Ghouls Just Want to Have Fun

by Andres Miedoso

  CHAPTER ONE DANCE, DANCE

  “School dance.” Talk about two words that should never ever be in the same sentence!

  Seriously, is there anything worse than a school dance?

  Here is how every school dance in the history of dances has ever been.

  First, they always have the school dance in the gym. The basketball nets are still there, but do you think we’re allowed to play basketball? Of course not! All the balls are locked away. Why? Because we’re supposed to dance, not have fun!

  Second, nobody ever dances. No, that’s a lie. There are people who dance… the grown-ups! It’s so embarrassing. And they always try to get the students dancing too. No, thanks.

  Third, the music is always really old. And really, really bad! At every school dance, they have a DJ who plays nothing but songs adults love. The kids have never heard of any of those songs, except when we get stuck listening to our parents’ music on long car rides.

  It’s the worst!

  And fourth, we have to dress up. I’m talking suits, ties, jackets, dresses, and shiny shoes that are way too tight and way too slippery, especially on the gym floor.

  Plus, gym teachers always get mad because there’s some weird rule that you can’t wear dress shoes in the gym.

  I guess the shoes leave scratches on the precious floor. But isn’t that what floors are for… stepping on?

  The whole thing makes no sense!

  Don’t get me wrong. There are some okay things about school dances. There’s free food, going to school at night, and having fun with your best friend.

  Like mine, Desmond Cole.

  That’s him on the dance floor. My name is Andres Miedoso, and I’m next to him.

  The only problem is that we’re not just dancing. We’re trying to save everyone’s lives! Do you want to know what are we saving them from?

  It’s a long story.

  CHAPTER TWO DISCO DANGER

  It all started on a boring day. I was home, looking out the window as the rain ruined a perfectly good bike-riding afternoon. There wasn’t anything to do. I couldn’t even read because my ghost had stolen all my books.

  Yeah, you heard me right. Ghosts are real. A ghost named Zax haunts my house, but not in a scary way. He isn’t like that. He’s more like an annoying brother.

  Another thing I can tell you is that ghosts love to read. But they never return books. I’ve lost so many books since Zax showed up!

  Anyway, since I couldn’t go out in the rain and I had zero books to read, I decided to play some video games. I had just started a game when there was a knock on the door.

  It was Desmond Cole, standing there soaked from head to toe. That was just from walking from his house to mine, and he lives next door! For him to come over through bad weather like this meant only one thing: Something huge was going on.

  Desmond came inside, hung up his raincoat, and pulled me into the living room.

  “I just found out the school dance theme,” he said excitedly.

  “What?” I asked.

  I was definitely not looking forward to the school dance.

  But I guess Desmond was, because he raised a hand in the air and kicked one leg to the side.

  “Disco Fever!” he said, spinning around.

  I couldn’t tell if he was dancing or if he had stubbed his toe. Either way, it looked ridiculous!

  “I love disco dancing,” Desmond said. “My parents play disco music all the time, and they taught me every funky move.”

  He clicked his heels together and started twirling both of his hands.

  My parents played disco music too, but they never taught me how to dance.

  “I don’t like funky dances,” I told Desmond. “Actually, I don’t like any dances. I like to just find a nice solid wall to lean against and nod my head to the music.”

  “Do you know how to dance?” Desmond asked me.

  I shrugged. “Well, um, no.”

  “That’s what I thought,” Desmond said. “So I brought my portable speaker with me.”

  Soon, disco music was blasting through my house. The thump, thump, thump of the beat made my mom’s flower vase jump, jump, jump on the coffee table.

  I had to admit, the song was kind of bouncy. And fun. And I started to like it.

  Even Zax flew into the room. “I love disco!” he screamed over the music.

  Desmond pointed at me and yelled back, “Andres doesn’t know how to dance.”

  Zax laughed. “I can teach you!”

  And he did! Who would have guessed that ghosts can get funky?

  For the next hour Zax showed us all kinds of dances. The music was loud, and we were having so much fun, but then there was another knock at the front door. The funny thing was that it wasn’t a normal knock. It was kind of funky too! Whoever was knocking was doing it with lots of rhythm.

  Quickly, Zax clicked off the music and shushed us.

  “Don’t answer that door,” he whispered.

  It was clear from the look on his face that he was scared. And if a ghost was scared, so was I.

  Our boring day wasn’t going to stay boring for long.

  CHAPTER THREE DEAD BOLT

  “Shhh.” Zax swooped down low and turned off the lights. Then, before we could ask what was going on, Zax tackled Desmond and me to the ground and covered us with a blanket.

  Desmond whispered, “What’s going on, Zax?”

  “Shhh,” Zax hissed again.

  A creaking noise came from outside on the front porch. Whoever was at the door wasn’t going away.

  The knock struck again, but it wasn’t a funky knock.

  This time it BOOMED! I could feel the whole house shake.

  That’s when I remembered something. “Oh no,” I said, and I squirmed out from under the blanket. “The front door is unlocked.”

  I knew what I had to do. Without thinking, I raced over to the front door and locked the dead bolt. Then I crouched by the door and hoped whoever was out there would go away.

  A second later the doorknob started to turn. Someone was trying to open the door! I had no choice. There was only one thing I could do.

  I screamed for my mom!

  I mean, isn’t that what any normal kid would have done?

  Mom came downstairs with a worried look on her face. “Mi hijo, why did the music stop? What is going on?”

  When she looked in the living room, I was hiding by the door.

  Desmond was under a blanket. Zax had disappeared. She must have thought we had gone crazy. But I needed to warn her.

  “Mom,” I said, “there’s someone outside!”

  CLICK.

  The dead bolt unlocked, and the door slowly opened. I gasped, until I heard, “Hello, Miedoso house!”

  It was the cheerful voice of… my dad!

  I breathed a huge sigh of relief, and Desmond popped his head out from under the blanket. Something didn’t make sense. Could it have been my dad all along?

  Or had someone else been out there?

  That was when Desmond ran out of the house, still under the blanket. He started looking around outside. I went out there with him, but nobody was there.

  I looked up to my window. Zax was gazing down on us with a ghost face, which told us what we already knew. He was totally freaked out, and only one thing could help him: the Ghost Patrol.

  CHAPTER FOUR THE BOOGIE MAN

  Desmond and I were officially on the case!

  Our first stop: Zax. We needed to find out what he knew and why he was so scared.

  We ran past my mom and dad, straight upstairs to my bedroom. Zax was floating and shivering near the ceiling. And let me tell you that a shivering ghost is really frightening!
r />   I closed the door, and we waved Zax down.

  “You have to tell us what’s going on,” Desmond said.

  Zax floated closer and whispered, “It was the Boogie Man.”

  “The Boogie Man?” Desmond and I repeated.

  “Zax,” I said, “the Boogie Man isn’t real. Back when I was little, I used to think the Boogie Man hid under my bed at night. I made my parents check to make sure he wasn’t there. That was the only way I could fall asleep. Now I know he was just make-believe.”

  Desmond laughed and shook his head. “Um, that’s not the Boogie Man. The Boogie Man is some creep who collects kids’ boogers!”

  “Ew,” I said. “That’s disgusting!”

  “It’s disgusting and true,” said Desmond. “I saw the booger eater at the park one time. He was leaning against a tree, picking boogers. That was when I started chasing him!”

  “You didn’t!” I said. But I knew Desmond did. He was always trying to chase down trouble.

  “Yes, I did,” Desmond said. “I screamed, ‘Stop, you booger eater!’ but he kept running away. Finally I caught him, but it was just a guy jogging in the park. The Boogie Man is real, though. Now, why would he come to your house? Are your boogers tasty?”

  “Yuck, no!” I gave a nervous chuckle. “I mean, I don’t know. I don’t eat boogers.”

  That’s when Zax put his cold ghost hands on my shoulders.

  “There’s nothing funny or silly about the Boogie Man,” he said gravely. “The Boogie Man doesn’t hide under your bed. And he doesn’t eat boogers. It’s so much worse than that.”

  Desmond and I stared at him. It was hard to breathe.

  “What does he do?” I whispered.

  “The Boogie Man… ,” Zax started, scanning the room to make sure we were still alone. “The Boogie Man dances.”

  CHAPTER FIVE TWO GHOUL FEET

  Okay, we lost it. Desmond and I cracked up and couldn’t stop laughing. There was nothing scary about dancing. I mean, I couldn’t dance, but I was never afraid to do it. I was just afraid that other people would see me dancing!

  But that’s a whole other type of fear!

  “This isn’t funny! Dancing can be dangerous!” Zax huffed, but that made us laugh even harder.

  The ghost rolled his eyes and floated through the ceiling into the attic.

  When he was gone, we calmed down.

  “Andres, maybe we shouldn’t have laughed,” Desmond suggested. “Zax was trying to be serious.”

  “I know,” I said. “Let’s go get him.” We found Zax in the attic next to an old record player. Desmond and I sat next to him.

  “Sorry, Zax. That wasn’t cool,” Desmond apologized.

  I nodded. “Yeah, we’re ready to listen. Who is the Boogie Man?”

  Zax took a deep breath. “This is a true story. It happened a long time ago at the Haunted Ball.”

  “The Haunted Ball?” Desmond asked.

  “It was a big ghost dance at the Kersville graveyard,” said Zax. “It was the place to be! There was a skeleton band and a foggy dance floor. Every ghost in town came out for it.”

  I gulped. A ghost dance in a graveyard… Sounds perfectly normal for Kersville.

  “It was fine at first,” Zax said. “Then a stranger strolled in. A very strange stranger! He was dressed in a white suit, and he was wearing a thick gold chain with a medallion hanging from it.”

  I tried to picture this stranger at my front door. It made me shiver.

  “And his hair!” Zax continued. “You should have seen it. It was thick and combed into a huge pouf on top. He really stood out in the crowd.”

  “You’re making him sound cool,” said Desmond.

  Zax nodded. “He was cool—too cool. He was… the Boogie Man.”

  “So, if he’s cool, why would you hide from him?” I asked.

  Zax looked around the room again, and then he leaned in even closer to us.

  “When the Boogie Man stepped on the dance floor, he started tapping his toes. All the ghosts watched him. It was like we couldn’t look away. Then he pointed to the band with a long, thin finger and said, ‘Drop the beat.’ ”

  “Then what happened?” I asked. I mean, this story was weird, but not as scary as I thought it was going to be.

  “All the ghosts started to dance,” said Zax. “Ghosts shimmied and square-danced. They danced the jitterbug and the jive. They even bopped and belly danced!”

  “What’s so bad about that?” Desmond asked. “It sounds fun.”

  “What was so bad was they couldn’t stop dancing,” said Zax. “Even the band couldn’t stop playing. The Haunted Ball had turned into what is known as… the Never-Ending Dance.”

  Desmond’s mouth flew open, but he didn’t say anything.

  Zax’s voice dropped down to barely a whisper. “Even now, the Boogie Man searches for dances, waiting to strike again.”

  I threw my arms into the air and asked, “What are we supposed to do about it?”

  “There’s only one thing you can do,” Zax said. “You have to stop the school dance. If you don’t, every student at Kersville Elementary will be stuck dancing… forever!”

  CHAPTER SIX TRAP DANCING

  Desmond and I went back to his garage, aka Ghost Patrol Office, the next day. We needed to figure out how to stop the Boogie Man.

  Desmond was in his deep-thinking mode. He studied a large map hanging on the wall.

  Then he grabbed nets, lamps, and all kinds of gadgets. I didn’t know what any of it was for, but I could see that Desmond was making a plan.

  I knew what he was trying to do. “Desmond, are you going to get the school dance canceled?”

  “No way,” Desmond answered quickly. “I look forward to the school dance every year. And I’m not about to let some dancing ghoul ruin our good time!”

  I swallowed hard. Just thinking about the Boogie Man was making my heart break-dance!

  “Follow me,” Desmond said with a smile on his face. “We have work to do.”

  We walked around to the back of his house.

  If you’ve never seen Desmond’s backyard, you don’t know what you’re missing! He has a full-blown obstacle course back there. It has everything he needs for Ghost Patrol training… except for ghosts.

  There was a warp wall, a rock wall, and a ropes course, too. The ropes course wasn’t my thing. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gotten stuck up there.

  Desmond pulled four full-length mirrors from behind the warp wall and set them into the shape of a box, with the mirrors on the inside.

  Don’t ask me why Desmond had four full-length mirrors in his backyard. I’ve learned never to ask questions like that. There was always a reason. Desmond Cole was prepared for anything and everything.

  Once the mirrors were set up, Desmond aimed four differently colored lights over the top and turned them on. It looked weird from the outside, but when I stepped into the mirror-box, I could see what Desmond was doing.

  It was a miniature dance party in there! Plus, the mirrors made it look like a million of me were waiting to dance.

  Next, Desmond pulled out a giant speaker and two pairs of earmuffs. “Put these on,” he said, handing me one set. “They will muffle the sound when I turn on the music. Then we’ll hide and wait.”

  I was confused. “Wait for what?”

  “The Boogie Man,” Desmond said matter-of-factly.

  Now my heart was back doing backflips!

  Desmond explained, “If the Boogie Man wants to dance, let’s bring him here. Then he’ll get trapped in our mirror-box! If no one can see him dance, then Kersville will be safe from catching dance fever.”

  His idea made a lot of sense. I grabbed the earmuffs and followed Desmond to our hiding place, but I still couldn’t believe what we were doing. If Desmond’s plan worked, the Boogie Man would be here in no time.

  And Desmond Cole’s plans always worked!

  CHAPTER SEVEN FEEL THE BEAT

  We hid out
on the ropes course. Desmond said being up that high would let us see when the Boogie Man arrived. Now, I’m scared of heights, but I didn’t mind being that far off the ground. Not if it meant I wouldn’t be close to the Boogie Man.

  When we were settled, Desmond asked, “Are you ready?”

  I nodded, and we adjusted our earmuffs. Suddenly, I couldn’t hear a thing except for the sound of my own breathing.

  That was when Desmond turned on the music and cranked it up all the way. I couldn’t hear it, but I could feel the thumping of the bass as it echoed through my body. Even birds and squirrels scampered away!

  That music had to be loud!

  Desmond and I watched the mirror-box and waited. I didn’t realize I was holding my breath until my head started getting fuzzy. I had to gasp to get some air.

  Desmond put his finger to his lips, motioning for me to keep quiet. Though I had no idea who could hear me over the music.

  We turned our attention back to the mirror-box, and good thing we did because right then, we saw something shuffling out from behind the bushes.

  It was a ghoul dressed like… well, it was hard to describe. I had never seen clothes like that! He had on a suit with crazy shoes that made him taller than he already was. And his hair was wavy and wild.