The mummy howled.

Carter yawned.

The skeleton rattled.

Carter sneezed.

The ghost flapped in his face.

Carter rolled his eyes.

He had to face it: the haunted house at the fair just wasn’t scary anymore.

It used to be scary when he was a little kid. Even last year, when he was eleven, it was still a little creepy. But this year?

No chills, no goosebumps, no shrieks, nothing. The only thing Carter noticed was that the pop-up crypt keeper had a broken spring sticking out of his head, and the floating ghost was covered in a thick layer of dust. Plus, there was a bored-looking man standing behind the curtain near the end of the ride, beside a red button that said, “In Case of Emergency, Push to STOP.”

What emergency? Carter thought. Not even a little kid would be scared by this boring ride!

The haunted house ride ended, and Carter climbed out of the rolling car. He pushed past the bored fair worker and shoved his way through the crowd into the bright sunshine. It was weird out in the noisy midway after the dark of the haunted house.

Carter scanned the crowd and found his older sister, Sydney, but frankly, she would have been hard to miss. She was wearing a ridiculous red hat with googly eyes and long, red tentacles.

“What the heck is that thing?” Carter asked as he joined her. It was the weirdest hat he’d ever seen.

“It’s a squid hat,” Sydney answered, pleased. “I won it. Over there.” She pointed at a tent with stripes on it under an old tree. “While you were in the haunted house,” she added.

“Take it off, you look strange,” Carter said. Everything about the fair suddenly seemed strange. His once-favourite haunted house. And now the weirdest hat in the world.

And there were more things that suddenly didn’t seem so fun. For one thing, it was too hot. And for another, it was too loud. He’d never noticed how loud and hot the fair was before. Plus the placed smelled. The air was full of the reek of fried food and garbage.

Yep … that’s garbage, all right.

Carter and Sydney walked out of the noisy, hot midway and bought ice cream cones. They sat on a picnic bench near the lake beside an enormous grey rock.

The water lay perfectly still against the pebbles on the shore. It looked pretty, but the water smelled like goose poop, which Carter had never noticed before. A few sailboats bobbed in the lake, but there was no wind. It was too hot and still, even for the sailboats.

Carter looked up at the huge grey rock beside them. It stood above his head, above his arms, stretched out. It looked very old and was covered with moss and deep scratches near the top. He finished his ice cream and studied the huge rock.

I’m so bored, I’m studying rocks! I have to get out of here!

“Come on, Sydney, let’s go find Mom,” he begged. “I’m dying of boredom! This place is dull. Nothing interesting has ever happened here in the history of the world. Let’s go!”

“It’s not boring, and Mom’s not meeting us at the parking lot for a little while, Carter. What’s wrong with you? There’s still so much to see.” Sydney marched away. Carter sighed and followed her past the tents and midway rides.

Then he stopped.

Someone was watching him. Across the grass beside a tall tree, a stranger waved and beckoned. Carter was too far away to tell if the man – because it looked like a very small man in a long green smock – was definitely waving at him or someone else. Carter slowly raised his hand and cautiously waved back.

The man waved again, more urgently this time.

Carter looked around to see if the person was waving at someone behind him, but no, he was alone. How odd. Who could that be? He didn’t know anyone else at the fair. Carter realized that Sydney was getting farther away; her red hat bounced in the distance.

He ran to catch up with his sister, looking over his shoulder once more … but the stranger in the green smock was gone.