The Haunting Hour Read Online Free PDF Page B

the floor. I stared down at it, expecting it to be broken, but it wasn’t.
    I dodged to the side as Lulu’s hands swiped the air in front of me. Now I was trapped. Trapped in the corner.
    The headless girl swung her arms again.
    Then…stopped. She froze.
    I gaped in shock as her right shoulder crumbled away and vanished. Then the scarf disappeared. Then her arm crumbled away.
    â€œHey—Muttley!” I heard my sister’s cry from across the room.
    I turned and saw the big dog, his head down, his teeth chomping hard.
    Muttley was gobbling up the Lulu cookie!
    A few seconds later Lulu was gone. Her head too.
    Shouting, screaming for joy, Courtney and I threw our arms around Muttley and gave him a hundred hugs. “You’re a hero, boy! A real hero!” I cried.
    â€œThank goodness he eats anything!” Courtney exclaimed.
    â€œWe should give him a big steak dinner tonight!” I said. “He’s a hero! A hero!” And I hugged him some more.
    Courtney climbed to her feet. “Let’s get the kitchen cleaned up before Mom and Dad get home,” she said.
    â€œNo. Leave it,” I replied. “Don’t touch anything. We need to show it all to them. We have a lot of explaining to do.”
    â€œOkay,” Courtney agreed. Her eyes searched the kitchen. “Whereare the two cookies Lulu brought? The cookies of you and me. Where did Lulu put them?”
    â€œShe brought them in here,” I said. “And then I think she put them—OH NO!”
    Courtney and I began screaming together. “Muttley—no! Drop, boy! Drop! Muttley—DROP! PLEASE—DROP!”

Revenge of the Snowman
    INTRODUCTION
    ILLUSTRATED BY A RT S PIEGELMAN
    I live in New York City. And when you live in such a crowded, noisy place, you overhear a lot of conversations.
    One afternoon I was passing a junior high in my neighborhood, and I overheard two boys arguing. “You can be scared to death,” a tall boy in a Mets cap said. “It happens a lot.”
    â€œNo way!” his friend replied. “You can’t just see something scary and drop dead.”
    â€œYour heart can stop,” the first boy insisted. “It can just freeze. You get so scared, you just freeze—forever.”
    Frozen in fear, I thought, watching the boys run for a bus. Is it possible for someone to be frozen in fear?
    And just as I had that thought, it started to snow.
    By the time I walked home, the snow was swirling—and my brain was swirling too. I rushed to my computer to write this story.
    M y friend Billy thinks he’s real cool. He’s always telling us how cool he is—which is only one of the things that annoy us about Billy.
    Billy is an annoying dude. Why? I could make a list….
    (1) He’s stuck-up.
    (2) He’s a show-off.
    (3) He’s a loudmouth.
    (4) He thinks he’s an expert on everything.
    (5) He thinks he’s smarter and better than us.
    By us I mean me—Rick Barker—and my other friends, Loren and Fred. The four of us all live on the same block, and we’ve hung out since kindergarten.
    So we’re stuck with Billy, even though we complain about him all the time. I guess our main problem with Billy is that he never stops talking.
    And he always talks about death .
    â€œDid you know you can tickle a person to death without even touching him?” Billy says.
    He’s so weird. It’s like he’s obsessed. He’s always telling us disturbing ways people can die.
    â€œDid you know you can itch to death in your sleep?”
    â€œDid you know a tiny feather can kill you if it falls from an airplane?”
    Listening to that stuff is not entertaining. I mean, it can mess up your mind—right?
    So today the four of us were walking to the neighborhood park, and when we got there, Loren, Fred, and I decided to put one of Billy’s wild death facts to the test.
    It was a snow day—school had been canceled.