I peered out over the dark tombstones, searching frantically for her.
Where is she? Did she decide to leave me out here? She wouldn’t do that.
Would she?
I pushed forward, trying to loosen the rope. It was wound around me tightly, from my shoulders to just below my knees. It pressed my hands tight against my sides.
I heaved my chest forward as hard as I could. But the rope wouldn’t give at all.
I twisted and turned my shoulders, trying to loosen it. But it remained taut.
With all my strength, I pushed my hands out. But the rope cut through the skin on my knuckles.
“What’s the use?” I fell back against the cold gravestone with a bitter sigh.
I stared out at the old tombstones bathed in the light of the full moon.
“Huh?”
Did a gravestone just shift? Did it tilt to one side?
No. It looked as if it moved. But it didn’t, I reassured myself. It’s just an illusion, caused by the shimmering light of the moon.
But I blinked hard and stared at it — just to make sure. The tombstone beside it appeared to tilt now!
I heard another long moan, closer this time.
The trees creaked. The wind shook their scraggly, bare limbs.
Another tombstone shifted. With a low creak, it seemed to lean back.
Another eerie moan, so close … so close behind me.
“No!” My head began to pound.
I have to get out of here!
I twisted and turned and pushed against the rope.
“Somebody — help me! Get me out of here!”
I gasped as a green mist rose up from the creaking, tilting graves. Slowly at first. Then faster. Thicker. Billowing up with a sour, sick smell.
The stench grew stronger as the mist swirled around me. I started to choke. I cried out as it settled on my face, stinging my skin, burning my eyes.
Break free, Spencer, I ordered myself. No matter what it takes!
But before I could start tugging, a hoarse voice echoed through the sickening mist: “I … need … your … body.”
“Huh? Who’s there?” I gasped. “Who is it? Frank? Frank — is that you?”
“I … need … your … body …”
The voice was a croak, more like a cough on the wind. The words so faint — but so chilling.
“Frank?” I cried. “Untie me! Frank? Buddy?”
“I … need … your … body.”
“Frank?”
The icy green mist rose up around me. I began to feel so strange. So weak …
What is happening to me?
I tried to push against the ropes, but I couldn’t raise my arms … couldn’t tighten my muscles.
My knees buckled.
I struggled to hold my head up. I felt so weak … so weak.
“Somebody — help,” I choked out, my voice only a whisper now.
“Your body … give me your body!”
“No —” I gasped.
But I suddenly felt dizzy. So weak and dizzy.
I felt something press down on my head. Something cold and hard. Like a heavy hand pushing down on my hair.
Pushing … pushing into my head.
I tried to protest. Tried to cry out.
But my mouth wouldn’t open.
And I felt so weak….
The heavy pressure made my forehead throb. My brain felt about to explode!
I … I can’t think! I realized. I can’t think of words. I can’t think of anything.
It hurts. It hurts so much!
The hard, cold feeling moved down to my chest, down through my arms, my legs.
Squeezing me. Squeezing so tight against my chest now, I could barely breathe.
Can’t breathe …
Can’t think …
And then I heard a sharp RIP.
Like Velcro tearing.
Like a shirt tearing.
Like skin ripping apart.
And I felt myself floating. Floating up, up. Floating free.
Up in the air now. High in the thick green mist.
Through the mist, I struggled to focus. I squinted hard — and saw myself!
Floating in the mist, I stared down at my own body, still tied to the tombstone.
I tried to cry out. I tried to shout, to call to my body down below.
But I couldn’t make a sound.
How can I be in two places? How can I be up here and down there? I wondered, terrified.
As I floated in the mist, I tried to raise my hands in front of my face.
No hands!
I swirled in the wind trying to glimpse my legs, my feet.
No. Not there!
I’m invisible, I realized to my horror.
I’m me. I’m only my mind! I’m me — floating above my own body.
And then, more horror. I watched helplessly as, down below, my body wiggled its fingers. It stretched out its legs. Then swung its head — my head! — from side to side.
Then it blinked.
And smiled.
A smile made with my lips — but not my smile. My nostrils flared. And my lips moved in a way that I could never move them. They turned down in the corners, curved into a cold, cruel sneer.
Watching in disbelief from the mist above, I tried to scream. But I couldn’t make a sound.
Down below, my head turned. It raised its eyes to me, as if it could see me. “Good-bye, Spencer,” it said in almost my voice. A little raspy, a little hoarse — but almost my voice.
Huh? Good-bye?
I watched my eyes flash in the moonlight. The sneer on my face deepened.
“You disturbed my rest. Your body is mine now. I’ve been waiting so long.”
“Huh? You rose up from the grave?” I cried. A silent cry. No sound. No sound at all. But I could think. Despite my panic, I could still think.
“Are you a ghoul?” I demanded. “Are you really a graveyard ghoul?”
“Not anymore. Now I am YOU.”
He answered me. I was silent, but he heard me. He can hear my thoughts.
“You can’t have my body!” I screamed. I tried to float lower. I tried to float back to myself.
But I couldn’t move. The heavy mist seemed to hold me in place.
“Do you hear me? You can’t have my body!”
“But I DO have it!” the ghoul answered in my voice.
“No!” I wailed. “No!”
And then through the icy mist, I heard another voice in the distance. “He’s over there!”
Audra’s voice!
“That’s where they tied him up!” Her words drifted up Highgrave Hill. I could see her racing up the steep slope. And who was that running behind her? My parents and hers.
“Where — where is he?” I heard my mother cry.
And then I saw Audra point to the tall gravestone where my body was tied.
“Spencer! Spencer!” Mom rushed up to my body. “Are you okay?”
I watched in horror as my head nodded yes.
“Don’t worry.” Dad started to work at the rope. “We’ll have you out of here in no time.”
Floating in the mist above, I saw the ghoul’s lips — my lips — spread into a grin. A triumphant grin. His eyes — my eyes — grew wide with joy.
The bitter Highgrave Hill wind picked up, pushing me forward, until I floated low over all of them.
“DON’T!” I screamed down at them. “Don’t untie him! He’s not me! Please — don’t untie him!”
“He’s not me!” I shouted. “Stop! Don’t untie him!”
But they couldn’t hear me. They couldn’t read my thoughts.
What’s going on? I panicked. What has happened to me?
I can see them. I can hear them. Why can’t they see or hear me? I wondered as I drifted above them.
Somehow, my mind and my body have separated, I realized. “And I don’t have a body anymore,” I moaned.
I floated inches above them now. I could have rea
ched out and touched them. But I had no skin to touch them with. No fingers or hands. No body.
No voice …
But I can see and I can hear, I told myself. And I can still feel, I realized, as the icy wind picked up and made me shiver.
I haven’t lost everything, I tried to convince myself. There’s still hope.
I watched as Dad tugged at the ropes tied around my body.
My body stepped free.
Everyone gathered around it. All talking at once, so excited, so worried and upset.
Mom hugged the ghoul in my body. Dad squeezed his shoulder.
My body rubbed its wrists where the rope cut through. Stretched its arms. Bent its knees.
My knees.
“Spencer, are you okay?” Audra asked it.
My eyes stared into hers. “I’m — I’m okay,” my body croaked. “Just a little hoarse. From screaming, I guess.”
“It’s a lucky thing Audra was up here with you,” Audra’s mother declared.
“Let’s hurry home,” my mother said. “I want to call Frank Foreman’s parents. That boy is in a lot of trouble.”
“I don’t know why he tied me up,” my body said. “Guess he was just showing off.” He smiled that smile. The smile that wasn’t really mine.
Invisible, I stared down at them helplessly, choked with panic. What am I going to do? I asked myself. I can’t let them leave here with him!
Think, Spencer!
I gazed around the cemetery — and spotted my flashlight on the ground.
I know! I’ll pick it up. I’ll wave it in front of them. That will get their attention!
Yes!
Riding on the wind, I floated down … down.
And reached out for the flashlight.
Grab it. Grab it, Spencer, I ordered myself.
Hurry!
But, no.
No. No …
I couldn’t pick it up.
I felt myself reaching … felt as if I had a hand.
Felt as if it passed right through the flashlight.
I’m air, I realized sadly. I’m nothing but air.
“Let’s go home.” I saw Dad wrap his arm around my body’s shoulders. “It’s been a long night.”
I watched my body lean into Dad, then begin to walk away.
“STOP!” I wailed. “STOP!”
To my shock, my body stopped. “I almost forgot something,” it said. Then it bent down and picked up Jason’s backpack. “Can’t forget this!”
“It’s cold up here.” Audra shivered. “Let’s go!”
“Wait!” I begged as they walked away. “Listen! He’s a ghoul! He’s not me!”
The ghoul glanced over his shoulder. He stared into the night air — at me.
He can see me, I knew. He has the power to see me floating helplessly here.
A gleeful smile spread over his face.
Audra glanced back, too. Her eyes swept over me, then over the gravestones. Then she turned away and led the ghoul in my body down the hill.
“What am I going to do?” I wailed. “I have to warn them. I have to let them know he’s not me. I have to get my body back!”
But how?
I’ll follow them. That’s how. And I’ll find a way to get their attention once we get home.
It wasn’t a great plan, but it was the only one I had.
I watched them step through the open cemetery gate. I tried to follow. But the wind picked me up and swept me back.
I tried again, struggling to move through the thick mist, the powerful wind.
No.
I felt myself floating back … back …
Back over the double grave with its toppled tombstone. Back over the granite crow with its terrifying warning underneath: DISTURB OUR REST AT YOUR OWN PERIL.
And then to my horror, I felt myself being dragged down.
Down into darkness. Down into the open grave.
“Noooo!” I screamed. “I’m not dead!”
But the dark earth rose up over me. So cold and hard.
“Please!” I cried out. “Don’t bury me. I’m alive! I don’t want to die!”
I gathered my strength.
I pushed as hard as I could.
But I couldn’t move. And I suddenly felt so tired.
“Stop fighting,” I thought I heard a soft whispering voice say. “Give in,” it said. “Go to sleep — forever.”
Sleep forever, I thought. Yes.
I relaxed.
I stopped struggling. I felt my energy drain away.
Yes … sleep forever.
Above me, the wind roared. The trees creaked and rattled in its wake.
I heard a CRACK, the crack of a tree branch. It snapped — and crashed to the ground over the grave.
The sound jolted me. Woke me.
Shocked me to life.
“NOOOOO! I will not give in!” I cried. “I don’t want to be buried down here!”
With a burst of strength, I forced myself up … up through the dirt.
And out.
Yes!
I could feel the wind again. So fresh and cold.
I floated over the graves. Tossed back, then forward by the gusting winds on the hilltop.
I had no power of my own, I realized.
No power at all.
Without a body, I was helpless. I could go only where the wind carried me.
“I want my body back!” I cried as I tossed on the plunging, swirling currents.
Did that ghoul really plan to take over my life?
Did he plan to be Spencer Kassimir forever?
No, I decided. He’s a ghoul. He wanted to use my body to escape the grave.
And now that he has it …
Now that he has it, what does he plan to do?
My parents, my brothers and sister — are they in danger?
You’re not going to find the answers until you get out of here, I told myself.
But how? HOW?
Whoa. A gust of wind swept me lower.
I saw a flicker of light over a gravestone. Then another. And another.
Small flashes of bright light, flickering over all the gravestones now.
And then dark shapes began to form in the mist. Figures rising up all around me, rising from the graves.
People?
No. Not people.
Shadows of people. Their features pale, almost transparent. Shadows hovering over the graves, staring blankly, lifelessly straight ahead.
Tossed by the wind, I watched in helpless terror as the figures floated up. I recognized old people and young, with withered skin and sunken eyes. Arms missing. Some of them toothless. Some with hardly any flesh at all.
A young woman drifted over her grave. Patches of blond hair stuck to her skull. She wore a pale pink dress, stained with mud, half-eaten away, crawling with white worms.
A man rose up from his grave. His dark hair was slicked down and combed neatly over a skeletal face with no skin and no eyes. A bug poked its head from one empty eye socket. The man grinned up at me, a hideous, broken-jawed grin.
The shadow of an old woman rose up from her grave — and I gasped. Shiny gray slugs — hundreds of them — clung to the bald spot on the back of her yellowed skull.
She turned slowly and stared up at me with the one eye remaining in her fleshless face.
A man in a rotted black suit drifted up from his grave. He raised his lifeless face and opened his mouth as if tasting the wind.
And then he stared up at me. “You’re one of us now,” he whispered. He flicked out his tongue, black with decay, and licked his cracked, rutted lips.
“You’re a ghoul,” he whispered. “You’re a graveyard ghoul.”
“You’re a graveyard ghoul,” the old woman repeated, scratching the back of her head.
“Welcome!” the young man rasped. “Welcome to the world of the undead!”
“The legend — it’s true!” I gasped. “The ghouls DO climb out of their graves at night! They DO float o
ver the tombstones!”
“Yes. The legend is true,” the old woman rasped. “At night we pace the graveyard. We cannot sleep.”
“Join us, Spencer. Float over the tombstones with us! You’re one of us now. You’re a graveyard ghoul!” the man exclaimed.
“I don’t want to be a ghoul!” I cried. “I don’t want to float over the gravestones! I want my body back!”
“You can’t have it back,” the man whispered.
“It’s gone,” the old woman croaked.
“Gone. Gone,” all the ghouls chanted as they rose up from their graves. “Your body is gone, Spencer. You’re one of us now.”
“Nooooo!” I wailed. My cry rose and fell on the wind.
The ugly, grinning ghouls ignored me. As I gaped in horror, they formed a circle. Bony hands grabbed bony hands. And they began to dance.
A dance of the dead.
As the mist faded, the shadowy figures moved in and out of the moonlight. Bending awkwardly, their legs shuffling stiffly. Hideous grins on their broken, decayed faces.
Dancing. Dancing as I floated over them.
And as they danced, I felt myself being drawn to them. Floating toward them. Floating down toward the toppled gravestone. An invisible force pulling me back to the open grave.
“Noooo!” I screamed in protest. “I don’t want to be a ghoul. I don’t want to haunt the cemetery. I want my body back. Tell me how to get it back!”
The ghouls stopped their eerie dance.
As soon as they did, I felt the force stop pulling me.
“He wants his body back,” the old woman cackled to the others.
“It’s gone.” The man in the black suit floated out of the circle. He moved toward me. “I told you — your body is gone.”
“Gone. Gone,” the other ghouls took up the chant.
“I know it’s gone,” I shouted. “But I’m going to get it back!”
“Gone. Gone,” the ghouls droned in hushed tones.
“You’ll never get it back,” the man declared over the ghouls’ droning.
“Why not?” I screamed.
“Don’t you know who stole your body?” he asked.
“No. I don’t.”
The ghouls fell silent. No more chanting. They all turned toward the man as he spoke.
“Oswald Manse stole your body,” he said. “You knocked over his tombstone. You angered him.”