The Beast of Blackslope by Tracy Barrett Read Free Book Online Page B

It’s back.”
    Xander felt his heart sink. So it was true! Whatever was causing all this uproar wasn’t a person. It was some kind of wild creature.
    â€œThe Beast?” Xena asked eagerly. Now they
were getting somewhere! “You mean the Beast from a hundred years ago?”
    Mr. Roberts answered quickly as though to prevent his wife from speaking. “We mean nothing of the sort. Now scoot back up to bed.”
    They didn’t exactly scoot, but they went upstairs. Xander shot a glance at Trevor’s door as he went past it. It was shut tight. He must be a heavy sleeper, he thought.
    And they didn’t exactly go to sleep either. At least not for a long time.
    Â 
    Xena stood outside her bedroom window the next morning, hands on her hips, peering at the ground.
    â€œWhat’s the matter?” Xander joined her. The smooth lawn with well-trimmed shrubbery looked so calm in the daylight. A brick walkway with a white metal workbench in the middle led through a tidy little flower bed.
    But Xena wasn’t admiring the garden. “Gravel,” she said in disgust. “It goes all the way up to the house on this side. And it’s dry. You can’t even tell if anything stood there, much less the shape of its foot.”
    Xander squatted. There was no sign of the Beast here. He felt a mixture of disappointment
and relief. “Cheer up. The thing you saw had to come from somewhere. Sure it wasn’t this bush that you were looking at?”
    â€œPositive. It was lots bigger and shaggy. And it was moving, like it was pushing its way through the bush. Do you think I’m imagining things? Or dreaming?”
    â€œOkay, okay,” Xander said. “Chill. I’m just trying to make sure.”
    â€œMake sure of what?”
    He didn’t answer and she was too cranky from lack of sleep to pursue it. They walked around the area slowly, bent over with their eyes on the ground, trying to find a footprint, some flattened grass, broken twigs—anything that would tell them which direction the Beast had come from.
    â€œNothing,” Xander said. “I bet it hasn’t rained here in a week. The ground’s hard, and the grass just bounces back after you step on it.” He pressed his foot into the ground and lifted it up to demonstrate. Sure enough, the neatly trimmed grass sprang right back. “What’s the point of being in this wet country if it stops raining just when you need clues?”
    Xena didn’t answer right away.
    â€œI said what’s the point—”

    â€œXander, come here. I think I’ve found something! Look at this!” She was pointing at the top of a wooden frame that supported a climbing rosebush.
    At first he didn’t see anything. Then—“Wow!” Xander couldn’t help being intrigued. “Could that be a piece of fur?” Something was stuck in a broken place at the top of one of the posts. He stretched one hand up but the clump of fuzz was way out of his reach.
    â€œWait a sec,” Xena said. “We have to do it carefully. We need to preserve the evidence.”
    Xander hung back, letting his sister shinny expertly up the sturdy post. The fingers of her right hand removed the dark brown clump while she held on with her left. In a moment she dropped lightly down to the ground and held out her palm to her brother.
    â€œSure looks like fur,” she said.
    Xander nodded. Despite his worry about coming face-to-face with a wild animal, he was starting to get excited and to think like a detective. They had a solid clue now, and they had to figure out what it meant. “It’s too fuzzy to be human hair. And it’s too high up to be from a dog, even a really big one. I haven’t seen any big dogs around here, have you?”

    Xena shook her head. “And all the sheep we’ve seen are white, so it can’t be some wool that floated up there somehow. Remember what Sherlock always