Chapter 17
For the last few days and weeks, priests, police officers, and science researchers tried to get Stauf out of the house. No luck. In fact, things got worse. Stauf appeared around the house on a regular basis. He always appeared on the instant midnight stroke. According to science experiments, there was always lots of radioactivity in the air.
No matter how things got, everyone just wanted Stauf to leave his house. Joseph and Chris finally returned to the house property, but they hardly went inside. They were just trying to think of ways themselves to finally defeat Stauf.
One day, Joseph and Chris were sitting by the gravestones behind Stauf's house, when all of a sudden, an ancient template rose from the ground. It said that extremely mean ghosts would be defeated if one would actually destroy them. The template sank back into the ground and was never seen again.
"Hey, I think I know how to defeat Stauf!" Joseph stood up and said excitedly.
"How?" Chris said curiously and excitedly.
"We have to burn Stauf's body and his coffin, and then, he will never appear again!" Joseph said.
"Doesn't that sound kind of mean?" Chris said.
"Yeah, but I have also figured another way to handle it," Joseph replied. Joseph and Chris hunched down with their arms around each other's backs, like in a football huddle, while Joseph whispered the plan to Chris. "OK, we dig really far down until we get to heck, and then, we dig up Stauf's coffin, throw it down the hole, fill up the hole to the evil place, and have you-know-who take 'care' of Stauf," Joseph said.
Then, the boys stood up. "Brilliant!" Chris said. "But do you think that we can dig a hole to heck?" he asked.
"Well, maybe," Joseph said. "First, we have to dig up Stauf's coffin, and then, we play Spaceboys and head southward," Joseph said. "We can play Spaceboys, just like we do on the bus!" Joseph exclaimed. Chris gave Joseph an odd look. "I mean, just like I play on the bus…" Joseph corrected. Chris never really took much interest in playing Joseph's silly games like Spaceboys. Spaceboys was a game Joseph played on the bus, and he tried to get Chris to play along too, but Chris never wanted to fully participate. The Spaceboys were people on a spaceship that once went down to heck by accident but often left because they defeated you-know-who.