Ghost Hunt 2: MORE Chilling Tales of the Unknown (23 page)

“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 shape 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.”