Nightmare (15 page)

“Good girl,” Carole said, leading Delilah onto a familiar path.

Carole had been riding Starlight almost exclusively since she’d gotten the bay gelding, but before she owned Starlight, she’d ridden every horse at Pine Hollow. Delilah had always been one of her favorites. It felt comfortably familiar to be back in Delilah’s saddle now.

Even when she was ill—and Carole couldn’t ignore that fact—the mare had a smooth, gentle gait that was
in itself soothing. Carole took a deep breath, appreciating the fresh, cool air, tinged with the ever wonderful scent of a horse and its tack. There might also have been a hint of smoke from a burning pile of autumn leaves.

Soon the afternoon sun began to dip behind the hill. Carole looked at her watch. It was getting late. If she’d been at home with her father, they’d be working together to make dinner for themselves. But he wasn’t there. He was someplace mysterious and distant. If her father wasn’t home, there wasn’t any reason to make dinner. She was better off here, with Delilah.

The two of them passed the creek and the rock where Carole so often stopped with her friends. It was one of their favorite places. In warm weather, they could take off their riding boots and dangle their weary feet in the creek. It was shady and quiet; the only sounds were leaves waving in a breeze, an occasional birdsong, and the pleasant sound of the water brushing over rocks in the creek that gave the town its name. Here in the woods, there were no signs of willows, but closer to town, where the creek ran flat through fields, willows had taken root a long time ago.

Carole drew Delilah to a halt and dismounted. She led the mare over to the creek. The water here was high and easy for a horse—or a person—to reach. Delilah sniffed curiously. Her head hung low. She reached forward and took a sip, then stepped back. A sip was all she wanted.

Carole stepped onto one of the rocks in the stream and crouched so that she could fill her hands with water, then lifted them to her lips. It was good and fresh. She wished Delilah would take more. Surely the mare must be thirsty, but she didn’t drink any more. She knew what she wanted. Carole accepted that.

She remounted and they went on.

Darkness came quickly now, slipping into the woods and surrounding the travelers. Delilah moved forward on the paths willingly. Carole knew horses had much better night vision than humans, but Delilah’s night vision didn’t help Carole much.

She looked at her watch again. It was almost eight o’clock. They’d been riding for a couple of hours. She didn’t have any idea how far they’d gone or where they were, but she knew Delilah was tired, and so was she. It was time to stop for the night.

Carole had brought some supplies with her. She smiled to herself, realizing that she hadn’t had any plan at all when they’d left Pine Hollow, but she had come prepared. Maybe she’d had a plan somewhere in her brain that her brain hadn’t told her about.

She dismounted and then removed Delilah’s saddle and bridle. The mare seemed to be relieved, and that was good because that was how she was supposed to feel.

Carole snapped a lead rope onto Delilah’s halter and then secured the mare to a tree branch, giving her
enough rope to reach some fresh greenery that grew on the forest floor and on the few nearby bushes that still had leaves.

For herself, Carole took a granola bar from her backpack. She untied the blanket she’d secured to the back of her saddle and, using the saddle for a pillow, lay down on the ground. She’d seen plenty of cowboys sleep this way in plenty of Western movies. She couldn’t think why it wouldn’t be a good enough way for her to sleep, too.

It was early for Carole to go to sleep, barely past eight o’clock. But it had been a long, difficult day. She’d been tense and strained until she’d decided to take this trip with Delilah. Now she realized that she was tired. Nearby, she could hear Delilah’s even breathing. It soothed her. Soon she slept.

“W
HERE
IS
SHE
?” Mrs. Atwood demanded.

Lisa shrugged. “I don’t know, Mom.”

“I’ve tried to be nice to her, but this is the second time she’s been late to dinner!” Mrs. Atwood said.

“Eleanor,” said Mr. Atwood, “it’s almost nine o’clock. I don’t think this is a case of being late for dinner. I think something’s wrong.”

“Definitely,” Lisa agreed. “You know Carole well enough to know that she isn’t the kind of girl who would be that late for dinner. Carole was all upset about her
father, and now she’s missing. Something is definitely wrong. We’ve got to find her!”

“Maybe,” her mother said. Then she added, “Of course. I’m sorry. I know something has to be wrong. I just didn’t want to admit it. It was easier to think she was just late. Okay. Now, where would she have gone?”

“The way I see it, there are two choices,” said Lisa. Her parents waited. “The first is Pine Hollow. Max and Mrs. Reg said she wasn’t there. So the next choice is her house. Let’s call and see if she answers.”

Lisa punched in the number. There was no answer. She let the phone ring until the answering machine picked it up. As she had earlier, she spoke into the machine, asking Carole to pick up if she was there. Nobody picked up. She tried again. Still no answer.

“She might just be afraid to answer the phone,” said Lisa. “Maybe we should drive out there.”

Her father agreed. The two of them drove out to the Hansons’ house. The place was completely dark, and there was no sign that anyone had been there. They didn’t have a key and couldn’t go into the house, but it appeared to be deserted.

They drove back to Lisa’s house and reported to Mrs. Atwood.

“Well, according to Lisa, there are only two places she could be. Let’s try Pine Hollow again. Maybe she’s hiding
somewhere there. There are lots of places at the stable where someone could hide, aren’t there?”

There were. There were stalls with and without horses; there were lofts, small rooms, basement rooms. The place even had a root cellar, from the days when it had been a working farm.

“Good idea, Mom. Let’s call Mrs. Reg.”

M
RS
. R
EG
PUT
down the phone with a worried look.

“Max?” she called up the stairs. Max appeared, carrying his daughter, Maxi, who had on a fresh, clean diaper.

“Mrs. Atwood just called. Carole never showed up there this afternoon. Apparently, this is the last place she was seen, and we were the last people to see her. I think we’d better look again. She’s been pretty distraught—”

“She’s had a lot to be distraught about,” Max said.

“Agreed. And she always finds it comforting to be with horses. This is the logical answer. Let’s look again. This time, let’s look hard.”

“I’ll be right there,” Max said. He took Maxi into Deborah’s study, where his wife was working on some research for her latest assignment, and put the baby in the crib next to the desk.

“Carole’s missing,” he explained to Deborah. “Mother and I have to do a thorough search.”

“Oh no, I hope she’s okay,” said Deborah.

“I’ll let you know as soon as we find her,” said Max. Then he hurried down the stairs to join his mother in the stable.

It took only a minute to assure themselves that she wasn’t in any of the stalls. Starlight looked at them curiously as they passed.

Max checked the tack room; his mother checked her office. Max looked in the feed room; Mrs. Reg checked the locker area.

“Max!” she called out. He joined her there. “Here’s her book bag and her school shoes,” she said. “She must have brought her riding clothes and changed into them.”

“But her horse is here,” Max protested. “I triple-checked Starlight’s stall.”

“And I double-checked it, but neither of us has checked Delilah’s stall, have we?”

“Delilah’s not here now,” Max said. “She’s over in the—Oh, my! Let’s go.”

He grabbed a flashlight from the shelf in his mother’s office, and the two of them hurried over to the feed shed. This had to be the answer, and they both knew it.

The door of the shed was open. Delilah’s stall was empty.

Mrs. Reg and Max stepped outside and looked at the
woods that lay beyond the fields. “Oh no!” said Mrs. Reg, shaking her head with concern.

Max tugged at his mother’s sleeve. “We’ve got some phone calls to make,” he said, steering her back to the office.

“And no time to waste,” agreed Mrs. Reg.

C
AROLE
FELT
SOMETHING
brushing her cheek. She swatted at it. It was still there. She swatted again. Still there. Reluctantly she opened her eyes.

That something was an oak leaf. Carole shook her head, trying to clear her thoughts. It took a second, but then she realized that she was in the woods. She’d been sleeping on the ground, which began to explain how uncomfortable she’d been, and it was a cool, gray morning. The coolness suggested a reason for her dreams about the North Pole a full two months before Christmas!

“Oh,” she said, finally remembering why she was in the woods. There, to her left, was Delilah, resting quietly. Carole and Delilah were on a trail ride—a
long trail ride, but a trail ride. They’d gone to sleep when it became dark, and now that it was becoming light, they were waking up, or at least Carole was. She looked at her watch. It was six-thirty. The sun was up, a little bit. It was another day, and Delilah was still alive.

Carole stood up and brushed herself off. Breaking camp was a pretty simple matter. All she had to eat was another granola bar. There was grass for Delilah if she wanted any, but she didn’t seem to. A few minutes after waking, Carole had Delilah tacked up, and the two of them were off for another day of riding.

Carole had done a lot of trail riding in her life. She’d ridden trails wherever she’d lived before she moved to Willow Creek; she’d ridden trails out West when she and her friends visited Kate Devine at the Bar None Ranch. She’d ridden in the Rockies; she’d ridden in the Appalachians; she’d ridden through snowdrifts in Minnesota. And she’d been riding the trails near Pine Hollow ever since her family had moved to Willow Creek. She’d always known where she was headed and how she was going to get there, though she hadn’t always gone the right way.

This was another trail ride. It had to be because she and Delilah were on a trail. The big difference was that Carole didn’t have any idea what trail they were on or where it headed. She knew that the woods behind Pine Hollow went on for miles. Some of it was state forest.
Some of it was private land. All of it had trails, but none of it was well marked. They were completely lost. And it was okay.

“Come on, girl, let’s get going,” Carole said, knowing it didn’t matter where they went, just that they were going. Delilah picked up her pace to a slow walk, and they continued on their way.

“A
LL
RIGHT
NOW
, groups of three,” Max was saying to all the people who stood around him in a circle. Next to him was a policeman. He was handing out maps to one person in each group.

“Each of these maps is marked with a sector. You should be looking on and around the trails in that sector only. If you leave your sector, you’ll be doubling somebody else’s efforts.”

“Where do we go?” Lisa asked, reaching for a map.

“Back home!” ordered the policeman. “We don’t want any kids joining in the search for this girl, or the next thing we know, we’ll be looking for three girls, not two.” He turned his back on Lisa and Stevie.

The girls glared at him. “Like he knows as much about Carole or the woods as we do,” Stevie said.

Lisa rolled her eyes.

The policeman also gave each group a flare and a noisemaker so that anyone who found Carole and Delilah could signal all the other searchers.

It wasn’t even seven o’clock in the morning, but there
were loads of people at Pine Hollow. Max and his mother had spent a good deal of the evening before marshaling neighbors and stable riders to find Carole. Everybody knew Carole. Everybody knew Delilah. And everybody cared about both of them. Since the Pine Hollow horses were quarantined, all the searching was to be done on foot. A few people who did not keep their horses at Pine Hollow had them trailered nearby so that they could ride into the woods on them.

“Okay, off you go!” said the policeman. As if it were the beginning of a race, a hundred people ran across the field and headed into Pine Hollow’s woods. Max was among them. Mrs. Reg showed the policemen to her office, where they could set up a command center. A number of people had radios with them, and quite a few also carried cellular telephones. All information was to come to Mrs. Reg’s office.

As soon as the area was clear, Stevie and Lisa looked at one another. The policeman might have thought that they belonged at home, but they knew better. Their job was to look for Carole. Also, they knew it was against the rules, but sometimes there were things that were more important than rules. They were going to ride, and nothing and nobody would stop them.

The girls surreptitiously tacked up Belle and Starlight, paused to touch the good-luck horseshoe, and were halfway across the field before anybody noticed.