Ghost Boy Read Online Free Page A

if you like to. We hope you will.
    Your freinds,
    Samuel and Tina

    â€œGeez, it’s your lucky day,” said Hopalong. “Now you can meet him.”
    â€œWho?” said Harold.
    â€œThe Cannibal King! Come on and look.”
    They went halfway down the building before Hopalong stopped. The poster was close to the ground, and he beamed at it so proudly that he might have painted the picture instead of only pasting it up on the wall.
    â€œYou see?” said Hopalong. “There he is. The Cannibal King.”
    The man on the poster was wearing a leopard skin and a necklace of bones, a round white shell for an earring. His hand was held high, and dangling from it by its hair was a shrunken head. He stared ferociously out of the picture.
    â€œYou see?” said Hopalong John.
    Harold nodded.
    â€œHe’s just like you.”
    â€œYes,” said Harold.
    The Cannibal King was an albino.
    His skin was white, his hair a woolly shock, like a feathery cloud on a summer day. But what a cloud! It rose like thunderheads, billowing out in wild array, a huge white mass of hair. His eyebrows were the same, and his hands were like blocks of ivory.
    â€œYou see what it says?” said Hopalong. He pointed at the poster, reading out the words. “He’s the strange king of a strange tribe—the Stone People, from the jungles of a Pacific island. They hunt for human food! They boil their hapless victims and shrink their heads for trophies! And now he’s here on his first world tour, the Cannibal King of Oola Boola Mambo!”
    Hopalong took down his finger. “Lordy!” he said. “I didn’t know there was
anyone
looked like you. Not anyone.”
    â€œNo,” said Harold. All his life he’d felt alone.
    â€œYou’ve got to meet that fella, Harold. You’ve just got to.”
    â€œWhere do you think Oola Boola Mambo is?”
    â€œOh, miles away,” said Hopalong. “Maybe he’ll take you there.” Then he frowned. “Do you think he’s really a cannibal?”
    â€œIf it says it’s true, it must be true,” said Harold. “You can’t say it’s true if it’s not.”
    â€œI guess so,” said Hopalong.
    â€œBut maybe he’s not
always
a cannibal.” Harold looked sideways at the bones and the shrunken head. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to go to Oola Boola Mambo. But he was certain of this: He had to meet the Cannibal King.

Chapter
    5
    M rs. Beesley, Harold’s mother, was as big and as shiny as a 4-H pig. She sat in the middle of the front steps, fanning herself with
The Liberty News
.
    â€œWhere have
you
been?” she asked as Harold came up the path.
    â€œFishing,” he said. “I got a sucker, Ma.”
    â€œI’ll sucker you,” she said, and stopped fanning. “What have I
told
you about going off without telling us? Huh? Your father had to go looking for you.”
    Harold stopped at the foot of the steps. “He isn’t my father,” he said.
    â€œWell, he’s
trying
to be,” said Mrs. Beesley. “And if you gave him so much as
half
of a chance, you’d find out he’s a very nice man.”
    There was nothing nice about Walter Beesley as far as Harold was concerned. He sat in the chair that belonged to Harold’s father, slept in his bed, ate with his knife and fork. A tall, weedy man, Walter was a banker in the daytime, at night a collector of stamps. He spent hours at that, bending over a scatter of stamps that looked all alike to Harold, demanding silence as he fumbled with the tiny hinges and fixed the stamps in place.
    â€œHe’s got a heart of
gold
,” said Mrs. Beesley.
    Harold looked at the ground. Quietly he asked, “Then why did Daddy never like him?”
    â€œOh!” she said. “Oh! You’ve got a
real
smart mouth on
you
today.” She fanned herself quickly. “Then tell me,
Mr. Smartmouth
, if you