The Bog Creek Bogy

Content warning: gory violence

The first hunter to walk in bloody was a young buck named Hank Williams.

Not the Hank Williams you’ve heard of, but Bog Creek’s very own barrel-chested golden boy of the country-loving Williams family. He burst through the door at ten a.m. on the second day of gun dear season, eyes shiny with the beer he’d already drank and a shit-eating grin splitting the dried blood caked on his cheeks. Rifle in hand—because at the Bog Creek Bar, guns were as welcome during hunting season as snowmobiles were once the snow flew—Hank stood beside the pool table to bask in his glory while all the other men in blaze orange ponied up for Hank’s hard-earned drinks. He’d get pissed up for free for the rest of hunting season.

In some camps, the tradition of being the first to feed the Bog Creek bogy was a thing of pride. Sons couldn’t wait for their turn and fathers and grandfathers told the stories of their prodigy’s first kills with esteemed reverence that comes with passing on a family legacy.

The legend, tainted by generations and so much blaze orange and beer, predated the first deer camps, back when hunting was more about putting food on the table and less about sport. The way I heard it from my own grandfather, back when this was still his Bog Creek Bar, was that old man Williams—what would be young Hank’s great, great, great grandfather, give or take a few greats—happened upon the bogy when he was plotting out his homestead.

Covered in mud and moss as if drawing its form from the earth, the bogy stood over eight feet tall, dripping creek water and black slime on old man Williams’s overcoat. Some claim it had long, black claws. Others say it was the teeth that were long and black. Everyone seems to agree that its eyes were green and depthless and ancient.

It’s said that the bogy, bloodthirsty and clever, had a decision to make: kill the new settlers one at a time, starting with old man Williams, or use them all to its advantage. On that day, a pact was forged that the first deer killed by each settling family be offered in tribute to the bogy on the creek bank. Old man Williams spread the news to the others, but no one believed him until another settler from the Daniels clan strung a buck from his tree in front of his one-room shack near the creek.

A few of the neighboring settlers helped him clean the deer in exchange for a few cuts of meat, such were the times when bounty was shared—with everyone but the bogy.

The next morning, it wasn’t the deer that was skinned and hanging from its hooves in the tree, but Mister Daniels…or what was left of him. As if that wasn’t message enough, the guts he’d left in a pile in the woods where he shot the deer ended up on the doorsteps of every hunter that helped him the night before.

No one ever doubted old man Williams again, and offerings were paid to the bogy as promised.

Over time, laws changed—even around here. Hunting was condensed to a season. The story of the settler hanging skinless from a tree seemed less believable with each retelling to the new generations, and soon the legend of the bogy became as much a sport as hunting itself.

Tributes to the bogy were still given for every new hunter who bagged their first kill. But in the last decade, some of the men—boozed up and brave—started offering themselves too. Today, when a hunter shoots his first deer, they cover themselves in the blood of the animal and spend the night alone beside the creek, waiting for the bogy. If they survive the night, and they always do, the first one to make their way to my Bog Creek Bar, just like Hank Williams did, drinks for free.

Hank takes a seat among the other hunters, and I set him up with a drink. He’s barely had a sip when I ask him if his grandpa found his dog yet. Hank’s eyes grow wide, the pride dripping out of his face. He says no—he had no idea that his grandpa, Henry Williams, had been by the bar four times already to ask if anyone had seen his beloved pooch, a blue heeler named Loretta that never left his side but had been missing since breakfast.

The last time Henry stormed in, the old man was frantic, begging his unwilling neighbors to set up a search party for his dog. No one in the bar wanted to say what they were thinking…that gun deer season was the worst time to lose a dog—or anything—in the woods. 

Hank drinks his beer a little too fast, pushing the empty mug out for a refill. A few young hunters pop in to tag their kills, asking if they should spend the night by the creek or if the honor of surviving the bogy had already been bestowed. Fresh rounds of cheers and beer flow for Hank until the sun gets low and the alcohol loosens his tongue. I’m drying glasses in a corner, pretending not to hear bits and pieces of the conversations around me, when my acute bartender ears pick up Hank’s hushed story to a fellow hunter and friend.

He wrings his still-bloody knuckles on the bar, and says he’s been getting a lot of flak for being the only William’s boy who hadn’t bagged a deer and had his turn by the creek. The twisted version of his family legacy had become such a pressure point that he couldn’t—he wouldn’t, he says—let another year pass without spending the night waiting for the bogy.

Only it wasn’t the blood of a deer that stained his hair, cheeks, beard, and blaze orange.

I’m not looking directly at him, so I can’t say for sure, but out of the corner of my eye it looks like his eyes are glistening. Hank could always be counted on to do stupid things. His was the first call when someone’s mailbox met with a baseball bat or a neighbor’s baby Jesus disappeared out of their nativity scene. But this…this is different. His friend squeezes his shoulder after Hank’s confession, then gets up and walks away, leaving Hank on his barstool and me holding the rag that I had been using to clean the glass I am barely holding.

I look down at him. He looks up at me. And he knows that I know. And I know that he knows that I know.

I set the glass down and am about to lock the windows and doors and call the police when the front door flies open with such force it bends the top hinge. I drop to the sticky floor behind the bar, but not before I see it blocking out what is left of the setting sun.

The bogy.

Like the bog had come alive in a mass of moss and mud. Eight feet tall. Black claws. Black teeth. Green, depthless, ancient eyes.

And a gun.

The first shot is a bang that I feel in my bones. I skuttle toward the coolers, around a small hallway made by wooden crates and empty beer boxes. Another shot. Everyone is screaming. Unholy wails I never heard from the mouth of a man. More gunshots that sound different than the first few. Other hunters are aiming at the bogy, as if bullets will help. As if anyone will make it out alive.

Another shot and a box above me explodes, sending cardboard and dust on my head. I don’t look back. The only unarmed person in my Bog Creek Bar, I stay low to the ground, hidden by the bar itself, and keep crawling until I make it to the darkest corner where the earwigs and spiders have made their homes among boxes still stacked from my grandfather’s generation. Tucking into a tiny ball, I pry my phone from my pocket and press the button for emergency calls.

The shots don’t stop. With each bang, an explosion. The wooden bar splinters, booze bottles shatter, skulls crack, brains spill. I hear gurgled cries for mercy, boots on the floor heading toward the backdoor, a bang and a thud as a body climbing over the bar falls flat on the floor. The screams of horrified men.

I can’t stop my hand from shaking to hold the phone to my ear. I think I hear a voice within it between the shots. It’s then, pulled briefly from the bloodshed by a voice not trapped inside my bar, that I ask myself the question I should’ve asked before.

Why does a bogy need a gun?

I know I saw a gun in its claws before I hit the deck. And I know I saw claws and teeth and those pools of green. Am I losing my mind? Why would a bogy need a gun?

The last voice begging for life is Hank Williams himself, sobbing and snotty and desperate. He shuffles like a caged animal, and I hear the bogy’s heavy footfalls plodding like a pair of boots on the linoleum. Boots? My ears are ringing from the gunfire so I must not be hearing right. But I do hear Hank’s pleading end in a sharp cry, then more gurgles as blood coats his words and seeps out of whatever wound has just been inflicted. A barstool screeches across the floor and falls over. Hank’s body lands with a wet thud.

I wait and for a while there is nothing but the sound of labored breathing. Is it mine? I hold my breath and slide my phone under my leg so the bogy won’t hear the 911 operator’s voice. After a few minutes that feel like a few hours, I hear it walk away, its footsteps squishing in blood then crunching on the gravel outside the broken door.

When I think it is safe to stand, I use the surrounding boxes to help me to my feet. I shuffle around the corner, out of the cramped dark space that saved my life, and my toes immediately meet with the pool of blood from what I think is the body of a seventy-year-old hunter who I’ve known since I was a kid, but I can’t be sure because he doesn’t have a head, just the frayed stump of a neck. Bloody, matted chunks of what I suspect are his brains and skull are splattered against the back wall.

I’m staring at the bloody neck stump when I drop my phone and vomit into the pool of his blood at my feet. Around the room, the carnage is the same. A body on the pool table. More slumped over the bar. A few others on the ground—some stopped on the way to the backdoor, others the front. Then there’s Hank Williams. I wipe my mouth and lift the door separating the back of the bar from the front and find him by the fallen stool. He’s still breathing but, God help me, I’m too stunned to do anything but stare at him as the blood bubbles out of the jagged gash in his neck. He’s holding something in his hands. Something I’ve seen before.

Clutched in his fist is a red collar with the name Loretta in big, white letters. The collar of Henry’s loyal blue heeler that used to follow that man everywhere.

Before Hank Williams killed it, skinned it, and bathed in its blood to wait by the creek for the bogy that never found him there, but tracked him to the Bog Creek Bar and killed a roomful of hunters…

Leaving nothing but that collar and a set of bloody boot prints behind.