The Ghost

1191 Words3 Pages

Night in the country came like a cloak so that everything outside disappeared. No street lights and a new moon, whose light couldn't penetrate the many trees, may have had something to do with that. From any window, the only thing Nate saw when he looked outside was a thick blanket of black and the occasional flare of a firefly. At nine p.m. he excused himself from his grandparents' company as they watched Secrets of the Dead in their sitting room. He had some dead people's secrets to uncover himself. He went to the library and carried to his room the two boxes of books he and the twins had started on earlier. He intended to look through them late into the night and make up for their lack of progress. But soon his eyes were too droopy to scan the pages for the clues Will had said might be there. Research became a lot more boring without the twins. Nate lay across the bed, not bothering to undress. He drifted off to sleep for just a short nap with every intention of waking after a few minutes to go at it again. Sometime during the night he woke to what sounded like loud footsteps thumping on the floor in an odd cadence. A rhythm of thump pause thump pause thump came repeatedly like someone hopping on one foot. Weird, it seemed to be coming from beside his bed. Nate sat up, still disoriented from sleep. His lights were still on, and he cast a drowsy look about the room to find the cause of the noise. Movement from the floor shot a rush of adrenaline that brought him to full alert. He pulled his feet onto the bed like they had been dangling in an alligator pit. Had his room been transformed into such a habitat, it would not have shocked him more than the sight that actually greeted him from the bedroom floor. Books rose from t... ... middle of paper ... ...uch effort and, to Nate's surprise, a small roll of parchment fell to the floor. He didn't trust himself to pick it up. It had to be old, and Will had already warned him about how delicate old parchment could be. Supposed it just crumbled in his hand and it turned out to be something really important. But it was too early to call Will for advice, and no way would he just let it lay on the floor. He picked it up and unrolled it gently. He held a note important enough to have a hiding place. Would it answer all his questions about the farm? Nate crawled back into bed. He laid the paper flat, then placed his pocket knife on the top end of the parchment to prevent it from rolling up again and kept his finger gently on the bottom edge. He read the note once, then read it much slower a second time. The note definitely meant something, he just didn't know what.

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