Masters of Disaster by Gary Paulsen

Author:Gary Paulsen [Paulsen, Gary]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-375-89867-9
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2010-08-21T04:00:00+00:00

5

The Headless, Blood-Drinking, Flesh-Eating Corpses of Cleveland

“This time,” Henry said, “I’ve come up with something really unusual.” He was eating pizza with Reed and Riley in his backyard on a Saturday afternoon.

“Wait!” Reed said. “Do you think it’s time for us to do another project when I still stink from the last three? I have to sleep in the basement and shower in the washtub in the laundry room because my mother says my smell is getting in her curtains and carpeting. I’m not supposed to do anything else interesting until the odor from the last three interesting things we’ve done stops seeping into her walls. I don’t even know what this means, but she says I’m bringing down the value of the house and diminishing the equity my parents have built over the years because of how awful I smell.”

“Uh-huh.” Henry was nodding but not really listening.

“And I have to sit by an open window in every class and I can’t eat lunch in the cafeteria anymore because the funk that surrounds me makes people sick to their stomachs. The only good thing is that Dwight keeps his distance, which, when you stop to think about it, is almost worth smelling baby doody all the time and constantly tasting river pee and always stinking like sludge.”

“Mystery,” Henry announced, ignoring Reed. “I am talking about mystery. We do not have enough mystery in our lives, men. We don’t have any mystery in our lives. Let’s change that.”

“I think maybe Reed has a point, Henry,” Riley said. “Your ideas have a weird way of making him smell really bad. And it’s getting harder and harder to always keep downwind of him. Which reminds me: Reed, could you move 3.7 inches to your left? Because the wind has shifted slightly and I’m catching a whiff.”

“This is different.” Henry paused as he watched Reed shift over on the picnic table bench. “It’s not a dangerous or smelly project. This time we’re going to solve a mystery. We’ll just be using our brains.”

“I’m up for anything pain-free. And stench-free. Solving a mystery doesn’t sound like it could hurt or smell,” Reed said hopefully.

“We’re going to solve a murder mystery that’s over a hundred years old. When I was in the public library doing a social studies report, I found an old journal by a guy who lived in Cleveland in the nineteenth century. Turns out that the Hansen family, who lived out on the east edge of town, disappeared on May 8, 1887.”

“What do you mean, ‘disappeared’?” Riley asked, jotting “5/8/1887—family gone” in a small notebook he pulled from his pocket.

“On May seventh the whole family was seen sitting on the porch, waving at a neighbor on his way to town. But on May eighth, they were gone—the man, his wife, their fourteen-year-old daughter and even the dog. The house was completely empty.”

“No one knows what happened?”

“Nope. The local lawmen investigated—searched the house and grounds, asked the neighbors, talked to townsfolk, but no trace of them was ever found.

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