The Return of Skeleton Man by Joseph Bruchac EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Author: Joseph Bruchac
- Language: English
- Genre: Children’s Scary Stories
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Price: Free
Arriving
Lookup there, Molly. That’s Sky Top Tower.” I shift my gaze up, way up.
There, far in the distance, at the top of a huge cliff, is a tall stone tower. I
can hardly believe it. Here we are, on a late-autumn day, speeding along the
New York State Thruway in the midst of a twenty-first-century seventymile-per-hour stream of traffic, dodging Winnebagos (the trucks, not the
Indians) and people more interested in their cell phone conversations than
in staying in their own lane, and I’m staring at something that looks like it
belongs in a Dracula movie.
“Wow,” I gasp. Then, just to show my parents how articulate I am, I say
it again. “Wow!”
But I’m not the only one awed by the sight.
“Is that really where we’re going?” my mom asks in a tone that indicates
she hopes the answer is yes.
In the rearview mirror I can see the big grin that spreads over my father’s
face. He’d always loved to surprise us in the past, but over the last year or
so, he’s been avoiding springing things on Mom and me unexpectedly,
which is understandable considering the recent events we barely survived. I
haven’t seen that wide a smile on his face for months. It makes me so happy
that I wiggle in my seat like a puppy.
“Uh-huh,” Dad says in that slow, confident voice of his. “That’s where
the conference is taking place.” He carefully checks his mirrors and puts on
his blinker to move into the exit lane for New Paltz. “Well, not exactly in
that tower. There’s a huge old Victorian hotel on that mountaintop, just
below the tower, with 251 rooms.”
“Cool,” I say.
Dad nods. “Way cool, indeed, Molly girl. It’s called the Mohonk
Mountain House, and when you are up there you feel like there’s no place
else in the world. Totally isolated in the middle of a vast forest preserve.”
“Mohonk?” my mother asks. “Isn’t that where they had the Friends of the
Indian conferences back in the 1880s, honey?”
I lean back to listen. It’s going to be one of those discussions between my
mom and dad that’s as much a seminar as a conversation. Some people
might find it boring, but my dad is a natural storyteller and my mom has
this way of explaining historical events that just makes them come alive for
me.
I hug myself as I listen and look out the window. My dad explains that
two brothers, the Smileys, started building the Mohonk Mountain House
back in 1869. It began as one building, but wings got added on and it just
kept getting bigger and bigger.
All kinds of major events have taken place
at Mohonk, starting at the end of the nineteenth century with the Friends of
the Indian—who did do a lot to make things better for native people—right
up to the present day. In recent years the Smiley family has added many
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