Bone Beds of the Badlands, page 13
“Why are you doing this?” said Dorothy, just blurting it out. I couldn’t believe she was trying to talk to the Reptile again. She seemed to have recovered a little. Her face looked defiant.
He twisted his long neck around and almost snarled at her. “I will do whatever I need to do to survive. That’s what we all do.”
“What about right and wrong?”
Oh man, why did she say that? Antagonize him, Dorothy, good idea. She really was like something from a movie. One for the kiddies. Who did she think she was, Anne of Green Gables?
“Right and wrong?” asked the Reptile with a smirk. “There is reality and there is fantasy, not right and wrong. No one cares about right and wrong any more. That’s an old idea. Whatever happens happens, whatever works works. Life is a business now. I am a businessman of a sort. I am what I am.”
“You aren’t an animal.”
“I am being hunted like one! Now, spare me the speeches they give in books, little girl.” He had had enough. He waved us forward. “Let’s move out. As long as you two keep up, this will be a breeze. No one knows we’re here.”
“No one?” I asked, before I could stop myself. I had suddenly remembered the hoofprints we had seen in the sand nearby.
“Of course not. No one is on to us, yet. And they won’t be for at least a few hours.”
A few hours? What was he talking about?
“How did you get here from Drumheller?” I asked, my mind racing.
“I had a horse, if you must know. I stole it from that saloon in Wayne.”
“Had a horse?” I blurted out.
“I dumped it before I reached the park. I couldn’t find enough water for the poor beast. You know, I was once a member of my local humane society. Let no one ever say that the Reptile is cruel to animals.” For an instant, a smile flickered across his face. But it quickly faded. “No more questions. Let’s move.”
He reached down and lifted something off the ground. It looked like one of those lights people have on their ceilings, for track lighting. Except it was much bigger. It was more like a searchlight, the kind used to light a whole street on the set of a movie. They’re always shooting movies in Toronto, so I’d seen lots of them. But what was it doing here? I could see it had a switch. It seemed as though it was battery operated.
“Once we get farther away from the cave, this will come in handy,” he said. “Ah, showbiz.”
Dorothy and I exchanged glances. I could tell by her expression that she had thought of the hoofprints, too. We had the same idea as we moved out into the darkness. The horse. The searchlight. Before long, we both started stumbling—on purpose.
“What’s wrong with you?” snapped the Reptile. “Can’t you two walk?”
“I can’t see,” said Dorothy. “We need some light.”
“Forget it. Not until we get further into the park. Walk!”
But a few more minutes of our stumbling changed his mind. “All right,” he said, “you can use the searchlight, on low. But just for a few minutes, until you’re used to the footing.” He thrust the light into my hands.
We were hoping that in minutes we would know all about that horse. Was it still in the area? Was it Grant Tyson’s best horse, the stolen “John Ware” from Wayne? Was someone new riding it? Or was there someone else out there? I turned on the searchlight. Pretending to be awkward, I let it flash around on the hillsides, letting it linger a bit in the area where I figured we had seen the tracks. About ten minutes later we heard the sound of hooves.
The Reptile hissed at us. “Stop! And douse that light!” We all stood still in the darkness. The sound stopped. We looked up at the ghostly castles on the hillsides.
“Start moving!” said the Reptile in another agitated whisper. “And no one makes a sound!”
But when we moved, the hooves moved. Several times we stopped. Silence. Then we walked again. Horse’s hooves. Finally, we stood still for a long time. The hooves started again and came towards us at a very slow pace. The Reptile turned towards the sound. A ghostly form began emerging from the darkness. What sort of beast would it be? First we saw the eyes, then a horse’s head, then a body…and no rider. A saddle was strapped to its back. The saddle was marked with the scarlet and gold of the RCMP.
“Halt, Flame!” said a voice out of the darkness. It sounded familiar, and it was right behind us. A man grabbed us and pulled us back, shielding us with his body. He was wearing a white Stetson. We heard his pistol click into firing position. “I believe I have my man,” said Steele Lougheed, training his firearm at that big, shaved head.
But the Reptile didn’t come by his reputation for no reason. He instantly vanished into the darkness like a phantom, bolting away at top speed. Just as quickly Lougheed was after him.
“Stay with Flame!” he shouted. “He knows the way out.”
We heard them run into the night. And before long we could hear nothing.
“Well,” said Dorothy, “I’m not standing on the sidelines.” She put one foot into the stirrup and threw herself onto Flame’s back. “Give me that!” she cried, pointing at the searchlight. But I wasn’t about to miss this either.
“Only if I come with it!” I shouted, putting the light in one hand, a foot onto a big rock beside the horse, and throwing myself up behind Dorothy into Lougheed’s big saddle. I switched on the beam, Dorothy brought her heels into Flame’s side, and we shot off like two human cannonballs into the night.
Bouncing up and down and barely holding on, I scanned all around with the light and soon saw them, running at full speed a couple hundred metres in front of us. Then we turned a corner in the Valley of the Castles and everything got weird. Very weird. The whole far end of the valley was lit up with an otherworldly glow! The hills, the valley, everything, gleamed like something from a dream. And right smack in the middle of that light, just standing there, perfectly still…was the dinosaur!
We came thundering towards the glowing scene. It grew brighter, like it was day instead of night. First came the Reptile, then Lougheed, and then us.
The music started again. The rain came down, the thunder crashed, the drums, the bass, and the guitar began, and that eerie electric piano cascaded over everything. The dinosaur started to move, its head almost bobbing in time to the second verse of “Riders on the Storm”; something about a killer on a road with a brain squirming like a toad, something about death too.
As we approached at top speed, we could see that people were gathered around the dinosaur now. A whole crew of people. There were many more lights like the kind we had with us, and boom microphones on long steel poles, and cameras, and cranes. A man in a red beret was shouting through a megaphone in an American accent.
“Okay, this is just before the T. rex rips apart the plant-eater! All right, people, I need this to be spooky and freaky! And real. Real real, comprendez? Music’s good! Turn it up! Dinosaur Wars II, take fifteen! Cue the violence!”
The Reptile rushed on, closing in on the bright lights as we closed in on both him and Steele Lougheed. Off to our right, just emerging out the darkness, I could see Rhett, Terry, and Bomber staggering forward as fast as they could go, drawn by the lights.
I stared up at the dinosaur as we neared. It had a stunned look in its eyes. And the eyes didn’t look like eyes at all. Then a sign came into view behind the man in the red beret. “Dinosaur Wars II, Scarecrow Productions, Hollywood, California” it read, in big, gold letters. That dinosaur was a massive, animatronic work of genius from the geniuses who can fake anything! Nearby I saw a big pile of “human” skeletons. Now I knew where our criminal wizard had found his mysterious bone—this crew had been in Drumheller when we first got there!
The Reptile arrived without warning, thundering onto the movie set. When he came into the cameras’ view the director started to swear. The others looked stunned. But soon a man holding a script and a pen ran forward, squealing with delight.
“Wow!” he gushed. “Do you see this! He looks dangerous! Very real! We can USE THIS!”
The Reptile’s face gleamed a lurid shade in the set’s lights. His eyes glowed deep in his sockets. He turned and saw the film crew and glowered at them.
“Cameras rolling!” shouted the director suddenly, not swearing any more. And so, they filmed it. In came Lougheed at full speed, the lights shining off the buttons of his uniform.
“Oh man, a Mountie! This is to die for!” shouted the guy holding the script.
We cut across the set on the horse at full gallop, knocking things down as we went. We weren’t quite as big a hit with the Hollywood guys.
“KIDS!” shrieked the director. “They’re ruining everything! There’s no place for kids in this!”
But we didn’t hear much else from him because we were soon all gone from the set and back out into the night. The music swelled. Someone had cranked it up.
There was no way we were letting the Reptile get away. We just had to catch him. The film crew started to run after us, their Steadicam pointed straight into our search beam, looking for the Reptile and the Mountie. Suddenly there was a horrific scream. It sounded like our prey.
We moved forward a little, and so did the camera crew, searching with our light. We saw Lougheed, standing alone, his gun in his holster, breathing hard, frantically looking for the Reptile, just as we were.
Then we caught sight of him, kicking his feet at something, still screaming. Lougheed spotted him and moved in. In an instant he had him down and the handcuffs on. The Reptile stiffened. He wouldn’t speak. He wouldn’t say what had tormented him in the night. He almost seemed embarrassed.
Norris arrived with Ophelia about an hour later. The film crew had finally gotten a call through and the Newcombes were nearby in the town of Brooks. They were so excited to see us that I thought Norris himself was going to faint. He set down that briefcase of his, pulled out a container of bottled water about the size of a swimming-pool noodle, and started drinking and splashing his face so he would stay upright. I guess the whole thing had been pretty rough on both of them. They’d not only been devastated by our disappearance, but they’d had to explain everything to all our parents and to the school principal. Then the media had gotten hold of it and kind of cornered them in their hotel room. Norris looked as though he hadn’t slept for about a decade, and Ophelia must have had a bucket of makeup on; I guess her poor face needed it.
All the parental units had flown in to Calgary on the second day we were lost and were on their way, making all sorts of demands about doctors checking us out and that sort of thing.
We were okay. Well, we were exhausted, hungry, dehydrated, and sunburned to the point where we each looked like a pizza on a stick. But really, we were all right. The doctors checked us out and pumped vitamins and fluids into us until we almost wished we could just go back out into the badlands.
When Mom and Dad got there, I had to admit to being relieved. They were what I really needed. Mom got in all the hugs she wanted. And Dad, he just kept slapping me on the back and saying stuff like, “Way to go, champ! Thought we’d lost you!” Then his eyes would get a little red and he’d walk away for a while. I’d never tell them this, but I was really looking forward to going back to Toronto with them to recover from all of this—there’s really nothing a little love and home sweet home won’t cure.
Actually, our biggest problem was Ophelia. The moment she saw us, she actually threw her arms around us and tried to kiss us!
And next morning something else happened that was nearly as revolting—Newcombe saw the Reptile being moved into a truck and immediately went into some sort of a stance. It looked disturbingly like a kung fu move. And he did it right in front of a whole battalion of Mounties. Gag me!
It was a pretty happy bus ride back to Drumheller, where we were all going to relax for a day. The parental units, the Nortons, the Singhs, and the Connorses, were in their rental cars right behind us, following us like mother bears or something. Rhett, who was just bouncing off the walls of the bus with happiness, started the “Wish I were…” game. “Myself!” shouted Dorothy, looking at us with a grin.
“Five kids,” I cracked, “on their way home!” No one else could top that. And when we got to Drum, it seemed almost like home. I smiled at the dinosaurs on the sidewalks and the garbage cans shaped like hoodoos.
It had been a horrible few days. But Dorothy and I and my three friends had learned a lot about ourselves out in that strange land. I’d seen some new sides to old buddies. I’d always thought Bomber was the dim-bulb of the group, but he’d come up with some pretty smart ideas when we got lost; Terry, who was easily the most timid of the guys, actually displayed more courage out there than the rest of us at times; and Rhett, good old Rhett, who we all admired because he was so cool, had shown the least heart when it counted, and then the most emotion when everything turned out well. He was even hugging Dorothy at the end. I guess it goes to show that people aren’t always exactly what they seem.
That night the parental units and I gathered around the supper table at the Osborne house and talked. Dorothy was acting a little funny—she was telling Mom and Dad what a fantastic place Drumheller was, and she really seemed to mean it! The food was great, heaped on our plates like the Rocky Mountains: roast beef and baked potatoes and buttered vegetables and lots of pie for dessert, a good old-fashioned western Canadian meal. Everything was perfect, except for the parental units, both pairs. Dad had heard about The Doors song and was going on and on about it with Dorothy’s dad, who strangely didn’t seem to mind a bit.
“It’s about love being greater than evil!” exclaimed Dad.
“Girl, you’ve gotta love your man,” sang Mom and Dorothy’s mom in unison, finishing off the song. “Take him by the hand, make him understand…the world on you depends!”
“Gag me,” whispered Dorothy. But she barely got it out because we were enveloped in a group hug by all four adults. I hate to admit it, but it felt pretty good. Being wrapped up in their arms with Dorothy was better than being chased by the Reptile any day, in any time, past or present.
After dinner Dorothy told me she had something she wanted to show me. We headed off into a fairly dark room at the back of their house. It had a row of couches and big soft chairs and the largest big-screen television I’d ever seen.
“This is what we call the screening room,” she said. “Sometimes Mom and Dad even show real movies here, using a film projector. Just like you’d see in the theatre. They have all the equipment.”
She pulled something out from behind her back. “I have a surprise,” she said. It was an old videocassette.
“A movie?”
“Sort of. It’s part of one. Dinosaur Wars II…Interrupted.” She laughed. “It turns out the director of that movie wanted the part we ended up in to be shot on an old-fashioned videocam. But he was so upset with us appearing in it that he told the cameraman to just throw out all the tape he used that night. Said even the part with ‘the freak’ was useless. I, uh…”—she smiled—“took the liberty of picking it out of the garbage bin. Mom and Dad have an old VCR here.”
A few minutes later we were watching the Reptile come snorting onto the screen, with a Mountie and two kids on horseback in pursuit. It was a very weird thing to look at. It wasn’t like watching a movie, though. It was frightening and very real. We watched as we rode off into the night, and the picture started getting darker and unfocused as the cameraman chased after us, catching glimpses of the Reptile spotlighted in the darkness. Then there was a pause.
“That must be where he screamed,” I said.
Dorothy had left the remote control on top of the television. She stood up to get it. The tape was about to end.
“Hold it!” I said. Before us on the large screen we could see dark images of the Reptile suddenly dancing in horror in front of us. It was very murky. He seemed to be kicking at something near his feet. Then the screen went blank.
“Can you run that back and slow it down?” I asked.
Dorothy rewound and we watched. When the Reptile started kicking, she put the tape on slow motion.
There, at his feet, small animals were attacking him. They looked like lizards. But they weren’t like any lizards we had ever seen before. We froze it and walked up to the screen. They had long tails, stood upright on their legs, and had sharp teeth like razors. We saw bright, yellow eyes, on fire.
They were miniature dinosaurs! Prehistoric creatures. Alive!
“Dorothy, don’t ever leave here,” I said, stunned, my eyes riveted on the screen.
“Why?” she whispered.
“Because you live in the Land of Oz.”
More Dylan Maples Adventures
The Mystery of Ireland’s Eye
978-1-77108-650-9
The Secret of the Silver Mines
978-1-77108-704-9
Coming Soon:
Monster in the Mountains (April 2019)
Phantom of Fire (July 2019)
About the Author
KEVIN KELLY PHOTOGRAPHY
Shane Peacock is a novelist, playwright, journalist, and television screenwriter for audiences of all ages. Among his novels are Last Message, a contribution to the groundbreaking Seven Series for young readers, and The Dark Missions of Edgar Brim, a trilogy for teens. His picture book, The Artist and Me, was shortlisted for the Marilyn Baillie Award. His bestselling series for young adults, The Boy Sherlock Holmes, has been published in twelve languages and has found its way onto more than sixty shortlists. It won the prestigious Violet Downey Award, two Arthur Ellis Awards for crime fiction, the Ruth & Sylvia Schwartz Award, The Libris Award, and has been a finalist for the Governor General’s Award and three times nominated for the TD Canadian Children’s Literature Award; as well, each novel in the series was named a Junior Library Guild of America Premier Selection. Visit shanepeacock.ca.
