No Trick-or-Treating!

by P. J. Night

  Ding-dong!

  All four girls held their breath, waiting expectantly for the door to open.

  But nothing happened.

  “I’ll try again,” Ashley whispered over her shoulder.

  Ding-dong!

  She cocked her head, trying to listen to any sounds within the house. Did she hear panicked whispering behind the door . . . or was it just her imagination?

  Ashley hesitated for a moment. With all the lights on, she was almost positive that someone was home. But she thought it would be rude to ring the doorbell for a third time.

  “Ashley . . . ” Mary Beth whispered. “Should we maybe go? I think that—”

  “What’s that?” Danielle interrupted her, pointing a bony finger to the far corner of the porch.

  Ashley turned to look and nodded her head in understanding. “Oh, that explains it,” she told her friends. “Nobody’s home after all, I guess. When people aren’t home on Halloween night, they leave a bowl full of candy for the trick-or-treaters.”

  “How much can we take?” Stephanie asked as they approached the bowl, which was filled to the brim with candy.

  “One or two pieces,” Ashley told her. “Don’t worry, we’re going to get plenty of treats tonight! Come on, we can help ourselves.”

  But the moment the girls reached into the bowl, all the lights outside—and inside—the house went out. They were plunged into sudden darkness!

  “Ahhh!” Mary Beth and Stephanie cried.

  “Aw, man. Now I can’t even see what I’m getting!” complained Danielle.

  With her hand in the bowl, Ashley could feel the crinkly foil and smooth plastic wrappers of the candy and her friends’ cold fingers as they all grasped for a piece. “Do you guys want me to turn on my flashlight?” Ashley asked.

  “I can see okay, with the full moon and all,” Mary Beth replied.

  The girls stuck some candy into their bags and hurried off the porch. “Well, that was kind of a letdown,” said Ashley. “But I’m sure the next house will be better.”

  “Yes!” Stephanie suddenly cheered. “I got my favorite!” She ripped the wrapper and took a big bite of her chocolate peanut-butter bar—right in the middle of the street. Ashley started to crack up, relieved that her friend was starting to get into the spirit of things.

  “What?” Stephanie asked with her mouth full. “I challenge you to find anything in the world that tastes better than chocolate and peanut butter. Don’t even bother. You’d only be wasting your time.”

  “Come on,” Ashley called out. “The porch light’s on at this house.”

  With less trepidation than before, her friends charged right up onto the porch.

  “Can I ring the bell this time?” Danielle asked.

  “Of course!” replied Ashley.

  Ding-dong!

  But again, no one came to the door.

  “Look,” Mary Beth said, pointing at the porch railing. “Another bowl of candy.”

  Ashley shook her head. “Let’s just grab some candy and try the next house.”

  Once again, when the girls reached into the bowl, the lights went out. This time, though, it was almost as if they expected it; nobody reacted at all.

  “Maybe that’s a Halloween tradition here?” Ashley asked her friends. “Or some kind of Heaton Corners–style prank?”

  “Hey, who’s that over there?” Stephanie asked as they neared the school. “And over there?”

  “Over there, too,” added Danielle, pointing across the street.

  “Ha! I knew it!” Ashley cried triumphantly. “I knew there were lots of people who went trick-or-treating in Heaton Corners. Come on; let’s go say hi.”

  “Maybe they’ll know about some houses where people actually, like, come to the door,” Danielle said.

  I hope so, Ashley thought. She didn’t want her friends’ very first experience with trick-or-treating to be so totally lame . . . but that’s how it was shaping up so far.

  The school was dark, but by the light of the moon Ashley could see that the sidewalks outside of it were swarming with kids in costumes. There was an executioner, clad all in black with heavy metal chains clanking across his chest. His mask had just two thin slits for eyeholes. The sharp edge of his ax glinted in the moonlight; if Ashley didn’t know better, she would’ve sworn it was real. There was a mangy dog, his hide bare and scabbed in places, who snarled at Ashley, and a tattered scarecrow who flopped down the street on limp and rubbery limbs. The smell of mildew was overwhelming as the scarecrow passed by, shedding moldy pieces of hay that swirled on the wind.

  Ashley marveled at the extreme realism of all these costumes. On one hand, it was like her wish for only spooky Halloween costumes was being granted, but she didn’t like it that she and her friends were outdone by every costume they saw.

  She was starting to think that maybe there was a reason a lot of people in Heaton Corners ignored Halloween—it seemed like Halloween wasn’t that much fun here. Only sinister.

  Ashley and her friends walked over to a group of trick-or-treaters who were dressed as a witch, a werewolf, a zombie, and some sort of goblin with greenish skin and sharply pointed ears.

  “Hey, you guys,” Danielle called out in a jokey voice. “Identify yourselves!”

  But the group of kids just stared at her.

  She decided to try again. “It’s us—Danielle Ramos the skeleton, Stephanie Gloucester the ghost bride, Mary Beth Medina the vampire, and Ashley McDowell, Medusa. Who’s under these masks?”

  The witch turned and looked at the school, as if she didn’t really know what it was. The pause before she replied was just a little too long. “You don’t know us,” she finally croaked out in a whisper. “We don’t go to school here.”

  Then the witch’s hands, which must have been coated with some sort of wrinkle paste, fluttered up to the brim of her pointed hat. She knocked at it absently, dislodging a few cobwebs that fell to the ground. And . . . was that a real spider that hit the sidewalk? Ashley turned on her flashlight to get a better look, but it had already skittered away.

  “Well, your costumes are amazing,” Danielle added. “Ash, did you see this werewolf mask? It looks totally real!”

  Ashley held up her flashlight and pointed it at the werewolf’s face. Its wiry, tangled hair hung in a thick shag over tiny black eyes that glittered with a beady brightness; they were animalistic and yet so much more, as if some unexpected intelligence lurked just beneath the surface.

  A terrible, snarling growl filled the air, making Ashley drop the flashlight at once. Then her friends started to giggle. “Totally realistic!” Danielle said approvingly. Next she turned to the zombie. “And you? The smell? Yuck, I have to give you props. That stink is serious. You really do smell like the undead! What did you do, roll around in a manure pile or something?”

  As Mary Beth and Stephanie laughed nervously, Ashley caught a whiff of the zombie, and suddenly she didn’t think it was very funny. Where had she smelled it before, that sickly stench, almost sweetly repulsive, the middle stages of decay and decomposition? A little stronger, and she would’ve gagged.

  Then the memory revealed itself to her: A few years ago, a mouse had died in the wall of their apartment building, and that smell—that very smell—had grown stronger and stronger, until the building manager had to come and put something in the wall to dissolve the dead mouse’s body. It had been one of the creepiest things to ever happen in Ashley’s life.

  So far.

  “Well, we should be going,” Ashley said, trying to mask the panic in her voice.

  “Hey, yeah, that reminds me,” Danielle said. “So, have you guys gone to any good houses? Nobody’s been answering the door for us.”

  “Well, tonight you can go anywhere,” the goblin whispered suddenly. His voice was so quiet and so distant, Ashley could barely hear him. Then he turned his grotesque face up to the moon, as if to judge its position in the sky and figure out what time it was.

  “Anywhere
,” echoed the witch. Then she reached for Stephanie’s veil and twined the gauzy lace through her gnarled fingers. “Pretty,” she said, and suddenly the witch’s voice sounded very far away. “I always liked pretty things. Soft things.”

  “Have fun,” Ashley said hurriedly, linking her arms through Mary Beth’s and Stephanie’s, hoping that Danielle would follow right behind them. “Hope you get a good haul.”

  “Bye, Stephanie,” the witch called, waving . . . or reaching for her; Ashley couldn’t tell which. “See you soon.”

  Ashley and her friends walked in silence for several blocks, more quickly than they had before, eager to get away from the crowd of trick-or-treaters at the school.

  Then Danielle said what they all were thinking: “Freaks!”

  And the friends broke into loud, contagious laughter, the kind that only comes from a place of fear.

  “Probably some kids from Walthrop.” Mary Beth sniffed. “Those losers should stay in their own town, huh?”

  “Bet they came here just to play pranks,” Ashley said wisely. “They didn’t even seem to care about trick-or-treating.” She caught Stephanie glancing over her shoulder again and gave her arm a quick squeeze. “Seriously, don’t worry about those kids,” Ashley said, trying to reassure her.

  “I don’t think they were kids,” Stephanie said in such a soft voice that Mary Beth and Danielle didn’t hear her. Her hand fluttered to her chest, then to her stomach, then clutched at the veil where the witch had held it.

  “Are you—” Ashley began.

  “Ash! Ash!” Mary Beth said in an urgent whisper. “You know who lives there, right?”

  Ashley’s gaze followed where Mary Beth’s finger pointed. It was a handsome red farmhouse, with crisp white shutters bookending each window and a large porch that wrapped around the entire first floor. The house glowed with a golden, welcoming light; it seemed like the lights were on in every single room.

  “Who?” Ashley whispered back—but in her heart, she was pretty sure she already knew.

  “Joey!” Mary Beth replied. “Do you want to—”

  Ashley cut her off. “I can’t. Not with the way he feels about Halloween.”

  “Oh, come on!” Danielle goaded. “It’s obvious he likes you, and you are obviously so into him.”

  And before Ashley knew it, Mary Beth and Danielle had dragged her up the front steps. “Good luck!” Danielle cried as she rang the Carmichaels’ doorbell and ran away. Ashley would have followed them and fled the scene, unwilling to face Joey’s wrath, except for the fact that the door immediately swung open and Ashley was face-to-face with Joey.

  It was a face Ashley barely recognized. It wasn’t just the lemniscates that had been painted on his cheeks with painstaking detail; even without looking closely, she could see the greenish glitter to the snakes’ scales; the red drops of blood, falling as the snake devoured itself, that stood out so strangely against Joey’s unusually pale skin. No, what really struck her was the horror in his eyes; they were an empty void of cold, black fear that made Ashley feel like her throat was closing up.

  “Oh, Ashley,” Joey whispered in a hoarse voice. “Please, please go home. And whatever you do, don’t—”

  “Noooooooooooooo!”

  Joey and Ashley both jumped as a woman’s voice screamed. There were thundering footsteps racing down the stairs, followed by another scream.

  “Noooooooooooooo!”

  Then a woman Ashley assumed was Joey’s stepmother appeared behind him. In one sudden motion, she yanked him away from the door and slammed it shut in Ashley’s face.

  Ashley heard the turning of a lock and hesitated for a moment as she listened to the loud sobs coming from behind the locked door.

  Then all the lights went out.

  For the first time in her life, Ashley was filled with genuine fear on Halloween night. Suddenly all the things she loved about Halloween—the costumes, the candy, the trick-or-treating—seemed trivial and foolish. None of it seemed that important anymore. And they sure weren’t fun in Heaton Corners.

  Somehow Ashley made it off the porch, back to her friends, whose faces were ashen.

  “So that was . . . ” she began. Then her voice trailed off.

  “Yeah,” Danielle said, and Ashley realized that she didn’t need to say another word.

  “Should we, um, go back?” Ashley asked. “Back to my house? I’m kind of not in the mood for any more trick-or—”

  “Yeah,” Danielle repeated.

  And in the light of the full moon, glancing warily around them, the four friends started to run.

  CHAPTER 8

  No one said much on the way back to Ashley’s house, but once they were in the barn, all the girls seemed to relax. The flickering jack-o’-lanterns, the wispy veils hanging from the rafters—they all helped Ashley start feeling deliciously scared—but not terrified—once more, which was precisely how she wanted to feel on Halloween.

  “Let’s check out our haul,” Ashley suggested as she turned over her treat bag and dumped her candy on the floor. The other girls did the same.

  “I can’t believe we got so much candy!” Danielle exclaimed. “And that people just stick it out on their porch for us to take! That’s crazy!”

  Ashley just smiled at her. In reality, their candy haul was incredibly disappointing. Pathetic, even. They’d probably only gotten six or seven pieces each. But they don’t know how weak that is, Ashley reminded herself. They’ve never had Halloween before.

  “And we have birthday cake, too,” Ashley said quickly. “And ice cream. And more candy in the house.”

  “So what do you want to do now, birthday girl?” Mary Beth asked. “I kind of don’t want to take off my costume yet. I love wearing it!”

  “Me too.” Ashley laughed, twirling a snake skin around her finger as if it were a lock of her own hair. The other girls shrieked.

  “Ooh, I know!” Ashley exclaimed. “Have you guys ever played Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board?”

  As she expected, the other girls looked at her blankly.

  “It’s a really spooky game that’s perfect for sleepovers,” Ashley continued.

  “What do you do?” asked Mary Beth.

  “So, one person lies down, and everyone else gathers around her, and you can actually make her levitate,” Ashley said. “It really works, too. I played it once in Atlanta, and my friend Rachel was totally floating, like, three inches off the ground!”

  “That sounds awesome!” cried Danielle. “Let’s do it!”

  “Okay, who wants to go first?” Ashley asked. She turned to Stephanie, who’d been strangely quiet since they had returned to the barn. “How about you, Steph? You already look like a ghost.”

  “Sure,” Stephanie said with a shrug. “Do I just lie down here? On the floor?”

  “Yup,” Ashley replied. Then she knelt down on one side of Stephanie. “Mary Beth and Danielle, you go take the other side.”

  When everyone was in position, Ashley dropped her voice to a hush. “Everyone put two fingers under Stephanie,” she explained. “Now close your eyes. When I start saying ‘light as a feather, stiff as a board,’ you repeat after me, okay?”

  Mary Beth and Danielle, their eyes already shut, nodded silently.

  “And, Stephanie, don’t move, not even a little bit. You’ve got to stay completely still,” Ashley continued. “Everybody ready?”

  Mary Beth and Danielle nodded again, but Stephanie didn’t move.

  Ashley slipped her index fingers under Stephanie’s side, feeling the fine, soft lace at the end of Stephanie’s veil. An image of the witch reaching for it flitted through her mind, but Ashley pushed it away as she closed her eyes. Focus, she told herself. Focus.

  After several minutes of silence, during which Ashley could only hear her friends’ quiet breathing, she started to speak, setting up the game. “Our friend Stephanie died today,” she said in a low, somber voice. “Her heart stopped beating. Her blood stopped flowing. And we
gather here tonight to say good-bye to our friend Stephanie, who died today. We gather around Stephanie’s cold, lifeless body, which is light as a feather, stiff as a board. Light as a feather, stiff as a board.”

  Mary Beth and Danielle joined in, their voices hushed and reverent. “Light as a feather, stiff as a board. Light as a feather, stiff as a board. Light as a feather, stiff as a board.”

  Light as a feather, stiff as a board.

  After the girls repeated the chant several times, it happened.

  Stephanie started to rise off the ground.

  Light as a feather, stiff as a board.

  It’s working, Ashley thought as a thrill of apprehension tingled through her. It’s working! Ashley felt no pressure from the weight of Stephanie’s body; just the softness of her veil and the stiffness of her hair under that. Ashley did notice that her index fingers were freezing. The barn floor is so cold, she told herself before shoving the thought far from her mind. Ashley knew that she had to focus to keep Stephanie floating. If her concentration wavered, Stephanie would fall back to the floor, and the spell would be broken.

  Light as a feather, stiff as a board.

  Suddenly Ashley realized that she couldn’t feel Stephanie’s veil anymore.

  She couldn’t feel anything.

  Ashley opened one eye and glanced up.

  Stephanie was hovering five feet above her head!

  Before she could begin to understand what had happened, or how, Ashley felt a surge of basic intuition: This was not right. She had never seen anyone hover so high during Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board.

  Mary Beth and Danielle, their eyes still closed, had no idea.

  And still Stephanie continued to rise.

  Without another thought, Ashley scrambled to her feet and lunged for Stephanie, who felt as light as a bird in her grasp. The spell was broken; Stephanie and Ashley both fell to the ground in a heap. Stephanie moaned.

  “You okay?” Ashley asked. “Sorry about that.”

  “That was amazing!” Danielle cried, opening her eyes.

  “Steph! You were levitating!” exclaimed Mary Beth. “How did it feel?”

  “Really weird,” Stephanie replied in a hollow voice. “I mean, I really felt like I was floating. Like I was completely weightless. Like I wasn’t even here, actually.”