The Girl Who Cried Bigfoot

1. Wren

WREN

FAKE IT ’TIL YOU CRYPTID

Red notifications flash across my laptop screen, a relentless pulse of pings from the Bigfoot Hotline.

Every five seconds, a new number registers, another voice from the internet void convinced they’ve spotted a hairy giant in the Cascades.

The call log climbs, the digits ticking up and up in time with my fingers drumming against the desk.

If only those digits could translate to the lodge.

The parking lot is a vast, empty stretch of gray gravel, interrupted only by my beat-up sedan and an SUV belonging to the birdwatchers in Cabin Four.

The Cassidy Lodge sign leans five degrees to the left, the wood silvered by age and neglect.

Yesterday morning, I hammered a fresh bracket onto the frame, but the rot is winning.

I’ll have to replace the frame soon, or maybe the whole sign.

If there’s still a need for a sign…

Everything about the lodge is quiet these days, and quiet means expensive.

At least we’re saving money on floor polish, because there aren’t enough boots coming through here to scuff the floorboards.

The place is a dying legacy in a beautiful wrapper.

Sighing, I lean back in the swivel chair, the springs groaning a protest that matches the one in my joints.

My father’s hiking boots still sit by the heavy oak door.

They’re caked in dried mud from a trail he’ll never walk again.

On the mantle above the fireplace, there’s a photo of me and my parents, my mother and I grinning with pride, my father wearing an aw shucks expression, because he’d just graduated from the Search and Rescue academy.

I usually avoid looking at the photo because grief is a heavy weight that doesn’t help me pay the electric bill.

Black ice and bad timing had taken my parents from me, which I’m sure must have pissed my father off because he’d always wanted the mountains to take him.

My art history degree hangs in a cheap frame behind the desk, a four-year detour that taught me everything about the iconography of the Renaissance and nothing about how to save a failing family business.

Everyone in this town, me included, has come to a tacit agreement that the degree was a mistake.

It turns out knowing the difference between a sfumato and a chiaroscuro doesn’t help when the septic tank decides to retire.

I tap a pen against the desk as I turn my gaze back to the call log.

I’m good at this. My marketing instincts, honed by a desperate need to keep the lights on, have turned a late-night whim into a viral sensation.

I’m not a believer, just a woman who knows how to curate a mystery.

People don’t really care about the truth; all they want is a story they can tell at bars.

They want to be part of something that can’t be explained.

The hotline started as a joke, a bit of local color to drive traffic to the gift shop.

Now, it’s become the only thing keeping us from foreclosure.

If I can keep the internet interested, I can keep the power running.

It’s a dumb thing to do on purpose, but being smart hasn’t been paying the mortgage.

HOTLINE TRANSCRIPT #442

CALLER: Yeah, hi. I’m in the national park and I definitely just saw him.

WREN: Describe the encounter, please.

CALLER: He was huge. Like, eight feet tall. And he was wearing... wait, was he wearing a trucker hat?

WREN: Did the hat have a logo, sir?

CALLER: I think it said Bass Pro Shops. Does Bigfoot shop at Bass Pro Shops?

WREN: We can’t rule out his appreciation for quality outdoor gear at this time. Thank you for your report.

I close the transcript and rub my eyes. The absurdity is the fuel.

People call to report stolen shoes, blurry shapes, strange noises, and, now apparently, cryptid fashion choices.

Every call is a data point that I can turn into content, and every piece of content is a reason for a tourist to book a room they’ll eventually realize is slightly damp.

A shadow falls over the desk. I don’t need to look up to know it’s Marge. The smell of cinnamon and sourdough precedes her, a physical manifestation of the kitchen’s authority. She puts a plate of thick-cut toast and a bowl of oatmeal on the cleared space next to my laptop.

“Eat,” Marge says, her voice rough and steady. She doesn’t ask if I’m hungry. Marge hasn’t asked a question she didn’t already know the answer to since 1994.

“I’m working, Marge. The internet is losing its mind over a Sasquatch in a trucker hat,” I say as another notification pops up on the screen. A man in Ohio thinks he found a footprint in his flowerbed. It’s a bear, but I’ll log it anyway.

“The internet can wait ten minutes while you chew,” she says, planting a hand on her hip.

She looks at the laptop screen with a level of suspicion she usually reserves for spoiled milk.

“You’re going to turn into a ghost if you keep sitting behind this desk.

A pale, twitchy ghost who smells like lithium batteries. ”

“Ghost-run lodges are a different niche. We’re doing the hairy giant thing right now.

If it doesn’t pan out, then we’ll look at the ghost angle.

Branding is important,” I mutter, finally picking up the toast. It’s buttered thick enough to be a health hazard, toasted just shy of burnt, exactly how my mother used to serve it.

Marge grunts in reluctant approval. “Walt says the gravel in the north lot is shifting again. He’s out there now with the rake, trying to convince the ground to stay where he put it. He also said he saw another one of those drones hovering over the tree line this morning.”

I pause, my teeth sinking into the bread. “A drone? We’re three miles from the nearest trailhead. Who’s flying drones out here?”

“The people who listen to that phone line of yours,” Marge says, squinting at a blurry photo a caller just uploaded. It looks like a stump. Maybe a very stationary bear. “That’s a cedar knot, Wren. I’ve lived in the area for sixty years. I know a tree when I see one.”

“Unidentified forest biomass, Marge. That sounds much more intriguing on a brochure,” I say. I move the photo to the Pending Verification folder. Verification usually consists of me waiting three days before posting a cryptic caption about how the Cascades keep their secrets well.

Walt Halloran enters the lobby, the screen door slapping shut behind him. He smells like pine needles and exhaust. The running family joke is that he’s been the groundskeeper here since before the lodge had indoor plumbing. He stops by the desk, nodding to Marge before looking at me.

“The birds are quiet today,” Walt says. It’s his version of a weather report. “And the roof on the equipment shed is starting to sag. I can patch it, but we’re going to need real shingles before the first snow. Not the stuff I found in the basement.”

A familiar tightening starts in my chest, the same feeling I get whenever I think of the dwindling bank account. “How much time do we have?”

“If the wind stays down? Maybe a month. If it doesn’t? We’ll be storing the mowers in the lobby by November,” Walt says. He doesn’t sound worried; he sounds practical. To Walt, buildings falling down is just another form of erosion.

I look back at the screen. The red notifications are still coming.

Each one is a potential guest. Each one is a shingle.

I’ve turned the memory of my family’s lodge into a digital freak show, and the worst part is how well it’s working.

The birdwatchers in Cabin Four are only here because they heard the lodge was the epicenter of the ‘recent activity.’

“I’ll find the money, Walt. Just... keep the rake moving. Make it look like we’ve got a full staff out there.” It’s a necessary lie. We’re a three-person operation pretending to be a wilderness resort.

Walt nods and heads back out. Marge lingers, her hand resting briefly on my shoulder, which is her version of a hug. Then she’s gone, back to the kitchen to prepare for a dinner rush that might consist of four people or forty, depending on whether the algorithm decides to bless up today.

I stare at the ‘Bass Pro Shops’ Bigfoot transcript again. This bit—this gloriously stupid, viral bit—is the only thing keeping the lights on. There is no plan B. No second act. There is only a girl with a useless degree and a fake hotline, waiting for the woods to give her something she can sell.

I check the About section of the website I built on a caffeine-fueled Tuesday at three in the morning.

It’s a masterpiece of intentional ambiguity.

I used my art history background to select the exact shade of forest green to evoke both nostalgia and a slight, unsettling sense of depth.

I know the power of a well-placed void. If you leave a gap in the narrative, a hundred strangers will rush to fill it with their own anxieties and desires.

Right now, those desires involve blurry photographs of shadows and an irrational hope that something ancient is roaming the forest.

The phone on the desk vibrates. It’s the direct line for the lodge, not the hotline. I pick it up, sliding into my Professional Daughter of the Cascades voice.

“Cassidy Lodge, this is Wren. How can I help you?”

“Is this the place with the monster?” The voice is young and a little breathless. I can hear the rush of wind in the background, so I assume they’re calling from a moving vehicle.

“We’re a full-service wilderness lodge located in the heart of the national forest,” I say, the script smooth as river stones. “If you’re referring to the recent reports of unusual sightings, we are indeed the primary intake center for the Bigfoot Hotline.”

“Do you have a room available? For tonight? We have a thermal camera and three bags of beef jerky.”

I bring up the booking calendar. It’s a sea of white space with a few lonely blue blocks. “I can get you into Cabin Seven. It has a prime view of the north ridge, which has been a... high-frequency area lately.”

Cabin Seven also has a temperamental water heater and a porch that groans when the wind hits it, but ‘high-frequency’ sounds much more enticing.

I take their credit card information, the numbers feeling like a transfusion of blood.

That’s another two hundred dollars toward the insurance payment.

Two hundred dollars away from the edge of the cliff.

When I hang up, I feel a prickle of something that isn’t quite guilt.

It’s more like the vertigo you get when you realize you’re standing on a bridge you built out of toothpicks.

I’m selling them the ridge and the thrill of the hunt, but I’m also selling them the silence.

This place used to be about the forest. My dad used to take people out to show them the Douglas firs and the way the light hit the lichen.

Now, I’m selling them the thing that isn’t there so I can save the things that are.

I pull up the next hotline transcript to clear my head.

HOTLINE TRANSCRIPT #445

CALLER: (Heavy breathing) It’s... it’s screaming. Do you hear that? In the woods behind the gas station?

WREN: Sir, are you near the town of Silverton?

CALLER: Yeah. It sounds like a woman screaming, but, like... bigger. Is that him? Is he angry?

WREN: Sir, based on your location and the time of year, what you’re likely hearing is a mountain lion in heat. They are known for their vocalizations, which can sound remarkably human.

CALLER: So it’s not Bigfoot?

WREN: While the Sasquatch is known for many sounds, we find that screams near the Chevron are usually feline in origin. Please stay in your vehicle.

I sigh. Sometimes the truth is more dangerous than the lie. A mountain lion is a real threat; a Sasquatch is a brand. I’m out here protecting people from reality by feeding them a fantasy, which is an irony my art history professors would have loved to deconstruct for three credit hours.

Standing, I stretch, my spine cracking. I need to move.

I walk over to the door and stop next to my father’s boots.

The size twelves are worn at the heel, the leather dark with years of waterproofing grease.

I haven’t moved them because moving them feels like an admission of a finality I’m not ready to sign off on.

As long as they’re by the door, I can pretend my parents are just late for dinner.

I push open the door and step onto the porch. The sharp, clean scent of petrichor and pine permeates the air. It’s beautiful, magnificent, but nature doesn’t care about beauty. Just like the mountains don’t care if I pay the mortgage because they’ll still be here long after Cassidy Lodge is gone.

I look toward the tree line. The forest starts about fifty yards past the last cabin, a wall of green that seems to swallow the light.

That’s where the “sightings” happen and the drones go to die when their batteries fail.

It’s also where the real problems live: the erosion, the beetle kill, the encroaching rot that eventually claims every man-made thing in this zip code.

A flicker of movement near the equipment shed catches my eye.

Walt, his back bent, rakes the gravel with a grim, rhythmic focus.

He looks smaller than he did last year. Or maybe the lodge just looks bigger the longer it stands empty.

He’s pretending for the sake of the imaginary guests, just like I’m pretending for the sake of the callers.

We’re all actors in a play that hasn’t had a rehearsal in years.

I remember a lecture in one of my courses about the sublime, the idea that nature is both terrifying and magnificent, and that humanity’s role is to stand in awe of it.

I’m not in awe. I’m looking out at a lodge with a failing septic tank, trying to figure out how to monetize terror to preserve magnificence. It’s a messy, undignified way to live.

I go back inside, the door clicking shut with a finality that echoes in the empty room. I sit back down at the desk. The red notifications are piling up again. Ping. Ping. Ping. It’s the sound of survival. It’s the sound of a legacy being bartered for clicks.

I pull up the latest report. It’s a video file, three seconds of shaky, pixelated footage of something brown moving through the brush. It’s almost certainly a deer, or perhaps a particularly large dog, but the caption from the sender reads: I FELT HIM WATCHING ME. THE EYES WERE RED.

I could tell them it’s a trick of the light, and that red-eye is a common photographic artifact. But then they wouldn’t book a room.

Instead, I type: Interesting. The local legends often mention the “glow” in the deep brush. Where exactly were you standing?

My heart does a little stutter-step, a mix of adrenaline and exhaustion, as I hit send. This bit is the only thing keeping the lights on, and there is no plan B. I’m the guardian of a ghost story, and as long as I can keep the world haunted, I can keep the Cassidy Lodge alive.