Grandpa’s Car

Grandpa’s Carby Maya Su Bromley Ozbilgin, age 10

Ben backed up. I mean, he was always up for adventure, but was he up for this? The car looked at Ben almost like it was smiling. He decided to grab the steering wheel and go wherever the car took him. He backed up the car into the lot and heard a hollow voice saying, “Good choice.” Ben looked up at the sky and saw only stars, no clouds. The car moaned, as if someone were destroying it. Two minutes later, the car shattered into pieces. Ben felt as if someone were destroying him too. He ran and ran until he saw something pale in front of him with a smudged face. He recognized the hollow voice, the one he’d just heard. Just as he had the thought, everything went black. There was a hollow tree, brownish with letters carved into it. Ben noticed the name—Ben—and a perfectly written X on top of the name. Okay, now he was scared. Where was he? His head spun around while looking for more clues. Then he saw the same pale, pudgy face that he felt he had seen three hours ago. The car. Ben had a black belt in karate. Got an award for best wrestler. Why couldn’t he fight? Why did he feel so cracked? Soon after that thought, millions of ghosts started to surround him. Their hands turned into venomous teeth, and so did their eyes. Ben may have looked confident on the outside, but he had fear on the inside. He couldn’t fight, he couldn’t disappear, but he could run, so he ran and ran till he ended up in the middle of a graveyard with nothing but gravestones. He hadn’t escaped, though. He still needed to hide with shelter over him. Finally, after maybe three hours of walking, he found a gray cave. He sat there for a long time and began to grow suspicious. Where were these ghosts? What could’ve happened to them? He had many doubts about stepping out of the cave, but that didn’t stop him from doing it. He looked at the full moon shining through the

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fog and then felt something at his feet. It was his friend, James, who was happily pointing towards a bunch of white cloth on the ground. Wait a sec . . . was this all a setup? But that didn’t explain the car getting destroyed. Ben took a long look at the bright red car.“Looks like the engine broke down,’’ James smirked. Now Ben wasn’t so scared he didn’t feel like punching James in the nose. He just wanted to sleep in his soft bed where his sister and mother were. They skipped down the road together peacefully. But a white, pale see-through cloth came out of nowhere. Possibly another ghost?

END OF FIRST STORY The clock ticked 12:00. Ella was at the station, standing in the tunnel waiting for any train to come. At this point every train was asleep . . . well, at least the train conductor was. The station remained quiet, nothing but a tick, tock, tick. Ella remained standing in the distance. Meanwhile, on the other side of the train station, about a two-mile walk, was a friendly ghost that no one could understand. He was deaf but could look into people’s souls and see their true selves. After he’d died at the age of 30, he remained in the hallways, prancing down the walk. As he sang to himself, he noticed a young girl, about 13, staring at the railroad, as if the railroad was special, which it wasn’t. The girl angled her head at the dear ghost, and her big round eyes widened. Was it just a coincidence that the girl happened to be looking in the ghost’s direction, or perhaps she could see him? No . . . she couldn’t see him. After all, nobody could. The girl walked through the ghost. She whispered to herself, “Ghost.” Just as she was about to say something, all of a sudden, she fainted. Not because she was scared; she just seemed to automatically faint. She woke up the next morning in a hollow place. Next to her was a white floating outfit, she thought.

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