Free 45 - Ghost Camp by R.L. Stine - (ebook by Undead) Page A

down. Into sour darkness.
    “We don’t believe in you. We don’t believe in you.” Alex and I continued to
chant.
    But our voices were muffled as we slid down the creature’s throbbing throat.
    “Harry—it swallowed us!” Alex wailed.
    “Keep chanting,” I ordered him. “If we don’t believe in it, it can’t exist!”
    “We don’t believe in you. We don’t believe in you.”
    A glob of thick saliva rolled over me. I gagged as it clung to my clothes, my
skin—hot and sticky.
    The walls of the throat throbbed harder.
    Pulling us down. Down.
    Down into the vast, churning gurgling pit of a stomach below.
    “Ohhhh.” Alex let out a long, defeated sigh. He sank to his knees. He was
covered in thick saliva too.
    “Keep chanting! It’s got to work! It’s got to!” I screamed.
    “We don’t believe in you. We don’t believe in you.”
    “We don’t believe in you!”
    Alex and I both opened our mouths in screams of horror as we began to fall.
    Falling, falling, into the churning stomach below.

 
 
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    I shut my eyes.
    And waited for the splash. Waited for the crash.
    Waited to hit the stomach floor.
    Waited.
    When I opened my eyes, I was standing on the ground. Standing next to Alex in
a grassy clearing.
    The pine trees shivered in the breeze. A full moon poked out from behind
wispy clouds.
    “Hey—!” I cried. I was so happy to hear my own voice!
    So happy to see the sky. The ground. So happy to breathe the cool air.
    Alex started spinning. Spinning like a top. Laughing at the top of his lungs.
“We didn’t believe in you!” he cried gleefully. “We didn’t believe in you—and
it worked !”
    We were both so thrilled. So excited that the monster had vanished.
    Poof! A puff of imagination.
    I started to spin with Alex. Spinning and laughing.
    We stopped when we realized we were no longer alone.
    I let out a startled cry when I saw the faces all around us. The pale, pale
faces with their glowing eyes.
    I recognized Sam, and Joe, and Lucy, and Elvis.
    I moved close to Alex as the campers—the ghost campers—moved to form a
circle around us. To trap us.
    Uncle Marv moved into the circle. His tiny eyes glowed red as fire. He
narrowed them angrily at Alex and me.
    “Capture them!” he bellowed. “Take them back to camp. No one ever escapes
Camp Spirit Moon.”
    Several counselors moved quickly to grab us.
    We couldn’t move. There was nowhere to run.
    “What are you going to do to us?” I cried.

 
 
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    “We need living kids,” Uncle Marv boomed. “We cannot allow living kids to
escape. Unless they carry one of us with them.”
    “Noooo!” Alex wailed. “You can’t take over my mind! You can’t! I won’t let
you!”
    The ghostly circle tightened. The ghost campers moved in on us.
    I tried to stop my legs from shaking. Tried to slow my pounding heart.
    “Alex—we don’t believe in them, either,” I whispered.
    He stared at me, confused for a moment. Then he understood.
    We made the monster vanish by not believing in him. We could do the same
thing to the ghost campers.
    “Grab them. Take them back to camp,” Uncle Marv ordered the counselors.
    “We don’t believe in you. We don’t believe in you,” Alex and I started to
chant.
    “We don’t believe in you. We don’t believe in you.”
    I stared hard at the circle of ghostly faces. Waited for them to disappear.
    I chanted with my brother. Chanted faster. Chanted louder.
    “We don’t believe in you. We don’t believe in you.”
    I shut my eyes. Shut them tight.
    And when I opened them…
    The ghosts were still there.
    “You can’t make us disappear, Harry,” Lucy said, stepping into the circle.
She narrowed her eyes at me. They glittered cold and silvery in the moonlight.
    “You made the monster disappear because it wasn’t real, just one of our ghost
tricks,” Lucy explained. “We made you see it. But we’re all real! All of us! And
we’re not going to vanish in a puff of