There's Something Out There (6 page)

“Looking for something?” Jason asked with a sly grin as he set a stack of dirty dishes in the sink.

“Yeah, Dad says he bought ice cream, but I can't find it.”

“Oh. That's my bad,” Jason said, still grinning. “But it was a delicious afternoon snack.”

“You ate the
whole thing
?” Jenna asked.

“I was really hungry,” he replied with a shrug. “It was so good—cold and creamy and sweet. French vanilla,
mmmm
.”

“I hate you so much.”

“Likewise.”

As he passed her, Jason reached out and lightly flicked Jenna on the arm. A searing pain shot through her arm, all the way to her wrist. She gasped and grabbed her arm. The knife she'd been holding to cut the pie clattered to the floor. “Mom!” she yelled.

“What's going on in there?” Dr. Walker called.

“Nothing,” Jason said quickly—too quickly. He leaned over to Jenna and hissed, “Don't be such a baby. I barely touched you.”

Jenna opened her mouth to retort, but stopped short. She knew that Jason was telling the truth.

So why did it hurt so much?

Suddenly she remembered—the cut she had received the night before. It hadn't done much healing, apparently.

Just then Dr. Walker appeared in the kitchen. “Well? What's going on?”

“Jason ate all the ice cream,” Jenna said.

Dr. Walker sighed. “Jason, was that really necessary?”

“It's got lots of calcium,” he pointed out.

“So does yogurt! Honestly, you're old enough to know better than to eat an entire carton of ice cream.”

“Sorry, Mom.”

“And also he flicked me,” Jenna said. She couldn't help herself. “Right in my arm.”

“Unacceptable, Jason,” Dr. Walker said. “I think you can miss your karate lesson on Monday.”

“Mom! No! Come on, I have a match next Saturday! I
have
to be at the lesson or Sensei will be so mad!”

Dr. Walker shook her head. “Maybe you can use the time to try to understand why you're still picking on your little sister.”

“Thanks, Jenna,” he snapped. “Thanks a lot.”

“You're welcome,” she said sweetly as she took a big bite out of her slice of pie. Jason hardly ever got busted for being so mean to her, so Jenna was going to enjoy it while she could.

After school on Monday, Jenna and Maggie walked to the public library. It was already filling up with students from the high school and the middle school, all working furiously on the big projects that were due before school let out for the summer. The girls went straight to the very back, where the Lewisville Archives were located. After Jenna pulled open the heavy oak door, Maggie flipped on the lights.

Walking into the archives was like stepping through a time machine. Oil paintings of the town's founder and mayors glared from the walls; in the oldest portraits, the men wore powdered white wigs and formal, old-fashioned suits. Tattered maps and stained surveyor's charts that chronicled the town's growth had been
framed and mounted on the walls in places of honor. There were bookcases throughout the room, each one crammed with old, leather-bound volumes filled with yellowed pages. One bookcase contained the minutes from every town council meeting since 1812.

The room was steeped in history. Jenna could feel it all around her; she could even smell it in the stuffy, dusty air.

“I'd kill for a computer in here,” she whispered to Maggie, not even realizing that she'd dropped her voice to a hush. “This is going to be impossible. How am I going to find
anything
about the Marked Monster? Like I really want to sift through all this stuff! There must be, like, a thousand books in here!”

“And who knows if anybody even wrote anything down about the Marked Monster in the town records?” Maggie pointed out. “What if Jason was just messing with you?”

Jenna paused. She hadn't thought of that.

“It would be so like him!” She groaned as a sudden wave of panic washed over her. “And now it's Monday and I already handed in my paragraph on this topic. How would I ever think of another topic and find
enough info to get the project done now?”

Maggie made a sympathetic face. “No, I'm probably wrong. Not even Jason is that evil,” she said. “Besides, didn't you say he was bragging to your parents about coming up with the idea?”

“Yeah,” Jenna said slowly.

“Well, he wouldn't do that if the whole point was to set you up. I mean, that would make your mom crazy mad, right?”

“
Crazy
mad,” Jenna repeated. She was starting to feel a little better. Even Jason was aware of how much her parents were pushing her to do well in school. They would completely freak out if she did poorly on her project because Jason had played a mean prank on her.

But she still faced an enormous stack of books—and no quick way to find the info she needed. “I guess I'd better get to it,” she said, sighing, as she pulled a book with a cranberry-colored cover off the shelf. She blew a thick cloud of dust off it. “‘Town Records, 1844 to 1845.' Please wake me up if I start snoring.”

“Sorry, Jenna, you're on your own,” Maggie said with a laugh. “I have to go photocopy a picture of Manfred Lewis for my poster.”

“What, you couldn't print that off the Internet?” Jenna asked. “I'm sure the town website has a picture of the founder of Lewisville.”

“I could've,” Maggie said, smiling slyly. “But then I wouldn't have had a chance to come to the library and use the computer here. And, you know, chat with anybody who's online.”

Jenna started laughing. Mrs. Marcuzzi was insanely strict about the Internet. Whenever Maggie was online, Mrs. Marcuzzi always hovered right behind her. Maggie could hardly e-mail or chat with anybody without her mom reading every word.

“Well, if nobody's online, you have to come back and help me,” Jenna said. “I don't even know where to begin.”

“Sure, sure, I will,” Maggie said with a little wave as she drifted out the door. Jenna watched her go and knew that Maggie wasn't going to budge from the library computer until Mrs. Marcuzzi arrived to pick them up in two hours.

Jenna really was on her own.

With a heavy sigh, she sat down at one of the desks. It was made out of shiny dark wood; the top of the desk slanted downward, with a tiny, tarnished keyhole near
the edge of the lid. Suddenly filled with curiosity, Jenna tried to open it.

But the desk was locked.

I wonder what's in here
, she thought. Why would this desk be locked, in the barely used archives room?

Jenna had almost completely forgotten about her research. All she wanted to do was open that desk and peek inside. Then she remembered the safety pin holding one of her backpack's straps together.
Maybe I can open the lock without the key
, she thought. She'd seen somebody on TV open a lock that way once.

Jenna bit her tongue as she slipped the pin into the keyhole. She jiggled it around, up, down, to the right, to the left. Every few seconds she tried to open the desk, but the lid wouldn't budge.

Five minutes passed like this, and she was just about to give up, when suddenly she heard it.

Click
.

The faint sound had come from the lock.

Holding her breath, Jenna tried again to lift the lid.

This time it opened on hinges so creaky the squeak seemed earsplitting—but the lid opened only a couple of inches, not nearly wide enough for her to see if anything
was inside. She leaned closer to the desk and tried to peer in it.

“
What
do you think you're doing?”

The voice scared Jenna so much that she jumped up; the lid of the desk banged down, hard, and then she heard a sickening sound—a second thump, as if something inside the desk had come loose, or broken when the lid fell.
Oh my God, did I just break some precious town heirloom or something?
she wondered frantically as she spun around to see an old man glaring at her from the doorway.
I'm going to be in so much trouble!
Jenna tried to hide the safety pin in her hand, but only managed to stab herself in the palm.

“Ow! What—Sorry—I was—”

“Can't you read?” the old man barked. He lifted his cane and banged it on the open door, making Jenna jump again. “Didn't you see the sign? It says ‘No Admittance without Permission of the Town Archivist'! That's me. And I don't remember giving you permission to come in here.”

“I'm sorry,” Jenna said miserably. “I, um, I didn't—”

“Speak up!” the man bellowed. “I can't hear a word you're saying.”

This is great
, Jenna thought.
Now this old deaf guy is going to yell at me—

Then she realized something. If he was hard of hearing, maybe he hadn't heard the desk lid fall.

And maybe he hadn't heard whatever had thumped inside it.

“I'm sorry, sir,” she said, louder this time. “I, um, I didn't see the sign—”

“You shouldn't be sitting at that desk. And you shouldn't be touching that book without gloves!”

Jenna stood up on shaky legs, blinking quickly so she wouldn't start to cry. She
hated
being yelled at, especially by adults, and
especially
by strangers.

“I honestly didn't see the sign,” she repeated. “I was trying to do some research. For this history project—”

The old man sighed. “For Mrs. Ramirez?”

Jenna nodded without saying anything.

“Every year, a parade of middle schoolers traipses through here,” he grumbled. “Every year. But you're getting a rather late start, aren't you, young lady?”

She nodded again.

“Well, what's your topic?”

“Um,” she replied, starting to blush. “Um. The—the
Marked Monster?” She just
knew
the old man was going to yell at her again—probably for wasting his time.

But she was wrong. To her astonishment, his eyes lit up. “Well!” he exclaimed. “Well! That's a clever choice! Quite the deviation from the standard Blizzard of 1907 that so many students report on, year after year after year. Where would you like to begin?”

“Wait a second,” Jenna said. “Do
you
know about the Marked Monster? Like, historical things for my project?”

The man nodded solemnly. “My dear, I know more about the Marked Monster than any person still living.”

Something in his voice—Jenna couldn't quite put her finger on it—gave her chills.

“My name is Mr. Carson,” he said, tapping his chest. “And you are?”

“Jenna, uh, Jenna Walker.”

“Wait there, Jenna,” Mr. Carson said. “Don't touch anything. I'll be right back.”

Jenna stood awkwardly in the middle of the archives room until the man returned with an enormous portfolio and a pair of soft cotton gloves. “Put these on,” he ordered her. “They'll keep the oils and dirt from your hands off the archival materials.”

My hands are
not
dirty and oily!
Jenna thought—but she put the gloves on without arguing.

“Please, have a seat over here,” Mr. Carson continued as he gestured to a long table in the middle of the room. Jenna sat next to him and snuck a peek at him while she pretended to arrange her notebook and note cards on the table. Clouds of white hair puffed up from his head, and this close, it was hard for her not to notice how yellow his teeth were, or the way that the corners of his mouth were crusted over with dried spit.

Then, to her embarrassment, she realized that Mr. Carson was watching her. He'd probably caught her staring. But he said nothing—just nodded his head over to the desk in the corner. The one where Jenna had picked the lock.

“That desk belonged to Manfred Lewis himself, you know.”

“Really?” Jenna asked in surprise.

“And the story of the Marked Monster—as it concerns Lewisville—is certainly wrapped up in the story of Manfred Lewis. Of course, what we know of the monster predates Lewis.”

“Cool,” Jenna said as she started scribbling down every word he said.

“Who can say from where the monster came?” Mr. Carson said, closing his eyes and shaking his head. “Most people these days just dismiss the story of the Marked Monster as a myth—a tale of a bogeyman—that some kid dreamed up years ago and that gets passed down from generation to generation. What they don't know, though, is that the legend of the Marked Monster was around long before this country was even founded. According to the Q'ippicut people, the Marked Monster was a curse, a creature whose very existence was a testament to the power of evil.”

Jenna felt cold all over … except for her injured arm, which was uncomfortably hot.

“In order to survive, the Q'ippicut forged an uneasy peace with the monster. It wasn't marked back then, you know. They called it
Keuhkkituh
—‘Creature of the Black Blood.' You see, the Q'ippicut had been forced to live with—or at least
near
—the creature for centuries. They knew more about its unholy form than anyone. Until a few months ago, you could still see their paintings of it in the caves near Mount Madison if you knew where to look—but then those caves were destroyed.”