Boojum

Tall—eight feet in most accounts—and covered in grayish fur that catches the light wrong at dusk. The build is heavy, but witnesses say it moves quiet for its size. The face is the part that sticks with people. Close enough to human to feel like recognition. Far enough to know it isn't. Most sightings are partial. A shape between balsam trunks. A silhouette on a ridge that doesn't move when you'd expect it to. The Boojum doesn't present itself square-on. It lets you notice. It lets you wonder. Then it's gone, or you are.

“The oldest stories follow women to the water. Creeks back in the hollers where folks went to wash or cool off. The feeling of being watched from the rhododendron. A shape that was there and then wasn't, or wasn't and then was. Nobody hurt. Nobody touched. Just—seen. Known. The gemstone stories wove in early. Caches found in odd places, jars of quartz and garnet tucked into rock shelves. Word would spread about rubies up in such-and-such drainage, and somebody would go looking, and sometimes they'd come back turned around in terrain they knew. Sometimes they'd come back quiet. Sometimes they'd find more than they were looking for. And then there was Annie. She wasn't scared of him. That was the thing everybody remembered. She'd hoot back at the ridge like she was answering a neighbor, and maybe she was. When she left, she didn't leave a note. She didn't have to. Folks knew where she'd gone. The hooting told them.”