Read Stacey And The Mystery Of Stoneybrook for Free Online Page A

read five chapters of Ozma of Oz (they were going through all the Oz books, since they'd just seen the movie), and everyone was still wide awake. Then she sang some lullabies with them. "All the Pretty Little Ponies" was Karen's favorite. The Ghostbusters song, "Who Ya Gonna Call" was David Michael's. Finally Kristy tucked them all in, sleepy or not, and told them it was bedtime. She went downstairs and sat on the couch to read.
    "Kristee-e-e-e-e, I need a drink of wa-a-a-a-ter." That was David Michael. He was in a whiny mood. Kristy brought the water, and he made her stay while he drank it. She waited, then dosed the door to his room almost all the way and went back downstairs.
    "Kristy?"
    Karen was standing at the door of the living room. "I can hear Ben again," she said. "He's walking around."
    "It's just the wind," said Kristy. "Go back to bed, Karen."
    Then Emily called, and of course Andrew wanted a drink, too. Kristy thought they'd never go to sleep. But finally the house was quiet. Quiet, that is, except for the wind rattling the shutters outside.
    Kristy found that she couldn't concentrate on her book. In fact, she couldn't stop thinking about the old house and the experiences Charlotte and I had there.
    She wandered into the kitchen and ate the last handful of popcorn. She washed out the bowl. She opened the refrigerator door, looked inside, and closed it without having any idea of what she'd seen in there. Then she tiptoed upstairs to check on her brothers and sisters. Everybody was fast asleep. Kristy figured that that was a good thing, except that all of a sudden she felt kind of lonely. (I think she was at what my mom would call "loose ends.")
    Finally, Kristy ended up downstairs in the library. (That's right. Watson's mansion is so big that there's a whole room just for his books.) The library at Watson's is a cozy place, with big red leather armchairs, lamps that look like they're made out of stained glass, and, of course, hundreds — maybe thousands — of books.
    Kristy looked around and spotted a big carton in the corner. She remembered Watson telling her that he'd just bought some old books at an 'estate sale. She also remembered him saying that some of the books were about
    the history of Stoneybrook. She was hoping that maybe she could find something out about that old house!
    She pulled a couple of books out of the box and took a look at them. They were kind of dusty, and they smelled like they'd been in someone's basement for awhile. The covers were cracked and the edges of the pages were yellowed. She opened one of them. Right away she spotted the name Brewer. Wow! Watson's family really had lived in Stoneybrook for a long time.
    She kept reading, just standing there by the cardboard box. There were other names she recognized, and places, too. Of course, there was no record of her old neighborhood: That whole area had just been woods and farmland at one time. But she found a chapter on the building of the library, and one on what the great blizzard of '88 had done to Stoneybrook. (That actually sounded kind of fun — people could walk out onto the snow from their second-story windows!)
    Kristy took an armload of books over to one . of the armchairs. She switched on a lamp, made herself comfortable, and settled in to read. The storm still blew outside, making the doors shake. Rain splattered against the win dows. But Kristy was lost in "Olde Stoneybrooke."
    She couldn't find a thing about the old house, though. She skimmed through each of the books, looking for information on the turreted mansion. Then she went back and paged through each one again. There was absolutely nothing.
    She was about to give up when a crumbly piece of paper fell out of the book she was holding. She unfolded it carefully, but even so, it ripped a little along the crease. It was very, very old. It was a map.
    It looked hand-drawn, and the locations were all hand-lettered. She turned it this way and that, trying to figure out