Free Ghouls, Ghouls, Ghouls by Victoria Laurie

protection prayer as waves of fear wafted in through the doorway and all about the room. With dread, I waited for the intensity of the terror to increase and take over my mind, but it never went past the level that had already affected us. “Stand perfectly still,” I ordered.
    My flashlight was tucked under my arm and clenched firmly to my side. It pointed directly at the doorway across the room, illuminating a small section of the kitchen.
    The beam was suddenly interrupted by a very large shadow that darted across the doorway almost too quickly for me to catch ... until the shadow returned and remained in my beam for several long seconds. John stiffened next to me, and like me, he was too frightened to breathe.
    The shadow was at least eight feet tall. It looked a bit like a giant man standing in a cloak with the hood pulled up.
    Who am I kidding? It looked like Death. All it needed to complete the ensemble was a scythe.
    “Je-Je- Jesus !” John stuttered. I could feel his panic mounting, and I was terribly worried he’d drop his spikes and run.
    “Stay still!” I commanded, feeling a bit of anger creep through my own fear. “John! Pull it together!”
    But he was trembling and shaking so hard that I wasn’t sure he’d heard me.
    I got even madder then. I unloosed my arm from his and took one very bold step toward the phantom. “Get back!” I shouted, waving the spikes about. “Get away from us now !”
    A laugh so horrible and so evil that it chilled me to the bone reverberated through the hall and into our room. I felt as if I’d been physically punched by it. In my mind’s eye I then saw the image of Heath, running along the side of the castle, dodging the rain. He kept looking over his shoulder—as if he was running away from something—and all the while he got closer and closer to the edge of the cliff without slowing down.
    A thousand warning bells went off in my head just as the phantom twirled in a tight circle, and with a whoosh, it was gone.
    Moving all my spikes to one hand, I reached back for John and shouted, “Let’s go!”
    Running as fast as I could, I bolted through the old kitchen, down the corridor, and back to Gilley, Meg, and Kim. Without stopping to explain what had happened, I put a hand on John’s chest, ordered him to stay with Meg and Kim, then hauled a very startled Gilley up off the floor where he’d been sitting by the fire. “Come with me!” I demanded.
    Gilley opened his mouth to say something, but I was in far too much of a panic to let him utter a single word. “Don’t speak!” I yelled, grabbing his hand and bolting out the door.
    Thankfully, Gilley cooperated and ran stride for stride right next to me. Gil had been a sprinter on the track team when we were in high school—and he’d also been crowned state champ in his day.
    I needed Gilley’s speed if I had any hope of saving Heath. “Where’re we going?” Gil shouted after we’d been running through the rain alongside the castle for a bit.
    Instead of answering him, I gasped, nearly tripping when I finally saw what I’d been looking for up ahead. I pointed to the figure of Heath, running through the rain, covering his ears with his hands and blind with fright. He darted right, then left, dashing away in short zigzags. At intervals he also stopped and turned in a circle, as if he were blind and deaf to anything else but the nightmare playing out in his head. To add to the horror, just behind him lurked the phantom. It towered over Heath by at least three feet, a black menacing shadow, stalking our friend, herding him ever closer to the edge of the cliff.
    Gilley squealed at the sight and abruptly stopped.
    I had to stop myself and wheel around to come back to him. “ What are you doing? We have to get to Heath before he runs off the cliff!”
    Gilley was white with fright. His wet hair hung in his eyes, and his sweatshirt sagged against his frame. “But the phantom!”
    “You’re wearing the