The Ghost of Gruesome High Read Online Free PDF Page B

its perfectly normal. And right now, talking to myself was the most normal thing I was doing!
    “Just stop climbing, turn around, and go home,” I said to myself quite calmly and rationally. But for some reason my feet kept going, kept climbing further and further up Grissom Hill toward Gruesome High. I mean, Grissom High. No. At ten minutes until midnight it could only be called Gruesome High!
    A part of me still couldn’t believe I was actually doing this. Just because I had told the others I wanted to get another look at the ghost was no reason to be climbing up this hill, all alone, at midnight, armed with nothing but a tiny flashlight.
    When I put it that way, this really was the stupidest thing I’d ever done in my whole life!
    But for some reason I felt there was no turning back now. I’d already sneaked out of my parent’s house—something I don’t normally do, though I have to admit I’ve done it once or twice before—and I’d already made it almost to the top of the hill, and it was already almost midnight. There hardly seemed any point in turning back now.
    Besides, there was something about this whole ghost thing that just wasn’t adding up. I wasn’t quite sure yet what it was that was screwy, but something kept buzzing in the back of my mind, telling me that something wasn’t right.  
    I tried to keep my mind busy attempting to figure out what was bugging me about all this so I wouldn’t have to think about the fact that I was out here all alone, at midnight, with a ghost, and no one knew I was here. But I couldn’t help but think about it.
    I was scared. My mouth felt as dry as a cotton ball. I felt the small flashlight in my pocket and suddenly wondered if it had batteries. I had been so nervous and excited as I sneaked out of the house I hadn’t even bothered to check. I thought about checking it now, but decided I was too close to the top of the hill and I didn’t want to risk the ghost seeing me before I saw him.
    As the dark shapes of the school buildings came into sight, almost seeming to flow down the hill toward me as I climbed up toward them, the wind picked up slightly. Even though summer was almost here and the days were getting hot, the wind at the top of Gruesome Hill was cold. Suddenly it seemed to get even colder.
    I looked at my watch by the light of a distant bulb somewhere in the school. It wasn’t like the school was completely dark. There were lights here and there, they just weren’t very bright, and most of them were either way up high, or way down low. They seemed to cast more shadows than light.
    11:58. Two minutes to go. It was a fairly large school and I had no reason to expect the ghost to show up at the same place it did the other night, but I hid behind some bushes in a planter near the spot where we’d seen it, resting my back against a large metal trash can painted in the school’s colors, black and gold.
    I was getting cold and now that I wasn’t moving my mind had even more free time to scare me. This really was the stupidest thing I’d ever done in my whole life!  
    And suddenly another thought struck me. The scariest thought yet! I didn’t really believe in ghosts. So if what we all saw the other night wasn’t a ghost, then it must have been something even scarier than a ghost.
    It must have been a man. A man sneaking around the school late at night so no one would see what he was doing! And here I was, a fifteen-year-old girl, all alone with some guy who was pretending to be a ghost so he could do—well, whatever he was doing.  
    Now that I thought about it that way, I decided this really was a bad idea. A very bad idea. I glanced at my watch again, but couldn’t see the face in the dark. I carefully started to reach into my coat pocket for the tiny flashlight, planning to take just a quick peek at my watch and then leave, when I saw a movement!
    I froze! I stopped breathing. I think my heart stopped beating. My eyes opened wider and I looked