Trick or Treat

by Jana Hunter

  Chewed-up paper? Shredded tissues? Chocolate nut walls?

  No one but my clever Merlin could’ve done it and the tiny teeth marks in the chocolate were a big clue. But as if that wasn’t enough, Merlin’s sneaky little trail of rat droppings, all the way up to Molly’s slipper, proved it.

  Merlin, my clever little wall builder, you are alive!

  I was dying to break the good news to my sister. But I decided to wait until that night when she was all nicely tucked up in bed.

  “Molly?” I began.

  “Go to sleep.”

  “Molly…”

  “What!?”

  “You know those chocolate brazils you accused me of stealing?”

  “Yeah, and I know you took them. So don’t try to get round Mum with your goody-goody housework tricks…”

  “Actually I didn’t steal them,” I said airily. “Someone much smaller than me did.”

  “Shut up.”

  “Someone much smaller…with tiny pink paws and a long skinny tail…”

  Molly’s duvet froze.

  “Yes. Did you know that someone with a long twitchy nose is hoarding your chocolate brazils?”

  “H-hoarding them?” whispered a muffled voice from under the duvet. “Wh…where?”

  “UNDER YOUR BED!” I hissed. Then I yawned extra loudly and snuggled down to sleep. “Goodnight, Molly.”

  My sister was grey the next morning. The thought that Merlin was loose in our bedroom was probably torment to a rat-hater like her. (Serves her right!) The silly thing was so anxious to catch Merlin that she didn’t say a word when I built a trap for him with her precious chessboard.

  Molly’s chessboard made an ace ramp, leaned up against a bucket. I planted a trail of chocolate brazils all the way up the ramp so when Merlin reached the top, he’d keel over and drop into the bucket – PLOP! I made a nest of cotton wool for a soft landing and buried a bonus chocolate, just to reward my little pet.

  But clever Merlin took the bait much quicker than even I had expected. Cos, ten minutes later, I was on the loo when there was an almighty CRASH! Then a scuffle and a bloodcurdling scream.

  “Aaargh! KENNY! HELP!”

  I shot off the loo so fast, there wasn’t time to pull up my knickers. But Merlin was even faster! He zoomed about the bedroom like a jet-propelled rocket. Round and round he scampered, climbing up the curtains, skittering across the pelmet and haring along the picture rail at record speed. I chased and he raced and all the time Molly crouched in the corner of her bed, screaming her silly head off.

  “Aaargh! Aaaargh! Aaaaaargh!”

  It went on for ages. Then, suddenly Merlin disappeared behind the bedside table.

  “Aargh!” shrieked Molly again, shrinking further into the corner of her bed.

  “It’s no good,” I said, flopping down on my bed. “If you hadn’t kicked the bucket over and screamed yourself silly, Merlin’d be safe and sound by now.”

  “C-couldn’t h-help it.”

  “The only way is to leave him alone here. He’ll come out when it’s quiet.”

  “B-but that means I’ll have to walk across the floor,” said Molly, looking as if she had to walk the plank.

  I shrugged. “Either that, or stay where you are until Merlin appears.”

  Molly pulled her duvet up to her chin.

  “Oh…but Molly?”

  “Wh-what?”

  “If you do stay in bed all day, you’d better remember one thing…”

  “What?”

  “Rats are very good climbers.”

  It was irresistible. When I came back into the bedroom after breakfast, there was Molly, with her stomach bare, snoring like a rhino. (She had to catch up on her missed sleep from last night, poor thing.) Anyway, the chance to get a bit of fluff from her belly button was too good to miss. I’d got hair, nail clippings and toe jam – but so far, no fluff.

  Stealthily as a witch’s cat, I crept up…leaned over…and ever so, ever so gently tweaked…

  “Aaaargh!” Molly leapt up screaming like a scalded cat. “Aaargh, aaargh!”

  The earpiercing screams alerted Mum, who bounded up the stairs and burst into the bedroom. “What on earth’s going on?”

  “Rats!” Molly shrieked. “R-rats crawling all over me…”

  Mum sighed. “It was probably just a dream, love.”

  “B-but they were all over me.”

  “Just a dream.”

  “It wasn’t.”

  Dunno why, but seeing Molly all white and shaky made me want to put her out of her misery. “It wasn’t rats. I was just…”

  Molly turned on me, ungrateful as ever. “It was you! You, you, you!”

  “Now stop it, Molly,” said Mum.

  “But Mu-um! Kenny—”

  Mum held up her hand. “I’ve had enough of this. Kenny has been really trying lately. Cleaning up your mess…Helping out around the house…”

  Molly glared at me.

  “It’s time you two called a truce…” Mum pleaded so hopefully that I acted nicer than even Lyndz might have expected.

  “Don’t worry Miss Rat-Hater,” I muttered. “Merlin is safely in his cage again.” No thanks to you! I thought crossly.

  But Molly was not ready to give up the fight. “Where was the slimy, horrible thing?”

  “In the bucket,” I said. “My trap worked like a dream.”

  “Yeuch!” shivered Molly. Some people are never grateful.

  “There!” said Mum, squeezing Molly’s shoulders. “Now you can stop dreaming about rats, Molly. I think you ought to thank your sister.” And as she said it, Mum flashed me one of her ‘darling daughter’ smiles.

  No doubt about it, I was Mum’s blue-eyed girl these days. Though I must admit it felt like I’d won through false pretences.

  Still, false pretences or not, when Mum suggested a Hallowe’en sleepover in the famous McKenzie caravan, how could I refuse?

  “A sleepover in the caravan!”

  “I said ‘no sleepovers in the house’, but our caravan is parked in the driveway, so perhaps that doesn’t count,” explained Mum with a twinkle in her eye.

  I almost knocked over my plate of Spaghetti Hoops in my rush to hug my mum. “Mum, you’re a star!”

  “It’s only for Hallowe’en,” warned Mum. “You’re still banned from the house.”

  “I know!” I rushed to the phone to tell the gang how Lyndsey’s ‘being nice’ idea had worked. “This is going to be the best Hallowe’en ever!” I cheered.

  But Fliss was not so enthusiastic. “A sleepover in the McKenzie caravan!” she shivered. “It’s probably full of spiders!”

  “We can use them for Hallowe’en,” Frankie teased.

  “I’m not sleeping there!” insisted Fliss.

  “Well we can’t have our sleepover at your house,” I retorted. “Your mum hates the mess!”

  Fliss had to admit this was true.

  “Mine’s out too,” Frankie reminded us. “My mum and dad are going to a Hallowe’en party and they said our gang’s too much for any babysitter.”

  “My mum’s gone all weird about the Sleepover Club ever since she bumped into Jilly’s mum,” said Lyndz. “But Kenny? Isn’t the caravan haunted?”

  “Don’t!” whispered Fliss.

  “Not any more,” I said. “We went camping in it last summer and had a great time.”

  “Well, I think it’s perfect for our Hallowe’en spells,” said Rosie, who still preferred not to have sleepovers at her house.

  And that decided it.

  Our Hallowe’en sleepover was going to be in the famous McKenzie caravan.

  Personally, I couldn’t wait.

  “Frankie, can you pin on my wings?” I asked.

  “Wait ’til I finish sticking on my witch’s talons,” came Frankie’s muffled voice from behind her witch mask.

  “I’ll do it,” offered Lyndz, ever helpful. Though she made the whole caravan shake as she clumped over in her riding boots.

>   “Woof, woof!”

  “Pepsi, stop rocking the boat!” Pepsi was jumping about like a mad thing, and making the caravan rock even more.

  “Woof, woof!”

  Yes, you guessed it! We were in the caravan dressing up in our Hallowe’en costumes.

  Hallowe’en at last!

  Everyone had got fantastic costumes. Fliss was a fairy in a pink (natch!) tutu from her ballet class. Her mum had curled her blonde hair into ringlets and she even had a sparkly tiara on top. She looked dead good. Rosie was a white witch (that means she was a good one) in one of her mum’s nighties and Lyndz was a jockey in jodhpurs and riding hat. Frankie, as you know, was the famous wicked witch who had scared Molly before…

  And me? Well, I was Cupid the love cherub who was going to shoot my lurrrrrrve arrow straight into the heart of Molly and Robin. Unfortunately the arrows were only rubber tipped! Though I say it myself, I looked fab with my curly clown’s wig and tissue paper wings. I’d even got a plastic bow and arrow from an old Robin Hood costume. Mind you, Frankie reckoned if I really wanted to look like Cupid, I should go starkers!

  Thank goodness Rosie pointed out I’d freeze my bum off in this weather!

  October in Leicester is not the best time for running round in skimpy costumes. That’s why our mums made us promise to wear our school coats between houses when we went trick-or-treating. But nothing was gonna stop our gang having a wicked Hallowe’en.

  Mind you, Frankie was not keen on doing trick-or-treat at all at first. She reckoned we were too old for all that baby stuff. But Lyndz, who wouldn’t miss out on the chance for sweets, won her over. She said it’d be cool if we only went to friends’ and neighbours’ houses.

  “Does Robin Hughes count?” I asked, aiming an arrow at his imaginary heart.

  “’Course,” said Fliss, waving her sparkly wand about. “He’s my neighbour, isn’t he?”

  Fliss was right. And luckily that made my plan to save the Sleepover Club easier.

  Soon all our troubles would be over. Molly would give up swimming and go to Chess Club, Mum’s ban would be over and Silly Jilly would never have to sleep over at our house again!

  We had our spell-making Hallowe’en Sleepover all planned out.

  1. Dress up in caravan

  2. Trick-or-treat

  3. Get Robin Hughes’ fingerprint

  4. Cast spells

  5. Eat Hallowe’en sweets

  6. Tell ghost stories

  7. Eat more sweets

  8. Stay up

  9. Eat loads more sweets!

  10. Oh yes, and go to sleep some time

  By 7.30pm, we’d nearly finished number two of our list. We’d visited our houses and our neighbours’ houses and got a ton of goodies. Our bags were bursting!

  Fliss’s street was the last to go…

  “Thanks, Mrs Sidebotham!”

  “Happy Hallowe’en!”

  Outside the gate, we slipped our coats back on, swapped sweets and wondered whether to knock on the Grumpies’ door. The Grumpies are Fliss’s snooty neighbours, the Watson-Wades, and they didn’t get their nickname for nothing! They’re so fussy about their posh house, our gang’s always getting into trouble with them.

  “It’s no good asking them for sweets,” Fliss sighed, probably remembering the earwigging she got from her mum over the Grumpies. “Mrs Watson-Wade says sweets are nasty sticky things and she wouldn’t have them in her house.”

  “So…” Frankie was sucking on a ginormous gobstopper, “we should play a trick on them!”

  “Like what?”

  “T.P. their house.”

  “What’s that?” asked Rosie, unwrapping another treacle toffee.

  “T.P. stands for toilet paper,” said Frankie with a grin.

  “And it means we wrap their house in toilet paper. The roof, the tree, everything,” I added.

  “Don’t be daft, Kenny!” said Rosie with her mouth full. “How could we climb…?”

  But she didn’t have time to finish, because Frankie-the-witch was already creeping up the Grumpies’ driveway.

  NEENAH! NEENAH!

  Suddenly alarm bells went off and lights floodlit the garden. Dogs barked and the whole place was lit up like a prison camp in one of those old war films. The door to the Grumpies’ house was flung open and Mrs Watson-Wade, with a face like a gruesome zombie, appeared.

  “SCARPER!” hissed Frankie, so the five of us legged it down the driveway and up the street. And before Mr Watson-Wade had time to shout, “Pack of wild animals!” we had disappeared round the corner.

  “That was close!” panted Frankie.

  “I’m not going back there,” Fliss said breathlessly.

  Me neither. We had enough to do without getting arrested by the Grumpies for disturbing the peace. For a start, we needed to collect a fingerprint from Robin Hughes.

  Holding on to my side, I panted, “Fliss, have you got the cupcakes for Robin?”

  Fliss nodded and opened a tin of scrummy chocolate cupcakes. Yum, yum! Mrs Sidebotham may be strict about keeping her kitchen clean, but she is an ace cook! Little did she know how her cooking was going to help save the Sleepover Club…

  The Hughes’ house didn’t have any burglar alarms, but the nerd himself still looked surprised to see us.

  “Hello, Robin,” said Fliss, putting on her soppy ‘fairy’ voice.

  Robin was too interested in Frankie’s mask to notice Fliss’s fairy outfit. “We don’t have any sweets,” he said, staring at the mask. “My mum doesn’t believe in sugar.”

  “You can have some of ours…” Fliss opened the tin of cupcakes. “Your mum won’t mind these, cos they’re homemade.”

  “Thanks!” Robin licked his lips. Then he picked the biggest cupcake and took such a huge bite he got chocolate all over his big nose.

  Frankie snorted behind her mask and Lyndz started to giggle. But it gave me a perfect chance. “Wait!” I grabbed the cake.

  “Hey!” protested Robin.

  “Er…sorry. That’s the one the dog licked,” I lied. I put the cupcake very carefully back in the tin. “Have another one instead.”

  Robin looked puzzled but he scoffed another cupcake anyway. (Some boys may be clever, but girls can still get one over them.)

  “Molly sent her love to you,” was my parting shot to the Chess Wiz. And underneath the globs of chocolate his face turned pink.

  “What are you going to do with that cake Robin started?” asked Rosie as we turned the corner.

  “Mix it in the Love Potion, of course.”

  “Why?” Rosie can be so dim sometimes.

  “Because it has his thumb print on it, Lame Brain!”

  “Ohhhh. Clever.”

  “You said it!” My plan was going so well that I almost danced down the street.

  Lyndz started to giggle. “What about when Robin got chocolate all over his nose?”

  “I think some even went up it.”

  “Eeeuw.” Fliss made out she was being sick.

  “That cake’s probably got his snot all over it!”

  “Or a big bogey…”

  “What a nerd.”

  We fell about the pavement, killing ourselves. “What a nerdy nerd nerd!”

  That’s when Rosie went haywire. She started waving her arms about, shouting, “The Curse of the Nerd’s Nose! The Curse of the Nerd’s Nose!” and chased us down the street.

  The five of us raced, yelling like mad, all through the dark streets of Cuddington…and all the way back to the caravan.

  The caravan looked magic in the candlelight. Mum had given us candle holders and shown me where it was safe to stand them, and we had draped fake spider webs everywhere. We’d stuck glow-in-the-dark pumpkins and ghosts all over the walls and Lyndz had tied a magic wreath to the caravan’s door handle. She’d made it with straw from the stables and ivy from her back garden.

  “It will bring us fairy luck,” she said, and Fliss did a little bit of fairy ballet, just to be sure.
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  “Fliss, you’re s’posed to say:

  “Come in from the mist of silvery dew,

  Come gather dance and play,

  Pixies, elves and fairies too

  Come to us today,”

  Lyndz chanted.

  “I did already. I said it on my own in my garden.” Fliss was still nervous about doing spells.

  Not me. I think Hallowe’en is coo-ell!

  So does Frankie. She loved all the mystery and witchcraft and she wanted to do a Broomstick Incantation before we got started on our spells, to make the caravan more magical. So we sat in a magic circle on the floor and watched while she got herself into a witchy mood. Frankie’s blue plastic kitchen broom didn’t look much like a witch’s broomstick, but as Rosie said, “a broom is a broom”.

  “Now for my incantation,” Frankie muttered, dead creepy-like.

  “Uh-oh.”

  “Sshh!” hissed Frankie as Lyndz started giggling.

  “Sorry.” Lyndz clapped her hand over her mouth so hard she got the hiccups. “Hic! Hic!”

  Uh-oh. Once Lyndsey Collins gets the hiccups, that’s it. We tried scaring her and making her hold her breath, but it was no good. In the end, Frankie said she we’d have to ignore her or we’d be here ’til next Hallowe’en.

  So apart from the occasional ‘hic’, everything went quiet. In the eerie candlelight Frankie tied a green ribbon on her broom handle. Then she tied a yellow one next to it. Dead tricky with witch’s talons glued to your fingernails, so it took an extra long time.

  “Pretty!” said Fairy Fliss when it was done. And she tapped the broom with her sparkly wand.

  “The yellow ribbon’s s’posed to be gold,” Frankie explained, “but I couldn’t find any. Ooops! I forgot, I’m supposed to say something while I’m tying the ribbons!” So Frankie had to untie the ribbons and start all over again. This time she chanted:

  “This caravan is filled with magic,

  And this broom is my lucky charm.”

  It made you shiver. Especially when Frankie closed her eyes and walked round our magic circle with the broom stuck out in front of her.

  “What are you doing now?” Rosie wanted to know.