Winners of Summer Chills & Thrills Contest!

The winners of BLT's Summer Chills & Thrills contest are:

Kristen

is the winner of Shadowed Summer

"Shadow of Wonders"

is the winner of a signed copy of Skeleton Creek

I have already emailed you, so please send me your mailing addresses! If the winners don't respond within one week, I will draw new winners.

Didn't win? Don't be sad....be on the lookout for another contest hosted by BLT!

Now that the winners have been announced, would you like to hear my scary story?

It happened in the late afternoon on a summer day about seven years ago (I just a little girl then). We had promised to feed our neighbor's kitten while they were away, so we walked over there, opened the garage and fed Puppy (yeah, a cat named Puppy). We took him out on the drive way and played with him for awhile. I have no idea what prompted me to do this, but I stopped playing with the kitten and stood up. I remember feeling prickles on my skin-the kind you get when you know someone's watching you. Frantically look to the left, to the right, and all around. Nothing.

My mom suddenly asks, "What wrong with you"? I don't answer, I just keep glancing around. The wind whistle amongst the trees and I remember following the breeze to the left (east). As I gaze over at the pasture surrounding my neighbor's house, there, to my horror, I suddenly see two big green eyes coming towards me in the swaying grass.

I freeze. The two green eyes are followed by a long flicking tail. One word goes through my mind at this point. Panther!

I can't speak because I'm so scared, but I managed to point. Frantically my mom jumps up. "What? What is it?"Now the creature is perched on a fallen tree and is staring directly at us, crouching. We grab the cat, run into the garage, and close the door down. We all run to the nearest window and lookout. I don't remember if we saw anything, but when we finally crept out of the garage, there wasn't a single sign of the panther anywhere.

I'll never forget those green eyes nor the screams in the night I heard only a few weeks later. I never ventured out into the pasture again, or went down to the river alone. I have never seen another panther (a panther is a small black version of the sandy colored mountain lion-we have both where I live) since then, nevertheless, they are out there. Everytime I go with my friends down to the river's edge, I'm watching, listening. I make my friends very jumpy.