by Jason Hawes
Every night, the same sound woke Cynthia, and every night she ran to the window and stared down into the yard. But she never saw the creature making the sound. She just heard it: the deep, steady panting of some enormous animal.
“There’s nothing down there,” Amanda said, her voice sharp. “You can see that for yourself. There’s no reason to get all freaked out.”
“I didn’t say I was all freaked out.”
“But you are. I can hear it in your voice.”
So what? Cynthia thought. She scrunched her shoulders so she wasn’t touching Amanda. Anybody would be freaked if there might be something in his or her own backyard.
Something strange. Something that did not belong. It had to be some kind of wild animal. The nearby woods were filled with them. But Cynthia had never heard an animal that sounded like this.
“I’m going down there,” she announced.
“No way,” Amanda protested as Cynthia stood up quickly. “Mom’s not home yet. You know she’s working the late shift at the hospital this week. She’ll ground me for a month if I let anything happen to you.”
“Nothing’s going to happen to me,” Cynthia said. She started for the bedroom door.
“You don’t know that,” Amanda argued.
“Sure I do,” Cynthia came right back. “You told me so yourself. There’s nothing down there.”
Before Amanda could stop her, Cynthia rushed out of the bedroom and through the house. She didn’t slow down until she reached the door that led to the backyard.
Creeeaaaakkk.
Cynthia was trying to be brave. But just the sound of the back door sent a shiver down her spine. It reminded her of every horror movie she had ever watched: The door would squeak, and then the monster would jump out. But that was just in movies, right? There was no monster.
Was there? Cynthia had to know what was making the strange noise.
Still, she wished she hadn’t come down here alone. Cynthia poked her head out the back door. The moon was higher and brighter now. The wind rattled the bare branches of the trees in the woods. The backyard was covered with dead leaves. They made a whispering sound as they blew across the dry grass.
Cynthia tightened her grip on her flashlight. It was a gift from Mom’s brother, Uncle Dave, the king of all flashlights. He gave each of them one for Christmas every year.
Cynthia switched on the flashlight. She breathed a sigh of relief as the wide, bright beam of light sliced across the yard. She stepped out onto the back porch steps. She held the flashlight out in front of her, aiming the light at the chain-link fence that separated their yard from the woods.
That’s where the sounds came from.
Cynthia lifted her right foot to go down the first of the porch steps—and heard the tiniest whisper of sound behind her!
Choking back a cry, Cynthia whirled around.
“Watch it,” Amanda whispered. “And get that light out of my eyes.”
Heart thundering, Cynthia lowered the flashlight.
“Are you trying to scare me to death?” she asked her sister. “Because if so, hey, really good job.”
“I’m sorry, all right?” Amanda said. “I decided I couldn’t let you go alone.”
“Why not?”
There was a pause.
“Because you’d never let me go alone,” Amanda finally said.
She turned on her own flashlight. Cynthia muffled a burst of crazy laughter when she realized her older sister had grabbed the biggest flashlight in the house.
“You really think there’s something out there, don’t you?” Amanda asked.
“Yes,” Cynthia said. “I really do.”
“All right,” Amanda said. “Then let’s go find it.”
It was Cynthia’s idea to walk together, arms linked, straight up the middle of the yard. Cynthia swept her flashlight to the right, Amanda, to the left. The lights the girls carried were powerful enough for them to see the corners of the yard.
But there was nothing to see. So far.
Dead leaves crunched underfoot. When her light hit the chain-link fence, Cynthia could see more dead leaves pressed up against it.
“The neighbors probably think we’re nuts,” Amanda said after a couple of moments.
“Not the Lutzes,” Cynthia replied. The Lutzes lived on the corner. They had garden gnomes in their front yard. A lot of them. Mrs. Lutz even gave them all names.
Amanda grinned. “If Mrs. Lutz sees our lights, she’ll probably think aliens are landing.”
The girls reached the back fence and stopped.
“Now what?” Amanda asked. “There’s no way I’m going any farther than the yard.”
“Me, neither,” Cynthia said. “You think I’m nuts?”
“Sometimes I do. Like now,” Amanda said. She aimed her flashlight through the fence. They could see the woods just beyond the fence. They could make out a narrow grass path leading deeper into the dark woods.
“So we didn’t see anything. We didn’t even hear anything. Can we go back now?” Amanda said.
“I hear it every night. It has to be some kind of animal,” Cynthia said. “I just can’t figure out what kind. It’s not a raccoon.”
“How do you know that?”
“Easy,” Cynthia said. “The garbage never gets knocked over.”
“True,” Amanda said. “Maybe it’s—” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “What’s that?”
“You hear it, don’t you?”
Amanda nodded. “I hear something. Footsteps crunching the leaves? Loud breathing. It sounds big.”
Cynthia listened closely. “It sounds nearby,” she whispered. She stepped to the fence, shining her light into the woods. Slowly, she began to move the light along the line of trees.
“There!” Amanda cried.
At the edge of the trees, something caught the light. Two small round objects. They glowed an eerie red.
Cynthia took four quick steps back, then made herself stop.
“What is that?” Amanda whispered. “What is it?”
“Eyes,” Cynthia suddenly said. Her heart was thumping as if it wanted to jump right out of her chest. She turned to her sister and said, “Do you see them? Right there. Red and glowing—like a monster’s eyes.”
Then the eyes winked out. When they appeared again, they were even closer. The eyes stared right at Cynthia. She could see the monster was just outside the chain-link fence.
“Oh my gosh,” Amanda said. Cynthia could hear Amanda breathing really, really fast. “What kind of animal is it? Can you tell?”
“No. All I can see are its eyes. But they’re too far off the ground to be anything small. Maybe it’s a deer?”
“No,” Amanda said. “If it was a deer, it would have run away by now. Deer always run if people walk toward them. These eyes—they’re not moving away. They’re watching us.”
Cynthia had an awful thought—that the animal was not only watching them, but hunting them.
She moved the flashlight back and forth, shining it into the trees. Again the eyes winked out. As if the animal disappeared.
But then there they were again. The eyes were closer.
A lot closer.
Cynthia couldn’t believe it. The eyes were now on their side of the fence! Whatever this animal was, it had jumped a high fence. And it was now in their own yard!
“Run, Cynthia!” her sister screamed. “Run right now!”
The girls spun around and sprinted back toward the house. The sound of her own breathing filled Cynthia’s ears. She could hear Amanda sobbing as she ran beside her.
And behind them, getting closer with every step they took, was the creature. She could hear it panting. She could almost feel its hot breath on her neck.
We’re never going to make it, Cynthia thought.
Then, totally without warning, there was a bright light in her eyes. She heard her mother’s voice.
“Girls, what on earth?” she cried.
Cynthia saw a dark sh
ape cut in front of the car headlights as her mother dashed toward them. She yanked open the side gate.
“Mom!” Cynthia sobbed out. “Mom, don’t let it get us.”
And then she and Amanda were in their mother’s arms.
It was only later, when everything was quiet, after they’d told their mother what happened—and after she was safely tucked in her own bed—that Cynthia let herself think about what had happened that night.
She shut her eyes and forced herself to remember exactly what she saw in the yard.
Only then did Cynthia realize the truth. The thing that terrified her most of all. The thing she’d seen in the split second before she and Amanda turned to run.
The creature had been inside the yard with them. The eyes had come straight at them. But Cynthia still hadn’t seen what the thing was.
I didn’t see a body. I couldn’t see a body, she thought.
What if the thing in the woods didn’t have one?
“So remind me how you know these people again?” Jen asked as the SUV rolled toward its destination. Jen was up front with Grant. Mike was sitting in the back. Jason, Lyssa, and Mark were in the second SUV, along with the equipment.
“I don’t actually know them,” Grant said. “But the girls’ uncle, Dave Parker, was my college roommate. We keep in touch. His sister, Holly, called Dave in the middle of the night. She said her daughters saw something really strange in their backyard. They say they saw red glowing eyes that got closer and closer.”
“Animal eyes can look red and glowing and scary,” Mike spoke up from the back.
“Yes, that’s true.” Grant nodded. “But here’s the strange part. This animal didn’t seem to have a body. So naturally, when Dave called me, I told him we would be glad to help.”
“Are we there yet?” Mike asked.
Grant laughed. “It is a long way,” he admitted. “But at least it’s a pretty drive.”
Cynthia, Amanda, and their mother lived in northern Vermont in what was called the Northeast Kingdom. Canada was just twenty miles away, on the far side of the woods in back of the Coopers’ property. Grant said it was where Holly and Dave grew up. Now Holly was back in her hometown.
It is beautiful, Jen thought. But it was also kind of bleak. In Rhode Island, where the TAPS office was, the leaves were still on the trees. Up here, the leaves were all gone. Jen could practically feel winter breathing down her neck.
She seriously hoped that was the only thing she felt. The case report had been, well, really strange.
“Turn off, just ahead,” Grant said. “Get on the walkie-talkie to the other SUV, will you, Jen? Tell everybody to get set to roll.”
“We’re not making all this up, I swear,” Cynthia said as soon as the TAPS team sat down.
“We’re really not, I promise. We just can’t explain it,” Amanda added.
The girls’ mother, Holly Cooper, sat in a nearby chair. It was no more than an arm’s length away, Jen noted.
“I didn’t see a thing,” Holly admitted. “But I believe the girls.”
“Okay, first things first,” Grant said. “It’s okay that you can’t explain what you saw. That won’t make us think you’re making things up. People come to us with mysteries all the time. Trying to explain them is what we do. That’s our job.”
“Maybe it would help if you told us exactly what you saw,” Lyssa said.
“Eyes,” Amanda said simply. “We saw a pair of glowing eyes.”
“Okay, eyes,” Grant said. “What else did you see? Did it have a shape? A color?”
“No,” Cynthia answered. “That’s sort of the problem. We couldn’t see anything except two glowing eyes.”
“Was there anything else?” Lyssa asked.
“There’s this funny sort of breathing sound,” Cynthia said. “Like a really big animal panting. I’ve heard it before. The sound keeps me awake at night.”
“Cynthia told me about the sound a couple of weeks ago,” Holly said. “I admit I didn’t think much about it. We are pretty close to the woods. There are all sorts of animals out there.”
“What happened last night?” Jason asked.
“We heard the sound first,” Cynthia began. “It was so dark out, we couldn’t see anything. So I decided to go outside with a flashlight to see if I could figure out what it was. I shone the light into the woods. Then I saw the eyes.”
“When that thing spotted us, it came right for us,” Amanda added. “And we ran for our lives.”
“Did it actually get into the yard last night?” Grant asked.
Cynthia and Amanda looked at each other.
“It felt like it did,” Cynthia said. “But we didn’t hear or see an animal jump a fence. But the eyes got closer and closer. Once I started running, I did not look back. Amanda didn’t, either.”
“Well,” Jason said. “I think our first step is perfectly clear.”
“Absolutely,” Grant agreed. “We check out the backyard while there’s still some daylight.”
“Of course,” Holly said. “I’ll take you the same way the girls went. Out through the kitchen.”
“I do have one more question, though,” Grant said as he fell into step beside Cynthia.
“What?”
“Does your uncle Dave send you guys a flashlight for Christmas every year?”
Cynthia grinned. “How did you know?”
“He does the same for me,” Grant said. “They’re usually pretty awesome.”
“In that case, you’re going to love our collection. They’re in the kitchen,” Cynthia said. “Come on. I’ll show you.”
Several hours later, the team was assembled in the kitchen, by the back door. They finished their first sweep of the backyard before dark. Now the true investigation was about to start.
“I don’t think all six of us need to be out back at once. We’ll only end up tripping over one another,” Grant began.
“The six stooges,” Mike said under his breath.
Jen choked down a laugh.
“So Jen, Mike, and I will take the yard,” Grant went on. “Jason, Mark, and Lyssa, you guys stay inside the house and monitor the activity from the girls’ room. Jay and I want some readings from up there, since that’s where they first heard the sounds. I want to know if anything pops in the house.”
“I have audio and visual recorders in key locations throughout the house,” Jen reported. “Also outside. There are a couple of cameras on the fence pointing toward the woods where the girls said they saw the eyes. A couple more are on the edge of the roof. We’re covering as much of the yard as possible.”
“Sounds good,” Jason said.
Grant opened the door. “Okay, backyard team, let’s go.”
Earlier, in the afternoon light, Jen and the others had seen that the yard was almost a perfect square. The house was on one side of the square, with a chain-link fence at the back and along the sides. The fence was high and sturdy. It went right down to the ground. It was hard to imagine anything being able to get in or out.
Jen glanced behind her. The Coopers’ house looked small and somehow lonely. She knew there were other houses in the neighborhood. But in the dark, the other houses all seemed very far away.
“Remember your positions,” Grant said in a low voice. “I’m on the right. Mike, you’re left. Jen, you’re going straight up the middle. We’ll meet at the fence. Maintain silence unless you’re in trouble. We don’t want to get confused by our own voices. Okay, let’s move out.”
Moving the flashlight slowly back and forth in front of her, Jen began to walk across the yard. Dried leaves crunched underfoot. A cold wind darted down the collar of her coat. She shivered.
The moon was no longer full. But it was still big enough to cast strange shadows across the yard. Jen squinted. The moon was actually making it more difficult to see. Everything looked weird, all wavy and stretched out.
Her flashlight beam danced across the leaf-covered ground, then lit up the metal of the fence.
She caught a glimpse of the trees on the other side of it.
What was that?
Jen stopped walking. She wasn’t sure, but she thought she heard something that sounded like a deep and steady panting. She opened her mouth to call out to Grant, then shut it again.
I’m not in danger, she thought. Grant and Mike are close by.
Jen leaned forward, stretching out her arm as far as it would go. She tried to make the flashlight beam go through the fence to the woods beyond. That’s where she thought the sound came from.
I’m not close enough yet, she thought.
Jen took a deep breath, then kept on going, one step at a time.
The night seemed different now that Jen had heard something she couldn’t identify. It was full of sounds. She heard the wind whispering through the trees in the woods. Bare branches hitting against each other. The crackle of dead leaves as they blew across the yard. And then another sound. Something on the ground, moving through the leaves.
Jen jumped back as something strong—and soft—pushed against her shoulder. Then she heard a rustling sound at her feet, and a high-pitched scream cut through the night.
She bit back her own cry. Her arm struck out—but there was nothing in front of her.
“Jen!” Grant was by her side. “Are you all right?”
Jen nodded. “I felt something. It touched my shoulder. It was”—she couldn’t explain it—“soft?”
“Like feathers?” Grant asked. He shook his head in disbelief. “I saw it. It was the wing of the biggest horned owl I’ve ever seen.”
“And it just caught the biggest rabbit I’ve ever seen,” Mike added with a shudder. “That’s what made the screaming sound.”
“Poor rabbit,” Jen said. Her heart was still racing, and the hand that held the flashlight was shaking. She tried to make her voice sound normal. “Do you think that’s what the girls saw? An owl’s eyes?”
“I don’t know,” Grant admitted. “But I don’t think owls make panting sounds. And I heard panting before.”
“Me too,” Mike admitted.
“Me three,” Jen said. At least she wasn’t the only one who heard the strange sound.