Boys Against Girls (2 page)

“What?”

Wally turned completely around this time. “Hasn't anyone told you about the abaguchie?”

“What are you talking about?”

“It's some kind of animal. Except no one knows what, so we just call it the abaguchie here in Buck-man. Every so often someone sees it around dark, and the newspaper has another story. They say it carries off pets and stuff.”

Caroline's eyes got as dark as her hair, which she wore in a long ponytail. “You're just making that up.”

Wally shrugged. “Don't believe me, then. I don't care. Ask anyone. You can even look it up in old newspapers.”

He turned toward the front of the room again as Miss Applebaum rapped for attention. But as the homework papers were being collected later, Wally felt another tug on his sweater, and heard Caroline whisper, “Does it ever attack people?”

“Hasn't yet,” he whispered over his shoulder. “But it's carried off some hundred-pound calves. You won't find many people sitting out on their steps alone after dark.” And when he faced forward again, Wally had to be very, very careful that a smile didn't take over his whole face.

Two
Call of the Wild

      T
he very first thing that entered Caroline Malloy's head when she heard about the abaguchie was what a marvelous movie it would make. That would be the title, of course: just
Abaguchie
.

While the credits were rolling across the screen, the camera would be scanning a typical small-town neighborhood about dusk, zooming in on a young girl sitting on the steps of her house with a kitten in her lap, watching the sky grow dark, the fireflies come out, and the moon rise up in the sky.

After a while she would feel chilly, so she'd put down her kitten and go inside to get a sweater, and when she came back, the kitten would be gone. Worse yet, on the steps where the kitten had been, there would be … Yes¡ A pool of blood. And a little tuft of white fur, along with the kitten's collar. And the girl's eyes would open wider and wider. She
would grab her throat and stifle a scream, and then … in big letters filling up the whole screen,
ABAGUCHIE, starring Caroline Lenore Malloy.

“Caroline, what the heck?” asked her oldest sister, Eddie, as the girls walked home from school, and it was only then that Caroline realized she was walking down the sidewalk clutching her throat. Caroline's one ambition in life was to be an actress, and an actress, as everyone knows, always has an eye out for a good role.

“How did I look just then?” Caroline asked eagerly. “Horrified? Frightened? Stunned? What?”

“You looked like you were about to throw up,” said Beth, the middle daughter in the Malloy family.

Caroline looked at her ten- and eleven-year-old sisters. “I was just thinking about what it would be like if I found a pool of blood and a little tuft of white fur where I'd left my kitten. If I
had
a kitten.”

Eddie gave her a peculiar look, lifted the baseball cap she wore all the time on her head, and put it on again backward. “Sometimes I wonder about you, Caroline, I really do.”

But Beth was more sympathetic. Beth always had her nose stuck in a book,
Zombies on the Loose
or
The Smell of Midnight
or something, so she understood things like pools of blood and tufts of fur.

“What got you thinking about that?” Beth asked.

“Wally Hatford asked me if we had pets. He said if
we did, we'd better not leave them outside after dark, because the abaguchie had been seen again”

“The what?” asked Eddie. Eddie's name was really Edith Ann, but she hated it, and preferred Eddie.

“That's what he called it. He said nobody knows what kind of animal it is, so people around here call it the abaguchie. It comes out around dusk and several people have seen it. He said there had just been another sighting.”

“Spookie!” breathed Beth.

But Eddie scoffed. “That sounds exactly like something those Hatford goons would dream up¡ Caroline, can't you tell when somebody's pulling your leg?”

“He said we could look it up in old newspapers, that there had been stories written about it.”

“Oh,” said Eddie, and grew thoughtful.

•

At dinner that evening Caroline was thinking some more about the movie she was creating in her mind when she suddenly wondered what would play the part of the kitten.
No
one would want a real kitten to be snatched up by some creature and squeezed and clawed to death. Then she realized that a little kitten didn't have to die at all to leave a little blood and fur behind. All you needed was a
close-up of a kitten sitting peacefully on the steps in the dark, and in the next shot you could have a pool of fake blood and a piece of fuzz off a wool blanket or something.

She put a spoonful of strawberry jelly on her plate and stirred it around with a fork. Too light. She poured a little catsup in it and mixed some more. That looked somewhat more like blood, but perhaps if she—

“Caroline, what on earth are you doing?” asked her father.

“Making blood,” Caroline told him. “For my death-of-a-kitten scene.”

“Your what?” came Mother's voice.

So Caroline had to explain once again what Wally Hatford had told her about the abaguchie.

“That sounds like absolute nonsense,” Mother said.

“Well, I've heard the faculty mention it once or twice,” Father said. He was coaching the college football team this year, and wasn't quite sure whether he would stay on after the year was over or move the family back to Ohio. “I've heard different players on the team joke about it now and then too.”

“Then that's the last time I'm going to go for firewood after dark,” Mother said.

“Could be some bobcat or something, but from what the faculty members say, it's supposed to be
bigger. Probably like the Loch Ness monster—the more you talk about it, the bigger it gets’ Father said.

•

There was a PTA meeting the following night, and both Mr. and Mrs. Malloy got ready to go.

“Anything special you want us to ask your teachers?” Mother said, throwing on her jacket.

“Could you ask when the next school play will be?” Caroline begged. “I'll just die if I have to wait until fifth grade to be in another play.”

“Ask when I can try out for the Softball team,” Eddie told her father. “They said March, but I see guys out there practicing all the time, and I want to be sure they don't hold tryouts without me.”

“Ask why we can't have silent reading at our desks like we did back in Ohio,” Beth suggested. “I could finish a book in two days if we just had silent reading in school.”

“We'll ask,” said Mother, and she and Father headed outside and down the bank toward the swinging bridge, to walk the few blocks to Buckman Elementary.

Eddie and Beth spread their homework out on the dining-room table and began their assignments, while Caroline stretched out on the sofa with her
geography book and tried to memorize the capitals of the states west of the Mississippi.

The fire in the fireplace snapped and popped occasionally, and now and then there would be a clunk as another log fell, smoking and sizzling. She recited under her breath:

“North Dakota, Bismarck,
South Dakota, Pierre;
Nebraska-ka, Lin-colon,
Kansas, To-peak.”

Suddenly she put down her geography book and listened.

There was a soft distant sound of … well, she wasn't sure. A moan? Like something in pain, perhaps?

She lifted her head from the cushion and looked at Beth and Eddie.

Another moan, more like a howl this time. A moaning howl. A howling moan. Closer now. Was it anything they had ever heard before? She didn't think so.

Beth and Eddie had heard it too.

Caroline swung her legs over the side of the couch and sat up. They listened some more.

Again the noise came. More like an animal, Caroline thought, but no animal she could name. It was growing louder all the time.

All three girls ran to the dining-room window overlooking the Buckman River below, hands cupped over their eyes to search out the darkness, ears listening for the least little sound.

“Owl-oooo¡ Owl-oooo!” came the noise again. Then a sort of yipping, yelping sound, followed by another “Owl-oooo!”

Beth's voice was shaky. “Eddie, what
is
it?”

“I don't know. It's not far away, whatever it is,” Eddie said.

“Should we—should we call Mom and Dad at the school and ask them to come home?” asked Caroline, now frightened out of her wits.

“Or the police, maybe,” said Beth.

“Owl-oooo¡ Yip, yip¡ Owl-oooo!” came the sound.

Caroline clung to Beth.

There was a grunting, scrabbling sound, like a creature snuffing and digging just outside the window; then the “owl-oooo” came once again.

“A-are all the windows locked?” asked Caroline.

“Never mind the windows; what about the doors?” asked Eddie. “Beth, go check.”

“You come with me,” said Beth, and her voice sounded unnaturally high.

Huddled together, the girls moved toward the front door and checked it, then started toward the kitchen.

“Owl-oooo¡ Owl-oooo!”

“Wait a minute. …” Eddie stood perfectly still. “Don't make a sound.”

Caroline and Beth froze.

“Owl-oooo¡ Yip, yip, yip!”

“Listen’ said Eddie. “Along about here there should be a whine.”

Caroline stared at Eddie. They listened some more.

“Owl-oooo¡ Yip¡ … Owl-oooo¡ Yip¡ Yip!” And then, just as Eddie said, a whine.

Caroline's mouth dropped open.

“I
know
those sounds!” Eddie told them. “That's a cassette tape of
Wolves in the Wild.
We had to listen to that in science class last year in Ohio. We had to listen to that so much, I know it by heart.”

“It's the Hatford boys!” said Caroline.

“Them!”
said Beth.

Caroline didn't know whether she was more angry or excited. Every time the boys did something to them, it just gave the girls an excuse to do something worse.

“What are we going to do?” asked Beth.

“Leave the curtains open just like they are. You two run around inside and act scared,” Eddie told them. “I'm going to sneak out and catch them when they go back down the driveway.”

Three
Bunny Slippers