Ghoul in the School
Morgan, Larasa, Lumina, Denner, and Donagut often carpooled to school in the morning. In order to get to everyone’s home, pick everyone up, and be to school on time, they had to be ready early. This was usually not a problem, except occasionally it caused them to miss important messages such as school cancelations. And on this day, they missed a very important announcement indeed.
As their van pulled into the school’s parking lot, dawn was just beginning to fight its way over the horizon. Unfortunately, the parking lot was shrouded in a thick morning fog that hung like a ghost in the air. Morgan was driving, and he pulled up slowly to a parking spot near the front door.
“Gee,” Lumina said, which nobody thought was weird despite the fact that no one had used that word since the 50s, “There doesn’t seem to be anyone here.”
“That fog sure makes everything look spooky,” Denner added.
“There’s nothing to be scared of,” Morgan assured him. “We’re probably just early, that’s all. At least we get a good parking spot for once.”
“Hey, Morgan, who’s that over there?” Larasa pointed to a shape moving toward them along the side of the building. As Morgan pulled into the nearest parking spot, the shape seemed to notice them.
“It’s Old Man Lorekeeper,” Lumina said.
“Now, what would Old Man Lorekeeper be doing wandering around the building like this?” Morgan asked.
“Like, maybe he lost his keys,” Denner suggested.
“Uh huh,” Donagut said, rolling his eyes.
Morgan rolled down the window as Raleris Lorekeeper walked up.
“What are you kids doing here?” The old man asked. “Ain’t you heard the school’s closed until further notice?”
“Sorry, Mr. Lorekeeper,” Larasa said. “They must have announced it after we were already on our way here.”
“But Mr. Lorekeeper, why is the school closed?” Lumina asked.
“Why?” Lorekeeper repeated indignantly. “Can’t very well run regular classes with a ghost running around, now can we?”
“A ghost!” Denner exclaimed.
“Uh oh,” Donagut added.
“Calm down, you two,” Morgan said. “There is no such thing as ghosts.”
“What about that Winmoore kid?” Lumina asked.
“You guys didn’t close the school because of Renn, did you, Mr. Lorekeeper?” Larasa asked. “That hardly seems fair.”
“You mean you kids ain’t heard the legend?”
“What legend?” Morgan asked.
“The Legend of the Terrible Truant!” Raleris said excitedly, then got suddenly serious. “Long ago, there was a student at this school who was known for never coming to class. The teachers, administration, even the janitors all gave him detention, over and over, but it never helped. They told him he would get so much detention that he would be here until he died, and even after. They were right!”
“Jeepers!” Lumina said.
“Yes, ‘jeepers’ indeed,” Raleris agreed. “When they finally caught him, they put him in detention to serve hundreds of life sentences, and they say the school just sort of forgot about him. But this morning, when Mr. Venn came in, he said he saw the Terrible Truant wondering the halls, causing havoc and seeking his revenge!”
“Yikes,” Larasa said. “What a kooky story!”
“Don’t worry, Mr. Lorekeeper,” Morgan said. “We’ll investigate this mystery for you.”
“Uh, we will?” Larasa asked.
“Yeah!” Morgan said. “Think about it. We’ll be known throughout the school as the kids who solved the mystery of the Terrible Truant!”
“Yeah,” Lumina agreed. “I think there’s more going on here than Old Man Lorekeeper told us.”
“I’m still standing right here,” Raleris said.
“But what about that spooky ghost?” Larasa asked.
“Oh, come on, Larasa,” Lumina said. “Ghosts aren’t real.”
“Except Renn…” Larasa mumbled.
“Well, you can count us out,” Denner said, pointing his thumb back and forth between himself and Donagut. “This sounds tough.”
“Rough,” Donagut added.
“Oh, come on, guys!” Morgan said. “Where’s your sense of adventure?”
“We left it about three blocks back, before this creepy fog rolled in and before that spooky old man told us about the Terrible Truant!”
“Yeah, still just standing here,” Raleris reminded them.
“Alright, guys,” Larasa said. “Look, Morgan and I brought sandwiches for lunch today. And since you two are always hungry…”
“We are?” Denner asked.
“…I know you could go for a little snack. So if you come with us, we’ll give you those sandwiches, alright?”
“Uh uh, no way, no how!” Denner said. “Like, there is nothing in the entire multiverse that could make us go in there!”
Lumina quickly searched through her bag and pulled out two more sandwiches. “How about two sandwiches each?” She asked.
“We’re in,” Donagut said, his tail wagging.
“You know, I am a teacher here,” Raleris said. “The school is off-limits, and I have neither asked you to look into this mystery, nor even given you permission to…”
“So don’t worry about anything, Mr. Lorekeeper,” Morgan interrupted. “We’ll solve this mystery and get the school open again!”
“Great. Wonderful. Fantastic. Just be careful, okay? And try not to die. We have more than enough trouble with one ghost on our hands.”
“Two ghosts, Mr. Lorekeeper,” Lumina reminded him. “Renn, remember.”
Raleris closed his eyes and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “You know what? Don’t be careful. Do whatever. Just promise me that if you end up haunting this place, you’ll keep the noise down, huh?”
But the kids were already out of the van and half way toward the door.
* * *
They had been in the haunted school for about three hours. They had been separated three times, fallen into five different traps, and almost died twice. Also, two of the sandwiches had fallen out of Lumina’s pack at one point and been lost during a long chase through the hallways, so Denner and Donagut had tried to run away, but the others had stopped them. But now, they had set up an overly elaborate trap using the remaining two sandwiches as bait (Lumina insisted that both ghosts and truants loved sandwiches) and all they needed was for the ghoul to find them.
The trap was brilliant. It ended with the rope ladder from the gym being dropped on the ghost from the ceiling as a net. That was released when the rope holding it was cut by the cigar cutter they found in Mr. Vane’s office, which was pressed down when the pile of books from Mr. Lorekeeper’s classroom fell on the lever. The books fell when the small explosion from the chemicals taken from Ms. Endbringer’s lab rocked the platform, which was triggered when seven other things happened, all set off when the Terrible Truant walked through the east door of the cafeteria.
When he came through the west door, unfortunately, they had no plan. Panicked, the kids ran around frightened until Donagut, too close to the ghost to run away, simply punched the ghost in the face. It took the others several minutes to cut down the rope that was holding the net without setting off the rest of the trap, but when they did, they tied up the ghost just in time for him to wake up.
“Now,” Morgan said triumphantly, “let’s see who the Terrible Truant really is!”
He pulled off the ghost’s mask, and the kids collectively gasped.
“Mr. Lorekeeper!” They said as one.
“Yes,” the old man admitted. “I know it’s shocking that the one person you met before entering the school was the one pretending to be the ghost.”
“But wait,” Larasa said. “Mr. Lorekeeper, if you were the ghost all along, why did you ask us to investigate the spooky school?”
“I didn’t, remember? In fact, I told you not to come in here!”
“This still doesn’t make any sense,” Morgan said.
“Of course not,” Lumina said. “That’s because this isn’t Mr. Lorekeeper at all! It’s a mask!”
“Zoinks!” Denner said for some reason.
Morgan reached over and took the Raleris mask off of the ghost. The kids gasped again.
“Mr. Venn!”
“Yes, indeed, for sooth, it’s I! You have solved the myster-I…”
“That is so not Mr. Venn,” Donagut said.
Morgan reached over and took off the Raiker mask.
Gasp.
“It’s the Terrible Truant after all!” Denner said.
“It’s another mask, Den,” Larasa said.
“Zoinks!”
Eventually, after an absurd number of masks, Morgan finally unveiled the true perpetrator.
“Mr. Shifter!”
“Yes, you’ve finally found me out! I was trying to close down the school, just to annoy The Duchess, really. And I would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren’t for you meddling kids!”
“Don’t worry, sir,” Morgan said, “I’m sure she’s plenty annoyed.”
“Oh, “The Shifter said, and shifted into a creature too thin to be bound by ropes. The ropes, subsequently, fell off. “Then I guess it’s win-win.” The Shifter spawned a nice red top hat, and gently tipped it in the kids’ direction. “Well, this has been fun, but I believe it is time to bid you good day.” He paused. “Good day.”
As he turned and walked away, Morgan turned to the group. “Well, gang, looks like another mystery solved!”
“What do you mean, ‘another’ one solved?” Denner asked. “This is the first and only mystery we have ever solved.”
“Didn’t you two used to have a detective agency?” Larasa asked, pointing to Denner and Donagut.
“I think so,” Donagut said, “when we were, like, what, eight?”
“We were ten,” Denner said, as if reading from a report. “We had just read three of the Encyclopedia Brown books, and we thought it would be a good idea to start our own detective agency. We charged twenty-five cents a case, plus expenses, and never got a single customer.”
“Well, we solved this one, gang!” Morgan said.
“So where do we go from here?” Lumina asked.
“Well, I have an algebra test next week,” Denner said.
“Oh, yeah,” Larasa added. “I really need to study for that!”
“Me, too,” Morgan admitted. “Actually, I really could have used a few days off of school.”
“Which we would have gotten had we let this Terrible Truant thing run its course,” Donagut added. “And it would have been a lot less work.”
They all looked at each other for a long moment, and then shrugged.
“Well, anyway,” Lumina said, “Let’s go celebrate with a nice round of sandwiches!”
“Zoinks!”
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