Read Online Crooked Hills by Cullen Bunn - Free Book Online Page B

but I realized the shape beneath the blanket was just pillows. The oldest trick in the book, but I wished I’d thought of it. If Alex woke up and found me missing, he’d cause trouble. Too late now. I couldn’t risk sneaking back into the bedroom without waking him. I’d have to take my chances.
    Marty waited by the back door. He was dressed and ready to go, and he handed me my still-damp shoes as I joined him.
    “What took you so long?” he asked.
    “Alex,” I said, rolling my eyes.
    “Why don’t you want him to come?”
    I shook my head. “He’s just a kid. He’d get too scared.”
    “He did fine today. A lot of kids would have been a lot more scared than he was. Maybe he’s braver than you think.”
    “Trust me,” I said. “Just when you think he’ll be all right, he gets frightened and all bets are off. He does okay in the daylight, but I don’t want to know how he’d be in the dark.”
    “If you say so.” Marty held up a pair of flashlights. He shook them, and the batteries rattled inside the plastic casing. He tested both of them, aiming the beams at the floor as he flipped the switches on and off a couple of times. He handed me one. “Don’t use these close to the house unless you really need to. I don’t want to risk our folks seeing the light.”
    Luckily, the moonlight was bright enough we didn’t need the flashlights. We hid a few yards away from the mysterious hole where I’d glimpsed the dog the night before.
    We waited.
    The air was cool and damp, and a light low-hanging mist oozed between the trees. The mist, Marty promised, would only deepen as the night wore on, growing as thick as pea soup by early morning until the sun burned the fog away.
    I noticed several odd zig-zagging lines trailing across the forest floor, up and down the fence posts, and across the yard. The trails glistened.
    “What is that?”
    “Haven’t you ever seen a slug trail before?”
    “A slug trail? You mean that’s slime where a slug crawled?”
    “Pretty disgusting, huh? They come out at night to feed with their tongues—all covered in teeth and slimy.” Marty stuck his tongue out and wagged it back and forth, laughing. “Sometimes they get in the house. Once, I was getting dressed and found a slug waiting in my shoe! Squished it right between my toes.”
    Great. Another creepy crawly to worry about out in the woods. Tarantulas. Scorpions. Chiggers. Slugs. What’s next?
    We sat in the woods for at least a couple of hours, but the dog didn’t return. My legs started to cramp, and I shifted uncomfortably. I yawned, long and loud.
    “Figures,” I muttered. “It’s not going to show up here again.”
    “Worth a shot, I reckon.” Marty looked off into the trees. “Dogs have more powerful senses of smell than humans. They can detect smells we don’t even know exist. He might have smelled us.”
    “Might have smelled you.” I gave him a shove.
    “You ate more beans at supper than I did!” He pushed me back.
    Our laughter raced off into the night, echoing through the darkness and bouncing through the hills. I hoped we weren’t being too loud. I didn’t want to wake our parents or Alex. Looking back at the house, though, I didn’t see any lights flaring to life.
    “Whether he smelled us or not,” I said, “he sure heard us. Sound really carries out here.”
    “Whatever it was, we’ll probably never find it again.” Marty shook his head. “There are miles and miles of forest out here. It would be like finding a needle in a haystack.”
    We were about to give up and pack it in when the mournful whistle of the train cried out in the night, rising up like the cry of a sad ghost and fading into nothing.
    “Where’s the train coming from?”
    “Crooked Hills used to be a rail town, but that dried up before I was even born. Now the train doesn’t even slow down when it passes through. Still comes through twice a day, once around midday and once in the middle of the night.”
    In the