An Excerpt from Jees' Bones by W. Dave Free

“It’s a—” Elena gasped.

The creature looked from the dog to the children, then took three quick steps toward the pool and disappeared into the water. Blue barked ferociously at the pool.

“Did—did you see that?” Jeremy found his voice. Elena didn’t speak, just nodded her head.

“It was a dinosaur!” Jeremy yelled. “We just saw a real, live dinosaur!” He jumped off his four-wheeler and danced around trying to get his helmet off. “I can’t believe it! Did you see that?” He finally got his helmet off and turned to his sister again, who kept nodding.
“It was an ornithomimus!” Jeremy said, jumping in excitement.

“I’m sure of it. Did you see how it kind of walked like an ostrich?” Jeremy waddled a few steps toward Elena to show her how it walked. “That’s what ornithomimus means. It means bird mimic. This is sooo cool!” He sat down on his four-wheeler and shook his head in disbelief, then jumped back up. “Come on! The pool’s not that big. I’ll bet we can see the dinosaur in the water.” He pulled his helmet on, and Elena finally found her voice.

“No! We’re not going down there!” she shouted at Jeremy.

He stopped and looked at her. “Why not?”

“Come on, Jeremy. You’ve watched Jurassic Park a thousand times. Dinosaurs eat kids like us!”

“Ellie, those were velociraptors. Velociraptors are carnivores! Didn’t you see what the ornithomimus was eating? Grass! He eats grass, Ellie, he’s not going to eat us!” Jeremy knew that the ornithomimus was actually an omnivore, but he didn’t think he should share that particular piece of information with his sister just now. He wasn’t going to let anything stop him from seeing that dinosaur as soon as possible.

Jeremy jumped on his four-wheeler. “Well, wait here if you want. If anything happens to me, just take off for the house. I’ve got to at least go down and get Blue.”

The dog still barked wildly. From the look on Elena’s face, Jeremy could tell she still wasn’t convinced, so he tried again, “If he was going to eat meat, don’t you think he would have eaten Blue by now?”

Elena thought for a minute with a frown on her face. “Okay, go get Blue, but if anything happens to you, I’m going to kill you.”

“Thanks,” Jeremy said with a smile, then started his four-wheeler down the side of the bowl. At the bottom he carefully parked the machine so that it faced the road, and he left the motor running in case he needed to make a quick getaway.

As he started to remove his helmet, Elena yelled, “Keep your helmet on, Jee! Helmets are hard to chew!”

Jeremy wasn’t thrilled with the thought of his head becoming a chew toy and decided to take her advice. He flipped up the tinted visor, then cautiously walked up beside Blue and looked down into the water. The glare of the sun on the water made it impossible to see anything, so he flipped his visor back down. Now he could see clearly to the bottom of the pool, so he slowly made his way around the edge. No matter how hard he looked, he couldn’t see anything that looked remotely like a dinosaur, and the only part of the pool he couldn’t see was the dark area under the overhang of the cliff. He decided the dinosaur must be hiding there.

He walked back around the pool to the four-wheeler, hit the kill switch on the machine, and took his helmet off. Then he sat down and began untying his shoes. He heard Elena yelling something, but he didn’t pay any attention. Forty-five seconds later she skidded her four-wheeler to a stop inches from where he was undressing.

“Jeremy David, I hope you are not doing what I think you are doing,” she said in her best motherly tone.

“You don’t want me to go for a swim?” he asked innocently.

“Not here and certainly not now,” she bellowed.

Jeremy kept undressing. In exasperation, Elena got off her machine and knelt down next to him. She tried to reason with him as calmly as she could. “Look, Jeremy, that creature is never going to come out as long as Blue is barking. Let’s take Blue back to the house then we can come back with some chairs, binoculars, a camera, Mom and Dad, and—I don’t know—maybe a cannon? Come on, Jee! Mom and Dad will kill me if I let you go in that pool with that dinosaur by yourself.” She was pleading now.

Jeremy stopped unbuckling his belt and looked at her. What she’d said made sense, and he had to admit to himself that he was a little worried about jumping in the pool alone. “Okay,” he agreed, “but while I take Blue home, you’ll have to wait here and make sure our dinosaur doesn’t get away.”

“And how am I supposed to stop it?” Elena asked.

“You’ll think of something.” Jeremy pulled on his shirt and then began working his sweaty socks back on over his dirty toes.

Elena remained unconvinced. “You’ll go straight home and come back as fast as you can, right?”

“As fast as I can,” Jeremy promised, “and I’ll leave a note for Mom and Dad to get out here as soon as they get home.”

“Okay,” Elena finally agreed, “but I’m waiting up on the edge of the bowl, not down here.”

“Just don’t let it get away,” Jeremy instructed as he popped open the compartment under the seat of his four-wheeler, dug out a short piece of rope, and walked over to Blue.

“It’s okay, boy, it’s okay. That was just a little dinosaur, nothing for you to worry about.”