Dunc and the Flaming Ghost Read online

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  THE MONUMENT, Gary Paulsen

  COOK CAMP, Gary Paulsen

  THE WINTER ROOM, Gary Paulsen

  THE VOYAGE OF THE FROG, Gary Paulsen

  CHOCOLATE FEVER, Robert Kimmel Smith

  JELLY BELLY, Robert Kimmel Smith

  MOSTLY MICHAEL, Robert Kimmel Smith

  THE WAR WITH GRANDPA, Robert Kimmel Smith

  YEARLING BOOKS/YOUNG YEARLINGS/YEARLING CLASSICS are designed especially to entertain and enlighten young people. Patricia Reilly Giff, consultant to this series, received her bachelor’s degree from Marymount College and a master’s degree in history from St. John’s University. She holds a Professional Diploma in Reading and a Doctorate of Humane Letters from Hofstra University. She was a teacher and reading consultant for many years, and is the author of numerous books for young readers.

  For a complete listing of all Yearling titles,

  write to Dell Readers Service,

  P.O. Box 1045, South Holland, IL 60473.

  Published by

  Bantam Doubleday Dell Books for Young Readers a division of

  Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc.

  1540 Broadway

  New York, New York 10036

  Copyright © 1992 by Gary Paulsen

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law.

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  eISBN: 978-0-307-80373-3

  v3.1

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  • 1

  Duncan—Dunc—Culpepper sat on his bicyle in front of the old Rambridge house beside his best friend for life, Amos Binder. Amos stared at the house’s front door with a frown.

  “Are you going to go in and get him?” Dunc asked.

  “No way.”

  Amos’s dog, Scruff, had just disappeared into the house.

  “All I did was try to pet him,” Amos said.

  “Why doesn’t he like you?”

  Amos scratched his head. “How would the school counselor put it? The sharp chasm between our personalities is difficult to breach.”

  Dunc balanced in place on his bicycle. He was pretty good at it. “So why don’t you just go in and get him?”

  “Haven’t you ever heard the story about Old Man Caruthers?”

  “Who’s Old Man Caruthers?”

  “There’s a legend that says Blackbeard the Pirate hid millions in jewels somewhere around here,” Amos said. “Old Man Caruthers used to brag that he knew where the treasure was. One night about twenty years ago he broke into the Rambridge house to get it.”

  “What happened?”

  “No one really knows. The neighbors said they heard him scream, then there was a real low, evil laugh. His scream was cut off short, just like you cut a piece of meat with a cleaver.” Amos ran his finger across his throat. He shuddered.

  Dunc straightened out his handlebars. He was still balancing. “So did they ever find Caruthers’s body?”

  “No. Some say he died in the cellar, others in the bedroom. Almost everybody says it was Blackbeard’s ghost that killed him.”

  “Blackbeard’s ghost?”

  “Yeah.” Amos shuddered again.

  Dunc shook his head. “I don’t believe it.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I don’t believe in ghosts, that’s why.” He set his feet down on the sidewalk. “You’ll still have to go in and get Scruff. You can’t leave that poor dog in there all night.”

  Amos looked at the house. It was old and falling apart. The paint had peeled off, and all the boards were bleached a grayish white. The last rays of the sun behind it made it look even spookier. If there was anyplace a ghost would want to live, the Rambridge house was it.

  “Maybe he hid in there because he wants it to be his new home,” Amos said. “Maybe he and Blackbeard get along really well, a kind of boy-and-his-dog type of thing.”

  “But he’s your dog.”

  “Blackbeard can keep Scruff. Scruff never liked me anyway.”

  “You don’t mean that. Your sister would be heartbroken.”

  “Then she can go in after him. Blackbeard can keep her, too. Or my grandparents, or Mom and Dad, or Melissa—” He stopped. “Well, maybe not her.” Amos was in love with a girl named Melissa Hansen.

  Dunc climbed off his bike. “C’mon.”

  “C’mon where?”

  “We’re going to get Scruff.” He grabbed Amos’s arm and dragged him toward the front door.

  “What do you mean, ‘we’? Why does it have to be ‘we’? Why can’t you do it yourself?”

  “Because you need to get over this silly superstition about ghosts.”

  “But I like superstitions. There’s nothing wrong with a good, healthy superstition once in a while.”

  Dunc wasn’t listening to him. He had Amos halfway to the front door.

  “I’ll tell you what,” Amos pleaded. “If you go in and get Scruff, you can have him. Free.”

  “What would your sister say?”

  “Just don’t bring him over to the house. I’ll tell her a dump truck ran over him.”

  Dunc almost had to carry Amos up the front steps into the house.

  Inside, it was like midnight. Just enough light was coming through the dusty windows to outline an old fireplace crouched against one wall with a picture hanging above it. There wasn’t any furniture and absolutely nothing that resembled a ghost.

  The picture was of an old man with piercing black eyes. “That must be Mr. Rambridge,” Dunc said.

  “I don’t care. I don’t like it in here.”

  “This isn’t so bad. It’s just an old house.”

  “All haunted houses are old.”

  “You don’t really think this place is haunted, do you?”

  “The thought has crossed my mind.” Amos crossed his fingers and held them out in front of him. All the movies said crosses kept ghosts away. Or maybe it was vampires. Either way, he wasn’t going to take any chances.

  “Even if it was, what could a ghost do to you? Punch you a good one? His hand would go right through your face. Big deal.”

  “We’re not talking about any old ghost. We’re talking about the ghost of Blackbeard. I’ve heard he used to make people chew the insides of their cheeks off and blow bubbles with them like gum.”

  “The only thing we need to worry about is these rotten floorboards. They could collapse at any moment.”

  “And Blackbeard would get us. He’s probably waiting under them for us right now.” Amos flashed his crossed fingers at the floor.

  “Will you relax?” Dunc studied the room. “Do you have any idea how old this place is?”

  “I don’t care.”

  “There aren’t any wall outlets. It must have been built before electricity. I bet there isn’t any internal plumbing, either—maybe just a hand pump in the sink. Let’s see if we can find the kitchen.”<
br />
  Amos grabbed his shoulder before he had a chance to wander off. “No. Let’s just find Scruff and get out of here.”

  “Are you really afraid?”

  “I just want to get out of here.”

  Dunc shrugged his shoulders. “All right. Stay close.”

  He didn’t have to say that. Amos was draped over his back like a cloak.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Staying close. You said to stay close.”

  “You don’t have to stay that close.”

  “I just want to be sure I don’t lose you.”

  Dunc studied the room again. “If you were Scruff, where would you be?”

  “Upstairs. Every time I come in the house, Scruff growls and hides under my sister’s bed.”

  “I don’t see a staircase,” Dunc said. “Wait, there it is.”

  He pointed toward an old wooden case with an ornately carved banister. It climbed the far wall and ended at a doorway on the second floor.

  “Let’s go.” He led Amos across the room.

  “If you see a ghost, you’ll tell me, won’t you?”

  “There are no such things.”

  “Tell me anyway. I don’t want to get my head cut off just because you say there are no such things.”

  Dunc ignored him.

  “If we see a ghost,” Amos said, “so long, Scruff. I don’t care how heartbroken my sister is. I don’t care if she cries herself to sleep and drowns in her soggy pillow.”

  “We’re not going to see a ghost. Be careful going up these stairs. Make sure you step on the sides and not in the middle in case the boards are rotten. You go first.” He pushed Amos up the first step. It creaked loudly.

  “Here, doggy,” Amos tried to call. He was so scared, his voice squeaked. He stepped onto the second step. It creaked worse than the first. Dunc followed him.

  “Here, Scruff old boy.”

  Scruff came out on the landing above them. He took one look at Amos, growled, and trotted back into the darkness.

  “There he is,” Amos said. “I’ll just go up and—” He stopped. “Do you smell something burning?”

  “Burning?” Dunc sniffed. “Yeah, I do. What is it?”

  “Don’t ask me.”

  “Why don’t you ask me?” a loud voice boomed.

  A light appeared suddenly at the top of the stairs. Amos and Dunc froze. Solid.

  They heard heavy footsteps like thunder. When they looked up, they saw a huge man carrying a lantern. He was glowing white and had a hat pulled down over thick, greasy hair, and two lit matches, one sticking out of each side of his head. He looked at them and laughed. The laugh sounded like somebody breaking bones with an ax.

  “Why don’t you ask me?” He bellowed again.

  And the boys were gone.

  Dunc didn’t know how he made it outside, but his feet never touched the floor.

  Amos didn’t know how he made it, either. The only thing that Amos’s feet touched was Dunc’s back as he ran over him on his way down the stairs.

  They burst out the front door like an explosion, screaming and tripping over each other. They hurdled the fence that encircled the yard and collapsed on the sidewalk, panting and scared spitless.

  Scruff trotted out after them, his tongue wagging out of the side of his mouth. When he reached the fence he cocked his head to one side and looked at them curiously.

  Amos stared at Dunc. He took a deep breath, took another one without exhaling, then one more, and screamed directly into Dunc’s ear:

  “Now do you believe in ghosts?”

  • 2

  “It couldn’t have been a ghost,” Dunc said.

  He and Amos were sitting at a table in the school library. It was that point in the afternoon when they began thinking less and less about schoolwork and more and more about other things. They were supposed to be working on book reports.

  “I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to even think about it. We’re supposed to be studying.”

  “But it couldn’t have been a ghost. It’s just not possible.”

  “You didn’t seem so convinced about that last night.” Amos snorted. “I barely caught up with you. That reminds me—how’s your back?”

  Dunc squirmed. “It’s all right, I guess.” He had a big bruise in the shape of a footprint right between his shoulder blades.

  “It’s amazing you could run as fast as you did with a bruise like that. You must have broken eight or ten land speed records. If you had cleats on and a track coach saw you, you’d be in the Olympics.” He shook his head. “And now you say what we saw last night couldn’t have been a ghost.”

  “I didn’t have time to think about it last night.”

  “What’s to think about? It was huge and white. It had matches sticking out of its head. It was either someone with a serious skin disorder and mental problems, or it was the ghost of Captain Edward Teach. In either case it doesn’t matter. I just about peed my pants.”

  “Who was that?” Dunc asked. “The name you mentioned?”

  “Edward Teach. Blackbeard the Pirate. He used to stick matches under the brim of his hat to look scarier. Personally, I don’t think he needed them.”

  “How do you know about Blackbeard?”

  “I looked him up in the encyclopedia.”

  “It just isn’t possible.”

  “Sure it is. You just look under B, and there it is. You read about it, and then you know about it.”

  “I don’t mean that. It just isn’t possible that what we saw was Blackbeard’s ghost.”

  Amos sighed. “When are you going to admit you don’t know everything? There are some things people just aren’t meant to understand. Ghosts are one of them.”

  “I still don’t think—”

  He stopped in midsentence. Amos had just kicked him under the table.

  “What did you do that for?”

  “Melissa. Melissa just came in the library.”

  Dunc looked over his shoulder. Melissa was walking with one of her friends between two bookshelves.

  “So?”

  “What do you mean, ‘so’? This could be my big opportunity. Watch this.” He stood up and sauntered over to the aisle.

  He’s being cool, Dunc thought. That’s not good.

  Amos pretended he didn’t know Melissa was there. He took a book off the shelf and opened it.

  Here it comes, Dunc thought.

  Amos leaned his free hand against a row of books. There was no backing behind them, and they shot out into the adjacent aisle like cannonballs. They hit the librarian right in the nose as she was reshelving a book about human anatomy. She was out cold, with her glasses split down the middle and hanging from her ears.

  Amos lost his balance and clutched the shelf as he fell. It broke off in his hand and tumbled to the ground with him. An avalanche of books about skiing cascaded down, burying him. Only his feet stuck out from under the pile. Melissa looked at him and shook her head. As he climbed to his feet, she walked away.

  After the mess was cleaned up and the school nurse had led the dazed librarian away, Amos walked back to the table.

  “I don’t think that went too well,” Amos said. “What do you think?”

  “Amos—”

  “You’re right. Melissa must think I’m a real dork now.”

  “I wouldn’t worry about that. A book about the Alps fell on your head. I don’t think she recognized you.”

  “Good. Then she still thinks I’m cool.”

  “Well—”

  “What were we talking about?” Amos snapped his fingers. “I remember. Ghosts. You said ghosts couldn’t exist because they don’t fit your narrow way of thinking.”

  “That isn’t what I said. I said it wasn’t possible for this ghost to exist.”

  “Why not?”

  “Since when do ghosts have to use doorways? I thought they could walk through walls.”

  “They don’t always have to walk through walls. I imagine
that if they want to use doorways, they can.”

  “Since when do ghosts need to carry lanterns or clomp their feet on stairways? If he was a ghost, how could he clomp his feet at all?”

  “Ghosts have been known to carry lights. They’ve also been known to make noises.”

  “So have people. In fact, I’d say the vast majority of all beings who have to carry lights, make noise, and use doorways are people.”

  “Are you saying that ghost was a man dressed up like a ghost?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe there’s something in the house he’s trying to hide.”

  “Or maybe he’s a ghost and he gets a big kick out of scaring people. Maybe he wants to scare them to death so he has some company.”

  “There’s only one way to find out.”

  Amos leaned back in the library chair. “No way, Dunc. Uh-uh. Not for all the money in the world.”

  “Come on, Amos. Maybe Blackbeard’s treasure really is in the house. Maybe the man’s protecting it.”

  “Treasure. You always say there might be treasure, but there never is. We find gunpowder exploding and time warps closing, but we never find any treasure.”

  “But why else would he want to scare us away?”

  “Because he’s a ghost and it’s his nature.”

  “I bet Melissa would be impressed if you went back in again. She’d think you were brave.”

  “She already thinks I’m cool. She doesn’t need to think I’m brave.”

  “But she’ll love you forever.”

  “Don’t bring her into this. You always sucker me into things by bringing in Melissa.”

  “Well, all right, if you don’t want to even try. I just thought …” Dunc shrugged. “Forget it.”

  Amos watched him for a long time. Dunc was reading his book. He didn’t look up.

  “Forget what?”

  “Nothing. It’s silly.”

  “Tell me, Dunc.”

  “It’s just a stupid idea I had. It’s not worth bringing up.”

  “Are you going to tell me, or do I have to jump over the table and shake it out of you?”

  Dunc closed his book. “All right, if you really want to know.”

  “I want to know.”