After a nice relaxing drive into town, Eustace, Muriel and Courage climbed out of the truck and went their seperate ways. Muriel went to the grocery store, Eustace headed to the hardware store, and Courage wandered off toward the park.
It was a nice autumn day although winter was fast approaching and the leaves were mostly gone from the trees. The cool air felt good on Courage's fur as he walked along the sidewalk. He looked up at the sky for a moment and sighed happily. The crystal blue sky seemed so calm and relaxing. It felt so good to be here today that he forgot all about the events at home until he saw the children on the playground. There were several boys playing ball only they weren't playing so much as just standing there tossing a ball once in a while. There were some girls on the swingset but they weren't swinging much. They would just sit there and maybe swing for a couple of moments then sit still again. All of the children had frightened looks on their faces. They kept looking around as if they were expecting something to be lurking behind them. "I wonder what's wrong with them?" Courage said aloud to himself.
Courage watched the children for a few minutes then wandered over to the fountain. The water was splashing about happily as usual. "At least something around here is normal." Courage thought to himself as he looked down into the pool of rippling water. Once again he forgot his troubles as the sunlight reflected off of the rippling water hypnotizing him. The happy splashing sound calmed his nerves. Soon, he began to feel completely relaxed. Courage didn't know how long he had been gazing into the water when a noise behind him startled him. Courage jumped and turned around but he couldn't see anything. Suddenly he began to feel that same horrible fear that he had felt the night before. Courage shivered turned his gaze back to the fountain staring into the water once more. The sunlit ripples once again started to hypnotize the fear away. Courage was beginning to feel relaxed once more when suddenly a big shadow seemed to cover the sun for an instant. Courage looked up at the sky expecting to see a large bird or something flying overhead but there was nothing but empty sky. In the background of his mind he heard children screaming. Quickly realizing that the screams were coming from the playground, Courage raced back through the park toward the frightened screams.
When he got there the playground was empty. There was no sign of children anywhere. Courage looked around for any sign of what had scared the children away but found nothing. The pink dog raced toward the sidewalk but found no trace of the children there either. He turned back and began to sniff around to see if maybe something had happened to the children but found no trace of any kind of trouble. Aftersearching around the playground for a few minutes Courage could not find anything that could have scared so many children away so quickly. Finally he left the park to go back to the truck where he met up with Eustace and Muriel.
"There is something strange going on I tell you!" Courage heard Muriel say to Eustace. "Everybody is acting so nervous!"
Eustace took the last grocery bag from Muriel and loaded it into the back of the truck. "Don't let yourself get all worked up about nothing woman! Probably just something in the weather."
Courage looked nervously back toward the park as they all climbed back into the truck. He snuggled close to Muriel during the ride home but that horrible feeling of fear was coming back and nothing seemed to get rid of it.