31 Days of Halloween

Terror Comes to West Fork

A path covered in fallen leaves, decaying and damp, left behind an earthy, mossy odor as the three boys trekked along the edge of the flowing stream. Late afternoon sunlight trickled through the tree tops as the boys began their journey home. Spending the first day of autumn break hiking, the thirteen-year-olds were enjoying their time outdoors. Rabbits and squirrels scurried and scampered away from the intrusion, sitting safely at a distance curiously observing the humans. Birds chirping and singing filled the air, and the rush of water over the rocks provided the background noise. For them, it had been a perfect day.

Riley Martin, stopped first, "Hey, what is that? Do you guys hear it?"

His companions both stopped to listen and shrugged their shoulders.

"I don't hear anything but the water and the wind, actually," Braden Hanson replied. Braden, with his tousled mop of blonde hair and striking blue eyes, was partially deaf and didn't rely much on the extraneous sounds he could hear around him.

Riley shrugged it off and once again ambled along the well-worn pathway through the trees, his cohorts in tow. That's how their friendship had grown. Riley, tall and lanky, the adventurer, always getting himself into something, which usually meant the other two were right there with him. Braden, the one the girls fawned over at school, always up to participate in whatever Riley found for them to do that day. Then there was Blake, quiet and shy, Blake kept to himself except with Riley and Braden. His home life left little to be desired and he often times found himself sleeping over at the other boy's houses. Nervous and a bit skittish, these two were his only real friends. The other kids used to bully and pick on him, but Riley put a stop to that. In the third grade, they brought him into what would become the friendship of a lifetime. Now, the boys were inseparable.

Stopping to zip up his hoodie, Blake yelled to the other two, "Hey, wait up a minute."

They stopped and looked back at their friend.

"Riley, do you hear that? Is that what you heard before?"

Over the sound of the water and the rustling of leaves, he heard it.

"Yes! What is that?"

"I don't know man, it sounds like something growling. Something big," he paused and turned slowly in a circle to try and hear where it was coming from.

"I still don't hear anything," Braden murmured.

"Alright, let's keep walking, there's probably another two miles to go before we get to the road," Riley said as he looked cautiously at their surroundings.

There wasn't any bear in the area, but on occasion, a mountain lion would be sighted. With no weapons, they wouldn't be able to outsmart a stalking cat.

"Walk slow and try to keep quiet. It's louder now than it was when I heard it the first time, but we have to go this way, if we try to go up the bank any further it will be too slippery, and we sure don't want to fall in here. Not from up that high. If it's a mountain lion, it will be above us on the hillside. Keep your eyes open and let's get out of here."

He tried to present the face of calmness, but inside he was scared. Never confronted with something like this, he really had no idea about what to do. The biggest thing they had seen there was a raccoon and a skunk. Whatever this might be, it had his imagination working in overdrive.

The sound was definitely growing louder and closer. The boys tightened their formation on the path and walked together, not sure of what the would encounter. With eyes on both the beaten trail and the hillside as well, they kept moving. For a short distance, the trail veered away from the running stream and took them farther into the woods.