“RUN AWAY!” yelled Rachel, holding onto a blanket with one hand and her porcelain doll in the other. “It’s going to get us! It’s going to get us!” She sped right by Jonathan and Steven, out the door, and into the woods.
“AH!” Jonathan and Steven screamed in unison and followed her along the muddy path through the woods. The children’s screams could be heard for a half-mile in any direction as they wound their way between trees, over boulders and under bridges until they finally reached their favorite rocky beach.
Rachel was positively covered with mud all the way up to the knees of her stockings, and Jonathan and Steven had slipped a few times, cakes of mud dripping from the collars of their shirts. When they finally stopped to breathe, they looked at each other’s brown-speckled cheeks and filthy clothes and started laughing and pointing at one another until their tummies hurt.
“Why were we running?” Jonathan asked.
The laughter stopped for a moment as everyone considered Jonathan’s question until Steven cracked a smile, renewing the roar. “You mean you just started running and screaming because I was?” Rachel asked.
“Well, yeah. What else were we supposed to do?” Steven giggled.
Then Rachel looked dreadfully serious as she said, “Mom said we’re eating the most terrible thing for dinner tonight. Said we were having something ghoulish! I didn’t know what that meant, but last I checked, eating ghosts is a sure way to be haunted by them forever!”
Steven and Jonathan looked at each other with surprise and amusement. Steven looked back at Rachel, “You’re kidding, right?”
“No! She said, ‘the ghoulish is almost ready, we’re gonna eat our brains out,’ and then I screamed and ran out the door and you two followed me.”
Steven hit his head with the palm of his hand, “We’re having goulash for dinner.”
December Rose 
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