Crandalls' Castle by Betty Ren Wright

Author:Betty Ren Wright
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781504013468
Publisher: Holiday House

Chapter Thirteen

SOPHIA’S JOURNAL

Charli nagged all the way home from the Castle. I take bigger steps than she does, but she ran to keep up. “You did see something upstairs. What was it? Why did you get that look on your face?”

I said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” but she didn’t believe me. And she could get me in trouble, the way Linda Wagner did.

“What do you think I saw?” I tried to make it sound like a joke. “Besides a dusty hallway.”

“A ghost,” she said. “I bet you saw a ghost.”

“Well, I didn’t,” I told her. “What’s wrong with you, anyway? If you go around telling people the house is haunted, you’ll make your uncle feel bad. He loves that place, in case you haven’t noticed.”

“Uncle Will wouldn’t care,” she said. “Dan says Uncle Will thinks people would pay more to spend the night in a haunted house.”

She’s probably right, I thought. Will Crandall would welcome a ghost. But I know he wouldn’t welcome being told Crandalls’ Castle is an awful place. He’d say, “What makes you say a thing like that, Sophia?” And I’d say, “When I went upstairs I had the same feeling I had the day my school burned in Sacramento.” Then he’d say, “What are you talking about?” I’d have to tell him.…

I don’t want to think about it. The way he’d look at me, wondering what kind of nut he had staying at his house! The way Lilly would look at me—like, why is this weird, ungrateful kid trying to make my Will unhappy?

“Just leave me out of it,” I told Charli. “I don’t like ghost stories.” We had reached the woods at the end of the Crandalls’ yard. I rushed ahead and up the back steps before she could ask any more questions.

I wanted to come up here to my bedroom and think for a while, before I had to talk to anyone else, but no luck. Lilly was at the stove, stirring tomato sauce with a long spoon and helping Mickey stand up with the other hand. I grabbed him just as he was about to fall.

“Sophia to the rescue as usual,” Lilly said. “You look tired, dear. Did Will work you girls too hard?”

“No way.” I whirled around the kitchen with Mickey in my arms to prove I wasn’t tired at all.

“I thought Will would be home by now,” she said, laughing at us. “We’ll eat as soon as he comes.”

I told her he had gone downtown for spray to get rid of a big wasps’ nest at the Castle.

She nodded and said something that really surprised me. “You know, I still haven’t been inside that house. I’ve passed it for years, of course, but now we own it and I should go in and look around but …”

“Why don’t you?” I said.

She gave the sauce an extra hard stir. “Well,” she said, “I realize it’s very run-down, and I don’t have Will’s knack for seeing how things will turn out.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.