The Haunting Hour Read Online Free PDF Page A

way,” Courtney replied. “The cookies are just mud. I’ll prove it to you. I’ll do something to Maryjo’s cookie. Nothing will happen. You’ll see.”
    Courtney and I hurried up to her room. She pulled the Maryjo cookie from its hiding place in the dresser drawer. She set it down on her desk. “Let’s see. What should we do to it?” she asked.
    She didn’t wait for me to answer. She picked up a pair of scissors, and —snip snip— cut off all the yellow hair.
    I gazed at the cookie with its ragged, bald head. Then I shoved the phone into my sister’s hand. “Go ahead. Call her.”
    Courtney’s eyes went wide. “Call Maryjo?”
    â€œYes. Call her,” I insisted. “See if anything happened.”
    Courtney punched in Maryjo’s number. “Hi, Mrs. Rawlins. It’s Courtney. Is Maryjo there?” she asked.
    Courtney’s mouth dropped open. She suddenly turned pale. “Oh. I see,” she said. “Well…no problem. It wasn’t important. Hope Maryjo is okay.” She clicked off the phone.
    â€œWhat? What? ” I asked.
    Courtney slumped onto the edge of her bed. Her voice came out in a whisper. “I—I could hear Maryjo screaming. Her mom said she couldn’t come to the phone. She was having some kind of trouble with her hair.”
    I gulped. “You could hear her screaming?”
    Courtney nodded. “She was yelling, ‘My hair—it’s falling out! Help me! It’s all falling out!’”
    I stared at the bald cookie on the desk. I suddenly felt sick. My legs were trembling. “We—we have to tell Mom,” I said.
    I turned and started toward the bedroom doorway. Mom’s voice floated up from downstairs. “I’m going, kids. I’m meeting your dad for dinner in town. Lulu is here. Come down and say hi.”
    Lulu?
    Courtney and I both froze. “I’m not going down there,” Courtney whispered. “She’s too scary. She has powers. She made us do horrible things.”
    â€œWe have to go down,” I said. “We have to tell Lulu the truth. That we don’t want to hurt our friends.”
    â€œI can hear you up there!” Lulu shouted. “Come down, you two.”
    Courtney and I made our way down the stairs, clinging to the banister as if it were a life raft. Lulu stood in the living room, arms crossed, waiting for us.
    She was dressed in black again, a black sweater pulled down over a short black skirt. A long purple scarf that matched her lipstick was curled around her neck.
    â€œThere you are!” she exclaimed, smiling.
    â€œWe know the truth about the mud cookies,” I blurted out in a trembling voice. “We don’t think it’s right to hurt people.”
    A smile spread over Lulu’s face. “It’s not right—but it sure is fun, isn’t it?”
    â€œNo,” Courtney said. “It’s not fun. We’re telling. We’re telling my parents about it as soon as they get home.”
    â€œNo, you’re not,” Lulu replied softly. Her smile faded slowly. “You’re not telling anyone. Let me show you why.”
    She lifted the lid off a square white box beside her on the coffee table. She pulled out two mud cookies and held them up, one in each hand.
    Her eyes lit up. “See? I made Matthew and Courtney cookies!”
    â€œOh no!” I gasped. The Matthew cookie had black hair and a skinny body, just like me. The Courtney cookie was thin and wiry, like Courtney.
    â€œNo more talk about telling on me. Let’s get busy,” Lulu said, holding the cookies in front of her. “We need mud, guys. We’re going to bake some more special cookies today.”
    â€œNo way!” I cried. “You can’t force us—”
    Lulu plucked a white feather from a couch pillow. A grin spread over her face as she slowly raised the quill of the feather to