A Magical Fantasy Adventure Book Series
Ghost Bear by Jesse Wilson
Series Excerpt
“So, is it everything you hoped it would be?” Jenny asked, relaxed but still uncomfortable with being outside, she held her hot dog over the fire. She had no idea when it was officially cooked all the way through or now. This was going to be a new experience for her.
“And so much more,” Matt replied and looked up into the stars, but when he did he was in for a bit of a shock. The night sky was black; there were no points of light anywhere, not one star.
“Dude, what do you make of that?” he asked Nick and they all looked up to see the full black sky above them. Nick nodded and was the only one who wasn’t shocked, at least outwardly.
“It is said that the Snake trail is known for starless nights, I did research. Scientists think it has something to do with the magnetic forces that naturally occur here. In the old days it’s been known to drive people insane,” Nick said and was nearly cheerful about it. The idea it had anything to do with magnetic forces seemed insane, but he only knew what he read.
“They called it trail madness, but the natural order of things is important. Back then it was doubly so. These days we know a lot more. Honestly, I didn’t believe this part of the story was true,” he said and took a sip of his beer that he grabbed out of his precious cooler.
“And you knew this coming here and didn’t say anything?” Mia asked. She was upset about this fact and looked around to realize that the only light anywhere was the fire. Outside of its boundaries anything could have been out there just waiting for the fire to go out.
Her imagination began to imagine all sorts of strange things. Everything from secret cults, monsters, ghosts and other, less describable things slithering in the dark, she shook her head in a hurry to banish the thoughts.
It was easy to see why this place was so scary. Monster or not this place had a terrible charm all its own.
“I didn’t think it would bug you guys so much, I mean you never see any stars because we live in the city, when was the last time you’ve actually seen the stars at night anyway?” Nick responded and had something of a point.
“Fair enough, but if I go insane the first one I am killing is you,” Mia laughed but Jenny reacted badly to that “Hey, now let’s not talk about killing, not here anyway,” she said and Mia almost felt bad about saying it and checked her food. It was black now and that was cooked good enough for her.
“Alright, we can talk other things, like about what we are going to do tomorrow,” Jenny responded then and Nick liked this topic. He truly believed Mia was being serious sometimes. He’d always thought there was a spark of violence in her somewhere, even if it would only come out in sarcasm like this. Changing the topic made him feel better.
“I want to go looking for Matt’s monster. There has to be some kind of truth to it don’t you think?” Nick asked but Matt wasn’t so sure entirely.
“Maybe, but really, where should we look first? It could be anywhere and we can’t cover nine hundred miles in a day, even two days….or a month,” Matt said, doing his best to discourage him.
“We don’t need to. That old man said the blood came from the river, all we need to do is find that and we should be close,” Jenny said, and immediately realized what she said and couldn’t believe it; she just wanted to be part of the conversation and by mistake turned a dead end into a journey. She silently cursed to herself for being so thoughtless.
She pulled her hot dog out of the fire and saw that it had burned black. She wasn’t sure if this was okay to eat or not. The others appeared to be in the same condition and Mia was eating hers and it was close to the same so, she figured it was okay.
Instead of talking anymore she decided to stuff her face to keep herself from giving any more helpful suggestions. It didn’t taste too bad.
“Yeah, actually that’s right the river should be close by and we can start there,” Nick said and was excited about this. He decided that is what they should do all on his own. No one else had anything better to suggest doing so they all went with it. Jenny stared into the fire, hearing all of this made her feel worse.
“I guess we’re monster hunters now, or is it ghost hunters?” Mia asked them. The others started to think about it. Nick was sure it was just a ghost, so he was going to answer.
When the silence fell, the considerable sized fire they were sitting around died all at once as if something smothered it from above casting them all into an impenetrable darkness in a second without a sound.
Jenny screamed, Mia fell back out of her chair and Nick and Matt froze in the sudden black that engulfed them all.
“Son of a bitch, what in the hell was that?” Matt asked and was the first to grab his flashlight that was by his chair and turn it on the others did almost as fast once Matt allowed them to see again.
“I don’t know but look at the wood; it’s not even smoking anymore,” Nick said and reached out to touch it and as soon as he did could feel that it was ice cold.
“Everyone get inside now,” Nick said as his blood went as cold as the firewood did and none of them wasted anytime following that order, they ran through the dark and quickly made it inside the cabin.
With all four flashlights combined it lit the room nicely enough but the light didn’t make anyone feel much better as they tried to process just what happened.
Praesent id libero id metus varius consectetur ac eget diam. Nulla felis nunc, consequat laoreet lacus id.