It was Show-and-Tell day at school and we were all getting bored. Spottiface had talked for ages about a scruffy, bitsy, falling-to-pieces bird's nest, Brussel Sprout had gone on for ever about a rusty, bent, useless old horse-shoe, and Prank Noodle had droned on till the spiders made webs on his ears about some stupid toy his grandfather had made.
Everyone in the class was getting restless. We wanted something really interesting to see. We wanted to hear something gruesome, and horrible and mouth-wateringly creepy!
Little Mike went to the front of the class. All he had was a brown paper bag.
"Today," he said, in his little-bird's voice, "I want to show you a bone!"
A bone? What sort of bone? Everyone in the class tried to see. Even the teacher, Mr. Rotten-teeth was leaning over to look into the bag.
"Me and Walty were digging a hole," chirped Mike, "and we found this bone..."
Mike took the bone out of the bag. It was quite a good bone. Brown and old-looking. It had a knob at each end and some scratch marks down its sides.
"I gave it a clean," said Mike, "in the barn. Mum was real mad at me for doing that, but when she saw what a good bone it was she let me finish its bath and dry it with my own towel. I even gave it a shampoo!"
"And tell me, Mike," said Mr. Rotten-teeth, "do you know what kind of bone it is?"
"Yes. It's a skellington bone."
"That's skeleton," said Mr. Rotten-teeth. "And what sort of animal did it come from?"
"Not an animal," said Mike. "It's from a human."
"Come now," said our teacher, "you don't find human bones in the ... where did you say you found it?"
"The back lawn."
"You don't find human bones under the back lawn. It must be from something else, like a dog, or cat?"
"No," said Mike. "It's from a human skellington. I can prove it too. Do you want me to prove it?"
"Go ahead," said Mr. Rotten-teeth with a sigh.
"OK, I will then," said Mike, and this is what he told us.
"I was sitting by myself in my bedroom last night, looking at the bone, when I heard a tap, tap on the window. "Who is that, tapping on my window?" I thought, so I went to see. It was a bit scary for me because we have a two-story house, and my bedroom is right up at the top. Nobody can reach my bedroom window, unless they have a ladder... or maybe walk on very tall stilts.
When I looked out the window, what do you think I saw? There was a skellington there! He had one foot on the drain-pipe, and one hand on the roof, and he was tapping with his finger-bone, right on my window. Tap, tap, tap!
"Go away, Mr. Skellington!" I said, but he didn't want to go away. He just waved to me and went tap, tap, tap with his bone-finger. He was trying to call to me but I couldn't hear him properly, so I opened the window just a crack.