This is my story. Even if you don’t believe me, it’s all true. This is a secret, which only my serious brother, Marcus, and my sister, Clara who takes everything lightly, even a murder, know about. Coming back to the story, my siblings and I along with my cousins – Rokia, Genina, and Veronica – live in Winnipeg, Manitoba. In Winnipeg, the weather is at most -9.3°C in winter. So, during every Christmas break, we all go south to the USA for camping in Coconino Forest. If there is one thing that we learned from vacationing is to always avoid crossing densely populated cites as they are noisy. In Coconino National Forest, we are never allowed to go past the river as there exist creatures that will rip you apart in 5 seconds. Well, on one instance, my curiosity got the better of me and I asked everyone to come to the other side of the river. None of my cousins listened but Marcus and Clara wanted to join me. It was just the three of us then and we were all excited. 

We three kick-started our adventure journey. Surprisingly, there were ‘Most Dangerous Forest’ signs with weird creature names everywhere. By watching these names, Marcus started worrying that we were going to be picked up and eaten by a Monster called Wallaw Sakndak. He had read about him online. Marcus looked like he was going to pee in his pants, and he did just that. Clara, on the other hand, was not so scared. She yelled loudly and didn’t hold anybody’s hand.

But five seconds later she ended up regretting it. Something was moving in the bushes and we ran into the jaguar habitat. My instincts kicked in and we started running away. Then I saw a creepy entryway and screamed, “Everyone! Shall we open the door?”. As usual, Marcus was scared but Clara was enthusiastic about the idea and we opened it. Marcus didn’t want to come with us, but we pulled him along. The moment we opened the door, we saw a tunnel. But you know, it was quite dark and creepy! Clara suggested that we use the cellphone torchlight to flick through the tunnel. Believe me, it was so scary to see all the skeletons, bats and spider webs everywhere around the tunnel, but somehow we managed to move along the path which led us to a tropical island. We walked on the beautiful coastline and reached a village. We had to walk past a relatively calm village and saw a bunch of people chattering nearby.
 
They all were talking about a monster who threw rocks on them every week. Just then, it happened again! The monster threw rocks on them. I recorded the whole thing, while I was running away from the boulder coming towards me. The trembling rock slowly stopped. At that very moment, we all believed there was really a monster on the island.

We started asking questions about why was this happening and then the native tribes of island narrated that “Every 15 days before the full moon, we are hearing very loud and weird noises and then immediately the next day, some trembling rocks are falling on the island. Nobody till now has dared to cross this mountain to see what it is. Few people tried but they never returned.”
 
After hearing their story, we used our technology like compass and GPS, and tried to overpass the mountain to check what it really was. And we succeeded in trekking the mountain. To our utter shock, we figured that it was a Government-Owned Energy plant where the general public was not allowed. We went to speak to the security manager to check what was going on. He was very friendly with us and explained that the whole thing was classified and couldn’t be revealed to the public. But coming to this fallen rock, the security general said that the Rotten Bananas Butte Mountain had a land sliding every 15 days. And about the village people who never came back, the Security officer said, “We thought they are Mexican Drug lords and hence, they were sent to JAIL “.

I tried to convey that there was a whole village in between the mountains, and that they were tribal people, not illegal immigrants. After hearing this, security assured me that the tribal people would be released after thorough checking.
 
This information from the security solved the mystery of the island and we went back and explained all the information clearly to the native tribes. They were relieved after hearing us out and they all made a thanksgiving gesture to us with glee and bade us farewell. We followed our same route back to our camping site. We had a very good adventure experience, meeting innocent native tribes, enjoying the coastal island beauty, finding out the mystery of weird sounds and imagining there was a monster to finally figuring that it was an Energy Plant. The whole experience also gave us goosebumps but it was memorable in every way. 

// This fictional story has been penned by 10-year-old Srikar Chitta from Hyderabad and has been selected for publishing on our platform from the reader submissions //