Chapter 9
chapter
nine
MILES
A week later, I’m starting to think Four Corners might be a bust. I don’t say that out loud. I never would.
You don’t lead a team into the field and start bleeding doubt all over morale just because the silence gets heavy.
But I feel it. Every dead thermal sweep. Every clean trail. Every canyon that looks perfect on paper and empty in reality.
Obviously, when you think of where a big hairy giant is hiding out, forested mountain regions make sense. Washington. Oregon. Northern California. Dense environments with cover and stable resources.
High desert is different. This is all movement corridors, hidden water systems, and weird little pockets of possibility. It’s hard territory for this kind of search.
Which means every lead out here feels like a long shot. Less likely to hold water.
And still, I can’t let it go.
Because last night, buried six pages deep in the Bigfoot Search Operation forums beneath three fake sightings, a political argument, and someone insisting Sasquatch was an interdimensional Nephilim, I found a post.
A real one.
Or at least one that felt real.
I hate that word. Felt. It has no place in field research.
Feelings don't hold up in peer review. They don't survive cross-examination. They certainly don't convince people that a species exists.
But after enough years doing this, you learn there are things your brain notices before it can explain them. Patterns, consistencies, and little details that refuse to let go.
Sometimes a gut feeling is your subconscious detecting patterns your conscious mind hasn't organized yet.
But whatever it is—a “feeling,” pattern recognition, or solid evidence—I still can’t stop thinking about this post.
I reread it now from the front seat of the 4Runner while the rest of the Machine still sleeps:
THREAD TITLE: Possible Sighting / Vocalization Near Chuska Range + Missing Person Incident
POSTED BY: desertmama88
DATE: August 14
TIME: 1:42 AM
STATE: Arizona / New Mexico Border
COUNTY: Apache County
LOCATION DETAILS: Near the Chuska Mountains, north of Red Rock Canyon trail systems
NEAREST TOWN: Lukachukai
NEAREST ROAD: Indian Route 13
OBSERVED: I've gone back and forth about posting this because I know how insane it sounds.
My husband actually told me not to because people online can be awful, but I haven't been able to stop thinking about it. Maybe somebody here has seen something similar.
Last weekend, my husband, my little brother, and I volunteered with a local search after a college-aged girl went missing. She’d been camping near one of the canyon trails in the Chuska area, and we know the roads around there pretty well, so we figured we could help.
At 11:30 p.m., we were driving slowly down one of the old service roads, spotlights cutting through the trees and washes.
At first, I honestly thought someone was standing out there. Then the light hit it and it was way too big to be a person.
I don't know exactly how tall because it's hard to judge at night, but it was near enough to trees that we had some context and it had to be at least seven feet. Maybe more. It was broad. Like SO broad. Covered in dark reddish-brown hair that looked clumpy and matted with mud or something.
The face is the part I can't quit thinking about. It had gray skin around the eye and nose area, kind of wrinkly. No hair there really. Didn’t look like an animal or a human. The eyes reflected a gold-ish when the spotlight hit it. It never moved toward us. It just stood there looking back.
My husband has hunted his whole life and is afraid of nothing. I've seen him walk toward wounded elk and scare bears out of camp. But when he told my brother "Get in the truck," he sounded terrified.
Before we got back in the truck, we heard three loud knocks farther up the canyon. Somebody on here called them "tree knocks," I think? I don't know. It sounded like someone hitting a baseball bat against a tree or something. My husband put the truck in drive before I even had my seatbelt on.
The part that really bothers me happened before all this… Earlier that evening I'd been calling the missing girl's name into the canyon. A couple of times I thought I heard something answering back, but I figured it was echoes doing weird things. I even joked, "Watch it be Bigfoot."
The girl was found alive the next morning about a mile away. She’d fallen into a wash. One of the women helping the medics said the girl kept talking about lights moving through the trees before they managed to calm her down. I don't know if that's connected. I don't know if any of it is connected.
I'm not saying it was Bigfoot. I'm just saying there was something out there that night, and I know what I saw wasn't a bear.
If anybody around the Chuska area has heard those knocking sounds (if that's what they're called) or heard strange yelling in the woods, I'd really appreciate hearing from you.
I haven't slept much since.
Hunters don’t scare easily. People familiar with wilderness don’t usually misidentify things, and when they do, it’s confusing elk calves for fawns.
It’s not confusing animals with cryptids.
This lead also sounds eerily familiar to six other reports I’ve cataloged over the last four years.
Not identical, but pattern-adjacent. Enough to itch at the back of my brain when we’ve shifted gears for other non-Bigfoot cases.
The passenger door flies open.
I look up fast enough to almost drop my phone.
Daisy climbs into the seat beside me, holding two coffees.
“Did I scare you?” she asks.
“Um, yes. I’m on page 412 of a conspiracy forum.”
She hands me one of the coffees. “Sounds healthy.”
“Skim milk?” I ask.
“One sugar,” she says.
I stare at her.
She smirks over the rim of her cup. “See? I can remember things, too.”
Something like butterflies rises in my chest.
Awesome. Great. Love being emotionally compromised before seven in the morning.
“What are you doing up?” I ask.
“You disappeared.”
“You watching me?”
“Hard not to when you sleep three feet below me.”
I snort despite myself and lock my phone.
Outside, dawn breaks over the desert, pale gold bleeding into red rock and distant mountain silhouettes.
The Chuska range sits dark against the horizon.
Daisy glances toward it. “You heading somewhere?”
“Trail recon.”
“Can I come?”
I hesitate.
Not because I don’t want her there. But because increasingly, I do.
“I was hoping to interview you,” she adds casually. “At long last.”
There it is.
Professional framing.
Safer territory.
“Interview me while hiking?” I ask.
“You’d be less likely to escape into forums and trail notes.”
She’s right.
I sigh loudly and start the engine. “Fine.”
The trailhead sits just below the Chuska Mountains, tucked into a stretch of rough terrain where sandstone slowly gives way to pine and scrub oak.
Morning air cuts cool against my skin as we start hiking.
Daisy’s gotten better already.
Still slower than the rest of us.
Still occasionally dramatic about elevation.
But better.
“You know,” she says as we climb over a rocky incline, “I don’t think you need to stretch before every hike.”
“That’s because I believe in joint preservation.”
“Nothing about ‘joint preservation’ is hot, Miles.”
“I like knowing my knees will work for years to come,” I explain.
She pauses, her wheels clearly turning while her eyes rake over me. “Okay, that’s hot. I like a man on his knees.”
I nearly trip over a rock.
Fantastic start.
We hike in silence for a few minutes after that, boots crunching softly over dirt and gravel while the desert awakens around us.
Bird calls echo faintly through the trees.
Wind brushes through juniper branches overhead.
And strangely enough, being alone with Daisy out here feels easier than being alone with her anywhere else. No audience. No crew dynamic. Just movement.
She breaks the silence after a solid ten minutes. “So, do you think we have something here?”
I glance toward her, not sure how to respond. My throat feels dry. “Y—yeah, I do. Do you?” I look at her earnestly, waiting for her reply.
“I don’t know,” she shrugs. “Even though this area’s been mostly quiet?”
My eyes go wide. Cryptids. She meant Bigfoot. Not if there’s something between us. “Well, uh, quiet doesn’t mean empty.” I attempt to recover.
“Mm-hmm. Sure.”
I smile despite myself and adjust my backpack strap.
“The desert works differently,” I explain. “Movement patterns shift out here every day. Water access changes. Temperature changes. Human traffic changes. Most people searching this terrain are expecting dense forest behavior in open country.”
“And you’re not?”
“No.” I pause. “I think if something like this exists, it survives by adapting better than we do.”
She studies me carefully as we keep walking.
“You really don’t sound crazy when you talk about this.”
“That continues to be the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
She laughs. God, I like making her laugh. That realization lands badly enough, I immediately start talking about something else before my brain can unpack it.
“There’s actually a whole theory about southwestern forest migration corridors tied to abandoned uranium sites.”
Daisy groans playfully. “There he is.”
“What?”
“The little conspiracy man inside you.”
“It’s not conspiracy-based,” I assure her.
“You just said uranium.”
“That’s geology.”
“It’s giving History Channel at 2 a.m.,” she laughs.
I point at her while we walk. “Okay, first of all, History Channel lost all scholarly credibility after ‘Ancient Aliens.’ Can't peer review that malarkey.”
“You watched ‘Ancient Aliens?’”
“Everybody watched ‘Ancient Aliens,’” I say.
She laughs again, shaking her head.
And because I enjoy humiliation, I keep going.
“There’s also this entire thread about the Loveland Frogman sightings correlating with waterway movement patterns in Ohio—”
Daisy stops walking. I stop too.
“What?” I ask, scared I said too much.
“You know the Loveland Frogman?!”
I blink. “Obviously.”
“Oh, my God.”
“What?”