Ghouls, Ghouls, Ghouls by Victoria Laurie Page A

off this freaking pile of rubble. Let’s see if we can get back across the causeway.” I then turned and led my team out of the cave, pausing only briefly to say, “Gilley, bring that journal.”
     
    We made our way out of the cavern, back through the tunnel, and finally out of the cave to the shore. With some relief, I realized it had stopped raining. I held my flashlight up, and although the causeway was slick, and there was the occasional small wave that crested over the edge, it looked passable. “We’ll need to hustle,” Heath advised, looking at his watch. “We’ve only got about twenty minutes left to get across it.”
    Without speaking, I stepped onto the causeway and started to jog. Gilley must have decided that he needed to be the first one to reach the beach at the other end, because he flew by me. “Be careful!” I called. “It’s slippery.”
    And no sooner had I said that than Gilley tripped and went down. “Uh-oh,” Heath grunted, moving past me to hurry to Gilley’s side.
    My best friend was holding his knee pathetically and whining. “Ow, ow, ow!”
    I hustled over to him and crouched down. “You okay?”
    “NO!” he yelled, right in my ear.
    “Dude,” I growled, standing up, really irritated with him and this whole stupid adventure.
    “Sorry,” he groused. “But that hurt.”
    I inhaled and extended my hand. Gil took it and I helped him up. He limped for a step or two, but then seemed all right.
    “What’s that?” Meg said from behind me.
    A chill ran down my spine, and I looked behind me back toward the rock, but then I noticed that Meg was looking down about six feet out into the water where the journal was just starting to sink below the waves.
    I pointed my flashlight where I saw her looking and gasped. “Gilley!” I yelled, sinking to my own knees and trying to reach out to it. “You dropped the journal!”
    Heath’s hand landed firmly on my waistband and he pulled me back from the edge. “Careful!” he said. “The water’s deeper than it looks here and the currents are likely to pull you under if you fall in.”
    I got back to my feet and sent an exasperated look at Gilley. He looked mournfully up at me. “I’m sorry!”
    I was so angry that I simply turned and stomped off. Heath came with me and slipped his hand into mine. “It was an accident, M. J.,” he said after a bit.
    “It was careless,” I said through gritted teeth.
    “We can figure this all out without it,” he insisted reasonably. “And at least you still have the letter.”
    I stopped and blinked up at him. “I do?” And then I felt all my pockets discovering that I’d tucked the letter into my back pocket. With a relieved sigh I started walking again. “A load of good that’ll do us,” I said after a bit, my foul mood returning. “The important parts were all in the journal.”
    When we finally reached the shore, our feet and pants up to our shins were all soaking and I couldn’t have been more cold, tired, and miserable. All I wanted to do was crawl into the van and point it back to the B&B.
    We found the van right where we’d left it, but only then realized that Gopher had taken the keys. “Look in his backpack,” I told John, who’d been shouldering it all the way from the top of the rock.
    John sifted through the contents while Heath shone his flashlight into the interior. No keys.
    “I think I saw him put them in his pocket after we got out of the van this morning,” Kim said quietly.
    “ Why did we only take one van this morning?” Gilley wailed.
    I remembered that it had been Gopher’s idea. He’d wanted to save on gas.
    Bone-weary and in a now truly terrible mood, I stared up the road and began to walk. “Looks like we’re hoofin’ it,” muttered John from behind me.
    I sighed again. This night just continued to offer up crap sandwiches. Heath held out his hand to me as we got to the steep part of the climb up the road. “Come on,” he said. “It can’t be that