“Where are you going?” I asked Mom’s back as she got uncomfortably close to the barricade.
“To the trail,” Mom ducked under the gate and studied the pile of rocks covering the tombstone-shaped barrier.
The excitement wobbled in my belly, feeling more like nervousness than overjoyed butterflies. “But something took a big bite out of the road. You said so yourself,” I reminded her. “Are you sure the people from the igloo are really hiking? Not sitting in a monster’s belly somewhere farther up the mountain?”
“What’s gotten into you?” She stepped onto the pile of rocks. “You jumped blithely over a rattlesnake yesterday and now you’re worried about a little berm?” She took another step. Dust and pebbles drooled from under her shoe as she teetered to catch her balance. I expected the rocks to eat her whole leg in one giant bite, but they behaved like regular ground.
“Doesn’t it burn?” I eeped.
“Of course not. You’re not chicken, are you?” Mom jumped to the far side. Instead of continuing to fall out of sight, she stayed the same height on the far side as she was on the safe side of the rock pile. She turned around. “Or do you need me to show you with the leash?”
“I’m not letting you drag me into danger!”
I ducked quickly under the gate, but I couldn’t help hesitating before I put my paw on the menacing mound. I took a deep breath. I gulped. I sniffed and tried to look busy. I looked back toward the mailman van.
“Do I need to carry you?” Mom asked.
“No. I’m just making sure it’s not a trap.” I backed up for a running start. I shook off the shivers and launched to the top in a single bound, hardly taking time to stick the landing before racing down to the safety of Mom’s side.
“Phew! That was a close one!” I wagged as I settled into a safe hiding place behind her knees.
“Good boy!” Mom kissed the special spot between my eyes, turned, and walked on. I was just about to take a step to follow, when something twitched in the corner of my eye. I froze and gathered the courage to look.
I carefully scanned my surroundings. After the road block, the road continued as normal with a steep upslope covered in trees and a block of empty air on the downslope side where the treetops should be. Beside the void was a jagged hole in the pavement where a gigantic mouth had taken a nibble out of the road.
Now that we were back together again, Mom started walking, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the ragged missing edge of the road. What could take a bite that big out of solid rock? The sound of Mom’s footsteps got farther away and I finally turned to follow. Just when I was about to take another step, a puff of wind blew through my whiskers and there was another fluttering in the corner of my eye.
I looked back at the bite mark and my body went cold. A something was flapping just beyond the edge of it. It looked like a shadowy phantom was trying to climb out of the hole. Its thread-like fingers silently curled around the lip of the road and its spectral head billowed over the edge for a peek. When it saw me, it quickly deflated back out of view. As long as I kept my eyes on it, it did little more than peek, but who knew what would happen if I turned my tail on it.
Suddenly, I remembered something Mom told me at the Grand Canyon. This must be the monster Mom told me about! The one that lives just over the edge of cliffs and waits till you’re not paying attention to grab your ankle pull you off.
I didn’t realize I was frozen in place until Mom’s voice broke my trance. “Come on!” she called in a cheerful teakettle voice that meant she had no idea of the danger we were in. When I risked a quick glance at her, she was staring back at me, but not in a scared way. “Whatcha looking at, dumdum? C’mere.”
“But there’s a...” I fixed my eyes on the spot so she would see what I meant. The ghostly thing fluttered again.
“IN THE NAME OF CHEESES AND THE ALMIGHTY DOG, I CAST THEE OUT!” I shouted in my most bossy bark. “BE GONE, VILE DEMON! BACK TO WHATEVER HAUNTED HOUSE YOU CAME FROM!”
“It’s just a bit of that plasticky cloth stuff they lay down before they pour asphalt, you dummy,” Mom’s voice came closer as she talked.
“Stay back, Mom!” I said, backing up myself to demomstrate.
“You’re not scared by an old blanket, are you?” It was hard to tell for sure, but it kind of sounded like Mom was laughing.
The Thing didn’t seem to appreciate Mom’s laughing. It reared up to its fully-inflated height, wiggling its frayed edges furiously in the breeze. It loomed there for a long, chilling moment before relaxing back out of sight.
“AND STAY OUT!” I shouted after it.
“Okay. Well, I’m gonna keep hiking,” Mom said, turning away from the monster. “You can come along if you aren’t too chicken. Or you can stay here staring at road work.” Her footsteps started moving away.
“Mom! Come back! Don’t let it eat me!” I yelled after her, tearing my eyes away from the monster for the first time.
“Well come on, then,” she called over her shoulder without so much as slowing down.
Now I was trapped. Behind me, the barricade suddenly seemed taller than a mountain without Mom there to encourage me. Ahead, a shadowy goblin threatened to snatch my ankle and drag me into oblivion. And on the far side, Mom was leaving me.
I took a deep breath and crept around the bite mark, keeping my ears back and my tail low. I never took my eyes off of the hole.
As soon as it was behind me, I broke bravely into a run. I ran until Mom was behind me, so she would be eaten first if it came after us.
“Oh good, I was afraid I’d have to play in the snow all by myself,” Mom said when I caught up.
I forgot all about being upset that she’d left me for dead. “White dirt?! Really? You mean it?”
“See those wet streaks on the pavement? That means that something is melting just out of sight in the trees beside the road. There must still be snow at the higher elevations.”
“You wouldn’t know what to do with a whole mountain of white dirt,” I told her, running ahead with my ears flopping importantly. “You need my help.”
I thought Mom hated white dirt. The last time we saw any, she avoided even touching the stuff. Even when she slipped and fell, she didn’t even bother trying to roll in it before standing up and giving up.
I was just about to remind her who the scardy cat really was when I heard a booming howl behind us.
“Hello,” it said.
Oh no!
It had followed us out of the hole after all!
Quick as a flash, I spun around and bellowed, “I THOUGHT I BANISHED YOU BACK TO H-E-DOUBLE-HOCKEY-STICKS!”
The ghost had taken the shape of a gigantic, wooly Sasquatch of a man. Or, something like a man, but all wrong, too. It had a giant hump on its back all the way from where its tail would be to above its head. It carried a long skewer in each of its front paws that it tapped mominously on the ground with each step like a viking might pound his fork on the table when dinner was taking too long.
“STAY BACK, YOU VILE BEAST!” I barked.
“I’m so sorry.” Mom snuck up on me and grabbed my collar. “He’s friendly, really.”
“Don’t you dare try anything,” I growled, stepping behind Mom again. She was a small human, but large enough to make a good shield.
Mom dug one of the freeze-dried liver treats mixed in with my kibble in my brunch bag. I didn’t know why our sacrifice had to come from my dessert, but if it would make the nasty beast go away...
“Here, will you please give him a treat?” Mom beseeched. “I want him to learn not to be so suspicious of strangers. Especially strangers with beards.”
The monster accepted the treat, but rather than going away quietly or roaring for more, it leaned down to offer the treat to me.
“Why didn’t you say so?” I snatched it from his hand and ran back behind Mom to savor it in peace.
Instead, it said, “Are you going up to Devil’s Punchbowl?”
“Trying.” Mom picked up the pace to see if he would follow or leave us alone like she hoped. “Do you know if we can get through?”
“I heard that it’s all snowed in still. But I’m going to try anyway.”
“That’s what I heard, too,” I said. “I wouldn’t miss it for anything.”
“It’s supposed to be a pretty easy trail until the switchbacks,” he went on. “Then it gets steep. Or so the reviews say.”
“Like fall-off-the-edge steep?” Visions of slipping and falling off cliffs flickered in Mom’s thought bubble. “The reviews I saw on AllTrails weren’t very helpful. They just talked about the exceptional pit toilet at the trailhead.”
“I don’t know. I packed my tent, a 0º sleeping bag, and three days of food so I can take my time," bragged the turtle.
“Oh.” Mom shifted the packpack like it was too heavy all of a sudden. “Uh, I was planning on driving to Oregon before dark. I guess I’ll just turn around if it gets too sketchy.”
“Do you have a satellite phone?”
“No. I just have my regular phone, but it hasn’t had service all morning.”
“It has a witch in it who’s always hovering around, so that’s sort of like a satellite,” I told him.
“You should get a sat phone for emergencies,” he said.
I don’t plan to have emergencies, Mom’s thought bubble said without her mouth.
He held up a witch and what looked like a walkie talkie for munchkins. “I still bring my phone, but I mostly just use it for maps.”
“Wait! You can get maps when you’re out of cell service?” Mom sputtered.
“Sure! Of course most people use Google or AllTrails, but I like Gaia better because you don’t have to remember to download them. They’re just on your phone whenever you need them.”
A big question mark filled Mom’s thought bubble when she heard the words download them, but she wasn’t about to let a stranger tell her how to live. Even if it did mean not getting lost again or having to bribe boy scouts with avocados.
“We have offline mapps, too,” I said. You can get them for free at gas stations, but it’ll cost you your first-born avocadoes if you go to one of those roadside convenience stands.”
“I’ll give it a try,” Mom lied. “I like AllTrails because it makes it easy to get driving directions to the middle of nowhere. It works well as long as you never make a wrong turn.”
“Gaia does driving directions, too.” He pulled out his witch to show her.
“Oh, no thank you," I helped. “That’s very kind of you, but we already have one Witch bossing us around all the time. She doesn’t need a second witch and a strange turtle-beast to answer to.”
Mom looked at her feet and pretended like she didn’t notice that he was trying to show her something. She picked up a stick and waved it on her non-turtle side. “Hey, Oscar!”
“Throw it!” I jumped back and forth across her path so she wouldn’t forget. “THROW IIIIIT!”
She lobbed it farther up the trail than I thought her girlie arm could throw. As I chased it, I heard her say, “Well, nice talking to you. I’d better get a move on so we have time to drive to Oregon before dinnertime. It was nice to meet you.”