“Sam, I need you to keep your voice down,” demanded Max.
“My boy is out here,” shouted Sam. “We have to find them!” The two men spoke as they jogged. Nothing was going to slow down their pace, not even an internal squabble.
“Listen, Sam, I know Bobby is out here. And so are Jed and Caroline. Hell, Caroline lives across the street from me. Her dad and I have been huntin’ out in these very woods. But you need to trust me. If there is some beast out here, the last thing we want to do is piss it off by disturbin’ his turf. And we sure as hell don’t want to call attention to ourselves.”
Larry broke into the conversation. “Listen to him, Sam. This is why we asked Max to be part of this. He is the expert. He is in charge out here. If the stories are true, and you don’t let him lead us, we’re probably all dead.”
Sam thought for a moment and then added through gritted teeth, “You better find him, Max.” Then softer, “Please find him.”
* * * * * * * * * *
“Ok, this is it. Who’s first?”
The three young friends finally made it to the western edge of Bayberry Cove. From shoreline to treeline, they had traveled over two miles. Now, only two yards separated Jed, Bobby, and Caroline from freedom. It would be the first taste of real freedom for any of them. Everything else had been a mass delusion – part of the curse that had trapped them for so long.
The illusion of freedom is the most secure prison of all.
“I say we all go at the same time,” said Caroline.
“Bobby and I will go,” Jed volunteered.
“We will?” Bobby’s voice cracked.
“There is no reason for all three of us to go,” explained Jed. “If Bobby and I make it, then Caroline can cross too. But if something happens, one of us needs to be able to run back into town and tell everyone.”
“That makes sense,” Caroline agreed. Bobby seemed much less convinced. “But you and I should go. Bobby can stay behind so he can go tell his dad if something bad happens.”
“Caroline,” Jed began to protest, but he quickly fell silent when she extended her delicate right hand and took hold of his trembling fingers.
“We’ll do this together,” she assured him.
Jed’s heart skipped a beat and his mouth went dry. Words eluded him, so he nodded his approval. He had never really thought about Caroline as a girl. She was a female, of course, but she was Caroline. More like a little sister or one of the guys. Definitely not a girl that gave him that wonderfully nauseous feeling in the pit of his stomach. But all that changed the moment her hand nestled within his. Her warmth radiated through his body and flushed his cheeks. For a fleeting second, there was no one else on the planet Jed would rather take a leap of faith with than Caroline Flowers. And so they leapt.
* * * * * * * * * *
What happened next was a blur.
A streak of color appeared from their right. The smell of wet fur filled the air. The gunshot was loud and echoed through the darkness. Warm blood splattered against Bobby’s round face. The taste of fear was heavy on Jed’s lips.
Max fired a second round and hit nothing but thin air. Whatever lunged for the three teenagers had disappeared into the night. Bobby was screaming, desperately trying to wipe the beast’s blood from his face. Jed and Caroline were still clutching each other’s hands, but they had already taken a half dozen steps toward the sheriff. Sam ran to his son and hugged him close, red blood soaking into his white cotton shirt.
“Are you hurt, son?” Sam asked with a panicked tone.
“I don’t think so,” Bobby cried.
Larry ran to Jed and Caroline and put his arms around the two terrified teens. “Everything is ok, kids,” he assured them. “That thing is gone.”
Max walked to the spot where hot lead pierced flesh. He needed to collect a blood sample. If they were lucky, he might even find a tuft of fur. Anything that could help him identify the animal that tried to attack Jed and Caroline. But there was nothing. At least, nothing Max could see in the dark. He would have to come back at first light to search for clues.
Max stood and began backtracking his way through the wilderness.”Let’s go,” he announced. “There’s nothin' left to do here. We need to get back into town and have a little talk.”
Sam and Bobby weren’t far behind. Larry, Jed, and Caroline pulled up the rear. The two shocked teenagers still held hands.
* * * * * * * * * *
“What the hell was that?” Sam asked, now safely back in Max’s living room. It approached ten o’clock in the evening and all six were sipping from mugs of steaming comfort – coffee for the adults and hot chocolate for the kids.
“That was the beast,” offered Caroline.
“There’s no proof of that,” said Max. “It could have been anything.”
“Anything?” asked Caroline in disbelief. “I’ve never seen a squirrel move that fast. And I don’t think a raccoon could have shrugged off a bullet like that.
“It had red blood,” muttered Bobby. Everyone turned simultaneously to confirm the presence of dried blood smeared across Bobby’s face.
“Go wash your face, Bobby,” his father demanded, but Bobby didn’t move.
“Red blood doesn’t mean anything,” argued Caroline. “Monsters don’t necessarily have green acid for blood.”
“What did you actually see?” Larry asked the teenagers.
“Everything was a blur,” replied Jed. Bobby and Caroline nodded in agreement. “What about you guys? You were behind us. You must have had a better view. What did you see?”
Larry and Sam exchanged a glance, but Max was staring at the ground between his boots. “Well,” the sheriff began, ”we saw the three of you standing at the edge of the treeline, and right when I was about to call out to you guys, there was a flash of color that just came out of nowhere.”
“It was like a streak of fur,” Sam added.
“Next thing we knew,” Larry finished, “we heard a gunshot, realized Max had fired a round, and that thing was gone.”
“Wow, Mr. Tucker, nice shot!” said Jed.
Max nodded, but his mind was elsewhere. All he could think about was what happened thirty minutes earlier in Harper’s Woods. Finding the footprints, tracking the kids, and watching the beast appear out of thin air to attack Jed and Caroline. But, most of all, he kept thinking about the miracle shot that wounded the beast. The shot, contrary to popular opinion, that Max never got the chance to fire. The shot that seemed to materialize from thin air.
