Mom pulled the wheel hard to the right, and I got a glimpse of a figure she'd swerved to avoid-a dark fluttering shape now lost behind us in the storm.
"What was that?" I asked.
"We're almost there," my mother said, ignoring my question. "Another mile. Please. Please. Please."
I didn't know where there was, but I found myself leaning forward in the car, anticipating, wanting us to arrive.
Outside, nothing but rain and darkness-the kind of empty countryside you get way out on the tip of Long Island. I thought about Mrs. Dodds and the moment when she'd changed into the thing with pointed teeth and leathery wings. My limbs went numb from delayed shock. She really hadn't been human. She'd meant to kill me.
Then I thought about Mr. Brunner ... and the sword he had thrown me. Before I could ask Grover about that, the hair rose on the back of my neck. There was a blinding flash, a jaw-rattling boom!, and our car exploded.
I remember feeling weightless, like I was being crushed, fried, and hosed down all at the same time
I peeled my forehead off the back of the driver's seat and said, "Ow."
"Percy! Celeste!" my mom shouted.
"I'm okay... ."
"Celeste! " Mom shouted again
"im alright"
I tried to shake off the daze. We weren't dead. The car hadn't really exploded. We'd swerved into a ditch. Our driver's-side doors were wedged in the mud. The roof had cracked open like an eggshell and rain was pouring in.
Lightning. That was the only explanation. We'd been blasted right off the road. Next to me in the backseat was a big motionless lump. "Grover!"
He was slumped over, blood trickling from the side of his mouth. I shook his furry hip, thinking, No! Even if you are half barnyard animal, you're my best friend and I don't want you to die!
"Wow thanks percy" Grover says
Then he groaned "Food," and I knew there was hope.
"Really grover? Food? Even after you almost died?" Draco said making Celeste huff.
"Percy, Celeste" my mother said, "we have to ..." Her voice faltered.
I looked back. In a flash of lightning, through the mud-spattered rear windshield, I saw a figure lumbering toward us on the shoulder of the road. The sight of it made my skin crawl. It was a dark silhouette of a huge guy, like a football player. He seemed to be holding a blanket over his head. His top half was bulky and fuzzy. His upraised hands made it look like he had horns. Celeste was observing silently analyzing him.
I swallowed hard. "Who is-"
"Percy, Celeste" my mother said, deadly serious. "Get out of the car."
My mother threw herself against the driver's-side door. It was jammed shut in the mud. I tried mine. Stuck too. I looked up desperately at the hole in the roof. It might've been an exit, but the edges were sizzling and smoking.
"Climb out the passenger's side!" my sister told me. "Percy, Celeste -you have to run. Do you see that big tree?"
"What?" "Yeah" me and celeste said at the same time
Another flash of lightning, and through the smoking hole in the roof I saw the tree she meant: a huge, White House Christmas tree-sized pine at the crest of the nearest hill.
"That's the property line," my mom said. "Get over that hill and you'll see a big farmhouse down in the valley. Run and don't look back. Yell for help. Don't stop until you reach the door."
"Mom, you're coming too."
"Mom-"
Her face was pale, her eyes as sad as when she looked at the ocean.
"No!" I shouted. "You are coming with us. Help me carry Grover. Celeste will be no help shes injured plus she can't move heavy stuff around"
"Hey! Not true" Celeste huffed.
"Food!" Grover moaned, a little louder.
The man with the blanket on his head kept coming toward us, making his grunting, snorting noises. As he got closer, I realized he couldn't be holding a blanket over his head, because his hands-huge meaty hands-were swinging at his sides. There was no blanket. Meaning the bulky, fuzzy mass that was too big to be his head ... was his head. And the points that looked like horns ...
"He doesn't want us," my mother told me. "He wants you two. Besides, I can't cross the property line."
Celeste got close to percy snuggling into him she didn't want to hear what happened again.
"But..."
"We don't have time, Percy, Celeste. Go. Please."
I got mad, then-mad at my mother, at Grover the goat, at the thing with horns that was lumbering toward us slowly and deliberately like, like a bull. Celeste tugged me to come with her I hear her mutter something but didn't catch what she said
"Percy come with me I know what he is or I think I do just listen to mom." Celeste dragged me but halfway through she lost her balance and fainted I guess the fall did take a toll on her then I picked her up and ran to the tree placing her down on the "Property line" Then I ran towards grover and mom
I climbed across Grover and pushed the door open into the rain. "We're going together. Come on, Mom."
"I told you-"
"Mom! I am not leaving you. Help me with Grover."
I didn't wait for her answer. I scrambled outside, dragging Grover from the car. He was surprisingly light, but I couldn't have carried him very far if my mom hadn't come to my aid.
Together, we draped Grover's arms over our shoulders and started stumbling uphill through wet waist-high grass.
Glancing back, I got my first clear look at the monster. He was seven feet tall, easy, his arms and legs like something from the cover of Muscle Man magazine-bulging biceps and triceps and a bunch of other 'ceps, all stuffed like baseballs under vein-webbed skin. He wore no clothes except underwear-I mean, bright white Fruit of the Looms-which would've looked funny, except that the top half of his body was so scary. Coarse brown hair started at about his belly button and got thicker as it reached his shoulders.
His neck was a mass of muscle and fur leading up to his enormous head, which had a snout as long as my arm, snotty nostrils with a gleaming brass ring, cruel black eyes, and horns-enormous black-and-white horns with points you just couldn't get from an electric sharpener.
I recognized the monster, all right. He had been in one of the first stories Mr. Brunner told us. But he couldn't be real.
___________________________________________________________
sorry it was a bit rushed but yea i updated
word count: 1,120
kinda short chapter ngl
ok i gtg i have to start studying already ig
bbye
BẠN ĐANG ĐỌC
Nyctophilia
Fanfiction||A person who loves night or darkness|| When during a feast in hogwart in the middle of Celeste Amaris Potter's 5th year at hogwarts there is a flash. demigods, gods, weasleys, sirius, lupin, moody, minister of magic, malfoys all are teleported int...
