About an hour ago I walked out onto the side porch. Dad was standing at the railing, staring into the trees. I stood beside him and rested my hand near his, breathing in the smell of the piney air. Since we were alone, I was thinking that maybe I should make some kind of big apology to him for doubting the Extraordinary World all these years—I’ve been trying to think of a way to say it for days. But before I could get it out, he took my wrist gently and pulled me close to his side. He pointed up into the sliver of washed-out blue sky peeking through the tops of the trees.
A dark shape was floating a few miles away, just above the treetops, gray and thick and unmistakable, with its familiar black hole in the middle. It was drifting back and forth slightly, as if searching the trees for something. Of course, I knew what it was searching for.
I suppose if we had any hope of the Cloud giving up, it’s gone now.
Dad says we’ll leave tomorrow night after dark.
October 28th
I woke this morning to the sound of Millie crying. My first thought, which took my breath away, was that the Cloud had arrived. But ducking to the window, I could see it still in the distance, drifting slowly. Down in the glade below me, the ghosts were gathered around a pair of Grandma’s binoculars and fighting over who would get the next look at it over the treetops.
Hurrying downstairs, I found Millie in the kitchen, leaning on my mom, her hair all askew and her face puffy. I thought that maybe she was on her period, because every time she is, she gets so upset her eyes become like the eyes of this killer in a horror movie I watched one night after Mom and Dad had gone to bed. Here’s a list of the top three most angry moments I ever remember her having:
1. The time I put the Poochie the dog (may she rest in peace), on the counter to eat the honey-glazed ham she’d baked for Christmas dinner
2. The time I took a photo of her barfing during the flu
3. The time Dad showed her homecoming date his collection of taxidermied ducks, especially pointing out the tail feathers (his favorite part)—basically putting all the duck butts in his face
“I can’t spend another day in the Winnebago,” she said as my mom hugged her and tried to comfort her. Across the room Oliver and Sam had just walked in holding—of all things—Ping-Pong paddles. They looked bewildered, turning and hurrying away before Millie could spot them.
“I know you guys have to go,” Millie sniffed, sucking in deep breaths. “I know the Cloud’s coming. But I don’t see why we all have to go. If Dad would just let me stay . . .” She sniffed again. “It’s not normal to be sixteen and living in an RV with your whole family. It’s psychologically . . . traumatic.”
“You know you don’t mean that, honey,” Mom said, looking at me as if urging me to add something sympathetic. “You wouldn’t be happy if we left you behind. We know how hard it is for you without your privacy. Right, Gracie?”
I was about to say life in the Winnebago isn’t quite un-psychologically-traumatizing for me, either, but I heroically kept my mouth shut and nodded. I turned so Mom couldn’t see me rolling my eyes, and then went and got this diary from upstairs and came here to the living room to reflect on how selfish Millie is. I just looked out the window, but have lost sight of the Cloud. There’s a strange breeze rattling the screens.
Millie—oh—something’s happening. Going to find out what’s going on. I’ll be back.
October 30th
There’s so much to say. Where do I begin?
We’re back in the Winnebago, driving on a curvy road headed southwest through Tennessee. Our departure from the Crow’s Nest, two days ago now, did not go as planned. I’ll try to get down as much as I can, even though the curves of the road are making me woozy. I guess I’ll start exactly where I last left off.
* * *
Millie was still crying, and I’d gone to the back deck to see what all the rattling and windiness was about. Below, in the ghost’s grove, the trees were swaying like crazy. Two ghosts (both sullen-looking Victorian ladies) were standing on top of the tallest boulder, one holding the end of a rope while the other tossed the far end, looped like a lasso, up into the sky. She was aiming for the Cloud. Other ghosts were swirling around the grass or disappearing into the Underworld cave in alarm, moaning and flipping through the air. Samson was especially agitated, glaring up at the Cloud, then poking into the cave, then floating out again.
I turned at the sound of Grandma, who was just coming in through the kitchen door with a butterfly net and a fresh crown of ivy nestled in her hair.
“Hush that crying,” she called to Millie. “You’re agitating the ghosts, honey, and they’re already stirred up.” She came outside to stand beside me and looked down at the scene below. “Oh dear, they’re trying to catch it. Pitiful.”
Just then a blinding orange light flared up at us from the deck. Flames crawled along a railing below us.
Grandma leaned over to get a closer look, jumped back in surprise, and thrust her fists against her hips. “Well, now he’s done it,” she said. “He’s set the house on fire.” We all rushed to her side and looked down. “Stupid old thing!”
Samson was watching the flames as they rose, looking sheepish and a little uncertain of himself, glancing up at us, then at the flames, then at us again. He moved back toward the cave, but kept swiveling again to stare, as if he wasn’t sure whether he should feel guilty or not. He still clasped the matches in both translucent hands.
“Y’all better get your things and go,” Grandma said, running into the kitchen and grabbing a bucket, then nodding toward a hall closet that spilled suddenly open to spit out two big pots. The crows flapped around the house wildly. We all stood, stunned, until Grandma darted past again. “Things are gonna get ugly for a while. Go!”
The Crow’s Nest—all wood, of course—was going up fast. Fire was soon licking toward the roofline, and the crows began a chorus of ungodly squawks.
We scattered to our rooms, grabbing our backpacks, with Mom yelling at us to forget them and get out of the house. As we banged into each other in the hall, Oliver took mine out of my arms and hoisted it onto his shoulder, but I pulled it back from him. (Side note: I’m not the kind of girl who likes boys to carry things for me, and I’ve decided I never will be.) There was no time to think if there was anything we were leaving behind. Mom stood in the doorway, waving me out wildly, stuffing the artifacts Grandma had given us (the postcard, the encyclopedia page, and the Delta snack bag) into the bag in her left hand.
Dad was on the front deck with Sam clinging to his legs.
Grandma, running back and forth inside and waving her arms in the air as buckets and pots full of water swirled around her, came to an abrupt stop at the door. She wiped her hair out of her face and hesitated in the doorway. “Don’t worry about me.” She pushed outside and thrust a sock, knotted at the top and bulging, into my Mom’s hands. “My savings. For your angel and your ship, nothing else,” she said. “Keep it safe and put away. You’ll need every penny when you get to LA.” She gave us each a fierce kiss. “I’ll be fine. I promise. Stick under the trees as much as you can.” She leaned out the open doorway and whispered something toward the woods. The uppermost branches of the trees bent toward each other ever so slightly, creating a shielding canopy over the trail. “You can’t fool a Cloud forever, but you can get a head start, and that’s better than nothing.”
We ran down the front stairs just as the first drops began to spatter the ground. “Rain,” my mom said in relief. “It’ll help put the fire out.” The trees swayed above us, blotting out the sky and keeping us mostly dry.
We hurried down the mountainside, half slipping, half running. We were down around the first bend when two trees swayed apart and revealed, very low and close, the Cloud, directly above us.
A long tendril of gray mist floated down toward us like an arm and reached slowly toward Sam, who was in Millie’s arms. She screamed and held him tight to her chest, covering his eyes. The mist retracted. Mom wrapped her
arms around both of them and pulled them to the left, and the Cloud lifted again. From up on the mountain, we heard Grandma’s voice yelling some kind of charm, and the trees closed together again.
We slipped and slid onward.
We didn’t stop for what must have been an hour or more. Finally halfway down the mountain, we slowed for a few minutes. Dad carefully stepped out onto a rocky outcropping to take the lay of the land, and then signaled for us to do the same. We could see the Cloud, hovering peacefully up the mountain a ways, and beyond it the last of the flames flickering at the top of the Crow’s Nest, dying out. The whole house was blackened on one side and giving off a long thin thread of smoke into the sky. But it was clear that Grandma was out of danger. We thought, for the moment, that we were too.
* * *
Close to the bottom of the mountain, the incline grew more gradual, and walking was easier. Millie sloughed along behind me, her legs and face splattered with mud, and I was thinking how she actually looked prettier when she wasn’t so perfectly put together. I also couldn’t shake the image of the Cloud: how it had reached for Sam almost gently, the way it had retracted so easily when Millie had screamed . . . like it didn’t want to intrude if it wasn’t wanted. I was wondering how such a terrible thing could be so gentle, when we emerged into the parking lot and the sight before us pushed the thought right out of my mind.
The Trinidad stood where we’d left it, but not how we’d left it.
“We’ve had visitors,” Dad said, holding out his arms to keep us from taking another step closer.
We all stood there, our hearts in our throats. Oliver reached up and touched his scar nervously. The Trinidad’s windshield was scraped right across the middle. The tires were all flat. The fender had been pulled off and bent in half. It smelled like maybe some animals had pooped on the roof.
“Sasquatches,” Mom said.
She held us back under the cover of the tree line as Dad stepped farther into the parking lot to investigate. “It looks like they’ve been gone for days,” he said over his shoulder, though I don’t know how he would have known that. He walked cautiously up to the Winnebago, circled it once, then knelt and peered underneath it. Meanwhile we eyed the woods surrounding the lot. After a few minutes Dad gave us the all clear to come closer.
He kicked one of the tires as Mom squatted to take a good look at it. “They let the air out. At least they didn’t slash them.”
“This was deliberate,” Dad said. “They don’t like us being in their woods.” I glanced at Oliver, who stood beside Millie with his shoulders hunched toward his ears, looking like he wanted to disappear. Millie took his arm—either to make him feel safe, or to feel safer herself.
Mom swept the parking lot with her eyes and turned to us. “Don’t worry about loading the trailer, just climb in. We can sort out your stuff later.”
Our nerves frayed, we piled into the Trinidad with our wet things and landed wherever we landed, retreating to our bunks to change into dry clothes. Mom and Dad quickly filled the tires using some cans of Fix-A-Flat that Mom had stowed in the compartment behind the driver’s seat. I breathed a sigh of relief when Dad started the ignition and the Trinidad lurched into motion.
One thing did catch my attention as we pulled out of the lot: a fragile, plaintive howl emanating from the woods at the edge of the pavement, and a rustling of bushes low to the ground. Whatever it was, it wasn’t human. Safe inside the Winnebago, I thought it had nothing to do with us at all.
* * *
The rest of the afternoon was uneventful. The Smoky Mountains slowly softened into rolling hills. Occasionally I noticed a strange, vague tapping sound coming from behind the camper, but Mom said it was something loose and banging around the trailer and that we’d fix it when we stopped.
Occasionally I crawled into my parents’ bunk to press my face to the back window. Far behind, the Cloud floated down the western edge of the mountains behind us, distant but steady. I tried to use ESP to thank it for not taking Sam when we were in the woods, and then in my mind I asked it to please forget about Sam completely and go find some other Clouds and take a Cloud vacation, or whatever it is Clouds do when they’re not after people’s little brothers. But as usual, my psychic skills turned out to be nonexistent, and the Cloud stuck with us for the rest of the day.
* * *
It was only after we’d parked for the night that we found out what danger had attached itself to us in the Smokies. It happened in the Burger King parking lot.
We’d parked almost directly under an old, peeling billboard that read: ANIMAL LOVERS! ONCE IN A LIFETIME OPPORTUNITY. TAKE A RIDE ON THE GLORIOUS PEGASUS. WIN A WISH FROM THE GENIE: BECOME A BILLIONAIRE OR BE MIRACULOUSLY HEALED! LUCK CITY, ARIZONA. In the center was a painting of a pegasus, glowing with sunlight behind him, dancing on his hind legs with wings outstretched. I couldn’t help staring at the billboard and wishing Grandma hadn’t forbidden us from going. I’d love to see a pegasus.
We were just turning in for the night after splurging on large fries for everyone, to go with our peanut butter sandwiches. Mom and Dad were settling into their room with Sam, Oliver was reading, I was trying to read but really daydreaming, and Millie was sitting at the table playing solitaire by lantern light, when we heard a shaking at the back of the Trinidad so loud and violent that the floor beneath us vibrated.
“What was that?” Mom said, darting out into the common area in her floral pajamas, eyes wide. Dad emerged behind her, and they exchanged one of their looks where they seem to say things to each other without speaking. And then Mom hurried to the front and grabbed the flashlight from the glove box.
“Stay inside,” she warned us as they both climbed out.
Everyone obeyed except for me. I couldn’t help it. I don’t know if everybody feels this way, but when I’m curious about something it’s like being grabbed by a fishhook and yanked along.
Oliver—who looked petrified—reached for my wrist just as I slipped out the side door, but he wasn’t quick enough.
Up ahead, Mom and Dad were huddled together, training the flashlight on the trailer. Its door was rattling on its hinges, being shaken back and forth from the inside.
“Whatever’s in there is trapped,” Mom said. Dad slowly moved his face toward the tiny screen window on the side, and then just as quickly jumped back. Mom did the same thing a moment later.
“How did it get in?” she said nervously, biting her lip. “I thought you locked up before we left the parking lot!”
“I guess I forgot the trailer,” Dad replied sheepishly. He soft-footed around to the back and peered at the trailer door, one foot back behind him as if ready to run. But then his posture relaxed. “The latch is closed. He’s locked in now. Door must have shut behind him.”
Mom gave him a desperate look.
“He must have been rummaging for food,” he went on. That’s when Mom turned and noticed me for the first time. She frowned.
“What is it?” I asked. She shook her head sharply and pointed for me to get back inside the camper. Dad was already closing the padlock that hung off the door latch, his hands trembling.
“Get back inside,” Mom hissed. But then they turned to each other to confer about what to do, and I took advantage of the moment to step forward on one foot and peer quickly into the dim trailer. Don’t flinch, I thought.
A huge hulking shape crouched in the darkness, breathing heavily. It was clutching a box of crackers to its chest. It was impossible to mistake for any other sort of creature. Looking like a human crossed with a giant monkey, it had fur sprouting in all directions around big dark eyes, enormous flaring nostrils, and an open mouth full of pointy, sharp white teeth that gleamed in the dark.
The sasquatch heard me breathing, and turned. His eyes met mine. Then, in a flash, he slammed an arm up and out, ripping a hole right in the screen and clawing toward me.
A hand on my collar yanked me backward just in time. At the same moment the creature started how
ling—such earth-shatteringly loud howls, the trailer shook as Dad guided me forcefully back in through the side door of the Trinidad.
Inside, Oliver sat at the dining table with his hands clasped in front of him, pale, his eyes big. Millie was on the couch behind him, with Sam pressing himself face-first against her belly like a koala.
“It’s a—” I began, but Oliver shook his head to stop me.
“We know what it is,” he said.
A few minutes later Mom and Dad climbed back into the front seats.
“What are we going to do?” Millie asked, stroking Sam’s hair with her fingers.
I was wondering the same thing. This was the kind of creature who could kill parents. It was the terror of the world locked up in our back trailer. I kept looking at Oliver; I couldn’t help it.
“Well, the trailer’s secure,” Mom said. “He can’t get out. We just have to decide what comes next. We can’t set him free—too dangerous; he could attack us. Our choice is whether to kill him, or sell him to a zoo or a circus. Surely we could find one along the way.”
“How would we kill him?” Millie asked.
Mom frowned, tense. “I’m not sure. I guess we could detach the trailer and leave it somewhere; eventually he’d starve. We could get some sasquatch poison from Walmart and put it in some food . . . slip it through the window?”
We were all silent, contemplating the possibility of death by poisoning or starvation. Only the sasquatch howled and howled. The sound was chilling.
“Oliver, sweetie, would you like to decide what we do?” Mom asked gently. (Her frown softened into something tender and tentative as she looked at him.) “You’re the one who has the most reason to hate sasquatches. But I know it’s a big responsibility, so you don’t have to decide if you don’t want to.”
We all looked at Oliver, who unfolded his hands and rubbed at his scar. In the movies, I thought, this would be the big revenge scene. A sasquatch life was in his hands!