The Elevator Ghost Read Online Free PDF

whimpered.
    â€œToo much light is bad for storytelling.” Carolina clicked off everything in the living room except for a small table lamp by the sofa. Then she reached into her going-to-the-park bag and pulled out a plastic container of round candles in tiny tin pans.
    â€œCandlelight is the best.”
    She arranged the candles in a large flat ­ornamental dish Mrs. Croop kept on the ­coffee table.
    In a minute, candles were lit and she was back with mugs of steaming hickory tea for all of them.
    â€œNow, let’s see…” Carolina Giddle took a sip of her tea. Flames from the candles flickered and danced. “A story for a November evening…hmmm. I think you might like hearing about the mountain king and the shadow killer.”
    Hubert shivered and pulled the blanket tighter as Carolina Giddle began.
    This is the story of a boy I knew a few years back. Jack Scrumble lived with his grandfather up on the side of Cornshuck Mountain. How old are you, Hubert? Seven and a half? And you’re a year older, Hetty? Well, Jack had just turned nine.
    He was pretty brave for a nine-year-old. He helped his grandfather rescue sheep that ­sometimes stumbled down a steep incline at the edge of their pasture. Looking down from that ledge could make you dizzy as a hornet that’s fallen into a mint julep. When his granddad gathered honey from their hives, Jack was right there giving him a hand, never mind he’d been stung twice by honeybees. He learned to milk their cow, Adeline. She was a miserable beast who was known to kick out at you if you didn’t approach her in just the right way. A bruised shin didn’t keep him from doing the milking chore.
    But one thing Jack didn’t like was the dark shadows that ranged over Cornshuck Mountain. Once the sun began to sink, it seemed that wherever Jack went he was met by horrible shadows from twisted pine trees and odd-shaped rock outcroppings. The shadows looked as if they might be made by trolls or werewolves, or maybe even dragons.
    What Jack didn’t know was that Cornshuck Mountain was ruled by a mountain king who, as mountain kings go, wasn’t all that bad. Except for one habit. He liked to spend time dreaming up scary shadows when he should have been tending to a hundred and one other things that needed doing.
    Like what?
    Well, a good mountain king makes sure all the mountain streams and waterfalls are working — not plugged up with rocks and dirt and leaves. He’s responsible for painting mountain ash berries that color of orange-red that looks like the heart of a candle flame. He polishes up quartz crystals so they can wink at the moon on a dark night.
    Like I said, a multitude of chores.
    To tell the truth, the mountain king’s wife was getting fed up with tending to most of these chores herself. Meanwhile, her husband played around, twisting tree branches so they made shadows that looked like hairy mammoths or zombies with three heads.
    â€œZeb,” she announced one evening, after she had spent the entire day teaching a litter of young mountain wolves how to yodel, “time you quit all that shadow work. I know you come from a long line of fright-masters given to spooking travelers who should know better than to be out on mountain paths at night. But that band of crooks is gone and there are no more moonshiners making bootleg liquor. So there’s really no reason —”
    â€œThere’s that boy,” the mountain king said. “You should have seen the expression on his face when he was hurrying home from the sheep corral and I cast that shadow that looked like a Tyrannosaurus rex. Oh, my, I thought I’d die laughing!”
    Yes, the mountain king’s wife thought. You’re spending all that time scaring one little boy when you could be lending him a hand. Coyotes needed to be shooed away from the sheep. Their old milk cow could use some guidance finding a good patch of