Hello again, Story Club members. I'm Ivy, your ghostly host with the most, and keeper of the strangest,

spookiest tales on earth. Today is another Ivy's chilling tale. This tale story club members has a little dose of

extra eerie because it was brought to me by one of you. Thank you so much to my beloved listener,

8-year-old Jacob, for coming up with today's deliciously scary tale for us. It's one that

Jacob calls the cravings of Creep Town. In the dusty corners of

Creep Town, where the shadows clung like cobwebs and the wind whistled tunes of forgotten times,

young Sam Sanderson was doing something extraordinarily ordinary.

He was attempting to skateboard down the twisted path of Maple Drive, and failing spectacularly

with each try.

His best friend Lila laughed from the porch of her rickety old house, her glasses glinting

in the dying light.

Sam, a wiry boy with more knees and elbows than seemed necessary, was determined.

But beneath that resolve lay a trembling fear of not being good enough,

of always being the butt of the joke,

a fear that resounded in his mind every time he fell. Oh, he wanted to nail the kickflip, not just to prove that he could,

but to finally earn the nod of approval from the older kids

who ruled the skate park like ancient wheeled gods.

Maple Drive was a street lined with houses that bore the weight of too many years, and the residents,

a collection of characters as rich as they were peculiar, each contributed to the chorus of daily

life. There was Mrs. Mabel, who claimed her cats, spoke to the future, and old Mr. Hinkley,

whose garden gnome collection was rumored to come alive at night. Their peculiarities

were the heartbeat of Creptown, and their stories, the flesh and bone of childhood warnings.

...