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Authors: Tracy Barrett

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BOOK: The Beast of Blackslope
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T
here you are!” their father said when they pushed open the door of the B and B. “You're just in time. We need you to break a tie.”
“A tie?” Xander asked. “About what?”
“Your mom wants to check out the preview at the sale.”
“What's that?” Xena asked.
“They put everything that's going to be sold on display a day or two ahead,” their mother explained. “That way you can examine it and have time to think about what you might want to buy and how much you want to spend.”
Xena and Xander groaned. “And I want to take a hike,” their father said. “I need to try out those new boots. So we thought we'd leave it up to you two.”
“Hike!” they both said, and their mom laughed and said, “Okay, I know when I'm outnumbered. Which way should we go?”
Xander promptly said, “South.” He glared at Xena, daring her to say something. He was going to prove to Xena that he wasn't afraid—and he was going to look for clues!
“Why south?” their father asked.
“That's the direction those woods are in, isn't it?” Xander asked. Their father nodded. “Well, don't you want to see some wildlife?”
“You? Wildlife?” Their mother looked surprised. “Anyway, I thought you liked London!”
“We do,” Xena said. “We do, a lot. It's just that it will be nice to get out in the country.”
“Okay,” their mom said. “Let's get some picnic supplies so we can spend all day exploring.”
 
“There's lots of cool stuff around the place we're going.” Xena was reading the guidebook.
Xander was looking straight out the windshield—or the windscreen, as it was called here—and let her read to him. He knew if he read even a few words in a moving car, he'd get so carsick they'd have to pull over. “Like what?”
“Like the ruins of an old temple and rock formations and things.”
Xander nodded, still looking ahead. A huge mass of something white was moving across a field. “What's that?” he asked.
“Oh wow!” Xena cried. “It's a flock of sheep with one of those herding dogs! I've always wanted to see that!”
Their father stopped the car, and for a while they sat and watched the beautiful black and white dog cleverly maneuvering sheep down the field and through a narrow gate into a paddock. As the shepherd passed near them he raised his hand briefly in greeting. In a moment the sheep went over a low rise and out of sight, and their father started up the engine and they drove off.
They drove farther on and got out of the car and climbed enormous piles of rocks, speckled with moss and lichen, which the guidebook said were the foundations of an ancient Druidic temple. They ate their picnic perched on the ruins and went back to exploring.
All day long, though, Xena and Xander couldn't stop thinking about the Beast. As they climbed around the huge rocks of the temple, Xena was thinking, I wonder what kind of creature could make that weird footprint Sherlock drew in his notebook. She kept her eyes peeled for a footprint, a tuft of fur, a broken branch, anything out of the ordinary.
Xander was thinking, There's got to be a way to solve this case without an actual Beast
encounter. He scanned the countryside from the highest rock, hoping for a long-distance glimpse of something large and brown and shaggy. He couldn't help feeling they were getting close to something scary. Every shadow made him jump, and once, when a hawk shrieked in the air above him, he nearly fell off the rocks he was clambering over.
“Boy, I'm tired,” their mom said as she climbed into the car at the end of the day. “Let's get back and see if Mrs. Roberts has any coffee in the kitchen. Tea's fine, but …”
Xander relaxed with relief. He wasn't going to have to confront the Beast after all—at least not today.
“But, Mom,” Xena said, “you said we could go to the woods. We haven't seen anything wild today.”
Shut up
, Xander thought.
“Except for that spider that went down your shirt,” their dad said, steering around a rut in the road. “I don't know which was wilder, you or the spider! I haven't seen you hop around like that in a long time.”
Xena
had
looked pretty funny when she felt all those legs tickling down the back of her neck. Xander would remember that the next time she teased him about his fear of wild animals. At
least he didn't screech at a harmless little spider.
“You
promised
,” Xena said.
“We didn't promise,” their father said.
He's so unfair sometimes, she thought. That was practically a promise. And we were on his side about going for a hike instead of to the sale preview!
“And we're tired,” their mom said. “We'll have plenty of chances to go exploring tomorrow. There's a walking tour of local sites of interest tomorrow morning. How does that sound?”
Xena and Xander looked at each other. Boring, each could almost hear the other thinking. And they were nearly at the woods. If a beast was hiding—and howling—around here, it was probably living among the shadows of the trees, Xander thought. Otherwise people would have seen it, wouldn't they?
A few small clouds were making soft streaks across the sky. “Ooh, that's so pretty,” their mom said. “Can you pull over for a minute? I want to take some pictures. The manor house we just passed is so pretty in this light, and the clouds are gorgeous.”
“I thought you were in a hurry to get back,” their father said. He slowed down the car and put on the blinker.
“I was. But those clouds! It will just take a minute.”
They all got out, and Mrs. Holmes leaned against the fence that ran along the road, taking picture after picture. “Let's wait a few minutes and see if they change their shape,” she said. “It's so peaceful here.”
“Can I take one?” Xander asked. His mom handed him the camera, and he pointed it toward the sky, keeping some of the dark trees in the foreground for contrast. Cool, he thought, and moved a few steps away to get a different angle.
Xena hopped over the waist-high fence—it was easy since the track coach at school had been training her on hurdles—and started looking at the ground. “Coming, Xander?” He shook his head. “Mom and Dad are right here,” she reminded him. “We won't go far.”
“I'm taking pictures.”
“Oh, all
right
.” As she moved away from him, she muttered just loud enough for him to hear, “What a baby.”
Xena soon found herself getting farther and farther away from her family. She could still see the car and hear her parents' voices. But the woods were thicker than they looked from the road, and it was dark in there. It would be a
good place for something to hide. Even something big could stay out of sight here. Something big, with sharp claws and enough strength to break a fence. Xena started at a sound, but it was just a squirrel scrambling up a tree.
She was about to turn back when something caught her eye. One of the tree's branches was broken. The break was above her head. Xena was already almost as tall as her mom, so whoever—or whatever—had hit the branch with enough force to snap it must have been as tall as a man. Maybe it was a man, she told herself.
She inspected the break. It looked pretty new; the splinters along the edge were still sharp and hadn't been worn down by exposure to wind and rain. And there, just past it, was another broken branch.
She glanced down and saw something else. She squatted. Was that a footprint? It was about the right length but broader than a footprint should be, and were those toe-marks or just depressions in the dirt? It was too dark in the thick trees to be sure.
Xena stood up. “Xander!” she called. “Could you come here?”
A few moments later he pushed through the trees. “Are you sure you want a
baby
with you?”
“Sorry,” Xena said. “I didn't mean—sorry.”
“Anyway, what do you want?” He glanced back toward the road. It had been hard for him to go into the woods, but he'd proved his point to Xena. Now he'd do whatever it was she wanted and get back to the car before the sun set any further.
Xena pointed at the ground, and Xander bent over, his hands on his knees. “Hmm.” He pulled the shiny camera out of his pocket.
“Great idea!” She reached for it. The camera's flash would illuminate the footprint, or whatever it was.
“No way. I thought of it.”
“Well, I found the footprint,” she said, but she cared more about getting the picture than about being the one to take it, so she moved to the side.
Xander snapped the picture, the white flash lighting up the scene. He took two more for good measure.
“Xena!” It was their dad. “Xander!”
“Coming!” they called together and headed back to the car. Then Xander pulled up short and Xena nearly ran into him.
“Watch out!” she said, but he just pointed at the fence.
“Look.” One whole section was fresh new wood, and sawdust lay under it. “Someone recently repaired it. This must be where it was broken!”
“Duh,” Xena said. “Let's—”
“Come on!” Their father sounded impatient, so Xander snapped a quick shot of the fence, and they ran back to the car.
“Did you get your picture?” their mom said as their dad pulled back onto the road.
“Just a sec.” Xena pressed the buttons to show the last pictures taken. She nudged Xander. “Take a look at this!” she whispered.
“I can't. I'll get sick.”
“Oh, right.”
“Well, what is it?” he asked impatiently as she stared at the camera in silence.
“It's the footprint.” Her hushed voice was high with excitement. “A huge footprint, and it has only four toes—just like the one in the casebook!”
Xander's voice cracked as he said, “Then … then the Beast is
real
.”
Xena nodded. All she felt was excitement, but in Xander excitement mingled with fear until he felt like he was going to throw up.
T
heir mother reached back her hand for the camera. “I want to see how those cloud pictures came out.”
“Just one more second, Mom,” Xena pleaded. She clicked the button back a frame and saw that this picture was even clearer. There was no doubt about it: a big flat-footed footprint with a missing toe. There was also a shot of the repaired fence. She passed the camera forward.
“Any good ones?” their dad asked, and while their parents discussed the photos, Xena and Xander leaned in toward each other to talk about what they had found.
“The footprint looked just the same as the one Sherlock drew in the notebook,” Xena said. “And the branch above it was broken, really high up, like by something tall.”
Xander shut his eyes, picturing the eerie creature Sherlock had drawn and imagining it
tall enough to break that high branch. “It's the Beast,” he said. “It's got to be.”
“Well, it was
something
big,” Xena conceded.
He swallowed hard, fighting back his fear. He was Sherlock Holmes's descendant, and he wanted to solve this case. He couldn't give up now. Maybe he just needed a little of Xena's skeptical approach. “Okay,” he said, sounding calmer than he felt. “All we know for sure is that something big is out there. Now we have to come up with our next step.”
They fell into silence for the rest of the ride, trying to think what they should do next.
There was a lot of interesting material in the library, Xander thought. We should definitely go back there.
I can't wait to get out in the woods again and see what else we can find! ran through Xena's mind.
As they pulled up at the B and B, Mrs. Roberts came out and stood in the doorway, wiping her hands on her apron. “Just in time for supper! Would you like to join us?”
“That's very nice of you,” their mother said. “We're all hungry.”
Again, Mrs. Roberts had made sandwiches. “Out in the country we stick to the old-fashioned
ways. Our big meal is at midday, and we have our tea in the late afternoon. So it's just sandwiches since nobody's very hungry at supper-time as a rule.”
They sat down and dug in. Mr. and Mrs. Roberts kept glancing at the door and then at the clock on the wall.
At home, the sandwiches would have been peanut butter and jelly or maybe tuna fish. Here, there were all sorts of interesting new things to try: egg and olive, cucumber slices with lots of butter on brown bread, and a tender green leaf that Mr. Roberts called watercress. They sampled each of them. Xander wasn't crazy about the egg and olive, but the others were really good. Xena ate some of everything.
“These are delicious,” their mother said.
Mrs. Roberts blushed. “Cooking's in my blood, I think,” she said modestly.
The back door opened and then banged shut, and Mrs. Roberts looked up with her lips pressed together. Is she angry at something? Xena wondered.
Trevor came into the room. “Sorry I'm late,” he mumbled as he pulled a chair up to the table.
“Young man,” Mr. Roberts said. “You know the rules. Home before dark.”
“The sun's just setting now!” Trevor protested.
This seemed a little odd to Xena. Blackslope was such a peaceful little town. Why would a boy Xander's age have to be home so early? Were the Robertses overprotective grandparents? Or could they be anxious because they knew that the Beast was around?
Trevor ate sandwich after sandwich with his head down, and in just a few minutes he pushed back from the table. “May I go spend the night at Ian's house?”
“Of course not,” his grandmother answered.
“You know the rules,” Mr. Roberts said again.
“I have the rental car right outside,” Mr. Holmes broke in. “I'd be happy to drive Trevor to his friend's house.”
Trevor brightened and said, “Thanks!” but Mrs. Roberts said, “You're too kind, but Trevor has to stay in tonight.” Trevor scowled and stomped out of the room.
“I'm so sorry,” Mrs. Roberts said, and their mother said, “Oh, we know how it is with kids! Why don't you two go relax? We'll clean up.”
 
“I bet Trevor's being grounded for something,” Xander said after the kitchen had been tidied
up. He and Xena were in the sitting room, playing a card game and waiting for their chance to get to work on the case.
“Probably,” Xena said. This
was
the most likely explanation for the Robertses' behavior, but she wasn't convinced. They had seemed more worried than angry.
Their mom poked her head into the sitting room. “We're going up to bed. You kids ran us ragged today! Don't be too late, okay?”
“Okay,” said Xander.
Xena called out, “Good night.”
When their parents were safely upstairs Xander said, “Finally! Now we can put all our evidence together.” He pulled a tuft of woolly material from his pocket.
“Whoa!” Xena snatched it up. “Where did you get that from? And why didn't you show me until now?”
“Some fell off the table when that guy in the library picked it up.” Xander was smug. “I grabbed it. And it's not like we had a chance to examine it in private until now!” Actually, he had been hoping for an impressed reaction if he kept his find a surprise, and it had worked.
Xena was examining the fluffy material, her head tilted to one side. Something was odd
about it. But what? Then it hit her. “Check this out, Xander. When blood dries, it turns brown. The blood on this wool is still bright red, even though it was found this morning.”
“You mean … ?” Xander looked at her with raised eyebrows.
“Maybe it isn't really blood. If it was real, wouldn't it have turned brown by now?”
“How do you know sheep blood acts the same as human blood? Maybe sheep blood doesn't turn brown,” Xander pointed out.
A noise behind them made them look up. Xander caught sight of Trevor peering into the room. “'Night,” he mumbled when Xander smiled at him. He headed up the stairs.
“How come everyone in this town goes to bed so early?” Xander wanted to know. “Even the kids on a school holiday week?”
But there was nothing else to do, so they went upstairs too. It took Xena a long time to fall asleep. Every time she started to doze off, some creak or crackle in the house would zing through her and wake her up. And when she finally did fall into a restless sleep, she was awakened by the sound of footsteps. She flopped over and pulled the pillow over her head.
Then she pulled it off and sat up. Now that
she was more awake and thought about it, she realized something.
The footsteps were coming from outside.
She went to her window and pulled the curtain aside. Almost immediately she jumped back again. It was still dark, but there was no mistaking what she'd seen. A huge shaggy figure stood directly under her window, hunched over, enormous paws pushing aside the shrubbery.
Without stopping to think, Xena tore through the hall and down the stairs. She threw the door open and looked out.
Nothing. Disappointment nearly choked her.
Then something brushed against her arm.
BOOK: The Beast of Blackslope
10.93Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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