The Beast From the East

When I was a really little girl, my mom would tuck me into bed at night. She
would whisper, “Good night, Ginger. Good night. Don’t let the bedbugs bite.”

I didn’t know what bedbugs were. I pictured fat red bugs with big eyes and
spidery legs, crawling under the sheet. Just thinking about them made me itchy
all over.

After Mom kissed me on the forehead and left, Dad would step into my room and
sing to me. Very softly. The same song every night. “The Teddy Bears’ Picnic.”

I don’t know why he thought that song made a good lullaby. It was about going
into the woods and finding hundreds and hundreds of bears.

The song gave me the shivers. What were the bears eating at their picnic?
Children?

After Dad kissed me on the forehead and left the room, I’d be itching and
shaking for hours.

Then I’d have nightmares about bedbugs and bears.

Until a few years ago, I was afraid to go into the woods.

I’m twelve now, and I’m not scared any longer.

At least, I wasn’t scared until our family camping trip this summer. That’s
when I discovered that there are a lot scarier creatures than bears in the
woods!

But I guess I’d better begin at the beginning.

The first thing I remember about our camping trip is Dad yelling at my
brothers. I have two ten-year-old brothers—Pat and Nat. You guessed it.
They’re twins.

Lucky me—huh?

Pat and Nat aren’t just twins. They’re identical twins. They look so much
alike, they confuse
each other
!

They are both short and skinny. They both have round faces and big brown
eyes. They both wear their brown hair parted in the middle and straight down the
sides. They both wear baggy, faded jeans and black-and-red skater T-shirts with
slogans no one can understand.

There is only one way to tell Pat from Nat or Nat from Pat. You have to ask
them who they are!

I remember that our camping trip began on a beautiful, sunny day. The air
smelled piney and fresh. Twigs and dead leaves crackled under our shoes as we followed a twisting path through the woods.

Dad led the way. He carried the tent over his shoulder, and he had a bulging
backpack on his back. Mom followed him. She was also loaded down with stuff we
needed.

The path led through a grassy clearing. The sun felt hot on my face. My
backpack began to feel heavy. I wondered how much deeper into the woods Mom and
Dad wanted to go.

Pat and Nat followed behind us. Dad kept turning around to yell at them. We
all had to yell at Pat and Nat. Otherwise, they never seemed to hear us. They
only heard each other.

Why was Dad yelling?

Well, for one thing, Nat kept disappearing. Nat likes to climb trees. If he
sees a good tree, he climbs it. I think he’s part chimpanzee.

I tell him that as often as I can. Then he scratches his chest and makes
chimp noises. He thinks he’s really funny.

So there we were, hiking through the woods. And every time we turned around,
Nat would be up a tree somewhere. It was slowing us down. So Dad had to yell at
him.

Then Dad had to yell at Pat because of his Game Boy. “I told you not to bring
that thing!” Dad shouted. Dad is big and broad, kind of like a bear. And he has
a booming voice.

It doesn’t do him much good. Pat and Nat never listen to him.

Pat walked along, eyes on his Game Boy, his fingers hammering the controls.

“Why are we hiking in the woods?” Dad asked him. “You could be home in your
room doing that. Put it away, Pat, and check out the scenery.”

“I can’t, Dad,” Pat protested. “I can’t quit now. I’m on Level Six! I’ve
never made it to Level Six before!”

“There goes a chipmunk,” Mom chimed in, pointing. Mom is the wildlife guide.
She points out everything that moves.

Pat didn’t raise his eyes from his Game Boy.

“Where’s Nat?” Dad demanded, his eyes searching the clearing.

“Up here, Dad,” Nat called. I shielded my eyes with one hand and saw him on a
high branch of a tall oak tree.

“Get down from there!” Dad shouted. “That branch won’t hold you!”

“Hey—I made it to Level Seven!” Pat declared, fingering frantically.

“Look—two bunny rabbits!” Mom cried. “See them in the tall grass?”

“Let’s keep walking,” I groaned. “It’s too hot here.” I wanted to get out of
the clearing and back under the cool shade of the trees.

“Ginger is the only sensible one,” Dad said, shaking his head.

“Ginger is a freak!” Nat called, sliding down from the oak tree.

We made our way through the woods. I don’t know how long we walked. It was so
beautiful! So peaceful. Beams of sunlight poked through the high branches,
making the ground sparkle.

I found myself humming that song about the bears in the woods. I don’t know
what made it pop into my head. Dad hadn’t sung it to me in years and years.

We stopped for lunch by a clear, trickling stream. “This would make a nice
camping spot,” Mom suggested. “We can set up the tent on the grass here by the
shore.”

Mom and Dad started to unpack the equipment and set up the tent. I helped
them. Pat and Nat threw stones into the stream. Then they got into a wrestling
match and tried to shove each other into the water.

“Take them into the woods,” Dad instructed me. “Try to lose them—okay?”

He was joking, of course.

He had no way of knowing that Pat, Nat, and I would soon be lost for real—with little hope of ever returning.

“What do you want to do?” Nat demanded. He had picked up a thin tree branch
to use as a walking stick. Pat kept slapping at it, trying to make Nat stumble.

We had followed the stream for a while. I saw a million tiny, silver minnows
swimming near the surface. Now we were making our own path through the tangle of
trees, low shrubs, and rocks.

“Hide-and-seek!” Pat declared. He slapped Nat. “You’re It!”

Nat slapped him back. “You’re It.”

“You’re It!”

“You’re It!”

“You’re It!”

The slaps kept getting harder.

“I’ll be It!” I cried. Anything to keep them from murdering each other.
“Hurry. Go hide. But don’t go too far.”

I leaned against a tree, shut my eyes, and started to count to one hundred. I could hear them scampering into the trees.

After thirty, I counted by tens. I didn’t want to give them too big a head
start. “Ready or not, here I come!” I called.

I found Pat after only a few minutes. He had crouched behind a large white
mound of sand. He thought he was hidden. But I spotted his brown hair poking up
over the top of the sand.

I tagged him easily.

Nat was harder to find. He had climbed a tree, of course. He was way up at
the top, completely hidden by thick clumps of green leaves.

I never would have found him if he hadn’t spit on me.

“Get down, creep!” I shouted angrily. I waved a fist up at him. “You’re
disgusting! Get down—right now!”

He giggled and peered down at me. “Did I hit you?”

I didn’t answer. I waited for him to climb down to the ground. Then I rubbed
a handful of dried leaves in his face until he was sputtering and choking.

Just a typical Wald family hide-and-seek game.

After that, we chased a squirrel through the woods. The poor thing kept
glancing back at us as if he didn’t believe we were chasing after him. He
finally got tired of the race and scurried up a tall pine tree.

I glanced around. The trees in this part of the woods grew close together.
Their leaves blocked most of the sunlight. The air felt cooler here. In their
shade, it was nearly as dark as evening.

“Let’s go back,” I suggested. “Mom and Dad might be getting worried.”

The boys didn’t argue. “Which way?” Nat asked.

I glanced around, making a complete circle with my eyes. “Uh… that way.”
I pointed. I was guessing. But I felt ninety-nine percent sure.

“Are you sure?” Pat asked. He eyed me suspiciously. I could see he was a
little worried. Pat didn’t like the outdoors as much as Nat and me.

“Sure I’m sure,” I told him.

I led the way. They followed close behind. They had both picked up walking
sticks. After we had walked a few minutes, they started fighting a duel with
them.

I ignored them. I had my own worries. I wasn’t sure we were walking in the
right direction. In fact, I felt totally turned around.

“Hey—there’s the stream!” I cried happily.

I immediately felt better. We weren’t lost. I had picked the right direction.

Now all we had to do was follow the stream back to the clearing where we had
set up camp.

I began to hum again. The boys tossed their sticks into the stream. We began
to jog along the grassy shore.

“Whoa!” I cried out when my left boot started to sink. I nearly fell into a
deep mud patch. I pulled my hiking boot up. Soaked in wet, brown mud up over the
ankle.

Pat and Nat thought that was a riot. They laughed and slapped each other high
fives.

I growled at them, but I didn’t waste any words. They’re both hopeless. So
totally immature.

Now I couldn’t wait to get back to camp and clean the thick mud off my boot.
We jogged along the shore, then cut through the skinny, white-trunked trees and
into the clearing.

“Mom! Dad!” I called, hurrying over the grass. “We’re back!”

I stopped so short, both boys tumbled into me.

My eyes searched the clearing.

“Mom? Dad?”

They were gone.

“They left us!” Pat exclaimed. He ran frantically around the clearing. “Mom!
Dad!”

“Earth to Pat,” Nat called. He waved his hand in front of Pat’s face. “We’re
in the wrong place, you wimp.”

“Nat is right,” I replied, glancing around. There were no footprints, no tent
markers. We were in a different clearing.

“I thought you knew the way, Ginger,” Pat complained. “Didn’t they teach you
anything at that nature camp?”

Nature camp! Last summer my parents forced me to spend two weeks at an
“Explore the Great Outdoors” camp. I got poison ivy the first day. After that, I
didn’t listen to anything the counselors said.

Now I wished I had.

“We should have left markers on the trees,” I said, “to find our way back.”

“
Now
you think of it?” Nat groaned, rolling his eyes. He picked up a long, crooked stick and waved it in my face.

“Give me that,” I ordered.

Nat handed me the stick. Yellow sap oozed onto my palm. It smelled sour.

“Gross!” I shouted. I tossed the stick away. I rubbed my hands on my jeans.
But the yellow stain wouldn’t come off my palm.

That’s weird, I thought. I wondered what the stuff was. I definitely didn’t
like it on my skin.

“Let’s follow the stream,” I suggested. “Mom and Dad can’t be too far.”

I tried to sound calm. But I was totally twisted around. In fact, I had no
idea where we were.

We headed out of the clearing and back to the shore. The sun fell lower in
the sky. It prickled the back of my neck.

Pat and Nat tossed pebbles into the water. After a few minutes, they tossed
them at each other.

I ignored them. At least they weren’t throwing anything at me.

As we walked along, the air became cooler. The path grew narrower.

The water turned dark and murky. Silvery-blue fish snapped at the air. The
skinny branches of the tall trees reached down toward us.

A feeling of dread swept over me. Nat and Pat grew quiet. They actually
stopped picking on each other.

“I don’t remember any of these bushes near our campsite,” Pat said nervously.
He pointed to a short, squat plant. Its strange blue leaves looked like open
umbrellas stacked one on top of the other. “Are you sure we’re going the right
way?”

By now I was sure we
weren’t
headed in the right direction. I didn’t
remember those strange bushes, either.

Then we heard a noise on the other side of the shrubs.

“Maybe that’s Mom and Dad!” Pat exclaimed.

We pushed our way through the plants. And ran into another
deserted
clearing.

I glanced around. This grassy field was enormous. Large enough for a hundred
tents.

My heart hammered against my chest.

We stood on rust-colored grass. It stuck up over my ankle. A clump of
gigantic purple cabbage plants grew to our right.

“This place is cool!” Nat cried. “Everything is so big.”

To me, the clearing wasn’t cool at all. It gave me the creeps.

Strange trees surrounded us on all sides. Their branches shot out at right
angles to the trunk. They resembled stairs going up and up and up. Up into the
clouds.

They were the tallest trees I’d ever seen. And perfect for climbing.