Read Online Once Upon a Midnight Eerie: Book #2 (Misadventures of Edgar/Allan) by Gordon McAlpine - Free Book Online

Telecommunications Satellite, the orbiting tomb of their mother and father. They’d last seen it from a Kansas cornfield.
    “Is that, um, your parents’ satellite up there?” Milly asked delicately.
    The girls knew the sad story of Mal and Irma Poe and the Atlas V rocket.
    All of America knew it.
    “No,” Edgar said. “That’s just an ordinary one.”
    “Oh, drat!” Allan groaned, glancing at his wristwatch. “We’re due in the makeup trailer in forty-five minutes.”
    They’d been awake now for twenty-four hours straight.
    Em grinned. “I suppose that’s what you two get for being the ‘stars’ of the last scene.”
    “Our scenes are done,” Milly added, smiling mischievously. “But we’ll be thinking of you this morning while
we
catch up on sleep.
    In response, the boys could only yawn.

    By eleven a.m., the Poe twins still had not started shooting their scene. They’d suffered through the familiar makeup routine, climbed into their stiff-collared costumes, shuffled to the buffet table to smear cream cheese on bagels for breakfast, and arrived on the set on time. But since then . . . nothing, as the lighting crew struggled to get a particular effect that Mr. Wender insisted upon.
    “I want it perfect!” he shouted.
    Some among the crew whispered that the director’s reluctance to shoot had less to do with lighting than it did with his dissatisfaction with the script. Set in a luxurious, nineteenth-century parlor, the scene was written as a fantasy sequence in which the boys sipped tea and argued about good and evil—two sides of their famous ancestor. But it lacked punch.
    It was the final scene in the movie, the all-important closing. And Mr. Wender still hadn’t come up with any improvements.
    So the lighting crew was getting an education in German cuss words.
    Meantime, the Poe twins caught up on shut-eye, one on the set’s velvet, nineteenth-century divan, the other in the big wingback chair beside the fireplace.
    At last, Cassie shouted, “Everyone to their places!”
    But Edgar and Allan remained in a deep snooze.
    “What is this sleeping
?
”
Mr. Wender shouted, drawing everyone’s attention.
    That is, everyone except the twin objects of his anger, who merely began to snore more loudly.
    “What in Gott’s name are you two doing?” Mr. Wender raged, slamming his copy of the script to the ground.
    At last, the twins opened their eyes.
    The director strode toward them. “I do not tolerate sleeping on the set!”
    Edgar sat up on the divan. “We weren’t just sleeping,” he said.
    “No?” Mr. Wender pressed.
    The twins thought fast.
    “Um, we were sharing a dream,” Allan said as he straightened in the wingback chair and ran his hand through his cowlicks (identical to his brother’s cowlicks, naturally).
    “Sharing one dream?” Mr. Wender scoffed. “How is it I didn’t guess that straight off?”
    “Oh, don’t be too hard on yourself,” Allan said, ignoring the director’s sarcasm. He stood, fluffing the high collar of his nineteenth-century shirt and tugging at the ridiculous satin pants. “Do you want to hear about our dream?”
    “No!” Mr. Wender snapped, stalking away.
    “You might find it inspirational for the final scene,” Edgar added.
    After a few steps the director stopped and turned back. “Well . . . maybe.”
    Allan nodded graciously. “In the dream, we were the young Edgar Allan Poe, our great-great-great-great granduncle, just like in the movie.”
    “That’s of no help.”
    “But instead of sipping tea, we were sitting in this very room doing . . .”
    “Doing what?” Mr. Wender inquired.
    Mr. Wender needed a better ending and the Poe twins needed a little more sleep.
    Crew members began to gather around the boys.
    “In the dream, what were you doing?” Mr. Wender pressed.
    Since the twins hadn’t been dreaming at all, this was no easy question.
    Stumped, Edgar and Allan looked at each other.
    Hadn’t Em said something about a