The Haunted Traveler December 2017 Edition

“It’ll be fun! We can just go for a nice pedal around the park or something.”
“I don’t own a bike.”
“I’ll borrow one for you.”
Liz tilted her head to one side, looked at Kathy over the top of her glasses.
“Twenty minutes. Just a little tootle around.”
Liz didn’t want to hurt her friend’s feelings and she knew Kathy wouldn’t give up
until she had some sort of agreement. “If you promise we won’t go riding in the middle
of the day, then maybe. For a short time,” she added.
“That’s the spirit!” Kathy glowed in her success. “I’ll pick you up at 8.”
Liz nodded and prayed for rain.
“Check out that tumbleweed!” Jenny shouted from the backseat. A jumble of dead
wood rolled and bounced over the bone-dry earth. “I thought tumbleweeds only existed
in movies.”
“Wouldn’t it be cool to see a giant one?” Margo said. “You know, like, what if we saw
one that was as big as a car?”
“Or as big as a house!”
“Can they get that big?”
Kathy shook her head. “They don’t really get any bigger than that one there.”
“Maybe you just haven’t seen a really big one before.” Margo searched her side of the
road hoping to spot a bigger one just to prove her mother wrong.
Kathy looked out the front windscreen. Nothing but brown earth, prickly bushes,
and dry grass for miles and miles. The road cut straight through the middle of the gritty
landscape. Ahead of them, the horizon wavered and steamed, a reminder that it was
scorching hot outside.
“This sure is some rural country.”
Liz nodded. She was worried about their chances of finding a gas station.
“Thank goodness for air conditioning.”
Liz patted the dashboard. “I’d never go anywhere without air conditioning.” She
thought about how hot it might be next Wednesday morning and imagined herself
dripping with sweat. She was instantly repulsed. She glanced at the petrol gauge again
and the orange light flickered.
“What’s that over there?” Jenny pointed to what looked like a cloud twisting along
the side of the road.
Liz adjusted her glasses. “That, my dear, is a very small, very harmless tornado.”
Margo craned her neck to get a clear view past Jenny. The small twister flicked to the
right and left stirring up the ground and throwing dirt into the air. “Will it turn into a
big one?”
“No, sweetie,” Kathy said. “It’s just a dust-devil. They don’t ever amount to much.”
The car went quiet. Margo scrutinized the terrain hoping to find something interesting
to point out to everyone, too.
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