Gray Meadow Manor: Narrative Essay

CHAPTER ONE
Gray Meadow Manor

There are two types of people in Whodunit Hill: the sincere and the shady. So when Miss Sally Sims, a checker at the Root & Shoot greengrocer, told me she’d seen a ghost waltzing on the grass in front of Gray Meadow Manor, I didn’t know what to believe. But I figured her claim had to be considered. In part because my dad always says, “There’s a kernel of truth in even shady assertions,” and being a private eye I needed to find out if he was right. Anyway, that was what got me in this bumpy green pickle in the first place. By pickle I mean the fact that I was standing in front of the manor, staring at the ghost Miss Sims saw as it flashed blue behind a tangled sea of tattered sheers. But even before the drapes

Mr. Mustache’s eyes drifted from me, to a No Trespassing sign. “This is private property. You two had best head home.” “You’re impeding progress, sir,” I warned him. “We’re with the Dead Wood Detective Agency, and we’re following up on a lead.” It was partly true. We had come to investigate Miss Sims’ claim and had agreed that if anything interesting happened, we would at least give it the once over. Plus, I thought it would make a good story for the school paper. But the biggest reason for my partial fib was we needed to drum up some business. Seth and I had opened the agency at the end of May and had only one case: a lost tomcat we found underneath a house having kittens. So a high-profile haunting would be a good promotional

“Lead, huh? Well, you need to watch where you’re going because you almost knocked me over!” The trees rustled. A man peered between the branches. “Hey, did you kids hear the screams?” “Yeah.” Seth dusted off his jeans. “It was a ghost!” “Ghost? What are you talking about? There’s no such thing.” The man stepped out of the shrubs to wedge himself between us. I could see his curly hair and wrestler silhouette, tall, brawny, with a sleeveless shirt, and jeans. “You’re letting your imagination run amuck, boy.” Muscles laughed. “It’s probably someone who needs help. Maybe they fell through the floor and they’re trapped!” “But . . . um,” I gulped. “We saw something.” A third guy with round dark glasses, limped slowly, stiffly across the lawn. “Those shrieks might be a hoax,” Glasses said. “Some two-time pickpocket trying to draw us in so he can take our wallets.” “People only scream when they’re in trouble and whoever it was sounded frantic,” Mr. Mustache insisted. “What was strange was the complete, profound stillness afterward, but even more peculiar, was the snapping noise. It sounded like shattering