'Ouch!' The hot gravel burned my bare feet. Me, I was leaking from every pore in the Louisiana soup.ĭad parked the car and we tumbled out. Even his Balloon Fiesta T-shirt looked like it'd just come out of the dryer. His perfect cap of blond hair bobbed around his face and fell over one eye, making him look like a lopsided cyclops. Now my dark spiked hair wilted in the humidity, and my usual gobs of mousse plastered the hair to my forehead. Of course, that was before Roberto died and everything changed. Come on, it'll be so much fun!' I'd promised my family back in the summer. What could be more not like high desert Albuquerque than a swampy plantation? I did an Internet search and came up with a sure winner: 'Laurel Oaks is certifiably haunted. 'And, Lila, make sure it's someplace not at all like Albuquerque,' she'd said. Since she was always overwhelmed with what ever it is professors do, and Dad was hopelessly nontech, Mom had asked me to hunt down an interesting place to stay.

We were missing two days of school for our family trek, because Mom had been invited to give a paper at the Biophysical Anthropology Conference at Louisiana State. 'Creepy.' My brother Gabe, who's fourteen, a year older than me, had an annoying habit of finishing my sentences, when I was perfectly capable of doing it myself. That is, if you believe the Smithsonian Institution's Web site.

I couldn't wait to explore the whole place, which was supposed to be one of the ten most haunted houses in the entire country.

The two- story mansion loomed ahead at the end of the driveway, in the dusty shadows of twilight. It was October, which in Louisiana means still hot enough to fry bacon on the hood of the car. Where were all the other guests? As our rented SUV crunched the gravel of the plantation grounds, I rolled down my window and stuck my head out. Though there was room for maybe six cars, the Laurel Oaks parking lot was totally deserted. It had been a long Thursday of travel from Albuquerque to Baton Rouge, and after a quick dinner of muffuletta sandwiches at the airport, we had hit the road to get to the bed- and- breakfast before dark. 'Here we are!' Dad said, waking Mom from her short nap.

The secret of laurel oaks by lois ruby