The Tell-Tale Start Read Online Free PDF

communicate with the realm of the dead via the captive brother, and thereby rule both worlds!
    At this moment, the plan is proceeding with clockwork precision….

LESSONS IN HORROR
    THE boys’ homeschooling went well the first week, even if they had to slow down a bit to accommodate their Aunt Judith. Then Roderick Usher went missing.
    Edgar and Allan looked everywhere for him, even checking inside the walls to ensure that their poor cat had not somehow been walled up alive, as one of their great-great-great-great granduncle’s most famous stories, “The Black Cat,” had involved just such a terrifying incident.
    But they found nothing.
    Allan and Edgar were distraught.
    Roderick was special—and not just because he was the last gift their mom and dad ever gave them.
    Over the past seven years, Edgar and Allan had taught him many tricks. There was the Stuffed Cat, where hefroze on command. (His cue was two lines from one of their great-great-great-great granduncle’s poems, “Lo! In yon brilliant window-niche, how statue-like I see thee stand.”) Roderick could hold a pose for so long that visitors often mistook him for a work of taxidermy, and their shock when he seemed to come suddenly to life (cued by a finger snap) was very gratifying.
    Also, Roderick was born able to imitate the sound of various birds, which proved helpful to his expeditions through the tangled branches of the neighborhood trees. Edgar and Allan added many other sounds to his repertoire, including monkey calls, hissing snakes, crying babies, barking dogs, and whistling teakettles. Who knew when the odd sound effect might come in handy?
    But their cat’s most useful talent was untying knots with his unusually strong and agile paws. The cue was the twins’ whistling “Ring Around the Rosy.” The Knot Trick was especially entertaining down at the Baltimore docks, where he was able to fray, unravel, and then unknot even the thickest rope to release moored yachts. The boys loved watching yachtsmen in sport jackets and leather deck shoes toss their cocktails aside and dive into the water to swim after their receding boats.
    And Roderick could work wonders with smallerknots as well, which made him a great help around the house. When Uncle Jack’s back was so painful that he couldn’t bend over, Roderick untied his sneakers for him. Aunt Judith, a semi-professional knitter, relied on the cat’s help whenever a project snarled.
    After Roderick disappeared, Allan and Edgar barely slept or ate.
    Fortunately, just a few days after the disappearance, Aunt Judith got a phone call with the good news that Roderick had apparently wandered into a delivery truck and survived for days on leftover fast food that the driver had tossed carelessly into the back of the cab.
    He was alive and well in Kansas.
    What a relief!
    Naturally, Aunt Judith offered to pay for Roderick’s return via airplane, but the man who had found him refused.
    “What’s he want, a ransom?” Uncle Jack asked that night at dinner, when he heard the story. “Is he some kind of nut?”
    “Not at all,” the boys answered. Aunt Judith already had filled them in on the details of her conversation. “He’s an animal lover.”
    “Who is he?” their uncle asked, tucking his napkin into his shirt.
    The boys tossed onto the table a brochure that the man had faxed a few hours before. “He’s the owner and operator of some kind of
Wizard of Oz
–themed amusement park in Kansas. It’s called the Dorothy Gale Farm and OZitorium,” said Allan. “It’s also his home.”
    “He goes by the somewhat unoriginal name of Professor Marvel,” Edgar added.
    “So he
is
a nutcase,” Uncle Jack remarked.
    “No! He’s an animal lover!”
    They explained that the professor believed it would be cruel to lock Roderick inside a small cage stowed in the dark belly of an airplane along with luggage and airmail and who-knew-what-else. And the boys agreed. It reminded them of another of their