Read The Beast of Blackslope Online

Authors: Tracy Barrett

The Beast of Blackslope (9 page)

BOOK: The Beast of Blackslope
11.93Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads
X
ander took off running toward the light. Xena never screamed without good reason. Beast or no Beast, his rage at whatever it was that had threatened his sister overcame his fear.
“It came from over here!” Trevor called.
“No, the light was in this direction!” What if the Beast had gotten his sister? Where could they go for help in the woods? Stay calm, Xander told himself.
Trevor caught up with him. “The light could have been anything, but the scream was from that direction.” He pointed left.
Xander stopped and bent over, hands on his knees, trying to catch his breath. He felt all turned around.
“Okay, you go toward the scream. I'll follow the light.”
“I don't think we should split up.” Trevor cast a nervous glance over his shoulder.
“Well, let's go
somewhere
.” Xander's anxiety was growing.
“Xena!” they both called. “Where are you?”
Nothing. “Okay, I guess we do have to split up,” Trevor admitted. “I'll go this way, and you—”
Just then they heard a whistle.
“That's her!” Xander ran toward the sound, suddenly afraid of what he would see when he got there. Would he find his sister clutched in huge shaggy paws? He let out a big breath of relief when he saw Xena sitting on a log holding her right ankle.
“I tripped,” she said. Xander reached down and helped her up. She put her weight on her left leg. “If you guys had quit arguing, you would have heard me calling earlier.”
Xander couldn't feel irritated at her angry tone. He was so relieved to see her safe and reasonably sound that he would have hugged her if Trevor hadn't been there.
“Is that why you screamed?” Trevor asked. “When you fell, I mean.”
“That wasn't me. That was way down there.” She gestured into the trees.
“Where's the Beast?” Xander looked all around.
“Lost it.” Xena sounded angry at herself. “I
could hear it for a while, but it seemed to know the woods really well. By the time I found this path it had disappeared, and I have no idea which way it went.”
“Can you walk?” Xander asked.
“You stay here with her,” Trevor said. “I'll go see if I can pick up a trail.” He sped off.
Xena got up and tested her ankle. “I'm okay. It's not sprained.” She spoke with the authority of an athlete who had experienced injuries. “Let me lean on you a bit.” With her hand pressing down on Xander's shoulder, they followed in Trevor's path.
They found him in a clearing where the grass had been trampled flat. Xena plopped down onto a large rock with a sigh, holding her ankle, and Xander bent over the grass looking for clues.
After a few minutes he said, “This is weird. Look!” and pointed to three holes in the dirt that formed a triangle with corners about two feet apart.
“Huh.” Trevor squatted next to him and peered at the holes. “I wonder what could have made those.”
Xander studied it again. He measured the distance between the holes with his hands.
“There are lots of prints here.” Trevor pointed to the middle of the cleared area. Xander joined him. “These look like shoes, but those other prints were made by something else. Like a big flat foot.”
“Which way do they go?” Xena called from her perch on the rock.
Trevor followed the prints across the clearing and into a thicket of trees. A few moments later he returned. “It's no use,” he reported. “I can't track it. The branches of all those trees protected the path from the rain. The ground is dry and there aren't any clear prints. Come on, let's go home.”
Xena and Xander had had enough for one night, so they agreed and headed back to the B and B, Xena limping on her twisted ankle. It was full daylight by the time they got back. Trevor stopped them at the door. “Don't tell my grandparents. I don't want to worry them.”
You mean you don't want to get grounded again, Xena thought, but all she said was, “All right.”
“You can count on us,” Xander promised.
They slept most of the morning, and when they got up they found a note on Xander's door. “See you later, sleepyheads!” it said in their
mother's handwriting. “We've gone exploring. Money for lunch on my bureau. Be back before tea time.”
“Let's go to town,” Xander said. “I'm starving.”
Xena's ankle hadn't swelled up, and if she walked carefully it didn't hurt. They made their way slowly to a café and ordered sandwiches. They were finishing their lunch when Katy and Emma, the university students from next door, stopped at their table.
“Hullo, you two!” said Emma. “What have you been up to?”
“Not much,” Xander said. “Exploring.”
Katy leaned forward and plucked something out of his hair. “Exploring in the woods?” She showed him a twig she had pulled out of the blond streak in his dark curls.
“Yup,” he agreed, and then he pulled a tiny leaf off the sleeve of her sweater. “You too?”
For a second she looked like she was about to deny it, but then she laughed. “You have sharp eyes! That leaf matches my sweater exactly.”
“So what were you doing out there?” Xena asked quickly, before the girls got a chance to ask them first.
Katy and Emma looked at each other as though unwilling to explain. “Oh, come on,”
Xander said with his winning smile. As people usually did, Katy and Emma melted.
“We're making a film,” Emma said. “A documentary about a bird called the red kite.”
“The kite!” Xena exclaimed. “I
knew
you weren't talking about one of those things on a string!”
“Sorry we told you a story,” Katy said. “A kite's a kind of bird. It's rare and very shy, and we heard one had been sighted near here. So we decided to film it for our final class project. But there's always noise in the forest at dusk, which is normally when we'd have the best chance of seeing it. It seems to have been scared off by something.”
“Aha!” Xena said. The others looked at her. “That's why you told us to search on the other side of the town!”
“Yes,” Emma said. “The more people in the forest, the less chance we have of finding it.”
“Oh!” Xander said. “So that was film equipment you were carrying when we saw you that first time!” The waitress brought the trifle he had ordered, but he was so intrigued by what the girls were saying that the layers of cake, custard, and jam didn't even tempt him.
The girls nodded. “We had to be secretive
about it,” Katy said. “We keep it in the shed so that the others won't see what we have.”
“What others?” Xander asked.
“There's a prize for the best film, and another of the crews from our school is working nearby,” Emma explained. “We didn't want them to know we were here.”
“What kind of equipment do you use?” Xena asked.
“Oh, cameras and lights and tripods,” Katy answered. “And filters for the lenses, and all sorts of things.”
“Anything with brown fuzzy material on it?” The girls looked at her questioningly, and Xena flushed. She knew it was an odd question. “Like insulation or padding or something?”
“No,” Emma answered, still looking curious.
Before her friend could say anything else, Katy said, “But now that we know about the Beast, there's no way we'll be going into those woods again!”
“We have to,” Emma said. “It's too late to start another film.”
“How do you go about looking for the kite?” Xena asked.
“Oh, we know where it likes to hang out,” Katy said. “And we have a recording of its call.”
Xander pricked up his ears. “Could we hear the recording?”
Emma shrugged. “I don't see why not.” Out of her backpack she pulled a portable CD player. “Put these on.” She gave Xander the headphones. He sat up straighter. Was he about to hear the howl? Emma pressed the Start button, and Xena pulled one of the earpieces away from her brother's head so that she could hear too.
For a second, nothing. Then—
“
Scrawk!
” The shrill scream wasn't very pleasant but was unmistakably a birdcall, and nothing like the heart-stopping howls that had been ringing out at dusk and in the night.
“Thanks.” Xander pulled off the headphones and handed them back to her. “Very interesting.” He picked up a spoon and dug into his trifle. He was so disappointed, he hardly tasted it.
“Yeah, thanks,” echoed Xena.
Emma wound the cord around the headphones and tucked them into her backpack. “Everyone's been really nice and helpful. But I don't know. We might just have to take an incomplete for this assignment.” She started walking away down the sidewalk.
“Come on, now, Emma,” Katy said. “Let's talk this over.” She took off after her friend.
“How big do you think those camera tripods are?” Xander asked his sister.
Xena shrugged. “I don't know, but the cameras must be pretty heavy. Why?”
“You know those holes in the woods?” Xena nodded. “Do you think they were made by something like that?”
“Hmm …” She frowned in concentration. “Could be. We should have asked Katy and Emma if they've been out that way.”
“Going to make a list of questions we need to ask?”
Xena ignored his teasing. “It's time we got some answers.” She fished in her pocket for the money to pay for their lunch. “Eat up and let's go find Trevor.”
 
At first Trevor didn't want to tell Xena and Xander anything.
“Come on,” Xander said. “We already know a lot about what's going on. We're pretty sure this isn't a real beast, just someone dressed up in a costume.”
“Do you have any proof?” Trevor asked.
“No,” Xena admitted. “But we'll keep looking. Everybody slips up sometime. And it's obviously someone who knows the woods well, like you.”
Trevor looked like he was about to say something, but he closed his mouth.
“And the manor house has something to do with it,” Xena went on. “A lot of the sightings came from near there. So maybe the Beast hides out there or something.”
Trevor still didn't say anything. “Come on,” Xander said. “Your grandparents are awake half the night worrying, and lots of people are starting to panic. If this keeps up,
all
the tourists will stop coming, not just the ones who get scared easily, and your guide business will flop.”
Trevor looked from one to the other, and then seemed to make up his mind. “Okay,” he said. “It's like this. I've been tracking the Beast's movements. I've always wanted to be a naturalist, and I knew that if I was the first to find the Beast, I'd get my name known right away. Maybe I'd even have my own TV show. So I've been keeping track of all the places where the Beast has been sighted. And I've found some things—”
“What things?” Xander burst in.
“Come on,” Trevor said. “I'll show you.”
They followed him out to a different part of the woods from where they'd been at dawn. On the way he pointed out clues to them: footprints, broken branches, crushed leaves.
“Aha!” Xander snatched something off the ground. He held up the wrapper of a protein bar, triumphant.
“I don't think a beast would eat one of those,” Trevor said.
“No way,” Xena said. “Chickens and things, sure. Maybe even a human once in a while. But not peanut butter–cranberry protein bars!”
“Maybe chicken-flavored protein bars!” Trevor said with a laugh.
“Maybe human-flavored—” But Xander didn't get to finish his sentence, because suddenly they heard, off in the distance, the sound of the birdcall that Katy and Emma had played for them the day before. They stopped in their tracks.
“What was that?” Trevor asked.
“A birdcall,” Xena said. “Those girls from the other B and B are making a movie.”
Trevor didn't move. “I wonder,” he said thoughtfully. “You know, those girls arrived before you, and the day they came was when the Beast sightings started. Maybe that was just a coincidence, but maybe they have something to do with it. We should see what they're up to.”
“Let's go now,” Xander suggested.
Trevor glanced at his watch and grimaced. “I can't,” he said. “I've got to get back. I promised
my grandmother I'd help her clean out her shed today.”
BOOK: The Beast of Blackslope
11.93Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

Riders Of the Dawn (1980) by L'amour, Louis
Left Hanging by Patricia McLinn
We Put the Baby in Sitter 3 by Cassandra Zara
The warlock insane by Christopher Stasheff
Last Chance by Norah McClintock
Lone Wolf by Jennifer Ashley