Monsterstreet #2

by J. H. Reynolds

  It’d be nice to have friends like that, Fisher thought.

  After they finished saying the motto, Pez put on his creature mask and strapped the water container to his back. Squirrel rolled up the scroll map and put it in his backpack. Champ buttoned his tuxedo and hid himself while Fisher covered himself with the ghost sheet again.

  Together, the four boys scampered down the tree-house ladder and onto their bikes. They pedaled past the iron gates of the graveyard, through the woods, over the creek, across Old Joe’s Pumpkin Farm, and back into the neighborhood of white picket fences, where swarms of costumed children reveled in the greatest night of the year.

  The one night they could become anything they dreamed.

  The night that would soon turn into a nightmare.

  4

  Trick and Treat

  The black paved streets looked like snakes slithering through the neighborhood. Jedi Knights and Avengers, scary clowns and one-eyed pirates all roamed from one door to the next, filling their buckets and pillowcases with a kaleidoscope of treats.

  By the time the clock tower struck eight, the Halloweeners had each filled up two pillowcases with candy.

  Fisher stopped his bike and looked at an advertisement stapled to a telephone pole:

  ALL-NIGHT MONSTER MARATHON AT THE DRIVE-IN!

  SPONSORED BY BUGFRY CANDY FACTORY!

  EVERYONE’S INVITED!

  “We should tell our parents we’re staying at each other’s houses, and then sneak out and go to the monster marathon,” Champ suggested.

  “I’m game,” Pez said. “You in, Fish?”

  “I sort of already snuck out tonight, so yeah,” Fisher agreed.

  “Snuck out? On Halloween?” Champ asked.

  “It’s a long story—but the simple version is that I got grounded for talking back to my mom,” Fisher explained.

  “Bummer,” Champ said. “Glad you broke out of mom jail.”

  They looked to Squirrel, but he was focused on more urgent matters.

  “According to the map, we only have a few more houses left on this street,” Squirrel said, pushing his plastic fangs back into place.

  “We’re going to win. I can feel it,” Pez declared, peering out the eye slits of his mask.

  “I still can’t see anything,” Champ said from inside his invisibility suit. “Pez, can you guide me with your hand again?”

  Pez took a swig of water from his straw and reluctantly placed his reptilian hand on Champ’s shoulder.

  When they turned the corner, they saw something that shattered all their hopes of winning the Halloween Games. . . .

  Across the street, four masked trick-or-treaters approached Mrs. Sanderson’s front door. They were each wearing a black cloak and a skeleton mask. As soon as Mrs. Sanderson dropped candy into their buckets, they ran to the side of her house and switched out their disguises to pumpkin-head masks, then they went back to the old woman’s door and rang the doorbell again.

  “Trick or treat!” the Pumpkinheads cried, and the old woman gave them more candy, not recognizing them from a few moments before.

  “Sweet junipers,” Squirrel proclaimed in awe, as if he was observing the holy grail of trick-or-treating strategies. “So that’s how the Pumpkinheads win every year.”

  “You’re supposed to be the one with all the ideas, Squirrel,” Pez reminded him. “Why didn’t you think of that?”

  Squirrel shrugged in defeat.

  They watched as the clever team of trick-or-treaters took off their masks and crossed the street toward them. As soon as they stepped out of the shadows, Fisher saw their faces.

  “Well, if it isn’t the Halloweenies,” the tallest girl taunted. She was wearing a witch’s hat and carrying a broom. Her masks were tucked into the pockets of her cloak. “Is that all the candy you guys have gotten?”

  Champ, Squirrel, Pez, and Fisher looked down at their pillowcases and realized how measly their plunder was compared to the girls’.

  “Uh, we have more candy bags hidden in some bushes back there,” Champ said, pointing aimlessly behind him.

  “Riiight,” the girl replied.

  “We saw that trick you pulled on Mrs. Sanderson, Ava,” Squirrel said accusingly. “That’s against the rules.”

  “It’s called trick-and-treating, dweebo,” Ava replied. “We trick in order to get more treats.” She paused and glanced at Fisher. “Who’s the ghost kid?”

  “This is Fisher,” Champ said. “He’s one of us now—well, almost.”

  “He might as well tattoo a giant ‘L’ on his forehead,” Ava jabbed, and the girls around her all giggled. She then stepped closer to Fisher to try to glimpse his eyes through the cut-out holes. “Does he talk?”

  “Yes, I talk,” Fisher said, already not liking the girl one bit. He pointed to her pocket full of masks. “What are you supposed to be, anyway? A witch having an identity crisis?”

  Champ laughed, but quickly stopped when Ava glared over at him.

  “I’m an aviophobic witch, thank you very much.”

  “Avio—what?” Champ asked.

  “Aviophobic. It means I’m afraid to fly,” she explained. “I don’t do airplanes, helicopters, or spaceships. My father’s a pilot, so me being an aviophobe is extra ironic.”

  The boys stared at her blankly.

  “Get it? A witch who’s afraid to fly?” she explained, holding up her broom. “You guys should really try reading the dictionary sometime. And good luck finding all that stashed candy you hid! Maybe it’s being protected by leprechauns and unicorns.”

  Ava and her posse of witches walked past the Halloweeners and toward the next house, swinging their pumpkin buckets full of candy. Fisher watched as she whispered some secret scheme to her minions. The other girls nodded at her command, then scattered like mice to carry out her surely sinister plot.

  Fisher, Squirrel, Champ, and Pez stood on the corner of Burgundy and Sandalwood, looking lost and hopeless.

  “Who was that?” Fisher asked.

  “Ava Highwater,” Pez said. “Our least favorite girl at school.”

  “I can’t stand her,” Squirrel said.

  “Me neither,” Champ added.

  “Is she always like that?” Fisher asked.

  “Let me put it this way—that was the nice version of her,” Pez said.

  “There’s no way we can win now,” Champ grumbled, staring into his half-empty pillowcase.

  “We definitely won’t win if we don’t try,” Fisher said.

  “You’re right,” Pez agreed. “Bring out the map again, Squirrel. Let’s hit up as many big-bar houses as we can with the hour we have left. All the baskets will be emptied by now, so the big bars are our best shot. We’ll have to run the whole way to double our intake.”

  “Run?” Champ asked, chewing on a piece of candy that had fallen on the ground. “What’s the use? Didn’t you see the girls? They already had four buckets each!”

  “Like Fisher said, we have to at least try,” Pez replied.

  They nodded in agreement, and Squirrel immediately took out eight more pillowcases from his backpack and handed two to each of them.

  “You brought extras?” Fisher asked, impressed.

  “Always be prepared,” Squirrel said with a smirk. “I even packed an extra ghost sheet in my pack in case you need it.”

  “When did you even have time to do that?” Fisher asked.

  “I have my ways,” Squirrel replied, then flung the backpack over his shoulders.

  The four of them ran to the next house, and the next, until they had gone all the way down the street. They took a shortcut over the Keeners’ backyard fence and cut over to Hidden Oaks Street, where there were seven big-bar houses marked on the map.

  But when they turned the corner, something stopped them in their tracks.

  Looming before them like a cryptic creature that had crawled out of the depths of the earth stood . . .

  An abandoned mansion.

  Its windows
were boarded up, and the roof was missing half its shingles, like a dragon that had shed most of its scales. Creepiest of all, its gables looked like raised eyebrows gazing back at them . . . watching.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Squirrel said. “Before the witch sees us.”

  5

  Just Take One

  “Witch?” Fisher asked.

  “Yeah, see all those bicycles bolted to the fence?” Champ said. “Those belonged to the kids she ate. She put the bikes out as a warning for the rest of us to stay away.”

  “Sounds like an urban legend.” Fisher called Champ’s bluff.

  Pez shook his head. “The woman who lived here was a recluse. She never gave out treats on Halloween, so kids used to play tricks on her.”

  “Like what?”

  “Throwing eggs at her house. Wrapping her trees with toilet paper. That kind of thing,” Pez explained.

  Champ stepped forward.

  “But it gets worse. One night, after scaring away some trick-or-treaters who tried to spray-paint her front door, she went back into her house and was never seen again.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “No one knows for sure. Everyone suspected she died, but no one ever found her body.”

  “But they did find something disturbing up in the attic,” Squirrel added.

  “What?” Fisher asked nervously.

  “Tiny piles of bones,” Champ continued. “They thought it was the bones of cats or animals that had gotten trapped up there. But when they tested them, they found that they were the bones of children.”

  Fisher gulped.

  “And ever since, people say when they’re standing near the property, it sometimes feels like they’re being pinched. It’s believed to be the ghosts of all the kids trapped here,” Pez finished.

  Just then, Fisher felt something pinch his leg. But when he looked down, no one was there.

  A ghost kid! he thought in terror. His body tensed, and goose bumps erupted all over his skin.

  “Gotcha!” Champ called out, waving his arm from the chest of his tuxedo. He had snuck his hand behind Fisher and pinched his calf.

  “Not funny,” Fisher said.

  The boys laughed in the soft glow of the streetlamp.

  “So, is this whole thing some kind of initiation prank?” Fisher asked.

  “No. There really is a warning in the Halloweener Diary from a long time ago that says to stay away from this place,” Pez assured him.

  “Especially on Halloween,” Squirrel added, pointing to the black “X” he had drawn onto the map in the place where the house stood.

  There was a long moment of silence. Fisher stared up at the haunted mansion, debating whether the story was real or legend.

  “If no one lives here, then what’s that?”

  Fisher pointed to the dilapidated front porch. Their gazes followed his finger to a black cauldron sitting on the corner, full of some kind of unidentifiable candy.

  “But how?” Squirrel asked, frustrated that there wasn’t a logical explanation. “No one’s lived here in like thirty years.”

  “Maybe the witch put it there—for us,” Pez said with visions of glory in his eyes.

  He headed toward the porch, but Fisher grabbed his arm.

  “Wait!” Fisher cautioned. “What if the candy’s poisoned? What if it’s part of the witch’s revenge—for all the kids who used to bully her?”

  “You don’t have to go if you don’t want to,” Pez said, pulling his webbed hand away and walking up the sidewalk. He called over his shoulder, “But I don’t like to lose.”

  “Yeah, we need the points,” Champ said, then patted Fisher’s shoulder as if to say, I’m sorry, buddy. Then he too followed after Pez.

  “But what about the warning in the Halloweener Diary?” Fisher asked.

  Squirrel tapped his foot nervously. He checked his watch, then said with reluctance, “I’m going to regret this.”

  Fisher watched as Squirrel joined the raid too.

  If I’m going to be a Halloweener, I need to act like one, Fisher told himself.

  Reluctantly, he followed after the boys. When he arrived on the porch, the rotted wood creaked beneath his feet, like a ship rocking at sea.

  The four of them stood over the black candy cauldron, examining it. It wasn’t plastic like the others they had seen that night. It was cast iron, like what they imagined a real witch might use. Each candy bar was sealed in a solid black wrapper. The cryptic branding MONSTERBARS was printed onto each one.

  “I’ve never seen this kind of candy before,” Champ said, reaching into the bowl and unwrapping a piece. “Must be something new the factory made this year.”

  He put it in his mouth and began to chew. The other boys watched him closely.

  Suddenly, Champ’s eyes filled with a strange madness and he grabbed for another piece.

  “Look,” Fisher warned, pointing to an index card taped to the front of the cauldron.

  It read:

  Just Take One!

  Champ shook his head at the sight of the card.

  “No way,” he said. “This stuff tastes too good to just eat one.”

  He reached into the cauldron, grabbed half a dozen Monsterbars, and shoved them into his pillowcase. He then unwrapped another one and thrust it into his mouth.

  “I thought you guys said we shouldn’t raid a candy pot if there’s a note with instructions,” Fisher said, looking to the others. “Isn’t that like . . . breaking the Second Sacred Law?”

  “No one will see,” Champ interjected, no longer seeming his usual self.

  “Fisher’s right,” Squirrel said, then looked to Pez for a guiding voice. “If we can’t play fair, then we don’t deserve to win.”

  Pez mused over it for a moment, observing Champ’s strange behavior. Then he reached down and picked up a Monsterbar. He inspected it for a moment, then took a cautious bite. And chewed.

  Soon, his eyes grew wide with a gluttonous wonder. They were entranced, just like Champ’s.

  “Just take one piece?” Pez said playfully. “Or one . . . handful?”

  Possessed by his craving, Pez reached into the cauldron for another Monsterbar.

  “But you’re breaking the rules!” Squirrel warned. “We’re supposed to honor the Three Sacred Laws at all times!”

  “Forget the rules,” Pez said. “We have to do whatever we have to do in order to win.”

  Pez reached into the basket, grabbed another bar, and tossed it into his pillowcase. Then another. And another.

  Fisher and Squirrel could hardly believe their eyes. They couldn’t have been more shocked if Bigfoot appeared at that very moment.

  “I’ve never seen them like this,” Squirrel said.

  Fisher reminded himself that Champ had a hard time saying no to candy and that Pez hated to lose. But still, their behavior seemed beyond natural cravings.

  Squirrel checked his watch again, stressed about staying on schedule.

  “Come on—taste one, Squirrel,” Champ encouraged, dangling an unwrapped piece in front of Squirrel’s mouth. “And then we can get on our way to the festival.”

  Squirrel flinched away from the bewitched treat, trying to fight the temptation. But the seductive, chocolaty scent overcame him, and he devoured the bar right out of Champ’s hand.

  Squirrel’s eyes instantly filled with dark illumination, just like the others’.

  Fisher watched in disbelief as the Halloweeners began stashing handfuls of Monsterbars in their pillowcases, eating them one by one. Two by two. Three by three.

  They’ve lost their minds, Fisher thought.

  “You should really try one of these, Fisher,” Squirrel said, fully converted. “They’re the most amazing thing I’ve ever tasted.”

  “Maybe you guys shouldn’t eat so many. I mean, won’t we get disqualified if someone sees you?” Fisher said, sensing they had worse problems than whether they’d win the Halloween Games.

  But they didn’t
seem to hear him, or to care.

  “My mom always says too much of a good thing can become a bad thing,” Champ said, gobbling down three bars at once. “Boy, was she wrong.”

  Just then, Champ used both his arms to pick up the cauldron and pour the rest of the Monsterbars into his pillowcase. Then he set the cauldron back down on the porch.

  Before the others could complain that Champ had taken the last bars, the cast-iron pot mysteriously refilled itself.

  “Did you guys just see that?” Fisher questioned.

  But they still didn’t hear him.

  Squirrel and Pez tried to grab for more, but Champ slapped their hands away. They maneuvered around him and grabbed at the haunted candy. Then they filled their pillowcases until they could fill them no more.

  How many bars have they eaten? Fisher wondered. Is this some kind of test to see if I’ll break the Sacred Laws of Halloween?

  Champ, Squirrel, and Pez each had two extra full pillowcases, with several dozen wrappers lying at their feet from the bars they had already eaten.

  “We might just get enough points to beat the girls after all,” Pez declared.

  “But don’t you guys think it’s weird that the cauldron keeps refilling itself?” Fisher said again. “It’s like . . . dark magic.”

  “Relax, Fish. It’s Halloween. Magical things can happen,” Pez proclaimed, holding up his pillowcase like a prized trophy.

  As soon as he, Champ, and Squirrel could fill their pillowcases and pockets no more, the boys began walking back down the sidewalk. But by the time they were halfway to the street, they were moving at a slower pace.

  Fisher watched as the Halloweeners exchanged ominous glances.

  Then—

  Champ doubled over in pain.

  6

  The Monsters

  Fisher stood in shock as he watched the Halloweeners heaving in agony. One by one, they each started throwing up. Thick black juices spilled from their mouths, staining their lips.

  “Come on, guys. If this is supposed to be some kind of test, it’s gone too far,” Fisher said.

  “Not—a—test,” Squirrel groaned, barely able to get out the words.

  Fisher squinted, still unconvinced. He glanced up at the house, then back to the boys.