The Last Stand of Daronwy Read online

  Mira’s feet blurred as she zipped down the white-gray ribbon that set the trail apart from the gloom. Jeremy fought to keep up with her, not daring to take his eyes off the trail, even for a moment. His hands strangled the handlebars. His legs burned. Faster, faster. The thing crashed through underbrush behind him. The front wheel bounced and jerked as it hit unseen ruts and roots. The bike trails were in the deeper darkness just ahead; one more turn. Thok thunk. Thok thunk. One more turn.

  He exploded into the wide bike trails. Slices of an amber streetlight cut through the shadows. Mira sailed ahead. Jeremy dared a glance backward. Underbrush along the trail whipped back and forth, caught in a malevolent gale. A shadow lunged out of the thicket on Jeremy’s right. It’s next to me! A knife sliced through his hand, wrenching the bike. The back tire left the ground, pitching him forward. Jeremy pushed against the pedals, vaulting himself over the tangled handlebars. He hit the ground hard, tumbling several times, but rolled onto his feet in a full sprint as Mira vanished around the last corner of the trail.

  Hands chopping air, heels pounding dirt, he raced for the streetlamp’s safe orange glow. Thok thunk. Thok thunk. The predator drew closer. Thok. Thunk. Thokthunk. Faster! Thokthunk.

  Jeremy’s lungs burned, his ribs ached. The light reached out toward him. ­Thokthunk thokthunk. Mira steered her bike into her garage. Thokthunk. Jeremy did not look back. His feet pounded against concrete. He ran up Mira’s driveway and into the garage behind her.

  Mira jumped at the thunder of Jeremy’s footsteps, dropping her bike in a crash. Her hands fluttered to cover her mouth, stifling a scream. Jeremy doubled over, panting, then let himself melt onto the refreshingly cool, smooth concrete. He was covered in dirt, his right hand and left elbow were smeared with blood. Mira knelt by his side. “Oh… oh my God. Wh… what happened… where’s your bike?”

  It took him a moment before he could catch his breath enough to speak. “Are… we… safe?”

  Mira’s normally fearless brown eyes had never looked so frightened. Her eyes darted to the blackness lurking outside the open maw of the garage door, then back to him. She jumped up, stumbled over the fallen bike, and slammed her fist against the garage door button. The door lumbered down, shutting out the night. She came back to him, pushing him to a sitting position, taking his elbow in her hands. “We’re safe now. What happened?”

  “I don’t know. You okay?”

  She pushed a sweat-plastered, brown lock back over her ear. “Yeah, I’m okay.” She turned his elbow upside down. “What happened? Does it hurt?”

  Jeremy stared at his hand. It stung. He could see thorns sticking out from the cut in a jagged line like thin needles. “No, not really. I guess my handlebars caught on a blackberry bush… at least that’s what it feels like. And I fell off the bike.”

  “Was he still after you?”

  Thok-thunk echoed in his mind, and Jeremy made a shell-shocked nod. His breath still wheezed through burning lungs, cold sweat still beaded on his forehead. Mira took his left hand in both of hers. They sat still, listening to their own ragged breathing and the moan of the wind outside.

  “That was really close,” she said.

  Blood dripped from his right hand onto the cement. It was starting to ache and sting. “I need to go home. I gotta get these thorns out.” He looked at the garage door. He would have to go out the garage, around her house, and up his driveway to get home. The thought of opening that garage door made his stomach backflip.

  Mira followed his gaze. “Come this way.” She pulled him to his feet and into her house. It smelled of tobacco and baked chicken.

  “Mira, where have you been? Supper is ready,” Mrs. Leblanc said, but her stern voice vanished when she saw Jeremy. She bent to him. “What happened?”

  Mira waved her mother back. “Jeremy crashed his bike. I’m taking him out the front door so he can go to his house.”

  Jeremy said nothing. Mira led him toward the front door where the black night waited like a coiled snake. From there, it would be a quick dash into his own garage. She stepped into the porch’s tiny pool of yellow light. They stood close, hand in hand, straining their eyes against the darkness poised on the light’s edge. They saw nothing, but that was no longer comforting. She squeezed his hand. He squeezed back. Ravenous shadows stared at them, waiting, eternally waiting.

  “Want me to walk you?”

  Jeremy looked at her, reading the fear mixed with concern in her eyes. “No, it’ll be okay. I’ll run.”

  She nodded. “I guess… I guess we found him?”

  Jeremy shrugged. “You’ll be okay?”

  “Mira!” Her mother’s shout made them both flinch. Their shoulders scrunched to their ears. “Supper’s on the table. Come on!”

  “I have to go.”

  He nodded, not relishing the thought of another sprint through the darkness. But even more, he did not want to release her hand. He took her other hand. “Mira, I—”

  “Mira! Get in here!” Her mom’s steps echoed, just on the other side of the door.

  She flicked his hands like reins. “Go now!”

  He took a deep breath and bolted: across the shadows, up his driveway, into his garage, and through the back door. He slammed the door shut behind him, collapsing on the green linoleum, never so happy to be inside.

  The next day, a Saturday, Jeremy armed himself with his Rambo knife and a BB gun. When the sun was high enough to burn away the shadows beneath the trees, he marched into Twin Hills. He walked along the light-splashed bike trails, but his eyes pulled toward the stubborn darkness that lurked in Helter Skelter. His hands shook. He switched the safety of the gun off and pumped it ten times. The crashed bike was ensnared by a blackberry bramble on the edge of the dark thicket with its handlebars twisted around backwards. He knelt next to it, gun ready. Nothing moved. A cardinal whooped. A sticky morning stillness hung over the wood. Jeremy let his gaze drop and scanned the dirt. He saw the divots from his feet as he sprinted after Mira.

  His eyes followed the wheel track, then froze. Breath hung in his throat. He scanned Helter Skelter one more time, then bent to touch the hard, round prints on either side of the wheel track. Jeremy rubbed his eyes. He stooped to trace the round outline of the track with a finger. Gooseflesh pebbled his arms. What could have possibly made these tracks? For the first time, out of all the times he’d heard the shadows move, of all the times that he had searched for the footprints of the shadows, here was proof. Not proof of the Old Man, but proof of something else—something magical.

  A branch snapped inside Helter Skelter. Jeremy recoiled, unsheathing the knife in mid-air. He stood with the rifle in his right hand, the knife in his left, facing the inscrutable thicket. His eyes darted from vine, to shadow, to vine. Nothing moved. Sweat drenched his T-shirt and stung his eyes. Were these prints from last night? They might be from this morning.

  But, regardless of when, what made them? A cow or an elephant could make a print like that, but there were neither in Twin Hills. Jeremy sheathed the knife with a slow movement, alert for any change in the shadows. Cautious feet carried him along the trail, following the chase in reverse. He saw Mira’s thin wheel track as well as his own and the circular prints along those tracks. He swallowed. It had turned the corner onto the bike trail with them, but on the trail from the pond, the prints disappeared on the packed clay. He found a few other prints from the hard pack to the pond. Nearing the pond, he crawled. There were the two deep wheel divots where they jumped on their bikes. Their shoes trampled each other in the mad dash to the bikes. Jeremy crawled closer to their hiding place. A circular print crushed one of Mira’s smaller prints. The edge of the circle cut intact through her instep; the circle prints were definitely made after theirs. Spiders of fear walked up Jeremy’s spine. Shaking fingers traced the outline of the giant footprint that had sunk deeper in the wet ground than th
ey had. Thok-thunk echoed in his mind. He unsheathed the knife and followed the prints to where he and Mira had crouched.

  He squatted there, looking toward the pond and Club Tree clearing, estimating where they first saw the shape. The yellowed grasses and baby cattails from him to the pond’s edge were unbent. At the pond’s soft, muddy edge, there were no prints. The pristine bank of the pond contradicted every logical explanation. What could have stood there and left no mark, yet made two inch-deep prints on harder ground?

  Thok-thunk. The memory of the heavy sound shivered through him. He should show this to Mira. A thought gnawed at the back of his mind: if the Old Man wasn’t a man, what was it? Did he really want to know? Jeremy took a last fretful gaze over the prints and rushed back to his house. He took off all the weapons and went next door.

  Mira’s mom answered.

  “Can Mira come play?”

  “Absolutely not. Mira is punished for being in the woods after dark. And if it were up to me, you would be too, young man.”

  “But—”

  She slammed the door. It wasn’t Mira’s fault. It wasn’t fair. They had already learned their lesson. He reached for the plastic doorbell. As his finger hovered over it, his hands shook and his knees quaked. He had to tell the truth—it wasn’t fair to punish Mira twice. And what would have happened to him if she hadn’t been there? He willed his finger to push the button, to bring Mira’s mom back to the door, to beg for her freedom. He lingered there, biting his lip, feeling his heart slam against his ribs. But who was he to argue with her mom? He swallowed. He couldn’t do it. He shoved his hands into his pockets and shuffled home, head bowed.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Jeremy ran across the playground beneath the burning sun. “Mira! Mira!” he called out as he ran. She stopped, half turning, and stared at the ground with her arms crossed.

  “Hey.”

  “Hey, I’ve been trying to talk to you for days. Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine.”

  She didn’t look fine. She looked… different. Jeremy couldn’t say exactly what was different, though. Her hair was in bows rather than a simple ponytail. Her eyes were more defined in her face, as though she were excited, but he could see confusion swirling in her pupils. It didn’t make any sense.

  “Last Saturday when I went back out to Twin Hills, I found these footprints, but they aren’t like the Old Man’s footprints. They’re entirely different.”

  She held up a hand. “Stop.”

  “I don’t think they’re human. I don’t know what it was but—”

  “Jeremy!”

  He blinked.

  Mira gestured in the air. “I don’t know what we saw that night, okay? But it’s time to just grow up and stop imagining things. Kelly told me that she made up the Old Man. She made him up! He isn’t real.”

  “But he was real. You saw it—him. We both did.”

  “No, we imagined him. You need to grow up. On Friday, we’re moving up to the fifth grade. It’s time to grow up, Jeremy.”

  “Then how do you explain the prints?”

  She shook her head. “Jeremy, they’re not real. They’re not! You just found some animal prints or something. I dunno.”

  Daniel walked to them, waving. “Hey.” He looked from one to the other. “Are y’all okay?”

  Mira crossed her arms again and kicked at the grass.

  How could she say it wasn’t real? It—him—whatever it was—had chased them. They had heard it; he had felt its hungry breath. How could she say it wasn’t real?

  Daniel looked from Mira to Jeremy, then pointed across the playground. “Y’all want to come play? They’re starting a soccer game over there.”

  “It’s too hot. I’ll see y’all later.” Mira walked toward a knot of girls sitting atop the merry-go-round in the shade of a tall oak.

  Jeremy watched her walk away. He had found the prints. It was real.

  “What’s wrong with her?” Daniel asked.

  “Urrrrrugh!” Jeremy shook his head, shoving his hands into his pockets. “I don’t know. She’s been weird ever since we found that thing that night.”

  “The Old Man?”

  “Yeah, whatever it was. I told you about the prints. It wasn’t a person.”

  “Yeah.” Daniel watched Mira take her place among the giggling girls on the merry-go-round. “Have you ever seen her wear makeup before?”

  “Don’t be silly, she’s not like those other girls.”

  “Are you blind? She’s wearing it right now. Dressed different too, like she’s trying to fit in with them.”

  Jeremy cocked his head sideways, staring at them. “Why? She’s a girl; she doesn’t have to try to fit in.”

  “Never mind, you don’t get it.”

  “What?”

  “You want to play soccer?”

  “What don’t I get?”

  “Forget it. Come on, let’s go play.”

  “Wait! What don’t I—”

  “Race you!”

  “Daniel!”

  The Port Arthur Library smelled of old bindings and yellowed papers; it hummed with a quiet busyness as refreshing as a burbling creek. Mom and Rosalyn wandered off to the children’s section. Jeremy marched to the subject card catalog. He pulled out the long box labeled “P” and thumbed through the meticulous, typewritten cards. He wrote down several call numbers of books on pollution. Sliding the wooden drawer back into the giant cabinet, he moved to the stacks. Nerves tickled his stomach; what if someone caught him in the grown-up section? He looked up and down the row of the grown-up books. There was no one around. He pulled three volumes off the shelf and half ran them to a table. Then he went back.

  “Excuse me?”

  Jeremy glanced over his shoulder. Standing on this stool, he was almost the same height as the octogenarian librarian frowning at him, her hands on her hips.

  “What are you doing, young man?”

  Jeremy swallowed. His hands shook. “I’m getting books on pollution.” He held out the card with scrawled call numbers. “I just need the last one up there.”

  “Here you go.” She reached up and handed him the book. Then she followed him to his table. “Working on a report for school?”

  “No, ma’am, school is out.” Jeremy stared at the carpet, slid into his chair, and started leafing through one of the books. If he looked busy maybe he wouldn’t get in trouble. “I’m trying to figure out how fast pollution is happening, so I can figure out how many years I have to stop it.”

  “Oh my,” she whispered.

  Jeremy shook his head and pushed another book toward her. “Have you read these books? Do you know which one might tell me?”

  She frowned at the various tomes on the table—Our Endangered Atmosphere, Acid Rain: A Rein of Controversy, Air Pollution, Acid Rain, and the Environment, The Waste Watchers: A Citizen’s Handbook for Conserving Energy and Resources.

  “No, no, I haven’t, but I might be able to help you. Let me see what I can do.”

  “Okay. Thanks.”

  She wandered off. Jeremy wiped the cold sweat off his head, thankful he wasn’t in trouble. He pored over paragraphs of words he didn’t know. Deep into the sixth book, his courage flagged. She reappeared at his desk. “Come see, cher.”

  Jeremy followed her to a large desk, scattered with papers and giant, important-looking volumes bound in red fabric.

  “These are government studies about pollution here in southeast Texas, published by the EPA.”

  He stared at the giant columns of numbers printed on Bible paper.

  “What’s the EPA?”

  “The Environmental Protection Agency—the part of the government that fights pollution.”

  “Why aren’t they doing anything, then?”

>   “What?”

  “Well, if the government is supposed to be fighting pollution, why do we still have it?”

  “I don’t think it’s that easy. Do you still want to see the numbers?”

  “Yes, ma’am. One second.” Jeremy ran back to his table to get his notebook and pencil.

  He stood next to her as she explained the numbers. “So this is the amount of sulfur in the air for each year since 1975.”

  “The numbers are getting bigger.”

  “Right.”

  Jeremy wrote this down. She gave him a soft smile, then turned the page to another column of numbers and charts. She explained that these pesticides and chemicals he’d never heard about ended up in water. Jeremy tried to write this down, but she turned the page to yet another set of numbers. The entire book was filled with these numbers. Jeremy’s pencil hung in his fist. The next several pages described chemicals released into the air.

  “But, how fast is it occurring?” he asked.

  She reached into her desk drawer and took out a calculator, keying in the numbers on the old adding machine as it printed a ticker-tape answer for him. She flipped back and forth through the pages, keying in numbers, adding and dividing several of them. Finally, she looked at Jeremy and pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose. “Mon cher, that’s hard to answer. I just don’t know.”

  He crossed his arms, staring at the printed string of numbers on the ticker tape.

  She said, “We can certainly say that the problem is getting worse over the years.”

  “Then I will have to write President Reagan and tell him that the EP… EP… ”

  “EPA.”

  “That the EPA needs to work harder.”

  She nodded. “That’s a good idea.”

  “And I’ll just have to start a pollution club now, I think.” He nodded to himself.

  “A pollution club?”

  “We’re going to pick up trash on the highway near my house. My mom says that we can recycle the cans that we find for money.”