My Haunted House Read Online Free Page A

as you get near the center of the earth, and the more I climbed down the ladder, the more I wondered if I was getting too close to that bit in the middle where all the rocks melt. But just as I was wondering whetherto go back up, I got to the bottom of the ladder and stepped onto the ground. It seemed pretty solid to me, so I figured I hadn’t got to the molten rock just yet.
    I was in a real tunnel now, with brick sides and a sandy floor. I decided to follow the tunnel just for a while, in case the balcony was around the next corner. The tunnel twisted and turned all over the place, and the air became even hotter, which didn’t make any sense to me, as I wasn’t going down anymore.
    And then I heard it—a really horrible, teeth-grating, toe-curling, clanging noise. The exact kind of noise that you get when a ghost drags a ball and chain behind it. I have heard that those ball-and-chain ghosts are not nice ghosts to meet. I suppose they are grumpybecause they have to drag all that stuff with them wherever they go. I stopped where I was and switched off my flashlight so that the ball-and-chain ghost would not see me, but being in the dark didn’t make me feel any better. In fact, it made me feel a whole lot worse, so I switched the flashlight on again.
    That was when the screaming started. Horrible, spine-chilling screaming. It filled up the secret passage and echoed all around me. It was the scariest sound I had ever, ever heard.
    And the worse thing was, I knew for sure what it meant—that the ball-and-chain ghost was coming to get me.

6
EDMUND
    A unt Tabby may think it is a big joke to go around frightening people who are exploring secret passages, but I do not. In fact, I think it is in very poor taste, as Uncle Drac would say.
    It did not take me long to realize that ball-and-chain ghosts do not scream, “DRAT THIS BOILER!” In fact, I don’t think that ball-and-chain ghosts are even a little bitinterested in boilers.
    â€œDRAT THIS BOILER! I HATE THIS GRATE!” I could hear Aunt Tabby yelling through the wall of the secret passage as clearly as if I was standing next to her. I was glad I wasn’t standing next to her, as I could also hear her kicking the coal scuttle and throwing the shovel at the wall.
    But time was running out. Soon a whole bunch of people who liked haunted houses would be walking around my house, deciding that they were going to live there instead of me . And if I was not careful, I would be stuck in a secret passage and not able to do a thing about it. I decided I had to give up on the balcony idea and go back and plan a Slimebucket Surprise. It was better than nothing.
    Since Aunt Tabby had given me a really big fright, I wanted to give her one back before I went. I looked for a chink in the wall to shine my flashlight through so that she would think there was a ghost in the boiler room—and that was when I saw him.
    I saw a ghost .
    He was sitting in a dark corner a bit farther down the secret passage. At first I was so surprised that I thought he was just an ordinary boy, so I said, “Hey! What are you doing here?”
    But when he looked up at me, there was something about his face that made me shiver, and I knew he must be a ghost. He had watery, ghostly eyes, and his face was kind of transparent and glowed with a pale light. I thought he was probably a ghost from longago, as he had a funny bowl haircut and wore a tunic with a long hood. He had a dagger tucked into his belt too, which I thought looked pretty good—Aunt Tabby won’t let me have a dagger, however much I ask her. In fact, I felt as though I had seen him somewhere before, as he looked just like the pictures of medieval pages in my knight-time storybook.

    I was pleased that he wasn’t a nasty ball-and-chain ghost. I went up to him and asked, just to make sure, “Are you a real ghost?”
    He didn’t answer—in fact he lookedscared, like he had seen a