Read Ghostbusters The Return for Free Online

unconvinced, but everyone was watching him. He didn't want to look chicken. "Yeah, okay," he said.

    He lay back down across the drain and reached inside. The ball was directly beneath him, but the problem was that he couldn't reach straight down to get it. He needed to manuever his arm around the gate and stretch it back underneath And since his body was covering the grate, he couldn't see what he was doing. He had to try to find the ball by touch.

    He groped around the area where he thought the ball was. His face twisted in disgust, and he recoiled as his hand encountered a pile of soggy muck.

    "You got it?" one of the other kids asked.

    "Not...yet."

    Gingerly, Jed probed around in the dark, his arm straining as he tried to reach further and further inside. He felt things that were hard, that were clammy, that were rough, and that were downright slimy. But so far, nothing felt like the ball. After a couple of minutes, though, his hand rested on something that felt different. It wasn't the ball - he was pretty sure of that - but it didn't feel like anything else in the drain either. It was big, far larger than his hand. As he moved his hand over it, he found that it was rounded and leathery. Ridges indented its surface in some sort of regular pattern. Jed's curiosity almost made him forget the ball as he ran his hand back and forth across the mystery object, trying to figure out what it was.

    Then it moved.

    With a shriek, he jumped back off the grate. Everyone reflexively pulled back in surprise. Jed scrambled to his feet halfway across the street, pale and breathing heavily. The rest of the kids stared at the storm drain in a mixture of anticipation and anxiety.

    Nothing happened.

    Once the kids realized that, their mood shifted from fear to ridicule. They jeered at Jed in the way that only a bunch of young children can.

    But that all came to a sudden stop when the red rubber ball suddenly popped out of the drain, all by itself. It arced up through the air, bounced against the pavement two or three times, and slowly rolled to a stop.

    The kids looked at each other, confused. Mostly, though, they looked at the storm drain, not quite sure what had just happened.

    That was when a pair of huge, chalky white jaws shot out of the drain. They missed Esti by inches, snapping shut around empty air.

    The children screamed at the sight. They scattered, running in every direction and leaving their equipment forgotten behind them.

    Albino alligators were swarming out of the sewer now. More of them were coming out of manholes and the other storm drains along the block. They seemed to ooze their translucent bodies unnaturally around the grating, in ways that no ordinary alligator could. Their growls cut through the air.

    By this point, it wasn't just the children who were screaming. Adult passersby ran from the block or took refuge inside stores and barricaded the doors. One of them flipped the sign on one of the store entrances to CLOSED.

    The only one who wasn't going anywhere was Esti. After her her close call with the first gator, she stood frozen in terror, trembling but otherwise unable to move. In all the confusion, the alligators hadn't seemed to notice her - but one of them noticed her now. It crept toward her, sniffing the air as though guided more by smell than by sight.

    On some level, Esti knew she had to get out of there. Yet, as the alligator inched closer, the fear wiped all rational thought from her head. She had to get out of there, but she couldn't will herself to do it.

    Just then, a hand grasped her wrist firmly. Jed yanked her out of the animal's path. He took off, pulling her along into a run until her legs started to work for themselves again.

    The alligator "watched" them disappear into the distance and decided the potential meal wasn't worth the trouble of chasing after them. Instead, the huge, spectral reptile lumbered off toward the school building, in search of easier prey.

    There was plenty