Grim Hill: Forest of Secrets

by Linda DeMeulemeester

  Jasper pulled himself up and out. He dropped on his knees and reached down while Mitch and Clive gave Sookie, then Skeeter, a boost. After that, Amarjeet and Amanda hoisted themselves out of the bus.

  “C’mon, Cat,” said Clive. “Your turn.”

  I ignored him and pushed Mia ahead of me. Mitch followed behind her.

  Glancing at the unconscious driver, I felt troubled. We were far north, and even though it was June, the nights would be cold. The temperature could plunge below freezing. If that crazy driver was badly injured and went into shock, he could die. He might’ve threatened us, but we still had to do something to help him.

  “What are you waiting for?” Clive asked, holding out a hand for me to grab.

  “I think we’ve got to cover the driver up with …”

  “With what? We’ll need our jackets and anything else to keep warm,” said Clive. “It’s not just about us either. We’ve got to think of Sookie and Skeeter too.”

  I knew he was right, but … I looked again at the motionless body of the driver.

  “There has to be a first aid kit,” Mia said, dropping back into the bus. “It’ll have a couple of those thin, insulating blankets. We could leave one on top of him.”

  I nodded. “Yeah, that could work.” Mia’s mom was a nurse and her dad a paramedic, so I figured she knew what she was talking about.

  Cautiously, we made our way to the front of the bus, which wasn’t easy since the floor was now the seating area. We found the first aid kit stashed beside the driver’s seat. Sure enough, two foil blankets rested on the top of the kit. I spread one over the unconscious driver, and Mia grabbed his wrist and placed three fingers on it to take his pulse.

  Mia’s brow furrowed in concentration and she brushed back a strand of her red hair. “His pulse feels strong … really strong.” A look of uneasiness spread across Mia’s face. “I … don’t think he’s hurt that badly.”

  The radio crackled. The driver’s eyelids fluttered and he moaned. Mia dropped his arm quickly and we hustled to get away as fast as we could. I grabbed the emergency pack.

  The sound of Clive’s voice made me jump. “I’m not leaving him with a gun,” he whispered, scooping up the driver’s duffel bag.

  We hopped over the back of the first row of seats and rushed to the exit. My shoulder was pulsating with pain and I lagged behind Clive. Mitch pulled Mia up through the window

  “Wait!” I said in a loud whisper. I ran back a few rows and scooped up my backpack. Clive was still waiting for me inside the bus when I returned. Without a word, he pushed me through the exit while Mitch pulled me out from the other side. I used my good arm to help Mitch haul Clive out.

  “Wow, you’re heavier than you look,” complained Mitch.

  “It’s the duffel bag,” explained Clive. “The gun’s heavy.”

  We jumped off the bus, scrambling down the embankment. Stones and dirt scattered down the hill and rolled into my sneakers as we ran toward the edge of the dense, foreboding forest, where the others were waiting.

  “What now?” asked Clive. “Do we try and make it back up to the logging road?”

  “Does anyone have a cell phone?” I asked. I didn’t have one – that would be a luxury on our family budget. “We could try and call for help.”

  Clive shook his head – I had the feeling his gran also struggled with finances.

  “My parents say I don’t need one,” Amarjeet said with disgust. “I’m supposed to be either at school or with them. Now look.”

  “I’m getting one for my birthday,” Amanda said.

  “Not helpful,” Clive snorted.

  Jasper and Mitch shook their heads. I sighed. Zach had a cell phone and so did Emily. But they weren’t here.

  “There’s probably no signal up here anyways,” said Jasper. “That’s why the driver and his contact were using a radio. The bigger question is – now what?” More to himself than to the rest of us, Jasper mused aloud. “If we climb back up to the road, we’ll be visible from the air, which means we could be seen by a rescue helicopter, or …”

  “Or what?” Sookie demanded.

  “Well, we’ll most likely be seen by whoever was on the other end of that radio.” Jasper looked at me. “What do you think?”

  I sighed. The real question for me was – how long would it be before help arrived? I worried that it might be a while. “The guy on the radio has a bird’s eye view of the area. If we begin walking along that road, we’d be the birds – of the sitting duck variety.”

  Jasper nodded in agreement. “Exactly.”

  “Remember,” I mouthed these last words to spare Skeeter and Sookie, “that guy said, ‘no witnesses.’”

  “That means he was supposed to kill us,” Skeeter said, having no problem reading my lips. Funny, you could practically shout other words such as “Stay out of my room” and he’d pretend he hadn’t heard. But this he heard easily. Skeeter shook his fist with bravado. “Ha. If he wants a piece of us, just let him try.”

  Ignoring his brother, Clive said, “You’re not thinking this through, Cat … We’re in the middle of nowhere and it would be stupid to run blindly into the forest.”

  “Yeah,” agreed Mitch. “I’ve heard of people disappearing forever inside this valley, unless their decapitated bodies uh …” He looked at Sookie’s widening eyes and stopped. “Besides, what will we eat?”

  “I am thinking about it,” I snapped, and then immediately felt bad. Clive was just thinking ahead, I reminded myself. He’s not trying to give me a hard time. Plus this was an emergency and we had to work together. More calmly I said, “Clive and Mitch make good points, but I’m with Jasper on wanting to avoid being spotted by the criminals.”

  “If we can stick to the trees lining the road and keep out of sight of the bus driver and that other guy, maybe we can get picked up by a passing truck. Maybe …” Amarjeet didn’t finish the sentence. She kept glancing up at the road and then into the forest. She sounded unsure.

  Not that I had a better suggestion – I didn’t want to get lost in the wilderness, especially not in a forest where people were known to turn up as headless corpses. Clive nodded silently. So did Jasper.

  “Okay, we’d better get moving,” I said.

  Before we could take a step, though, we heard the unmistakable sound of an approaching helicopter. A loud whirring filled the air and the tops of the trees around us fluttered and waved.

  Our decision was made for us. We had to hide fast. But when I looked at the forest, I exchanged glances with my friends. We were all thinking the same thing.

  If we entered Headless Valley, would we ever find our way out?

  CHAPTER 8 - Forest of Darkness

  WE COULDN’T SEE the road from the bottom of the embankment. But we could see dirt fly up and branches shaking violently. The helicopter was landing. We had no other choice – we plunged into the forest.

  Cedar and spruce branches slapped our faces and almost poked one of my eyes. Roots and ferns tangled with our feet. Amanda fell and Jasper pulled her up. Thorns snagged my jacket, which tore as I tugged it away. We were running downhill and it was hard to move fast without sliding. Still, I blocked all that out because we needed to get as far away as possible from the bus and the helicopter.

  But if they know anything about tracking, they’ll follow you, Cat. You are leaving behind a trail of broken branches and bent shrubs.

  “Shut up,” I told the voice in my head. “At least for now.” Sometimes common sense wasn’t much help.

  My shoulder burned as I tugged my sister along. She’d begun to stumble, and while she was as stalwart as any kid on our soccer team, I could tell her legs were giving out. I stopped for a second and gave Sookie a chance to catch her breath. The others stopped with me and we all took a rest, panting and gasping for air.

  That was when I noticed that one of us was missing.

  “Where’s Amanda?” I asked, surveying our group.

  We all turned in circles, s
earching for her.

  Jasper dashed into the shadows. “Wait,” I called. The forest was a tangle of trees. Even if he went a short distance, he may not find his way back to us. If we kept splitting up, we would just disappear one by one.

  Sookie and Skeeter slumped to the ground. Amarjeet stared nervously at the forest while Clive paced in a tight circle, his sneakers crunching dry spruce needles. He was still carrying the duffel bag he had taken from the driver. Mitch kept peering in Jasper’s direction, trying to decide whether to follow him.

  “No way,” said Mia, grabbing Mitch’s arm. “We’ll just end up looking for three people.”

  “I’m thirsty,” Skeeter said.

  “Me too,” complained Sookie.

  I drew my hand across my mouth. I was pretty parched myself – but a couple of little juice boxes that Mom had packed wouldn’t go far amongst us. “We’ll find water as soon as Jasper and Amanda come back.” Come to think of it, we had been running downhill. “Hey guys – remember Ms. Dreeble told us in science class that water flows downhill. Or was that in geography class, when Mr. Morrows was talking about tributaries?”

  “Whatever,” said Mia. “That’s where water would most likely be.”

  “Right,” I said. “We could even find a creek and follow it, instead of getting lost deeper in the forest.”

  “Hello?” called Jasper. I turned when I heard his voice

  – it was coming from the forest.

  “Over here,” Sookie shouted.

  Jasper and Amanda crashed through bushes, toward us. Amanda was limping. “When I fell, I twisted my ankle.” She gritted her teeth as her foot brushed against the ground.

  “Wow,” said Jasper. “I almost didn’t find my way back. It all looks the same. If I hadn’t heard you talking and Sookie’s call, I think I would have missed this spot.

  “That’s why we have to stay together,” I said with all the emphasis I could muster.

  “And we have to keep our mouths shut,” Clive ordered. I rolled my eyes. Clive looked at me and said, “Jasper and Amanda could hear us. So could anyone who decides to come after us.”

  “Point taken,” I answered quietly.

  “Maybe they won’t come after us,” Amarjeet said, also in a lower voice. “They wanted no witnesses and that’s what they’ve got. Maybe they won’t expect us to make it out of here.”

  “That’s their mistake,” Skeeter said proudly. “We’re strong.”

  “Shh. Keep your voice down.” Clive ruffled his brother’s hair. “But you’re right. We’ll outsmart them. We’ll keep moving until we find a creek and travel down it until we get rescued or find help.”

  Everyone agreed. Mia helped Amanda bind her ankle with a bandage from the first aid kit and then we headed out. The woods thickened as we moved downhill. It was hard going – for one thing, we were trying not to disturb the branches or the soil, so that our trail would be harder to track. The deeper into the bush we went, the more the air filled with blackflies. When they landed on me, it felt like they took a chunk out of my skin. The mosquitoes were even worse.

  The lengthening shadows of the forest blocked out most of the sunlight, and the trees were so close together, we could barely see beyond a few feet. I began to have niggling doubts about our plan. What if we were traveling in circles without even knowing it? What if we couldn’t find water? I reminded myself that we were still going down a slope, so we couldn’t be going in circles. And wasn’t there a fresh, tangy smell in the air now? I stopped for a second and listened carefully – I heard a rushing sound that had to be water.

  “Let a person know if you’re stopping.” Clive complained when he bumped into me.

  “Can you hear water?” I said. “I can’t tell if it’s to the left or right of us.”

  Amanda bent down and examined the plants on the ground. She limped ahead and I made sure she didn’t wander so far I couldn’t see her moving between the branches. When she called softly, we followed her until the ground grew slippery and we could see white flowers lining the forest floor. Within moments, we spotted a creek.

  Huh. I looked at Amanda in surprise. She was super popular, and though she was interested in soccer, she mostly seemed to care about finding the perfect thing to wear. She never struck me as the outdoors type.

  “Okay,” Mia said when we reached the bank of the water. “Which direction do we want to go?”

  “South,” said Clive. “That’s the direction the police and search teams would be coming from. That’s where the closest town would be.”

  I looked down and noticed that we had left clear imprints of our feet on the muddy bank. I was still worried about being followed. “But that’s also the direction those guys will think we’d go,” I said quietly.

  “But they won’t want to go back that way. That’s where they were trying to get away from,” Clive said.

  “I guess, but do you even know which way is south?”

  “Good point,” Mia said, peering into the forest. Her red hair framed her face and for a second she reminded me of Red Riding Hood. She looked like she expected a wolf to jump out at any moment.

  “I … I … think moss grows thickest on the part of the tree that faces north,” Amanda said uncertainly.

  Sookie piped up, “That’s absolutely right.”

  My sister would know. She had become obsessed with gardening back in February. I tried to block that memory – she’d gotten the whole town in deep trouble with her plant potions. Instead, I walked to the closest tree. It looked like its branches were thick with moss on both sides. But the clumps of moss seemed slightly fatter on one side. I pointed downstream. “That has to be south. Let’s get moving.”

  “Can we have a drink from the creek first, Cat? I’m really thirsty,” Sookie whined.

  “Ms. Dreeble told us once that unless creek water runs cold and fast, it could be dangerous to drink from.” I turned to the others. “But I don’t know how cold or fast it needs to be. Does anyone know?”

  Everybody shook their heads, so I pulled a juice box out of my pack. It would have to do until we figured out how to boil the water. Skeeter didn’t say anything, but he stared longingly at the juice. “Why don’t we take a quick break here and pool our resources,” I suggested.

  We all emptied our packs and pockets. Sookie and I had the most food because Mom had given us a bag of snacks and juice boxes. Mitch had nothing. Skeeter had some gum and Clive had a bag of peanuts. Mia produced a chocolate bar and Amarjeet a pack of cookies and a water bottle. Amanda also had gum.

  “Bingo,” Mia said, opening up a side pocket in the emergency kit. Besides bandages, disinfectant, and a blanket, there was a water filter kit, two big water bottles, and half a dozen freeze-dried packages of food.

  We were going to need more than one blanket if we ended up being stuck here for the night. I regretted leaving the other blanket with the driver. He was probably sitting in a helicopter right now, stuffing his face and drinking soda. Meanwhile, we were only wearing light jackets, and now that we’d stopped running, I was feeling chilly again. I guessed it would heat up in a couple of hours when the sun reached high noon. But the nights – they’d be freezing.

  “Okay, so that’s not enough to keep us fed or warm,” I said.

  We opened a water bottle and passed it around. After taking a big gulp, I remembered something else. “Hey, Clive, what’s in the driver’s bag?” I took another swig of water before passing the bottle to Jasper.

  A surprised look darted across Clive’s face – he had forgotten he was still carrying the bag. He quickly slung it off his shoulder and opened it up. As soon as we saw what was inside, Amarjeet gasped and Jasper dropped his water bottle.

  “Jackpot!” exclaimed Skeeter.

  “Oh crap,” I sputtered.

  CHAPTER 9 - A Dicey Decision

  HORRIFIED, WE GAPED at the inside of the bag that Clive had taken from the driver.

  “No …” I shook my head again.

  “W
e are so dead,” Mitch said rather unhelpfully.

  “I … I … didn’t know,” Clive said, backing away from the duffel bag.

  Sunlight had managed to break through the thick forest canopy. A ray struck the bag, lighting it like a blazing chandelier.

  Diamonds, hundreds of diamonds, gleamed back at me. “This changes everything,” I muttered.

  “What do you mean this changes everything?” asked Amarjeet, her eyes not moving from the bag. Instead of looking horrified, she looked thrilled.

  “Because those crooks will keep following us until they get their diamonds back,” I answered in despair.

  “Cat’s right,” agreed Jasper, shaking his head slowly. “That driver went through a lot of trouble to get those diamonds here. He hijacked the bus and took us hostage so he could be sure to make a getaway. He won’t give up on them now.”

  “We could just leave them here,” suggested Amanda. “That’s what they’d be searching for – not for us.”

  “But what if they find us before the diamonds?” Amarjeet asked.

  Good point.

  “Then we’d lead them back here and show them where we left them?” Mia said, more as a question than as a suggestion.

  “They’d only need one of us for that,” Amarjeet countered. The diamonds were still glowing, but it felt like the world had just darkened.

  “Why would they care as long as they get what they want?” objected Skeeter. “Hey, maybe we could keep a few diamonds and they won’t even notice.”

  Sookie remained silent, but she shot me an imploring look. She still wanted me to let her use magic against the outlaws. I ignored her.

  “Maybe Amanda’s right,” Clive said. He gave Skeeter a reproachful look. “I mean, maybe if they got their diamonds they wouldn’t search for us. This forest is just as dangerous for them. But there’s no guarantee.”