The Eerie, Haunting, Terrible Cry
Even
before I reached the tent, I knew there would be trouble.
My little brother was following me, his arms heaped with
a sleeping bag, a flashlight, and his stuffed bear.
“Oh no,” my friend Wade said. “What did you bring him for?”
The other guys moaned and groaned so much you’d think they were hospital patients instead of kids I’d invited for an outdoor sleepover.
“He wanted to come. My mom said he could,” I answered, not exactly happy about Andy tag-ging along. I didn’t need to be embarrassed.
“He’ll ruin everything,” Wade insisted. “He’ll get scared in the middle of the night and have to be taken back to the house.”
“No, I won’t!” Andy said, show-ing Wade his fiercest face.
I’d made Andy promise that he wouldn’t ruin anything and that he’d make himself invisible in the tent corner farthest from me.
“Get in,” I said.
Andy wormed his way into the tent—getting tangled in sleeping bags, tripping over feet—until he reached the far corner, where he settled in. Night was settling in, too, with the woods around us fading toward black. The house, with its porch light, seemed a long way from us.
“Time for ghost stories!” Brad announced as soon as I’d closed the tent flap. He told a story about vampires, but it only made us fall over laughing.
Next was Mike. He whispered a creepy tale about cemeteries and zombies. Right in the middle, something landed on the tent. We all looked up.
“Leaves,” I said. “Only leaves falling.”
When it was Wade’s turn, he held the flashlight under his chin, turning his face into a shadowy mask. “These four guys were camping in a tent,” he began, describing our situation exactly—except for Andy. “Wandering the woods nearby was this creature, one that was all teeth and claws and appetite.”
Somewhere outside, a twig snapped. The hairs on my arms pricked.
“These guys were crawling into their sleeping bags, right?” Wade said. “When out of the darkness rang this eerie, haunting, terrible cry.”
And out of the woods behind us there was a cry! High-pitched, eerie, and inhuman. The hairs on my head shot straight up.
“What was that?” Mike asked as the cry came again.
Brad looked from Mike to Wade. Wade looked at me.
“I don’t know!” I said.
“Maybe you should check,” Wade suggested.
“Why don’t you?” I asked.
An anxious voice interrupted. “What if it’s something trapped or hurt?” We focused our flashlights on Andy, whom we’d forgotten, sitting in the corner with his arms around his bear. Andy, who would adopt every lost or hurt animal in the world if Mom would let him.
“What?” I said.
“It sounds like something trapped or hurt,” he insisted. “We have to save it.”
“You have no idea what it is,” Wade said. “What if it’s a ghost?”
Wade would have to say something like that. Not that I believed in ghosts, but would a ghost make a sound like that?
“I’m going to see,” Andy said as he scrambled to the front of the tent. Still, I could tell he was scared from the way he was hanging on to his bear.
Andy unzipped the tent flap, and he was gone.
“Andy!”
I had to go after him. He was my little brother. “One of you guys run to the house and get my dad,” I said, not knowing if any of them had the courage to dash across the long dark yard.
Andy was headed into the woods, his flashlight beam wobbling along the trail. “Andy!” I yelled again.
I’d walked that trail hundreds of times during the day and a few times at night with Dad. But now, under the beam of my flashlight, shadows shifted and leaped, attacking me from all sides. In my imagination, hideous monsters lurked behind every tree. My heart pounded.
“Andy!”
Then I saw him, a few yards ahead, with his flashlight aimed at the upper branches of a large tree. I raised my own light to shine on the same spot. A pair of luminous eyes seemed to float in the darkness. My heart pounded harder.
“It’s a little animal,” Andy whispered.
Then I heard a rustle in the bushes behind us. We swung around, flashlights pointed, and a creature lumbered out. A creature with teeth and claws . . . and covered in quills. As soon as it began clambering up the tree toward the glowing eyes, the high-pitched cries stopped.
“A happy ending,” Andy said. “The baby porcupine was lost, and he was crying for his mama.”
I knew he was right, although I hadn’t known before that porcupines had voices. The little porcupine was climbing down toward its mother. My heart lifted like a helium balloon.
I turned toward Andy, who was smiling and clutching his bear. “You know, Andy,” I said, reaching over to pat his shoulder, “for a kid brother, you can be one impressive little guy.”
As we walked down the trail toward home, I could see all the guys huddled under the porch light, with Dad throwing his jacket on over his pajamas.
“Hey,” Wade hollered, “are you all right?”
“We’re fine,” I answered with a grin, knowing that Wade’s opinion of Andy would change, too. “And that creature you were telling us about? It’s fine, too.”
