standing still-- as he passed me I realized that the sound… the crashing in the bushes hadn’t stopped when Landry emerged. It was still going, still getting louder. Something else was in there, running at Landry’s heels, chasing him. Something else was coming.
I looked back-- and in the moonlight I swear I saw, coming out of the low scrub… a razorback… a boar so big, I-- I couldn’t even get the scale of the thing. To this day I think I must have seen it wrong, be mis-remembering. That boar crushed a little pine tree as it broke cover-- the tree must have been six feet tall, and the hog ran right through it like it was an itty-bitty sapling. Its tusks looked about the size of my hand, and even in that pale moonlight its eyes had a red cast, like they were glowing. That’s all I saw-- just that one little snapshot of a glimpse.
Then I was off, trying to follow Landry as he crashed away down the other side of the grade and back into the woods. He was moving so fast-- faster through those thick woods than he ever ran on the field, ducking and dodging all the limbs and branches that I caught full on the shins and chest and face. Before long, the tremble of swaying branches and the rising call of birds disturbed from their slumber up ahead were the only things I had to follow him by. I’d lost sight of him completely, he was so far ahead.
As for the boar-- that huge monster-- there wasn’t a single moment when I didn’t hear it behind me. Crashing through the brush, tearing up the earth with its studdering, quick-hooved pace. Grunting, snorting, popping its heavy tusks together with that nasty sound the way they do. When I stumbled one time-- tripped, almost fell sprawling-- I swear I felt its hot breath and caught a spray of saliva on my legs, it was that close. It popped those big tusks again, and that was like a starter’s pistol for me-- I’ve never moved like that before… Ihope I never have to again.
I had no idea where I was until I broke out of the cover of the trees, with that big hog so close behind me I could smell him. When I burst out of there… three steps and I realized we were in the yard behind Landry’s folks’ house. Landry was standing under the big oak tree they have-- just standing there-- chest heaving, hands on his knees-- with the first rays of the new rising sun painting him blood red. I screamed at him-- I meant it to be words of warning, that the hog was right behind me, but it just came out as a scream. He shook his head at me and pointed toward the sun, like that meant something.
I’m not ashamed to say… well, I’m not TOO ashamed to say that I shinnied up that oak tree like a natural-born lumber jack, until I was up a good fifteen feet above the ground. I stayed there five minutes or more, too, even when nothing else came out of the woods except more of the morning sun. Landry was sitting at the base of the tree now, head in his hands, catching his breath.
And I started laughing. Like a fool. I came down the tree laughing, still eyeing the woods, but laughing. And I tried to get Landry started, too. I laughed about how big that hog was, how close it got to us, about the look on Landry’s face when he ran by me, about how much faster he was than me. But Landry didn’t even crack a smile, wouldn’t look at me. And when I joked that I was sure to take him on our next hog hunt-- as bait!-- he turned his head away and I stopped forcing it and just sat their quiet while he… while he cried. Then he told me.
Every night, he said. Every night since that practice when he’d first seen it. Every night of the whole season. He’d have this dream that he was running-- in a game at first, running for a touchdown… then… in the dream he’d run right off the field through that same hole in the fence…every night!… He knew what was about to happen, but he couldn’t help it, couldn’t stop himself. And… and it would be down there, every night… that demon hog, waiting for him. It would start chasing him, through endless woods, and then… then somewhere in there he’d realize it wasn’t a dream. He’d realize he was running… really running for his life. And every morning, just as it was about to catch him, he’d end like this, in his own backyard, exhausted, and the hog gone like mist in the morning sun.
Well I didn’t know… quite what to say. I told him he was under a lot of stress, putting too much pressure on himself, sleep-walking. I told him how I’d been so nervous myself that night that I’d gone on a run when I was still half asleep. But one thing I told him-- he wasn’t seeing things. That hog was no dream, no… no hallucination! I’d seen it with my own eyes! I’d swear to it! Hog as big as that…
He looked at me then, and cracked that shattered smile of his-- the real one, that looked so weary these days. And he asked me: Hog as big as that… it would leave some track, wouldn’t it? Running like it was… leave some real sign? I said sure, I reckoned it would. And he looked back out into the trees and told me, when the light came up a little more, we’d go back in there and see.
And we did just that. Looked all over those woods. We saw our tracks in the dusty spots, clear as day. Saw where we’d broken branches too high for even a monster hog to reach. But... no sign. No sign of big hoof prints, not a single bristle caught in the fork of a twig-- nothing.
Well I didn’t know what to make of that. Still don’t, frankly. But it… scared me some. Made me worry about… all kinds of things. My mind, for one-- and Landry. I worried, and wondered… how long he could keep running… keep running… I wondered how it was going to end.
Turns out, the end wasn’t very far off.
It was just like coach said, at the end of the big rivalry game that Friday. We were dog-tired, worse than the end of a two-a-day-practice-- wore out, dragging, steam pouring off our backs into the chill night. Down by five, with our undefeated season on the line and time almost gone. Staring into the end zone… into that end zone, the one the big cottonwoods down the hill behind it. Time enough left for one play. And it was like coach said: we had to execute.
We ran the trick play. We’d practiced it all year, hadn’t run it until then. Pre-snap motions, shifts, and a whole lot of razzle-dazzle later, I ended up with the ball in my hands, rolling out behind the line with Landry streaking toward the corner of the end zone. That corner. The one… the one with the gap in the fence. I pulled up, just long enough to set my feet to throw, and as I did a funny thing happened. The whole season came pouring through my mind in an instant-- every game, every play, every great run Landry made, every touchdown he scored. And I realized… I remembered… all season long, all those touchdowns… he’d never scored one to that corner of that end zone… the one with the gap in the fence and those ghostly cottonwoods behind. Not one.
And I think… I think if I would have remembered that an instant earlier… maybe I would have muffed the throw. Not on purpose, but… just out of surprise or… or because of the feeling that something bad was about to happen, which gripped me as soon as I threw that ball.
I almost muffed the throw anyway. I’m no quarterback. I launched a duck that wobbled through the night air with a couple thousand eyes on it. It was too high. It was too long. Nobody could jump that high. Nobody could make that catch.
Nobody but Landry. He jumped that high, corralled that ugly throw like it was a perfect spiral, and came down light as a ballet dancer with both feet in-bounds for good measure. The clock expired, the stands exploded, the band was playing, the cheer squad cheering, our whole sideline pouring out onto the field… And Landry kept running. Slowly, but… like he couldn’t stop. Out of the end zone… across the track… through that dark little gap in the fence… down the hill… out of sight.
I wanted to run over there. I tried, but– everything was happening at once. The thunderous, dazing crack of hands pounding my helmet. Faces in front of me, grabbing my fask mask, yelling. Everyone hauling on my jersey and pads, trying to spin me around to face them, trying to lift me up. I was… fighting… I was trying to fight through them, over to the fence. Everyone was caught up in the excitement, lost in the moment– anyone who’d seen Landry go through that fence must have figured he’d come right back up again. But he didn’t. And no one had followed him. Landry was still down there. And I knew. I knew. Someone should… someone had to help him!
The night was so loud… the band… the shouting… getting louder every second. But as I struggled toward that gap in the fence I was listening through it all for… I don’t know what. Popping tusks, maybe? And then came the moment… and the sound. I swear I heard it– though I don’t see how I could have, loud as the night was. It was like there was a little breath… a gap… a pause in all the other sounds just long enough for me to hear– clear as the snap of a twig in a quiet thicket– for me to hear the scream…
Then I was through the fence– crashing down the hill and in among the thick old trees. I didn’t see Landry at first– it took a second for my eyes to adjust to the dark of the place. But it didn’t take any time at all for me to feel the darkness down there– like all my worst secrets were hiding in the bushes, perched on the limbs of the trees, waiting to punish me. That’s as near as I can tell to how it felt.
I nearly tripped over Landry before I saw him, sprawled out on the ground right in the center of the grove. I went to ask if he was alright, but as I stepped close the question lost its purpose because I saw his leg twisted up beneath him, his foot pointing a wrong way. So I knelt beside him, and he caught my eye… made a little hissing sound then looked down further into the thicket… down past his broken leg.
And there it was. That huge hog– Hogzilla– eyeing us, just as red-eyed and nasty as ever. And it had us dead to rights. Landry was… broken– couldn’t move. I couldn’t leave him. There’d be no running from the beast tonight. I was praying someone would follow me down… but I didn’t hear any help coming.
That hog stared at us… all we could do was stare back. It popped its huge tusks once, and I about fainted dead away. But then it turned its huge bulk and trotted off into the dark of the brambles… and as soon as it was gone I heard the band playing on the field behind us, and folks sliding down the hill toward us.
Landry told me later that, as soon as he caught that ball, it was all like a dream– like something he was watching. He didn’t even think about stopping himself until he’d run through that fence, down the hill and into the darkness under the trees. And he knew the hog would be there. But that night, before he could run from it– before he even saw it, it hit him. Took the legs right out from under him. That must have been when he screamed. But all he remembers feeling, through the pain, was relief. Relief that… it was over. That he couldn’t run from the thing anymore. That whatever was going to happen to him… he was just going to have to face it. I mean to tell you he did face it. He faced it all the way down… and he won.
The doctors got his knee put back together– almost as good as before. Maybe a step or two slower, but… Landry told me that was the best thing for him. Kinda took the pressure off. Man, the next couple years I loved watching him on TV on Saturdays, playing on scholarship for one of the state universities-- smiling, flying around, having so much fun. Effortless again. Happy again.
Well, looks like it’s just about time for the opening kickoff. Man, what a lot of fun. It doesn’t get any better than this. And hey-- after the game is over, I know a short-cut back to the parking lot. It’s right through that gap in the fence down there, through those trees… yeah, you’re right, maybe we’d… maybe we’d just better follow the crowd…
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Camp Monsters is part of the REI Podcast Network. Tonight’s rousing pre-game speech was given by our Senior Producer, Chelsea Davis, reminding us all to go out there and win-- just-- one-- for the Chelso. Our Associate Producer Jenny Barber has sure taken that to heart as she sprints past the Safety, running full speed down the near sideline, nobody’s gonna catch her-- TOUCHDOWN! And on to kick the extra point is our engineer, Nick Patri <
In fact, anyone can. That’s because next week we’ll be in Florida, in search of the elusive Skunk Ape. Oh, we’ll find one alright. That’ll be the easy part. The hard part will be… well, join us next week to find out.
And as always, the stories here on Camp Monsters are just that-- stories. Sure, some of them are based on things people claim to have seen or experienced, but it’s up to you to decide what you believe-- and how to explain away what you don’t. Please subscribe, share, review, and tell your friends to check out Camp Monsters podcast. It’s your support that keeps us recording. Thank you so much.