Monster in the Mountains: A Dylan Maples Adventure
Penguin Books Canada, 2003

Excerpt from Chapter 9 …

AS WE ENTERED THE FOREST I glanced over at Alice. She had this look on her face like she was ready to fly to the moon. She caught my eye and gave me a smile that I’d never seen before. She was incredibly happy. We raced into the woods, the ferns whipping against our pant legs.

Before long we heard voices. We froze. Then we began moving much slower and quieter. It was hard not to make the leaves crunch under our feet. With every step we were afraid we’d be heard.

“About here?” asked one of the voices.

It was Cosmos Greene.

“Yes,” said another.

“Yeah, I’d say that’s right,” added a third.

As we moved cautiously forward we saw them through the trees about thirty metres away. Greene and the two hunters, dressed in their bright orange vests, looking a little scared.

The old man seemed to sense something and turned to look back in our direction. We ducked down like we’d been shot. He stood very still and listened. When he turned around again, we moved forward on our hands and knees. Soon we could almost hear them breathing.

“And where was the creature, Mr. Barrett?”

“That direction.” Barrett pointed.

“Correct, Mr. Vander Zalm?”

“Correct.”

They had come to a slight opening in the woods. Fifty metres away the trees got thicker again. They all stood very still for a while. There was silence.

“Yeah...it was over there, all right,” mumbled Barrett, his eyes opening wide as he looked out across the clearing.

“It didn’t see us. I don’t think. We left, really fast.”

“Maybe we were seeing things? Maybe...maybe we should go?”

“Let me take a look,” whispered Cosmos, putting a reassuring arm on Barrett. The men were all glancing around now, watching for any movement in the forest, listening for strange sounds. Cosmos examined the trees. Slowly they inched their way in the direction Barrett had said the sasquatch had been. As Cosmos got closer, he lowered his head, examining the ground. Then he stopped.

“Oh...my God,” we heard him say.

Alice and I rose a little, straining to see what he was looking down at. The men rushed over to where he was crouching.

“Here’s another one,” he said, standing up and moving forward. “And another. And another.” He walked bent at the waist, his eyes on the ground, still moving in the direction the creature had been spotted.

When he was ten metres farther, Alice and I took a chance. We scurried through the brush towards the spot where Cosmos had first bent over and threw ourselves on the ground. We looked down, our faces a toadstool height from the dirt.

The footprint was unmistakable. It was about half a metre long, a lot like the one Cosmos had made his plaster cast of. Most impressively, it was sunk down into the earth.

“Look at the depth,” we heard Cosmos loudly whisper, up ahead of us. I peeked up through the ferns and saw his eyes gazing down, all ablaze.

I knew what he meant. At his house, he had told us that many sasquatch footprints were hoaxes, just people trying to have a good time with big fake feet, running around making imprints to see if others would believe they were on the trail of a sasquatch. But these passed the test instantly. They sank several centimetres into the ground, ground that wasn’t soft and was scattered with Douglas fir needles and leaves: the men’s feet weren’t even leaving a mark. These tracks had to be made by something big, very big, much bigger than any human being who had ever walked the earth.

We heard Cosmos click open a little tape measure and stick it into the print.

“I’d say that whatever made that weighed...about eight or nine hundred pounds.”

“That’s almost half a ton!” gasped Alice, right beside my ear.

“We should get out of here,” cried Vander Zalm.

“And they keep going...” said Cosmos, following the direction the toes were pointed in, “this way.” He moved along in a crouch and we followed.. there were more and more prints. Some were on muddy patches and incredibly clear–you could see five toe marks on each, real toes, not claws like a bear’s tracks would have. And each print was separated from the other by more than a metre. That was something else Cosmos had said to look for: a sasquatch’s stride was much greater that a human being’s. Anybody faking these prints would have to be not only heavy, but able to run awfully fast to keep the marks far apart. That would have been virtually impossible.

“Put the guns away, boys,” we heard Cosmos say quietly. He had stood up and stopped, as if he was readying himself for something.

The men hesitated. they looked at each other.

“I’ll put the safety on,” said Barrett, “but that’s it. I’m keeping it in my hands.”

“You didn’t see this thing!” added Vander Zalm.

They clicked the safeties into position.

Cosmos turned and started walking faster. We scrambled to keep up, trying to stay low. We were stepping over fallen trunks and veering around stumps, still worried about the sound of leaves crunching beneath our feet. Then, without the men saying anything to each other, their pace picked up. Before long they were jogging. It was as if they could feel the sasquatch getting nearer. We began to move faster too.

The footprints remained fairly clear. They were on a straight line through the forest. Then we started to smell something very strong. I remembered what Cosmos had said about other people who had encountered the monster.

Man! Was I about to become a sasquatch witness?

The smell grew stronger. It was as if a pack of skunks had unloaded near us. Why did it smell like skunks?

Cosmos held up his hand and they all stopped. We froze too. Everything was silent except for five people breathing heavily. Then we heard a rustling in the forest up ahead.

THERE!

Something moved in the trees. It was at least a hundred metres away but we could tell it was big and black.
It stood upright as it ran and looked far larger than a bear!

Vander Zalm and Barrett cried out.

We straightened up and raced forward, not caring who saw us. We let loose and began to sprint. A rush of energy exploded inside me. I was scared, but I loved it. I felt like a kid again. Cosmos, who had come to a halt as the others roared forward, looked at us in disbelief as we surged past him. I noticed a video camera in his hand. We glanced at him and then locked our eyes on the blur way out in front of us.

My heart was pounding. I felt like slapping myself in the face to see if I was dreaming. Here we were, chasing a sasquatch! Or something. It was so hard to believe it was really the monster itself.