Case File 13 #3 Read online

  Dedication

  To our border collie, Pepper. There was never a more faithful or friendly dog. I hope there are lots of juicy bones for you in heaven.

  Contents

  Dedication

  Questions in the Night

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Looking Back

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Credits

  Back Ad

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Come in. It’s late, but I’ve been waiting for you. How did I know you’d come back? Your kind always does. Oh, you might tell yourself that the last adventure was too dreadful, too horrifying. You might convince yourself that you’re done delving into mysteries that can only be solved after dark. But eventually you are drawn by an irresistible hunger—a hunger for the unknown. A hunger that can only be satisfied by what we both seek.

  I notice you keep looking at my mirror. Is it just me or does it almost appear as though the figure behind the glass is not your reflection at all, but a darker version of yourself, watching you with terrible eyes?

  But never mind. I’m sure you’re tired of listening to an old man babbling about his fears. Doubtless you’re dying to know what is happening to the three boys whose adventures I’ve been carefully documenting in Case File 13.

  It seems they are off on a camping trip. One to the forest, and no ordinary forest at that. The woods are dark places—some even older than I—full of legends, mysteries, and creatures never seen by the eyes of men.

  At least, no men who lived to tell the tale . . .

  Saturday morning was the perfect day for a campout. The sky was blue and, although it was early December, the temperature was nearly sixty-five degrees. Nick and his friends Carter and Angelo had been looking forward to this trip ever since Nick’s dad announced it. But now Nick was afraid the trip was going to end before it even got started. Mom was digging through the gear in the back of the car like a cat hunting a mouse, while Dad complained from the driveway behind her.

  “Did you bring the sleeping bags?” Mom asked, pushing aside a stack of air mattresses.

  “Of course,” Dad said, hands on his hips.

  “First-aid box?”

  “Complete with snakebite kit, instant ice packs, and suture set.”

  Mom looked through a grocery bag, set it aside, and examined every canteen individually.

  “Is she always like this?” Carter whispered.

  Nick stepped away from the SUV so his parents couldn’t overhear him. “Dad’s got kind of a reputation for forgetting things when we go camping.”

  Angelo pushed his new glasses up on his nose and peered toward the car. “What kinds of things?”

  “Well, once he brought a whole bunch of fancy dehydrated food but nothing to cook it in.”

  “How bad could that be?” Carter asked, dumping a pack of cherry Pop Rocks into his mouth.

  Nick made a face. “Ever tried sucking on a mouthful of dried shrimp Rangoon, waiting for it to get soft enough that you could chew it? Trust me, it’s not pretty. Another time he packed the tent but forgot the spikes. In the middle of the night, this freak storm picked up the tent and rolled us all down the side of a hill into a lake.”

  Angelo’s eyes widened in alarm. “Maybe I’ll go help your mom check on things.”

  Carter stuck out his tongue to make the candy in his mouth pop louder. Red-colored saliva splashed from his mouth with each pop.

  “Dude, stop spitting,” Nick said. “That’s disgusting. And what’s with the hair?” Carter was always changing his hair color. One month it was neon green, the next it was blue. But this was the first time he’d ever dyed it black with white down the middle.

  “Zebra stripes,” Carter said, swallowing the Pop Rocks. “Tell me it’s not the coolest yet.”

  “It’s not the coolest yet,” Nick repeated. “I hate to tell you, dude, but you look like a skunk.”

  “That’s cool too,” Carter said, opening another bag of Pop Rocks. “Are we still planning on making s’mores?”

  “Yeah,” Nick said. “We’re making s’mores. I made sure Dad packed the marshmallows, graham crackers, and chocolate.” Sometimes he wondered if Carter was able to stop thinking about food for more than a minute or two at a time.

  “Well?” Dad asked, holding his hands palms up as Mom climbed from the back of the car. “Are you ready to apologize and admit I didn’t forget anything this time?”

  Mom brushed her hands on the front of her jeans. “I’m not apologizing until we actually set up camp. But I can’t see anything you missed.”

  “Never doubt genius,” Dad said, closing the hatch. “Let’s go, everybody. It’s time to set sail on the adventure of a lifetime.”

  “I think we’ve had more than enough adventures to last a lifetime,” Mom muttered under her breath. “I’d settle for a nice, normal campout.”

  “Normal?” Dad grinned, clearly elated by his victory. “Were Lewis and Clark satisfied with normal? Did Cortés want a simple campout? Was Magellan scared of a little adventure?”

  Angelo scratched the back of his head. “Actually, Magellan was killed by natives.”

  Dad scowled. “Get in the car.”

  “How come I have to sit in the middle?” Carter complained as the three boys slid onto the back bench seat.

  “You’re the shortest,” Angelo said.

  Carter snorted. “Short people get no respect.”

  Nick’s dad started the car and pulled out of the driveway as Mom programmed the GPS.

  “Where’s the campground?” Angelo asked.

  “Near Santa Cruz.” Mom craned her neck to look back at the boys. “I’m so excited to see the tide pools.”

  “The tide pools are fascinating,” Angelo said. “And the monarch butterflies should be there for their winter migration.”

  Angelo never failed to surprise Nick with his knowledge. Of course he knew everything there was to know about monsters, monster movies, alien abductions, and anything else paranormal. It was what had drawn the Three Monsterteers, as they called themselves, together in the first place. But he seemed to know about everything else, too.

  “Butterflies?” Carter scoffed. “I’m planning on catching a mermaid. I brought a couple of Almond Joys. Mermaids go crazy for coconut.”

  Nick’s mom rolled her eyes and turned to face the front.

  “Where did you hear that?” Angelo asked.

  Carter shifted in his seat and pulled a small booklet out of his back pocket. “Right here.” He opened the book, which was called Finding and Catching the Lovelies of the Sea. “Mermaids are vegetarians by nature,” he read, “living primarily off of seaweed and algae. However, they have been known to crawl onto shore for a rare treat of fresh coconut.”

  Angelo opened his monster notebook and started writing, but Nick shook his head. “What would you do with a mermaid if you caught one?”

  “Drop out of school and take her on the road,” Carter said at once, as though he’d been giving it a lot of thought. “Do you have a
ny idea what people would pay to see a live mermaid? I’d probably have to teach her to do stuff. You know, like card tricks, or juggling flaming chain saws.”

  “I dated a mermaid once,” Dad said as he pulled onto the freeway. “Things went swimmingly at first. Then her scales starting rubbing me the wrong way and—” Mom cut him off with a stare, and he quickly changed the subject. “Wait till you boys see my new camp stove. It’s a beauty. Three burners, adjustable windscreen. It even has a built-in cook timer.”

  Angelo nodded, clearly impressed. “What kind of fuel does it take?”

  “Fuel?” Dad’s face went white as he looked toward the back of the car.

  “Tell me you didn’t forget fuel for the stove,” Mom said.

  Dad braked, hung his head, and got off at the next exit.

  “Here’s the thing I don’t get,” Nick said as his dad steered up the winding Highway 17 through the Santa Cruz Mountains. They’d been driving for just over an hour and were less than thirty minutes from the beach. “If a vampire bit a mummy, would the mummy turn into a vampire, stay a mummy, or form some weird combination?”

  “Definitely stay a mummy,” Angelo answered without even stopping to think about it. “Mummies don’t have any blood for the vampire to infect.”

  “Sure. I get that. But does it have to infect the blood? I mean, couldn’t the vampire just inject his venom into the mummy’s flesh and turn its mummy cells into vampire cells?”

  Angelo shook his head. “Assuming we’re talking about a sanguivore—the kind of vampire that feeds off blood, not energy—vampires suck in blood from the victim, mix it with their venom, and kind of spit it back out. The blood is how the venom mixes into the rest of the victim’s body. Sort of like what Carter does with food. Except he never spits out anything he eats.”

  Carter gave him a dirty look. “I’m right here, you know.”

  Nick considered Angelo’s words for a minute, staring out the window at the dense forest passing by outside. “Then if a mummy and a vampire got into a fight, I would totally bet on the mummy. They have supernatural strength and excellent endurance. Plus, they are immune to pain and have all kinds of cool curses.”

  “Not all mummies have curses,” Angelo said, flipping through his monster notebook. “And even if they do, the curses might not work on vampires. More importantly, vampires can fly, and they are much smarter than mummies.”

  Nick smirked. “How can you possibly know that?”

  “Simple.” Angelo pointed to a picture of a long hook in his notebook. “Mummies don’t have any brains. When the embalmers prepare the body, they shove this through his nose and—”

  “That’s disgusting,” Mom said, spinning around to glare at the boys from the front seat of the car. “Can’t you think of something fun to do until we get to the campsite? When I was a girl we used to sing songs while we drove.”

  Dad grinned back at them in the rearview mirror. “‘Ninety-Nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall’ was one of my favorites.”

  Nick wrinkled his nose. “So you’d rather have us sing a repetitive verse about an alcoholic beverage we won’t even be able to legally drink for ten more years ninety-nine times?”

  “No!” Mom exploded, giving Dad the evil eye. “Why don’t you play a game? You can look for the letters of the alphabet on license plates.”

  “No offense,” Nick said, “but I think I’d rather watch my fingernails grow.”

  Mom frowned. “All right. How about I Spy?”

  “That could be fun,” Angelo said. He looked out the window for a minute. “I spy something with sharp fangs and snakes for hair.”

  “A gorgon,” Nick said. “That was easy.” He looked out his window. “I spy something with four legs and the head and wings of an eagle.”

  “Trick question. If all four legs are lion legs, it’s an opinicus. But if the front legs are aquiline, like an eagle’s, it’s a griffin. Of course if the back legs are . . .”

  Mom turned away with a sigh, muttering something that sounded like “Why couldn’t I have given birth to a girl?”

  Carter, who had been going through snacks as if he hadn’t eaten in a week, looked up from the mermaid book he’d been reading and wiped his forehead. “Are we going to be on this curvy road for long?”

  “Do you feel sick?” Mom asked.

  “A little,” Carter said. His stomach gurgled so loudly it sounded like a milk shake in a blender.

  Nick studied his friend’s face. “You do look sort of pale.”

  “Look straight ahead,” Dad said. “You don’t want to throw up. Once, when I was a kid, my dad drove us up this majorly curvy road. That made my stomach feel sort of queasy. But then he fed us these smelly meat chunks that turned out to be eel jerky, and—”

  Carter’s face turned from white to green. “Pull over,” he said, clutching his hands to his mouth.

  Nick’s father pulled the car off the highway, and before Nick could even get his seat belt off, Carter was scrambling over him and clawing for the door handle.

  “Eel jerky? Really?” Mom groaned, shaking her head. “You tell a sick boy about the time your sadistic father fed you eel jerky?”

  Dad held out his hands. “He didn’t let me get to the end of my story. It turned out that even though the eel jerky smelled terrible it made my stomach feel much better. Or was that the Pepto-Bismol my mom gave me? Come to think of it, the eel might have . . .” He glanced out the window to where Carter was gagging on the side of the road. “Maybe you better go help Carter. I think he just threw up an armchair.”

  “You. Are. Impossible,” Mom said before getting out of the car.

  Dad looked back at Nick and Angelo. “There was another song we used to sing about a kid who eats a bad peanut and dies. But that might not be the best song either.”

  A few minutes later, Carter climbed into his seat, sipping from a bottle of water Nick’s mom had given him.

  Mom got back into the car, slamming her door so hard it rattled the drink in her cup holder. She looked at the boys. “Until we get to the campground, no food, no reading, and no disgusting stories. Clear?”

  “Yes,” the boys answered together.

  “Roll down both of your windows a little so Carter can get some fresh air. And you,” she said, looking at Dad. “Drive slower, stop suggesting inappropriate songs, and no more stories of any kind.”

  Dad opened his mouth as if he was going to argue, but then he thought better of it and restarted the car.

  “Feeling better?” Nick asked as they pulled onto the freeway.

  “I guess,” Carter said. “Man, it felt like my gut was trying to turn inside out.” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Actually I feel pretty good now.”

  “Not surprising.” Angelo glanced up at Nick’s mom before whispering, “Getting sick to your stomach feels gross because your body is telling you not to do whatever made you sick in the first place. Throwing up releases endorphins that make you feel better so the vomiting doesn’t seem as bad.”

  Nick groaned. “Who knows stuff like that? What do you do, study books about puking?”

  “I study books about everything,” Angelo said in a tone of voice that made it clear he couldn’t understand why everyone didn’t do the same. “You never know when something will come in handy. Say an alien abducts you and makes you eat poison. Knowing when to puke and when not to could make all the difference.”

  Mom started to turn around and the boys quieted down.

  “Speaking of aliens,” Carter whispered. “When I was, you know, yakking, something weird happened.”

  “Please don’t tell me your puke formed the shape of a flying saucer,” Nick said. A couple of years before, Carter had gotten on a kick where everything formed some kind of symbol. Clouds looked like werewolves, trees looked like dragons. Nick and Angelo finally put a stop to it when he wanted to describe the shapes of things that really shouldn’t be discussed.

  “No,” Carter said. “Although n
ow that you mention it . . .”

  Angelo held up a finger. “Don’t go there.”

  “Fine,” Carter said. “Besides, that’s not what I wanted to tell you.”

  “What did you want to tell us?” Angelo asked, twirling one hand impatiently.

  Carter waved Nick and Angelo closer. “Okay. When I was throwing up—which actually looked more like a pepperoni pizza than a flying saucer—I think something was watching me from just inside the woods.”

  “An animal?” Nick asked, hoping it was a raccoon and not a bear. True, they were going to be camping near the beach. But if there were bears in the woods, and they smelled something tasty like beef stew—or a kid—they might come exploring.

  “I don’t think so. I heard a branch crack when I first got out of the car. But I wasn’t paying much attention because I was . . .”

  “We know what you were doing,” Angelo said. “Get on with the story.”

  Carter started to take a bag of M&M’s out of his pocket, but Nick put a hand over the bag. “Better not.”

  “Yeah.” Carter reluctantly put the bag back. “Anyway, I heard this branch crack and I thought I saw something in the shadows. When I looked in its direction, it disappeared into the trees.”

  “It probably was an animal,” Angelo said. “When Nick’s dad pulled the car over, it came to see what was going on. Then, when you got out, you scared it. There are lots of animals in these woods. Squirrels, raccoons, deer, mountain lions. Even bears.”

  Nick bit the inside of his cheek. So there are bears. Great.

  “It wasn’t an animal,” Carter said, his eyes wide.

  “How could you tell?” Nick asked. “Did you see it?”

  Carter shook his head. “I didn’t see it. I heard it.”

  Angelo ran his fingers across the pages of his notebook, his eyes intense. “What did you hear?”

  “I heard it . . .” Carter swallowed and his hand went to the bag of candy in his pocket. “I heard it say something.”

  Nick felt the back of his neck grow cold. “You mean like words?”

  “Uh-huh. I heard it say . . .” Carter lowered his voice so that Nick and Angelo had to lean close to make out what he whispered. “I heard it say my name.”