My Diary from the Edge of the World (11 page)

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 howling—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!

Oliver seemed to be arguing with himself. I thought
he wasn't going to say anything at all, but then he finally looked up at us.

“I think we should wait,” he said. “And sell him when we can.”

I couldn't believe my ears. “But your parents!” I blurted out before I could stop myself. Not to mention the danger we all felt.

Oliver looked down at his hands, embarrassed and uncomfortable under the glare of our attention. “It's not what my mom would want,” he said. “Anyway, Gracie, I don't think I have the heart to kill him. Do you?”

I was searching for an answer, wondering whether I
did
have the heart and thinking that I probably did, when Sam interrupted. “I think we should call him Daisy,” he said.

“But he's a
he
, Sam,” Millie said, fighting a sudden nervous smile.

“Actually,” Dad said, stepping in through the side door, “he's a she. A nursing mother by the looks of it.”

Suddenly the fragile howl from the bushes of the parking lot, the search for food in the trailer, made sense. She must have been trying to feed her babies. (What will her babies do without her, I wonder. Also, do I feel sorry for her? Also, how am I supposed to
feel sorry for a creature who'd probably like to eat my face off?)

“I think she's cute,” Sam said, swiveling on Millie's lap and looking like he'd made up his mind not to be afraid.

“You haven't even seen her,” Millie said.

“I still think we should consider leaving her locked in the trailer somewhere,” I suggested.

Mom opened her arms, and Sam crawled from Millie's lap into hers. “You have a big heart, my little Mouse,” Mom said.

“So does Oliver,” Millie said, which made Oliver blush.

Nobody said
I
have a big heart.

*  *  *

So here we are, driving through Tennessee. We seem to be collecting misfits—first Oliver, and now a bloodthirsty monster called Daisy who could potentially escape and eat us all (even though Dad says that's not going to happen). Out of the frying pan, into the fryer, hardy-har.

Sam just climbed into my bunk and let out a huge fart and then disappeared. Boys are a species all to themselves. Closing this journal and going to make a bomb shelter out of my covers. Good night.

I think Cliffden is an
October town, though I said this to Millie last night and she looked at me like I might infect her with a rare and deadly form of insanity. Still, our town was at its best when the leaves turned colors and the orange glow of jack-o'-lanterns made beacons along the porches so that you could find your way home by candlelight on Halloween. All those nights I spent trick-or-treating, I always thought that it would go on once a year, every year, forever. Isn't it weird how things seem endless until they suddenly end?

We're on day twenty-four of our journey (it feels so much longer than that!), somewhere in Arkansas, according to Sam the Mouse. Or, in his words, “We're close to the squiggly line.” The smiling man, a.k.a. the evil
clown, a.k.a. the black hole, is following steadily behind us, up among the other clouds but always distinct—not getting too close, but also never far.