Nightmare Academy Read Online Free

attempt at an experiment. Holding a long rope suspended from a ceiling beam, Elijah stood atop a towering stack of hay bales, staring, thinking, and staring again at the straw-strewn floor of the barn, then at the high, post-and-beam walls surrounding him, then at the ceiling beam to which the rope was secured, and then at his horse—still standing obediently, but only for so long.
    The big question: Launching from this location, would he have enough inertia to kick off from the north wall, swing over to the west wall, swing in a downward spiral, and finally return to where Charlie was waiting at the very limit of the rope's decaying swing, thus coming into contact with the saddle while in a state of near weightlessness? If Charlie felt nothing, and mostly, if Elijah felt nothing, then his prediction based on the available data would be correct and the experiment would be a success—not a Nobel prize winner, but a success. He could see the trajectory in his head, as clearly as if he'd drawn it on his eye's view of the barn with bright yellow chalk.
    Ready.
    He gripped the rope tightly, checked the diagram in his mind one last time, and then started with a quick run off the hay bales.
    He was flying, suspended, the north wall approaching, the rope moaning against the beam.
    BAM! His feet hit the wall, his legs flexing like springs, and he bounded off like a billiard ball. Perfect angle.
    He was lower now. The arc of the swing was decaying, but that was all in the plan. The west wall was coming at him.
    BAM! Second rebound successful. I should work for NASA.
    Now, one last spiral down, coming back toward his starting point, but below it now, right along the base of the hay bales, and there was Charlie's hind end, like the planet Earth from a spacecraft window, and just above it, the saddle, ready for a soft landing . . .
    The approach of a leg-kicking, blue-jeaned, leather-brimmed spacecraft spooked planet Earth, and he trotted out the barn door just as Elijah reached the last, dying inch of the rope's swing, that minuscule moment of weightlessness when a landing would have been perfect. . . .

    He was flying, suspended,
the north wall approaching,
the rope moaning against the beam.

    With a cry of frustration and despair, he clung to the rope as it carried him backward. He let go and fell into a pile of soft straw carefully placed there—in case something went wrong. By this time, although he hadn't mastered a weightless landing in a saddle, he had become quite skilled at landing in straw when something went wrong. He rolled into it, head over heels, half disappearing under the swishing stuff, the world going dark as his cool leather hat with the rattlesnake band scrunched down over his eyes.
    With an angry growl he sat upright, brushing the straw off his arms and shoulders. “Charlie! You keep throwing variables into the equation!” He lifted his brim, letting the daylight back in. “If you'd only spook at a uniform rate—”
    There stood his sister, weight shifted to one hip, hat cocked back on her head, watching him with great amusement.
    â€œHey, Einstein, let's do some riding.”
    â€œIt's about time, Hemingway!”
    She gave him a hand up. “So let's go, before something else stops us.”
    They hurried out of the barn. Charlie and Pardner, saddled and ready, awaited them by the fence. The afternoon sun was still high and the Montana sky deep blue. There would be time to ride the ridge behind the ranch, and maybe even get as far as the tree line where they'd spotted bear tracks just two days ago. Elijah mounted Charlie in quite the conventional way—Charlie didn't mind that. Elisha put her foot in the stirrup—
    And the dinner bell rang. Not for dinner. This was a special ring, calling them to the house for something important. Elisha, her hand on the saddle horn, wilted, and then let go. “I hope it's you this time!”
    Elijah dismounted, slightly miffed.