The Tell-Tale Start Read Online Free PDF Page B

great-great-great-great granduncle’s stories, “The Premature Burial,” in which a poor soul suffers the horrors of believing he has been buried alive in a coffin. Their cat simply could not undergo such a fearful experience.
    “But flying’s the best way to travel, boys,” Uncle Jack said as he forked a pile of spaghetti onto his plate. “For cats as well as humans.”
    “Not for
our
cat,” Allan answered, stabbing his knife into the rubbery chicken parmesan that sat beside the spaghetti. “Imagine what it would feel like to be locked inside a little box, Uncle Jack. Have you no heart? Imagine being in a coffin, buried under six feet of cold, damp earth.”
    “Nobody’s talking about burying your cat,” Uncle Jack replied evenly.
    “But putting him in a pet carrier is like walling him into a stone tomb,” Edgar said as he picked all the mushrooms out of the sauce on his plate. “Imagine the darkness, the stale air, the frigid chill, the terror.”
    “So what do you two propose we do?” With a sigh, Uncle Jack put down his fork and picked up the grainy black-and-white fax of the brochure for the Gale Farm and OZitorium. “You want to leave the poor animal with this crazy professor?”
    “No,” the boys replied. “We want to drive there to pick him up, and then we’ll drive him home.”
    “Drive?” Uncle Jack replied, dumbfounded. “That’s thirteen hundred miles away!”
    “But Uncle Jack, please—”
    “Are you two sure this isn’t an excuse to visit this weird amusement park?”
    Edgar snatched up the fax and read aloud. “‘Visitors will discover on our grounds the actual home of Dorothy Gale, famous heroine of the beloved Oz story.’”
    Aunt Judith narrowed her eyes. “How can it be the ‘actual’ home of Dorothy Gale when she was a fictional character?”
    Edgar continued, “‘In addition, we offer a live musical production of
The Wizard of Oz
, performed daily.’” He tossed the brochure back onto the table. “Does that sound like someplace my brother and I would
ever
want to visit, Uncle Jack?”
    “Actually, yes—it’s just the sort of place you two would find funny.”
    “Just the sort of place where you could wreak havoc,” Aunt Judith added knowingly.
    “Driving twenty-five hundred miles round trip is out of the question,” Uncle Jack declared. “And that’s final.”
    “But Uncle Jack—”
    Aunt Judith didn’t let them finish. “Can’t this discussion wait until tomorrow?” Her voice was uncharacteristically edgy.
    “But Roderick—”
    “The darned cat’ll keep!” Aunt Judith snapped.
    Everyone turned toward her, surprised.
    She slapped her palms on the table, making the dishes and water glasses jump. “Have you boys forgotten that the representative from the Baltimore School District is coming tomorrow morning to evaluate our home school? To evaluate
everything
?”
    Actually, Allan and Edgar
had
forgotten it.
    She collected herself. “Tomorrow’s too important for us to wear ourselves out arguing about Roderick.”
    The twins settled back in their seats, their minds working fast:
    A representative from the school district…
    Evaluation…
    Roderick Usher fifteen hundred miles away…
    After a moment, identical grins spread across their faces. Suddenly, they weren’t worried about any of it—they had a plan.

    At breakfast the next morning, the boys assured their nervous aunt that they would be models of good behavior for the school district representative.
    It was no lie.
    What they did
not
tell her was that in the wee hoursof the night they had snuck out of bed and into the attic. There, by flashlight, they had removed the painted flats and props from their Halloween dungeon, carried them down into the basement, and silently transformed Aunt Judith’s spic-and-span “classroom” into something else entirely.
    “More pancakes?” Aunt Judith asked the boys, unaware of their handiwork.
    Uncle Jack had already left for his morning