Anybody Shining Read Online Free PDF

been looking at his feet, but now Tom raised his head a bit and a smile snuck onto his face. “That must be nice.”
    â€œIt pretty much is,” I agreed.
    â€œSo,” he said, and you could tell he was struggling to come up with something to say. “Well, I guess I was wondering, is—is it always so cold here in July?”
    James stepped forward. “Son, sometimes it gets so cold, it snows the first day of August.”
    â€œNo, it don’t!” yelled Harlan, who had stoodback from the crowd, but now run over to join us. “That James will tell you a tall one, he sure will. It don’t get cold enough to snow until nearly November, and then again some years it don’t snow until come Christmastime.”
    Tom stumbled back a few steps, like he was afraid Harlan might plow him over. But he steadied himself and give Harlan a nod. “Right now, back where I live, it’s hot enough that steam comes off the road after it rains,” he told us. “If it’s late in the day, it looks like ghosts.”
    â€œWe ain’t got no road here,” Harlan admitted. “But we got us lots of ghosts!”
    Tom’s eyes turned bright. “Real ghosts?”
    â€œReal as you’re alive,” I told him, cutting in before Harlan could tell all our best ghost stories. “We got a headless one living yonder in our barn.”
    The bossy girl named Ruth snorted. “Ghosts? In your barn? I guess no one has informed you that there are no such things as ghosts.”
    â€œYou don’t believe it? Just come up and look,” I told her. “You’ll believe it soon enough.”
    â€œBest ghosts are in the caves,” James said. He leaned toward Tom in that confiding way he has that draws folks to him so. “Folks get lost in the caves, never to be seen again except as spooks and spirits. Why, almost any night, you can go over to Ghost Cave and see Wendell McBean right there at the mouth, asking you what’s on the stove for dinner. Folks’ll tell him, but he don’t listen. Most spooks are stubborn that way.”
    Bossy Ruth shook her head. “Mother said we’d hear all sorts of stuff and superstition from people up here, and she was right. Tom, you’re not to listen to one syllable of this nonsense.”
    Even though that Ruth was as bossy and rude as could be, I found that I admired the way she talked. It was like she was reading directly from a book. But one look at James and Tom, and I could see they didn’t share in my admiration. I could also see that James was drawing Tom to him, and that if I didn’t act quick, Tom would be his friend and not mine!
    â€œTom, I will be pleased to take you to the cave James is telling you about,” I said, hoping to sound as refined as Ruth, but much more polite. “If you would like to meet me here in this very clearing tomorrow evening at this very time, why, I will show you the way.”
    Tom smiled at me. “I’d like that.”
    Ruth shot him a harsh look. “Mother will not approve,” she warned him. Then she turned to the little ones. “It’s time for you to be off to bed. Mazie, help me take these children to their cabins.”
    A girl of Lucille’s age, which is to say ten, took the hand of the smallest child and turned toward the cabins. Ruth fussed at the others and soon was leading them in a line like a mother duck back across the clearing.
    â€œWe best be getting back too,” James declared. “Daddy will set out looking for us if we ain’t home before full dark.”
    â€œThat’s when the mountain lions will jump you,” Harlan added. “If you’re in the woods and hear a woman screaming, why, it ain’t nowoman at all. It’s a mountain lion, and it will eat you tip to toe.”
    The light was draining out of the sky, but even so I could see Tom’s face go ghosty pale. “Don’t