there’s a washroom with a Jacuzzi just beyond those trees,” Caitlin said, drawing circles in the air with the smoke from her marshmallow stick.
After the ripening sunset stripped the last shades of purple and orange from the sky, the girls settled into their sleeping bags for the night. Talk within the tent was punctuated by an assortment of strange sounds outside.
Whenever Caitlin asked, “What’s that?” as she tended to do every few minutes, Dani answered with calming words in an anxious voice: “They’re just the natural sounds of the forest.”
Dani had heard this line in a documentary film once. She vaguely wondered if the film had meant spooky instead of natural. For a while the girls were quiet, listening to the forest and the sounds of their own breathing. They could hear frogs croaking, the gentle lapping of water on the shore, and the buzzing of mosquitoes close to their ears.
“Caitlin, they’re just a few sounds we’re going to have to get used to. In fact, we’re already getting—” A piercing hoot cut through the forest. Each girl grabbed the other, naturally, to shield herself from the eerie, natural sound. “It’s… it’s… it’s okay,” Dani stammered. “Just… just an owl.”
Caitlin released her grip on her friend. “How the heck do skunks and porcupines ever sleep around here at night?”
Dani rolled her eyes and wondered, If you roll your eyes in the dark and no one sees you do it, did it really happen? “Caitlin, skunks and porcupines don’t sleep at night. They sleep during the day.”
“Naturally,” Caitlin said.
“It’s ’cause they’re nocturnal,” Dani said in the matter-of-fact voice she always used when she was trying to impress.
“No, Dani, it’s ’cause of all the racket,” Caitlin countered. “It makes them all natural insomniacs, and us, too.”
“Caitlin, I’m sure we’ll soon be used to the sounds—” Dani’s voice went shrill as the great horned owl continued its serenade.
Caitlin laughed hysterically, and soon Dani managed a giggle. “Okay, so it may take a few months to get used to the sounds, We’ll just have to stay here until we do.”
The girls lay awake talking and listening for a long time. Eventually exhaustion displaced fear and they drifted into deep, satisfying sleep. For about five minutes.
“You awake, Dani?”
“Yeah, how ’bout you?”
“No, I’m asleep. I’m talking in my sleep ’cause you hypnotized me, or else the owl did. Maybe you can check for me.”
Dani ignored her friend’s early-morning sarcasm. “I’m not even tired.”
“Neither am I,” Caitlin said with excitement, “and it’s still nighttime.”
Dani lifted the tent flap. Whispers of light had begun to filter through the darkness. “We’re in the Hour of the Dead,” she said in her most serious voice.
“Huh?” Caitlin said, truly puzzled.
Dani continued in a serious and dramatic voice. “It’s the beginning of dawn, and I read that this is the time when most people die.”
“Wow,” Caitlin whispered.
“It’s the time when the world is most calm, so people leave this mortal coil.” Dani remembered hearing a guy called Hamlet talk like that.
“Or else people die ’cause it’s so spooky outside,” Caitlin added, but Dani was alone with her thoughts. “Hey, Dani, I’m not even tired. Maybe it should be called the Hour of the Wide Awake.”
Dani snapped back to the world of the living. “You know, you’re right. I’m wide awake, too. Come on, let’s go outside and look around.”
“Ah…” But before Caitlin could finish her objection Dani was out of the tent. When Nikki also roused himself with a world-record yawn and stretch, Caitlin concluded she had no choice but to check out this hour-of-the-dead thing. The girls stood listening to, without seeing, hundreds of birds screeching and flapping about overhead as if the entire world were already awake and eager to greet the new day. A shroud of mist lay across the entire lake and campsite.
“Wow!” Dani said.
“You can say that again,” Caitlin agreed.
“Wow!” Dani obliged. “It’s so…”
“Spooky.”
“Beautiful,” Dani whispered.
“Spooky,” Caitlin whispered.
Close to the girls but lost to the mist came a slap and a flapping of wings. The pair were startled and then mesmerized by the long, eerie sound of a loon puncturing the dull blanket of mist.
“Spooky,” Dani said.
“It’s so beautiful,” Caitlin said, her thoughts finally no longer preoccupied with outhouses.
The cry of the loon echoed across the lake unmuffled by the mistlike waves lapping the shore. As the echo faded, it seemed as if everything had stopped. The girls let out a breath together. As a second cry erupted, they strained to see through the mist and emerging light.
“There,” Dani said, pointing toward a noise coming from somewhere within the thick mist. But this sound wasn’t from a loon. The girls heard a whiz followed by a dull plop. As the pair searched the mist for the source, a shape slowly emerged.
“Something floating,” Dani said, straining on her tiptoes.
“Could be an outhouse,” Caitlin offered, reverting to her old obsession.
Dani was about to speak when the shape disappeared altogether.
Again they heard a distinct whiz followed by a dull plop. The girls leaned forward, each holding an overhanging branch to keep from falling into the water.
“I’ve been counting. It’s been about seventy seconds between whizzes,” Dani observed.
“Interesting,” Caitlin said. Every little mystery’s got to be figured out by that girl, she thought.
Dani leaned farther into the mist, determined to discover the source of the mysterious sounds and shape. Caitlin was about to comment on the precarious angle of Dani’s leaning but was struck by an amusing thought: The Leaning Tower of Dani. Caitlin was about to share her amusing thought when her friend’s branch snapped and Dani did a belly flop into the lake. Although only knee-deep, Dani shouted from the shock of her cold morning swim. She splashed wildly, and Caitlin almost followed her friend as she put a hand over her mouth, forgetting she, too, was suspended over the water from a tree twig. Just as Dani quit flailing in the water and attempted to pull herself out, both girls heard a distinct voice exclaim, “Darn!”
Dani stood completely still, dripping, shivering, and listening.
“Did you hear that, Dani?” Caitlin whispered loudly.
