On the other side of the wall was a small room, no bigger than your bedroom closet. One of the walls in the room had an opening that led out to the Big Wide World. It was large enough for a full-grown Sasquatch to walk through, if they ducked their head a little. Scattered on the ground in the room were clumps of dark green fur. In one corner there was a pile of small bones.
“Something lives here, Gigi,” Hugo whispered down to her.
“A Sasquatch?” Gigi whispered back.
Hugo shook his head. “There are bones. Sasquatches don’t eat meat.”
“Maybe a bear?” Gigi suggested.
“Have you ever heard of a bear with green fur?” Hugo asked.
“Green fur?” Suddenly Gigi looked alarmed. “It must be the Green Whistler!”
Hugo felt his foot begin to slip, and he came back down to the ground in a sliding, skidding, bumping way.
“The Green Whatsit?” he asked as he checked his feet for scrapes.
“The Green Whistler! My grandmother told me about it. It was this horrible creature that used to live in Widdershins Cavern. They called it the Green Whistler because it was covered in green fur, and right before it pounced on its victims it made this weird whistling noise.”
“Really?”
“Really. And my grandmother said there was a rumor that it ate squidges.”
Hugo and Gigi stared at each other in the darkness. The only sound was the click-click-click of the Monster Detector.
“Um, I’d better get going,” said Hugo. “I think my parents wanted me to help at the store.”
“Yeah, I think I still have some homework to do,” Gigi said.
Then Hugo and Gigi turned around and walked back the way they had come. But this time they walked a lot faster.
