Billy Hooten Read Free Page B

if the entire incident was just the product of his sometimes overactive imagination?
    He remembered last summer, when he was certain that invaders from Mars had landed in his neighborhood during a particularly nasty thunderstorm. It was an honest mistake; in the lightning, the electric company repair trucks did look a little like Martian death cruisers.
    Billy ran faster, feeling the slap of the cement path through the soles of his sneakers.
    Is that it?
he wondered.
Or maybe I really did play ball with Randy and Mitchell and they hit me over the head with their bats and now I've got this horrible head injury giving me all kinds of crazy dreams.
    Up ahead, just before the next bend in the path, he saw the stone wall that separated his backyard from the cemetery. If he could just get to his house, he knew he could wake up.
    He pushed himself even faster, certain now that this was all just one big, crazy nightmare.
    But then how did he explain the Owlboy comic book he was still holding?
    He would always blame what happened next on a wet patch of slimy fall leaves, but in fact, the cause was just as likely to have been his own clumsiness born offear. Whatever the reason, he lost his footing and careened off the path, moving so fast he couldn't stop, until he plowed headfirst into a marble headstone.
    Billy had never dreamed that nightmares could be quite so painful.

CHAPTER 2
    “Y ou are the Owlboy,” the tiny creature screeched, waving the old comic book.
    Billy awoke with a start to find himself lying facedown in the grass atop a grave.
    “What the … ?” he began, pushing himself up to his knees. He felt a bit dizzy, swaying slightly as he brought his hand up to touch the front of his aching head.
    He winced, feeling a good-sized bump as well as some sticky wetness. “Oh no,” he said, looking at his fingers where a little blood had stained them.
    Then, noticing that the cemetery around him was a little out of focus, he looked about for his glasses. He could just make them out lying on the ground near himand picked them up. Checking them first to be sure they weren't broken, he breathed a sigh of relief as he returned them to his face. At least he wouldn't have to explain that to his parents.
    As the world came back into focus, he saw the comic book lying on the ground next to him and slowly picked it up. He glanced back down the path toward the Sprylock mausoleum.
    Had it really been some kind of waking nightmare? A hallucination? But again, how did that explain this?
    Billy stared at the cover of the comic book for a moment, then finally got to his feet, brushing stray blades of grass from the front of his sweatshirt. The sun was starting to go down, and he wondered how long he had been lying there. He was considering going back to the mausoleum, just to prove he wasn't crazy, when he heard his mother's voice.
    “Billy! Time for supper!”
    He felt a rumbling ache in his stomach and realized he hadn't had anything to eat since breakfast.
I can always check tomorrow,
he told himself, and trudged toward home.
    “Coming, Mom!” he yelled.
    By the time he'd climbed over the wall and into his backyard, he'd almost convinced himself that the events at the mausoleum had just been some strange,out-of-control daydream. But that still didn't explain the comic book.
    He could just hear it now:
Hey, Billy, where'd you get the wicked old comic book?
    A goblin gave it to me in a mausoleum!
Maybe he'd be finishing up sixth grade at the Happydale Insane Asylum.
    He opened the back door to the kitchen, pondering this disturbing thought, and his mother started to scream.
    Billy jumped, whipping around to see if the pig-man, or maybe Archebold, had followed him home, but he saw nothing.
    “What?” he screamed back, looking at his mother's wide-eyed face as she stood near the stove, hand clutching her mouth.
    “What happened to your head?” she shrieked.
    “I fell down in the cemetery,” he answered in an equally shrill