Dudes, the School Is Haunted! by R. L. Stine

No cars came by. No one was out walking.
    “Is this Bell Valley?” Ben asked as we crossed another street and kept
jogging. “Why doesn’t it look familiar?”
    “These aren’t the same houses across from the school,” I said.
    A chill of fear made me stop running.
    How could there be a whole different town out here? And where were the people
who lived here?
    Was it deserted? Was it like a movie set? I suddenly wondered. Not a real
neighborhood at all?
    The kids’ warnings repeated in my ears. Maybe Ben and I made a mistake, I
thought. Maybe we should have listened to them.
    I turned back toward the school. Wisps of fog came floating up from the
ground. The school rose darkly behind the spreading gray mist.
    Startled, I squinted hard at it. “Whoa—Ben,” I gasped. “Check out the
school.”
    He was studying it too. “That’s not our school!” he exclaimed.
    We were staring at a low, square building with a flat roof. Only one story
high. Gray light flooded from the only window facing the street.
    The light fell on a slender, bare flagpole planted near the street. And a
small set of swings, silvery gray in the dim wash of light.
    “We’re in a different world,” I said, my voice shaky and shrill. “We’re in a
different world—so close to ours.”
    “But—but—” Ben sputtered.
    The clumps of fog began to float together, forming a billowing wall. It moved
quickly up from the ground, hiding the bottom of the building from us now.
    “Let’s keep going,” I urged Ben. “There’s got to be a way out of
here!”
    We started to jog again, moving past darkened houses and empty lots. Running under black-trunked trees, all winter bare.
Our shoes clattering over streets without cars or streetlights.
    I kept gazing up at the sky, hoping to see the moon or the blinking light of
a star. But I stared up at a ceiling of solid black.
    We’re like shadows, I thought. Shadows running through shadows.
    Stop it, Tommy! I scolded myself. Don’t start thinking weird thoughts. Just
keep your mind straight ahead on what you have to do.
    Which is to find a way to escape from this place.
    We jogged past a black mailbox, across another empty street. And as we ran,
the fog swept around us.
    It floated low at first, clinging to the dark grass, billowing over the
streets. There was no breeze. No wind at all.
    But the fog quickly began to rise. It rose all around us. Hiding the houses
behind it. Hiding the bare trees and streets and driveways—hiding everything behind a thick, swirling curtain of gray.
    With a groan, Ben stopped jogging.
    I ran right into him. “Hey—!” I cried out breathlessly. “Why did you stop?”
    “I can’t see anything,” he choked out. “The fog…” He lowered his hands to
his knees and leaned forward, struggling to catch his breath.
    “We’re not getting anywhere—are we?” I asked softly. “I mean, we could
probably keep running forever. And we’d never get out of this place.”
    “Maybe we should wait till morning,” Ben suggested, still bent over. “Then
the fog will probably be gone and we can see where we’re going.”
    “Maybe…” I said doubtfully.
    I shivered. I wondered how much of me had turned gray. Did I have any
color left?
    I pulled up my shirt and struggled to see. But it was too dark. Everything
looked black and gray. I couldn’t tell.
    “What do you want to do?” I asked Ben. “Go back to the school?”
    The fog swept around us. So thick, I could barely see him.
    “I—I don’t think we could find the school in this fog,” he stammered. I
could hear the fear in his voice.
    I turned back.
    He was right. I couldn’t see the street or the trees on the other side of the
thick mist.
    “Maybe we can retrace our steps,” I suggested. “If we keep going in that
direction—” I pointed.
    But in the thick, spinning fog, I wasn’t sure it was the right direction.
    “This was dumb,” Ben muttered. “We should have listened to those kids.