Month: December 2020

In the foggy night there came deadly sounds from the haunted bungalow on the other side of the street which gave a spine-chilling feel to David who was returning home from his friend’s house. 

David Caroline was a 12 year old boy, who loved spooky adventures but today he had shivers of fear. His mom, Mrs. Jennifer Caroline, a stout lady with a crooked nose and a mouth as sour as a gooseberry had a peculiar talent of slapping the hardest in the entire universe. She had instructed David to come straight home after meeting his friend, or else, he would have to experience his mom’s odd talent!. But will he be able to come home at all? 

Suddenly, David detected some eerie sounds from the bungalow. On the spur of the moment, he turned to notice a hazy figure in the misty night. In a flash of a second, the figure appeared right next to David. 

It was a spine-chilling sight – a blood-curdling phantom with eight blood red eyes and wore a white robe with patches of blood on it. Seeing this, David had a sweat shower! The ghoul took out a string with a marble as black as coal, clipped to the end of it. The ghost moved the string slowly in front of David’s eyes and hypnotised him. The ghost then led David into the strange bungalow. There came creepy voices like a horse carriage riding in the distance, weird sounds like whispering cries, howling of wolves and slithering of snakes. There appeared a chain of headless corpses bound with bones. The cobwebs had spiders in it which were one of the most terrifying of all. Suddenly, there appeared a big shiny sword in the air. It was smeared with blood. “You’re gonna die!”, hollered the phantom. And at that moment David gave out a loud scream! 

Mrs. Caroline’s slap was the same as the attack of a sword! “My talent has flourished with flying colours! You had the world-famous slap coming for some time!”, boasted Mrs. Caroline. David’s mouth fell open on hearing this truth and he promised himself not to watch any scary movie before going to sleep.

One day Lia was cleaning up the attic with her mother. She moved a pile of boxes and found a secret compartment. She opened it and found a yellow envelope that had a crumpled piece of paper in it. She thought it was a treasure map but she was not sure. She went to ask her mother but remembered that her father had a lot of old maps. So, she went to ask her father about the treasure map. 

Her father said he had seen such blueprints in Lia’s grandfather’s study room. Lia’s dad was curious so he had asked his dad about them, but Lia’s grandfather never told him. When he grew up, Lia’s father was still curious, so he scanned the blueprints and found out that the building had never existed. 

Lia researched everything that she could find on the crumpled piece of paper and got to know that the location of the nonexistent building was occupied by the public library. Behind the map there were some faded words, she could make out the words “solve ….. puzzle ……. secret …… treasure”. 

Lia thought that she had to solve a puzzle so that she would get to know the secret of the treasure. The next day she went to the library with her dad. There were some places on the map marked ‘C-1, C-2, C-3’. Lia’s dad said that those might be some clues. They went to the place marked C-1 and saw a little statue of some golden painted books, the top book was different from the rest: it had no title, and as the wind blew in from the window the top book opened and inside the book was a bronze key! 

They then solved the next two clues and found a silver and a golden key. Now they just had to find where to fit those keys. Just then Lia noticed that on the map at only one place there was a little figure shaped like a key. They went to that place and unlocked the doors quietly, inside the door was another door and yet another one. 

When they had unlocked the final door they saw a chest full of gold bars, gold coins, sparkling silver jewellery sets and a big hand painted portrait of a man, a woman and a boy who was not more than 4 years old. The frame of the painting was shimmering and was also made of gold. 

Lia and her dad were speechless not because of all the gold and the riches but because the woman in the painting looked just like Lia’s great grandmother. Lia and her father went to talk to the owner of the library and got to know that the owner who was known as Mr. Miller was a very good friend of her great grandmother and he had promised to protect the treasure until one day one of her daughters or sons would find the treasure. 

Mr. Miller asked Lia what she would do with all that gold and the painting. Lia had a great plan. Instead of wasting the money in buying things, she would donate some of the money to different charities and give the painting away for display in Mr. Miller’s library. He was very grateful to Lia and told her that she was truly a worthy heir to her grandmother’s treasure.

Once Nora and her friends were on a picnic at a lake. They placed the picnic mat and Ava, Zuri and Lonnie started putting the food on the mat. Nora and Zuri changed into their swimming costumes and went into the lake for a swim.

While they were swimming, Zuri stumbled upon a box which was submerged in the water. Nora took the box out and saw that it had the sign of a castle which she had seen in a history book before.

When they opened the box they found some sketches, a map and a photograph of a queen, a king and a boy. Lonnie said that they might even become famous for finding this box. Ava did some research and she found out that the sign of the castle on the box was the crest of the king of Udaipur. The king had a wonderful palace right beside the lake. He often used to go to the lake for fishing.

Nora and her friends gave the box to the Udaipur museum. The box was placed in the famous king’s exhibition of the museum. And guess what, they got their names written on a plaque just below the exhibit!

“This was found by Nora, Ava, Lonnie and Zuri, tourists at Fateh Sagar Lake.”