Chapter Two: Ding Dong

I don't know how long I lay on the ground. I don't know how long I closed my eyes, hoping, praying the world wasn't coming to an end.

"Do you still see it?" Margaret asked.

I let the muscles in my face relax just enough for my eyelids to let in some light.

The blurred image of Margaret's big head appeared beside me. She nuzzled her face into the snow, scooping up the tiny white flakes with her tongue.   

"I don't know if I can see it," I replied. "I'm too scared to look."

"Me too." Margaret dipped her mouth into the snow again. Her giant hair dangled down over her face. She swallowed and turned to me. "Let's look at the same time."

I nodded. "Good idea."

"Okay," Margaret began. "On the count of seven."

"Seven?" I asked.

"Yes, seven."

I bit off a chunk of snow hanging from the end of my mitt. "Why not three?"

Margaret pushed her hair out of the way and looked at me. "Because three rhymes with 'd' and 'd' is the first letter in Dayna Redfern's name. And we can't do 'five' because there are five letters in her name and six in her last."

I nodded again. "Right. Of course."

"We can't do 'two' because 'two' has a 'w' in it and Dayna's favourite day of the week is Wednesday."

Dayna Redfern was in our class and was going up against Margaret in the Hidden Trail's annual Third-Grade Trivia Championship. She lived a few doors down from us, in the same courtyard but never took the bus. We figured Dayna thought she was too important to take a measly old second class yellow school bus.

Anyway, to prepare for the competition, Margaret promised herself she would avoid any words associated with the name, Dayna Redfern.

For example: two, three, five, six, twelve, purple, orange, peanut butter, belly button and Toe-jam, just to name a few.

"Are you ready to look?" Margaret asked.

"Okay," I replied.

"One...Two...Three...Four...Five...Six...Seven."

We both sat up and looked out at the sky. We scanned the Hickory farmhouse and the big red barn.

Nothing.

Except Sheldon.

Sheldon stood on the road just a few feet away from us. He was still holding his shovel. He had patches of black hair poking out along his chin and upper lip. A big brown woolly hat sat snugly around his head.

"Did you see it?" he asked. His voice was so deep. He sounded like Ernie, the old police officer who always ate at the Tim Horton's on Highway Six.

"No. I don't see it." I stood up and walked over to Sheldon. Margaret brushed the snow off her face and hair and stepped up onto the road as well.

Up the way at the Bryer's home, Farmer Tom and his wife Mrs. Bryer, stood on their porch. The two of them pointed at something by the woods, but I couldn’t see what it was.

The bell from the clock tower on the other side of the town rang out over the trees.

“What’s out there?” I asked. "What was that thing in the sky?"

“I don’t know,” Sheldon replied, picking at the hairs on his face. “I just don’t know.”

For a minute, the countryside was quiet.

Almost...too quiet.

All we could hear was the bell.

Ding.

Dong.

Ding.

Dong.

I think Margaret was feeling a little awkward because she started whistling.

Maybe she was still scared.

We waited for another minute.

And then another.

The silence was ripped away when a loud, heavy boom blasted out from the cow pasture. The ground shook.

My nose vibrated.

It tickled for a second.

A large black ball of smoke ballooned out over the horizon, behind the trees.

The explosion bounced around the fields and back up into the sky. Peter, the dog from across the main road ripped into a barking frenzy. Man, I hated that dog.

A second tremor crept along the ground. More snow jumped off the trees.

Margaret stepped closer to Shelden and nuzzled her face into his arm. "Is this the end of the world?" she asked.

Shelden patted Margaret's head and looked back out at the black cloud. "I hope not."

“We should get out of here,” I said. “If this really is the end of the world, we need to find a place to hide.”

I grabbed Margaret and pulled her up the road.

“What are you doing, Bailey?”

“We’re going to find a place to hide.”

Margaret yanked her hand away from me and stopped. “Sheldon?” she cried, turning back to the big guy. “What should we do?”

A third explosion ripped out over the trees, catapulting a small object with stringy tentacles high up into the sky.

We all froze, watching the tiny little thing nearly disappear into the greyish blur of smoke, before falling once again toward the ground.

We watched as the tiny object headed for a haystack beside the big red barn.

Hay shot out in all directions as the object landed with a heavy thud.

“Holy cow!” I shouted. “Holy cow, holy cow, holy cow.”

"Did you see that?" Margaret asked.

"Yeah, what was that? It looked like an octopus. It came from that cloud of smoke," Sheldon said.

The bell from the tower in town stopped ringing.

Peter the dog stopped barking.

Farmer Tom and Mrs. Bryer disappeared into their house.

I looked at Sheldon. He squeezed the handle on his shovel and cleared his throat. "We should get out of here," he whispered. “Whatever that thing was that fell out of the sky, could be dangerous.”

"Yeah," I replied. “It could be very dangerous.”

Margaret chewed on her mitt and nodded. "I agree. It could eat us."

I kicked snow onto Margaret’s boots. “It’s not going to eat us. We don’t even know what it is.”

The grey smoke continued to spill out from the forest. A gazillion birds escaped into the dark skies overhead. Their squawks echoed out around us.

Margaret looked over to the haystack. “It could be a big jelly-fish, or a giant space-spider or baby dragon.” She scratched her chin. “A crazy hungry man-eating baby dragon.”

I laughed. “Dragon’s aren’t real, silly."

Sheldon giggled. "And neither are giant space-spiders.”

Margaret frowned and crossed her arms. “Well, Komodo dragons are real. They eat mammals, and we are mammals.”

I forgot who I was dealing with. Margaret had won every trivia contest she ever participated in. She was like a walking Wikipedia.

I turned to her and swallowed.

However, before I could speak, the haystack beside the big red barn moved.

Author's Note

First two chapters...let me know what you think :)