Beware, the Snowman Read online

  “And why did you stay?” I demanded.

  “I stayed because I thought I owed it to the people of the village,” he explained. “I owed it to them to keep the snowman in his cave. To keep him from harming people.”

  He uttered another sad sigh. “And so I stayed up here, close to the monster we created. But … but … leaving you, Jaclyn, was the hardest thing I ever had to do!”

  He wrapped his arm around my shoulders. Again, his beard scratched my face.

  “I always dreamed that someday I could leave the mountain and go find you,” he said softly. “And now the monster is dead. The horror is finally over. And Greta has brought you back. Perhaps …”

  His voice broke. He smiled at Aunt Greta and then at me. He took a breath and tried again. “Perhaps … we can try to be a family again.”

  He kept his arm around me as we turned to go down the mountain.

  “Hey—!” I cried out as I saw the snowmen move to block our path.

  In all the excitement of finding my father, I’d completely forgotten about all the snowmen!

  Now they circled us. Surrounded us.

  Staring at us with their glowing coal eyes. Staring at us so coldly.

  “Wh-what are they going to do?” I stammered.

  Before my father could answer, one of the snowmen came thumping out of the group. He rumbled up to us, arms twitching, eyes flashing.

  I grabbed Dad’s arm. The snowmen had us totally surrounded.

  Nowhere to move. No chance to run away.

  The snowman stopped inches from my father—and opened his mouth to speak.

  “Can we go back down now?” the snowman asked. “It’s really cold up here!”

  R.L. Stine’s books are read all over the world. So far, his books have sold more than 300 million copies, making him one of the most popular children’s authors in history. Besides Goosebumps, R.L. Stine has written the teen series Fear Street and the funny series Rotten School, as well as the Mostly Ghostly series, The Nightmare Room series, and the two-book thriller Dangerous Girls. R.L. Stine lives in New York with his wife, Jane, and Minnie, his King Charles spaniel. You can learn more about him at RLStine.com.

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  WELCOME TO DEAD HOUSE

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  Goosebumps book series created by Parachute Press, Inc.

  Copyright © 1997 by Scholastic Inc.

  All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Inc., Publishers since 1920. SCHOLASTIC, GOOSEBUMPS, GOOSEBUMPS HORRORLAND, and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  First printing, January 1997

  e-ISBN 978-1-338-33823-2

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