The Midnight Country

Chapter 9

One thing was for sure, I hadn’t imagined it—the dinosaur’s prints ended precisely where it had disappeared.

“Don’t go any further,” I warned. “The portal—or whatever it is—is right there.” I pointed at the final footprint.

Dillon just stood there, his hands on his hips.

“Okay, so there’s prints,” he said, looking down at the two-foot-long indentations, the sun having really brought out his freckles. “Who’s to say you didn’t make them yourself?”

I adjusted the strap of my book bag, which was digging into my shoulder. “Because I’m not a liar, like your mother. Besides, the dragonflies. Did you forget about them?”

Dillon dropped his own bag and knelt beside one of the tracks. “Dragonflies are one thing ...” He touched the roughly-compressed silt, which had a pattern of concentric rings, like a fingerprint. “Dinosaurs are something else.” He peered along the prints, following them to the water. “There’s not even a tail indentation. Tyrannosaurs drag their tails.”

“No, they don’t,” I said, shirking off my pack. I picked up a stick and crouched next to him, drew a triangle with a line over it. “It was like—a teeter-totter, okay? Only perfectly balanced.” I pointed at one end of the line. “This was its head,” I slid my finger to the opposite end of the mark. “And this was its spine ... to the tip of its tail.” I tapped the triangle. “This was its legs and torso—the center of gravity. See? Besides, it wasn’t fully grown.”

“What? It was like—it was like a bird?” He burst out laughing, rolling in the silt—which had dried in the sun—holding his stomach. “Like Big Bird?”

I think I just looked at him, as though he were mentally disabled. In his defense, it was only 1978. Jurassic Park was a long ways off.

“A little—yeah. Like a wild turkey. What are you doing?”

He’d picked up a rock and stood. “You said the portal is right here. I’m going to test your Hypo Thesis.”

“Hypothesis.”

“Whatever.” He stepped back and began to swing his arm back and forth. “Watch out. We don’t know what forces this might unleash.”

He was being cute, of course; which made it all the more satisfying—and yet no less shocking—when he tossed the stone underhand over the last of the prints—and it vanished without a trace. Just poof! It was Gone.

After which, visibly disturbed, he turned to me.

“Bet you’re glad we didn’t bet,” I said.

And then I stood myself—and prepared to do what I’d decided to do even before lunch: which was to enter the portal—the breach, the tear in the fabric of space-time, whatever—myself.

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