Grim Hill: Forest of Secrets

by Linda DeMeulemeester

  “Yeah,” Mia complained. “Why haven’t we turned around?”

  The driver sped up and the bus lurched dangerously in and out of traffic.

  “Uh, if you’re in a hurry to get somewhere you could just let us out,” I suggested. Not that I wanted to be stranded by a highway, but at the moment that seemed the better option.

  The driver screamed, “Just shut up and let me think!”

  We all stopped speaking at once, being extra-careful not to anger the driver. But he hadn’t seemed grouchy at all when I’d boarded the bus. A neat freak, perhaps, but friendly. Alarm bells rang inside my head as I struggled to find a logical explanation for the driver’s weird behavior. He must have received a call to bring the fancy bus back to the depot, which must be located to the north – they didn’t want a bunch of kids riding around in a brand-new bus. He just didn’t feel like explaining that to us.

  That was it. We were returning to the depot and we’d come back and pick up the others in a regular school bus. Of course.

  Then why didn’t he leave us behind, Cat?

  We were in too much of a hurry, I answered myself.

  But he’s not the same driver, Cat.

  Sure he is, he just changed his clothes.

  I peered at the driver while trying to make like I wasn’t looking at him at all. His jacket had grown miles too long. So, besides changing clothes he had also lost a ton of weight in a matter of minutes.

  The first driver became sick and this must be his replacement.

  That last thought calmed me until Skeeter shouted out, “Hey you, I told you we’re going the wrong way!”

  This time the driver lurched onto the soft shoulder of the highway and slammed the bus to a stop. Good thing none of us were standing in the aisle. The driver jumped out of his seat and yelled, “Last warning, sit still and keep your mouths shut.”

  “But …”

  “Quiet, Skeeter.” It was the way Clive spoke to his brother that broke the dam I’d been building to hold back the panic. The barely suppressed dread in his voice seeped into me. Then I heard Sookie sniffle.

  “Cat, I … I want to go home with Mom,” she whispered. A tear crept down my little sister’s cheek.

  “Shh,” I said, keeping my voice as steady as I could. “We’ll be home soon.” I unzipped my pack and a glint of silver caught my eye – I’d packed Lea’s mirror to take to the sleepover. Somehow it made me feel like my fairy friend was always close. Lately I’d been missing Lea, wondering if we’d ever meet again. Touching the silver gilt around the mirror calmed me a little.

  “What’s that?” Sookie leaned in for a closer look. I quickly pushed the mirror deeper into my pack. I didn’t want to share this memento with her. Instead I found what I’d been looking for – a package of trail mix to cheer Sookie up.

  “Here,” I whispered. “This won’t make a mess.”

  We kept driving north and the bus kept speeding up. It was obvious we weren’t getting home anytime soon. The more I thought about what was going on, the harder it became to concentrate.

  Then I heard a rustle behind me. Clive had left his seat and was moving slowly, furtively toward the front of the bus. Jasper stood up too, ready to join him. The more the better, I thought. I signaled Mia and Mitch and in seconds we all joined them, but we either made too much noise or the bus driver saw us moving in his rearview mirror. “Stay in the back of the bus,” he warned. “Or else …”

  “Or else what,” Clive snapped back. We stood our ground. That is, until the driver reached into the duffel bag at his feet.

  “Or else I’ll make you.” The driver pulled a dark metal object out of the bag and checked over his shoulder to make sure we all saw it – a gun! I pulled Clive back and we all sat down. Sookie whimpered and I put my arm around her.

  I had to face it – this bus was being hijacked and we were hostages. Strangely, this realization cleared my mind. It gave me a goal – we had to escape. Somehow. But for now, there was nothing to do but wait.

  Outside, all signs of civilization had begun to disappear and the trees along the edges of the road grew dense. It was as if we were on the highway to nowhere.

  “I’m feeling a little sick,” Amarjeet whispered to me. Then she rushed to the back of the bus. When the driver ignored her, I came up with a plan. The bus would have to stop at some point, somewhere, and if a person happened to be in the washroom, and if there happened to be an emergency exit in there, that person could climb out and get help.

  I waited until Amarjeet returned, looking a bit worse for wear. She slumped down into her seat. I waited a few more minutes and then I got up, gave Sookie a reassuring pat on the arm, and headed for the washroom.

  As soon as I was inside the cramped cubicle, I saw there wasn’t even a window, let alone an emergency exit. When I came back out, I slipped in next to Jasper instead of returning to my seat.

  “Is there a way to escape?” Jasper whispered. He’d clearly hatched the same plan as me. I shook my head. I guessed the driver must’ve known that, and that’s why he didn’t care if we stayed at the back of the bus. Skeeter piped up from behind. “What about a fire extinguisher, or anything to bonk him on the head?” That last part was muffled.

  Skeeter’s whisper was as quiet as he could make it, but Clive had still clamped his hand over his brother’s mouth. None of us wanted to catch the driver’s attention. I gave them a thumbs-down signal. Not that we should even consider Skeeter’s idea. This wasn’t a TV show, where kids could sneak up on someone carrying a gun and win. Someone could get hurt – badly. We had to stay under the driver’s radar.

  A semitruck pulled up alongside us. Its rumbling engine masked the sound of our hushed conference. “Why do you think he’s taken us hostage?” I asked.

  “I bet he’s committed a crime or he’s an escaped convict. We’re insurance that he gets away,” suggested Clive.

  I let out a low whistle. “Well – he’ll need to stop for gas eventually, won’t he? Could we escape then?”

  “Except that a deluxe bus like this probably has a backup fuel tank,” Mitch whispered. He had snuck to the back and was sitting across the aisle from us.

  “That would be, ah,” Clive scratched his head, “maybe one hundred forty or even fifty gallons of fuel, if the bus had a full tank of gas.”

  Mitch nodded in agreement.

  “This is highway driving in a mostly empty tour bus,” Jasper whispered. Then he did that thing he always did when he was concentrating. He made a gesture as if he were pushing his glasses to the top of his head, even though he didn’t wear glasses anymore. “I bet this bus gets about two and a half miles per gallon. So on full tanks, we could travel a few hundred miles before we run out of gas.”

  “If he makes it even a couple of hundred miles north, we’ll be in nothing but wilderness,” I sputtered.

  “You’re right.” Clive frowned in concentration. “If this bus keeps on traveling at this rate along the highway, soon we’ll have left all the towns behind. We might even make it as far as Headless Valley.”

  Clive was the best social studies student among us – he knew his geography – but even I’d heard of Headless Valley. That was where hikers, trappers, and miners sometimes went, never to be seen again. I gulped.

  Clive continued to explain. “There’s only one highway, but there are old logging roads up there, a perfect place to ditch a bus and set up some kind of rendezvous.”

  So not good …

  While the bus driver was busy passing the semitruck, I ducked back into my seat beside Sookie. So the big question was – how long before anyone discovered we had been taken hostage? How far could the driver travel before the police started looking for the bus? I began calculating.

  Mom wouldn’t be back to town for hours and she wouldn’t check up on us until she returned. The other students had to somehow find their way back from the city, but then nobody would expect them back until dinner, or even later …

  How long would a
parent wait before calling other parents and checking up on their kids?

  That one I had experience with – maybe like an hour. But all the parents would still have to get hold of each other and then contact the staff at the senior school, and then the staff would have to check with the bus company.

  This bus just rolled off the assembly line – it hasn’t even been officially delivered. That’s what the original bus driver had told me. And I had a bad feeling whatever had happened to him wasn’t good.

  There might be no record of this bus even picking us up. It could be hours before anyone tried tracking us down. And by that time … by that time, it could be too late.

  CHAPTER 6 - A Perilous Ride

  THE SKY OUTSIDE was darkening – the bus had to be coming to a stop soon, didn’t it? I tried to stay awake, but after a while, the bus’s lolling motion forced down my eyelids. A tap on my shoulder woke me up.

  “I think we’re almost there,” whispered Sookie.

  Almost where? I looked around and took stock of our surroundings. Everyone but Sookie and me was still sleeping. We must have traveled a long way – now the sky was streaked pink from the rising sun. Nights this far north were shorter than those back home, so I figured it had to be three or four in the morning. The highway was getting bumpier too. Sookie whispered that it had been a while since the bus had passed any turnoffs into other towns.

  Spruce trees grew thick on each side of the road and stretched endlessly toward the horizon. We were headed for nothing but wilderness. Tree after tree flew by the window, almost making me feel seasick – as if we’d drown in this desolate forest.

  The road narrowed and I spotted a logging truck heading in the opposite direction. In seconds it would pass us. When the truck pulled up alongside my window, I tried signaling to the other driver by slashing my throat and pointing to the front of the bus. Then I waved frantically. He looked up from the steering wheel and laughed.

  I slumped. He thought I was goofing around.

  “Cat, I want off the bus now,” Sookie implored.

  “We all do,” I whispered. “But we have to wait.”

  “There’s great danger.” Sookie looked up at me, her dark blue eyes sparkling like crystals. Her expression made her seem a lot older. “That man is a criminal and he doesn’t care about us. Once he’s finished with the bus, what do you think he’ll do to us?”

  “He’ll let us go,” I said as reassuringly as I could.

  Sookie shook her head. “Even if he does, he’ll leave us in the middle of nowhere.”

  My sister was probably right. Certainly some jerk that would kidnap a bunch of kids wouldn’t worry what happened to them once he got away. “Everyone will figure out we’ve been kidnapped. They’ll send helicopters to find the runaway bus.”

  “No one knows which direction we’re headed.” Sookie got that faraway look on her face – another expression I didn’t much care for. It was as if she could see beyond what a normal person could even imagine. That was never good.

  Sookie stared at nothing for a while. Then her eyes sparkled even more. “Cat, I think I should try and use magic. I could hex the driver. Make him get dizzy. I … I think I know all the right words to the song I’d need to chant. Then we could …”

  “No,” I said, cutting her off. I balked at even the suggestion of letting my kid sister use magic.

  “But Cat, this man could really hurt us. He deserves it if I put a spell on him.”

  Sookie had a tendency to be overdramatic. Except this time, I was worried she had it dead right. Even so, I shook my head. “Promise me you won’t use a spell. I mean it, Sookie. Don’t. Even. Think. About. Magic. Besides –” I thought frantically, “– if you make him sick, he’ll probably end up crashing the bus and killing us all.”

  In my family, every second generation of sisters was faced with a choice of two fates – one would become a witch and be lost forever, and the other would become a fairy fighter, always battling dark magic. On Walpurgis Night, Sookie had drunk witches’ brew from a special goblet as part of the initiation for becoming a witch. I’d saved her before she could make the deal final, but it had been a close call, and if she slipped away from me again I didn’t think I’d ever get a second chance. If Sookie delved into magic – the kind of evil spell she’d need to stop this man – I’d never win her back.

  “No,” I repeated one more time. “You can never use the dark magic you’ve learned. Not for any reason.”

  Sookie gave me a searching, thoughtful look before saying, “Okay, Cat. I won’t unless you tell me to.”

  “Well, that’s not going to happen,” I told her. Sookie just kept staring at me with that solemn, sad expression, and I shivered as if an ice cube had slid down my spine.

  After a while, the bus swung off the highway, down an even bumpier logging road. I swear every bone in my body almost popped though my skin as the bus bounced along the trail. My teeth ached as they rattled together.

  The landscape became more barren. Tall, craggy cliffs rose on both sides of the bus as the road wound higher and higher toward a huge rocky plateau above. A relentless wind battered the bus, hissing through the windows in ghostly screeches.

  The engine chugged and strained against the steep incline. Then a static clatter rose from inside the driver’s duffel bag. The driver held on to the wheel with one hand and lowered his other arm and fished out what looked like a two-way radio. “I’m almost there. Roger.”

  More static. A voice responded. “Any problems? Roger.”

  “There was a slight glitch – someone was using the unregistered bus, but I got it back. Everything’s going as planned – almost.”

  “Almost?” said the voice.

  “Ah, roger,” said the driver. “I took a few passengers along for the ride. Just in case.”

  “No witnesses. Roger that.”

  The driver dropped his voice, but I could still make out what he was saying. “If they can even hike their way out, it’ll be a long time before they get back. Roger?”

  Static. “We’re landing the helicopter. Pickup is in fifteen minutes. No witnesses. Do you copy?”

  The driver paused – maybe for only a few seconds, but it felt like forever as I held my breath.

  Meanwhile, the sound of static had woken the others up. Soft snorts and murmurs rose around the bus, but died down when the others heard the snatches of conversation on the radio. It was as if a heavy shroud had cloaked all sound. Even the whine of the wind faded.

  The driver finally answered. “I copy. Over and out.”

  I sucked in my breath. Did that mean he was going to kill us? Or did it mean that he would desert us in this forsaken place, where we might die of hypothermia, or starve before anyone found us, or get attacked by wild animals … or … or possibly become another grisly statistic – lost forever in Headless Valley. For a second, I reconsidered Sookie’s offer. But no – I couldn’t risk putting her life in jeopardy.

  The driver glanced at us from over his shoulder. His face was a cold mask, but that’s not where I was looking anymore. My eyes widened as he turned back around. Before I could shout a warning, a cedar bough slammed into the windshield, shattering glass over the front of the bus.

  We screamed as the bus swerved and fell off an embankment.

  CHAPTER 7 - A Narrow Escape

  THE BUS TILTED on the edge of the embankment, wobbling precariously. “Stay,” I whispered as if I were talking to a dog. But this wasn’t a dog: it was a forty-foot bus made of steel and glass.

  The bus fell on its side with a thundering crash. I slammed against the window and Sookie slammed into me. I reached out and grabbed my sister with one hand. We both held on to our armrests as the bus began sliding again.

  Metal scraped against dirt and rock, releasing a wild screech that hurt my ears. The bus, like a giant toboggan, slid several feet, and I tightened my grip on the seat and on Sookie. Our bodies pressed against the window and I could see that only a small pile of dirt a
nd shrubs was keeping us from tumbling down. “Stay,” I whispered again, stupidly.

  But the weight of the bus was too much. It overturned and slid down the small embankment. Cracks spread across the glass of our window like cobwebs.

  We shook around, as if we were marionettes dangling on puppet strings, until the bus hit a clump of rocks and trees, finally slamming to a halt. The jolt wrenched my arm and sent my sister and me somersaulting over the edge of our seats.

  I ended up at the bottom of a giant dog pile of my friends. Someone fell on top of me, knocking the breath out of me. I couldn’t have screamed if I’d wanted to. For several hideous seconds I lay gasping, trying to breathe despite the heavy weight. Black spots blotted my vision – or were those the elbows of Clive and Skeeter? I sucked in another ragged breath and pulled myself out from under everyone. Sookie was wedged between the seats.

  “Are you okay?” Clive called frantically. I winced when he tugged me up by my sore arm. Shaking him off, I checked on my sister. Sookie looked whiter than Mom’s freshly bleached sheets, but she managed a weak nod.

  “Wow, I really thought we were gonna die,” Skeeter exclaimed with some relish. Sometimes Skeeter and my sister had a warped sense of adventure. Not that Sookie looked like she was enjoying herself.

  Jasper joined Clive and me, and we helped Amanda, Mitch, Mia, and Amarjeet untangle from a crumpled heap of broken glass and torn seats. Good thing everyone was in pretty good shape from playing soccer. We’d all managed to hold on to our seats. I couldn’t say the same for the driver. He was sprawled out on the side of the bus – which was the floor now – and looked, as far as I could tell, unconscious. I moved forward cautiously.

  “Wait,” Clive said, pulling me back. I winced again. “Let’s get out of this stupid bus.” Clive shot the driver a dismissive nod. “He’s the least of our worries.”

  That made sense. First things first, although that wasn’t so simple considering my brain felt like scrambled eggs. I rubbed my forehead.

  We all picked our way through the mess toward the window exit, which was now above us. The exit was difficult to reach, and while the others brushed glass off each other, Jasper, Clive, and I climbed on top of the tipped seats and shoved the exit door open – which didn’t help my sore arm.