Kaylen and the Lost Spirits: Adventure Kids, #7

By T. James Logan

Where the tides of magic meet, lies a world of wonder...

A strange spider on Kaylen's pillow at bedtime meant it was going to be a weird night. Who needs sleep anyway?
But when one of her old toys, a lawn ornament named Mr. Toad, decides to get up and go for a walk, all by himself, it becomes a really weird night.
Following him leads her into a world of bizarre creatures, magic, and mystery. What is she supposed to do, exactly, with an infestation of ghost spiders in her neighborhood?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bear Paw Publishing
• Release date: Apr 16, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201653422

Book preview

Kaylen

and the

Lost Spirits

By

T. James Logan

Bear Paw Publishing Denver

www.bearpawpublishing.com

Copyright © 2021 by T. James Logan

Cover Illustration by João Rodri

Cover Design by Kaylen Helgason

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, or mechanical without explicit permission in writing from the Author or Publisher.

AAAHHGGG! A spider! Kaylen yelled, jumping up onto her bed and hugging her knees.

The hairy, black thing was the size of a trash can lid, staring at her with eyes like big, shiny marbles, scuttling along the baseboard near her dresser, under Mr. Toad. Her heart pounded in her chest, and her skin crawled.

Uh, help? she peeped. She didn’t want to sound too terrified, but that thing could probably carry her away. It could take out a charging rhinoceros. It could flip over a locomotive and cocoon all the cars...

Her step-father filled the doorway, looking like he was ready to execute a massive eyeroll. Where is it?

She pointed to Mr. Toad, the whimsical-looking rubber toy about the size of a basketball that she had loved since she was three, when Grandma had bought it for her on an outing to a pumpkin patch (it was really a lawn ornament, they said). If Mr. Toad were alive, he would only have to sit down, and that spider would be toast, but of course, Mr. Toad wasn’t really alive, even though she’d had a number of tea parties with him when she was little. At twelve, she’d grown out of such tea parties, but he was still one of her favorite companions.

As far as Kaylen knew, her step-dad wasn’t scared of anything, but Kaylen had inherited Mom’s Spider Terror, something Step-dad never wasted a chance to tease them about. He said, Want me to squish it?

Kaylen made a face. Eww! No! Use the bugzooka. As much as she hated spiders, she couldn’t bring herself to kill them. It was more humane to relocate them to the outdoors, where they might eat even more and grosser bugs.

The bugzooka was a two-foot-long plastic tube designed suck bugs—and spiders!—into a little clear-plastic jail at the tip, using a burst of spring-loaded suction.

Her step-dad left and returned a couple minutes later with the black tube. Her eyes had been laser-focused on the motionless spider the whole time.

He held out the bugzooka. Do you want to nab the beast?

Uhn uh! No way!

He shrugged, walked