Hello, R. L. Stein Story Club members. I'm Ivy, your ghostly host with the absolute most,

and custodian of those strange and spooky tales from the hidden vault of R. L. Stein.

Today is another chilling tale. This green and leafy tale story club members might make you a little cautious around our floral friends.

It's one I call don't feed the plants.

A flash of light, but no sound. It was the middle of November, so it was not heat lightning.

Besides, heat lightning in the middle of summer is usually white in the cloudy warm breeze.

This light was definitely fiery orange against the crisp, starry night, autumnal sky.

It must have been a shooting star, Ashley McCray thought, and I just saw it out of the corner of my eye.

She finished dumping the plastic bagged garbage into the trash can.

Tomorrow was garbage pickup day, and one of her household chores was to dump the garbage when

needed and move the trash can to the curb on pickup day. It was the kind of thing you had to do

for your parents when you were 11 years old to get allowance money. It came in handy when you

wanted to go out to a movie with a friend. Ashley kept thinking about it.

If it was a shooting star, it disappeared beyond the black blur of woods by my house.

Ashley felt something stir at her feet and jumped. Windham, her cat, nestled his gray furry

body against her jeans. He was out for his nightly rump. Goodness, Ashley felt so spooked

tonight, Wyndham had managed to startle her. Did you see that too, Windham? She asked the cat

as she picked him up and held his purring body in her arms. Or were you too busy chasing down a mouse?

The cat answered her with a content, yellow-eyed stare. She rubbed wind him under

his blue collar. He really loved that. Then something caught Ashley's eye again, another flash

of orange light out in the woods. I know you saw that, she said to the cat, the shooting star,

or whatever it was, must have hit the ground. Let's go look so we can just forget about

...