brought the bear to life? Did he even believe in magic?
“Jackson!” his mother shouted from outside his room. “What’s all the noise? You’d better not be on the phone! I said no friends!”
His eyes widened in alarm. His mother! What if his drawing had done something to her too? He had used the No. 13 pencil to draw her as a witch.
Heart pounding, he flipped to the drawing of his mother as a witch and erased frantically. He started with the face. It was disgusting. The nose! The warts! How could he have made his own mother look so ugly?
The door to his room swung open and Jackson looked up, catching his breath. He shrieked but his mother didn’t say a word.
She couldn’t.
Her mouth was gone. It had been erased along with the rest of her face.
The End
This story and twelve others appear in the book Mystery Underground: California Creatures. Look for it on MysteryUnderground.com.
Sleeping Bear Doom
Sleeping Bear National Lakeshore, MI
August 17, 12:36 pm
“All right, kids,” Mr. Bennett announced as he pulled the family car to a stop, “you can open your eyes now.”
Sitting in the backseat, Caleb and his sister Katie opened more than that. Their mouths also dropped at the sight before them. They leaned forward, squeezing into the space between the front seats for a better view.
“Wow!” Caleb gasped, staring out the windshield. “That’s a lot of sand!”
“It’s sandnormous!” Katie agreed.
The Bennett family was visiting the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. They had just arrived at the foot of the famous Dune Climb near Empire, Michigan. It was here that visitors could hike up the front of the dunes—a steep climb over two hundred feet high!
“How far is it to the water?” Katie asked her parents. By “water,” she meant Lake Michigan.
“It’s almost two miles across the dunes,” Mrs. Bennett replied. “That’s why we packed lunch. We’re going to be here all afternoon.”
Next to her, Mr. Bennett chuckled. He glanced at his kids in the rearview mirror.
“Did you hear that?” he asked, still grinning. “Mom said, ‘all afternoon.’ What are you going to do without electronics for so long?”
“I’ll wait in the car,” Caleb said without cracking a smile. He was joking, of course. Nothing could keep him from exploring the magnificent dunes.
Mr. Bennett snorted. “If you stay here, the dunes will eat you,” he said. “They’re constantly growing, you know. Every year they gobble up more and more land like a hungry monster.”
Caleb nudged his sister. “Here it comes,” he whispered.
“In fact,” Mr. Bennett continued, “this place should really be called—”
“Sleeping Bear Doom!” the whole family said at once.
Laughter erupted throughout the car. The Bennett family had heard this story before. Mr. Bennett had repeated it many times on their vacation.
“I guess you already heard that one,” Mr. Bennett said.
“Yeah, Dad,” Katie snickered.
“Like a hundred times,” Caleb added.
Their father played innocent. “I have a good memory but it’s short,” he said with a wink.
The Bennett kids groaned. They had heard that one before too.
Katie pulled the door handle and pushed open her door. She slipped out of the car before anyone else unbuckled their seatbelt.
“Race you to the top!” she shouted, starting to dash across the parking lot in her bare feet.
Caleb zoomed after her. He had long legs and was a natural runner. He caught her where the dunes began to rise and the pair turned around. Their parents lagged behind, rummaging in the trunk for their picnic supplies.
“Dad, I think you’re getting old,” Caleb shouted, barely out of breath. “You didn’t try to catch up.”
Mr. Bennett waved. “I didn’t want to embarrass you by beating you.”
Caleb laughed. “Weak!” he retorted.
“Go on,” Mr. Bennett said, waving again. “We’ll meet you at the lake. Just don’t get too far ahead. Keep us in sight.”
Caleb and Katie didn’t wait to hear more. They waved, turned, and started to climb.
The Dune Climb rose before them like a mountain and people of all ages were scattered across its sandy face. Squealing kids charged recklessly downhill, their legs windmilling like cartoon characters. Falling while running down was almost guaranteed. Yet when they rolled to the bottom, they would happily climb to the top and race down again.
The Bennett kids pressed on. They were on a mission, Lake Michigan or bust. They scaled the Dune Climb easily and paused at the top of the first rise. Their parents, looking tiny far below, had just started to climb.
“Looks like we can keep going,” Katie said, and Caleb nodded. The pair started hiking again.
The second rise of the Climb wasn’t as steep, and sunshine warmed the sand beneath their feet. A cloudless blue sky met the sandy horizon, making the dunes look as if they stretched on forever.
“Walking in all this sand is harder than I remember,” Caleb complained. “Where did it come from anyway?”
“Depends on who you ask,” Katie shrugged.
“I’m asking you,” he said.
“My teacher said that the sand is blown inland by wind,” she explained. “That’s why the dunes grow. You know—” She lowered her voice. “—Sleeping Bear Doom.”
“But where did the sand come from?” Caleb pressed.
“Glaciers in the Ice Age.”
“Boring,” Caleb said in singsong.
“Well, my teacher told us a Native American legend about the dunes too,” Katie offered.
“I’m listening,” Caleb told her.
“Long ago a mother bear and her two cubs were trying to swim across Lake Michigan from Wisconsin. When the mother reached the Michigan shore, she collapsed on a hill in exhaustion. Sand covered her as she waited for her children.”
“Did the cubs make it across?” Caleb asked.
Katie shook her head. “Nope. They’re the islands we can see from shore. The Manitou Islands.”
Caleb frowned. “That’s depressing.”
“But not boring,” Katie replied.
The pair continued their trek. Clumps of tall dune grass rustled in the breeze. A few white specks wheeled overhead—seagulls in search of snacks. Katie surveyed the area with a hand shading her eyes.
“I don’t see Mom and Dad anywhere,” she reported. “They’re going to be mad at us.”
“It’s their fault for going too slow,” Caleb said.
“Let’s wait here for a few minutes and see if they show up,” she said.
“Okay, but we’d better be careful,” Caleb warned, suddenly dropping onto his stomach on the sand.
“What are you talking about?” Katie asked.
“Get down!” Caleb hissed. “The Cobra King and his Scorpion Riders could be out there. If they spot us we’ll never make it back to Cairo!”
Katie threw herself down next to him. She and her brother had big imaginations and it was easy to pretend that they were adventurers in the Egyptian desert.
“That hill would make a good lookout point,” she suggested, pointing at a sandy mound ahead.
“Good idea,” he agreed. “Help me with this treasure chest and we’ll go.”
“Okay!” She pretended to grab the handle on one side of the make-believe chest. Caleb made a show of grabbing the other.
Hunched over but heads up, they crept across the dune. A fallen beech tree lay half-buried in the sand on the mound like a lost relic from another age. Katie and her brother knelt behind it and plunked the make-believe chest between them. This time they both scouted the landscape.
“I don’t see anyone,” Katie said. “Not a single Scorpion Rider. Not even Mom and Dad.”
“You mean the Cobra King and his queen,” Caleb corrected.
“I’m serious, C
aleb,” she said. “There’s no one around. I mean no one.” Even the seagulls in the sky had vanished.
They stood and turned in a slow circle, squinting into the distance. “We can’t be the only ones out here,” Caleb muttered. “Where is everyone else? What happened to Mom and Dad?”
“Maybe we should—” Katie started to say.
A tremor shook the mound, knocking them over.
“Was that an earthquake?” Caleb exclaimed.
Before Katie could reply, a loud snoring sound filled the air like a chainsaw. The sandy hill lurched upward, then down, and then up again. Katie and Caleb were tossed around like riders at a carnival.
“Let’s get out of here!” Caleb bellowed. He scrambled awkwardly down the mound on his hands and knees.
Katie chased after him, falling, and her descent turned into a roll. She clambered to her feet at the bottom of the mound and pulled Caleb to his. They whirled around and were shocked to see that the mound was growing.
“What’s it doing?” Katie cried in dismay.
The hill exploded, whipping a cloud of sand into the air. Stinging grains pelted the kids’ exposed skin. They shrank down, raising their arms for protection.
A dark shape materialized in the cloud. It was vaguely humanoid but much, much bigger. As the cloud whirled, the shape grew like a pile of sand in the bottom of an hourglass. It also became identifiable.
It was a bear. A giant bear made of sand. The beast was as tall as the flagpole in front of their school.
“My teacher was right!” Katie cried.
The Native American legend was true. The mother bear was real. She wasn’t flesh and blood anymore, but her spirit lived on in the sand. It haunted the dunes.
As the sandstorm settled, the bear dropped heavily onto four legs and sniffed the ground noisily. Its sandy ears lay flat against its tan head.
“W-what is she