48 - Attack of the Jack-O'-Lanterns (7 page)

“Lots more houses. Lots more blocks.”

“No way!” Lee cried.

“No way!” Tabby repeated. She tried to sound strong. But I heard a tremble in
her voice.

The jack-o’-lantern faces loomed over us once again. The fiery eyes stared
out at us.

“Hurry. You can’t stop now! You CAN’T!”

“But it’s too late!” I protested.

“And my shoe keeps coming off,” Walker chimed in.

“We don’t want to trick-or-treat anymore,” Tabby told them shrilly.

“You can’t stop now! Hurry!”

“Lots more houses. This is the BEST neighborhood!”

“No way!” Tabby and Lee repeated together. They started to chant. “No way! No
way! No way!”

“Our bags are full,” I said.

“Mine is starting to tear,” Walker complained.

“No way! No way!” Tabby and Lee chanted.

The two jack-o’-lanterns began to swirl around us again, circling faster and
faster, rebuilding the wall of flames.
“You mussssst not ssssstop!”
one
of them hissed.

“You musssst keep going!”

They swirled closer. So close I could feel the scorching heat of their
flames.

And as they swirled, they began to hiss, like snakes about to strike.

The hissing grew louder, louder—until it sounded as if we were
surrounded
by snakes!

My heavy trick-or-treat bag fell from my hands. “Stop—!” I screamed up at
them. “Stop it! You’re not Shane and Shana!”

Fire leaped from their eyes. Their hisses became a high wail.

“You’re not Shane and Shana!” I shrieked. “Who are you?”

They swirled to a stop. Bright flames licked out of their grinning mouths.
Their shrill wails bounced off the bare trees, cutting through the heavy night
silence.

“Who are you?” I demanded again, my voice trembling. My whole body shook. I
suddenly felt as if the cold of the night had seeped inside me.

“Who are you? Have you done something to our friends?”

No reply.

I turned to Walker. The light of the flames flickered over his face. Through
his black makeup, I could see his frightened expression.

I swallowed hard and turned to Tabby and Lee. They were both sneering and
shaking their heads.

“Is this your idea of a dumb Halloween joke?” Tabby demanded. She rolled her
eyes. “Wow. Did you really think Lee and I would fall for this?”

“Ooh—I’m scared! I’m scared!” Lee cried sarcastically. He made his knees knock together. “Look—I’m shaking like a
leaf!”

He and Tabby let out loud laughs.

“These are real clever costumes. Great fire effects. But we know it’s Shane
and Shana,” Lee declared. “No way you’re going to scare us, Drew.”

“No way,” Tabby repeated. “Look—!”

She and Lee reached out their hands. They each grabbed a pumpkin head—and
tugged.

“Whoa!”

They pulled the fiery pumpkin heads off the creatures’ shoulders.

And then all four of us screamed—because the two costumed figures
had no
heads underneath!

Our screams rose up shrilly, cutting through the night air like wailing
sirens.

The pumpkin head fell from Tabby’s hand and bounced heavily on the ground.
Bright orange flames shot out of its eyes and mouth.

Lee still gripped the other pumpkin head between his hands. But he dropped it
when the jagged mouth began to move.

The fiery heads grinned up at us from the grass.

“Ohhh.” I uttered a low moan of terror and staggered back. I wanted to run
away to run as fast as I could and not look back.

But I couldn’t take my eyes off the two heads, grinning up at us from the wet
grass.

As I stared, my heart pounded and my legs began to shake. Someone grabbed my
arm.

“Walker!”

He held on to me. His hand was as cold as ice.

With his other hand, he pointed to the two headless bodies.

They stood in their dark, flowing costumes. They hadn’t moved. The spot
between their shoulders where their heads had rested was flat and smooth.

As if the pumpkin heads had been balanced there. But never attached.

Never attached.

Tabby and Lee huddled together beside me. Tabby’s tiara was missing. Her hair
had come unpinned. It fell in wet tangles over her face.

Lee’s trick-or-treat bag had toppled onto its side. A pile of candy had
spilled over the grass, inches away from one of the pumpkin heads.

The flames inside the heads danced and flickered. And then the jagged mouths
began to move.

The smiles grew wider. The triangle eyes narrowed.

“Hee hee hee heeeeee.”

An ugly laugh escaped their mouths. An evil, dry sound. More like a throat
clearing, more like a cough than a laugh.

“Hee hee heeeeeeeee.”

“Noooo!” I moaned. Beside me, I heard Walker gasp.

Lee swallowed hard. Tabby was holding on to the sleeve of his bee costume
with both hands.

She pulled him back until they were standing behind Walker and me.

“Hee hee heeeeeeeee.”

The heads laughed together, flames flickering inside them.

Their two bodies moved quickly. They reached out long arms and grabbed the
heads up from the grass.

I expected them to place the heads back on their shoulders. But they didn’t.
They held the heads in front of their chests.

“Hee heeeeeee.”

Another dry laugh. The pumpkin mouths twisted on the dark, round faces. The
eyes stared blankly at us, bright orange, then shadowy, flickering with the
flames.

I realized I was squeezing Walker’s arm. He didn’t even seem to notice.

I let go. And took a deep breath.

“Who are you?” I called to the two creatures. My voice came out high and
tiny. “Who are you? And what do you want?”

“Hee heee heeeee.”
They laughed their ugly laughs again.

“Who are you?” I choked out again, shouting over their dry, crackling
laughter. “Where are Shane and Shana? Where are our friends?”

Flames hissed from the two heads. Their ragged orange grins grew wider.

“Drew—let’s try one more time to run away,” Walker whispered. “Maybe if we
catch them by surprise…”

We both spun around and started to run. Tabby and Lee came stumbling after
us.

My legs felt so wobbly and weak, I didn’t think I could run. My heart pounded
so hard, I struggled to breathe.

“Run!” Walker cried breathlessly, pulling my arm. “Drew—faster!”

We didn’t get far.

Uttering their shrill, frightening hisses, the creatures whirled around us
once again. Trapping us. Holding us prisoner inside their circle of flames.

No way we could run away. No way we could escape from them.

Peering over the flying flames, I searched desperately up and down the
street.

No one in sight. Nothing moved. No cars. No people. Not even a dog or a cat.

Holding their heads at their waists, the two creatures stepped up to us. They
stood over us menacingly, raising the red, glowing heads high above their bare
shoulders.

“More houses. More houses.”
The jack-o’-lantern lips pushed out the
words. The red eyes stared down at us.

“More houses. More houses.”

“You cannot stop. You must keep on trick-or-treating!”

“Pick up your bags. Pick them up—now!”
one of them growled. Her
head held up between two hands, she gazed down at us, her jagged lips forming an
evil sneer.

“We—we don’t
want
to trick-or-treat!” Lee wailed, holding onto
Tabby.

“We want to go home!” Tabby cried.

“More houses. More houses. More houses.”
The pumpkin heads continued
their hissing chant.

They bumped us together. They bumped and pushed us.

We had no choice. Wearily, we picked up our trick-or-treat bags from where
they had fallen on the grass.

They moved behind us, chanting, chanting in their low, dry whispers.
“More
houses. More houses.”

They pushed us to the first house on the block. They pushed us onto the front
stoop. Then they hovered close behind.

“How—how long do we have to trick-or-treat?” Tabby demanded.

The pumpkin heads grinned together.
“Forever!”
they declared.

A woman came to the door and dropped packages of Hershey’s kisses into our
bags. “You kids are out awfully late,” she said. “Do you live around here?”

“No,” I replied. “We don’t really know where we are. We’re in a strange
neighborhood, and we’re being forced to trick-or-treat by two headless pumpkin
creatures. And they say they’re going to make us trick-or-treat forever. Help us—please! You’ve got to help us!”

“Ha-ha! That’s good!” the woman laughed. “That’s very funny. You have a very
good imagination.” She closed the door before I could get out another word.

At the next house, we didn’t even bother to ask for help. We knew no one
would believe us.

“Your bags are so full!” the woman exclaimed. “You must have been
trick-or-treating for hours!”

“We… we like candy a lot,” Walker replied wearily.

I glanced back at the pumpkin heads. They were motioning impatiently. They
wanted us to move on to the next house.

We said good-bye to the woman and made our way across the front yard. Our
trick-or-treat bags were heavy, so we dragged them along the grass.

As we headed to the next driveway, Tabby hurried up beside me. “What are we
going to do?” she whispered in my ear. “How are we going to get away from these… these
monsters
?”

I shrugged. I didn’t know how to answer her.

“I’m so scared,” Tabby confessed. “You don’t think these pumpkin creatures
really plan to make us trick-or-treat
forever
—do you? What do they
really want? Why are they doing this to us?”

“I don’t know,” I said, swallowing hard. I could see that Tabby was about to
cry.

Lee was walking with his head down. He dragged his bulging trick-or-treat bag
behind him. He was shaking his head, muttering to himself.

We stepped up to the next porch and rang the bell. A middle-aged man in
bright yellow pajamas opened the door. “Trick or treat!” we cried wearily.

He dropped little Tootsie Rolls into our bags. “Very late,” he muttered. “Do
your parents know you’re still out?”

We dragged on to the next house. And the next.

I kept waiting for a chance to escape. But the two creatures never let us out
of their sight. They stayed right with us, keeping in the shadows. Their eyes
glowed red from the deepening fire inside their heads.

“More houses,”
they chanted, forcing us to cross the street and do the
long row of houses on the other side.

“More houses.”

“I’m so scared,” Tabby repeated to me in a trembling whisper. “So is Lee.
We’re so scared, we feel sick.”

I started to tell her I felt the same way.

But we both gasped when we saw someone walking along the street.

A man in a blue uniform!

At first I thought he was a policeman. But as he stepped under a streetlight,
I saw that he wore a blue work uniform. He had a blue baseball cap on his head.
He carried a large black lunch box in one hand.

He must be coming home from work, I told myself. He was whistling softly to
himself, walking with his head down. I don’t think he saw us.

Tabby changed that. “Helllllp!” she screamed. “Sir—please! Help us!”

The man raised his head, startled. He squinted at us.

Tabby began running across the grass to him. The rest of us followed,
dragging our heavy trick-or-treat bags.

“Help us—please!” Tabby pleaded shrilly. “You’ve got to save us!”

The four of us hurtled breathlessly into the street. We surrounded the
startled man. He narrowed his eyes at us and scratched his brown, curly hair.

“What’s wrong, kids? Are you lost?” he asked.

“Monsters!” Lee exploded. “Headless jack-o’-lantern monsters! They’ve
captured us! They’re forcing us to trick-or-treat!”

The man started to laugh.

“No—it’s true!” Tabby insisted. “You’ve got to believe us! You’ve got to
help us!”

“Hurry!” Lee cried.

The man scratched his hair again. He squinted at us hard, studying our faces.

“Hurry! Please hurry!” Lee wailed.

I stared back at the startled man.

Would he help us?

“You’ve
got
to help us!” Lee pleaded.

“Okay. I’ll go along with the joke,” the man said, rolling his eyes. “Where
are your monsters?”

“There!” I cried.

We all turned back to the front yard.

No one there. The pumpkin heads were gone.

Disappeared.

Tabby gasped. Lee’s mouth dropped open.

“Where did they go?” Walker murmured.

“They were standing right there!” Tabby insisted. “Both of them. Holding
their heads in their hands! Really!”

The man let out a long sigh. “You kids have a good Halloween,” he said
wearily. “But give me a break, okay? I just got off work, and I’m beat.”

He shifted his black lunch box to the other hand. Then we watched him make
his way up the driveway. He disappeared around the back of the house.

“Let’s get
out
of here!” Lee cried.

But before we could run, the two pumpkin heads leaped out from behind a low
hedge. The red flames hissed inside their heads. Their jagged mouths were turned
down in angry snarls.

“More houses,”
they insisted, rasping the words together.
“More
houses. You can’t stop trick-or-treating.”

“But we’re so tired!” Tabby protested. Her voice cracked. Again, I saw tears
wetting her eyes.

“Let us go—please!” Lee begged.