Hello again R. L. Stein Story Club members, I'm Ivy, your ghostly host and keeper of those

strange and spooky tales from the hidden vault of R. L. Stein. Today is another chilling tale.

This burdening tale story club members might weigh upon your mind for quite some time.

It's one I call free trunk, not haunted. The antique steamer trunk sat in the yard of the old

house. It had a handwritten note on it that said free trunk in large letters, and in smaller letters

and parentheses, not haunted. Um, yeah, usually when someone claims an inanimate object is not haunted, it usually is.

Avery Quinn thought, well, free is my favorite price, her dad said, as he unlatched the trunk and peeked inside.

It smells old and creepy, dad.

It's a nice old trunk. It'll make a great restoration project.

Oh, sure. Her dad had a garage full of restoration projects that he'd picked up from the side of the road like this trunk.

They all sat in there gathering dust instead of him fixing them up and reselling them like he had promised himself he would do with each new junkie antique acquisition.

Her dad loaded the steamer trunk, which was as large as Avery, into the back of the car and

they headed home.

Fifteen minutes later, her father unloaded the trunk in the garage, said something about

grabbing the sander and stripping the old varnish off it, then went into the house and

laid down on the couch for a nap.

So like her father. Avery went about her day, but nighttime was a different story.

Boom, boom, boom. A knocking noise awakened her with a start. At first, Avery thought there was somebody at the front door.

Squinting at the blood-read letters on her digital clock that read 1213, she wondered who would be knocking on the door in the

middle of the night. Nobody good. She tried to go back to sleep, but the knocking wouldn't

stop. Boom, boom, boom. Climbing out of her bed, Avery shuffled to her parents' room. They

were both asleep, and so was their Pomeranian Felix. Even the dog, who would usually bark at the wind, wasn't disturbed by the post midnight pounding.

...