Story Starts

It was a dark and stormy night when the house at the end of the street exploded.  I may or may not have been involved in the events leading up to this explosion.  If I was, here is how things would have gone down.  Mr. McCratchet died almost eight years ago, but it was a supposition of my friends and I that he still haunted it. Of course, we had evidence; dilapidated, creaking shutters, vines clinging in long tendrils over the entire house, spooky, shifting shadows behind broken pane glass windows, but most of all an air of general creepiness surrounded the old place, giving us the heebie jeebies - to state the technical term.
It all started the night before the night of Halloween.  My best friend, Gerald got it in his head that he wanted to impress the snottiest girl in the neighborhood, Melinda.  He claimed some kind of mature, heart blossoming love for the pubescent, freckle nosed, brace face. Who was I to argue with matters of the heart?
"If I sneak to the top floor of the McCratchet place, and hang a sign from the window, it will show her how brave I really am. I'll be her knight in shining armor." Gerald explained to me on the way home from school.  Of course, he wanted me to accompany him on this brain dead quest. Talking him out of it was no use, the last time I tried to use logic in one of Gerald's romantic adventures, I ended up with my pant leg caught in the branches of the apple tree at the school, hanging upside down with an absurd smile on my face, trying to convince the principal that I was in the final phase of a ground-breaking science experiment.


I work as a tutor - the boy I tutor and I often have writing contests. My brain can go some pretty bizarre places in the ten or so minutes we spend writing. He'll often give me a mark for my writing. this one got A+++ (He is of course, only 11)