Chapter 2

 

       And sure enough we did become good friends. Within a couple weeks of playing with each other, I felt as though he was one of my greatest friends (but of course I didn't really have too many friends at the time either). When school started up, I learned that Jack was in fourth grade – a grade higher than me. We sat in a seat together on the bus everyday too. During the mornings we didn't really do much, but in the afternoons we spent most of the bus ride playing Game Boy Color – usually one of the Pokémon games since that was one of the things we were obsessed with at the time.

       It was now the Saturday after the second week of school. I was at Jack's house playing basketball in his backyard. Sports weren't really my thing; I had no talent for them whatsoever and so I usually found myself hating them. However, Jack had somehow cajoled me into playing, even though I kept missing the basket just about every single time I tried to shoot the ball. While we played, I noticed that Jack kept glancing towards the woods that was up the steep hill past the fence.

       “What do you think it's like in there?” he asked, looking towards the woods while I tried to shoot the ball.

       “I dunno,” I replied as I watched the ball miss the hoop for the hundredth time. I didn't bother chasing after the ball as I turned to look towards him. “I've never been in there before.”

       “I think we should go in there,” he said after a few seconds of silence.

       “I dunno,” I said, unsure of the decision. “Haven't you heard the stories?”

       “Something about a monster that lurks in there right? Yeah, someone said something about it on the bus. I still think we should go in there though. It could be cool. Maybe we'll see it? We could be the first kids in the town to see it!”

       “That kinda sounds like a bad idea. What if we do see it? It might try to eat us.”

       “We'll be fine. We can just run if it spots us.”

       “I don't know. . .”

       “What are you, chicken?”

       Jack tucked his hands into his armpits and started to flap his arms like they were wings while making the sound chickens made.

       “No!” I said.

       “Good, then let's go exploring,” replied Jack as his arms fell to his sides.

       Jack quickly went to go tell his mother where we were going before we walked down the street a little ways. The houses soon ended and all that was left was woods, which had a fence placed on the fringes of it. There was a gap in it though meant for the entrance. We didn't know that the woods was really referred to as a nature trail though and that it already had a set trail. When we got to the entrance of it, we noticed the gravel that had been put down and we started to follow it.

       “Wait,” Jack said a few seconds later when we were only about a few yards from the entrance.

       He looked over to the side and I did the same. A little ways away from the trail was a small pile of large sticks. Jack walked over to it before picking two out from the pile, which were bamboo. When he rejoined me on the trail, he handed me one of them, which was about at least half a foot taller than me.

       “Just in case the monster does spot us,” he said.

       “Good idea,” I replied.

       We pressed deeper into the nature trail. About a few seconds later, we reached a set of stairs, which were outlined with wood and filled with gravel. We ascended them and we were just the right size to go underneath the low-hanging branches without getting whacked in the head. Once we finally got to the top, we saw that the trail branched off into two directions. We decided to go left.

       During our walk, I couldn't help but to feel a little nervous. I was afraid that we would maybe run into the rumored beast. What if we did? What if we weren't able to outrun it? Would we get eaten if we failed to? All these questions ran through my mind, my imagination beginning to get the best of me. A lot of the time I was startled by the slightest noise. The scurrying of a squirrel or the sound of a bird taking flight from within a tree startled me and I instantly pulled the bamboo stick towards my chest as if it would protect me from anything that would attack. Every time I did this, Jack would always tell me what probably made that sound to calm me down before we continued to walk.

       Jack had led the way most of the time while we walked. I thought it would probably be best if he was the one to get attacked by the monster first if it did happen to pop out at us at any moment. Then that way I would maybe have a better chance of getting out of the nature trail alive. At one point though, I had somehow managed to get ahead of him. About a few seconds after this, I felt something grab onto my shoulder and I heard a “rawr!” from behind me. I gave a yelp of surprise and quickly spun around to whack whatever had tried to attack me. Jack stumbled backwards upon getting hit by the end of my bamboo stick.

       “Ow, what was that for?” Jack asked as he clutched his forehead.

       “It's not my fault!” I said a little defensively. “You were the one who scared me!”

       “Sorry, I didn't think you'd get that freaked out,” he apologized, but laughed a little a couple seconds later. “It was kinda funny though.”

       “Shut up,” I mumbled.

       We dropped it after that and continued on our way. After a couple more minutes of walking, we reached a part where the nature trail began to open up. When we turned the corner, we noticed that we were in another part of the town. The gravel path ended just a few feet ahead and the small parking lot to the place started just after that. I was relieved to see this, thinking that it would be the end of our expedition. Unfortunately, Jack noticed that the trail began at the other end of the parking lot and said that we should continue to explore. I didn't argue, no matter how much I didn't want to do this anymore.

       We resumed our journey through the wooded area. About five minutes later, we came to a part of the trail that branched off to the right. Jack said that we should just continue to go straight and that's what we did. It wasn't too long after that until we reached a dead end in the trail.

       “Well, there isn't anything here,” I said after we looked around for a couple seconds. “Let's just head back.”

       “Wait, maybe there's something cool here,” he said.

       I sighed as I watched him go all the way to the end of the gravel trail. I stayed where I was, wishing that we would just turn around and leave. Jack looked around as he stood at the dead end and soon screamed. I jumped out of natural reaction as I watched him drop his bamboo stick and break into a sprint.

       “It's the monster!” he yelled at the top of his lungs. “Run!”

       It was my turn to scream as I also dropped my stick. I quickly turned around and started to run alongside Jack down the trail, going as fast as my little feet could carry me. I never bothered to look behind us to see if the monster was on our trail. The fear I felt was too great to allow me to do something like that. And besides, I had always learned that it was never a good idea to look behind you while you ran.

       It wasn't long until we reached the section of the trail that branched off and we quickly made a turn onto the part that went right. The trail led us to the stairs that we had climbed earlier and we quickly descended them until we finally exited the nature trail. We didn't stop running though until we got inside Jack's house. Both of us quickly fell into a sitting position on the loveseat that sat just to the side of the door, panting.

       “That was close,” Jack said in between pants. “I thought we weren't going to make it.”

       “Yeah,” I agreed.

       We didn't say anything else for a few seconds. The only sound that filled the quiet living room was our pants, which slowly died down until we were able to breathe calmly again.

       “What did it look like?” I inquired.

       “I dunno, I didn't really get a good look at it,” Jack replied. “All I saw was a huge white thing running my way and I ran.”

       “What are you two talking about?” Jack's mother asked as she came into the living room.

       “I saw the monster in the woods!” Jack exclaimed a bit triumphantly.

       “What monster?” she asked as she looked at us with a humored expression on her face.

       Jack went on to tell her about the story we heard on the bus about how there was supposedly a monster that lurked in the nature trail. He told her how no one had seen it though and how we were the first ones. When Jack finished, his mother giggled some.

       “Are you sure you didn't see a dog or something like that?” she asked.

       “It didn't look like any dog I ever seen,” Jack replied.

       She still didn't believe us though. Even Mom didn't believe me when I told her the same thing later on that night. It seemed that moms never believed anything their kids told them, but of course neither of us did get a good look at what the creature was that Jack considered as the monster. Regardless though, we vowed to never go into the nature trail again, and we never did.

Reviews

[Eidolon Michael]

This story is very nice and pleasant ^_^ I'm liking it more and more as I read ^_^

[courtney]

theres some restating that takes away from the story. eample (Jack had led the way most of the time) "while we walked"

[Amund Schofield]

Each of these chapters seems like a short story in of its self. I'm not sure if you intended it that way or not, but I thought I would point that out.