Jim Takes Vanishing Lesson

The school bus picked up Jimmy Crandall every morning at the side road that led up to his aunt's house, and every afternoon it dropped him there again. And so twice a day, on the bus, he paused the entrance to the mysterious road.

   It wasn't much of a road any more. It was choked with weeds and blackberry bushes, and the woods on both sides pressed in so closely that the branches met overhead, and it was dark and gloomy even on bright days. The bus driver once pointed it out.

   "Folks that go in there after dark," he said, "well, they usually don't ever come out again. There's a haunted house about a quarter of a mile down that road." He paused. "But you ought to know about that, Jimmy. It was your grandfather's house."

   Jimmy knew about it, and he knew that it now belonged to his Aunt Mary. But Jimmy's aunt would never talk to him about the house. She said the worries about it were silly nonsense and there were no such things ghosts. If all the villagers weren't a lot of superstitious idiots, she would be able to rent the house, and then she would have enough money to buy Jimmy some decent clothes and take him to the movies.

   Jimmy thought it was all very well to say that thee were no such things as ghosts, but how about the people who had tried to live there? Aunt Mary had rented the house three times, but every family had moved out within a week. They said the things that went on there were just too queer. So nobody would live in it any more.

   Jimmy thought about the house a lot. If he could only prove that there wasn't a ghost.... And one Saturday when his aunt was in the village, Jimmy took the key to the haunted house from its hook on the kitchen door, and started out.

   It had seemed like a fine idea when he had first thought of it-to find out forhimself. Even in the silence and damp gloom ofthe old road it stillseemed pretty good. Nothingto be scared of, he told himself.

Ghosts aren't around in the daytime. But when he came out in the clearing and looked at thoseblank, dusty windows, he wasn't so sure.

   "Oh, come on!" he told himself. And he squared his shoulders and waded through the long grass to the porch.

   The he stopped again. His feet did not seem to wan to to go up the steps. It took him nearly five minutes to persuade them to move. But when at last they did, they marched right up and across the porch to the front door,