Free The Tell-Tale Start by Gordon McAlpine Page A

the road led out of the maize to a dusty lot where a few cars were parked beside two buses.
    Uncle Jack pulled in. “All right, boys. Let’s find this professor, get your cat, and start back home again.”
    Edgar and Allan nodded, though they doubted it was going to be quite that simple.
    At the emerald-green ticket booth, Uncle Jack grinned widely when a clerk in a funny hat told him the professor had left them free passes. However, the smile faded when the clerk added that the professor was currently “indisposed” and that they should all just “enjoy the park for a couple hours until his schedule cleared.”
    “After all the miles we’ve traveled he’s too busy to see us?” Uncle Jack said incredulously.
    The clerk shrugged, helpless. “Don’t worry, sir. He’ll track you down in no time. You’re his special guests.”
    The twins didn’t like the sound of “track down.”
    “It’ll be OK, Jack,” Aunt Judith reassured, patting his arm. “Let’s go in.”
    He turned to her, still put out. “Who does he think we are? His Munchkins?”
    “I’m sure it’ll be fun,” she said, leading him toward the entrance.
    The boys weren’t sure
what
it was going to be.
    Inside the front gate, a cracked cement sidewalk had been painted to look like the Yellow Brick Road. Hedged on either side by tall cornstalks, the path branched in two directions. A signpost pointed one way toward the Authentic Gale Farmhouse, and in the other direction toward the OZitorium.
    There were very few other tourists around.
    And oddly—particularly for a sunny Saturday—there were no children.
    Instead, they were either old folks wearing wide-brimmed sun hats or middle-aged couples dressed in embarrassing colors (or worse, in husband-wife matchingoutfits). An amusement park with no kids? The boys wondered if this was a sign of danger or just characteristic of
any
crummy roadside attraction.
    “This is a strange place for a professor to call home,” Aunt Judith observed.
    “Not if he’s a strange professor,” said Edgar, his tone a bit suspicious.
    “Or a professor of the strange,” Allan added.
    Uncle Jack gave the boys a funny look.
    “Maybe he’s in the farmhouse,” their aunt suggested reasonably.
    Uncle Jack nodded and started in that direction.
    The other three Poes followed.
    They rounded a corner and arrived at the crest of the hill.
    From there, they could see the farm, which looked like any abandoned, broken-down, century-old place, only worse. The barn consisted of a small forest’s worth of rotting wood piled haphazardly within the boundaries of a barely recognizable barn-shaped frame; the pigpens were empty; the water tower leaked; and the farmhouse was nothing more than a collapsed pile of splintered wood, roof shingles, and twisted metal bed frames and stovepipes. In short, the house looked exactly like what it claimed to be: a small wooden structure that hadbeen lifted off its foundations and into the air by a tornado and then dropped from a great height.
Crash!
It was hardly a house at all anymore.
    A sign beside the wreckage read:
    AUTHENTIC FORMER HOME
    OF DOROTHY GALE
    “That’s all there is to it?” Aunt Judith said.
    Uncle Jack shook his head, disgruntled. “The professor must be at the OZitorium, whatever
that
is.”
    The boys kept their eyes open for anything unusual or threatening as they retraced their steps and then took the other path, passing a souvenir stand that sold T-shirts, DVDs of
The Wizard of Oz
, paperback editions of the Oz books, snow globes, Toto dog leashes, and “authentic” Dorothy Gale sunglasses and cell-phone cases. They continued around a bend until they came to the OZitorium, which was just an ordinary-looking auditorium. A murmur of voices from inside resolved itself into music and singing as the Poe family drew nearer.
    “
We’re off to see the Wizard, the Wonderful Wizard of Oz…
”
    Aunt Judith smiled. “Oh, I do love a live show.”
    A sign above the entrance