Free Ghost Rider by Bonnie Bryant Page A

the top of the mural. “I can fly, you know.”
    “I know,” said Mrs. Lonetree. “Let me get you achair to stand on so you can put yourself in just the right place!” She did that. She also brought him the red, blue, and yellow paints so he’d make himself the right colors. The mural, a piece of brown wrapping paper that was eight feet tall and twenty-five feet long, was taped to one very long wall of the basement. Anybody who wanted to was invited to come and paint anything they wanted on it. It was another one of Stevie’s bright ideas, and it was working beautifully. The youngest kids weren’t very good at drawing ghosts and goblins, but to most viewers’ eyes, the scribbles of color were just as pretty as the neat ballerina next to them.
    “Can I have some orange?” Superman asked.
    “Sure,” Mrs. Lonetree said. “What’s going to be orange?”
    “Oh, it’s the sun that Superman is melting in order to be able to fry some bad guys who are trying to steal all the television sets in Metropolis so nobody can watch cartoons.…”
    He was interrupted by a little girl. “Hey! Don’t get your old sun all over my balloon that’s supposed to be taking Dorothy back to Kansas!”
    Superman promised to be careful.
    Mrs. Lonetree smiled. This mural will be very special, she thought to herself as she went to fetch the orange paint.
    * * *
    A
AAAAAAARRRHHHHHH
!
    It was a bloodcurdling scream—just exactly the kind everybody wanted to hear coming out of the horror house. It was immediately followed by joyful giggles.
    “Don’t do that again!” one child chided.
    “What? I didn’t do anything!”
    “You didn’t?”
    That was the sort of conversation Lisa had been hearing ever since she’d taken her position behind the black curtain in the horror house. Her job was to reach out and tickle kids from behind after they’d passed her. They somehow always thought it had been done by whomever they were with.
    “No,” the companion said.
    “You did too!”
    Then she’d scoot up a bit, reach out, and tickle the other person.
    “What was that?”
    “It wasn’t me!”
    That was when Lisa would scream. It was more fun than she could remember having for a long time, and the best part of it was that the kids loved it, too. Usually by that time they’d figured out that they weren’t alone, and they’d start laughing. Some of them could hardly walk because they were laughing so hard. Theirenjoyment was a real tribute to Stevie. If Lisa had ever doubted it, she knew for sure now the truth of the notion that Stevie was a genius. Nobody else could have possibly come up with such a wonderfully scary and funny horror house as this. And that was before the kids even got to the part where the vacuum cleaners blew out at them, or where they landed on Styrofoam peanuts.
    “Now follow me this way,” came a familiar voice. It was John. He had volunteered to be a guide in the horror house. Each pair of children going through the house had a guide just to be sure they didn’t get lost or too scared. Also, it was a way to guarantee that they wouldn’t
counter
attack!
    Lisa reached out at just the right minute and tickled one child. Then, as the argument got going between the visitors, she tickled the other. Pretty soon they were both laughing. The headless horseman seemed to turn in her direction, and if she hadn’t been sure that she could not have possibly seen it, she would have sworn that the headless horseman had winked at her.
    Once again she was struck by what an interesting mix of characteristics John Brightstar was. He had seemed so serious and distant last night, and now he was acting as if he didn’t have a care in the world. She was so intrigued by her observations that she almost forgot to tickle a leprechaun.
    * * *
    I T FILLED S TEVIE ’ S heart with joy to look at the overstuffed cigar box of entries for the Kount the Kandy Korn Kontest. Mrs. Lonetree’s dollhouse had brought every single child to the