Monsterstreet #2

by J. H. Reynolds

  Just then, something scratched against the ceiling of the attic. It sounded like critters on the roof.

  Fisher jumped, certain that the monsters were outside, trying to claw their way in.

  His walkie-talkie buzzed, and he pulled it out of his pocket.

  “Fisher, can you hear me? Fisher, are you inside your house?”

  It was Ava.

  “I’m here,” he called back, glad to hear her voice. “But my mom’s locked me in the attic. What’s going on out there?”

  “The monsters are tearing up the town,” she said. “Time’s almost up. We have to figure out a way to reverse the curse!”

  “I’m stuck in here. There’s literally no way out,” he said.

  “Don’t be so sure,” she replied.

  Fisher heard movement against the wall on the far side of the attic. A circular grate popped out, and he could see moonlight beaming in from outside.

  “My uncle installs air conditioners,” Ava said, peeking in. “I knew there had to be a vent grate that connected to the attic.”

  “You’re a genius!” Fisher whispered, hurrying over to her. He stuffed the newspaper article into his pocket and glanced down again at his mother’s drawing of the witch’s house. He suddenly remembered something his mom had said earlier that night at the festival: Fisher! Come back! You don’t know what you’re getting into! She said it as if she somehow knew what the night had in store. And he wondered if his mom knew something about the witch and her cauldron.

  “I know where we have to go,” he said.

  “Where?” Ava asked.

  “We have to go back to the house where Champ, Pez, and Squirrel ate the candy. If we can figure out who put the cauldron there and why, then maybe we can figure out how to reverse the curse.”

  Ava and Fisher jumped off the roof and ran into the night.

  What they didn’t know was that one of them would be dead within the hour.

  20

  Not Afraid to Die

  As Fisher and Ava sprinted through the streets, they observed the trail of pandemonium left behind by the monsters. Not a single person was outside—everyone was locked up safely in their houses.

  Everyone except for Fisher and Ava.

  “We only have an hour until sunrise,” Ava said, glancing down at her watch.

  “That’s not enough time,” Fisher fretted. “We have to stop the monsters from doing any more damage.”

  “I don’t know how we’re going to reach them all in time,” Ava replied. “I heard on the radio that they’ve separated across town.”

  Suddenly, Fisher slowed down his pace.

  Ava ran a few yards ahead of him, then turned around.

  “Why are you stopping? We have to hurry!” she implored.

  Fisher stared down at the ground, pondering something.

  “You saw how the monsters reacted to the air horn back at the drive-in, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah. So?”

  “The sound paralyzed them because they have heightened senses. I think that was the missing piece of the diary, and also why they were trying to destroy the speakers back at the dance. If we can re-create that noise on a larger scale, then maybe we can stop them from causing any more damage until we can figure out how to reverse the spell.”

  “How are we going to do that?”

  Fisher turned in a circle, perusing the horizon. His eyebrows soon rose with an idea.

  “Does this town have a storm siren?” he asked.

  “You mean like for hurricanes and tornadoes?” Ava questioned, intrigued.

  “Yeah.”

  She thought for a moment, then pointed toward Town Square.

  “There’s one on top of Town Hall.”

  “Good! If we can figure out a way to turn it on, then maybe we can hold off the monsters.”

  “But we’d need a key or ladder or something to get up on the roof—and we don’t have any time,” Ava reminded him.

  “Unless . . .” Fisher glanced down at Ava’s broom.

  “Why are you looking at me like that?” Ava questioned.

  Fisher smiled.

  “Come on,” he said, and grabbed her hand. “I have an idea.”

  They ran another two blocks until they arrived at the overgrown lot where the abandoned mansion sat. It seemed even scarier in the middle of the night, when no one else was out in the neighborhood.

  “I’ve spent every Halloween of my life avoiding this place,” Ava said.

  “Well, you can’t stay away from it any longer,” Fisher said, then led her up the sidewalk.

  As they approached the front porch, Fisher saw the pillowcases and candy in the yard from earlier that night. His original ghost sheet was still lying in the grass right where he had left it.

  They stepped up to the front door, and Fisher ran his fingers over the cracked wood and faded paint.

  Whiiissshh!

  A cold wind brushed over them, like the icy breath of Death.

  Moonlight poured through the clouds above and illumined the candy cauldron beside them. No other part of the porch was touched by the moonlight—only the pot.

  Fisher squatted down beside it.

  “The Halloweeners ate at least ten pieces each, and their eyes turned solid black. Maybe if you just eat two or three, you’ll change, but still have control over your mind,” he presented.

  “Change?!” Ava cried. “I’m not eating that stuff!”

  “Do you want to save the town?” Fisher said.

  He started to unwrap a bar to give to Ava, and accidentally knocked over the “Just Take One” card. It fell beside him, and he noticed a mysterious message written on the back of it:

  IF A CONSUMER EATS MORE THAN JUST ONE PIECE,

  THE ONLY WAY TO REVERSE THE CURSE

  IS TO WORK A MONSTROUS MIRACLE*.

  ONLY THEN MAY BALANCE

  RETURN TO THE WORLD.

  “Monstrous miracle?” Fisher whispered, and he and Ava exchanged a curious glance. “Like what?”

  Ava pointed to more words that were in fine print at the bottom of the card:

  *MONSTROUS MIRACLES INCLUDE,

  BUT ARE NOT LIMITED TO:

  RESURRECTING THE DEAD,

  CONJURING A FULL MOON,

  OR FREEING A HAUNTED HEART.

  Fisher stared down at the card, its ink glimmering in the moonlight.

  “A haunted heart?” he whispered.

  Something about it sounded familiar.

  Then it hit him like a lightning bolt. “Like . . . my mom! She has a haunted heart!”

  He thought of how creeped out he had been by the graveyard earlier that afternoon, and he remembered the rusted sign above the iron gates, Oakwood Cemetery. The article he had found in the attic said his mother’s family had been buried there in side-by-side plots.

  If I can find their graves, maybe I can talk to them, he realized. After all, tonight’s the only night of the year when the Dead wander among the Living.

  He took out the Halloweener Diary and skimmed through the pages looking for any entries about ghosts. Finally, he found one written in bolded letters:

  In order to awaken a sleeping spirit,

  One must place a jack-o’-lantern atop a grave on Hallows’ Eve,

  But beware, the Living will be deaf, mute, and blind to the conjured soul,

  For only the Dead can speak to the Dead.

  “Only the Dead can speak to the Dead,” Fisher whispered.

  He glanced over at his ghost sheet lying in the yard, and his eyes widened with an idea—a terrible, impossible, fantastical idea!

  Fisher turned to Ava, who stood watching him anxiously.

  “I think I know what I have to do,” he said.

  He ran to the yard and grabbed the ghost sheet, then returned to the porch.

  “Once you eat a few of these, you’ll turn into a real witch, and you can fly to the storm siren. But you have to control your appetite—don’t eat more than two or three, okay?” he said. />
  “Are you crazy?” Ava challenged. “I’m afraid of flying, remember?”

  “Just trust me,” he encouraged her, then looked down at the cauldron full of Monsterbars. “I have something else I have to do.”

  With no other choice in sight, he put on the ghost sheet.

  Fisher unwrapped three Monsterbars and shoved them into his mouth. He chewed swiftly, and their sweet juices flowed over his tongue.

  Admittedly, it was the best candy he had ever tasted in his entire life.

  “Are you sure this is safe?” Ava questioned. But her voice seemed so far away.

  He stood and examined his hands peeking out from under the ghost sheet. They were still made of flesh and blood.

  “It’s not working,” he told Ava in surrender, while fighting his craving to eat another bar.

  As she followed Fisher back down the sidewalk, his stomach started to feel strange, but nothing like the violent pain his friends had suffered after they ate the candy.

  But when he stepped into the street, a ferocious ache surged through his stomach. It felt like a storm was brewing inside him.

  He doubled over in pain.

  “Fisher, watch out!” Ava screamed.

  He glanced up just in time to see car headlights racing right toward him at full speed.

  He put up his hands to block the blinding light, but before he had time to get out of the way . . .

  The car plowed right into him.

  21

  Only the Dead Can Speak to the Dead

  The minivan sped down the street. The rubber tires squealed as it disappeared around the corner.

  “Fisher?” Ava cried out.

  He was so stunned, he couldn’t speak.

  “Fisher, where are you?” he heard her say while she crawled around in the street, as if she were looking for lost keys.

  “I’m right here,” he said, but she didn’t hear him.

  Confused, he looked down at his hands. They were pale and translucent.

  It worked! he thought, slightly horrified. I’m a real ghost!

  He glanced in the direction where the minivan had disappeared, realizing it had passed right through him.

  “Ava, you need to eat three Monsterbars and then fly to the storm siren! It will paralyze the monsters until I can reverse the curse,” he urged her.

  But she couldn’t hear him.

  Knowing there wasn’t much time, he stood and ran toward the nearby woods.

  He hoped Ava would be okay without him. When he glanced over his shoulder, he saw her holding her broom and examining a candy wrapper in the moonlight.

  Soon, his feet lifted off the ground, and he was hovering over a pile of leaves.

  I’m—I’m flying! he thought in astonished wonder. And on Halloween night!

  He soared over trees, houses, and lampposts. He swooped down and picked up an uneaten jack-o’-lantern from a darkened porch. He had never felt so free in all his life. Only now . . . he was dead.

  A few moments later, Fisher landed outside the graveyard gates. An owl hooted nearby. Then another. As if in warning.

  Fisher held the jack-o’-lantern in his spectral palms. Its perpetual candlelight glowed softly against the gray, slumbering fog. Dozens of spirits stood at the fence line of the cemetery, looking out into the woods, as if waiting for visitors.

  It was the creepiest thing Fisher had ever seen.

  But he no longer felt the chill of fear at the sight of the graves. He had become his fear—death—and it no longer held power over him.

  He floated over the grass, navigating through the labyrinth of tombstones, until he arrived at the three side-by-side graves that bore his mother’s maiden name.

  Remembering the diary’s prescription for conjuring the Dead, he set the jack-o’-lantern upon the middle grave and waited.

  But nothing happened.

  The night was dark and still, like the calm before a storm.

  Soon, the moon peeked out from behind the gray clouds, and a thin path of moonlight dripped down from the sky and kissed the grave.

  The flame inside the hollow pumpkin danced wildly. The jack-o’-lantern’s face began to change. And a tall, ghoulish spirit rose up out of the candle and loomed above Fisher.

  “Who dares wake me from my sleep?”

  22

  Unburying the Truth

  The ghost of Fisher’s grandfather stared down at him. Fisher thought it strange that he still looked the same age he had in the newspaper photograph from thirty years before. The only difference was his pale, translucent appearance. That, and he was hovering a foot off the ground.

  “I’m—I’m your grandson,” Fisher introduced himself. “Hallie’s my mom.”

  There was a long moment of silence. The specter seemed stunned, like he was processing what Fisher had said.

  Fisher could see ethereal tears forming in his eyes.

  “Welcome, boy,” the man’s ghost greeted him. “But—where is your grave? We weren’t notified by the Council of your arrival.”

  He perused the cemetery for Fisher’s freshly covered grave.

  “I’m not really dead,” Fisher tried to explain. “It’s just temporary. At least I hope it is.”

  His grandfather’s ghost squinted.

  “Then how—and why—are you here?”

  Fisher thought of the words written on the black candy wrapper. There was so much more that he wanted to ask his grandfather. But he knew he didn’t have much time.

  “It’s my mom,” he said. “She hates Halloween, and—”

  “Hallie? Hates Halloween?” his grandfather questioned.

  “Yeah, she thinks if she hadn’t stayed out late trick-or-treating on Halloween night, you guys never would have gone looking for her. And you wouldn’t have been killed in the accident.”

  “Looking for her?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” Fisher said. “The newspaper said that ‘It is suspected that . . .’”

  Fisher pulled out the obituary and pointed to the paragraph. His grandfather leaned over to read it.

  After a moment, his grandfather looked up at him. Haunted by something.

  “This obituary is . . . wrong,” he said.

  “What?” Fisher questioned.

  “We knew where Hallie was all along,” his grandfather revealed. “It was Halloween night, and we didn’t want to rob her of an extra hour or two of making memories with her friends.”

  Fisher gulped. He suddenly felt colder.

  “You mean—you weren’t driving around town looking for her that night?”

  “No. We went to Old Joe’s Pumpkin Farm to do the corn maze one last time before they took it down. Our car slid on some smashed pumpkins in the road—that’s what caused the accident.”

  Fisher was silent. Everything his mom had been led to believe wasn’t true.

  “So it wasn’t my mom’s fault?” he asked.

  His grandfather shook his head. “Far from it.”

  “I have to tell her somehow. I have to let her know the truth. It will change everything,” Fisher said.

  His grandfather put his fingers to his chin and brooded for a moment. Soon, his wraithlike eyes turned to his gravestone and his brows rose with an idea.

  “There is one way I might be able to communicate to her,” he said.

  Fisher’s grandfather held up his bony fingers and conjured a piece of paper out of thin air. Before he said anything, he held it up into the moonlight and used his glowing finger like a pen to write something secret upon it.

  “Take this to her,” he said. “If she sees this, she might understand.”

  Fisher took the paper and examined it. To him, it looked completely blank.

  “Do you want to come with me?” Fisher asked. “To tell her yourself?”

  His grandfather shook his head.

  “Alas, even though tonight’s the only night of the year we can be conjured from our eternal sleep, we spirits are bound to our graves. But tell your mom that we lo
ve her dearly,” the phantom said.

  “I will,” Fisher promised.

  He hugged his grandfather’s ghost, wishing he had more time with him. He suspected it would be another seventy years or so before he would see him again.

  Suddenly, a sour scent filled the air.

  The candle in the jack-o’-lantern snuffed out.

  And Fisher’s grandfather disappeared.

  Then Fisher heard . . .

  Grrraaaagggghhhh!

  Hisssss!

  Aaahhhaaahhhaaa!

  The monsters had found him.

  23

  Hallie Is for Halloween

  Out of the shadows, three monstrous silhouettes appeared. Fisher watched in horror as the vegetarian vampire sunk his fangs into the jack-o-lantern sitting atop the grave. All three monsters closed in around him. He then realized that, although living humans couldn’t see his ghost form, the monsters still could.

  He could smell their deathly stench as they reached toward him with handfuls of Monsterbars, eager to shove them into his mouth and make him fully one of them.

  Fisher tried to jump in the air to fly away, but the vegetarian vampire grabbed his ankle and pulled him back down to the earth.

  “Becooome onnne ooof ussss,” the vampire moaned, gripping Fisher’s throat and forcing open the ghost boy’s jaws. The invisible candysnatcher stood beside him, shoving Monsterbars into Fisher’s mouth, one by one.

  “Eeeeaaat,” Champ’s monster-fied voice commanded.

  The swamp creature squealed with delight, leaping around like a giant, possessed lizard.

  Fisher tried to spit out the bars, but the monsters kept shoving more into his mouth. He tried again to escape, but the vampire bit his translucent arm just as the swamp creature projected slime all over him. Although Fisher was still in ghost form, the slime burned like alcohol being poured onto an open wound.

  There’s no escape now, he thought. I’m doomed.

  Just then, a terrible sound blared throughout the graveyard, vexing their eardrums. It sounded like a police siren being set off right next to them.

  Only it wasn’t the police.