How I Got My Shrunken Head Read Online Free PDF Page B

table.
    My hands shot out, and I knocked something over. I grabbed it before it rolled off the table.
    A flashlight.
    “Hey!” I cried out happily.
    I’m going to listen to Carolyn’s advice from now on,
I promised myself.
I’m never going out again without a flashlight.
    I pushed the button, and a white beam of light swept over the floor. As I raised the flashlight, the light settled on the bookshelf against the wall.
    Aunt Benna’s black notebooks flashed into view. A tall stack of them nearly filled the shelf.
    I moved quickly to the bookshelf. With my free hand, I pulled down the top notebook. It was heavier than I thought, and I almost dropped it.
    Cradling it in my arms, I carried it over to the lab table. I climbed onto the tall stool and opened it up.
    Maybe I can find some answers in here,
I thought.
    Maybe I can find the part where Aunt Benna talks about giving me Jungle Magic. Maybe I can find out why Dr. Hawlings and Carolyn think I have it.
    I leaned over the notebook and aimed the light onto the pages. Then I began flipping through, page after page, squinting in the light.
    Luckily, my aunt has big, bold handwriting. Very clean and easy to read.
    The pages seemed to be organized by year. I kept flipping pages, scanning each page quickly — until I came to the year of her visit.
    My eyes rolled down over a long section about lizards. Some kind of tree lizards that Aunt Benna was studying.
    Then she described a cave she had found, cut into the rocky shore at the other side of the island. The cave, she wrote, had been lived in by the Oloyans, maybe two hundred years ago.
    I skimmed over long lists of things Aunt Benna had found in the cave. Her handwriting got very jagged, very crooked here. I guess she was really excited by her discovery.
    I turned several more pages. And started a section marked “Summer.”
    As I read the words, my mouth dropped open. My eyes nearly bulged out of my head.
    The words started to blur. I lowered the flashlight to the page so that I could see better. I blinked several times.
    I didn’t want to believe what I was reading.
    I didn’t want to believe what Aunt Benna had written.
    But the words were there.
    And they were terrifying.

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    The flashlight shook in my hand. I steadied it between both hands. Then I leaned forward and read Aunt Benna’s words, moving my lips silently as I read.
    “Dr. Hawlings and his sister, Carolyn, will stop at nothing to destroy the jungle and all the creatures who live here,” my aunt wrote in her bold, clear handwriting. “They do not care who they hurt or who they kill. They care only about getting what they want.”
    I swallowed hard. Steadied the circle of light over the notebook page. And kept reading.
    “Finding the secret of Jungle Magic in that cave was my most amazing discovery,” Aunt Benna wrote. “But I know the secret is not safe as long as Dr. Hawlings and Carolyn are around. They will use the Jungle Magic to do evil. And so I have given the Jungle Magic and its secret to my nephew, Mark. He lives four thousand miles awayin the United States. And so I hope the secret will be safe.
    “If the Jungle Magic ever falls into Hawlings’s hands,” my aunt continued, “the jungle will be destroyed. The island of Baladora will be destroyed. And so will I.”
    I gasped and turned the page. I struggled to keep the flashlight steady so that I could read more.
    “If Hawlings gets the Jungle Magic,” Aunt Benna wrote, “he will shrink my head until there is no trace of me. I must keep my nephew four thousand miles away from Hawlings. Because he will shrink Mark’s head, too, to get at the magic I have hidden there.”
    “Ohhhh.” A terrified moan escaped my throat.
    Shrink my head?
    Dr. Hawlings will shrink my head?
    I read the last words again: “I must keep my nephew four thousand miles away …”
    But I’m
not
four thousand miles away!
I told myself.
    I’m here. I’m right here!
    Carolyn brought me here to steal the