48 - Attack of the Jack-O'-Lanterns Read Online Free Page B

room felt
like a blast furnace. It had to be five hundred degrees in there!
    The woman shut the front door behind us. “Forrest! Forrest!” she called. She
turned to us and smiled. “He’s in the back room. Follow me.”
    She opened the door and let us enter. To my surprise, the back room was
enormous.
    And jammed with kids in costumes.
    “Whoa!” I cried out, startled. My eyes quickly swept the room.
    Most of the kids had taken off their masks. Some of them were crying. Some
were red-faced and angry. Several kids sat cross-legged on the floor, their expressions
glum.
    “What’s going on?” Tabby demanded shrilly. Her eyes bulged wide with fear.
    “What are they all doing here?” Lee asked, swallowing hard.
    A red-faced little man with shaggy white hair came hobbling out from the
corner, leaning on a white cane. “I like your costumes,” he said, grinning at
us.
    “We—we have to go now,” Tabby stammered.
    We all turned to the door. The old woman had shut it behind her.
    I glanced back at the kids in costumes. There were at least two dozen of
them. They all looked so frightened and unhappy.
    “We have to go,” Tabby repeated shrilly.
    “Yeah. Let us out of here,” Lee insisted.
    The old man smiled. The woman stepped up beside him. “You have to stay,” she
said. “We like to look at your costumes.”
    “You can’t go,” the man added, leaning heavily on his cane. “We have to look
at your costumes.”
    “Huh? What are you saying? How long are you going to keep us here?”
Tabby cried.
    “Forever,” the old couple replied in unison.

 
 
10
     
     
    That was my daydream.
    I was down by the street in front of my house, waiting for my friends to show
up. And daydreaming about Tabby and Lee being trapped by a weird old couple who
liked to collect trick-or-treaters and keep them forever.
    Of course, in my daydream, Walker and I sneaked out a side door.
    But Tabby and Lee were caught before they could escape. And they were never
seen again.
    Nice daydream, huh?
    I was still picturing the whole thing when Walker, Shane, and Shana finally
arrived. And we eagerly trooped inside and up to my room.
    “Drew, why are you grinning like that?” Shana demanded, dropping down onto
the edge of my bed.
    “I was just having a very funny daydream,” I told her. “About Tabby and Lee.”
    “What could be funny about those two creeps?” Walker demanded. He picked up a
tennis ball from the floor and tossed it to Shane. The two of them started
tossing the ball back and forth across my room.
    “It was very funny,” I replied, sitting up and stretching. “Especially the
ending.”
    I told them the whole daydream. I could see from the smiles on their faces
that they enjoyed it.
    But Shana scolded me. “We don’t have time for daydreams, Drew. We need a real
plan. It’s almost Halloween.”
    Walker tossed the tennis ball too high. It smashed into my dresser lamp and
knocked it over.
    Shane hurtled toward the lamp and made a diving catch before it hit the
floor.
    “Way to go!” Walker cried. “Catch of the Month!” He slapped Shane a high
five. He hit Shane so hard, the poor guy almost dropped the lamp.
    “Grrrrrrr!” I growled at Walker and pointed to the desk chair. “Sit down. We
have serious thinking to do.”
    “She’s right,” Shana agreed. “We have to scare Tabby and Lee out of their
skins this year. We have to pay them back for the last two years. We have to!”
    “So what are we going to do?” Walker demanded, dropping his long, lanky body
into the desk chair. “Hide behind some bushes and yell ‘Boo!’?”
    Bad attitude.
    “I’ve been thinking of some really scary things we could do at a party,” I
started. “I think—”
    “No party!” Shana interrupted.
    “Right. No party,” her twin agreed. “We worked so hard on last year’s party.
And then Tabby and Lee didn’t show up.”
    “Grrrrr.” Just thinking about last year made me growl.
    “Well, if we don’t