Title SWINDLE

You have been chosen for your special skills to do something that urgently needs to be done. To learn more , come to the Bathroom at 3:30. Don’t miss this. It will be worth your while-$$$. Two weeks Earlier… SNEAKING OUT AT NIGHT-HELPFUL HINTS: (I) When lying to your parents, maintain EYE CONTACT. (II) Make sure you ask permission to attend the correct FAKE SLEEPOVER.(Boys-Stan winter’s place. Girls- Karen Lobodzic’s) (III) Meet at the OLD ROCKFORD HOUSE at 8:30 p.m. Friday. ( You can’t miss it; there’s a CRANE with a giant WRECKING BALL parked in front.) (IV) Enter through missing planks in BOARDED-UP WINDOW, first floor, east side. (V) Bring your SLEEPING BAG. Remember: The old Rockford house is a CONDEMNED BUILDING that will be demolished TOMORROW MORNING. There will be no beds, no running water, no furniture, no light, no TV…. When a plan came from Griffin Bing, even the tiniest detail had to be per-fect. He’d agonized over every fine point and possibility. All except one: What if nobody showed up? We probably shouldn’t have put in the part about no TV, Griffin’s friend Ben Slovak said glumly. Griffin and Ben sat cross-legged on their sleeping bags in what had once been an elegant living room. They were surrounded by shred-ded drapery, remnants of ancient furnishings, and mounds of dust. All around them, the cav-ernous old house creaked and groaned with hollow, eerie noises. Outside, a thunderstorm raged. Griffin trained the beam of his flashlight on his wristwatch:10:34 p.m.’’I can’t believe it, he seethed. ‘’How could we get nobody? Twenty-eight people said they were coming!’’ Maybe they’re just late, Ben offered lamely. “Nine o’clock is late. Ten-thirty is a no-show. Don’t they have any self-respect? This is like saying it’s totally fine for the adults in this town to walk all over us. Ben would have dearly loved to be No-Show #29. Only loyalty to his best friend had brought him here tonight. “Come on, Griffin, he reasoned. “What difference does it make if two people or two hundred people spend the last night in a condemned building? How does that show the adults that we’re standing up for our rights? They’re never even going to know about it.’’ ‘’We’ll know,’’ Griffin said stoutly, sticking out his jaw. Sometimes you have to prove to yourself that you’re more than just a slab of meat under the shrink-wrap in your grocer’s freezer. Why do you think I came up with the fake sleepover idea? I wanted to make sure everybody had an excuse to be here. That was the whole point behind the plan.’’ The plan. Ben groaned inwardly. It was the best thing about Griffin, and also the worst.Griffin Bing was The Man With The Plan. Maybe the other kids wanted to come, but they were scared,’’Ben suggested. ‘’Of what?’’ Griffin challenged. ‘’Dust? The rain? A whole night with no TV?’’ ‘’This house is supposed to be haunted,’’ Ben insisted. ‘’You know the rumors.’’What rumors?’’ Griffin scoffed. ‘’How do you think it got abandoned in the first place? Old Man Rockford was in jail for cutting up his wife with a chainsaw -that’s what Darren said.’’ ‘’When’s the last time Darren’s said any-thing that’s been worth the air it took to blow it out of his big fat head?’’ Griffin exploded. ‘’He also says he’s distantly related to Rockford-with no proof whatever. Besides, they didn’t even have chainsaws back in Old Man Rockford’s time.’’ ‘’They had railroads, though,’’ Ben noted. ‘’According to Marcus, the real muder weapon was a railway spike pounded into her skull.’’ Griffin wasn’t buying it. “He’s Just pulling your chain. You know how he loves messing with people.’’ ‘’But Pitch doesn’t, and you know what she heard? The house is haunted by the spirit of a dog that the old man brought home from Europe after World War One. Or maybe it wasn’t a dog.’’ Griffin rolled his eyes. ‘’Then what was it? A komodo dragon?’’ Ben shrugged. “Nobody knows. But just a few days after it got to town, pets started disappearing. At first it was just little kit-tens and puppies, but pretty soon full-grown Saint Bernards were vanishing into thin air. And there were bones buried all around the house-only Rockford wasn’t feeding his dog any bones.’’ A flash of lightning cast strange angular shadows through the boarded-up windows. Ben paused to let his story sink in. ‘’The towns-people took the law into their own hands. They put rat poison inside a big steak and left it on the doorstep. It never occurred to them that if an evil spirit could live inside a dog, it could live inside something else, too-like a house!” He peered around at the shadowed walls, as if expecting to see something supernatural and hideous coming through. Oh, come on!” Griffin refused to be shaken. “There’s no such thing as a haunted house.” “Well, Marcus heard the same story,” Ben said with a sniff. “No, he didn’t,” Griffin reminded him. “He heard the one about the railway spike.” He heard both. And so did Savannah. Only in her version, it wasn’t a dog. It was a baby.” “Why would the townspeople poison a baby?” “They didn’t. It got carried off by a chicken hawk. But the baby’s ghost put a curse on the house to take back all the years it never got to live. “He heard the one about the railway spike.” He heard both. And so did Savannah. Only in her version, it wasn’t a dog. It was a baby.” “Why would the townspeople poison a baby?” “They didn’t. It got carried off by a chicken hawk. But the baby’s ghost put a curse on the house to take back all the years it never got to live. There was this schoolteacher-the first non-Rockford ever to live here. No one saw her again after the day she moved in-or maybe they did. People talked about an old, old woman peering out an attic window. But here’s the thing: That Schoolteacher was only twenty-three.” A gust of wind blew through the eaves, and an unearthly moaning sound echoed around them.