The Mystery of the Headless Man
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Buster's growl make them all stop in their tracks. "What is it, boy?" asked Alex, trying to see what had upset the little dog. The last of the rain clouds were slowly drifting away on the night sky. A big full moon now bathed everything it touched in a pale, ghostly light. Alex looked hard in the direction Buster was staring. So did Shelby and Toby. "Wow! What's that?" cried Toby, loud enough to be heard all the way back at Grandma's house. "Somebody's down there by the big oak tree!" Shelby punched her cousin's shoulder hard enough to make him drop the jar he'd brought for catching fireflies. "Be quiet, will you?" she whispered. Buster growled again. By this time, Alex had also spotted the outline of someone standing beneath an outstretched branch of the huge tree. A moment later, a small cloud covered the moon and the figure was shaded in darkness. "Who do you think it is?" asked Alex. "We need a closer look," Shelby replied, moving further down the trail toward the creek. Alex, Toby, and Buster stayed put. Shelby stopped and turned around. "He's trespassing on Grandma's land. He could be here to steal from Mr. Godfrey's gardens." That got Alex moving. He liked Mr. Godfrey, who rented several acres from Grandma every spring in order to grow the many vegetables he sold in his roadside market. "Come on, Buster," said Alex, "let's check out this intruder." Buster whined and sat down. Toby leaned over and scooped the little terrier up in his arms. "Hurry up, will you?" Shelby whispered loudly. The three cousins and Buster were halfway down the trail when the cloud moved on, and the land was again flooded in pale moonlight. The stranger hadn't moved. Alex sucked in his breath as the trespasser turned his body in their direction. He wore a long coat that almost touched the ground. The square shoulders turned away from the three, then slowly back again. Shelby began backing up. "He...he..." she swallowed with great effort and pointed. "He..he doesn't have a head!" Alex quickly realized she was right. Toby must have too. He dropped little Buster like a hot brick and raced up the path towards Grandma's house. Buster yipped in fright and surprise, and sped after him. The long arms of the headless stranger moved out from his sides in a gesturing manner. That was enough for Shelby and Alex. They easily caught up and passed Toby and Buster as the four fled the scene. "It's a ghost!" Shelby declared when they had reached the backyard and could catch their breath. "We saw a headless ghost!" Toby leaned over with his hands on his knees. "What do we do about it?" he asked. "We should go back tomorrow morning," said Alex. "We'll take a good look around to see if we can find any evidence the ghost was there." The other two nodded. "And we don't tell Grandma. At least, not yet. We don't want to worry her." Again, nods all around. The next morning, right after breakfast, Alex, Shelby, Toby, and Buster headed back to the creek. They stopped when they reached the top of the hill. The headless stranger was gone. Way off to the right of the path, Mr. Godfrey could be seen busy at work in one of his gardens. He waved when he saw them. Searching under the big oak tree turned up nothing. "Why would a headless ghost be roaming around on Grandma's land, anyway?" asked Toby "I have no idea," replied Alex. "Me either," Shelby said. "But we saw him. He was here." "We should tell Grandma," said Toby. Back at the house, over a snack of cookies and milk out on the front porch, they discussed in soft voices what might be the best way to tell their grandmother they had seen a headless ghost by the creek. While they pondered the situation, Mr. Godfrey drove his truck up the long driveway and stepped out. "How are you young folks doing today?" he asked, waving a large plastic coat hangar at them as he approached. Stopping at the bottom of the porch steps, Mr. Godfrey handed the hangar up to Toby. "Please give this to your grandmother. She was nice enough to loan it to me yesterday when it was raining." "What for?" asked Toby. "So I could hang my raincoat on it after the rain stopped. I hung the coat under the old oak tree, and it was all nice and dry by the time I arrived today." Mr. Godfrey winked. "Pretty good idea, don't you think?" As Mr. Godfrey drove away, the three cousins had a good laugh. "Mr. Godfrey's raincoat was our headless ghost," said Alex, relieved he and the others hadn't blurted out their wild story to Grandma. "Now it all makes sense," Shelby replied. "The breeze caused the coat to move and its arms to flap. Grandma doesn't have a headless ghost after all." "So tonight, we can go back for those fireflies," said Toby, tossing a cookie crumb to Buster. "Maybe," Alex replied, noticing several dark clouds forming in the summer sky. "Looks like Mr. Godfrey may be needing Grandma's coat hangar again." THE END |
| The idea for this story came from my own past experience. I grew up in the country, next to my grandparents' farm. One sunny Sunday, my best friend, Frank Wayne, and I were over walking near the creek. From where we stopped to rest we could look down a hill to the water. As we did so, we noticed to our horror someone standing down among the trees; a tall man wearing a long coat and, you guessed, no head! I never knew I could run so fast to get back home. The next day, when I excitedly relayed to my grandfather what we had seen, he laughed and explained that the headless man was his raincoat, swinging from a tree branch by a coat hanger. |
