* * * * *
Claudia's group had no luck finding Alex. Mr. Gordon left them to see if Alex had appeared back by the river with Caera's group.
Claudia and her friends waited a while before there were grumblings about heading back. The others finally started heading back along the trail, when Claudia felt a searing pain in her calf and ankle and couldn't go on. She didn't understand where the pain was coming from; she hadn't fallen, nor could she find any bruises or scratches. In a moment she heard a cry for help, muffled and a little feeble, though desperate and urging. Now her group was crowded around her, and she realized that she had fallen down and had herself cried out.
Was she hearing things now? she wondered.
"Did any of you hear something just now?" Claudia asked the others, Their blank, puzzled faces clearly said "no" as if their mouths had opened and uttered the word. Another cry called out to her, and she told Brian Anderson and his friends to stay and wait for the other groups, took her first aid kit and followed the source of the sound. After a few minutes at a fast pace, Claudia reached a large hill just off the path.
The wind began whispering in the leaves. Claudia shivered, even though it wasn't cold. She felt a strange creeping cold sensation and turned around quickly to check all around her. There was no one. She reminded herself to breathe but tried not to make an audible sound.
The wind whispered again, rising in pitch like the dreadful wail of a ban-shee. Claudia stumbled a little in haste away from the sound and toward the hill. As she scrambled nearer, a luminous mass of pale, ghostly light suddenly appeared before her on the rough path.
Claudia stopped dead in her tracks. Her heart was racing away like a runaway train.
Then, as she stared at the vapors, a disembodied head many times larger than human, but human nonetheless, began to appear among them.
It can't be! she thought, recognizing the girl's face. "Emma Campbell!" Claudia jumped back and almost bolted away, but she ran into someone close behind her.
Claudia whirled around in surprise.
"Who?" Brian asked, holding her steady, as the group came up behind her.
"Yikes! Hey, don't sneak up on a person like that!" she cried.
"Who were you talking to?" Brian asked, offering her a blank stare.
"No one," Claudia said, turning back around.
She looked left and right. There was no sign of the ghost. Claudia sighed deeply, her nerves still taut as a wire.
Then, after a minute, Claudia heard a cry again from a cave farther ahead, and for the first time the rest of her group did, too.
"Hey, what was that?" Brian asked.
"I don't know," Claudia said.
"Wow, you heard it from all the way back on the trail," Brian said in wonder. "Cool!"
"Uh-huh," Claudia agreed half-heartedly. She was more curious about the sound. It was definitely not Emma Campbell, she thought.
Growing bolder, Claudia stepped inside the dark opening of the cave before them and almost fell into the hole where Alex Davenport had spent the last few hours.