And then I read that they had already filled their quota and weren't looking for anything else.
Ugh. News traveled slow in the days before the Internet and email. Well, the promising news traveled slow; but the disappointing stuff was blazing fast. I was still doing everything by the US Post and getting my information from newsletters in those ancient times.
Anyway, I found this old thing stored away on my portable hard drive. I did manage to salvage the setting, which I used in my adult horror novel, WITHERING.
A Dinosaur in the Neighborhood
by
James
Robert Smith
Chapter One
"Are you sure a dinosaur walked past
here?" Ernie asked his Grandfather Partridge.
The sun was blazing hot on this summer day
in Woodvine, but twelve year old Ernie was out hiking in the woods with his
grandfather and his younger brother, Billy.
"You'll see soon enough. There are
lots of dinosaur tracks out here." Grandfather led the way. He may have
retired his position as paleontologist years ago, but he still liked hunting
for fossils.
"I've never seen a dinosaur
track," said Billy, who had just turned ten and was kind of a pest.
"I'll bet if we found a real dinosaur, it would make a great pet."
They were following a path through the
woods, and it suddenly came to an end at a big outcropping of hard rock that
baked in the sun. "You wouldn't make much of a pet out of the dinosaur
that made these footprints," said Mr. Partridge.
And there they were. A line of gigantic
dinosaur footprints leading off across the rocks from where they were standing all the way to the
forest on the other side of the outcrop. Billy put his foot next to the first
one: like some giant bird track. His foot was tiny compared to the big
fossilized imprint.
"Gosh," he said. "What kind
of dinosaur made this?"
Mr. Partridge took a blue handkerchief out
of his pocket and wiped his forehead. "I'm not sure, Billy. But I think it
was probably a Ceratosaurus, or maybe an Antrodemus--I mean an
Allosaurus. They keep changing the names on a retired old professor," he added with an embarrassed chuckle.
"Wow," Ernie said. "Those
were both pretty mean dinosaurs. They used to eat big old Apatosaurus." He
brushed back his brown hair, feeling the sun beat down on him.
"You're right about that," Mr.
Partridge agreed. He stepped out onto the rock and began to wander off
downhill. He was gazing at the ground. Billy and Ernie knew how much their
grandfather liked hunting for fossils. When he was concentrating on searching
the ground, he sometimes forgot they were even there with him, visiting for the
summer.
"We're going to follow the
tracks," Ernie told him. "While you hunt for fossils." Their
grandfather nodded absently as he wandered away from them. "Let's
go," Ernie said to his brother.
The boys began to follow the tracks. They
led far across the big expanse of rock, across the flats and uphill, toward the
woods. "Look," Billy pointed. "He must have been following the
smaller dinosaur." Sure enough. Where Billy pointed, you could see where a
smaller dinosaur had been running ahead of the big one.
"That must have been some chase, huh
Billy?"
"Heck, yeah! I wish I could have seen
it."
And then they seemed to be at the end of
the trail. The tracks in the rock disappeared beneath the leaves and brush that
formed the edge of the forest. Pine trees, tall and green, stood all around.
"Ha. It looks like they both just walked off into the woods, doesn't
it?" Billy was pointing at the greenery in front of them.
"Sure does," said Ernie.
"Let's go take a look in there, and see if the rocks poke up through the
dirt. Maybe we can find some more tracks. Maybe we can find where the big one
caught up with the little one."
"Wow! That would be neat," Billy
said.
And they pushed through the bushes and
went into the woods.
"Gosh. It sure is dark in here,"
Ernie said.
"Yeah. Maybe we should turn around.
Maybe there really is a dinosaur still around here." Billy was
craning his neck, looking all over the woods.
"I doubt that," Ernie
told him. "Dinosaurs have all been dead for about sixty-five million
years."
No sooner had those words left Ernie's
mouth than the two boys suddenly heard something crashing through the
underbrush. Something was coming through the woods. It was running
fast, right at them! Something was headed their way!
The brothers grabbed hold of one another
and froze.
Chapter Two
Suddenly, from out of the dark woods,
Billy and Ernie could make out a movement. A blot of shadow was moving their
way. And soon they were relieved to see that it was human. Two humans,
in fact: a boy and girl.
Both kids, carrying metal
pails, saw Billy and Ernie and stopped running. The brothers could see that the
pails were full of blackberries.
"Hello." It was Ernie who spoke
up first. "You two scared the heck out of us!"
"We thought you were a
dinosaur," Billy said before Ernie could stop him.
"A dinosaur?" The girl,
who, like Ernie, looked to be about twelve years old, started to laugh, throwing
back her head so that her long black hair shook. "You two certainly look
scared enough to have seen a dinosaur." Her little brother, Billy's age,
was now laughing, too.
"Come on," Ernie said.
"Give us a break. We're staying way out here in the country with our
grandparents this summer and we don't know our way around." He stuck out
his tanned hand. "I'm Ernie Partridge," he told them as the girl
shook his hand. "And this is my little brother Billy."
The girl stopped laughing as she turned to
Billy to greet him, too. "I'm Sally," she told them. "And this
is my brother, Ted. We're staying with our grandmother, and she lives
way off in the woods, near Shadowtown Swamp."
"Shadowtown Swamp? My grandfather
told us to stay away from the swamp. He says it's full of quicksand and
alligators." Billy stared wide eyed at the two kids who could live in such
a place.
"Aw, it's not so bad," Ted told
them. "Not if you know your way around. And we know our way around. Our
grandmother taught us all the paths."
"Anyway," asked Sally,
"what are you two doing out here in the woods?"
"We came out to look at the old
dinosaur footprints with our granddad. He used to be paleontologist at the big
museum in Atlanta, and now he lives out here, too." Ernie wiped at his
face. It was hot and he was getting sweaty.
"Oh. Those old
footprints?" Ted was pointing toward the rocks which lay just beyond the
trees they were standing in. "I've seen other footprints like
those," he said. "But the ones I saw weren't in rock."
"What do you mean?" asked Ernie.
Sally was nudging her brother in the ribs,
to get him to be quiet. But it was too late. He had a big mouth and once it got
going, no one could stop it.
"The tracks I've seen are in the swamp. And they weren't in any old rocks. They were in the mud!"
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