Ghost Beach
Page 8
“Chris? Where are you?” I shouted.
My brother is eleven. But sometimes he acts like a six-year-old and hides from me just to make me worry. There’s only one year between us, but I’m the mature one. And the sensible one. So I’m always in charge.
“Chris?”
A shrill scream rang through the tunnel and echoed all around me.
And someone grabbed me from behind. Grabbed me around the waist. And I felt hot breath on my face.
I let out a shriek — and spun around.
In the flickering firefly light, I saw Chris grinning like a cat. He let go of me and did a crazy dance.
“You creep!” I cried. I grabbed him by the ears.
Chris has giant ears. Sometimes I call him Dumbo. They are waaay too big for his head. Mom says he’ll grow into them, but I don’t believe it.
Sometimes when I get angry at him, I grab both ears and pull with all my might. Sometimes I do it when I’m not angry at him. I do it just for fun. And because he hates it.
So I pulled his ears. Then I gave him a push, and we started moving again through the Tunnel of Screams.
The tunnel made a sharp turn, and we both bumped the cold stone wall. A little girl’s scream repeated and repeated, high and shrill.
Even in the dim light, I could see the fear on Chris’s face. I mean, I probably looked scared, too. It’s just so frightening to hear real people screaming in horror.
And then it got even more frightening — because I thought I recognized the screams. It sounded just like us.
“Chris —” I called. My voice trembled. “Is that you? Is that you screaming?”
I couldn’t hear his reply.
And then I heard two more screams — could it be? Chris and me screaming together?
But that was impossible. Where did the screams come from?
This was HorrorLand. It had to be some kind of trick.
“Chris — are you okay? Do you hear those screams?” I cried. I grabbed for his shoulder. But I grabbed only air.
The tunnel appeared to grow darker.
“Chris? Doesn’t that sound like us?”
No answer.
The screams were too real. I wanted the tunnel to end.
“Chris? Where are you?” I called.
Finally, squinting into the flickering light, I saw him up ahead of me. I ran and caught up. “Chris?”
I grabbed his shoulder and turned him around. And cried out in shock.
His face … Chris’s face … it was GONE!
I was staring at his ugly, grinning skull!
2
The empty eye sockets stared up at me like deep, black tunnels. His toothless jaw moved up and down.
I stumbled back. I jerked my hand from his shoulder.
He spun away from me and ran. He quickly vanished into the darkness of the tunnel.
I blinked several times, trying to force that ugly skull from my eyes. I was panting hard. Trembling.
Finally, I caught my breath. I turned and saw that I was near the tunnel exit. Gray light seeped across the floor.
And in the weak light, I realized someone was standing in front of me. Chris! His face looked completely normal. “Meg? What’s your problem? Too scared?”
“N-no,” I stammered. I finally caught my breath. “There was a boy. I thought he was you.”
Chris crinkled his face up. “So? What’s the big deal?”
“He had no face,” I said. “He only had a skull. A hideous, grinning skull.”
Chris laughed. “Did you forget? This is HorrorLand. Some kid was wearing a mask.”
“You … you’re probably right,” I said. I started to feel a little better.
But a deep woman’s voice interrupted us: “It wasn’t a mask.”
“Huh?” I spun around to see a large woman hovering behind us. Even in the dim light, I could see that she was strangely dressed. She wore a tall turban over her dark hair. Her pleated skirt dragged along the tunnel floor. Strings of clattering beads hung over the front of her high-necked blouse.
A long, low howl rang out through the tunnel. It sent a shiver down my back.
The woman stared from Chris to me with her glowing, dark eyes.
“It wasn’t a mask,” she said in her booming, deep voice. “Maybe the faceless boy revealed your future.”
Chris and I gaped at her. Her perfume was spicy, like cinnamon. She had big painted lips. Her eyes didn’t blink.
Chris and I both spoke at once.
“Our future?” Chris asked. “A boy with a bare skull?”
“Who are you? What do you mean?” I demanded.
“You may have heard of me,” she answered. “I am Madame Doom.”
Madame Doom? We’d never heard of her. We waited for her to go on.
She rattled her beaded necklaces. Then she pushed a curl of black hair up into her turban.
“Perhaps the boy without a face was a warning,” she said. “Perhaps you should let me show you what life has in store for you.”
“Are you some kind of fortune-teller?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said. “I see the future.” She motioned for us to follow her.
I felt a tingle of fear. Maybe we should run….
I glanced at Chris. He shrugged. “Might as well,” he said. “I’d like to see my future. She’ll probably tell me I’ll be rich and famous. Of course, I already know that!”
I grabbed his big ears and gave them a tug. Then we followed Madame Doom to Zombie Plaza.
Beads clattering, she led the way to a little cottage on the edge of the plaza. As we walked, I could still hear the screams pouring from the tunnel behind us.
Is that the scariest attraction at HorrorLand? I wondered. Or will we find places even scarier?
Curtains were drawn over the front window of the cottage. Purple light seeped through the crack between them. The doorway was also bathed in purple light.
Chris pulled me back. “You really think we should go in there?” he whispered.
“Don’t be afraid,” Madame Doom said. “We all have to die sometime!” She let out a booming laugh.
We followed Madame Doom into a small, cluttered front room. The air was hot inside the cottage and smelled of cinnamon, like her perfume. We had to duck under dark purple glass beads strung across the low ceiling.
Candles flickered. A glass ball about the size of a bowling ball rested on a round table. The table was cluttered with decks of cards, strange little glass figures, a stack of books. Everything glowed under the purple light.
“Take a seat,” Madame Doom said softly. She pointed to two folding chairs at the table. She smiled. “That’s where my victims sit.”
Even more frights to keep you awake at night! Here’s a preview of
THE SCARECROW WALKS AT MIDNIGHT
Another classic Goosebumps adventure with brand-new bonus material
1
“Hey, Jodie — wait up!”
I turned and squinted into the bright sunlight. My brother, Mark, was still on the concrete train platform. The train had clattered off. I could see it snaking its way through the low green meadows in the distance.
I turned to Stanley. Stanley is the hired man on my grandparents’ farm. He stood beside me, carrying both suitcases. “Look in the dictionary for the word ‘slowpoke,’ “ I said, “and you’ll see Mark’s picture.”
Stanley smiled at me. “I like the dictionary, Jodie,” he said. “Sometimes I read it for hours.”
“Hey, Mark — get a move on!” I cried. But he was taking his good time, walking slowly, in a daze as usual.
I tossed my blond hair behind my shoulders and turned back to Stanley. Mark and I hadn’t visited the farm for a year. But Stanley still looked the same.
He’s so skinny. “Like a noodle,” my grandma always says. His denim overalls always look five sizes too big on him.
Stanley is about forty or forty-five, I think. He wears his dark hair in a crewcut, shaved close to his head.
His ears are huge. They stick way out and are always bright red. And he has big, round, brown eyes that remind me of puppy eyes.
Stanley isn’t very smart. Grandpa Kurt always says that Stanley isn’t working with a full one hundred watts.
But Mark and I really like him. He has a quiet sense of humor. And he is kind and gentle and friendly, and always has lots of amazing things to show us whenever we visit the farm.
“You look nice, Jodie,” Stanley said, his cheeks turning as red as his ears. “How old are you now?”
“Twelve,” I told him. “And Mark is eleven.”
He thought about it. “That makes twenty-three,” he joked.
We both laughed. You never know what Stanley is going to say!
“I think I stepped in something gross,” Mark complained, catching up to us.
I always know what Mark is going to say. My brother only knows three words — cool, weird, and gross. Really. That’s his whole vocabulary.
As a joke, I gave him a dictionary for his last birthday. “You’re weird,” Mark said when I handed it to him. “What a gross gift.”
He scraped his white high-tops on the ground as we followed Stanley to the beat-up red pickup truck. “Carry my backpack for me,” Mark said, trying to shove the bulging backpack at me.
“No way,” I told him. “Carry it yourself.”
The backpack contained his Walkman, about thirty tapes, comic books, his Game Boy, and at least fifty game cartridges. I knew he planned to spend the whole month lying on the hammock on the screened-in back porch of the farmhouse, listening to music and playing video games.
Well … no way!
Mom and Dad said it was my job to make sure Mark got outside and enjoyed the farm. We were so cooped up in the city all year. That’s why they send us to visit Grandpa Kurt and Grandma Miriam for a month each summer — to enjoy the great outdoors.
We stopped beside the truck while Stanley searched his overall pockets for the key. “It’s going to be pretty hot today,” Stanley said, “unless it cools down.”
A typical Stanley weather report.
I gazed out at the wide grassy field beyond the small train station parking lot. Thousands of tiny white puffballs floated up against the clear blue sky.
It was so beautiful!
Naturally, I sneezed.
I love visiting my grandparents’ farm. My only problem is, I’m allergic to just about everything on it.
So Mom packs several bottles of my allergy medicine for me — and lots of tissues.
“Gesundheit,” Stanley said. He tossed our two suitcases in the back of the pickup. Mark slid his backpack in, too. “Can I ride in back?” he asked.
He loves to lie flat in the back, staring up at the sky and bumping up and down really hard.
Stanley is a terrible driver. He can’t seem to concentrate on steering and driving at the right speed at the same time. So there are always lots of quick turns and heavy bumps.
Mark lifted himself into the back of the pickup and stretched out next to the suitcases. I climbed beside Stanley in the front.
A short while later, we were bouncing along the narrow, twisting road that led to the farm. I stared out the dusty window at the passing meadows and farmhouses. Everything looked so green and alive.
Stanley drove with both hands wrapped tightly around the top of the steering wheel. He sat forward stiffly, leaning over the wheel, staring straight ahead through the windshield without blinking.
“Mr. Mortimer doesn’t farm his place anymore,” he said, lifting one hand from the wheel to point to a big white farmhouse on top of a sloping green hill.
“Why not?” I asked.
“Because he died,” Stanley replied solemnly.
See what I mean? You never know what Stanley is going to say.
We bounced over a deep rut in the road. I was sure Mark was having a great time in the back.
The road leads through the small town, so small that it doesn’t even have a name. The farmers have always called it Town.
It has a feed store, a combination gas station and grocery store, a white-steepled church, a hardware store, and a mailbox.
There were two trucks parked in front of the feed store. I didn’t see anyone as we barreled past.
My grandparents’ farm is about two miles from town. I recognized the cornfields as we approached.
“The corn is so high already!” I exclaimed, staring through the bouncing window. “Have you eaten any yet?”
“Just at dinner,” Stanley replied.
Suddenly, he slowed the truck and turned his eyes to me. “The scarecrow walks at midnight,” he uttered in a low voice.
“Huh?” I wasn’t sure I’d heard correctly.
“The scarecrow walks at midnight,” he repeated, training his big puppy eyes on me. “I read it in the book.”
I didn’t know what to say, so I laughed. I thought maybe he was making a joke.
Days later, I realized it was no joke.
GOOSEBUMPS HorrorLand™
ALL-NEW! ALL TERRIFYING!
Also Available from Scholastic Audio Books
#1 REVENGE OF THE LIVING DUMMY
#2 CREEP FROM THE DEEP
#3 MONSTER BLOOD FOR BREAKFAST!
#4 THE SCREAM OF THE HAUNTED MASK
#5 DR. MANIAC VS. ROBBY SCHWARTZ
#6 WHO’S YOUR MUMMY?
#7 MY FRIENDS CALL ME MONSTER
#8 SAY CHEESE — AND DIE SCREAMING!
#9 WELCOME TO CAMP SLITHER
#10 HELP! WE HAVE STRANGE POWERS
#11 ESCAPE FROM HORRORLAND
#12 THE STREETS OF PANIC PARK GOOSEBUMPS HORRORLAND BOXED SET
#1-4 WELCOME TO HORRORLAND: A SURVIVAL GUIDE
#13 WHEN THE GHOST DOG HOWLS
#14 LITTLE SHOP OF HAMSTERS
#15 HEADS, YOU LOSE!
#16 SPECIAL EDITION WEIRDO HALLOWEEN
RIDE FOR YOUR LIFE!
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HorrorLand™
THE VIDEO GAME
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GOOSEBUMPS®
NOW WITH BONUS FEATURES!
NIGHT OF THE LIVING DUMMY
DEEP TROUBLE
MONSTER BLOOD
THE HAUNTED MASK
ONE DAY AT HORRORLAND
THE CURSE OF THE MUMMY’S TOMB
BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR
SAY CHEESE AND DIE!
THE HORROR AT CAMP JELLYJAM
HOW I GOT MY SHRUNKEN HEAD
WEREWOLF OF FEVER SWAMP
A NIGHT IN TERROR TOWER
WELCOME TO DEAD HOUSE
WELCOME TO CAMP NIGHTMARE
GHOST BEACH
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ATTACK OF THE JACK-O’-LANTERNS
THE HEADLESS GHOST
MONSTER BLOOD
A NIGHT IN TERROR TOWER
ONE DAY AT HORRORLAND
RETURN OF THE MUMMY
THE SCARECROW WALKS AT MIDNIGHT
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Copyright
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Copyright © 1994 by R.L. Stine
Cover design by Steve Scott
Cover art by Brandon Dorman
All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Inc., Publishers since 1920. SCHOLASTIC, GOOSEBUMPS, GOOSEBUMPS HORRORLAND, and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.
First printing, June 2010
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eISBN: 978-0-545-29466-9
“Behind the Screams” bonus material by Luke Woods