There's Something Out There by P.J. Night

know.
    â€œLewis humored the old chief. I suspect that he thought it was all a story to scare away the settlers. But he couldn’t have been more wrong … and he paid dearly for his mistake. You see, right there in front of everyone, he vowed to protect the town from any ‘beasts’ that attempted to attack it. It was just weeks later that the stillness of the night was shattered by the Keuhkkituh’s cry. And the settlers were still living in tents!
    â€œLewis set off alone, on foot, armed with a musket. According to his diary, he found the creature in the heart of the forest. As soon as he recovered from his horror at its grotesque appearance, he planned to shoot it in the head. But his musket jammed! He would’ve been a deadman if the chief had not appeared at that very moment, brandishing a spear and a torch. According to Lewis, Onongahkan heated the spear’s blade in the fire of the torch, then struck the Keuhkkituh with what should have been a fatal blow: The chief sliced a four-foot gash through the creature’s belly. Black blood poured from its body, and its howls could be heard all the way back at the settlement. Lewis and Onongahkan left it there to die.”
    â€œThen what happened?” Jenna asked.
    â€œThe next morning the settlers and the members of the Q’ippicut tribe returned to the scene of the attack. The dirt was dark and wet with spilled blood, and vultures perched hungrily in the trees, attracted by the smell, likely. But the creature’s body was gone. They searched the woods for five days in hopes of finding it, but it had vanished. There were sightings, from time to time; and all accounts report that a long, puckered wound was now visible on the creature’s belly—giving the Keuhkkituh a new name: the Marked Monster.”
    â€œSo that’s why it’s called the Marked Monster,” Jenna said thoughtfully. “Not because it, like, marks its victims.”
    Mr. Carson looked uncomfortable. “What I’ve told you so far is pulled from the historical record,” he saidslowly. “We have primary documents that chronicle Lewis and Onongahkan’s battle with the Keuhkkituh that night—though for the last hundred years, the town record has more or less been scrubbed of this fact by the town council.”
    â€œHow come?” Jenna asked.
    â€œPeople can be so shortsighted,” Mr. Carson said bitterly. “No one
appreciates
the importance of living in a place steeped in such unique history. Oh no, they’re worried that these valuable accounts of our history make a mockery of the town or that the settlers had overdramatized a wolf or other such creature! They’ll learn someday. You can ignore the history, but that won’t make it disappear. And there are … stories … about the Marked Monster. Stories that cannot be proven—yet, in their very existence, in their sheer persistence, force us to consider that they may perhaps contain an element of truth.”
    â€œWhat are those stories?” Jenna said, sitting very still.
    â€œManfred Lewis had a daughter,” Mr. Carson said. “Her name was Imogen, and she was fifteen when her father founded Lewisville. Two months after Lewis and Onongahkan attacked the Marked Monster, Imogen wentberry picking in the woods. She did not return by nightfall.”
    â€œWhat happened to her?”
    There was a pause while Mr. Carson struggled to find the right words. “When her father found her, she was wounded—she had a grave injury to her leg. The flesh had been sliced open nearly to the bone, and Imogen was out of her mind with pain and delirium. Lewis carried her home and began the slow process of nursing her back to health, but Imogen never recovered. Lewis’s diary is filled with entries that chronicle not only his anxiety about her health, but the progression of her illness—the wound that would not heal; the way she sat