The Hidebehind: The Lumberwoods Terror No One Has Ever Seen
Every monster in this chronicle has a description — the color of its eyes, the number of its heads, the exact wrongness of its feet. Every monster but one. In the great pine woods of the American North — the same lumber-camp country that wept for the Squonk — the old hands spoke of a creature that has been killing woodsmen since the first axe rang in the timber, and about whose appearance the entire tradition, a century and a half of it, can testify to precisely nothing. Not its size. Not its shape. Not so much as the color of its hide. Because no human being has ever seen the hidebehind — and that is not a gap in the record. That is the record. The hidebehind is always behind something. Behind the nearest tree, whichever tree is nearest; behind the stump, the boulder, the loaded sled; and when you spin around — every child who ever heard the tale has spun around — it has already moved, in perfect silence, exactly as fast as your turning, to the new behind. You can whirl all day in...