Traps and Specters (26 page)

W
ithin forty yards of Megan, the sasquatch passed into the bright light in the middle of the hall and was fully revealed: the wide wall of its teeth, the flex and release of its massive muscles.

In a panic, Megan ran to a classroom door, Room 203, Ms. Peter's class. The knob wouldn't turn. She ran to Room 205. It, too, was kept locked.

Barely more than forty lockers now separated the sasquatch from Megan. It passed Charlie Red, who casually walked on.

Megan dashed across the hall to Room 206 and cranked the doorknob. Nothing. She seized the doorknob to Room 204, which was directly beside Room 206. Again, the knob wouldn't budge.

She stared up the hall again. Less than twenty lockers away, the sasquatch was now creeping forward on two feet, its arms raised. She saw the details of its face—its swollen lips, its black pupils, its dark nostrils. In seconds it would reach her … and it would kill her.

Megan's eyes moved to a poster above the lockers on the wall beside the sasquatch. On it was a picture of a closed book, the reader's spot marked with a gold key. A caption read, “Reading is your key to success.”

Your
key
.

An idea sparked in her head. She unsnapped the small leather pouch on her pirate belt and pulled out the single item inside it, the gold key that Noah had dropped in the street. The
magical
gold key that could fit any lock in the Clarksville Zoo.

Could the key fit a lock
outside
the Clarksville Zoo?

She jabbed the key at the door. Expecting to hear the soft
clink
of the key jamming halfway into the lock, she instead heard nothing at all. The key had softened and sunk into the lock cylinder, just as it had for the doors in the Clarksville Zoo.

She turned the knob and pushed her way into the classroom. Just as the door slammed shut behind her, the sasquatch banged into it, rattling it inside its frame. The beast dropped its head and peered through the small window, its apelike nose pressed against the glass. Megan had a close-up view of its yellow eyes and square teeth.

She backed away and glanced around. This was Ms. Sara's third grade classroom. It had at least twenty individual desks in groups of four, and the walls were papered in drawings made of crayon. Normally Megan would have thought this room charming and fun, but now she thought of it as something else—a dead end, no better than the one in the hall.

The sasquatch pulled away from the door, leaving green, goopy snot on the glass. It disappeared from view.

“Leave,” Megan muttered. “Please, please … just
leave
.”

But right after her words, there was an enormous crash and the door snapped off its hinges and flew inward. It smashed into a group of desks and its window burst in a spray of glass. Two desks toppled over, spilling books and papers and crayons onto the floor. The sasquatch turned sideways and knuckle-walked through the open doorframe.

“No,” Megan uttered.

Inside Room 204 of Clarksville Elementary, the sasquatch stood partially straight, pressing the mound of his back against the ceiling. Then it threw back its head and roared.

CHAPTER 52

R
ichie continued to stand with his back against the wall as the sasquatch advanced into the upper-el wing. Was Richie in plain view? He could only hope not.

He glanced around and saw the two walls of lockers stretching in both directions. Suddenly he had an idea.

He slid down to a nearby locker, where a thin metal plate read, “518.” Richie's locker. He dialed in his combination and gently opened the door. Then he turned sideways, ducked his head to avoid the top shelf, and slipped inside, pulling the door closed behind him, but not allowing it to latch. His world went almost black. The only light came through the vent—five horizontal slits right in front of his face. Through them, he could see maybe fifty feet in either direction.

He waited. He listened. In the dark, confined space, he could hear his heart. Sweat streamed down his temples. His shallow breaths burst against the locker door and wafted back against his face.

He heard something. Footsteps. Then, in the edge of his vision, the sasquatch appeared. It stopped at the beginning of the upper-el wing and peered down the empty hall, its raised snout sniffing the air. It lowered its head, grunted, and scanned the rows of lockers.

Richie watched the beast knuckle-walk to the lockers along the opposite wall. It tipped its head to one side and seemed to wonder about them. It laid one palm flat against the door and softly pushed. The door buckled inward and snapped off its top hinge. Startled, the sasquatch jumped back and the door swung outward and dangled on its bottom hinge like a too-loose tooth ready for pulling. The sasquatch curiously sniffed the exposed space. Then it swung around and faced the hallway again. It swept its gaze down the lockers on one wall, then up the lockers on the other, still hunting for Richie's scent. It walked across the hall and back again. It seemed confused, and Richie realized why. Richie's scent was trapped in the locker, and the sasquatch couldn't pinpoint where he was.

The small space of Richie's locker was hotter than ever. Sweat had soaked the ribbed cuff of his cap and the armpits of his checkered nerd shirt. His breaths came in quiet, quick gasps.

The sasquatch suddenly lunged to one side and threw itself against the lockers, collapsing a few. Metal clanged and clunked, and fragments of steel burst into the air—latches and locks and small jagged pieces. Books and papers spilled out onto the floor. The monster kicked through the debris and took off toward Richie's side of the hall, disappearing from view before crashing into the lockers again. The exploding sounds rang in Richie's ears. Shreds of metal rained down on the hall floor, and pens and pencils rolled across the tiles.

Richie bit his bottom lip to keep from whimpering and tasted the salt of his sweat.

An animal grunt sounded, and then the sasquatch charged across the hall and slammed into several new lockers, smashing their doors and thin walls, emptying their guts onto the floor. It immediately ran to the other side and plowed into several more.

Its intentions became obvious.

The beast was going to move down the hall, crushing lockers until it crushed Richie.

CHAPTER 53

P
ain shot from Ella's wrist to elbow. All the sasquatch needed to do was tighten its grip to crack and crumble her bones to pieces. Something grabbed her other arm, and she glanced over to see Noah holding her with two hands. He was leaning back on the bridge, trying to free her.

“Ella—pull!”
he commanded.

Ella did as instructed, the web of pain spreading all the way to her shoulder. Just when she feared she'd never break loose, she fell away from the hut and tumbled over Noah onto the bridge. Stunned, she glanced back and saw the sasquatch holding the broken remains of her Wonder Woman bracelet. The wide silver band had split in two and slipped off her arm, allowing her to pull free.

She turned to Noah, who said, “Defends against all manners of attack.”

Ella nodded, too shocked for words.

Noah grabbed under her shoulder and pulled them both to their feet. “C'mon—we got to move!”

The scouts ran across the bridge, which had a metal grate for a floor and vertical rails for walls. The sasquatch, having freed its arm, jumped beneath them. It reached up and seized both sides of the grate. Then it dropped its weight to one side, snapping the brackets that connected the floor to the hut behind the scouts. The bridge tipped like a drawbridge as one end of it was forced down.

“Noah—hurry!”

Less than five feet separated the scouts from a new platform. The floor became a steeper and steeper incline as the sasquatch continued to pull. They were no longer simply crossing the bridge—they were
climbing
it.

As the scouts escaped onto the new platform, brackets and bolts snapped like gunshots and the bridge gave way and crashed to the ground. Tremors moved through the framework of the play structure.

“We have to make it back to the Descenders!” Noah said. “We'll never beat this thing on our own!”

A straight slide provided the quickest exit to the ground. Three feet above the top of the slide ran a horizontal bar. Noah clutched it in both hands and flung his legs out in front of him, landing on his rear end on the slide. He touched down on the playground and took off running, his feet flinging wood chips into the air.

Ella followed. But as she released the horizontal bar, the sasquatch appeared at the side of the slide, its arm cocked back. It swung at her head, and Ella dropped down just in time to pass beneath the blow, which instantly buckled the slide, tipping up its bottom like a ramp. Ella coasted across the unexpected incline and flew several feet into the air, her arms and leg flailing. She hit the ground running and took off after Noah.

As the scouts dashed across the playground, Ella peered over her shoulder. The sasquatch had already dropped to its hands and feet and was rushing after them.

CHAPTER 54