In the Woods by Jones Carrie & Wedel Steven E

Author:Jones, Carrie & Wedel, Steven E. [Jones, Carrie & Wedel, Steven E.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Horror, Young Adult, Mystery, Paranormal, Fantasy
ISBN: 9780765336552
Amazon: 0765336553
Goodreads: 41555922
Publisher: Tor Teen
Published: 2019-07-16T07:00:00+00:00

17

LOGAN

I grab my shotgun and throw open the front door to join Dad on the porch. Dumb ole Galahad almost knocks me over in the doorway as he races outside, hair bristling while he barks nonstop. He’s off the porch and standing on the lawn ahead of Thunder and Daisy, barking and jumping around as I come to stand beside Dad.

“Toward the cattle?” I ask.

Dad shakes his head. “Across the road. Hadley place. I think. I’m not sure. It’s hard to tell.”

Roger Hadley and his family have 360 acres, with their house on the south end and their back pasture meeting up with the road across from us. Using the mile-section roads, their house is almost three miles from us.

“Should we go?” I ask.

“No,” Dad says, his voice stiff, angry. “Damn it. We can’t. But we can’t just leave them.” He glances over his shoulder at the front of the house. Mom and the girls are standing in the doorway, the screen door closed, but they seem to be listening to Mr. Lawson Smith, who I can just see behind them.

Chrystal rushes out. “It was here. It pulled Dad’s camera down. It’s … That proves it’s smart. But … it’s here.”

“Did you see which way it went?” Dad asks.

“No … it’s … The camera is just pointing up at the sky.” She stares at us. “I’m going back inside to check on my dad.”

As soon as she’s gone, my dad says, “I saw one of those women, Sarah Fields, just the other day, Logan.”

“Sarah Fields?” I ask, not recognizing the name.

“First-grade teacher,” he says.

“Mrs. Fields?” She’s a short, perky woman with real light reddish-blond hair. She’s probably in her early thirties. Kind of pretty for a teacher. “She’s dead?”

He nods. “Yes. That’s three they blame on this thing.”

“Three?”

Dad sighs, his gaze still focused on the darkness over the Hadley farm. “Alison King. She works up at the Walmart. About twenty-two. They found Mrs. Fields’s body during the searches today. They are assuming it was the monster.”

The thing out in the dark howls again. I can tell now that it’s not on our property, but our cattle begin to snort and shift, their sounds carrying clearly through the otherwise still night. Dad’s mouth tightens as we hear the thunder of hooves pounding the earth in the Hadley pasture. Something is chasing the cattle.

“What that thing did to her…” Dad says. “I don’t understand it. No animal would do it. The sheriff called the coroner out. Just an estimate, but he said it looked like she’d died a week ago. Her husband thought she’d run off with a guy he suspected she’d been seeing. That was two weeks ago. That thing kept her alive for a week, then killed her. Something just ain’t right about it. Animals don’t do that. People do that.”

A line of headlights appears on the road and turns into our driveway. Dogs in the backs of two of the trucks approaching the house begin baying.

“How’d they know?” I ask.

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