R. L. Stine_Mostly Ghostly 03 (10 page)

Robert Lawrence Stine's
scary stories have made him one of the bestselling children's authors in history. “Kids like to be scared!” he says, and he has proved it by selling more than 300 million books. R.L. teamed up with Parachute Press to create Fear Street, the first and number one bestselling young adult horror series. He then went on to launch Goosebumps, the creepy bestselling series that gave kids chills all over the world and made him the number one children's author of all time (
The Guinness Book of Records
).

R.L. Stine lives in Manhattan with his wife, Jane, their son, Matthew, and their dog, Nadine. He says he has never seen a ghost—but he's still looking!

Check out this sneak preview of the fourth book in R.L. Stine's Mostly Ghostly:

Little Camp of Horrors

THIS SUMMER MAX IS
going to Camp Snake Lake—where he will have to swim in a lake filled with poisonous snakes…

where a Headless Ghost roams the fields…

where he and his mostly ghostly friends, Nicky and Tara, will continue the dangerous search for Nicky and Tara's parents.

But first Max will have to face the evil spirit Phears again. Can Max learn the secret that will destroy this most terrifying ghoul for good?

MOM STEPPED OVER THE
clutter on the floor. “Max, please change your mind,” she said. “Go to summer camp with Colin. He's leaving in a few minutes on the counselors’ bus with the other junior counselors. Let me pack you up.”

“No way,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest. “I told you. I’m allergic to trees. I can’t help it. Even if I see a tree in a movie, I break out in spots.”

“That can’t be true,” Colin said, bursting into my room. “Because you were
born
in a tree!”

Dad came in right behind him. He laughed at Colin's stupid joke.

“At least I was born, not dredged from a swamp,” I said to Colin.

No one laughed at that.

No one ever laughs at my jokes.

Mom brushed a hand through my hair. “You don’t have to go with Colin. You can take the camp bus tomorrow with the regular campers.”

“Forget it,” I muttered. “I can’t go to camp. Fresh air makes me cough.”

Dad shook his head and scowled at me. “How do you plan to spend your summer, Max? Doing stupid card tricks in your bedroom?”

I picked up a deck of cards from my bed table. “Here. Pick a card, any card.”

Colin grabbed a puzzle magazine and flipped through it. “Check this out.
One Hundred and One Anagrams
. And he's worked them all.”

He pinched my cheek really hard. “Like to waste time, Maxie?”

I grabbed the magazine out of his hand. “Know what an anagram of
Colin
is?” I asked. “It's
stupid
.”

“Please don’t fight,” Mom said. She said that at least a hundred times a day. Mom is tiny like a little bird, with a quiet little voice, and she doesn’t like yelling.

Dad took the deck of cards from me. “You have to get over your fears, Max,” he said. “Summer camp will help you.”

“I’m not afraid,” I replied. “I just don’t want to go!”

“Colin will be there to protect you,” Mom said.

“Yeah, you got that right.” Colin grinned at me. “Know what I’ll protect you from? I’ll protect you from gut punches. Like this!”

He punched me so hard in the stomach, I thought his hand went out my back! I doubled over, holding my aching gut, groaning like a dying seal.

Mom hurried over to me. “Colin, why did you do that to Maxie?” she asked.

Colin grinned again. “For fun?”

“Unnnnk unnnk,” I moaned.

Colin turned to Dad. “I know why Max won’t come to my camp. He's afraid he might have to swim in Snake Lake. I told him how it's filled with deadly poisonous snakes.”

“That would toughen him up,” Dad said.

“No one has ever come out of Snake Lake alive,” Colin said, lowering his voice and trying to sound scary.

I shuddered. I guess he
did
sound scary.

“And get this,” Colin said to Dad. “When I told Max the story of the Headless Camper, he almost wet his pants.”

Dad and Colin both hee-hawed.

“You’re a liar!” I cried.

“Stop scaring Maxie with those awful camp stories,” Mom scolded.

“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “I’m not going. No way.”

We heard a horn honk out on the street.

“The bus!” Colin cried. “It's here!”

Dad and I grabbed Colin's bags. Then we all
hurried downstairs to load him onto the bus. I suddenly felt very happy. A whole summer without Colin! Now,
that's
a vacation!

The bus driver came out to help with the bags. Inside the small yellow school bus, three or four other guys about Colin's age stared out at us. The bus said
CAMP NAKE AKE
on the side. Someone had pulled off some of the letters.

Mom hugged Colin. Dad hugged him too. Then he and Dad touched knuckles.

Colin started to climb onto the bus. Halfway up the steps, he turned to me. He pulled something out from under his Camp Snake Lake T-shirt.

It glittered in the sunlight.

The pendant!

Colin was wearing the pendant!

“Hey, Max—check out my new good-luck pendant!” he called, a big grin on his face.

“But that's
mine
!” I shouted.

“I’m tossing it to the snakes in Snake Lake! See ya!”

He disappeared into the bus, and it roared away.

A few minutes later, I sat on the edge of my bed, feeling glum. Nicky and Tara and I spent
months
searching for that pendant. And stupid Colin had it the whole time.

How could I tell my two ghost friends the bad news?

The house was silent. Mom and Dad had gone to a movie. I think they were seeing
Scream and Die 3
.

They both love totally violent movies with fighting and killing, and people thrown through plate glass windows, and guys screaming and dying hideous deaths every minute. Mom likes them even more than Dad. Go figure.

Well, I felt pretty violent myself. I wanted to
strangle
my brother Colin.

But he was gone. Gone for eight long weeks. And we
had
to get that pendant.

“Nicky? Tara? Where are you?” I called, glancing around my room.

No answer.

They had disappeared when Mom came bursting into my room.

“Hey, guys? Are you here? I need to tell you something.”

No reply.

I climbed to my feet and started to pace back and forth. I had to calm down and stop feeling so angry. But how?

I called Aaron's house. His mother answered and said Aaron wasn’t allowed to come to the phone. He was grounded because he’d played a joke on his little sister.

Aaron told his sister he had barfed in her bed. It was only potato salad. But when she saw the yellow pile on her blanket, she freaked and puked all over the floor.

“Aaron can come to the phone in about a month,” his mom said.

I clicked off the phone and started pacing again. Then I picked up the deck of cards and shuffled it for a while. I practiced shuffling up and shuffling down. The trick is to keep the same five cards on top no matter how many times you shuffle the deck.

I’m getting pretty good at it. But shuffling cards didn’t take my mind off Colin and the pendant.

“Nicky? Tara?” I called. “Where
are
you?”

The doorbell rang.

I jumped. I could hear my dog, Buster—our huge, furry wolfhound—barking his head off in the garage. Doorbells drive him crazy. I don’t have a clue why.

The front door was open. I saw a man and a woman through the screen door. I blinked. Why did they look familiar?

The man was tall and thin and had wavy brown hair, thinning in front. He had serious brown eyes and a nice smile. He wore a white Polo shirt over baggy khakis.

The woman had lighter hair, cut short and straight. Her eyes were blue. They kept darting
from side to side. She didn’t smile. Instead, she was chewing the pink lipstick off her lips.

She wore a pale pink top over a flowered skirt with lots of pleats.

The man stared at me through the screen door. “I’m sorry to bother you,” he said. “We’re the Rolands. We used to live in your house. And we’re searching for our two kids, Nicky and Tara.”

Excerpt from
Little Camp of Horrors

Copyright © 2005 by Parachute Publishing, L.L.C.

Published by
Delacorte Press
an imprint of
Random House Children's Books
a division of Random House, Inc.
New York

Copyright © 2005 by Parachute Publishing, L.L.C.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher,
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eISBN: 978-0-307-53917-5

v3.0