Free 08 - The Girl Who Cried Monster by R.L. Stine - (ebook by Undead) Page A

steps.
    Aaron and I ducked down lower.
    I peered through the branches of the shrub. The librarian turned to lock the
front door. He was wearing a red-and-white-striped short-sleeved sportshirt and
baggy gray slacks. He had a red baseball cap on his bald head.
    “Stay far behind,” I whispered to Aaron. “Don’t let him see you.”
    “Good advice,” Aaron said sarcastically.
    We both shifted onto our knees and waited for Mr. Mortman to head down the
sidewalk. He hesitated on the steps, replacing the keys in his pants pocket.
Then, humming to himself, he walked down the driveway and turned away from us.
    “What’s he humming about?” Aaron whispered.
    “He always hums,” I whispered back. Mr. Mortman was more than half a block
away. “Let’s go,” I said, climbing quickly to my feet.
    Keeping in the shadows of the trees and shrubs, I began following the
librarian. Aaron followed just behind me.
    “Do you know where he lives?” Aaron asked.
    I turned back to him, frowning. “If I knew where he lived, we wouldn’t have
to follow him—would we?”
    “Oh. Right.”
    Following someone was a lot harder than I thought. We had to cut through
front yards. Some of them had barking dogs. Some had lawn sprinklers going. Some
had thick hedges we somehow had to duck through.
    At every street corner, Mr. Mortman would stop and look both ways for
oncoming cars. Each time, I was certain he was going to look over his shoulder, too, and see Aaron and me creeping along behind him.
    He lived farther from the library than I had thought. After several blocks,
the houses ended, and a bare, flat field spread in front of us.
    Mr. Mortman cut through the field, walking quickly, swinging his stubby arms
rhythmically with each step. We had no choice but to follow him across the
field. There were no hiding place’s. No shrubs to duck behind. No hedges to
shield us.
    We were completely out in the open. We just had to pray that he didn’t turn
around in the middle of the field and see us.
    A block of small, older houses stood beyond the field. Most of the houses
were brick, set close to the street on tiny front yards.
    Mr. Mortman turned onto a block of these houses. Aaron and I crouched behind
a mailbox and watched him walk up to a house near the middle of the block. He
stepped onto the small front stoop and fiddled in his pocket for the keys.
    “We’re here,” I whispered to Aaron. “We made it.”
    “My friend Ralph lives on this block, I think,” Aaron said.
    “Who cares?” I snapped. “Keep your mind on business, okay?”
    We waited until Mr. Mortman had disappeared through the front door of his
house, then crept closer.
    His house was white clapboard, badly in need of a paint job. He had a small
rectangle of a front yard, with recently cut grass bordered by a single row of
tall, yellow tiger lilies.
    Aaron and I made our way quickly to the side of the house where there was a
narrow strip of grass that led to the back. The window near the front of the
house was high enough for us to stand under and not be seen.
    A light came on in the window. “That must be his living room,” I whispered.
    Aaron had a frightened expression. His freckles seemed a lot paler than
usual. “I don’t like this,” he said.
    “The hard part was following him,” I assured Aaron. “This part is easy. We
just watch him through the window.”
    “But the window is too high,” Aaron pointed out. “We can’t see anything.”
    He was right. Staring up from beneath the window, all I could see was the
living room ceiling.
    “We’ll have to stand on something,” I said.
    “Huh? What?”
    I could see Aaron was going to be no help. He was so frightened, his nose was
twitching like a bunny rabbit’s. I decided if I could keep him busy, maybe I could keep him from totally freaking and running away.
    “Go in back. See if there’s a ladder or something,” I whispered, motioning
toward the back of the house.
    Another light