The Beast

by Ally Condie

  “That’s not true!” Emma huffed, as the van rolled to a stop in front of White Pines, the nicest bed-and-breakfast in town. “They do serious detective work, Tyler. Verifying that paranormal things really do happen in remote places.” She tapped her chin with an index finger. “They must be here to investigate the Beast.”

  Nico felt a chill creep down his spine. He glanced at Opal, who was chewing her bottom lip.

  “We don’t want any paranormal investigations in Timbers,” Opal said quietly. “For obvious reasons.”

  Logan dropped his Beast shirt onto the bench. “Who’s that getting out of the van?”

  A short, wiry man wearing a Yellowstone tee, jeans, and hiking boots stepped from the vehicle. Yawning, he pulled off a wool ski cap, running a hand through his dark brown hair as he examined his reflection in a window. He looks like an ad for Ultimate Frisbee or something.

  Nico caught Emma and Opal exchanging a glance. “Is that the host?” he asked.

  “Yes!” Emma said, barely able to contain her excitement. “Colton Bridger. He has a film degree from USC and used to be a professional bird-watcher, and before that he shot backcountry skiing videos. He lived a year in Tibet to learn meditation. Bridger’s not afraid to go anywhere. He does all the writing, directing, and editing for Freakshow.”

  “A professional hipster,” Tyler murmured. Logan snorted, but Emma didn’t seem to hear.

  “Colton Bridger has won seven Web Breaker click-count awards,” she continued breathlessly, “and last year he was named ‘Most Downloaded’ by Online Magazine. You guys, he’s a star. In our town. I can’t believe it!”

  Bridger was rotating in a slow circle, taking in the neighborhood as two men and a woman unloaded a set of battered trunks behind him. When his inspection reached their bench, he paused. Then, incredibly, he started walking toward them.

  Emma stiffened like she’d been hit with a cattle prod. “He’s coming. Over here.”

  Bridger approached, flashing an easy smile. “Hey, guys. I was wondering if you might be able to help me. My film crew and I are looking for a place called Fort Bulloch, somewhere near”—he held up a finger, pulling a scrap of crumpled paper from his jeans—“Razor Point? Any chance you could give us directions?”

  Logan grunted. “Easy enough. Take Coast Street south out of town and you’ll run right into it. That way becomes a dirt road after a couple miles, but it doesn’t go anywhere else.”

  Emma was blinking rapidly at Bridger. “Are you here to do an episode of Freakshow?”

  His smile grew coy. “That we are. In fact, we hope to shoot a whole miniseries.”

  He extended a hand and Emma shook it, beaming.

  “Colton Bridger. We’ve come to investigate the Beast rumors—how it wrecked your radish festival a few weeks back. The Internet is on fire about the attack. Everyone wants us to catch this devil in the act.” His eyes twinkled, as if enjoying a private joke. Nico found himself disliking the man.

  “The Beast isn’t a devil,” Tyler shot back. “It’s just … the Beast. That legend has been around for decades.”

  “Right, right,” Colton said smoothly. “You locals would know best, for sure. I’m here to show the world how real this monster is once and for all. That it’s almost Halloween makes everything perfect.” He nodded at the Beast-themed windows surrounding them. “The creature hasn’t exactly been bad for Timbers, has it?”

  “Why are you heading to Razor Point?” Nico asked, hiding a frown. “The old fort’s out there, but not much else.” That area was too close to Still Cove for Nico’s comfort.

  “Didn’t you hear?” Bridger glanced around dramatically, dropping his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Some fishermen reported a Beast sighting there three hours ago. Today I might capture footage of an actual sea monster.” He straightened, pulling his ski cap back on. “Thanks for the directions. Hope to see you kids around soon. It’s always great to meet our fans!” He strode back to his van and climbed inside.

  “Nobody said we were fans,” Tyler grumbled. “That dude thinks he’s as cool as there is.”

  Nico was nodding in full agreement, but stopped short when he noticed Opal frowning at the pavement, a dull metal object clutched in her fingers. Nico thought he heard her whisper, “Fort Bulloch.”

  Opal abruptly straightened to face them. “We should check it out, too. Before the film crew gets there.”

  “What, Razor Point?” Tyler said, his mouth forming a scowl. “Why?”

  “I don’t know … I just … Here.” She held up the object in her hand for everyone to see. “I found this medal back on the houseboat. I want to …” Opal trailed off. Nico thought she wore an odd expression, like something was bothering her. “Can we just go look, okay?” she finished awkwardly.

  “It’s a long bike ride out to the Point,” Tyler complained. “We’d have to leave right now if we want to beat that van.”

  Opal folded her arms. “Then what are we waiting for?”

  4

  OPAL

  Opal skidded to a stop beside the rusty fence.

  She scanned the fort’s parking area and found it delightfully empty. We made it first.

  The others pulled up around her in a ragged semicircle, sucking wind as they studied crumbling Fort Bulloch over the next rise.

  Tyler dropped his bike to the grass. “How much longer until we can use your four-wheelers again, Logan? I’m not built for all this bonus exercise.”

  “Who knows?” Logan’s face glistened with sweat despite the low temperature. “They’ve been stuck in my garage ever since that giant cockroach wrecked them. I’ve got to keep them both out of sight until Sheriff Ritchie stops investigating Beast Night. He took pictures of the tracks, you know.”

  “They should be thanking us for saving the rest of downtown,” Nico grumbled.

  Opal agreed. They’d used Logan’s ATVs to lure rampaging figments away from town square, but had left tire marks all over the sidewalks. If anyone connected them to Logan’s vehicles, he could get blamed for everything.

  Opal rolled her bike into a tangle of alder trees behind them. “Come on. We don’t want anyone to know we’re here.”

  “Why are we here, exactly?” Emma asked, stashing her bike alongside Opal’s. Together they approached the fence and ducked through a gap in the chain-link. Nico, Tyler, and Logan followed, whispering among themselves. Inside the perimeter, a short, grassy field stretched to the foot of the deserted citadel. “I mean, I get that you found a war medal, but … what does that have to do with us?”

  “I think it connects to the Torchbearers.” Opal tapped her jeans pocket. “There must be a reason the medal was stored on the houseboat, right? Last night, I googled the image, and it’s something called a Distinguished Flying Cross. From World War II. Fort Bulloch was active during that era. I just think we should check it out.”

  Opal frowned. Weak, even to my ears. But she couldn’t explain it better than that. Something in her head insisted this search was important. The spark of an idea, buried deep inside. Opal had learned to trust her intuition, even when it felt … different than usual. She stuffed her doubts away. What could it hurt to look?

  “There’s lots of weird crap on the houseboat,” Logan pointed out. “That medal could be some random trinket an old Torchbearer kept as a souvenir.”

  “Maybe,” Opal said diplomatically, but she thought Logan was wrong. She’d had another flash of insight back in town.

  When Bridger said he needed to go to Razor Point. I don’t know … something.

  Fort Bulloch sat on a high promontory overlooking the sea. Its cement buildings were set in two rows, with a thick curtain wall encircling the entire fortification. Below it, a sea cliff dropped to a sandy spit of lowland bordered by beaches on both sides. At the very tip of the peninsula—on lonely Razor Point itself—an old military cemetery was just visible in the overcast haze. An automated lighthouse still operated at its farthest reach, marking the dangerous ro
cks that gave the area its name.

  Inside the curtain wall, bunkers faced the ocean, their bulky concrete shells covered in emerald-green moss. A line of storage buildings ran behind them, giving the paths in between a tight, mazelike feel. The military closed the base in the 1950s, but the location had been an important stronghold for two centuries before that, guarding the coastline and surrounding areas.

  “We’re not supposed to be here,” Tyler fretted, pointing to a NO TRESPASSING sign. “This is restricted government property.”

  “What are we looking for, exactly?” Nico asked, hands in his pockets.

  Opal heard the confusion in his voice, though she could tell he was trying to be supportive. “I’m not sure,” she replied honestly. “We could try looking for anything that matches the medal’s engraving. Airplane propellers?”

  Nico nodded, but Opal caught him shooting a glance at Tyler, who shrugged. She ignored them and plunged deeper into the fort.

  Rusty ladders ran up the outsides of the bunkers. Broken metal doors swung on raspy hinges. The walls were covered with graffiti, and broken glass crunched underfoot, left behind by teenagers who liked to sneak past the fences at night.

  “There’s gotta be info about Fort Bulloch in the school library,” Tyler suggested. “We could do some research there. And not break the law.”

  “Yeah, maybe later,” Opal said absently. But as towering clouds shifted in the Pacific sky—late afternoon sunlight slanting into her eyes—she kept thinking: here. The impulse had only strengthened. Something had to be learned, or seen, or found at the fort. Here.

  “It’d make sense if a few Torchbearers were in the military,” Emma said, her voice echoing as she poked her head into one of the gloomy bunkers. “I mean, their charge was to protect people from threats.”

  “Maybe,” Tyler conceded. But Opal could tell he remained unconvinced. He kept looking over his shoulder, clearly more worried about getting caught than anything else.

  “If we get busted here, I’ll be grounded again,” Logan complained. “And I will lose my mind. For real. I can’t spend another minute in my house playing board games with my little sister. Not when figments are running through the hills.”

  “I can’t believe no one’s filmed here before.” Emma’s eyes twinkled as she examined every inch of the fortress. “Those Freakshow guys are going to get amazing footage, even without a Beast shot.”

  Opal stopped. They’d reached a small amphitheater—a smooth semicircular patio with cement benches descending to a raised stage. Spray paint and lichen covered the walls, but the floor was oddly clear of both.

  “This must be where they performed the human sacrifices,” Tyler said, nodding sagely.

  “Gross.” Logan tromped down onto the stage and spun in a lazy circle. “Well? Now what? Should I sing?” An icy wind swept through the hollow space, sending shivers down Opal’s back.

  Nico glanced at her, spoke in a neutral voice. “Should we go back?”

  Opal shook her head. “Not yet.”

  Is it something I have to find? she wondered. Like an object?

  “Yo.” Emma pointed to the far side of the amphitheater. “More bunkers thataway.”

  “I’m not sure how much farther we should go,” Nico began, but Opal strode forward without looking back. After a tense moment, she heard the others follow. They passed another row of storage buildings, descended a flight of steps, and reached an archway that cut straight through the outer wall.

  “Wait.” Logan stopped and held up a hand. “Do you hear that?”

  Opal listened hard. At first, nothing. But then voices carried across the fort’s strange concrete acoustics. “The Freakshow crew?” she whispered.

  “Who else?” Tyler snapped. “Let’s bail. We can sneak around them back to the fence.”

  “No.” Opal saw Tyler flinch. She took a deep breath and softened her voice. “Just a little farther. I want to see what’s beyond this archway.”

  “Opal—” Nico began, but she darted ahead once again, her pulse quickening when she realized the archway was actually a tunnel burrowing into the stony hillside.

  Daylight was barely visible at the opposite end, which exited to a forested glen at the base of the curtain wall. Opal thought the area might have been well groomed in the past, like a small park or garden.

  There she froze, a tremor creeping up her spine. Opal turned around.

  Beside the archway, a tarnished bronze plaque was bolted to the concrete wall.

  Opal swept in close, brushed away some encroaching moss with her fingers, and read the words stamped there.

  In Loving Memory of Our Lost Airmen.

  A short list of names followed.

  “What’s that?” Emma asked, peering over Opal’s shoulder.

  “A war memorial,” Tyler answered, hemming to Opal’s side. “Looks like this one is dedicated to Timbers men and women who died fighting in World War II.”

  Each name had a raised symbol stamped beside it. Most looked like unit emblems, though Opal didn’t know much about that kind of thing. Her eyes ran down the list.

  There.

  A name.

  CHARLES DIXON.

  Next to it, engraved in the flaking metal, was a hand holding a torch.

  “The Torchbearer symbol!” Emma squawked. “Opal, you were right!”

  Nico blinked in surprise. “Okay, wow.”

  “No, wait …” Opal reached out and traced the emblem with her finger. “Look. This is similar to the basic design we’ve seen before, but different. The flame on this one swirls in a circle instead of burning in jagged streaks.” She stepped back and sucked in her lip. “What does that mean?”

  Emma dug under her collar and removed her Torchbearer necklace. Logan had carved one for each of them. She held it up next to the plaque. “You’re right. Close, but not the same. Huh.”

  Opal swung her backpack around and rifled inside for a piece of paper. She wanted to make a rubbing of the plaque.

  “Almost there!” Colton Bridger called out to someone. “I want a shot of the ocean from up here, then we’ll work our way down to the beach.”

  Opal’s eyes popped. The film crew was nearly on top of them. She pulled out the first thing her fingers touched—the old leather-bound notebook. Opal flipped to a blank yellowed page and pressed it to the plaque, hurriedly running a pencil tip over the paper.

  “A photo would be faster,” Emma whispered. “Like, light-years faster.”

  “You take one.” But Opal had to get it down like this. This was tangible. This, you could touch.

  “We’re out of time,” Nico hissed. “Come on!”

  He was right, but Opal kept at it. The plaque’s hard edges appeared.

  She heard a whistle.

  Logan was farther along the base of the wall with two fingers to his lips. When they all looked, he pointed and whisper-shouted, “There’s a second archway over here!”

  “Done.” Opal pushed back from the wall. Everyone scurried after Logan and ducked into the gap, jostling like wild dogs in their silent rush to escape. The tunnel was humid and claustrophobic, and stank of things Opal didn’t want to know about. Holding her breath, she hurried up the steep ramp, hoping it led somewhere safe.

  They spilled from the passageway into another maze of bunkers, but here the path cutting back across the fort was fenced off and padlocked. Logan grabbed his head with both hands. “We’re trapped!”

  Voices carried from the tunnel mouth.

  “Where does this one go?” Bridger asked, his voice echoing up. “I don’t want to miss—”

  Nico snagged Opal by the shoulder, then pointed to a rusty ladder running up the outside of the closest bunker. Climb, he mouthed. Now.

  Opal studied the flaking orange rungs with serious misgivings, but the footsteps headed their way made the decision for her. She went first, climbing as fast as she could, praying the ancient ladder would hold. At the top, Opal scrambled onto the bunker’s mossy roof.
Even in her panic, the view took her breath away. Rolling Pacific waves stretched endlessly toward the horizon.

  Emma scaled the wall next, with Tyler right on her heels. Then Nico followed, with Logan, the heaviest, going last. He slipped over the edge just as Colton Bridger appeared in the archway.

  “Now what?” Tyler whispered.

  “This row of bunkers leads back to where we broke in,” Opal said in a hushed voice. “We can walk along the tops of them.”

  “But how will we get down?” Nico asked, eyeing the not insignificant drop to ground level.

  Opal shrugged. “Hope for another ladder.” It was pointless worrying about it now.

  They crept along like cats. Anyone looking up from the beach would’ve seen a line of hunched silhouettes moving across the top of the fort, paper-doll cutouts against the blue-gray sky.

  Nico was in the lead when he stopped suddenly, causing a minor pileup. He whistled low.

  “Look at that.”

  Opal followed his startled gaze. Out in the Sound, a giant band of seawater had turned bloodred, rippling in a huge swath around Razor Point. It reminded Opal of the oil slicks that gathered in gas station parking lots. The scarlet stain shimmered, iridescent in the afternoon light.

  “Red tide,” Nico said quietly, shaking his head in disbelief. “A kind of algae bloom. That’s not good. I wonder why it wasn’t on the news?”

  They all stared down at the ocean. The bloom looked like a sunset spilled across the waves. Finally, they stopped gawking and shuffled to the far end of the roofline, which dropped to a cobblestoned courtyard. Ivy covered this end of the wall, green tendrils reaching up to spread beneath their feet.

  “No ladder,” Logan grumbled.

  Emma knelt. “I bet these vines are strong enough to hold us.”

  “Better not be poison ivy,” Tyler said sharply. “I’m not looking to collect any new rashes.”

  Logan sighed. “What choice do we have?” Using the vines as ropes, he slowly worked his way down the wall. Emma went next, skittering easily like a squirrel and jumping lightly to the ground.