R. L. Stine_Mostly Ghostly 04

Nice letter home from camp, right?

Well, if you think it's for real, you're majorly crazy. It's a joke.
No way
would yours truly, Max Doyle, write a letter like that.

For one thing, I
hate
summer camp. Why go a hundred miles away? You can get mosquito bites in your own backyard! Being outside all day could give you sunburn or sun poisoning or sunstroke— or something even worse.

For another thing, my parents sent me to Camp Snake Lake. One of the scariest places on earth. A pit of horrors—no kidding. I mean, what does the name tell you? Camp Snake Lake. Does that sound like Camp Smiley Face?

My other problem is that I'm haunted.

I'm haunted by Nicky and Tara Roland, two
ghosts who used to live in my house. I'm the only one who can see and hear them. They're all alone, and they need me to help find their parents.

It's all their fault that I had to go to Camp Snake Lake.

I would have stayed home all summer. I never would have gone away—if it wasn't for them.

I never would have faced the horde of evil ghosts, those ugly, terrifying ghosts. I never would have taken the plunge—into Snake Lake.

And three guesses why they call it that?

Well, believe me, I never wrote any sweet letters home from camp. I didn't have time.

The only letters I wrote were “S.O.S.”
Help!!!

I
T ALL STARTED IN
J
ULY
.
My brother Colin was in his room, packing his trunk for camp. He's a big shot junior counselor at Camp Snake Lake.

He loves it there.

What does Colin love about summer camp? Well, he enjoys dunking kids' heads underwater. And scaring the little campers with ghost stories. Tossing kids out of canoes and telling them there's a man-eating crocodile in the water. Hiding dead beetles in the potato salad. Fun things like that.

Colin is big and blond, good-looking and athletic, smart and popular.

In other words, he's a total jerk.

At least, that's my opinion.

I'm not like my older brother. I told my parents I wouldn't go to camp. I said I wanted to stay home, hang out with my friend Aaron, and have fun on my own.

I wanted to practice my magic act. I have a whole bunch of new tricks I want to learn. And I've gotten into word games in a major way.

I do all the puzzle books with word searches and anagrams. Do you know what an anagram is? It's when you take a word or a name and switch all the letters around to make new words.

For example, do you know an anagram for my name—Max E. Doyle?

It's YODEL EXAM.

And do you know an anagram for
Bob
?

It's BOB. Ha ha!

Aaron and I are also building our own Web site. We don't know what it's about yet. But we know it's going to be totally cool.

So there's plenty to do around home. That's what I told my parents. Mom said I need more fresh air. She said I need to build my body by playing sports.

Dad called me a spineless wimp. He's big as a truck and tough, and he always talks like that. I'm used to it. He thinks he can encourage me by calling me a lot of names.

I told him that an anagram for
spineless
is SLIPS SEEN. He just stared at me like I was crazy.

So now they were in Colin's room helping him pack. And I was in my room down the hall, practicing some card tricks. And a voice behind me said, “Hey, Max. What's up?”

Startled, I dropped the deck of cards all over
the floor. I turned and saw Nicky and Tara standing behind me.

They're both tall and thin and have dark hair and gray-green eyes. Nicky is my age—eleven. He wore a black T-shirt and shorts. Tara is nine. She wore a blue sleeveless top over faded low-rise jeans. Red plastic earrings dangled from her ears.

“Why did you sneak up on me like that?” I demanded.

“We're ghosts,” Tara said. “We can't help it.”

“Can we search one more time?” Nicky asked, peeking under my bed.

“What for?” I said. “We've been searching for months. We've torn this room upside down. The pendant isn't here.”

Tara sighed. “We can't give up, Max. We have to keep looking everywhere. If Mom and Dad are inside that pendant … ” Her voice broke.

Nicky dropped to his stomach and crawled under the bed. “I don't see it,” he said.

“Nicky, we've searched every dust ball,” I said.

“Maybe there are some new dust balls we haven't searched,” Nicky replied.

Tara opened my closet door and began tossing all the junk out of my closet. “That pendant is close by,” she said. “I just have a feeling.”

I'd better explain.

When my family moved into this house, it was
empty. On the floor in my bedroom, Mom found a silver, bullet-shaped pendant. She put it on a chain and told me to wear it around my neck for good luck.

A few months ago, the ghosts and I learned that the pendant is actually a life pod. Ghosts can live inside it. Nicky and Tara believe their mom and dad are trapped inside the pendant I wear. And maybe we could let them out.

There's only one little problem. I'm not wearing the pendant. It's lost. It's been lost for months.

Where did it go? I don't have a clue.

But of course Nicky and Tara are desperate to find it. They need to find their parents. You see, they don't know what happened to all of them. When they turned up at my house last October, Nicky and Tara couldn't remember how they became mostly ghostly.

I feel so bad for them. One minute they were normal kids. The next minute they were ghosts. No place to live. No parents.

And to make matters worse, an evil ghost showed up. A terrifying ghost named Phears. He wanted to capture Nicky and Tara—and their parents. He still does.

I know Phears is out there somewhere. We have to find Nicky and Tara's parents before he does. And that's why we keep searching for the life pod.

We've torn apart every room in the house— even Colin's room when he was away at a track meet.

No luck.

I think it's lost for good. But they won't give up. “Help me, Max,” Nicky called. We tilted back my couch and looked underneath it. I saw two dimes and a quarter under there, but no pendant.

Tara had finished searching the closet. Now she moved to my bed. “Maybe it's caught between the mattress and the headboard,” she said.

She grabbed the pillows and started to heave them off the bed.

“Max!” I heard Mom cry. She stepped into the doorway just as Tara tossed the pillows.

Mom saw my pillows appear to fly into the air by themselves.

“Max!” she cried, pressing her hands to her face. “What is going on?”

I
HAD TO THINK FAST
. “Uh … I'm practicing for a pillow fight with Colin,” I said.

“But those pillows—they were flying by
themselves
!” Mom cried.

“Of course,” I said. “They're
feather
pillows.”

I know. It didn't make any sense. But Mom didn't want to talk about pillows.

She stepped over the clutter on the floor. “Max, please change your mind,” she said. “Go to summer camp with Colin. He's leaving in a few minutes with the other junior counselors. Let me pack you up.”

“No way,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest. “I told you. I'm allergic to trees. I can't help it. Even if I see a tree in a movie, I break out in spots.”

“That can't be true,” Colin said, bursting into my room. “Because you were
born
in a tree!”

Dad came in right behind him. He laughed at Colin's stupid joke.

“At least I was born, not dredged from a swamp,” I said to Colin.

No one laughed at that.

No one ever laughs at my jokes.

Mom brushed a hand through my hair. “You don't have to go with Colin. You can take the bus tomorrow with the regular campers.”

“Forget it,” I muttered. “I can't go to camp. Fresh air makes me cough.”

Dad shook his head and scowled at me. “How do you plan to spend your summer, Max? Doing stupid card tricks in your bedroom?”

I picked up a deck of cards from my bed table. “Here. Pick a card, any card.”

Colin grabbed a puzzle magazine and flipped through it. “Check this out.
One Hundred and One Anagrams
. And he's worked them all.”

He pinched my cheek really hard. “Like to waste time, Maxie?”

I grabbed the magazine out of his hand. “Know what an anagram of
Colin
is?” I asked. “It's
stupid
.”

“Please don't fight,” Mom said. She said that at least a hundred times a day. Mom is tiny like a little bird, with a quiet little voice, and she doesn't like yelling.