My Friends Are Dead People Read Online Free PDF

“Go on. There’s a lantern on the wall. It’s very old so be
careful with it.”
    “ You’re g-going,
right?”
    “ It’s better if you
experience it by yourself. And don’t daydream down there or you’ll
fall off.”
    “ What do you mean fall
off? I don’t want to go if there’s a chance – Oz, aren’t you
worried that I might fall?”
    “ Jess, you’ll be fine.
Just take one step at a time.”
    Great. I took a step forward and landed in a
pile of mud. I took a few more, and reached the flat ground. It was
pitch black the rest of the way. I couldn’t do this. I turned back,
but there was now a wall blocking the opening. I quickly snatched
the lantern off its hook and without hesitation pulled out a match
and lit it.
    “ Oz?” I yelled, lifting up
a rusty iron lantern with green glass panels. There was a slight
echo. “I don't want to do this!"
    Running footsteps above me
thumped across the floorboards. What was she doing now? Well, it
really didn’t matter. I had had just about enough of her scares. I
held the lantern out and started my descent, taking one step at a
time, which was hard in itself because I could only see the step I
was on. Luckily, there weren’t that many and the next passage was a
long corridor lit with tiny lamps. The walls were lined top to
bottom with black bricks and dirty roots, leaving space in the
middle for ragged plywood and locked cupboards labeled with names
like Lingering Tom and Boo Goth
Lawrence . One label said: James Skool , a babel gargoyle who died
in Wandering Lost from a malicauht’s nevetru
curse in H.D.
2439 .
    A little ways down, there was a stone
werewolf sculpted into the plywood. Most of its body was hidden
inside the wall, and its head was at the top corner, easily eight
feet high. I lifted the lantern above my head to get a better look
at the scary face. It looked a little like Charles. The label for
it was blank. That was kind of creepy.
    I lowered my head as I hurried by the
sculpture.
    Hello .
    The voice was deep and eerie. I peeked back
and saw a dark shape move smoothly into the glow of my lantern and
over to the sculpture.
    "Hello," it said again to the sculpture.
    I couldn’t tell what it was. One thing for
sure, it did not move like a person. The ghostly silhouette eyed
the sculpture for a moment, then planted a small pumpkin at the
werewolf's stone feet. The black ghost turned its featureless face
back to me, then disappeared.
    Scared, I ran out of the passage and
stumbled out onto a flight of stairs, made of branches and sheets
of distorted plywood. There wasn’t any railing or wall this time,
or was there a ceiling. All I could see beyond the steps were huge
tree branches stretched high above me. Inside the crevice of one,
there was a crooked sign.

    Y o u a r e two-h u n d r e d f e e t b e l
o w
     
    Oh, my God, what was this place? Why did I
just find out about this underground today?
    I took a deep breath and continued. The
stairway went on and on, taking me deeper underground and further
away from the lit corridor. Every so often there would be another
marker telling me how far below the house I was. I stopped reading
them after a while, turning my attention to staying on the path
while dodging countless bugs crawling all over the steps.
    All of a sudden, I ran smack into a bundle
of prickly branches.
    “ Ow!” I yelped, whacking
the branches away and scrambling forward.
    Just ahead of me was a massive tree trunk
with an enormous owl hole. I knew exactly what kind of tree it was.
It was a sequoia, said to be the tallest tree in the world, and I
was somewhere high up in it, slowly descending it by its
branches.
    To the sides of the hole were two wooden
werewolf statues, each with terrified expressions and clutching a
rotten pumpkin to its chest. I bowed my head once again and hurried
past the statues and into the hole. The inside was as big as my
bedroom. There were empty shelves built into the walls, an angled
roof and a deep alcove