Attack of the Jack-O'-Lanterns Read online

  Todd brushed his coppery hair back off his forehead. His hair was wet, his face was red, and he was sweating. I guess it was hot inside that rubber mask.

  Joe tossed his ski mask to the floor. He shook his head, laughing at us. “All a joke, guys!” he called out. “Happy Halloween!”

  All the other kids had stopped the push-ups. But no one had moved from the floor. I guess we were too shocked to stand up.

  “Just a party joke!” Lee chimed in, grinning.

  “Did we scare you?” Tabby asked coyly.

  “Grrrrrr!” I let out the loudest growl I ever growled. I wanted to leap up, grab the tiara off Princess Tabby’s head, and wrap it around her neck!

  Todd and Joe slapped each other a high five. They picked up cans of Pepsi and tilted them up over their mouths.

  “You can get up now!” Lee announced, snickering.

  “Wow! You guys looked so scared!” Tabby cried gleefully. “I guess we really fooled you!”

  “I don’t believe this,” Walker muttered, shaking his head. The wrapping had fallen from his face. Bandages drooped loosely over his shoulders. “I really don’t believe this. What a mean, rotten joke.”

  I climbed up shakily and helped Walker to his feet. I heard Shane and Shana grumbling behind us. Their costumes were totally wrecked.

  Kids were grumbling and complaining. Tabby and Lee were the only ones laughing. No one else thought the joke was the least bit funny.

  I started across the room to tell the two creeps what I thought of their dumb joke. But Lee’s parents burst into the room, pulling off their coats.

  “We went next door to the Jeffreys’,” Lee’s mom announced. Then she saw Todd. “Oh, hi, Todd. We were just at your house, visiting your parents. What are you doing over here? Helping Lee out with the party?”

  “Kind of,” Todd replied, grinning.

  “How’s the party going?” Lee’s dad asked.

  “Great,” Lee told him. “Just great, Dad.”

  * * *

  And that’s how Tabby and Lee ruined Halloween two years ago.

  Walker and I — and Shane and Shana, too — were all really upset.

  No. We were more than upset. We were furious.

  Halloween is our favorite holiday. And we don’t like to see it ruined because of a mean practical joke.

  So, last year we decided to get even.

  “We need special decorations,” Shana said. “Not the same old pumpkins and skeletons.”

  “Yeah. Something scarier,” Shane chimed in.

  “I think jack-o’-lanterns are plenty scary,” I insisted. “Especially when you put candles in them. And their dark faces light up with those jagged, evil grins.”

  “Jack-o’-lanterns are babyish,” Walker argued. “No one is afraid of a jack-o’-lantern. Shana is right. If we’re going to scare Tabby and Lee, we need something better.”

  It was a week before Halloween. The four of us were hard at work at my house. We were working on my Halloween party.

  Yes. Last year, the party was at my house.

  Why did I decide to have the party? For only one reason.

  For revenge.

  For revenge on Tabby and Lee.

  Walker, Shane, Shana, and I had spent the entire year talking about it, dreaming up plans. Dreaming up the most frightening scares we could imagine.

  We didn’t want to pull a mean joke like having people break into the house.

  That was too mean. And too frightening.

  Some of my friends still have bad dreams about guys in ski masks and gorilla masks.

  The four of us didn’t want to terrify all of our guests. We just wanted to embarrass Tabby and Lee — and scare them out of their skins!

  Now, a week before the big night, we were sitting around my living room after dinner. We should have been doing homework. But Halloween was too near.

  We had no time for homework. We had to spend all of our time making evil plans.

  Shane and Shana had a lot of really frightening ideas. They both look so sweet and innocent. But once you get to know them, they’re pretty weird.

  Walker and I wanted to keep our scares simple. The simpler, the scarier. That’s what we thought.

  I wanted to drop fake cobwebs over Tabby and Lee from the stairway. I know a store that sells really sticky, scratchy cobwebs.

  Walker has a tarantula that he keeps in a glass cage in his room. A live tarantula. He thought maybe we could tangle the tarantula in the cobwebs and then drop it in Tabby’s hair.

  Not a bad idea.

  Walker also wanted to cut a trapdoor in the living-room floor. When Tabby and Lee stepped on the spot, we’d open the trapdoor, and they would disappear into the basement.

  I had to reject that idea. I liked it. But I wasn’t sure how Mom and Dad would react when they discovered us sawing up the floor.

  Also, I just wanted to terrify the two creeps. I didn’t want to break their necks.

  “Where are we going to put the fake blood puddles?” Shane asked.

  He held a red plastic puddle of blood in each hand. He and his sister had bought a dozen fake blood puddles at a costume store. They came in different sizes, and looked very real.

  “And don’t forget the green slime,” Shana reminded us. She had three plastic bags of slime beside her.

  Walker and I opened one of the bags and felt the slimy, sticky, oozy gunk. “Where did you buy this?” I asked. “At the same store?”

  “No. It came out of Shana’s nose!” Shane joked.

  With an angry cry, Shana hoisted up one of the bags. She swung it in front of her, threatening to smack her brother with it.

  He laughed and bounced off the couch.

  “Whoa! Careful!” I cried. “If that bag breaks — ”

  “Maybe we can hang the slime from the ceiling,” Walker suggested.

  “Yeah! Cool!” Shane cried excitedly. “And it could drip down onto Tabby and Lee.”

  “Maybe we could cover them in it!” Walker added excitedly. “And they’d look like two sticky, green blobs.”

  “Glub glub glub!” Shana thrashed out her arms and pretended she was drowning under a puddle of slime.

  “Will it stick to the ceiling?” I asked. “How will we keep it up there long enough? How will we get the two of them to stand under it?”

  I’m the practical one in the group. They have a lot of wild ideas. But they never know how to make them work.

  That’s my job.

  “I’m not sure,” Walker replied. He jumped up from his chair. “I’m going to get something to drink.”

  “What if the slime started to spew out of the jack-o’-lanterns?” Shane suggested. “That would be kind of scary — wouldn’t it?”

  “What if we had fake blood gush out of the jack-o’-lanterns?” Shana said. “That would be even scarier.”

  “We have to trap Tabby and Lee somehow,” Shane suggested, thinking hard. “All this slime and cobwebs and blood is good. But we have to make them think they’re really in danger. We have to make them think that something terrible is really going to happen to them.”

  I started to agree — but the lights went out.

  “Oh!” I uttered a cry of surprise, blinking in the sudden darkness. “What happened?”

  Shane and Shana didn’t reply.

  The curtains were drawn. So no light entered the living room from outside. The room was so dark, I couldn’t see my two friends sitting right across from me!

  And then, I heard a dry, whispered voice. A frightening whisper, so close, so close to my ear:

  “Come with me.

  Come home with me now.

  Come home to where you belong.

  Come home — to the grave.”

  Staring into the darkness, the whispered words sent a shiver down my back.

  “Come with me.

  Come home with me now.

  Come home to where you belong.

  Come to your grave, Tabby and Lee.

  I ha
ve come for you and you alone.

  Come, Tabby and Lee. Come with me now.”

  “That’s excellent!” I cried.

  The lights flashed back on. Across from me, Shane and Shana clapped and cheered.

  “Good job, Walker!” I turned to congratulate him.

  He set a recorder on the coffee table in front of us. “I think it will scare them,” he said.

  “It scared me!” I told him. “And I knew what it was.”

  “When the lights go out and that voice starts to whisper, it will creep everyone out!” Shana exclaimed. “Especially with it playing from right under the couch.”

  “Who recorded the voice?” Shane asked Walker. “Did you do it?”

  Walker nodded.

  “Cool,” Shane said. He turned to me. “But, Drew, I still think you should let Shana and me do some of our scares on Tabby and Lee.”

  “Let’s save those for when we really need them,” I replied.

  I bent down and opened one of the plastic bags. I dug a hand in and pulled out a big chunk of green slime. It felt cold and gooey in my hand.

  I worked it around in my palm, squeezing it and shaping it. Then I rolled it into a ball.

  “Think it’s sticky enough to hang from the ceiling?” I asked. “It would be a nice effect to have it running down the walls. I think — ”

  “No. I’ve got a better idea,” Walker interrupted. “The lights all go out — right? And the creepy voice starts to whisper. And when it whispers their names — when it whispers, ‘Come to your grave, Tabby and Lee’ — then someone sneaks up behind each of them and drops a huge glob of slime on their heads.”

  “That’s cool!” Shane declared. We all laughed and cheered.

  We had some good ideas. But we needed more. I didn’t want to slip up. I didn’t want Tabby and Lee to think it was funny, all a big joke.

  I wanted them to be SCARED — with a capital S-C-A-R-E-D.

  So we thought of more scary ideas. And more ideas.

  We worked all week. From after school until late at night. Setting traps. Hiding little creepy surprises all over the living room.

  We carved the ugliest jack-o’-lanterns you ever saw. And we filled them with real-looking plastic cockroaches.

  We made an eight-foot-tall, papier-mâché monster. And we rigged it to fall out of the coat closet when we pulled a string.

  We bought real-looking rubber snakes and worms and spiders and hid them all around the house.

  We didn’t eat or sleep. We dragged ourselves through school, thinking only about more ways to terrify our two special guests.

  Finally, Halloween arrived.

  The four of us gathered at my house. We were too tense to sit still or even stand still. We moved around the house, barely speaking to each other. And we carefully checked and rechecked all of the frightening traps and tricks we had prepared.

  I had never worked so hard in all my life. Never!

  I spent so much time getting ready for the party — and our revenge — that I didn’t even think of my Halloween costume until the very last minute.

  And so I ended up wearing the same Klingon costume I had worn the year before.

  Walker was a pirate that year. He had a patch over one eye and wore a striped shirt and a parrot on one shoulder.

  Shane and Shana had dressed as some kind of creatures. I couldn’t really tell what they were supposed to be.

  We didn’t care about our costumes. We only cared about scaring Tabby and Lee.

  And then, as we paced the living room nervously, one hour before the party was to start, the phone rang.

  And we received a call that filled us all with horror.

  I was standing right next to the phone when it rang. The harsh buzz nearly made me jump out of my skin. Was I a little tense? YES!

  I grabbed the phone in the middle of the first ring. “Hello?”

  I heard a familiar voice on the other end. “Hi, Drew. It’s Tabby.”

  “Tabby!” I cried. I decided she was calling to find out what time the party started. “The party starts at eight,” I said. “But if you and Lee — ”

  “That’s why I’m calling,” Tabby interrupted. “Lee and I can’t come tonight.”

  “Huh?”

  The phone dropped out of my hand. It clattered to the floor.

  I dove to pick up the receiver, stumbled, and nearly knocked the whole table over.

  “What? What did you say?” I demanded.

  “Lee and I can’t come.” Tabby repeated the chilling words. “We’re going to Lee’s cousin’s instead. His cousin gets to trick-or-treat until midnight. He does four different neighborhoods. He promised we’ll get bags and bags of candy. Sorry.”

  “But, Tabby — ” I started to protest weakly.

  “Sorry,” she said. “See you. Bye.”

  She hung up.

  I let out a hoarse wail and sank to my knees on the floor.

  “What’s wrong?” Walker demanded.

  “They — they — they — ” I couldn’t get the words out.

  My three friends huddled around me. Walker tried to pull me to my feet. But my head was spinning. I didn’t want to stand up.

  “They’re not coming!” I finally managed to choke out. “Not coming.”

  “Oh,” Walker replied softly. Shane and Shana shook their heads glumly, but didn’t say a word.

  We all stayed frozen in place, stunned, too miserable to talk. Thinking about all the work … all the planning and all the hard work.

  A whole year of planning and work.

  I’m not going to cry, I told myself. I feel like crying, but I’m not going to.

  I climbed shakily to my feet. And glanced at the couch.

  “What is that?” I shrieked.

  Everyone turned and saw what I saw. A huge, ugly hole in one of the brown leather couch cushions.

  “Oh, no!” Shana wailed. “I was playing with a ball of green slime. I must have dropped it onto the couch when I stood up. It — it burned a hole in the cushion!”

  “Quick — cover it up before Mom and Dad see — ” I started.

  Of course Mom and Dad came strolling into the living room. “How’s it going?” Dad asked. “All ready for your guests?”

  I crossed my fingers and prayed they wouldn’t see the huge hole in the couch.

  “Good heavens! What happened to the couch?” Mom shrieked.

  * * *

  It took Mom and Dad a long time to get over the ruined couch.

  And it took me even longer to get over the ruined party.

  That’s how it went last Halloween. Two years. Two years of ruined Halloweens.

  Now it’s a year later.

  Halloween time again. This year, we have twice as much reason to get revenge on Tabby and Lee.

  If only we had a plan …

  “This year I’m a space princess,” Tabby announced.

  She had her blond hair piled high once again, with the same rhinestone tiara in it. And she wore the same long, lacy dress.

  The same costume as two years ago. But to add the outer-space look, Tabby had painted her face bright green.

  She always has to be a princess, I thought bitterly. Green or not green, she’s still a princess.

  Lee showed up in a cape and tights and said he was Superman. He said it was his little brother’s costume. He told us why he didn’t have time to get a costume of his own. But I couldn’t understand him because of the big wad of bubble gum in his mouth.

  Walker and I had decided to be ghosts. We cut eyeholes in bedsheets, and armholes, and that was that.

  My sheet dragged behind me on the grass. I should have cut it shorter. But it was too late. We were already on our way to trick-or-treat.

  “Where are Shane and Shana?” Lee asked.

  “I guess we’ll catch up with them,” I replied. I raised my trick-or-treat bag in front of me. “Let’s get going.”

  The four of us stepped out into a clear, cold night. A pale half-
moon floated low over the houses. The grass shone gray under a light blanket of frost.

  We stopped at the bottom of my driveway. A minivan rumbled by. I saw two big dogs peering out the back window. The driver slowed to stare at us as she passed by.

  “Where shall we start?” Tabby asked.

  Lee mumbled something I didn’t understand.

  “I want to trick-or-treat all night!” Walker exclaimed. “This may be our last trick-or-treat night ever.”

  “Excuse me? What do you mean?” Tabby demanded, turning her green face to him.

  “Next year, we’ll be teenagers,” Walker explained. “We’ll be too old to trick-or-treat.”

  Kind of a sad thought.

  I tried to take a deep breath of cool air. But I had forgotten to cut a nose or mouth hole in the sheet. We hadn’t even left my front yard, and I was already starting to feel hot!

  “Let’s start at The Willows,” I suggested.

  The Willows is a neighborhood of small houses. It starts on the other side of a small woods, just two blocks away.

  “Why The Willows?” Tabby demanded, fiddling with her tiara.

  “Because the houses are real close together,” I told her. “We won’t have to walk much, and we’ll get a lot of candy. No long driveways to walk up and down.”

  “Sounds good,” Lee agreed.

  We started walking along the curb. Across the street, I saw two monsters and a skeleton making their way across a front yard. Little kids, followed by a father.

  The wind fluttered my costume as we walked. My shoes crunched over frost-covered dead leaves. The sky seemed to grow darker as we made our way past the bare black trees of the woods.

  A few minutes later, we reached the first block of The Willows. Streetlights cast a warm yellow glow over the neighborhood. A lot of the houses were decorated with orange and green lights, cutouts of witches and goblins, and flickering jack-o’-lanterns.

  The four of us began walking from house to house, gleefully yelling “Trick or treat!” and collecting all kinds of candy.

  People oohed and aahed over Tabby’s princess costume. She was the only one in our group who had bothered to put on a decent costume. So I guess she stood out.

  We passed by a lot of other kids as we made our way down the block. Most of them appeared younger than us. One kid was dressed as a milk carton. He even had all the nutritional information printed on one side.