Why I'm Not Afraid of Ghosts

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  ‘Monster Dog’ Excerpt

  About R. L. Stine

  1

  “Wait till I get through with this place.” Stocky, dark-haired Oliver Bowen glanced around the attic room. “It’s going to be the coolest room I’ve ever had. You’ll see.”

  He gazed at the cobwebs and old furniture and dust. He peered into shadowy coners. A wide grin spread over his face.

  It was excellent!

  “I don’t know,” Shawn Wood murmured.

  Oliver glanced at Shawn. Shawn shoved his glasses up on his nose and blinked his blue eyes. His spiky blond hair was so pale, it was almost white. He looked kind of like a rabbit.

  “Don’t know what?” Oliver asked.

  Shawn shrugged. “Don’t you think it’s kind of spooky up here?”

  “That’s what I like about it!” Oliver declared. He pulled open the top drawer of a fancy old bureau and peered inside. Yup, he thought. This place is full of possibilities.

  “I was psyched when I saw your moving vans last week,” Shawn told him. He hopped on top of an old trunk. “It’s been a while since any kids my age lived in this house.”

  Oliver opened the bottom drawer of the bureau. “You’re eleven, right? Like me. So we should be in the same grade,” he called over his shoulder. “How come I haven’t seen you at Shadyside Middle School?”

  “I go to private school,” Shawn replied.

  “Oh.” Oliver nodded. Too bad. Even though he did look like a rabbit, Shawn seemed pretty cool. It would have been fun if they had classes together.

  The school term had just started. That made it a little easier. At least Oliver didn’t have to start in the middle of the year. But still, most of the kids at Shadyside Middle School had been together since kindergarten.

  He sighed. Sometimes it was tough, always being the new kid.

  “So you really like it up here?” Shawn asked in a doubtful voice.

  “Definitely. I love all this old furniture.” Oliver ran his hand along the bureau’s carved edges. “You never know where you’ll find a secret drawer. Or what you’ll find inside!”

  Shawn shook his head. “Like a dead mouse? No thanks.”

  Oliver fiddled with a large standing mirror in the corner. He tilted it first one way, then another. “The last house didn’t have cool stuff like this,” he declared. “No attic either.”

  “How many new houses have you had?” Shawn asked.

  “Lots.” Oliver shrugged. “We move all the time because of my dad’s work.”

  “How come? What does he do?”

  “He’s a consultant,” Oliver explained. “He does stuff for the government.”

  He strolled over to an old desk and tugged the handle of the rolltop, trying to open it. “I took one of the downstairs bedrooms until I can get this attic fixed up. The farther away from my sister, Nell, the better. She’s seven, and she is such a pain! She never stops snooping. Dad says I can put a lock on the door at the bottom of the stairs. Once I do, she won’t be able to come up here unless I let her. Which I won’t!”

  “Want to bet?” Nell’s voice floated up the stairs.

  “Get out of here!” Oliver shouted at his little sister.

  He should have known she’d be listening. What a pest! Sometimes Oliver thought Nell’s mission in life was to annoy him. She seemed to be right behind him every time he turned around.

  “This room is creepy,” Shawn muttered. “This whole house is creepy!” He hopped off the trunk. “Listen, Oliver. There’s something you should know. There are a lot of ghosts in this town. Especially here on Fear Street.”

  “Ghosts?” Oliver repeated. He watched Shawn pace around the attic. “You’re kidding, right?”

  Shawn pointed toward the round, dust-streaked window. “You know the cemetery down the street? People are always running into ghosts there. There used to be a ghost named Pete who controlled people’s bodies at night.” Shawn shivered. “And I’ve heard of worse things!”

  “Are you nuts?” Oliver asked, wrinkling his forehead. “Or are you just trying to scare me? Because I hate to tell you, it won’t work.”

  “I’m serious,” Shawn insisted. “You have to be careful around here. Ghosts are all over the place!”

  Oliver grinned. Ghosts were all over Shawn’s brain anyway!

  Shawn glanced around as if checking for people listening in. “Just about every house on Fear Street has a ghost in it,” he whispered. “I bet this house has more than one! Nobody’s ever lived here longer than a couple of months. This very room is probably haunted!”

  Oliver laughed. “Come on, Shawn. Don’t be demented! Everyone knows there’s no such thing as ghosts! Those are just stories to scare babies with. Nothing scares me.”

  “Don’t laugh!” Shawn cried. He looked over his shoulder, then whipped his head around to check the other direction. “You’ll just make them mad. We’d better get out of here!”

  Was Shawn serious? Oliver wondered. If it was a joke, he was putting on some show.

  “Get real,” Oliver said. “What do you think will happen if I laugh?”

  He stepped to the center of the attic. He placed his hands on his hips. “Ha!” he laughed loudly. “Ha! Ha! Ha!”

  He heard a rustling noise behind him.

  Shawn glanced that way. His eyes widened. “Oh, no,” he murmured.

  What was he staring at?

  Oliver whirled to look behind him.

  Something moved near the open window.

  Something pale. An old sheet draped across an armchair.

  Oliver stared as it rose slowly into the air!

  2

  Oliver gazed at the sheet hovering above the armchair. It curved over something round, its hem flapping in and out.

  Shawn lifted a shaking hand and pointed. “L-look!”

  Oliver snorted. “Chill, Shawn. It’s just Spooky.”

  Oliver’s big black-and-tan Doberman, Spooky, followed him everywhere. Spooky liked to hide under things.

  Oliver went over and jerked the sheet from the air above the armchair.

  There was nothing below it but an ordinary seat cushion!

  Weird, Oliver thought. He glanced around. “I could have sworn he was under here. Spooky? Where is that dumb dog?”

  Shawn stared at the sheet. His eyes behind his glasses were wide. “If Spooky didn’t make the sheet rise, what did?”

  “It was probably just a breeze or something.” Oliver waved at the open window beside the chair.

  “I’ve never seen a breeze that could do that,” Shawn mumbled. Then he gazed straight at Oliver. “It was ghosts,” he declared.

  “No way! Anyway, suppose there are ghosts, which there aren’t. Why would they make a sheet rise in the air? What a dumb trick!”

  “Ghosts don’t have to have human reasons for doing what they do,” Shawn argued.

  “If I were a ghost, I’d pick something way cooler than sheets to play with,” Oliver said. He headed for the stairs. “Hey, I’ve got something to show you in my room. At least, I hope it’s still in my room.” He raised his voice so his sister would hear. “Which it should be, unless Nell took
it.”

  “I haven’t been in your room today!” Nell yelled from below.

  “Soundproofing, that’s what I really need up here,” Oliver muttered as he and Shawn bounded down the creaky attic stairs.

  * * *

  The attic was silent and still for a moment. Dust settled on the floor and on the sheet.

  Then twin whirlwinds began to spin, lifting spirals of dust. Whoosh! The columns of air swirled faster and faster. The cobwebs stirred in the breeze they gave off.

  Slowly, in the middle of the dust tornadoes, two ghostly figures appeared.

  3

  Robbie coughed. He hated the appearing-as-a whirlwind trick. It always made him feel dry and thirsty—even though ghosts never needed to drink.

  But his older sister, Dora, liked it. And if she felt like doing it, she made Robbie do it too.

  They’d been dead more than a hundred years and she was still just as bossy as she used to be when they were alive!

  Robbie glanced over at his sister. She looked like an ordinary blond-haired, blue-eyed twelve-year-old girl, her hair in two braids with big ribbons on the ends. She wore an old-fashioned yellow dress with puffy sleeves. No one would guess by looking at her that she was a ghost. Just like him.

  “That sheet trick was so dumb!” Robbie complained. “You call that scary? Babies wouldn’t be scared of that!”

  “Some scares work better than others. Babies are scared when they see your hideous face,” Dora retorted.

  Robbie stuck his tongue out. Then he made the flesh melt off his face until only skull, tongue, and eyeballs were left.

  “Much less scary than your regular face,” Dora scoffed. “You want to see scary?”

  Her skin slowly peeled off her whole body, evaporating into the air. She threw her skull back and waved her white bone hands in the air. Then she danced around the attic as a clattering skeleton. Her yellow dress hung from her dry bones.

  Robbie had to admit she looked gruesome. It was a really cool trick.

  Plus she made her shoes stay on! They were button-up boots. How does she do that? Robbie wondered. Why don’t her bones slip right out of them?

  Dora danced over to the big dusty mirror in the corner and floated up so she could see herself in her bones. She curtsied to her skeleton reflection, clacking her jawbone.

  Robbie shuddered. He hated that noise. Except when he did it.

  Dora laughed. Her skin rolled over her bones, and she turned back into herself. As she admired herself in the mirror, Robbie came up behind her.

  “How come you’re always staring at your ghost self?” Robbie asked. “Your face stays the same!”

  “Yeah!” Dora replied. “I always look good!” She stuck her tongue out at him in the mirror. “And you always look dumb!” She ruffled his hair, making it stand straight up.

  “Cut it out!” Robbie snapped. He smoothed down his blond hair. It was short on the sides and long on top. Then he straightened out his shirt. He wore a navy blue sailor suit with a wide square collar. He hated that suit. But he always appeared in it, because he was wearing it when he died.

  That was one of the reasons he liked doing sound effects better than appearing in his natural form. Who could be scared of a ten-year-old kid in a sailor suit?

  Dora turned and pushed him away. “Get out of my mirror before you crack it!” she ordered.

  Robbie floated over to the desk. He perched on top of it. He wished he could crack mirrors! But no.

  Dora drifted over to sit on the armchair.

  “That Oliver kid is going to be tough,” she announced. “I don’t want him up here in our attic.”

  “Neither do I,” Robbie said, though he wasn’t really sure. He kind of liked Oliver. He seemed fun. And he had lots of cool stuff in his room. Stuff Robbie had never seen before.

  “Some dumb lifer getting in the way when we’re fixing up a scare,” Dora grumbled. She called all living creatures “lifers.” “We’d have to watch every move we made!”

  “It is easier to haunt the house when we can hide in the attic between scares,” Robbie agreed. Ghosts didn’t have to eat or sleep, but they needed rest sometimes. Especially if they did hard tricks, like moving things or touching people.

  “And he’s got some nerve,” Dora went on. She copied Oliver’s tone. “‘Everyone knows there’s no such thing as ghosts!’ ”

  Her blue eyes took on a nasty gleam. “Maybe we should show him just how wrong he is,” she suggested with a grin.

  “Let’s scare him,” Robbie suggested. “Let’s scare him right out of the attic!”

  Dora rubbed her hands together. “Better than that! Let’s make him run to his parents and beg to move away!”

  Move away? Robbie thought. How come she always wants everybody to move away? There’s nothing to do around here unless someone is living in the house!

  On the other hand, scaring people was what Robbie liked to do best. He couldn’t resist a good scare session. “Bet I can scare him better than you can!”

  “Bet you can’t!” Dora retorted.

  “Bet I can!”

  “Oh, yeah?” Dora sneered. “Oh, yeah? Well, we’ll just see about that! We’ll take turns scaring him. The one who makes him run to Mommy and Daddy first wins!”

  What a great idea, Robbie thought. A contest!

  “Deal. But it’s my turn next,” he said. “You already tried that stupid sheet trick.”

  “All right,” Dora grumbled. “Whatever you do, I’ll top it!”

  Stairs creaked behind them.

  Robbie jumped. He and Dora whipped around.

  Robbie clutched Dora’s arm.

  His mouth opened and closed.

  He couldn’t tear his eyes away from the horrible thing he saw!

  4

  Oliver’s little sister, Nell, stood at the top of the stairs.

  She stared straight at the ghosts!

  Robbie stared back, frozen. Oh, no! he thought. She’s not supposed to know about us yet.

  This could wreck everything!

  How did that kid sneak up on us? We aren’t ready to be seen!

  Did he and Dora lose their special power to choose when they wanted to appear and to whom?

  Or—did this kid have the Sight?

  People with the Sight can see ghosts—whether the ghosts want them to or not.

  People with the Sight are a ghost’s biggest fear. A ghost’s worst nightmare!

  Robbie stared at Nell. She was small for her age, like her brother. She had short, curly dark hair and dark brown eyes.

  “Thunder!” Nell called. “Where are you, you bad cat?”

  Whew!

  She wasn’t looking at them, Robbie realized with relief. She was looking through them. Looking for her cat!

  He took a deep breath, even though he didn’t need to breathe anymore. Sometimes it just felt right. He let out a faint sigh.

  “Here, kitty kitty kitty,” Nell said.

  She edged into the room. She chewed on her lower lip and glanced around. She seemed nervous.

  Robbie bet she would be easy to scare!

  “Kitty?” Nell murmured, venturing farther into the room. She studied the sheet on the chair, then the big mirror.

  She peeked under the chair, lifting the sheet. “Kitty?”

  She searched behind the mirror. “Kitty? Are you up here?”

  Then she headed over to the carved wooden rolltop desk that used to be Robbie’s when he was alive. The one he was sitting on right now!

  Robbie jumped up and floated away from Nell. He hovered in the air above the desk.

  Nell rolled up the top of the desk and started opening the little drawers in back of it.

  Hey. What was she doing?

  Just plain snooping!

  No way could a cat fit in any of those drawers!

  Now she was humming! She wasn’t even calling the cat anymore.

  Had she ever really been looking for it? Or was she just looking for an excuse to come u
p here?

  Maybe Oliver was right about this kid being a brat.

  Nell found Robbie’s old magnifying glass and took it out of its drawer. She examined her fingertips through it. Then she stuck it in her pocket.

  She’s stealing it! Robbie thought, outraged.

  What if she found the puzzle drawer where he hid his most excellent secret stuff? His lucky arrowhead, the bullet he found at a Civil War battle site, and the 1894 Liberty Head silver dollar his father gave him on his tenth birthday?

  Robbie puffed up. He was going to scare Nell right out of her pink pom-pommed socks!

  “Boo!” Dora shouted behind him.

  Robbie jumped. He totally lost his concentration.

  Nell gasped. She ran downstairs.

  “What are you doing?” Robbie yelled at Dora. He hated it when she startled him! “I was going to scare her.”

  “It didn’t take much,” Dora commented.

  Robbie glared at her. “I’m going down to check out Oliver’s room now. You better not scare him before I do, or you automatically lose the contest!”

  * * *

  Robbie lurked in the doorway of Oliver’s room.

  Shawn perched on the desk chair, leafing through some comic books. Oliver sat on his bed, playing a weird-looking guitar.

  It didn’t look like any of the guitars Robbie remembered seeing while he was alive. It was flat instead of hollow, and it was made out of some shiny red stuff that didn’t look like wood. It had black knobs on it. Also, it made hardly any sound.

  Robbie remembered seeing guitars like Oliver’s on televisions that had been in the house before. The families who owned the televisions never stayed in the house long, which frustrated Robbie. He loved TV.

  Dora always wanted people to move out pretty soon after they moved in. Lifers irritated her.

  Robbie thought that was stupid. The rules of haunting said you could haunt only people who lived under your roof. Or people who were connected to people who lived under your roof. So when nobody lived here, who was there to haunt?

  People were much more fun to play with than spiders and bats and rats.

  Wait a second! What’s wrong with me? Robbie scolded himself. I should be coming up with a really good scare!