48 - Attack of the Jack-O'-Lanterns (2 page)

The gorilla turned to his partner and laughed. They both laughed loudly,
tossing back their heads.

“It’s
our
party now!” the gorilla announced. “We’re taking over!”

Hushed gasps rang out around the room. My legs suddenly felt rubbery and
weak. I grabbed Walker’s shoulder to keep from collapsing.

“Wh-what are you going to do?” Tabby demanded.

“Everybody down on the floor!” the guy in the ski mask ordered.

“You can’t do this!” Tabby screamed.

“We’re just kids!” someone else cried. “Are you going to rob us? We don’t
have any money!”

I saw Shane and Shana huddled together by the fireplace. Their faces were
hidden by their snowman costumes. But I knew they must be terrified, too.

“Down on the floor!”
both intruders screamed.

The room echoed with heavy thuds and the rustle of costumes as we all
obediently dropped to the floor.

“You, too!” the gorilla screamed at Shane and Shana.

“It’s impossible! How can we get down in these big snowballs?” Shana cried.

“Get down on the floor anyway,” the gorilla ordered nastily.

“Get down—or we’ll push you down,” the ski-masked guy threatened.

I watched Shane and Shana struggle to lower themselves to the floor. They had
to pull off their bottom snowballs to get onto their knees. Shana’s snowball
broke in half as she worked to pull it off.

“Okay—push-ups, everybody!” the gorilla ordered.

“Huh?” Confused cries rose up through the room.

“Push-ups!” the gorilla repeated. “You all know how to do push-ups—right?”

“How—how many do we have to do?” Walker asked. He knelt close beside me on
the rug in front of the coffee table.

“Do them for a couple of hours,” the ski-masked guy replied.

“Hours?” several kids cried out.

“A few hours of push-ups will get you all warmed up,” the gorilla said. “Then
we’ll think of something harder for you to do!”

“Yeah.
Much
harder!” his partner added. Then they both burst out
laughing again.

“You can’t do this!” I screamed. My voice came out high and tiny, like a
mouse voice.

Other kids protested, too. I turned to the door. The guy in the ski mask had
moved into the living room. But the gorilla was still blocking any escape.

“Get started!”
the gorilla ordered.

“Or we’ll make it
three
hours!” his partner added.

I heard a lot of groans and complaints. But we all dropped onto our stomachs
and started doing push-ups.

What choice did we have?

“We can’t do this for two hours!” Walker protested breathlessly. “We’ll
faint
!”

He raised and dropped, raised and dropped, close beside me on the floor. His
mummy costume was unraveling with each move he made.

“Faster!” the gorilla ordered. “Come on. Speed it up!”

I had done only four or five push-ups, and my arms already started to ache. I
don’t get much exercise, except for bike riding and swimming in the summer.

There was no way I’d last for more than ten or fifteen minutes.

I raised my eyes to the front of the room—and saw a sight that made me cry
out in shock.

“Walker—look!” I whispered.

“Hunnh?” he groaned.

I poked Walker in the side.

He lost his balance and hit the floor. “Hey, Drew—! What’s your problem?”
he groaned.

We both turned our eyes to the doorway.

And saw to our surprise that Tabby and Lee weren’t down on the floor with the
rest of us. They had joined the two intruders in front of the doorway.

And they both had wide, gleeful grins on their faces.

I stopped the push-ups and raised myself to my knees. I saw Lee start to
laugh.

Tabby joined him. She laughed so hard, her tiara shook. They slapped each
other a high five.

All around me on the floor, some kids were still working away, pushing
themselves up, then down, up, then down. Groaning and grunting as they
obediently did their push-ups.

But Walker and I had stopped. We were both on our knees, watching Tabby and
Lee. The two creeps were laughing and celebrating.

I was about to cry out in anger—when the two intruders tugged off their
masks.

I instantly recognized the boy with the gorilla mask. He was Todd Jeffrey, a
high-school kid who lives next door to Lee.

I knew the ski-mask kid, too. His name was Joe Something-or-other. He is a
friend of Todd’s.

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 have 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 his portable tape player on the coffee table in front of us and
rewound the tape. “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 the tape player 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.”