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3rd and Long

I was hooked after the first page. Out of all of Mr. Holland’s books I have read, this is my favorite. Every page is packed with mystery, action, and adventure. I couldn’t put this book down. I read it every second I could.

Not only is this one of the most action-packed, chilling books I’ve read, it’s also one of the funniest. You may not believe in old legends of creatures roaming in the woods, but Charlie does, and he has to use all of his courage not only to face the strange creature in the woods, but to face a murderer as well.

-- Ian Converse, age 11

This books was fantastic! Each page was filled with action and excitement and I could not stop reading. I thought it was amazing how Charlie was always prepared for danger, like when he faced the sasquatch and a serial killer and the goons from Greenfield’s

The exciting plot, with intriguing characters, kept me hooked until the last page. This was another awesome book from Robert Holland.

-- Kyle Egan, age 12

Chapter One

The Thing in the Fog

Two nights before school started, I staked out Mrs. Parks’ house to find out whether anyone was casing the place. If I seem a little doubtful that’s because there have always been strange stories about Mrs. Parks, stuff like her interest in Caribbean religions, and in particular, voodoo, which was something I knew nothing about.

But I also knew her from the library. I had been checking out some books and she started a conversation about the books and after that, when we met, she’d suggest some others that I should read.

Sometimes we talked about the books and from those discussions I learned a lot about anthropology. But there was no getting around her reputation and I think that’s why the police didn’t take her complaints seriously. But me? Hey, I need convincing and I decided to look into things. After all, Mrs. Parks was not one of those women who goes all weird over snakes and spiders.

Pete was a little more skeptical, but then he’s only been my partner for a few months and he hasn’t got the hang of being a detective yet. You have to be suspicious about everyone and everything. Still, like all athletes, he’s deeply superstitious and I was planning on using that to convince him to watch the house on alternate nights.

Still, I didn’t hold out much hope. He was getting ready for football and Pete is dedicated. During the season he doesn’t party and he never stays up late. So any chance I had of getting my partner engaged in this enterprise depended on my seeing something.

It was not a good way to start. Far too often, when you have the need to see something, you end up convincing yourself that you have, in fact, seen something. That is what some folks call a slippery slope.

So there I was, dressed in a gray ninja suit, including a hood, sitting in the dark of the woods in a Martha’s Vineyard fog so thick that at times I couldn’t see thirty feet. The house sits on something over two hundred acres at the end of a long dirt road. Mrs. Parks’ grandfather bought the land long before the real estate prices on Martha’s Vineyard shot up into the millions.

What I’m getting at here is that I had begun to feel a little edgy about the isolation, despite having a cell phone and several throwing stars. I’m not exactly helpless. I’ve got a black belt in Karate and I’ve been boxing since I was twelve. I’m also six feet tall and I weigh two hundred pounds. But sometimes things creep in and they’re hard to chase out. The other thing is, I’m not used to the woods. Private investigators are mostly city guys. In the woods you are absolutely alone and it wasn’t something I had thought about ‘ ’til then, and it was making me a little edgy.

If it had that effect on me it would be worse for Pete, who never spent any time in places like this, and I was pretty sure he’d be nervous as a cat in coyote country.

An hour went slowly by. Midnight. A chilly night, which explained the fog, and in the damp dark I took a long, deep breath, let it out slowly and settled in for another half-hour. If nothing happened by then, I’d check with Mrs. Parks in the morning.

After another fifteen minutes, I realized that I had been operating on the assumption that nobody would try breaking in at the front of the house because of the road. As assumptions go, it wasn’t all that bad, but I’d failed to consider how the fog changed things and how few people ever used this road. Stupid.

I eased myself to a standing position and slipped back into the pines and began slowly, a step at a time, working my way toward the road. The trick is to move as little of your body as possible. Motion is what alerts a predator and humans are predators. I tried to pretend that my upper body was as stiff as a tree trunk.

I heard nothing. I saw nothing. Finally, I took up station in a thick part of the woods, where it came in close to the end of the house. But this time I didn’t sit down because I wasn’t planning on staying long.

The sound was absolutely identifiable: the sound an aluminum storm window makes in its track, and it was close.

I took a deep breath, not liking my situation. The fog had thickened and I couldn’t see more than ten feet so I had no idea who or what had moved the storm window. Well, I was pretty sure it wasn’t a what, because the one thing we don’t have on the Vineyard is much in the way of "whats"; things like bears for example, or, in fact any animal large enough to cause a human any trouble, especially one my size.

On the other hand, even ruling out the "whats" did not exactly spread calm. The "whats" don’t carry guns and humans do. Another deep breath and then, keeping close to the ground, I closed the distance to the house and flattened myself against the wall. I eased my head around the corner so I could see along the front wall as a soft breeze slipped down from the roof and for an instant the fog thinned and I could see an enormous, humanlike figure trying to jimmy open the inside lock on the window.

I was working out my choices when suddenly the lights came on in the house and the ... whatever it was ... turned and ran right at me. In the light I got a good look and pulled my head back out of sight as the figure came rushing toward me along the front wall of the house, heading for the thick woods beyond.

I wanted nothing to do with it, but something inside me made me stick out my foot as it reached the corner of the building and it let out a loud sort of grunt and tumbled out onto the lawn and I went after it, leaping into the air and smashing my foot into its head as it began to get up. It grunted again but my kick didn’t even slow it down and it got onto its feet and one long arm slashed out at me and I felt something tear through my shirt as I leaped away. Then it stood up to its full height and I leaped back.

There was nothing to measure against but it had to be eight feet tall and maybe a yard wide. I couldn’t move. I felt as if my feet had been nailed to the ground. I dropped into a fighter’s crouch and waited.

Slowly, it stepped backward away from me and then sideways into the shadow of the house as the fog closed in again and I blinked my eyes several times. It was gone.

I heard it reach the woods and for an instant I considered following, but an ambush was way too easy because I would be moving fast and making noise, while he needed only to wait. I took a deep breath, straightened, and then took another deep breath. This was a case worthy of Charles Oliver Jones ... though I had to admit that just then, I felt maybe a little overmatched.

But never, not for a second, did I consider quitting. I walked back to the front of the house and rang the bell. "Who’s there?" Mrs. Parks shouted, her voice very high and excited.

"It’s me, Mrs. Parks, Charlie Jones."

"Who?"

"Charlie Jones. You asked me to check things out for you."

"Who? Oh, Charlie. Well, why didn’t you say so?" She opened the door and I stepped inside. Mrs. Parks is close to six feet tall and big. Her hair is almost white and she doesn’t get around all that well, but then she is also in her eighties. In the summer, the house crawls with children and grandchildren and great grandchildren, but in the off-season she’s pretty much alone except for a small group of friends who meet for lunch nearly every day and play bridge a couple of nights a week.

"Was that you I heard out there?"

I shook my head. "Someone else. He opened the storm window and he was trying to jimmy the window lock."

"Now there! I told those cops that somebody was trying to break in and they wouldn’t listen! Just think I’m some silly old woman, living alone, scared of every sound."

"I’ll talk with the chief in the morning."

"Did you run him off?"

"He ran when you turned on the light. I almost had him." Okay, it was an exaggeration, but in this business the client has to have confidence in the investigator.

She pulled her head back and looked up at me with that calculating look adults use on you when they’re pretty sure you’re making something up.

"I tripped him and I got in one good kick and then the fog closed back in."

She shook her head. "I’m supposed to believe that?"

I shrugged. "I don‘t think he’ll be back tonight. Just keep a light on in every room."

"What’s this man look like?"

"He’s pretty tall and wide."

"How tall?"

I hesitated. Should I tell her? What was to be gained?

"What are we talking here, Charlie? Six-six, six-seven?"

"About eight feet, I think."

"Maybe he only looked that tall."

I knew what she was thinking. And why wouldn’t she doubt me? Everyone exaggerates. "No," I said. "Eight feet, maybe a little more."

"Huh. He white or black?"

"Couldn’t tell."

"You must not have got a very good look, then."

"I saw him."

"Well?"

"He had some kind of a disguise on, I think, you know, like a ski mask or something."

"I think you’re not telling me everything you saw, are you, Charlie?"

"It looked like an enormous bear." Then I remembered the slash it had taken at me and I looked down and across the front of my shirt were four distinct tears. "If I hadn’t had a kevlar vest under my shirt I’d have been ripped wide open." "It did that?" she asked, her eyes wide with disbelief.

I nodded. "I jumped back just in time."

"You certainly did," she said. "And now I think maybe I’ll call those cops this very minute. You just sit down over there and we’ll see what they have to say about this! All but calling me a liar — huh!"

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