Beaumont was known, loved, and respected by everyone who came to him for their routine check-ups and to be examined should any symptom occur. He was as stout man of 43 years with shorter than average arms for his height. He had a lovely wife named Charlise Lorene and one bright son who was named in his sake.
The doctor was known to the southerners who lived below Lerner Hill to be a strange and overly curious man. They did not like his appearance and weren't all too sure about those small arms and why any human would adapt them. Quite surely, his appearance had to mean something more relevant, and perhaps sinister. Legends of local depravity were nothing new to this town or its people, for there were tales of old Seymour who lived up on Lerner Hill as early as 1928. It would only be natural that the southerners would find reason to distrust a man as unordinary as Arthur Beaumont.
Arthur knew of the stories that were being told in his absence, yet he took none of them to heart. He saw the people as bored and aging and knew that they meant no harm. He was, as he realized, a rather peculiar man with less than normal curiosities and took part in some quite odd studies. The most recent of these studies is actually the breeding ground for the bizarre happenings that are the centerpiece for this tale.
Arthur had wondered many times what his dog would bark at during the night and why it would cease whenever he stepped outside. He had thought it strange that he could hear his cat hissing and pouncing at things in the house but would go right back to normal when he'd enter the room. He meant to find a means to research what things his animals had seen in the absence of man. He started very quickly trying to find some source of energy that could be harnessed to make a sort of shroud to cover his own presence. He quickly found in every experiment the flaw of the human form still being visible, and there was no way to block the smell that animals realized.
The first prototype emitted an ultra-high frequency sound that would mask the sound of his breathing and distort the sound of his footfalls so that they would not register on the ears of his cat. The cat became aware of his presence and the experiment was deemed a miss. The second prototype the he had concocted created a sort of electromagnetic field that would destroy the waves in the air that carried his odor. This machine was rejected as well, for the cat quickly heard him come into the room. These experiments had set him back so far that he was beginning to fall a little behind in his practices and, before he knew it, had more appointments than he was able to take on with a steady hand.
Arthur had mentioned his tinkering to very few and among the included were his wife and an esteemed colleague named Buster Newbury. Newbury was a much celebrated physician from Fairburn who came down to Belzerburg to share news and discuss new medicine with Beaumont. When it was disclosed to Newbury exactly what his colleague was up to, he frowned with great distaste. He explained to Arthur that there are reasons that we never come in to contact with these secret creatures. He even suggested that one glance at something that a person is not prepared to see could send a strong willed man into the depths of insanity. These claims would not stop Arthur Beaumont, for he was the "strong willed man" that Newbury was alluding to.
After he had finished all of his appointments and house calls, due to the help of Buster Newbury, Arthur began working on his third prototype, whereas he had surmised that one could simply hide from the eyes of the subjects if his odor and any sounds that are distinct of man were kept in check. This new mechanism would simply combine the original pair of machines and could fit easily into the larger pocket on the inside of his trench coat. First, he tried it on his cat, who was sitting up in the windowsill facing southeastward from the house. He walked directly up to the cat, stretched forth an arm, and gave the cat a gentle stroke. As soon as his hand land upon the head of the feline, the animal jumped straight into the air, hit its head on the top of the window's frame, landed and dashed out of the room all in a matter of about 3 seconds. The machine worked. Now it was time for Arthur to take it into the wild and try it for real.
For the first field test, Arthur would try it in the front yard. He would wait until nightfall and when the dog would bark, he would simply power the machine on and walk outside. Surely enough, the dog began barking at around 10:34 pm and he turned the machine on and went to investigate. There he saw a small grayish creature that stood to be about 24 inches in height and walked as a biped. This was very strange, as it looked nothing like anything he'd seen. The creature seemed to have opposable thumbs, large feet, and look to be covered in the fine fuzz that covers the arms and legs of a child.
Just as he had begun to study the creature, Charlise called to him from inside and asked of the barking. Alerted to human presence, the creature turned to appraise the distance of the intruder. He met eyes with Beaumont, who had lost all color in his bearded face. The creature was quite shockingly humanoid, with close-set eyes, a heavy brow, a sort of beard, a large and quite wide nose, and the most shocking was the arms. They were of the "fisherman's arm" style that was so distinct of Beaumont himself. Arthur had only enough time to clearly see the face and arms of the creature before it snarled at him and ran off into the wood.
Arthur went back inside to tell Charlise what he had seen, and he explained to her that if there are more things like this in nature, then we could learn so much more about the evolution of the human race. This discovery gave hope to legends like the skunk ape, the Sasquatch, carcharadon megalodon, and even the pleseasaur. The applications were becoming limitless with his invention. He explained that we would be going away for the night to go camping. There must be some remarkable creatures out in the wood that would be nothing short of great significance in proving the existence of many things laughed off as urban legend.
The first night in the wood was already proving quite useful, as he had seen a strange sloth that had a full head of auburn hair, very human hands, and sporadic patches of wiry dark hair on its apricot colored torso. The sloth was hanging by prehensile feet from a low branch and ambushing small reptiles and rodents. This was particularly fetching, as all other sloths had been herbivorous.
There was, too, an odd creature that he had seen several yards out that much resembled the much speculated "Bigfoot". The animal was wandering about the wood and shaking trees to pick up and devour just about anything that fell out of them. Arthur, anxious to document his findings, withdrew a camera and snapped a photo of the sloth. The lumbering giant in the background had seen the flash and, after a few moments of sniffing the air, shrugged and continued his search for food. Arthur decided to put away the camera, as there were quite enough “Bigfoot” photos floating around already. Besides, being dismembered on the first night of the expedition was no way to end his life.
Arthur turned off the mechanism, the sloth dropped down and ran away, and the Sasquatch lumbered off into the distance. This would be a good time to set up camp and sleep 'til daylight. He had wondered about what he may find in the wood while the sun was still about.
That night, Beaumont had many odd dreams where the strange little "man" that he had seen that night had warned him about the creatures that lurk in the absence of man. He had told the doctor that there are too many reasons that their existence has been kept secret and that he should abort this mission. Upon waking, Beaumont shook his head and thought no more about leaving so much research alone. He returned home, leaving his camping gear behind, and told his wife about his finds so far. She was terrified and excited for him all the same. He explained that he would be returning to the same spot to have a look at the life that inhabits the wood during the day.
Arthur headed back toward the wood and, just before entering, turned his strange machine back on. When he got to the camp, he saw a vast variety of strange creatures surrounding the tent. Some of them, a strange deer and a couple of the "little people", standing upright and prodding it curiously. He hid in a small shrub and quickly snapped a photograph using no flash. Just after this, he turned off his machine but remained hidden. He waited there, listening to all of the animals scatter, and when he stood they were all gone save but for the "little people," who approached him and began speaking quite harshly in a strange tongue that seemed derived of a dialect of French.
This is where my tale gets interesting, for you still not know who I am, and don't mistake that you ever will. All I will tell you is this, no one person save for myself will ever see Arthur Beaumont again, for no one knows how to search in the absence of man.
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