Wildwood (Wildwood Chronicles 1)

Her dad cracked the door and peeked in. “G’night, sweetheart,” he said. Her mom added, “Don’t be up too late.”

“Uh-huh,” said Prue. She turned and smiled at them, and they closed the door.

Prue frowned as she heard their footsteps on the hardwood floor, moving toward her brother’s room. The sound of Mac’s door creaking open sounded like a peal of thunder to Prue’s hyperattentive ears, and her breath caught in her throat. Thinking quickly, Prue leapt from her bed and ran to her door, peeking her head out from around the jamb. “Hey, Mom? Dad?” she whispered loudly.

“What’s that?” said her father, his hand on the doorknob. The light from Mac’s night-light spilled into the hall.

“I think he’s really wiped out. Maybe try not to wake him?”

Her mom smiled and nodded. “Sure thing,” she said, before poking her head into Mac’s room and saying quietly, “Good night, Macky.”

“Sweet dreams,” whispered her father.

The door creaked shut, and Prue smiled at her parents as they passed her on the way to their bedroom. Seeing the door close behind them, she returned to her bed and let out her breath. It emerged from her chest as if she’d held it in all day long.

That night, Prue slept restlessly, her sleep fraught with dreams of great flocks of giant birds—owls, eagles, and ravens—in dazzling plumage, swooping down and carrying away her father and mother and leaving Prue alone in their emptied house. She had set her alarm for five a.m. but had been awake for a while when it finally went off. She rolled out of bed, careful not to make too much noise. The house was silent. The world was still dark outside and the neighborhood had yet to wake up, the only sound being the occasional car whispering past the house. Prue slipped into her jeans and threw on a shirt and a sweater. Her peacoat was still draped over her desk chair from the night before, and she cinched a scarf around her neck before putting on the coat. She wiggled her feet into her black sneakers and padded out into the hall. She put her ear to her parents’ door and listened for the sawing snore of her father. Her parents were fast asleep. She figured she had an hour before they would be up, which would be plenty of time to make her escape. She walked down to her brother’s room and pulled the stuffed animal from his crib and upset the blankets; she picked a set of warm clothes from Mac’s red chest of drawers and stuffed them into her messenger bag. Tiptoeing downstairs, Prue wrote a hasty note on the dry-erase board by the refrigerator:

Mom, Dad:

Mac was up early. Wanted to go adventuring.

Back later!

Love, Prue

She opened the pantry and puzzled over the potential rations she might bring along, settling on a handful of granola bars and a bag of gorp left over from the summer’s last camping trip. By the camping staples was the family’s emergency first aid kit, and Prue slipped the plastic case into her bag. An air horn, a kind of canister with a plastic belled horn on the top, caught her attention, and she picked it up, inspecting it. A picture of a menacing grizzly bear graced the label. The words BEAR-BE-GONE made an arc in the air above him. Apparently the noise was loud enough to scare away wildlife, something she imagined would come in handy in an impassable wilderness. She dropped it into the messenger bag and scanned the kitchen before slipping out the back door to the yard. The air was brittle and cold, and a slight breeze disturbed the yellowing leaves in the oak trees. Prue pushed her bike, the Radio Flyer wagon still attached, quietly out into the street. The first glimmers of dawn could be seen to the distant east, but the streetlights still illuminated the leafy sidewalks as Prue pushed her bike a safe distance from her house before climbing on. The scarf her mother had knit for her the prior winter clung snugly to her neck as she gained speed over the pavement, heading southwest through the streets and alleys. Lights in the houses began flickering on, and the hum of cars on the streets grew as the neighborhood awoke to the morning.

Following the path of her pursuit the day before, Prue made her way through the park to the bluff, the wagon jumping and clattering behind her. A heavy mist hung over the river basin, obscuring the water completely. The lights of the Wastes on the far banks of the river flashed under the cloud. An inscrutable clanking noise was carried across the wide trough of the river, echoing off the cliff walls of the bluffs. It sounded to Prue like the grinding gears of a giant’s wristwatch. The only thing beyond the bluff that was exposed above the bank of clouds was the imposing iron lattice of the Railroad Bridge. It seemed to float, unmoored, on the river mist. Prue dismounted her bike and walked it south along the bluff toward an area where the cliff side sloped down into the clouds. The world around her dimmed to white as she descended.

When the ground below Prue’s feet finally evened out, she found she was standing in an alien landscape. The mist clung to everything, casting the world in a ghostly sheen. A slight wind was buffeting through the gorge, and the mist occasionally shifted to reveal the distant shapes of desiccated, wind-blown trees. The ground was covered in a dead yellow grass. Just beyond a line of trees, a span of railroad tracks carved a straight line east to west, disappearing into the haze on either end. Assuming the tracks would lead over the bridge, Prue began following them westward.

Ahead, the mists lifted, and she could see the spires of the Railroad Bridge. As she made her way toward it, she suddenly heard the sound of footsteps in the gravel behind her. She froze. After a moment, she cautiously looked over her shoulder. There was no one there. She had turned and kept walking when she heard the sound again.

“Who’s there?” she shouted, searching the area behind her. There was no response. The railroad tracks, flanked by the line of strange, squat trees, disappeared into the mist; there was no sign of a pursuer.

Prue took a deep, shuddering breath and began walking faster toward the bridge. Suddenly, the footsteps sounded again unmistakably, and she spun around in time to see a figure dart off the tracks and through a gap between two of the trees. Without thinking, she dropped her bike to the ground and gave chase, her shoes sending up a small plume of gravel as she took the corner into the trees.

“Stop!” she yelled. She could now see the person through the mist—it was rather short and wore a heavy winter coat. A stocking cap was pulled down over the figure’s head, obscuring his face. When Prue yelled, the person momentarily looked behind him—and slipped in a patch of loose dirt, slamming shoulder-first into the ground with a hoarse yell of surprise.

Prue dove onto the prostrate form of her pursuer and yanked the figure’s stocking cap away. She gave a startled cry.

“Curtis!” she yelled.

“Hi, Prue,” said Curtis, out of breath. He squirmed underneath her. “Can you get off of me? Your knee is really pushing into my stomach.”

“No way,” said Prue, regaining her composure. “Not till you tell me why you were following me.”

Curtis sighed. “I w-wasn’t! Really!”

She jamm

ed her knee farther into his ribs, and Curtis let out a cry. “Okay! Okay!” he shouted, his voice quavering on the edge of crying. “I was up early taking the recycling out and I happened to see you riding by and I just wondered where you were going! I heard you talking to yourself last night about your brother and how you were going to get him, and then I saw you leave your house so early this morning and I figured something had to be up, and I just couldn’t help myself!”

“What do you know about my brother?” Prue asked.

“Nothing!” said Curtis, sniffling. “I just know he’s . . . he’s missing.” He blushed a little. “Also, I don’t know who you were trying to fool with that wet blanket in the wagon.”

Prue released the pressure on his ribs, and Curtis let out a breath of air.