Grim Hill: Forest of Secrets

by Linda DeMeulemeester

  The group broke up and Clive doused the fire. “No point taking any chances by sending a trail of smoke into the darkening sky. That would be like a flashing arrow advertising the location of our camp.”

  It was freezing and I hoped Amanda’s plan to heat the shelter with rocks had worked. We crammed inside. Amanda was half right. The stones had heated the shelter. Even though the rocks cooled down quickly, once we all climbed into the cramped space our body heat would keep us warm. But the shelter wasn’t big enough for all of us.

  “In a sweat lodge you sit up,” Amanda explained. “Um, I forgot we’d all be lying down.”

  “We should post a watch outside anyhow,” Clive said. “You know, keep an eye out for any unwelcome visitors. I’ll take the first watch.”

  “Should I go too, that way we can keep each other awake?” I suggested.

  “You girls get some rest.” Clive pointed to Jasper and Mitch. “The men should post guard.” They nodded.

  “What?” But Amarjeet’s protest was halfhearted. It was warm inside the shelter and cozy too.

  But I considered arguing – I hated when Clive got cocky like that, except I didn’t think this was about guys against girls this time. More like, I was the last person Clive wanted to be stuck with, so instead I mumbled, “Fine.”

  Inside the shelter I snuggled up against Sookie. The spruce branches covering the ground kept rocks from poking our backs and made the shelter smell Christmassy. I thought about how I would rather be on watch because there was no way I could sleep – not with all my worries. Then next thing I knew, I woke up with a snort after somebody jabbed me in the ribs.

  “Will you tell your sister to keep quiet and let me sleep,” complained Mia.

  “Huh?” I mumbled. Rubbing my eyes, I managed to make out a glint of silver inside the darkened shelter. Icy shivers erupted over my body as if I were back in that stupid creek. And it wasn’t because the shelter had grown cold.

  Sookie was lying flat on her stomach and staring into Lea’s mirror.

  “Cat,” Sookie said in an ominous voice, “do you have any idea what you’ve got here?”

  CHAPTER 11 - Dangerous Magic

  I YANKED LEA’S mirror out of my sister’s hands. Sookie must have snuck it out of my pack while I was asleep. She often helped herself to my things. Usually that annoyed me, but it didn’t usually fill me with dread. Lea was a fairy and fairies had magic. I could only guess the mirror Lea had left behind was unique. After all, it was a fairy object.

  “Never you mind,” I said once more. There was still no way I wanted Sookie to get her hands on it. I was about to stuff it in the pack, but Sookie grabbed my hand and stopped me. “Look into the mirror, Cat. Can you see?”

  “See what?” This mirror had never been useful as far as mirrors go – the silver frame was beautiful, but strange too, carved with peculiar creatures that framed the glass. The glass itself had always been foggy and distorted. I only carried it around because I missed Lea. The mirror wasn’t even clear enough for me to put makeup on, not that Mom would allow that yet.

  I stared into the looking glass again. Even though it was dark, the mirror lit up from behind with an eerie light. I swallowed a small yelp. In the unsettling glow, it still looked like a bathroom mirror after a shower. “I can’t see a thing,” I said, my heart racing.

  “Well I can see plenty …” Sookie grabbed the mirror back. Then, more coyly, she added, “Interesting.” I tried shaking her hand off, but her grip was tight.

  “Not so fast,” Sookie said. “Listen, I’m trying to tell you that I can summon help through this mirror, Cat. I’m sure of it.” For a second, Sookie’s small face was full of hopefulness and it tugged at my heart. Then she shifted herself on the ground so that her face was lit from underneath by the mysterious fairy light. Even though Sookie’s wide blue eyes still shone with eagerness to help, under that greenish glow her face took on a foreboding appearance.

  Anyone would look creepy with a light shining under their chin, I reassured myself. Except I knew Sookie wasn’t just anyone. Once more I snatched the mirror away. “Rescuers are coming at any moment,” I reassured her. “We don’t need any help from a fairy object.”

  It was a hollow promise. I had no idea if the runaway bus had been discovered. Nor was I sure using this fairy object would be a bad thing. After all, Lea gave it to me and it had helped me before. Also I carried a feather that was from Fairy, and it helped me remember the twisted enchantments that befell our town, even when my friends didn’t.

  I hesitated. The glint in my sister’s eye worried me. Sookie was on the edge – ready to tip from our world into a world filled with evil magic – maleficium. Witch blood ran in our family, and so far, my sister had come pretty close to becoming a full-fledged witch. That seemed a lot more dangerous than spending another night in the forest waiting for the police to find us.

  “Please let me use the mirror. I can help,” Sookie begged.

  “No.”

  “Don’t boss me around,” Sookie burst out. “You don’t know everything. I knew what plants we could eat – but you never asked. I can stop those outlaws, but you won’t let me. You’re not Mom.” Sookie choked up as soon as she mentioned our mother.

  “Do you two ever sleep?” Mia grumbled as she rolled over and faced us. Mia had been our roommate in Sweden and I knew from previous experience she was a light sleeper and couldn’t stand noise. Even though the shelter was dark, the mirror’s green light swirled and spilled out of the glass, illuminating the inside of the shelter with a ghostly glow. Mia didn’t seem to notice this, but there was enough light for me to see her shake her head in disgust.

  “Seriously,” Mia hissed. “Sleep or don’t sleep. But be quiet.” A few of the others snorted or groaned after she rolled over and turned away from us.

  Finally I wrestled the mirror away from Sookie. I’d been using my backpack as a pillow and Sookie must have opened the zipper without waking me. I stuffed the mirror back inside the pack. “Get some sleep,” I ordered Sookie before I crawled out of the hut.

  “Need a break?” I asked the guys.

  “I’m out of here,” Mitch yawned.

  “There’s actually room for one more person inside – if you sit. It’s definitely warmer.” That was good enough for Jasper. He followed Mitch. It was cold outside the shelter. The good news was that this meant no mosquitoes. The bad news – Clive and I would have to huddle up close under the one emergency blanket – none too easy when you weren’t feeling too friendly toward each other. But I didn’t want to go back and keep arguing with Sookie. Mia would kill me.

  Clive frowned.

  I sighed. “I’m staying outside. You can go back inside, if you want. And you can get Amarjeet or Amanda to come out – if you don’t think I can handle it,” I added a little sarcastically. “I don’t care either way.” I yawned.

  Clive yawned as well. “We probably should keep each other awake,” he said, seemingly too tired to snap back with a mean reply. When I sat beside him he became as silent as a stone.

  He’d moved closer to the last remnants of the fire, trying to soak up more heat. I slipped under the blanket, pulling my knees up to my chest and wrapping my arms around my shoulders for more warmth. Sitting in silence in the middle of a wild forest at night, wondering if you’ll ever make it home in one piece, weighs on a person’s mind. I really wanted to plan things out with Clive, to get his take on things. He wasn’t the easiest person to get along with, but he was brave, and this I had to force myself to admit, smart. Just a few short weeks ago, I thought we’d become friends – but that had all changed. I wanted to ask him what went wrong and was about to when a wolf howled.

  Its haunting call hung on the air, sending prickly feelings up and down my skin, as if I had walked through cobwebs. I shivered.

  Another wolf howled, and Clive said, “Tell me what you know about wolves.”

  “They’re not supposed to be that dangerous to humans,” I answered sh
akily. At the moment, though, I was thinking that reading about wolves was one thing. Hearing them howl in the middle of the night in a forest was a whole other thing entirely. Besides, when I listened to their howls on YouTube, it sounded nothing like these menacing wails.

  “What do you mean by, ‘that dangerous,’” Clive pressed, picking up on my worried vibes.

  “They’re not usually aggressive – unless they’re sick or really hungry. Or …”

  “Or what?” asked Clive.

  “If wolves were in a big enough pack, they’d be more courageous, though cautious. There’s no way they’d attack right away except …”

  “Except what?”

  “They’re intelligent. They’ve been known to stalk their prey to figure out a plan of attack.”

  “Right,” Clive said. “So … we should be okay in camp tonight.” He said that as if our only hope was to get out of here fast. I was forced to admit he was right.

  Another howl ripped through the woods. Then quite a different sound echoed throughout the forest – the snapping and breaking of branches.

  A thin creek of light bobbed in the distance, threading through the trees – a flashlight.

  We weren’t alone.

  CHAPTER 12 - A Diabolical Plot

  WORDLESSLY, CLIVE AND I made hand signals to one another. Then I climbed back in the shelter and woke Jasper, who’d somehow managed to fall asleep sitting up. He didn’t exactly appreciate me clasping my hand over his mouth, but I wanted to make sure he didn’t make a sound. As his eyes opened, I whispered in his ear, “There’s someone coming.” Jasper’s eyes grew even wider.

  “Wake everyone quietly,” I whispered. “Then disappear into the forest and head for the creek. Clive and I will meet up with all of you farther upstream.”

  When we got back outside, Clive and I dived into the forest to spy on the visitors. First we looped behind to where we had heard the snapping branches. Between copses of trees, in the deepest shadows of gloom, we spotted two men. My heartbeat raced. One of them was the bus driver and he was limping.

  “My head’s splitting,” the driver said. “There’s no point searching around here in the night. I’m gonna trip on a stone and break my leg.” He stopped and leaned against the sweeping branches of a fir tree as he caught his breath.

  “That’ll match your cracked skull,” said the other guy in none too sympathetic a voice. “This is where we thought we saw smoke, this is where we search. We find the diamonds, we take care of the witnesses, and then we hike back to camp.”

  Take care of the witnesses – I gulped. That voice belonged to the pilot we’d heard speaking over the radio.

  “I didn’t sign on to kill a bunch of kids,” said the driver.

  There was a slight hiss beside me as Clive let out his breath. Even when you imagine the worst, you don’t actually believe it until it stares you in the face – or, in this case, until you hear it straight up. But the bus driver didn’t want to kill anyone. My heart warmed to him – a little. Then he stubbed his sore foot on a twisted root and let out a stream of bloodcurdling curses, mostly targeting “idiot kids.”

  “They’ve got eyes, so they’ll look in the bag,” his companion growled. “And they’ve got mouths, so they’ll tell someone about the diamonds. How can we keep it secret now, tell me that?” He waited a few seconds and when the driver said nothing, he continued to rant. “We’re talking multimillion dollar deals here. We have investors from all over the world. They think they’re buying into diamond mines because we brought those diamonds up here for them to find. After all these years it’s almost a done deal. We can’t have witnesses screwing it up.”

  Clive and I drew back. We looked at each other with panicked expressions. “We’re in deep,” he whispered, shaking his head. “These guys are going to use the uncut diamonds to salt the mines. They’re going to trick investors into thinking there are diamonds up here!”

  Clive may know a lot about geography, but I was good at math. I could add. One – they were bringing uncut diamonds up north to scatter in old mines to fool people – plus one – they were going to sell lots of stocks in diamond mines. That equaled two bone-chilling facts – they had to keep their scheme secret and that meant they had to get rid of us.

  “Anyone who knows the truth about those diamonds can’t be allowed to live,” I said with a sinking heart. The expression on Clive’s face showed that he’d reached the same conclusion.

  “We gotta take care of loose ends,” the helicopter guy finished. They stayed huddled under a tree while they argued. This guy never used the word “kids” like the driver had. To him, we were obstacles, nothing else. I shuddered.

  “But there’s nine of ‘em, and two of them are little,” the driver whined, but with less confidence.

  “Yeah, well you’re the one who decided to drive away with a busload. You could have just kept one or two as hostages,” said the pilot. They started out again.

  Blood rushed to my head and it felt as if there were no other sounds in the forest – not the snapping of branches as the bus driver and the pilot pushed through brambles, nor the ragged wail of the thin wind that blew constantly through this valley – only the echo of the outlaws’ voices.

  “They’ll be dead out here in another day or so. What’s the hurry,” the driver argued. “Let nature do the dirty work.”

  My heart cooled toward him. How could he think if we starved to death or got killed by wild animals that there wouldn’t be blood on his hands? I shook my head in disgust.

  “We don’t want to stay here any longer than we have to. This valley has a way of turning on everyone,” warned his companion. “Even expert trackers disappear or lose their heads. We get the job done and get out as fast as we can.”

  A string of wolf wails froze my blood – it had the same effect on those crooks. They stopped in their tracks.

  “That’s it,” the driver rubbed his head vigorously. “We’ve almost found them, and those kids aren’t going anywhere for a while. We’ll go back to camp and find them when it’s brighter. They’re just kids and they’ve had no food. They’re probably freezing and crying for their mothers right now. They’ll be in bad condition and won’t get far.”

  The pilot nodded as he pulled a long, dark object – a rifle – off his shoulder, checked it, and sighted it.

  I turned to head for the creek, but Clive grabbed my shoulder and pointed in their direction. I knew he wanted us to follow them and find out where they’d camped, but I didn’t want to leave our hiding spot. It wasn’t pitch black, but the trees were densely packed and everything looked the same in the gray twilight – how would we find our way back? Yeah, right – if the wolves don’t find you first.

  The problem was I knew too much about wolves. I understood that a group of kids at camp were safer than a couple of kids stumbling around on the wolves’ turf.

  Then I thought about Sookie and Skeeter, and how those men were willing to let them die. I decided I’d take my chances with the wolves.

  I kept up with Clive as we crept behind the men, all the while conserving my energy like I would on the soccer field until time for a breakaway. The smell of rotting leaves and stumps grew thick in the air, clinging to my tongue like a bad taste, and it was getting harder to detect the sharp tang of water from the creek. I didn’t want to lose direction.

  As we followed, our feet started bouncing off the ground as if we were on a cushiony turf. It was easy to travel and easy staying deadly silent. Then I shoved my foot into some tall grass and sank in mud and icy water up to my knee. I let out a tiny yelp and then bit my lip, hoping the men hadn’t heard. Clive turned as my leg made a sucking sound when I yanked it out. We were in a bog.

  My sneaker sloshed as we backtracked away from the bog. It was easy to stalk the men. They were confident of their strength and of our weakness, so they didn’t even try to keep quiet or to watch where their flashlights shone. I could have followed them with my eyes closed, except for the bog
part. Anyway, we weren’t a bunch of weak and scared kids like they thought. We were surviving just fine. A doubt formed in my head like a warning whisper. You can’t survive out here forever, Cat.

  A couple of minutes later, Clive and I peered through the trees as the men walked into their camp. The slight edge I thought we had disappeared. They were confident for a reason. They had the best equipment – a fancy tent, Bunsen stove, top of the line gear stacked to one side, and crates of food. They had compasses and satellite navigators, Gore-tex coats, and thick hiking boots.

  As I started calculating our chances, one more guy came out of the tent – a big, bald, muscle-bound thug. I pictured all of us trying to tackle him and him shaking us off as if we were annoying kittens.

  Three of them pitted against nine of us. Except they were expert woodsmen and they had guns. Clive paled. I figured he’d come to the same conclusion I had come to.

  Situation: hopeless.

  We stole away. Clive wasn’t a bad tracker himself. We found our way back and realized we hadn’t traveled far – only our fear had made it seem that way. Those men were dangerously close to us. Jasper had managed to get everyone out from the shelter, so Clive and I made our way to the creek.

  “You know, um,” Clive began saying. “Unless a rescue comes today, I don’t think, um …”

  “We will last until tomorrow.” My voice went flat. Clive shot me a strange look – half despair and I think half admiration. I was willing to face the truth, which he could lay out without worrying about me fainting or crying or something. He was such a … guy. I winced. The problem was Clive didn’t know I was facing a much harder decision.

  “You made it,” Amarjeet said in relief. We’d found our friends upstream, grouped at the rocky bed of the rushing creek. “What’s the scoop?”

  “It’s not good,” I said.

  “Yeah, those wolves got close,” Mia said. “They sounded …”