48 - Attack of the Jack-O'-Lanterns (8 page)

“More houses. More!”

“You can never stop! NEVER!”

“I can’t!” Lee cried. “My bag is full. Look!” He held out the bulging
trick-or-treat bag to the pumpkin heads. Candy bars spilled over the top.

“Mine is full, too!” Walker declared. “It’s filled to the top. I can’t
squeeze another piece of candy corn in it!”

“We have to go home!” Tabby cried. “Our bags are totally full.”

“That’s no problem,”
one of the pumpkin heads replied.

“No problem?” Tabby wailed. “No problem?”

“Start eating,”
the pumpkin head ordered.

“Huh?” We all gasped.

“Start eating,”
he insisted.
“Start eating.”

“Hey—no way!” Lee protested. “We’re not going to stand here and—”

The creatures appeared to rise up. Bright yellow flames shot out from their
eyes. A roar of hot wind escaped their jagged, snarling mouths. The wind burned
my face.

We all knew what would happen if we refused to do as they said. We’d end up
inside the flames.

Lee grabbed a chocolate bar from the top of his trick-or-treat bag. He tore
off the wrapper with a trembling hand. And he shoved the candy into his mouth.

We all started to eat candy. We had no choice.

I shoved a Hershey bar into my mouth and started to chew. I couldn’t even
taste it. A big gob stuck to my teeth. But I shoved in more and kept chewing.

“Faster! Faster!”
the pumpkin heads ordered.

“Please—!” Tabby begged, with a mouthful of red licorice. “We can’t—”

“Faster! Eat! Eat!”

I shoved an entire bag of candy corn into my mouth and struggled to chew. I
saw Walker pawing through his bag, looking for something he could eat quickly.

“Faster! Eat!”
the fiery heads demanded, floating over us.
“Eat! Eat!”

Lee choked down his fourth Musketeer bar. He grabbed a Milky Way and started
to unwrap it.

“I—I’m going to be sick!” Tabby declared.

“Faster! Faster!”
came the raspy command.

“No. Really. I feel sick!” she cried.

“Eat more! Eat—faster!”

Lee started to choke. A gob of pink taffy shot out of his mouth. Tabby
slapped him on the back until he stopped coughing.

“More! Faster!”
the pumpkin heads ordered.

“I—I can’t!” Lee cried in a hoarse whisper.

The creatures leaned over him, angry flames shooting from their eyes.

Lee grabbed a Crunch bar, tore off the wrapper, and bit into it.

All four of us huddled there on the curb, gobbling down candy. Chewing as
fast as we could. Forcing it down, then shoving in some more.

Trembling. Frightened. Feeling sick.

We had no idea that the biggest horror was still to come.

“I… can’t… eat… any more,” Tabby choked out.

We had been stuffing ourselves with candy for several minutes. Tabby had
chocolate running down her chin. And I saw chocolate stuck in the tangles of her
blond hair.

Lee was bent over on the grass. He held his stomach and groaned. “I don’t
feel so hot,” he murmured. He let out a long, loud burp. And groaned again.

“I never want to see another candy bar in my life,” Walker whispered to me.

I tried to reply. But my mouth was full.

“More houses!”
one of the pumpkin heads ordered.

“More houses! More trick-or-treating!”

“No—please!” Tabby begged.

Bent over on the grass, Lee let out another long burp.

“It’s almost midnight!” Tabby protested. “We have to go home!”

“There are many houses to go,”
a pumpkin head told her, narrowing its
fiery eyes.
“Houses forever. Trick-or-treat forever!”

“But we feel sick!” Lee moaned, holding his stomach. “We can’t do any more
houses tonight!”

“Everyone has gone to sleep,” Walker told the pumpkin heads. “No one will
answer the door this late.”

“They WILL in this neighborhood!”
the pumpkin head replied.

“No problem in THIS neighborhood,”
the other creature agreed.
“In
this neighborhood, you can trick-or-treat FOREVER!”

“But—but—but—” I sputtered.

I knew it was no use. The fiery creatures were going to force us to keep
going. They weren’t going to listen to our complaints.

And they weren’t going to let us go home.

“More houses! More! Trick-or-treat forever!”

Tabby helped Lee to his feet. She picked up his trick-or-treat bag and placed
it in his hand. Then she brushed her hair out of her face and picked up her own
bag.

The four of us trooped across the street, dragging the bags beside us. The
night air had grown cold and heavy. A strong breeze rattled the trees and sent
brown leaves scuttling past our feet.

“Our parents must be so worried,” Lee murmured. “It’s really late.”

“They
should
be worried!” Tabby declared in a trembling voice. “We may
never see them again.”

The porch light at the first house was still on. The pumpkin heads forced us
onto the porch.

“It’s too late to trick-or-treat,” Lee protested.

But we had no choice. I rang the bell.

We waited. Shivering. Feeling heavy and sick from all the candy we had forced
down.

Slowly, the front door opened.

And we all gasped in shock.

“Ohhh!” A low cry escaped Walker’s throat.

Lee jumped off the porch.

I stared at the creature in the yellow porch light. A woman. A woman with a
grinning jack-o’-lantern head.

“Trick or treat?” she asked, turning her jagged smile on us. Orange flames
danced and flickered inside her head.

“Uh—uh—uh—” Walker hopped off the porch and stumbled into Lee.

I stared at the grinning pumpkin head.
This is a nightmare!
I told
myself.
A living nightmare!

The woman dropped some kind of candy into my bag. I didn’t even see what it
was. I couldn’t take my eyes off her pumpkin head.

“Are you—?” I started to ask.

But she closed the front door before I could get the words out.

“More houses!”
the pumpkin heads commanded.
“More trick-or-treating!”

We dragged ourselves to the next little house. The door swung open as we
climbed onto the front stoop.

And we stared at
another
pumpkin-head creature.

This one wore jeans and a maroon sweatshirt. The flames hissed and crackled
behind his eyes and mouth. Two wide, crooked teeth were carved into his mouth—one on top, one below—giving him a silly expression.

But my friends and I were too terrified to laugh.

At the next house, we were greeted by two jack-o’-lantern creatures. We
crossed the street and found another fiery-headed creature waiting for us at the
next house.

Where
are
we? I wondered.

What
is
this strange neighborhood?

The two pumpkin heads forced us on to the next block. The houses here all had
jack-o’-lantern creatures living in them.

At the end of the block, Tabby set down her trick-or-treat bag and turned to
face the pumpkin heads. “Please—let us stop!” she begged. “Please!”

“We can’t do any more houses!” Lee exclaimed weakly. “I—I’m so tired. And I
really feel sick.”

“Please—?” Walker pleaded. “Please—?”

“I can’t do another house. I really can’t,” Tabby said, shaking her head. “I’m so frightened. Those creatures… in every
house…” She uttered a sob and her voice trailed off.

Lee crossed his arms over the front of his striped costume. “I’m not taking
another step,” he insisted. “I don’t care what you do. I’m not moving.”

“Me neither,” Tabby agreed, stepping close beside him.

The two pumpkin heads didn’t reply. Instead, they rose up high in the air.

I took a step back as their triangle eyes bulged wide and their mouths
stretched open. Bright orange flames flew from their eyes.

And then their mouths stretched even wider. And they both let out high wails.
The shrill sound rose and fell through the heavy night air. Rose and fell, like
police sirens.

The pumpkin heads tilted back until their flames shot straight up to the sky.
And their siren wails grew louder. Louder. Until I had to hold my hands over my
ears.

I saw a flash of light. And turned to see another pumpkin head floating
toward us from across the street.

“Oh!” I uttered a hoarse cry as two more pumpkin-head creatures hurried out
of their houses.

And then two more. And another creature. And another.

All down the block, doors flew open.

Creatures floated out. Floated toward us. Hissing and wailing.

Flickering, dancing flames shot out from their jack-o’-lantern eyes and
mouths, sending orange light into the black sky. They floated and bobbed down
the street, across the dark lawns, wailing like sirens, hissing like snakes.

Closer. Closer.

Dozens of them. Dozens and dozens.

Walker, Tabby, Lee, and I pressed close together in the middle of the street
as the pumpkin-head creatures drew near.

They formed a circle around us. A circle of grinning, fiery jack-o’-lantern
faces over dark-robed bodies.

The circle of creatures spun around us slowly. And as they spun, their heads
bobbed and tilted on their shoulders.

Slowly, slowly, they spun around us. And then they began to chant in their
hoarse, crackly voices:

“Trick or treat! Trick or treat! Trick or treat!”

“What do they want?” Tabby cried. “What are they going to do?”

I didn’t have a chance to answer her.

Four creatures stepped quickly into the middle of the circle.

And when I saw what they carried in their hands, I started to scream.

“Trick or treat! Trick or treat! Trick or treat!”

My scream drowned out the chanting pumpkin heads.

And as the four creatures stepped forward, the chanting stopped. Their
jack-o’-lantern heads bobbed on their shoulders. Their ragged smiles grew wider
as they came near.

They held their hands waist high. In their hands, they each held a pumpkin
head.

Four extra pumpkin heads!

“Oh, no!” Lee cried out when he saw them.

Tabby grabbed Lee’s arm in terror. “What are they going to do with those
heads?”

Bright yellow flames flickered from the eyes and grinning mouths of the four
extra heads.

“These are for you!”
a pumpkin head announced in a voice that sounded
like sharp pieces of gravel being rubbed together.

“Ohhh!” A low moan escaped my throat.

I stared at the empty heads, stared at their fiery eyes, their ugly grins.

“These are for you,”
the pumpkin head repeated, stepping closer.
“These will be your new heads!”

“No! You can’t! You
can’t
!” Tabby screamed. “You—”

Her cry was cut off as one of the creatures raised a pumpkin head over her.
It had a hole cut in the bottom. The creature slammed the pumpkin head over
Tabby’s head.

Lee tried to run.

But a creature moved quickly to block his way—and then slammed a pumpkin
head onto Lee’s head.

I stumbled back, my mouth open in amazement.

Hands pressed helplessly against the sides of their pumpkin heads, Tabby and
Lee ran down the street. Ran blindly. Ran screaming. Screaming into the
darkness.

And then the creatures turned to Walker and me. And raised the empty pumpkin
heads high.

“Please—!” I begged. “Please—no!”

“Please—!” I cried. “Please don’t give me a pumpkin head!”

“Please—” Walker joined in.

And then we both burst out laughing.

The two creatures set the empty pumpkin heads down on the ground. And then
their own pumpkin heads started to change. The flames died out. The heads began
to shrink. And change shape.

A few seconds later, Shane and Shana had their own heads back.

And then all four of us started to laugh. We hugged each other and spun
around. We danced wildly, crazily, up and down the street. We tossed back our
heads and laughed at the moon and stars. Laughed till it hurt.

“It worked, guys!” I exclaimed when we finally stopped celebrating. “It
worked! It worked! We really scared Tabby and Lee this time!”

“They’ll be scared for the rest of their lives!”

Walker declared. He slapped Shane on the back. Then he danced another happy
dance, waving his hands gleefully above his head.

“We did it! We did it!” I chanted joyfully. “We really scared them! We
finally scared them!”

“That was so much fun!” Walker exclaimed. “And so easy!”

I stepped up to Shane and Shana and hugged them both. “Of course,” I
exclaimed, “it helps to have two aliens from another planet as friends!”

“Whoa! Take it easy!” Shane warned, lowering his voice. He glanced around
nervously.

“We don’t want any strangers to know that we’re not from Earth,” Shana said.

“I know, I know!” I replied. “That’s why we didn’t use your weird powers to
scare Tabby and Lee before.”

“This year, we were desperate!” Walker declared.

“But we’ve got to be very careful,” Shana said.

Shane rose up and turned to all the other pumpkin-head creatures who still
circled us. “Thanks for your help, brothers and sisters!” Shane called to them.
“You’d better hurry home before anyone sees that we have invaded this whole
neighborhood!”

Waving and laughing, murmuring happily to each other, the other pumpkin heads
hurried back to their houses. In a few seconds, the street stood empty again—except for us four friends.

We started walking down the middle of the street, making our way home. Walker
and I dragged our heavy trick-or-treat bags beside us.