CHAPTER 15

Beth let out a squeal of mirth, then waved her hand apologetically. "I'm sorry, I'm just excited is all."

Eulalie looked at Mike. "Bigfoot fan?"

Big something fan, he thought to himself. "What was happening on these patrols?" he asked, hoping to get back to the subject at hand. "And tell me about the patterns."

Eulalie's eyes narrowed. "At first glance, the patrols were fine. Nothing ever happened. But then a pattern of nothingness emerged. Even on patrol, you're bound to see some form of game. Like a bear or a deer. Or maybe you don't see the animal, but you do see signs that it was there. But there were no signs at all, as if something was chasing our prey away.

"Anyway, once I realized that Velvet and Uncle Foot were coming back with less food than ever, so I did something I haven't done in a while. I set some traps of my own. I don't usually bother myself with hunting, but a girl's gotta eat."

"With..." he gestured at her waist, the word now stuck in his mouth.

"Webs? Yes." She reached under her skirt with one hand and pulled out a white glob of fluid that balanced perfectly on her middle finger. With a few deft movements, she created a Cat's Cradle, then shifted it around again so that the ensuing web looked like a butterfly. "Unlike my sister, my strengths lie in web-building." She looked around, then awkwardly crumpled the web and shoved it in her mouth.

"Thorry," she muttered. "Not thpothed ta wipe it on clothes."

Mike just stared at her, his mouth hanging open.

"What did you catch in the traps?" asked Dana.

"Some small game," Eulalie replied. "Not enough for a proper meal, but Arachne can go without for some time if we have to. Now, a lack of game is one thing, but it was too perfect. What really caught my attention was when I discovered that something had taken down my bigger traps. It isn't all just webs, mind you, I incorporate the environment into them. Some of my traps had been sprung, but it looked like the animal had been removed. Other times, I discovered that the trap had been taken down entirely, which doesn't make any sense. Not only are they difficult to spot, but some of these were high up in the trees. Someone would have to climb fifteen feet just to take them down.

"Therefore, this pattern of nothingness isn't natural. Something is chasing away our food, but for what purpose?"

"Interesting." Mike pondered over this information and stared at the floor. "There's nothing else in the forest with you guys?"

"Not anymore," she replied. "We had a huge goblin problem some years back—"

"Goblins?" His head snapped up. "You had goblins?"

"Yes. They took up residence in one of the cave systems, kept breaking into our barn and causing problems." She waved a hand dismissively. "That is a problem that we took care of years ago. Even if they had somehow survived this long, they would be too stupid to evade my traps."

Mike nodded. Tink was a genius in many ways, but he had been assured by Naia that her intelligence was completely off the goblin species chart entirely. "So something is taking down your traps and chasing off your food."

"I see it like a chess match. Our pieces were being eliminated before we even knew that the game had started. I'm here to get some new pieces to come and help us."

At the mention of chess, Mike couldn't help but throw a dirty look at Jenny. Checkers was one of the few games he would still play with her. The doll gave him a little wave and pushed herself further into her corner.

"And Velvet disagreed?" Dana asked. "Doesn't seem like her."

Eulalie nodded solemnly. "She's really struggled with everything since dad died. When I brought it up, I got lectured on being self-sufficient and how we didn't deserve to live if we couldn't do things for ourselves, blah blah blah. And Uncle Foot took her side because he promised dad that he would take care of us."

"So why didn't you just call?" Dana shook her head. "Or email, text, whatever. It's not like you're cut off from civilization."

"Oh?" Mike asked. He wondered what sort of technology the cabin in Oregon had. If anything, he bet it had a rotary phone.

"By the time I thought about contacting you, we actually had been cut off. Completely." Eulalie sighed. "The very same day I realized my traps were tampered with, I came home to discover that the fiber line we had run to our home had been severed and carried off. And cell service has always been spotty at best, but now it just doesn't exist out there anymore, almost like it's being blocked. Whatever is out there was watching me, and making moves of its own. Velvet and I got in a huge fight over it, and I told her I was leaving to get help."

"Why didn't Bigfoot bring you?" he asked. He knew that Bigfoot could move between trees using magic portals, but wasn't entirely certain of the mechanism.

"This house was cut off years ago, but we had no idea why. Having Bigfoot and a giant spider wandering the neighborhood trying to find this place would be a terrible idea. There isn't anywhere nearby we could just jump to. He needs certain trees when he travels." Eulalie chuckled. "So he helped box me up and dropped me off at a shipping office in Kentucky. There are still plenty of trees there for him to sneak around in."

"Seems like he could have come a lot closer," Beth said with a frown. "If it's trees he needs, anyway."

"Oh, he hates coming out east," Eulalie said. "And don't bother asking me why. Anytime I asked him about it, he furrows his head up and looks like a gorilla trying to force a monster shit out." Her cheeks flushed and she covered her mouth. "Oh, I'm so sorry!"

"Don't worry about it," Mike reassured her. "Our swear jar is full anyway, it's how we fund this place. It's a goblin problem of our own."