Garden Ghoulies: The Savior of Faldoon

By Kevin Gould

Join Abraham Lincoln Horowitz on an adventure that will change his world! Abe is a bullied kid from Buffalo, New York with an unsatisfying home life who looks forward every year to his summers in Chipper Hollow with his Grandma, and this summer is no different... until it is. He can hardly contain his excitement on the last day of school. Neither the constant thrashing by the school bullies or his long-time crush actually speaking to him can take his mind off of Chipper Hollow today! However, this particular summer, Abe finds out the hard way that Chipper Hollow holds more secrets than he ever knew, as he sets out on an adventure like no other under the forest floor to save a race of small subterranean creatures called the Ghaoultica, or as Abe calls them, Ghoulies. Teaming up with his new friends Joe, Lita, and Ozzie, Abe sets out to defend Faldoon and all the Ghoulies from certain doom at the hands of Valdrick and the Falcrin.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kevin Gould
• Release date: Apr 15, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005007553

Book preview

Chapter 1: Abe

The sun always seems brighter, the air fresher, and the grass greener in Chipper Hollow. The birds chirp happily during the day, the owls hoot loudly at night, and the stars sparkle bolder and more brilliantly than anywhere else in the world. It is the most beautiful place I have personally ever seen. Of course, that’s probably not saying much since I haven’t really been anywhere else… but I have seen a lot of places on TV! I love it there and I would live there for the rest of my life if I could. Who am I? You might ask. Well, I’m Abe Lincoln. Abe Lincoln Horowitz, that is. Had you fooled for a minute there, didn’t I? I’m 12 years old, but people say that I’m really small for my age. My mom measures me every month, and last week she said I just passed four feet tall. I think it was my puffy black morning wake-up hair that just pushed me over the top. She always tells me I need to eat more to put some meat on my bones too, which I think is funny because I feel like I never stop eating. My big sister, Haddie, and I live in Buffalo with Mom and Dad. That’s in New York… if you didn’t know. We spend all of our summers in Chipper Hollow with our Grandma Jean though. I consider it more my home than my real home. Chipper Hollow is in New York too, but it is way different. Grandma has an amazing house out there on 36 ½ acres. I am not sure what that means exactly, but believe me… it’s huuuuge! Her house is right in the middle of all that land, so she is really far away from all of her neighbors. I mean, I think she has neighbors because you wouldn’t even know they were there. She has a beautiful creek running right through her land too. It’s actually big enough to be a river, but Grandma calls it a creek. Whatever it is—creek, river, lake, puddle—it doesn’t matter because it’s super cool. It’s like, I don’t know, 20 feet across or something, and it’s pretty deep. It’s super clear and there are always lots of big fish swimming around. Grandma says they are called bass and steelhead, but I wouldn’t know because I am not a fisherman… like, at all. She tried to take me fishing once and it was way too boring for me. Grandma’s place always makes me think of those scenes in movies when the camera is way up in the air looking down on a big jungle or forest and all you can see are trees everywhere. It is the most perfect place to play hide and seek, or Black Ops Soldiers, which is my absolute favorite. It used to be more fun to go out and do that stuff because Haddie would play them with me, but she says she is too old for those kinds of games now, and it’s really hard to play hide and seek by yourself. She is four years older than me, and she says now that she is 16, she can’t be seen playing kids games anymore. C’mon! Nobody can see anything that happens out here anyway!

Haddie doesn’t even really talk to me anymore when we’re at home in Buffalo either, which can make life pretty lonely sometimes. She is too busy going out with her friends, texting, talking about boys, texting, and doing whatever else teenage girls do… and did I mention texting? Yuck. I mean, girls are alright, but there seems to be a lot of drama and I am just not into all that. We are headed out to Grandma’s house for the summer again tomorrow. I am thrilled, but Haddie doesn’t want any part of it this year. But, you see, Mom and Dad send us out to Grandma’s so that they can go and travel the world, which has been hitting Haddie harder and harder every year. For a while, it seemed like she was getting a lot closer to Mom, and she was so much happier—she actually treated me nicely, but she went right back to her old self when Mom told her they were leaving again and that she couldn’t go with them. Anyway, this year, they’re going to Morocco. They have been there before, but they would rather spend time away from us than with us. At least, that’s the way it feels whenever Dad gets any time away from work. Not Mom really… she spends as much time with us as possible, but Dad is a different story. He is an ontra-penner, or something like that. He started some kind of business that helps people ship their stuff faster and easier than they could before… that’s what Mom says anyway. I guess it means he makes a lot of money, but it also means that he is busy all the time too. At first, I thought his job was like being a superhero or something like that, but sometimes things just don’t work out the way we want them to, ya know? At least not for Haddie and me they don’t. Whatever his job is, I think it means that he isn’t allowed to spend time with his kids either because we don’t see him unless he is coming back from, or leaving for, one of his trips. Even when he is home, he leaves before we get up and comes home after we go to bed. Sometimes I am not sure how I feel about that because he isn’t really very nice to us when he is around anyway. I was super excited when he came out to play catch with me once, but his phone rang about five pitches in and that was the last time we saw him for about a month. He grabbed his bag and headed off to Taiwan. He didn’t even look at me on his way out the door. Anyway, that means that Haddie doesn’t have a choice. She says that she should be able to stay at home alone because she is 16 now and grown-up enough to be trusted to do things by herself. Mom and Dad disagree… and so do I. So, Haddie is throwing a fit. A teenager size fit, which is ridiculously loud and obnoxious. I can hear her slamming doors and throwing things around all day and night. I gotta just brush it off though because I am too excited for Grandma’s house.

We have one day of school left, and I can’t wait to get out of here! Don’t get me wrong though, I like school a lot… at least the learning part of it. I can’t get enough of learning, especially in English class, which is my absolute favorite. I love to read, and I get made fun of a lot because of it. The kids at school call me nerd and doofus, and I don’t ever know what to say back. I just don’t say anything at all when they do it, but I think that might make it worse. I guess I’m used to it though because I get that constantly from Haddie at home too. I get bullied a lot. I don’t know if it’s my size or what, but it’s been happening my whole life. Right now, it’s this one kid named Jesse—the school bully—who picks on me more than anybody else. It happens every day. EVERY DAY! Some days he hits me, but most days he just calls me names and does his best to make me feel terrible about myself. It’s on those days that I wish he would just hit me. I used to have friends, but they were all afraid that they would get beat up too if they hung out with me, so they stopped being my friends. I don’t know what to do about it. My best friend, Todd, left me earlier this year, but I didn’t blame him for that after what happened. Jesse was having a worse day than normal, so he decided to take it out on me. When Todd got there, Jesse had me upside down in a trash can and was poking a big stick down at me. I was screaming, so Todd yelled at him to stop, which made Jesse turn on him. He wound up like a baseball player, started running, and swung that big stick at him, hitting him right in the head. He hit him so hard that he cracked his cheekbone. It would have been a lot worse if Todd hadn’t gotten his arms up as far as he did to try and block it. I couldn’t see any of this because I was head-down in a trash can, but this is what I heard after Ms. Johnson pulled me out of there. Todd had to have a bunch of surgeries to get his face fixed right. I have always felt bad for that, but he hasn’t talked to me since and I don’t even know what to say to him to try and make it right. We used to spend all of our time together. We have known each other since… well, before I can even remember. Our moms knew each other in college and were always good friends, but… not anymore. The upside is that having no friends just gives me more time to read, I guess. That’s about all I do now, other than watch movies. I do that a lot too. Anything that takes me away from reality. So, I read at home, at lunch, at recess… whenever I have free time really, and even sometimes when I don’t. I have been caught more than a few times reading when I should be listening or working in class. I have nothing else to do now though, except when I am in Chipper Hollow. I am so excited! Only one more day! Mom is taking us to Grandma’s after we get out of school today. Dad never goes with us. He says he has too much important stuff to do. Man, I wish the day could be over now! Ugh… Jesse is going to make this last day horrible though. I just know it.

I woke up this morning ready to go and get the day over with. I was up way before Mom came to wake me and I was downstairs eating breakfast when Dad stumbled into the kitchen to make coffee. He is NOT a morning person. I see you’re ready for school early today, Abe, he commented while yawning and putting the coffee into the machine. Sure am! It’s a beautiful day, Dad… and it’s Grandma day! Whoo-hoo! He flinched as I spoke and just grunted something I couldn’t understand in reply. I guess I was probably a little loud. He mumbled something as he walked away about not even being able to tell if it is a beautiful day yet because it hasn’t even started, and then he stumbled back out of the room. I finished my breakfast, grabbed my lunch and my backpack, and I was out the door faster than a cheetah after its prey. The bus wasn’t supposed to get there for another half an hour or so, but I wanted to be there when it arrived. Well, now I have lots of time to wait, which is just giving me more time to think and get more restless. Sometimes it’s not a good idea for me to have too much time on my hands to think. This one time, I got grounded from TV and books because I was throwing my baseball up in the air as high as I could outside, and it ended up in the windshield of the neighbor’s car. I guess I threw it pretty high. I ended up getting so bored that I decided to take the DVD player apart to see how it worked. I just knew I could put it back together again. Um, in case you were wondering… the answer is no, it never got put back together. Mom had to buy a new one, which was bad because ours was pretty old and had the DVD player on one side and a VHS player on the other. They don’t even sell those anymore, so Dad went off the deep end with that one. I got two weeks more grounding after that. Well, I don’t have a DVD player with me this morning, so I think it will be ok. I figured I would sit on the edge of the lawn closest to the bus stop so I can plan out my time at Grandma’s house while I wait. It’s supposed to be a really hot summer, so I think I’m going to spend a lot of time down by the creek. I have three lists going for different things I want to do when I hear Jonathan yell, Hey, Abe, wake up, man! The bus is here! Jonathan is one of my old friends that left me when Jesse got a bit too much. I bounce up like a spring and sprint to the bus. I sit down in the only completely empty seat at the back and watch the trees go by. Nobody wants to sit next to me the whole ride as usual, so I sit there alone and finish my lists for Grandma’s house. The ride is uneventful like normal and we are at the school before I know it. I step off the bus and head straight over to my locker so that I can start the day. Today is homeroom, which means… Hey, Abe Stinkin’, where do you think you’re goin’?

Chapter 2: Jesse

Here he comes. He is making his way down the hall straight toward me. Of course, as usual, he has his two goons, Chuck and Jonesie, trailing behind him like lost puppies. My lucky day. NOT! Hey, Jesse. I’m getting ready to go to class. What about you? He is heading directly for me and quickly closing the gap between us, but worse than that, he looks like he is going to throttle me. This isn’t good. I begin to flinch as he gets closer, and the closer he gets, the slower he seems to be moving. It’s like he is moving in slow motion now, stalking me and ready to attack. His footsteps are pounding in my ears like sledgehammers pounding on the concrete. Whatcha got for me today, Abe Stinkin’? he asks as he puts his hand on his head and leans his big fat elbow against the locker next to mine. His other hand reaches out and grabs the front of my shirt to pull me toward him. He grins at me through his green teeth. So gross! He is so close to me that I can smell the smoke on his breath and the B.O. wafting out from, well, everywhere! Jesse is a very big kid. He is the same age as me, but twice, maybe even three times my size. No joke! He has got to be six feet tall! He is fat, ugly, and always looks and smells like he hasn’t taken a shower in a month. He wears a leather vest that says Kill Mongers on the back and has a fist in the middle. I’m pretty sure it used to have the middle finger sticking up, but it looks like somebody scratched it out with a marker or something. Probably because they wouldn’t let him wear it to school like that. All of his clothes are ripped, and he wears brown leather biker boots with chains on them. I always wonder if the reason he picks on other kids is so that he doesn’t get picked on himself. I mean, other than the leather and stuff, he is just like the rest of us nerds, except for all the being crazy and vicious, I mean. He lives on the other side of the tracks, as they say, in a trailer park that is known for robberies and gang violence. I heard that his dad left when he was born, and his mom works constantly at her three jobs just to try to pay the rent. He is always home alone because she is never home. Well, I say home alone, but he is usually out around town somewhere terrorizing someone or something. The thing is, I have met his mom and she is a pretty amazing lady who loves him a lot. I got to meet her one time at a bake sale. She had a minute of free time and chose to use it to volunteer at the school, which I thought was awesome. We don’t really get any baked goodies at home, so I had saved a little bit of money because I knew this was coming. I walked up to the brownie table where she was working because brownies are my favorite, and even though she looked really tired, she greeted me with a great smile and said, C’mon in and take a look, good sir. We have sweets and treats for every taste and liking! She talked me through everything on the table and then gave me a nice break on the price because I didn’t quite have enough money. She asked me if I was friends with her Jesse, but I didn’t have the heart to describe to her the type of relationship that I have with her Jesse. After a really nice conversation, she winked at me, handed me my brownie, and said, I hope you have a blessed day, Abe Horowitz. It was my pleasure to have met you and I hope we meet again. I don’t understand how or why he is the way he is when he has such a great mom.

Anyway, when they’re not torturing me, Jesse and his goons are hanging out on their stoop out in the front of the school, smoking and making fun of everyone walking by. It’s right outside the front doors so they can mess with everybody… even teachers. It’s so awful looking when you walk up to the school because the left side is nasty and the right side is still spotless. It’s all marked up with pens and there are holes in it like they dig at it with knives or something, not to mention it’s really dirty because they lay all over it. I always wonder why nobody stops them from smoking, messing with people, or destroying the school for that matter, but they always seem to get away with everything. Huh… maybe the adults are afraid of them too. Maybe it’s just my experience from being tortured by them my entire life, but I think you can tell they are trouble just by looking at them. Chuck is a tall, skinny, and muscular kid, and he is older than everyone else in our grade because he was held back in sixth grade… TWICE! I was never in his class, thank goodness, but I heard that he stabbed the teacher in the hand with a pencil, and I did see Mr. Mirks with a bandage wrapped around his hand for a while there. He ALWAYS wears shorts and a t-shirt, no matter what the weather is like—that doesn’t stop him from wearing his leather biker boots though, which looks really goofy, but nobody is going to tell him so. Again, it kinda makes me wonder how he doesn’t end up head-first in a trash can. Jonesie is a little guy. He is shorter and skinnier than me, but he is crazier than Jesse and Chuck combined, and he is surprisingly strong. I have the scars to prove just how strong he actually is too. He is like Jesse’s attack Chihuahua, and he WILL attack if given ANY chance at all. His parents have money, so he dresses a little better than the other two, but they both wear the same kind of vest as Jesse with Kill Mongers on the back. I heard a long time ago that they got recruited to help a biker gang rob a bank once because they were kids and could be a good distraction, so the gang leader gave them those vests to make them part of the gang, but I don’t know how true that is. I don’t have anything, Jesse, I tell him as I slowly ease my locker closed, trying not to call any attention to it. Let’s see whatcha got in here then! he demands, pushing me back away from my locker hard and flipping the door wide open. Jonesie jumps up on my back and grabs a hold of me in a headlock, cackling like a maniac. He starts giving me a hard noogie and messing my hair up big time, nearly ripping it out. Like I said, he is really strong and he isn’t holding back as he wears a hole in my skull with his boney little knuckle while Jesse proceeds to empty the entire contents of my locker out all over the hallway. Everyone else in the hallway is just walking by, minding their own business and trying not to make any eye contact so they don’t end up on the hit list too. I can’t see much as Jonesie flings my head around, but I can tell that not a soul is even making an attempt to help me get out of this.

Man, you really are worthless, Stinkin’. You ain’t got nuttin’ in here at all… like always. Let ‘im go, Jonesie. Let’s let him get back to being losery. Jonesie digs his knuckle into my head one last time with extra pressure for good measure before he hurls me backwards to the ground. Chuck is just standing there chuckling, pointing at me, and mumbling, losery to himself. He’s a real genius that one. By this point, almost everyone is in their classroom. There are only a few people wandering the halls still, so I just sit there for a minute and rub my head, trying to fix my hair—what is left of it at least. Once I think I’m ready to face life again, I pull myself up onto my hands and knees to try and collect the contents of my locker that are now strewn up and down the hallway. As I swipe my papers into a pile, I hear a soft, angelic voice say, Here you go. Athena Sabatta, the most popular and beautiful girl in school, and possibly the world… is talking to me! She had picked up all of my loose papers and was bringing them over to me. ME! I have had a crush on Athena since she smiled at me while I was picking my nose in the Kindergarten sandbox. Not one of my finest moments… don’t judge me. I never thought she would actually speak to someone like me, and lucky me, it actually happened right after getting my butt kicked. Great. Even though I am trying to speak, nothing is coming out but squeaks and grunts. All my breath is gone and, all of a sudden, I am sweating like a turkey at Thanksgiving. It’s ridiculous! I finally collect myself after what seems like an eternity and shakily mutter, Th-th-thank you, Athena, as I embarrassingly reach out with my shaky, sweaty hands to take my papers from her. You’re welcome. You better hurry or you will be late for class, Abe. Happy last day of school, she says as she flashes the most enchanting smile at me and gracefully floats off down the hallway, putting off an effervescent glow all around her… and then the bell rings. I’m late! I exclaim in a voice that I think is in my own head until I hear it echoing down the empty hallway. I scrape the rest of my locker innards up off the floor, separating my science book and notepad from the rest of the mess, shove the rest of the miscellaneous items in my locker while simultaneously slamming it closed to avoid an avalanche, and scramble off to science class. Room 17 is a blustering jumble of pre-teen horseplay as usual when I arrive