The Haunting of Heck House Read Online Free PDF

to this— ‘when he quite unexpectedly blew himself to smithereens whilst summoning entities from the beyond!’”
    â€œRight in the middle of my second encore!” the speaker enthused.
    â€œWow …” Tweed whistled low. “Way to bring the house down.”
    â€œI’ll say!” Cheryl peered at the last line of the information card. “Says here that ‘the ruby jewel from his gold-lamé turban was all that was left of him’ … Yeesh. Messy.”
    â€œAh yes. I remember now,” said the voice wistfully. “That was the performance where I finally managed to punch all the way through to the spirit plane. The afterlife.”
    â€œSo … what happened?” Cheryl asked.
    â€œIt punched back.”
    The twins flinched in tandem.
    â€œA rather unfortunate incident, really,” Simon Omar’s disembodied voice continued. “Some departed shades can be a tad on the grumpy side, you see. And if one of ’em decides to throw a spectral temper tantrum, and you happen to make contact at just the wrong moment, they can sometimes muster up an awful lot of arcane energy. The end result is usually nothing more than a dazzling light show and a deafening ka-boom. In my case, the entity I’d managed to disturb from eternal slumber decided if I really wanted to talk to the dearly departed that badly, then I might as well just … dearly depart.”
    â€œGah!” Cheryl shuddered in horror.
    Tweed blinked. “You mean a ghost … exploded you?”
    â€œThereby turning me into a ghost, myself,” Simon Omar explained. “And then, it seems, the grumpy old spook trapped that remaining spectral essence in my turban jewel for good measure. Just to teach me a lesson, I suppose. Ah, well … as theatrical demises go, I’m sure it was spectacular! No doubt secured me a place in the annals of famous magicians, wouldn’t you say?”
    â€œUm.” Cheryl shrugged a shoulder. “We’ve never heard of you.”
    â€œNonsense.”
    â€œNo, seriously,” Tweed confirmed. “No offence, but you actually kind of wound up bouncing around in the back of a truck, part of a rinky-dink travelling carnival run by a nefarious scammer named Colonel Winchester P.Q. Dudley. Along with a bunch of fake stuff made up to look like rare artifacts. You and the mummy princess were probably the only real curiosities he had. And he probably picked you up at somebody’s lawn sale or at a flea market.”
    â€œMummy princess? Dudley?” The speaker actually sounded like it was frowning in thought. “Dudley … ah, yes. It’s coming back to me now … flashes of memories of my time with the carnival …”
    â€œWhat do you remember?”
    â€œPotholes.”
    â€œâ€™Scuse me?”
    â€œThe carnival truck had terrible suspension,” the speaker complained. “I rattled around in my case like a lone pea in a pod! I remember now! And that Dudley fellow. The Colonel. Dreadful showman. No panache!”
    Cheryl leaned her elbows on the table, intrigued by the talking speaker. Tweed settled herself on a stool, likewise fascinated. Under normal circumstances, a pair of twelve-year-old girls might not have had suchcucumber-cool reactions to a piece of supernaturally possessed machinery. But, then again, Cheryl and Tweed weren’t what anyone usually thought of as “normal.” And a magic speaker was kind of a step down from the paranormal encounter they’d experienced only a few days earlier (although they’d never suggest such a thing to it—that would be rude).
    â€œD’you remember the carnival’s mummy princess?” Cheryl asked. “She’s a pal of ours.”
    â€œNever met her,” Simon answered. “Although, now that you mention it, I do recall admiring her sarcophagus from afar. Never spoke though. I mean, it isn’t like I’ve