The Legend of Annie Murphy by Frank Peretti Read Free Book Online

standing there, looking out the window.”
    The lady with the bun pondered out loud, “If she’s back, it could be for justice—for revenge!”
    That brought a squeak of fear from Mrs. Crackerby.
    â€œEloise!” the judge snapped. “Didn’t you have some baking to do?”
    â€œWell, lots of times when ghosts come back, that’s the reason.”
    â€œWe’re not dealing with a ghost here!” the judge insisted. “And I’ll thank you to get back in the kitchen and stop filling Beulah’s mind with such rubbish!”
    Then Jay piped up, so suddenly it startled Lila. “Was she wearing a long blue dress, and did she have long red hair?”
    Silence. They all gawked at the young intruders.
    Then Mrs. Crackerby responded in a slightly healthier voice, “Why . . . yes, she did.”
    Then Lila had another question, “And was she kind of flat, like a picture, and kind of wavy and fuzzy and floating in the air?”
    Mrs. Crackerby looked up at her husband. “See, Amos? I’m not crazy! They saw her too!”
    â€œOohhh, saints preserve us!” said Eloise.
    The judge only got redder. “Who are you children, and what are you doing in my house?”
    â€œWell, we’re doing some research on the Annie Murphy case, and we were told you’d know about it.”
    â€œAre you Judge Crackerby?” Lila asked.
    The judge lowered his bushy eyebrows. “I’ve never seen you children before.”
    â€œWell . . . we’re new in town . . .” Jay tried to explain.
    â€œBut we saw Annie Murphy,” Lila piped up, “and we’re trying to find out where she went.”
    Slam! The judge pounded the back of the big chair in anger. “I’ve had quite enough of this! I should turn you both over my knee—”
    The earth wiggled under their feet—or did it just feel that way?
    The judge came around the chair with a walking stick in his hand, saying something about knocking some sense into them.
    But he began to fade. The whole room did. The judge, Mrs. Crackerby, Eloise, the furniture, the house—everything was turning transparent and ghostlike.
    Mrs. Crackerby wailed, looking at them with huge, frightened eyes. “GHOSTS! More ghosts!” She was transparent. Her voice sounded far away.
    The judge came at them with his walking stick, ready to wallop them. By now the whole building had become so thin and ghostlike that the floor couldn’t support them anymore, and Jay and Lila sank through it as if it were water. When they had dropped through the floor up to their chests, their feet landed on solid ground beneath the house. The judge took a swing at them, but his walking stick passed right through them, and they hardly felt it.
    They ran—or tried to run. It was like trying to run through chest-deep water as they pushed their way through the big Persian carpet and under the coffee table. Mrs. Crackerby screamed and Eloise wailed and Judge Crackerby kept pounding at them with that walking stick.
    So this is how it looks to a cat being chased , Lila thought. The carpet was only inches below her chin. As for the skirt she’d just bought, it had faded like everything else and she’d run right out of it.
    Oh-oh. The judge was between them and the front door, just waiting with that stick. Jay took a sharp right. Lila followed, and they ducked through the sofa and the wall to the outside, passing through the shrubs and into the open. The ground in the front yard covered their ankles until they reached the street. Then it dropped away and they could see they were running on the ground that would be there a century later, several inches higher. They ran for all they were worth, encountering a few more ghostly people in the street who spotted them and cried out in terror.
    The whole town was ghostly again, and they could see the present-day ruins through the transparent walls of the century-old