1
Bushwhacked
It was a green and stormy night. Tornado season in Oklahoma was like that.
People with common sense had already gotten where they were supposed to be—a closet or a bathtub—any room with no windows was good, unless you lived in a trailer, and then it was better to leave completely. Just another day in Tornado Alley.
But tonight the weather had caught Michelle at the worst possible time. She was already riding her banana-seat bike home from Dana’s when she realized the sky wasn’t just darkening, it was going green. That was a bad sign. Then she realized the clouds had dropped down to form a long wall across the sky. That was even worse.
She still could have been okay, except she took the back way home.
The path cut across a field, but kids had been using it for years, so there was a smooth, dusty track worn by the ghosts of other bike tires. Someone had been on it just a few minutes ago, because in the glow of her bike light Michelle could see dust floating above the path ahead of her. Even though she had glasses on, she blinked, like the particles were going to get in her eyes.
The sudden howl of an animal shocked her, and she swerved. Her bike light flickered as she hit a chuckhole, a big one that hadn’t been there last time she’d taken this path. The beaded hair ties at the ends of her long red braids bounced against her back.
“Whoa!” she said out loud to no one, squeezing her brakes. Then she hit another hole and almost flipped her bike. She rode right off the path, wading to a stop in the tall grass. She wheeled her bike around so she could use her light to see.
Right in the middle of the path was a huge pawprint. Something growled, much closer than the howl had been.
Lightning flashed, and thunder rumbled way too quickly for comfort. On the other side of the path, something enormous moved through the grass. It was louder than the rush of the storm, and Michelle thought she saw the tips of bristling fur before the glare of lightning washed across her glasses and blinded her.
Back on her bike, pedaling as fast as she could, Michelle tried to quiet her breathing so she could listen to the thing that was following her. She could hear the panting of the beast and the crashing of its body through the grass as it chased her. Then it was on the path, and its paws were silent but its breathing was getting closer.
Above them, the storm clouds rolled across the Oklahoma sky.
Michelle was in the home stretch now. She could see the lights of her street in the distance. But she was also on a downhill slope. Pedaling couldn’t help her anymore. All she could do was hold on and steer. She jumped a bump in the path, then another. She bounced on her seat, and her glasses bounced on her nose.
Then she fell.
The bike skidded out from under her on the dusty path. The handlebar hit her on the knee, hard, and her glasses flew off. There wasn’t any time to look for them. There wasn’t even time to scream. With an echoing howl, the creature sprang.
She lived, but only because the storm had confused the view enough that the monster attacked her bicycle and not her. She pulled herself backward into the sea of grass, her hurt leg dragging on the ground.
On the path, she could hear the squeal of metal and the snarls of the creature as it found a machine instead of meat. Then she heard a snort as its head swung up, fixed on her location. Quick as the lightning overhead, she rolled over and dragged herself to her feet. She limped down the hill toward a drainage ditch as enormous rain drops began to splatter all around her. Lightning flashed, and the thunder was deafening.
She slipped and fell again, this time tumbling downhill into the water at the bottom of the ditch. The rain was blinding. She got up onto her hands and knees as best she could. She started to head up the hill toward the tall wooden fence that enclosed her yard. There was no gate on the back, but she could scream for help, and maybe someone would hear her.
Then an enormous, dark shadow crossed in front of her.
Michelle made for the concrete arch that separated the ditch from the cow pasture. The water in the ditch was rising as the rain ran downhill across the hard-baked summer dirt instead of soaking in. Water got up her nose, and she choked but kept going. She didn’t look behind her. She could hear splashing, panting, grunting, but she was too afraid to look, or think, or stop. She half swam across the archway, no longer afraid of the water moccasins her parents had told her a million times were in here and could kill her. Then she hit the other side … and her fingers found wire instead of freedom.
The farmer had run fence across the arch.
She turned to go out the way she’d come in, but it was already too late. The creature loomed across the entry. A flash of lightning illuminated its hairy bulk, and she realized it had one great paw up on top of the arch and was leaning down to look in at her, its posture like a person’s. Lightning flashed, and its sharp teeth gleamed. Without her glasses she couldn’t be sure, but she thought it smiled.
Then it moved. She dodged, but she was a mouse in a trap. There was nowhere to go. Outside the arch, every animal in earshot made itself smaller as the monster pounced. Michelle screamed and screamed. And then she didn’t.
The monster’s howl echoed across the neighborhood, amplified by the concrete arch. Michelle’s neighbors cowered in their closets, fearing tornadoes more than anything, and being completely wrong.
As Eli Goodman finished reading, his teacher, Mrs. Benton, clutched her heart. He guessed she hadn’t expected him to be quite so bloodthirsty. Maybe she didn’t read a lot of scary stories. The first character who saw the monster never got to live. Everybody knew that.
A few kids said “Whoa” softly. One or two even clapped. It would have been enough to make him want to try that new moonwalk move of Michael Jackson’s, except that Scott Gabler was looking around like he smelled something his dog had delivered. He smirked at Eli as his crony, Brandon, muttered in his ear. Eli looked away, but he could still hear them laugh.
“So,” said Mrs. Benton, widening her eyes at the class as if to say Wasn’t that something, “who has questions about ‘The Howler’?”
Adriana raised her hand.
“Do you write stories like that a lot?”
“I write screenplays, too.”
“You mean movies, like E.T.?”
“More like the Twilight Zone movie, but yeah.”
“So you want to work in Hollywood when you grow up?” asked Scott. It might’ve been a reasonable question without the smirk.
“That’s the idea.”
“That’s, like, a lofty goal. Not that many people get to work in Hollywood, right?”
Eli’d heard enough.
“So you’re saying if something is difficult, I should give up?” he asked.
Copyright © 2020 by Sarah Cannon
