Philip and the Haunted House (9781619500020) (3 page)

Philip turned the key and pushed the button,
and suddenly they were surrounded by noise. Philip shouted at
Emery, “Come on. Hold on here and push with me.”

Emery got elbow-to-elbow with Philip, and the
two friends pushed the mower through the tall grass. Their
community improvement project was underway.

Chapter Five

The two busy boys had finished one side of
the lawn, raked up the loose grass and put it into big, black trash
bags and had begun the second side of the lawn when Philip’s father
returned carrying a jug. Philip turned the mower off when he saw
him.

“
What’s in there?” Philip
asked.

“
Your mom made you some lemonade. I see
you’re sweating. Why don’t you stop for lunch and have some of this
lemonade to cool off?”

“
I’m hungry,” Emery said. He wiped his
sleeve across his forehead. “I didn’t think I could sweat so much
when it wasn’t summer.”

Philip’s father laughed. “You’re doing a good
day’s work, Emery. Run and get your lunch.”

Emery looked at Philip and both boys
knew without saying anything they would go to the porch
together
to pick up their lunch. They
walked toward the porch step-by-step, shoulder-to-shoulder. When
they reached the porch steps, they stared in surprise.

“
Where is it?” Emery whispered. He and
Philip looked right, then left. Philip waved his hand to Emery, and
they walked up the three steps onto the porch and looked right and
left again. The brown paper bag wasn’t there.

“
Dad,” Philip called.

“
Shhh! Not so loud,” Emery warned,
keeping his eyes on the front door and the two dark windows on each
side of it.

“
Dad,” Philip called more quietly. “The
lunches are missing.”

Philip’s father walked up the path and looked
for the lunch bag. “I put it right there. Funny. Did you guys see a
dog or something walking around up here?”

“
Some
thing?”
Emery repeated. He grabbed Philip’s elbow, and they backed slowly
off the porch.

“
That’s the second time my lunch has
disappeared,” Philip whispered. “You
know
I didn’t leave it in the kitchen this time,
Emery.”

“
I know. I know,” said Emery, his eyes
darting everywhere.

“
Did you?” Mr. Felton
repeated.

“
Did I what?” Philip asked.

“
See a dog.”

“
Dog? No, no dog.”

“
Funny,” Mr. Felton repeated. “Well,
look. Have some lemonade, and I’ll go home and make two more
sandwiches. I’ll be right back.”

“
How about if we come with you?” Emery
blurted, stepping closer to Philip’s father. Philip moved with
him.

“
Yeah,” said Philip. “Then you won’t
have to carry it back.”

“
Save you some time,” Emery
added.

“
All right. Come on. And let me tell
you, you’re doing a good job on this lawn. Come home, have lunch,
and then get this finished up. I’ll come back with the camera and
take the ‘after’ photos, and your project will be done.”

The boys stayed close to Mr. Felton and home
they went.

Finally, at three o’clock as Philip tied up
the last big garbage bag full of grass—“haunted grass”—the boys
called it, Philip’s father showed up, camera in hand.

“
Wow,” he said. “What a difference. Now
go stand in the same six places you stood before, and I’ll take six
pictures. If this doesn’t get you an A+ I’ll be very
surprised.”

Philip and Emery hurried to one spot after
another, posing once with a lawnmower in front of them; once
holding rakes; three times with their arms across each other’s
shoulders; and in the final photo surrounded by four big, black
trash bags. They were finished.

“
Okay, let’s go,” said
Emery.

“
Yeah, Dad. We’re done. Nothing left to
do.”

“
Let’s put these trash bags by the curb
for the trash truck and we’ll go.”

Philip and Emery each dragged a trash bag to
the curb while Philip’s father dragged the other two.

“
That’s everything, let’s go,” said
Philip’s father. “Grab the mowers. I’ll get the two rakes. We’ll
put this stuff back into our garages, then drive to the mall to
drop the film off.”

“
Can we go to the arcade in the mall
for a while?” Philip asked.

“
I think you’ve earned it,” said Mr.
Felton as they transported their equipment down the street. “And my
treat, five dollars each—a reward for a job well done.”

Philip and Emery looked at each other. “All
right,” they shouted and slapped hands. The haunted house slowly
slipped out of their memories.

Chapter Six

“
I’m going to bed,” Philip reported to
his parents, who sat on the living room sofa watching
TV.

“
So soon?” Philip’s mother asked in
surprise. “It’s not even nine o’clock yet.”

“
I’m tired. And everything hurts,”
Philip grumbled.

“
Are you getting sick?” asked his
mother, beginning to get up, but Mr. Felton put out his hand and
made her sit back down.

“
Philip is suffering from what is known
as a hard day’s work. Don’t you worry, Flipster. The achiness goes
away, but the good job you did today will last. At least until the
grass grows back.”

“
I don’t want to do it again,” said
Philip in alarm.

His father laughed. “No, you’re right. Once
was enough. The weather’s changing anyway. The grass probably won’t
grow any more till spring. Go on to bed. We’ll see you in the
morning.”

“
Don’t forget to brush your teeth,”
said his mother.

Philip brushed his teeth, got into his
pajamas, and climbed into bed. He couldn’t remember ever being so
tired. He closed his eyes. As he started to drift off to sleep, the
sound of sirens floated up to him from the street, but he felt too
tired to wonder why they sounded so close. He just didn’t care.

The next morning Philip lay on the living
room floor reading the Sunday comics when the phone rang. He
answered and heard Emery’s voice.

“
Did you hear about the robbery last
night?”

“
No, I kind of went to bed early. What
robbery?”

“
The pizza store across the street from
school. The two robbers took a lot of money.”

“
How do you know?”

“
My dad heard it on the radio. I even
heard the sirens last night.”

“
Oh, yeah. Me, too. Is that what they
were for? I heard them when I went to bed.”

“
That was only like nine o’clock. You
went to bed so early?”

“
All the lawn mowing.”

“
Yeah, I went to bed at nine-thirty,”
Emery confessed. “What’ll we do today? Hey, did your dad get the
pictures back yet?”

“
No, not till Monday, he
said.”

“
Oh. So what’ll we do
today?”

“
I was thinking about the haunted
house. Let’s pack another lunch and put it on the porch. Then we
make believe we’re going away, but really hide across the street.
Maybe we can see what happens to it.”

“
You want to see the ghost?”

“
Ghost! Don’t be dumb. It can’t be a
ghost. My lunches disappeared during the day. Ghosts only come out
at night, right?”

“
Maybe it’s a daytime
ghost.”

“
A daytime ghost? What’s a daytime
ghost?”

“
You know. If you die at night, you’re
a nighttime ghost. If you die during the day, you’re a daytime
ghost.”

“
Is that true? You sure?”

Emery shrugged. “All the ghosts can’t be
flying around at night. They’d bump into one another. Some must
have to fly around in the daytime so it’s not so crowded.”

“
How many ghosts do you think there
are, anyway?”

“
Lots.”

“
It couldn’t be a ghost though, could
it?” Philip reasoned. “Ghosts don’t eat, right?”

“
This one ate our
sandwiches.”

Philip pondered the possibility. “Anyway,
let’s put the sandwich on the porch, then hide and see what
happens.”

“
How far away will we hide?”

“
Far enough to be safe.”

“
Where’s that? Alaska?”

“
No, not Alaska. Across the
street.”

“
You sure across the street is
safe?”

“
It should be. We were closer than that
when the second lunches got stolen, and the ghost didn’t do
anything to us.”

“
Hey, you said it
wasn’t
a ghost.”

“
All right, no ghost. We’ll be safe
from whatever took them.”

“
Whatever
took
them! What kind of whatever you mean?”

“
How do I know what kind of whatever? A
whatever’s just a whatever. Something took them, right?”

“
Oh, great. I’d rather it was a ghost
than a whatever that took them.”

“
We’ll be far away and
safe.”

“
We better be.”

“
Don’t worry.”

“
Pack the lunch and come by for me.
I’ll be waiting. And worrying.”

Ten minutes later the two boys walked down
Pratt Street toward the haunted house.

“
It’s kind of hard to tell the house is
haunted after we cut the grass,” Emery said.

“
Shhh,” whispered Philip. They’d
reached the beginning of the cement walkway. “Here.” He handed the
brown bag to Emery.

“
Here, what? What do you mean ‘here?’ I
don’t want it. You take it.”

“
I’ll be your lookout. If I yell, you
start running.”

“
How about I be
your
lookout and if
I
yell,
you
start running?”

“
I yell better than you,” Philip
claimed.

“
Oh, no. I yell pretty good, too. Want
to hear?”

“
No, no, shhhh!” Philip sighed in
exasperation. “All right. We’ll both go.”

“
If we both go, who’s going to yell so
we can both start running?”

“
We’ll both yell, and we’ll both start
running.”

“
Which way shall we run?”

“
Away, away! We’ll run away! Now, come
on.” Shoulder-to-shoulder the two boys took tiny steps up the
walkway. They looked left, right, and everywhere, ready to yell and
ready to run. They saw nothing to yell about, though, and when they
got near the porch Philip underhanded the lunch to the same spot as
yesterday’s lunch.

“
Good throw,” said Emery. “Let’s go.”
They backed down the walkway until they reached the
sidewalk.

“
Now what?” Emery whispered.

“
Just act normal.”

“
Walking backwards isn’t
normal.”

“
So let’s turn around.”

“
If we turn around we can’t watch the
house.”

Philip’s voice rose in exasperation. “Well,
we can’t walk all the way to the corner backwards, can we? We’ll
look stupid. Let’s turn together. We can hide behind the house
across the street and watch what goes on. Ready?”

The boys turned slowly and walked down the
street, Emery sneaking peeks over his shoulder until Philip told
him to stop. They crossed the street and went a little way down the
block. When they’d gone far enough, they turned and went behind the
house directly across from the haunted house.

“
Suppose the people who live here see
us,” Emery said in a worried voice.

“
Be quiet and nobody will
know.”

“
Peek out. Can you see it from here?”
Emery asked.

Philip moved back and forth and finally
stepped out from behind the house. “Emery,” Philip said, his voice
rising softly, “it’s not there.”

“
The house isn’t there! Are you crazy?
What are you talking about?”

“
No dummy, not the house, the lunch.
How could the house not be there? The lunch isn’t where I threw
it.”

“
It has to be. I saw you throw it. Look
again.”

Philip stepped away from the house. “Nope, I
don’t see it. Come on.” The boys walked alongside the house and
onto the sidewalk. They crossed the street and paused at the
beginning of the cement walkway. Shoulder-to-shoulder, they
repeated their march along the walkway.

“
Where is it?” Emery whispered. “See it
anywhere?”

Philip’s heart thumped like it was jumping up
and down trying to put out a fire in his chest. Suddenly, a gust of
breeze blew a piece of paper from the porch toward the boys. The
paper landed at Emery’s feet, and he bent to pick it up.

Emery studied the paper and held it in front
of Philip. “Philip, did you put a Happy Pie in this lunch?”

“
I put blueberry,” he gulped, staring
at the wrapper in Emery’s hand. “That’s a blueberry Happy Pie
paper.” Philip took a step backward, and Emery stepped back with
him.