Secrets of Goth Mountain Read online

CHAPTER 19

  MORE SECRETS

  “Baaaaah”, bleated Ned, mournfully, after telling Johnny and Ann his secret.

  Ann sat down on the ground beside Johnny, pale and trembling. Johnny wrapped a strong arm around her shoulders.

  “Fourteen years ago you found my father’s body and never told anyone?” Johnny asked, shocked and astounded.

  “Looks that way,” said Two Bears. “At least he didn’t tell anyone in the Tribe. Tell them where you took it.”

  To upset to speak, Ned pointed to the nearby One Tree, and again bleated pitifully. Tears ran down his hairy cheeks.

  “He took Mark’s body to the Land of the People,” translated Two Bears. “That is as much as he told me minutes ago when we awoke. The rest he will have to tell you himself.”

  “I’m sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry,” Ned babbled.

  “Ned, we know that whatever you did was only what you thought was right,” consoled Ann.

  The little Goat man took a deep breath to compose himself. “I didn’t know what else to do when I found him, Cub. I called Pru. She came right away. I talked her into taking Mark’s body to the Land and keeping it a secret.”

  “But why?” asked Johnny.

  “Baaaaaaaaaaa,” bleated Ned, once again too upset to speak.

  “I think I know,” said Two Bears. “Mark’s body was in very poor shape, wasn’t it? Like Mort’s?”

  Ned nodded slowly.

  “And you didn’t want Johnny and Ann to see him that way, did you?”

  Ned nodded again, more vigorously. “I moved Mort’s body, too, when I found it at the same place, near the One Tree. But I thought that Mort would like to be brought home and found by the Tribe, so I put him in his bed at the cabin.”

  Johnny went to the little goat man, and hugged him warmly. “Maybe those were mistakes, and maybe not, but you’re still the best friend anyone could ever have. Regardless, I for one still don’t think that Dad is dead.” He pulled out his father’s old watch and showed it to his mother. Mark Goth’s face was still on the back of the old time peace, beside his own.

  “I agree,” said Two Bears. “In the past, only when a Goth has died has their image disappeared. There is still hope for both your father and perhaps for Mort, though how they could both be alive and dead is the deeper mystery here.”

  “It must have to do with doppelgangers,” Ann noted. “I’ve known that from the beginning. Finding a body that looks like Mark is a piece of the puzzle, but not the end of all hope. I won’t let it be.”

  “Good,” said Two Bears. “But there’s something else that I have to tell everyone immediately, something terrible that pains me to even think of. It was my nephew Small Bear that shot me. Small Bear is the traitor.”

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