Middle School: How I Got Lost in London Read Online Free Page A

they had been sitting down they would have been on the edge of their seats waiting for the scary story of the Temple of Terrors haunting…
    Only for the whole thing to be spoiled by me.
    “Excellent,” said Gordon. He clapped his hands. “Then without further ado, let us proceed.”
    He opened the door to reveal winding stone steps that led down into darkness. Everyone else glared at me. All except for Miller, that was. He just glowered as usual.
    My Popularity Score took another dip.
    Current Popularity Score: -22
    Down we went. Down into the depths of Madame Fifi’s. It was so much darker than it had been on the upper floors.

At the bottom we heard a rumbling sound. One of the girls gasped but Gordon assured her it was just a passing London Underground train.
    (Okay, I admit—it wasn’t “one of the girls” who gasped, it was me. Like I say, it was dark, and when I gasp I sound like a girl anyway.)

    Wax figures seemed to loom at us from the gloom.
    “Cool,” we said as we peered at heads on spikes, victims on racks, murderers caught in the act. Really gross, scary stuff. And not just really gross, scary stuff, but really gross, scary stuff that had actually happened .
    All I’ll say about a guy called Vlad the Impaler is that the clue is in the name. And as for Countess Bathory—guess what she figured would be good for her skin? That’s right: blood. She actually kidnapped girls and…took a bath…in their…
    Too much information?
    Sure. Too much information.

    “Cool,” we said. And yes, I know it doesn’t sound like we were taking the whole real-people-dying-gruesome-deaths thing all that seriously, but listen: They died their gruesome deaths a really long time ago. Which makes all the difference. Which means you can say “Cool” without feeling too guilty about it.
    “Now, Rafe…” said Gordon. We stopped near a scene of a woman being put to death by seventeenth-century witchfinders.
    “Here,” I said, out of habit.
    “Since you know all about the ghost of Madame Fifi’s, I expect you can tell us all about the famous Temple of Terrors wager?”
    NO WAY was I going to spoil this one for the rest of class. I shook my head “no” furiously.
    Gordon smiled. “Well, I’ll tell you then, shall I?”

OVER A HUNDRED years ago, two rather well-dressed Victorian gentlemen are taking a tour around the famous Madame Fifi’s House of Wax. With them is a lady in whom they both have a romantic interest.
    “I say,” says one, twirling his mustache, “have you been down to this Temple of Terrors they’ve been writing about in the Pall Mall Gazette ? They do say it’s frightfully frightful.”
    “Frightfully frightful indeed,” says the second gent, as he adjusts his waistcoat on his ample stomach.
    Eleanor (the lady) clutches her pearls. “Oh, Cedric, it sounds perfectly dreadful.”

    Sensing their chance to impress their lady friend, both men preen.
    “A lot of sensationalist rot, no doubt,” says William. “The ravings of a journalist with an overactive imagination.”
    “You don’t sound terribly convinced, William,” says Eleanor.
    “Oh, indeed not, Eleanor, indeed not.”
    “Well, William,” says Cedric, “what say you we descend the steps to discover for ourselves just how frightening this place is?”
    “What a wheeze it will be.”
    And the two gents take the stone steps down into the Temple of Terrors.
    “Well, I say !” says William. He peers around into the gloom, seeing the grotesque, waxy figures staring sightlessly back at him. His skin crawls with fear. “It’s not at all frightening, what?”
    “No, not at all frightening,” says Cedric, swallowing hard and finding he has a sudden need to use the bathroom.
    “Why, I would quite happily spend the night here,” says William. Who would quite happily do anything but spend the night there.
    “And I would quite happily join you,” agrees Cedric. Who would rather eat a bowl of rancid horse manure than spend the