Chapter 13: The Wild, Wild West
NORA freaked out when her environment suddenly changed. She looked like she’d seen a ghost! “Where—Where are we?” she asked Matthew with fright. He was studying his reddened thumb and she gawked at it. “Is that blood on your thumb?”
“It’s just red,” he assured, turning his attention to the scroll-turned-book in his other hand. It was all so amazing!
“I give up,” Nora announced, ignoring their puzzled faces. “I mean, you caused all this,” she threw at Matthew. “I’m still wondering if I’m dreaming or not! What am I even saying? I thought as much about that book! I knew you were up to no good when you found it.”
“Nora, you’re a Native American,” Stephanie suddenly discovered.
“So are we,” Matthew dryly pointed out. “Thankfully, we still speak English.”
“The Indians knew a little English, Bonehead,” Nora snapped. “They learned from the English.”
“But we still speak better,” Matthew insisted in a small voice, turning his gaze on his surroundings. He’d watched so many movies of the Wild West to know the difference. Those guys really had limited vocabulary!
“Did you hear that?”
“Hear what?” Stephanie asked.
“Something like a . . . roar from a . . . lion,” Nora whispered with foreboding, turning her back on her siblings. The place looked like a pine forest, but beyond it in the distance, a sloping plane stretched out in the light of a full moon.
This time they all heard the sound, which was clearly brought to them by the slow night breeze despite the resonating noise of the pine trees.
“At least, we know it’s not a lion,” Matthew allayed. “You don’t find them here.”
“And where do you think we are?” Stephanie asked him.
“America? Don’t ask me why I think so.”
“The Indian clothes?”
The ‘roar’ came again.
“Oh, my God,” Nora quickly said, drawing back to the others. “Oh, my God,” she kept saying. “Oh, my God.”
“It’s not a lion, Nora,” Stephanie told her sister. But the little girl still stole some backward steps like the others as they formed a tight triangle with one another, their backs in the middle. “It’s not a lion, right, Matthew?”
“Doesn’t sound like one to me,” Matthew assured her. “I bet it’s a strange sound for a wild cat, though. I think we should break for the open beyond those trees.”
“They’re so far away,” Nora complained. “It will catch us before we get there.”
“It’s our only chance,” Matthew said. “We mustn’t look back when we start.” His attention was now diverted from the book. He didn’t see its edges turn red, but he felt it when its temperature sharply rose and suddenly shot through his spine. “Yeow,” he shouted, dropping it and attracting the others. The black book exploded into flames as it fell into a shallow depression very close to his right foot and full of small snakes. His sisters screamed as the tiny things dispersed, the book unexpectedly burning out its fire in their midst. He bent down to pick up the book. It was no longer hot.
“Matthew, where are we?” Nora demanded.
“Near Mary Ann’s whereabouts, I hope,” Matthew replied a bit uneasily.
“And you wanted us to believe you,” his senior sister shouted at him. “You caused them all to disappear and tried to prove your innocence.”
“How could I have known?” he shot back. “There was no manual on the book! No . . . instructions! I could have done the right thing then.”
Nora lurched towards him all of a sudden. She wanted to grab the book in his right hand and was the more agile for this sole objective, though she never succeeded. A bit of luck came Matthew’s way in the form of a slip on the wet ground, and the book fell back into the depression, which his sister dared not near with her hands.
“Guys, remember getting out of here?” Stephanie intruded with justification as Nora picked herself up. A black figure skipped past atop the pine trees and before the moon, and both girls lost their newfound confidence, Stephanie jumping on Nora without delay.
“Who’s that?” Matthew called out with a weak voice. He was as scared as his two sisters.
“O.K., breathe,” Nora mumbled, her heart thumping heavily in her ears and her breathing audible. “Keep breathing! Deeply.”
“It must be a fairy,” Stephanie suggested. Her foster brother stood up holding the book and she quickly came down from Nora, her legs poised for another jump and her hands strongly clutching the other girl’s Indian shirt.
Noiselessly, they edged backwards and away from the shallow depression, their backs facing the distant opening illuminated by the moonlight and their eyes riveted on the blackness created by the pine trees deep within the forest. These tightly clustered trees did not allow moonlight to penetrate this part of the forest, and they feared it was from here that any threat would emerge.
“I hope it’s not a coyote,” Matthew whispered. “I hate coyotes.”
“Me, too,” Nora agreed.
“It didn’t have legs,” Stephanie supplied. “It seemed quite . . . legless.”
The comforting expanse outside the trees was still a long way off and that was not good, so they quickened their backward steps, driven by the terror they could only imagine. Slowly, they increased the pace of this quickened retreat, their hearts pounding loudly and their heads spinning round now and then to make sure they were headed in the right direction. They dared not contemplate what retaliation a full-blown marathon would generate from within the black oblivion horribly facing them, though, and refused to give into the temptation of running for their dear lives, even when it looked like their desired destination was rather receding from them.
The blackness before them beckoned. It seemed to grow darker and then take shape. At first, they thought nature was playing with their stressed out minds using the tall pines whistling in the ever-present wind that was hugging the forest. The moon’s inability to extend its rays into this region due to these stoic wooden lords was being manipulated by the latter, they thought, to create giant-sized monsters and demons in contrasts of silvery light and darkness as these trees swayed to and fro. Hence the tall, lanky apparition, which suddenly appeared in the midst of these wild shapes of varying grays and blacks, must certainly be a figment of their imagination.
Until it moved.
“Run,” Matthew yelled.
He was standing alone.