On an evening in October of 2004, I was on Bardstown Road visiting a favorite bookshop. The proprietor, Harold McCarty, was well-known to me and I thought it might cheer me up to stop in and chat with him a while. We were of very different inclinations both in books and politics but he had a kindly manner as bookmen go, and had extended a certain philanthropy toward me in my younger days when I was sometimes choosing whether to read or eat.

But that evening I received the unwelcome news that he would soon be closing his doors. He had been thinking of selling out for years but had failed repeatedly to find a taker for both the storefront and the books. Having at last done so, he was frankly relieved.

I said little of my own thoughts. I suppose it should have been nothing to me that a bookshop would close. But I had come to the place from the infancy of my literary passion. And at a time when I was starting to feel my age, and at a season when the mind is naturally disposed to sadness, I was very sensible that I was speaking to him and standing in that place for perhaps the last time.

He spoke of his future plans, which, as he intended retirement, consisted mainly of trivia. He entertained with inconstant enthusiasm the project of rereading the favorite books of his youth. And a discussion of the merits of those once-beloved stories involved the greater part of our conversation.

When our words were spent and the first drops of a threatening storm pattered on the store windows, I wished him well and set about taking leave of him. And it was then, as I was turning to go, that he stopped me and brought out a book from behind the counter. It was a journal. He had laid it aside for me years ago, he said, but had always forgotten to mention it. I am a long-time collector of autograph manuscripts of all kinds, especially where they document anything strange or obscure, and had often spoken with him on the subject. He now informed me that this volume fulfilled the criteria of both strangeness and obscurity very well, although admittedly in a few pages only.

He said, "A customer brought it in to me. It wasn't worth anything—didn't even have the writer's name in it. But he'd picked it up at a Salvation Army and was willing to trade it for a few dollars of credit, so I got it from him. I took it because of this."

He opened the journal to a place near the middle and turned it on the counter for me to read it. A phone rang in the back office and, asking me to hold down the fort a while, he went away while I read.

It was very strange. The entries consisted almost wholly of notes on gardening and hunting. It was clearly the work of a man who knew what he liked and was intent on detailing it in full. And for the most part, it was of no interest except those who shared his pursuits.

The entry that McCarty had pointed out to me consisted of a mysterious encounter in the woods surrounding Taylorsville Lake. I would have smiled at it, and at first perhaps I did smile at it. But the story was set down with such dead earnestness that it was not until I finished the entry that I realized McCarty was once more seated behind the counter, waiting for me to finish. I asked him what he would take for it and he told me that since he knew how much business I'd brought his way over the years, he might as well give it to me. It was, he said, of no value except to those few who had a mania for such things—that is, to lovers of books and curiosities such as ourselves.

I thanked him, renewed my well-wishing and said goodbye.

The author of the journal was probably dead by the time it came to McCarty's shop. But, living or dead, I have no right to reproduce publicly what was written in private and remains by default under copyright.

But I will not infringe on that man's privacy or the law if I encapsulate in a few words and in general terms the substance of the relevant episode.

He had gone out on a September morning to do some hunting and arrived at Taylorsville Lake's just before sunrise. This reservation consists of more than 10,000 acres bounding at various points on the lake itself. The section of the reservation described in the journal was familiar to me, being the most frequented area and one I had hunted as a boy.

But as I was saying, the man entered the woods at first light and began wandering the ridges and slopes very much at random, not disposed to stop as usual under a tree to await the game, but driven (for reasons he doesn't mention) more to hike than hunt, carrying his .22 as though against the simple possibility that an unwary squirrel might show itself.

There follows in his entry a minute recount of every feature he could remember from his ramble. He drew in words, as well as could be done, a kind of map, that led me in my imagination to the precise locale of the encounter. In a portion of the reservation already identified, he came near the bottom of a slope and, looking across, saw a pale, dead and mostly dislimbed tree. The trunk was bored out and, through a hole in the side, he could see the furtive motions of a gray squirrel. He fired and missed, and had no more than cursed his aim when he heard a commotion away to his left, on the slope behind him.

It was moving before he could get a fix on it. He felt sure even at the first glimpse that it was not a deer. And yet it seemed somewhat too large to be a wild turkey. It ran away from him up the slope and under the cover of thick weeds. The man gave chase to it. From his fleeting view of the creature's ambling gallop, he judged that he might catch up to it by simple persistence. And besides, a peculiarly blended dread and curiosity came over him as he followed. This man was no stranger to the woods, and yet the motion and vague silhouette of the thing reminded him of nothing familiar.

Although evidently well on in years, he strove mightily in the creature's track. At the top of the ridge, the ground was clear of trees but nonetheless obstructed by high weeds and grass. As such, he could not see his quarry but was able to locate it by the shifting greenery and crunch of brambles and branches underfoot as it ran. At first, the hunter fully expected the creature to head for the opposite slope. But instead it wound through the thick weeds of the ridge, occasionally slipping out to the edge and running along the treeline before dashing back into the weeds.

The creature showed an oddly human canniness in its evident intention to wear down its pursuer. But there was no doubt that it was an animal. He had seen clearly that it was covered in a coat of fur. And the strange gait of the thing, however unfamiliar, could not possibly have been that of a man. Yet it continued, weaving in and out among the heavy weeds and grass of the ridge, carrying on its bizarre and labyrinthine chase, both perplexing the hunter and paradoxically luring him onward.

The creature was running again along the treeline and the man had just struck out from the weeds to follow when it abruptly dashed down the slope. As it did so, it turned briefly to look at him.

At this place in the journal, the author grows dilatory, obviously loathing the memory and yet struggling to depict it. Some traits are described without trouble. It was, he said, very like a man in form, moving in a kind of half-upright posture like an orangutan. And by the coat of shaggy hair, he might very nearly have taken it for such—would have preferred in the teeth of impossibility that it had been such—had he not seen its face. It is here that his description gives way to confusion. He compares its features to a variety of creatures so contradictory in kind that their names are not worthwhile to repeat. He returns again and again to the teeth. They were long, yellow and radiated a profound ferocity. He ends his description, somewhat feebly, by saying that the eyes were certainly those of a man.

All of the pages of the journal are filled, and it may be that other volumes exist that might throw light on the case. However, a later conversation with McCarty yielded no useful information about the original seller of the book, and repeated advertisements in the newspaper, asking for information, have gone unanswered.

I have myself returned to those woods—have followed the directions of the journal as well as the passage of time allowed. But if the dead tree still stands, I have not yet found it.