Moon place

Moon Palace is a scary story about a boy who is dared by his friends to explore a haunted house. It was inspired by one or two pages from Stephen King's book 'Salem's Lot'. Brendan Clooney was ten years old when his parents moved to town and enrolled him in a new school. Being the new kid wasn't easy and he had to start making friends all over again. On a hill, overlooking the school playground, there was an old, dark house. Brendan often looked up at it and wondered who lived there. At lunch time, he would sometimes see the girls playing games in the yard with a skipping rope and chanting a curious little rhyme. 'Zachary Moon he likes kids, Especially when they're seven. And if he gets his hands on you, He'll send you straight to heaven.' When he eventually made friends with a group of boys in his class, one of the first things he asked them was, 'Who lives in that big old house up there?' 'Nobody now,' said one boy. 'That's the old Moon Palace.' Brendan remembered the chant he had heard. 'You mean Zachary Moon?' he asked. 'Yeah,' replied the boy. 'You know the story?' Brendan shook his head. 'You don't know?' asked another boy, aghast. 'They didn't tell you about Moon Palace?' The boys all gathered around, eager to tell the story. In hushed tones, they narrated the whole sorry tale, glancing over their shoulders and making sure there were no teachers around to hear them. Zachary Moon and his wife were a rich old couple who had owned the big old house on the hill a long time ago. They named it Moon Palace and hung a sign over the door. Nobody knew how they had made their money, but they lived like hermits, seldom emerging from their house. The only time anybody saw them was when they made the short journey into town to buy supplies. One Summer's day, the mailman was delivering some bills to Moon Palace, when he noticed that the garden had become overgrown. Looking through the mailbox, he saw a pile of unopened letters on the floor. He knocked on the front door, but got no answer. Something didn't feel right, so he went inside to investigate. In the kitchen, he found Zachary Moon hanging from the ceiling. His wife was sprawled on the floor in a pool of dried blood. The mailman immediately ran to the police station and told them what he had discovered. Two police officers accompanied him back to the house and were tasked with figuring out what exactly had happened. In the basement, they found the dead body of a 7-year old boy. Nobody knew who he was at first, but then the mailman recognized him. He had seen his face on a poster. The boy had gone missing from the school almost two years before. Most people thought he had run away from home and even his parents had given up looking for him. As far as the police could tell, Zachary Moon had probably kidnapped the young boy and kept him gagged and chained up in the cellar. When his wife found out, she must have threatened to go to the police, so Zachary blew her brains out with a shotgun and then hung himself from the rafters. It seemed as if the boy had wasted away in the cellar and died of starvation. A few days later, they held a funeral for Zachary and his wife. Half the town showed up, not to pay their respects, but rather to spit on Zachary's coffin as they lowered it into the grave. After that, nobody wanted to live in Moon Palace and the old place had lain vacant for years. Brendan felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up when he thought of that 7-year old boy, cowering all alone in a pitch black cellar, waiting for a rescue that never came. Who could do such a thing to a child, he wondered. That evening, his new friends brought him out to the woods to show him their tree house. They told him he could be a member of their gang, but first, he would have to pass the test. 'What's the test?' he asked suspiciously. Sly smiles spread across the faces of the other boys. 'You have to go into Moon Palace,' they said in unison. 'And you have to stand in the kitchen for one whole minute.' At first, Brendan refused to go, but he was afraid of losing their friendship and ev