Feelers Pt. 12

My knees felt weak and I was afraid I would actually fall over, so I sat down on the grass before that could happen. As Grant and I stared in horrid fascination at the print, we saw little trickles of dirt at the edges falling gently into the hollow hoof print. Three narrow, deep holes splayed out from the front edges of the hoof print, making me think of the claws the creature had used to grip me around the waistband of my jeans. I rubbed my still-bruised hip, unpunctured thanks to my leather belt.

 

As we both realized how very fresh the print was, we both had the same thought- run! But quiet. Which meant slow. Which meant nerve-wracking. It's not easy to breath quietly when it speeds up and your heart starts pounding away! But we tried. Backing away, trying not to rustle the grasses, looking around fearfully, we crept across the clearing to a stand of trees.

 

"What if it's a tree animal?" Grant breathed out

 

"Not with the hooves, I don't think," I whispered back, though with those add-on claws, I really didn't know. But we both looked up above us. We could see nothing up in the branches. "Let's get away from here. Did you get a good drink?"

 

"Yes, and I got the water bottle filled."

 

"Good, so let's get to a better place where we can talk and figure out what's going on and what we need to do next!" I nodded, and pointed over to a hilly place behind the trees where the landscape looked jumbled with big boulders and tufts of bushes. I pointed the direction, and Grant nodded. Looking around as we went, we picked our way a hundred feet into the rough wild area. We hunkered down behind a rock, sheltered by a little bluff behind us. Roots from the shrubs above hung down like a curtain where the dirt had been eroded away from the bluff. We scrunched back and made ourselves comfortable in the relative gloom of the cave-like dugout.

 

"Do you notice the sun is lower in the sky now than it was when we first got here?" Grant asked. Now I did.

 

"I think it will be dark soon," he said. "We may have to spend the night here."

 

Instinctively I drew a little closer to him, getting a little comfort from his nearness. "Maybe there'll be a moon."

 

"Maybe," he said. "Maybe two moons."

 

"Maybe three," I snickered. For some reason, probably the relief of being relatively safe in the total weirdness of our situation, I felt giggly now. "Maybe a dozen, like Saturn or something."

 

"Maybe we're on Saturn." Grant joked. "Maybe we're aliens!" Now I couldn't help it. We both started giggling and snickering, the effort of staying quiet making strange noises in our throats and tears in our eyes. And then I was afraid I would really start to cry, so I pulled myself together and shut up.

 

"Ok, what do we know? We aren't on Earth anymore, at least as we know it," I said. "And that foggy place, I don't think that was Earth either. So what happened?"

 

"That foggy place didn't seem like anything," Grant said. "There wasn't anything there. Even the fog wasn't damp, didn't smell like smoke. It was just like, uh, like physical blurry, is all I can describe it. And those ghostly scenes. They didn't all look like Earth scenes. I'm kind of wondering if they were other worlds. Maybe different worlds that hooked into it, sort of like if the blurry place was a hub that could connect them."

 

"So that creature might have stumbled into the hub like we did. It didn't belong there either." I still refused to feel bad about stabbing it with the pencil. It was tooth and nail, kill or be killed. Eat or be eaten. "I wonder how long it had been there."

 

"Long enough to get hungry," Grant said. "Unless it is just naturally vicious."

 

"So how did we end up getting here? Why did we come to the creature's world?" I thought about what led up to that. The fluff of fur, floating ahead of us on the merest whisper of a breeze that we couldn't feel. The way it seemed to be drawn to one spot, and then being sucked down to the ground.

 

"I think there must be a pull from the world to the hub. The fur was caught up in it and showed us the spot, or portal, if you want to call it that." I thought for a moment. "I wonder if there are lots of portals, one to each of those worlds. Places you'd never notice unless you were looking for them, and if you had some small piece of something from that place."

 

"But we walked all over the place and never found the way back to Earth!" Grant exclaimed.

 

"Yeah, we tromped and stomped all over but didn't look for anything subtle."

 

"I guess we could try something with, say, a strand or two of our hair to find the portal to Earth." He paused. "That is, if we can figure out how to get back to the hub."

 

Now it was definitely getting dark. And chilly. I pulled my sweatshirt out of my backpack and put it on.

 

"We never did get a chance to inventory your pack!" Grant said.

 

"Too dark now, we'd lose something," I replied. I made a mental note to rummage through it myself tomorrow in private to make sure there wouldn't be anything embarrassing to pop up.

 

We sat in friendly silence for a bit. It was nice feeling like we didn't have to talk to be enjoying each other's company and not feel awkward, like at school when you meet at the locker and you don't know what to say. There is the dead silence, or the dreaded babble, both making me want to kick myself afterwards. But now it was funny. I'd had such a crush on Grant. It was so thrilling just to walk by him in the hall and say hi. I would get nervous and sweaty just thinking of having to think of brilliant things to say if we ended up near each other at lunch or PE. But now he was more like a real friend. We'd gone through some stuff together, and it was funny, I didn't feel that super strong attraction of liking him anymore, but I felt comfortable with him, like a real friend.

 

"Hey, Andie," Grant whispered. "What are you thinking?"

 

"Nothing important." I said. "I'm not sleepy yet, and the night might be long. So, tell me about yourself. Do you have brothers and sisters? What are all the classes you're taking?"

 

The rest of the long evening was filled with us sharing stories, hearing about Grant's little sister and older brother, who apparently was a super jock who got all the attention, and how he liked history and social science but his folks were trying to get him into the math and science track. He opened up about his friends, which ones were real friends and which ones he felt were using him. He talked about the teachers he liked and then we got onto the subject of Mr. Devius.

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Feelers pt. 11

For just a minute, I thought either Grant would run over and give me a hug, or that I would grab onto him, I was that glad to see him. But instead we just grinned at each other and began talking at the same time.

 

"You should have seen...!"

 

"What took you so long...?"

 

"I thought you were...!"

 

"I didn't want to move from here...!"

 

"I've got bruises...!"

 

Finally we caught each other up. I showed Grant the big purple blotch on my side where the creature had clutched me while it was banging me against the ground. He showed me his wound. It was beginning to seep a little bit, and the edges of the scrape were reddish. That worried me plenty, but since I couldn't think of what to do about it right now, I didn't want to nitpick over it yet.

 

"Ok, hand it over!" I said teasingly, reaching out for my backpack.

 

"It's all right, I can handle it," Grant said. "You've got that nasty bruise."

 

"I promise, if it starts to hurt too much, it can be your turn again." He pulled it off his own shoulders and handed it to me

 

"Now," I said, "Let's see if we can figure out just where we are."

 

"Before we walk away from here," Grant said, "I think we should mark this spot. We don't know anything yet. We don't even know if we are back on Earth where we should be." He took a straight branch about a yard long and walked over to the place where I had emerged. It looked sort of like a mostly filled in coyote den. He pushed the end of the stick into the soft soil. Carefully, he tore a slim strip from one edge of the pink bandana wrapped around his arm. At first I was going to protest. It was MY bandana, after all, but then I decided that once you hand a personal item over for a leaking wound-dressing, you sort of give up your ownership of it. He tied it in a knot around the top part of the stick, leaving a couple inches to flutter in the breeze

 

"There!" he said. "Now if we need to, as long as we can find this general area, we won't lose track of where we came from. Just in case," he added.

 

"So where do you think we are?" I plopped down on a little hillock and laid back, my face enjoying the feel of the sun on it, after that long time in the foggy place.

 

"Andie, look at this." Grant sat down beside me. I opened one eye just a slit and saw that he was holding something, a stem or something. "What?" I said sleepily, shutting my eye again. I felt something tickling my nose. It was like something crawling around on me.

 

"Aack!" I yelped, slapping my hand across my face, sitting up. Grant had been trailing the weed stem on me. He was laughing, but his eyes were a little worried. "Unh!" I groaned and sat up.

 

"Look at this. Have you ever seen anything like this?" I took the stem and peered down into the thumb-sized flower on the end of it. It was a pretty shade of blue. I knew that truly blue flowers are rare so I looked at it with curiosity. It didn't look like one I had ever seen before. It had two large petals that flared into sky blue at the top ruffly edges and funneled down into the deep indigo depth. I brought it closer, peering down into it. It was very strange. I hadn't had botany yet, but I did know that flowers had stamens and pollen and stuff that should have been in the center of this one. Instead all I saw was an inky crater.

 

I leaned in closer, my eyes practically crossing as I stared into it. Suddenly I saw two little black holes open up. Or spots, or something. But whatever they were, it felt like they were looking at me. The central tube of the blossom seemed to twist, and then suddenly what I swear were needle sharp teeth suddenly jutted out from the bottom of the flower! I jerked back and flung it away from me.

 

"It's alive! It's alive!" I choked out. "It's like a Venus flytrap or something. But more. It was looking at me!" Grant picked it up and pulled the flower apart. The swelling at the base of the bloom resembled the innards of a small animal, and I turned away in disgust.

 

"Let's go see what else this place has in it," Grant suggested. It was funny, at first I was the one who was more curious, but now I felt strangely reluctant to go exploring.

 

"Ok, but this spot may be our only connection for getting back home. We've got to make sure we memorize how to get back here."

 

"What? No compass in your pack?" Grant teased.

 

"Actually, yes!" I showed him the zipper pull, which held a tiny compass on the end.

 

"Assuming that the magnetic poles work here like they do on Earth, then I think we can head that way through the trees and when we want to go back, we can, uh..." he turned the compass this way and that, trying to figure out how to work it. "We can go South to get back here. I think."

 

We struck off, in spite of the strange situation, in a happy mood. The sun was shining, the air was clear and the view was pretty.

 

And that lasted for about twenty minutes, until we stopped with relief at a little creek of cool water and noticed a deep print in the damp earth by the bank. It was a large, strange, hoof-like paw.

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Feelers pt. 10

“Grant! Grant!” I screamed.  I knelt down, frantically pushing the mist away, as if there was a hole that I could reveal that he could have slipped down through. But there was nothing, just the familiar fuzzy white ground.

I stopped still and stood listening. Everything was dead silence. I had not realized how much noise another person could make, just being around them. The swish of their clothing, the sound when they cleared their throat, the little laughs and sighs that had been part of their companionship.  Now it was like the void of outer space, or the bottom of the sea. But not quite.

Far off, I imagined I heard a shuffling sound, a snuffling sound. Was I imagining it? Was that a low growl? I held my breath, trying not to move or make a sound so I could hear if there was anyone else within earshot of me. There was nothing. It had been my imagination. Safe for now!

I began yelling at Grant now, walking around the place where he had vanished.

“How could you go off and leave me?” I hollered. “You dolt! You inconsiderate idiot!” For some reason that made me feel better, so I kept it up, walking around and around.

“Mrrrrrrrrhhh!” A growl so low in pitch I could scarcely hear it was my only warning before a horrible face popped out of the pitch whiteness as it lurched towards me! A bloody Ticonderoga pencil with the eraser end broken off waggled from one eye. I jumped to one side and missed its cuffing paw, but lost my balance and stumbled to the ground. I didn’t even stop to look, but I began rolling as hard as I could away from those long hairy legs. The ground shook a little as a huge paw-like hoof stomped the ground where I had been a split second ago. I rolled again, in another direction, thrashing around, trying to get to my feet without staying in one place longer than a moment.

Finally I was able to jump up. Wildly I looked around. I could see nothing. I heard the woofing, snuffling sound, but it seemed all around me. Everything was white. I breathed as shallowly as I could, not moving. Suddenly a heavy force like a tree limb knocked me across my shoulders and I was down on my face before I could even prepare myself. I’d landed on my nose and as I turned over, Icould feel blood trickling down my upper lip.

The slashing fangs of that monstrous creature were so close I could smell its nasty breath and couldn’t dodge the dripping saliva. With an instinct that came from who knows where, my hand jerked up and slapped onto the broken end of the pencil still jutting from its eye. It howled and jerked back but didn’t run away. Instead it began to scream an awful penetrating shriek and reached out for me with its paws. It grabbed me tightly and began slamming me down to the ground. I wished I could just pass out and be done with it all.

And then, at about the fifth pounding, I felt something peculiar under my knees, that spongy ground Grant had described. I prayed for the next slam to be in the same spot, and it was. My knees seemed to force the ground to give way, and then a hole popped open under me! I could feel nothing beneath my feet. I began beating the creature’s arm, but couldn’t get the leverage I needed. Then I hearkened back to a self-defense class I’d had last year and, quelling the nausea, bit down on the monster’s arm as hard as I could, biting as if I was aiming for the bone.  The beast squealed and dropped me, dropped me straight down where Grant had disappeared.

The last sound I heard from that awful place was a faint roar, and then nothing. And then I was brushing dirt out of my eyes and hair and mouth because I was crawling out of a medium sized hole in the ground. Grant was sitting on a nearby rock with an astonished look on his face.

I coughed, wiping the dirt off my lips, my eyes tearing as they washed the grit out, and I said, “Hey! You still had my backpack. I couldn’t let you get away with all my stuff!”

Feelers pt. 9

We walked and we walked, and then we walked some more. At one point Grant pulled my backpack off my shoulders and shrugged it onto his own, and I was too tired to protest. We stumble through the mist, through flickering ghost children playing on transparent playground equipment, through a herd of oblivious spectral dairy cows, and through moving creatures that I didn't know existed on Earth. More than once, we heard snuffling noises, low growls, and we froze, holding our breaths until it was muffled silence again. We grew thirsty, sipping tiny sips on my lone water bottle. I forget how many times we passed the Payday wrapper lying on the ground where we had left it.

 

"I can't understand it!" I cried. "I know I've read that it happens, that people who are lost walk in circles, but I could swear we are walking in a straight line!"

 

"There's nothing to judge it against," Grant wearily said, plopping down for another rest. "No sun, no moon, no mountains, no nothing. We have no idea what we are doing."

 

"Well what do YOU expect us to do?" I sniped in a whiny tone. I felt close to tears and was trying to do what I could to not feel sorry for myself and start blubbering.

 

"It's not MY job to come up with the answer!" Grant snapped. He put his head down in his hands. We both sat there for awhile, miserable. After a little while, I started to worry that Grant might be weepy, losing it. That was a scary thought. I wanted him to be strong, in case I wasn't. I wasn't sure what to do. His breathing sounded strange, sighing-like. I felt a tender surge. Poor Grant! Nothing had prepared either of us for this adventure gone wrong. He was feeling the despair and trying to hide it from me so I wouldn't be scared. I reached out a gently hand to his shoulder. He didn't move. I brushed back his bangs from the side of his forehead. His eyes were shut. He was sleeping.

 

My gentle caress turned a little rough.

 

"Wake up!" I shook his shoulder. "Don't be sleeping now! We've got to do something to get out of here!"

 

He started, looked wildly around and then rubbed his face.

 

"Gah! I hoped it was a bad dream."

 

"No, and we've got to think. As my grandpa always said, think smarter, not harder. Though he actually always said, 'Work smarter, not harder,' but it's the same thing. We need to try to figure this out, if we can."

 

"There's no box here to climb in and go back. At least that we've seen."

 

"Right," I said. "But I bet Mr. Devius has been here before. I'm sure he didn't have the box for long without trying it out."

 

"So either he knew the way it all works, or he did the same thing as us, stumble around until he figured out how to get back," Grant said.

 

While we were talking, I noticed a bit of brown fluff stuck to a spot of dried blood on the arm of Grant's tee shirt. I pulled it off and began idly playing with it, stoking it and blowing on it, watching the pale tips of the hairs flutter with my breath. It had come from the creature that had attacked Grant, and thought it still creeped me out to look at it, it also fascinated me.

 

"I might want to bring that back with me as a souvenir," Grant joked. I was glad to hear him talk about it in a lighthearted way, even if he might be covering up a little, it still made me feel better.

 

"Let me see it," he said. I pulled a few hairs loose and, laughing, blew it across to him with a puff of my breath. But in the next second, we watched in amazement as the hairs floated in place for awhile and then began drifting off behind me, lighter than a feather, and carried on some invisible, indiscernible current.

 

Like bloodhounds, we leaped up and began to follow it through the fog, staying close behind each flutter of the hairs, afraid we would lose it completely if we let it get further away than a foot or so. I don't know just what we expected to discover, but this was the first new and different thing that had happened since we had been attacked by the owner of those hairs.

 

"As long as they are not being pulled back to whence they came," Grant nervously whispered. I'd had the same little thought.

 

"If we hear breathing or snuffling, we'll stop still, and stop breathing until we can slip away," I whispered back.

 

The hairs flitted and flicked, they tumbled and dipped, and then rose again, keeping about four feet off the ground. Finally they coasted to a stop and then began to sink. It was then I noticed that the mist was not dead still right underneath the slowly falling hairs. It was swirling, ever so slowly, but definitely, like a slow motion whirlpool about as big as a kitchen sink. We watched in amazement as they disappeared into the mist at the very center. We both dropped to the ground and began scooping up the mist, looking for the lost hairs.

 

"They're gone!" I whispered, still a little nervous about the strange animal that might be near.

 

"Did they get sucked down?"Grant said, scooping up the fog off the ground and watching for the hairs as it ran through his fingers. "If so, then down to where?" He began probing the ground.

 

"It feels funny here. Sort of mushy. Sort of like rubber sand that I can't get ahold of." Grant stood up and stomped his foot, hard, right in the middle of the almost invisible whirlpool. Suddenly a look of horror flashed across his face!

 

"My leg!" he yelped. "It's falling; it's getting sucked in!" I grabbed his arm, the one with the wound, but at that point, I didn't care, and I hoped he didn't, too much. I pulled, but now his other foot had gotten stuck, and he was sinking, like in a bog of quicksand!

 

"Andieeee!" he wailed as the mist covered his head and then he was gone.

 

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Feelers - pt. 8

I couldn't react quickly enough to move one muscle before Grant went tumbling underneath a big black shadowy thing, a thing that was the most real object I'd seen in this weird foggy between-world place. It was growling and snarling, rumbling like the bottom keys of a piano. I felt stupid and slow as I turned around to help Grant. The creature was the size of a Shetland pony, sharp and quick, as he wallowed over Grant, snaking his head forward and back, trying to get past Grant's beating arms. I saw blood glistening.

 

Frantically I kicked at the animal's leg that was closest. It was thick and furry, like a bear, and I may as well have been a moth for the attention it paid me.

 

"Get off! Get off!" I screamed.

 

What? What did I have to get this thing off him? There was no time to over-think it. Grant was yelling and bleeding, the creature was swinging back its arm for a giant cuff. I swung my backpack around and then straight for its head with all my might. The corner of a book connected into the side of its temple, and, overbalanced, it fell backwards.

 

From somewhere, I realized I now had a new freshly sharpened yellow Ticonderoga pencil in my other hand. Dropping the backpack, I took the pencil in both hands point side down, aimed, shut my eyes, and drove it with a chopping motion down at one of its red-rimmed eyes. In that moment I heard a barking grunt and was hurled away several yards and to the ground. I caught a glimpse of the bear-like creature with impossibly long legs disappearing into the fog with my new pencil still in its right eye. I rolled over with some fear to look at Grant. I had a flash of realizing what it would mean if he were dead or dying. All alone in this place!

 

I was relieved to see him sitting up and looking at me with an expression that probably matched mine.

 

"You're OK!" We both said in unison, and then flopped back down, letting the adrenaline fade away with shudders and teary giggles.

 

"I think they are just surface scrapes," Grant said, as we inspected his wounds.

 

"It bothers me because they might be from its teeth," I said. "It might get infected. We need to wash it or something." I looked in my backpack, my wonderful backpack that I was starting to realize might be the thing that would help us survive in this place.

 

"I've got a water-bottle, but I hate to use it up if we get thirsty later. How about using this?" I held up a small travel-size bottle of mouthwash, minty-fresh.

 

"You go to school with a bottle of mouthwash?" Grant asked incredulously.

 

"Hey, you never know!" I said defensively. "I don't want to breathe Dorito breath on.. well, anyone..." I finished lamely. "Anyway, if it kills germs, it should help here."

 

"We're assuming that these are Earth germs!" Grant said under his breath.

 

I ignored him and drizzled some of the green fluid over his bloody scrapes. He howled as the mouthwash ran over the wounds and rinsed off some of the blood. The green liquid and the red blood made a sort of brown color that I finished wiping off with the corner of my shirt. I dug in my pack once again and brought out a pink bandana. I folded it over and tied it like a bandage over the injury.

 

"That should keep it clean at least," I said. "Now, what next?"

 

It seemed like hours, days had gone by, but there was still just the pale gray fog surrounding us and my stopped watch to remind me there was no time here. The pale shadows that looked like a scene from our school had quit moving, and other, more strange shadows had become more active.

 

"Come closer, sit by me," Grant said, patting his side. I scooted over, putting my pack between my feet. "Can we figure any of this out? Are there more creatures like, uh, that one?" he said quietly.

 

"It's my guess this whole place is like this," I said, "though we should probably walk around a little to make sure. The only other thing we've seen that's as real as we are was the creature." I patted the ground. "See? Even the ground isn't really dirt, or grass, or anything, really."

 

Grant ran his fingers along the misty ground in front of us. He scooped his hand up but only tendrils of smoke poured out from between his fingers.

 

"I wonder if it ended up like us here, sort of by accident, but from another world," he said gazing at the flickering shapes of long-legged creatures that faded in and out of the ghost show.

 

"Well, I don't care. I don't feel sorry for what I did to it!" I declared.

 

"No, never," Grant hastily replied, "but, I was just wondering right now if maybe it decided to come back. If it was a carnivore, you know, and it was really hungry and stuff..." He trailed off. I was thinking, too, that we should get a move on. Nothing to be gained by waiting. No one was going to come and rescue us. Nobody was going to come and deliver a pizza while we sat waiting. Thinking about pizza made my stomach growl. I was embarrassed until I heard Grant's stomach making noises too.

 

Silently I reached into my backpack and pulled out a Payday, broke it in half and handed that part over to Grant. He took it and we chewed silently for a few moments.

 

"What else have you got in that thing?" he asked. "Maybe we should take inventory."

 

"I don't want to empty it here. If I lose something out of it, we might never find it again," I said gesturing towards the fog. I also wasn't quite sure myself what all was in there, and if there was something embarrassing, I didn't want to spill it out right in front of him.

 

"Good thought," he said. "We might need everything we have."

 

"And now," Grant said, rising to his feet, "It's time we got moving."

 

"One thing," I said. "It may be important to know just where we came into this place. There aren't any landmarks, and once we move around, we won't have any point of reference. We would be absolutely clueless!"

 

"Not that we aren't pretty clueless anyway!" he joked, "But you're right. What have we got that we can spare?"

 

I pulled out the Payday wrapper I'd shoved into my pants pocket and smoothed it out. I laid it out in front of us. It seemed to rest on top of the foggy ground, it's orange and blue colors shimmering. "This will have to do," I said. Grant agreed, and with a gesture that seemed so natural, he reached out and took my hand and we began walking.

 

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