Read Ghouls, Ghouls, Ghouls for Free Online Page A

then he appeared to jerk forward and I cried out, afraid he was being pulled off the edge. With two more long strides I reached him and flung myself across the back of his legs to keep him from falling.
    “Noooooooooooooo!” I heard him cry, and I gripped his legs even more fiercely.
    With a sickening dread I heard someone dropping away from us scream, “Alllllllex!”
    Using my weight to anchor Heath, I peered over the side and gasped when I saw the same man I’d seen through the binoculars falling, his arms pitifully still reaching up and flailing as his hands grabbed at thin air, all the while falling down, and down and down.
    I screamed—the scene was so horrible I could barely stand it. The man’s face was so panic-stricken and frightened and there was nothing anyone could do to help him.
    And then his form disappeared in what remained of the fog at the base of the rock, and an instant later Heath and I both heard a faint sickening crunch.
    I rolled away from Heath and lay on my back, covering my eyes with both hands. A moment later—I burst into tears.
     
    “Stop staring at me,” I ordered.
    “Sorry!” Gilley apologized. “It’s just, you almost never cry, M. J., and this flood’s been going for almost thirty minutes now.”
    I wiped my tearstained cheeks and stared out at the waves crashing onto shore. “Yeah, well, I almost never see someone die right in front of my eyes either, Gil.”
    “John should be back soon. And Heath and Gopher should also be showing up any minute.”
    I shuddered. John had gone back to shore to alert the authorities, while Heath and Gopher were conducting a search at the base of the rocks where the man had likely landed. I knew the distance he’d fallen and the hard surface he’d landed on certainly meant that there was no hope, but I still wanted to cling to it anyway.
    “You look cold,” Meg said from behind me. “Do you want my coat?”
    I worked to control the shivering sending tremors through my body. The wind was cold, but I was probably in a little bit of shock from the scene I’d witnessed earlier. “No,” I told her. “Thanks, though. I’ll be okay.”
    Gilley looked guilt-ridden, probably because he hadn’t offered to help me warm up. “Here,” he said, shrugging out of his sweatshirt and handing it to me. “It’s warm at least.”
    “What’re you going to wear?”
    Gilley reached for his backpack and pulled out his own coat. “This.”
    I held out my hand for his coat instead of the sweatshirt, knowing how nervous Gil got when he wasn’t wearing it. “Thanks, honey.”
    “How’s she doing?” I heard someone ask.
    Turning to look, I saw Gopher and Heath walking toward us.
    “She’ll be okay,” Gilley said.
    I blushed because I’d been an emotional wreck all the way back down the staircase. “Did you find him?” I asked softly.
    Both men shook their heads. “No,” Gopher said. “We looked all the way along the rocks underneath the cliff, and there’s no sign of him.”
    I blinked. “Was he swept offshore?”
    Gopher and Heath exchanged an uncomfortable look. “We don’t think so.”
    “So, where’d he go?”
    Heath sat down next to me and wrapped a muscled arm across my shoulders. “I don’t think he was ever really there.”
    I cocked my head at him and Gilley said, “Huh?”
    Heath eyed the top of the cliff for a moment before he explained. “I know you didn’t see it, M. J., but when I got to the edge of the cliff, I dropped down and reached for the guy hanging there. He wasn’t far away, maybe a foot or two, and as he grabbed for my hand, I swear, it passed right through mine.”
    My jaw fell open. “He was a spook ?!”
    Heath nodded. “I think so.”
    No one said anything for the longest time; we were all too stunned by the possibility that we’d been so easily duped. “He looked so real,” I whispered, knowing that I had been so panic-stricken to get to him that I hadn’t even considered using my sixth sense to