The Dwayyo, Werewolf of the Northeast

I have a new article on my Examiner site, about the creature called the Dwayyo. It is a local cryptid of the Blue Ridge area of Maryland. Here is the introductory story:

According to ‘Aubrey’, she was driving her old Subaru on Coxey Brown Road near Myersville, Maryland late in the summer of 2009 when she had an eerie feeling.

It was as if she was being watched. The road was lined with trees, she was on the outer edge of Gambrill State Park, and the forest was beginning to grow thicker. According to her, as she turned on Hawbottom Road, where her friend lived, the feeling became overwhelming. The hairs on the back of her neck rose in terror as she sensed the unseen eyes upon her.

She wanted to stop the car and take her breath, she was afraid that she would veer off the road and hit a tree because she her nerves were getting so unsteady that she began to shake. But she knew that whatever was watching her, and following her was out there, and she took what little comfort she had by being safer inside her rust rotted car.

Still, to prevent a wreck, she slowed down as she headed south, and that was when she saw the creature. At first it was a blur to the right of her periphery vision. Something that was moving through the trees, a shadow that flickered as it went in and out of sight on the edge of her vision.

It was a brown smear of color that popped out in contrast to the dull dark grey trees that she passed. Whatever it was, it bobbed through the underbrush and between the trees to keep pace with her car. She thinks at the time, she was going around 25 miles per hour. She then slowed down once more to take a good look to her right, and make sure that she was not seeing things. As her car slowed to a crawl, the brown blurry smear of color seemed to bound out of the woods closer to the road.

With a massive leap the hazy color became flesh as a huge dog-like animal on two legs emerged from the foliage.

The fangs, Aubrey wrote, are burned into her memory. Huge fangs from a mouth grimaced in anger and hate. She could feel the fangs as if they were ripping her skin while the creature stood there panting on the side of the road. Drool dripped from its huge mouth as she heard a loud growl, and she looked into the dark eyes. Darkness took up its entire eye, there was no white at all. It was if she was staring death and hell head on in dizzying madness.

Then it leaped, arms outstretched with claws grasping the wind. Instinctively Aubrey stepped on her gas pedal with all her might. The squeal of her tires seemed as if her car too was screaming in horror at the thing that emerged from the dark looming forest.

She did not look back. She didn’t want to know if the thing was following her. She didn’t feel the eyes upon her anymore. She was too shaken to really feel anything at all.

When she made it to her friends house, she sat in the driveway shaking as she looked around to make sure the creature had not followed her there. The house was also in the woods, at the opposite side of the State Park.

When she felt safe, she made a mad dash for her friend’s door, and banged on it frantically. He did not know what to make of her story. Aubrey knew he did not believe her. He had lived in the woods all his life, and had never encountered what she had seen. He assured her that it must have just been a dog, perhaps a rabid one at that. Her mind was playing tricks on her. But the young woman knew what she had seen that late summer day. It was no dog. It was something out of a horror movie come to life before her eyes.

Though she told nobody what she felt it really was, she called it a werewolf. That is until after she did some research in the local college library and came up with the name that others had called it when they too saw the forest come alive.

She had encountered the Dwayyo.

For the full article and more on the Dwayyo, go to my Examiner article here: DWAYYO