The Best Halloween Ever Read online

  The “big light” was Woodrow Wilson School. It was lit up from top to bottom, all bright and cheerful, as if to scare Halloween away and leave a perfectly safe school event—free of shrieking ghosts and rattling skeletons, free of all Halloween tricks and all Halloween candy.

  And free of all Herdmans …

  8

  This was a new experience—being Herdman-free on Halloween—and you could tell not everyone believed it. Louella, for instance, kept looking over her shoulder for anybody who looked unusual.

  “Louella,” I said, “Everybody looks unusual. It’s Halloween.”

  Charlie and Cecil looked unusual as long as they stayed together, and even more unusual when they didn’t. Kenneth Jordan was a robot in aluminum foil, with Slinkies for ears and an alarm clock taped to the front of him. There were two or three television sets—Joyce Bender, with a box over her head and a red wig, was pretending to be I Love Lucy. Skinny Austin Hubbard was a floor lamp in brown wrapping paper, with a lamp shade on his head and a flashlight to turn himself on. Maxine Cooper was a big round yellow M&M—the only candy in sight.

  “I know,” Louella said, “but I keep thinking I’ll see some Herdmans after all, and they’ll grab Howard and shave off what little hair he’s got.”

  “You will see Imogene,” I told her, “but it won’t really be Imogene. It’ll be Joanne McCoy.”

  But Joanne changed her mind and came in a Wonder Woman costume “ … because,” she said, “if something does happen, and people think I’m Imogene Herdman, they’ll blame it on me.”

  It was hard to imagine what could happen here that hadn’t been planned out and arranged by the PTA and Mrs. Wendleken. The whole place looked like Back-to-School-Night.

  On Back-to-School Night there are signs on all the doors so the parents won’t get lost, the PA system is on with Mr. Crabtree giving directions and advice, and there are special exhibits in the halls—science projects and shoe-box dioramas and, once, Alice’s popcorn map of Antarctica, which was pretty impressive till Claude and Ollie Herdman ate it, glue and all.

  Now, on Halloween night, it was almost the same.

  There were signs on all the doors: “Ghoul Gallery,” “Mystery Swamp,” “Ghostly Games.” The PA system was on with lots of screeches and ghoulish laughter. “That’s Jolene Liggett’s father on the PA,” Louella said, “but don’t tell her I told you. She’s too embarrassed.”

  There were exhibits, too—stacks of my mother’s pumpkins everywhere, cardboard bats hanging from the ceiling, and a big scarecrow right inside the front door.

  “That’s Dad’s wash-the-car pants on the scarecrow,” Charlie said.

  He was right, and this was good news for two reasons: it meant Charlie could see around the mop strings and I wouldn’t have to lead him everywhere; and it meant my father probably wouldn’t get drafted at the last minute to be the swamp zombie or something since he already gave them his pants.

  Of course nobody wore costumes on Back-to-School Night, so that was different. Now there were all the usual cartoon characters and ghosts and accident victims, some strange Dracula-types all wrapped up in black … and a King Kong. We saw Boomer at the end of the hall, all brown and furry, in a gorilla mask, so they must have found his grandmother’s coat.

  Alice got her wish—she was the only Christmas tree. She had lights and decorations hung all over herself, with a big star on top of her head and jingle bells glued to her shoes. There was a long extension cord, too, hanging down her back, so you knew that sooner or later she would plug herself in somewhere and light herself up.

  “Howard will like that,” Louella said, “and it won’t be too scary for him.”

  We weren’t supposed to take Howard to anything scary, but so far that didn’t look like much of a problem. We even heard Mr. Crabtree tell two kindergarten mothers, “Don’t you worry, there’s nothing scary here!”

  I guess that was important to the kindergarten mothers, but who knows what’s scary to kindergarten kids? Eloise Albright’s little brother is scared of fish; Wesley Potter’s little sister is scared of bald people, so she was probably scared of Howard till something sprouted on his head. Charlie used to be scared of Little Orphan Annie in old comic books because she didn’t have any eyes—just round white circles.

  So we really couldn’t know what would be scary to Howard … but almost the first thing we saw was scary to me.

  It was my mother, in a crooked witch hat and her take-out-the-trash sneakers, swooping back and forth in front of the Mystery Maze.

  “Now, Beth … “ She swooped—sort of—over to me. “Don’t look at me that way. I told you abut this, that Mrs. Coburn broke her ankle, and … “

  Then I remembered the torn-off note on the refrigerator. This was what it said—that my mother was going to be a witch for everyone to see.

  “After all,” Mother went on, “it’s not as if I want to be doing this, and I’m certainly no good at it, but somebody had to fill in for Thelma Coburn. So, are you having a good time?” She turned to Louella. “How about Howard … is he having a good time?”

  “I guess so, Mrs. Bradley,” Louella said. “He’s not scared, anyway.”

  “Oh, no,” Mother said, swooping back to the Mystery Maze, “there’s nothing scary here!”

  “That must be the whole idea,” Louella said, “but I thought the whole idea was no Herdmans.”

  “Maybe it’s the same thing,” I said.

  With nothing scary, nothing spooky, nothing unexpected, no trick or treat and no candy, and not even Herdmans to watch out for, it was turning into the worst Halloween ever.

  This is what everybody said—Boomer,Stewart, Joanne, Rosalie Sims, Albert Pelfrey—” … worst Halloween ever … “ Even Alice was grumpy because she couldn’t find a convenient outlet to plug herself in.

  “I remember last year,” Maxine Cooper said with a sigh. “Remember the house where they strung cobwebs everywhere, and the door was creaky, and the doorbell was one awful scream?”

  “And the house where they gave out the big candy bars?” somebody said.

  “I got fifty-seven different things last year,” Albert said, “and they were all good … chocolate and peanut butter and …”

  “How do you know that?” Alice barked at him. “Did Ralph Herdman tell you you had fifty-seven different things after he took your sack?”

  Alice was especially grumpy with Albert because she could tell that, next to her, he had the best costume of all, and it didn’t depend on electricity. Albert had half a laundry basket tied to the front of him, with clothes hanging out of it, and bottles of detergent and bleach stuck in among the clothes. A sign across his back said “Dirty Laundry.”

  “But it’s not really dirty,” Albert said. “It’s just old stuff, full of holes.”

  “Too bad I didn’t know, Albert,” I said. “My whole family is here in old stuff full of holes. My brother’s in an old slipcover; I’m in old bedroom curtains; my mother’s wearing her take-out-the-trash sneakers; and my father’s wash-the-car pants are on the scarecrow.”

  “Is he in them?” Stewart asked. “Your father?”

  “No, it’s just his pants. He isn’t in them.” “Well”—Stewart shrugged—”someone is.” He was right. There was somebody inside the scarecrow costume … reaching up to scratch its head, crossing one leg over the other one… .

  “I don’t think it’s your father,” Louella said. “It’s not tall enough, and it’s too tall to be your brother.”

  “It doesn’t have to be someone from my family, Louella, just because it’s our pants,” I said.

  “It’s probably just some short teacher,” Boomer said.

  He was right behind us, and I suddenly remembered seeing Boomer twice before. Once he was King Kong, and once he was … I turned around.

  Boomer was a Happy Hobo.

  “Boomer!” I said. “Where’s your costume?”

  “This is it. Remember, I told you.”

  �
�But you were King Kong!” That was Louella. “We saw you.”

  “I saw you, too,” Joanne said, “in some old fur coat.”

  “My grandmother’s coat!” Boomer said. “Who’s in my grandmother’s coat?”

  Who was in my father’s pants? I wondered.

  Who was the scarecrow? Who was King Kong?

  9

  “Attention, please!”

  Everybody jumped, but it was only Mr. Crabtree on the PA system.

  “Will the following boys and girls join your parents in front of the office on the first floor: Missy Reed, Joey Marks, Eliot and Andrew Baker, Jillian Anthony, Freddy Adams. Thank you.”

  There were the usual crackles on the PA system, and then we could hear the school secretary whispering, “ … and there’s more. Wanda Ruggles and the Quincy boy, and Mrs. Walker can’t find Robert, and the Lenkers can’t find Gretchen… . “

  It sounded as if most of the first grade was missing somewhere in Woodrow Wilson School, and if this was true it was the only interesting thing that had happened all evening.

  “ … not just the younger kids,” the secretary was saying, “Eddie O’Brien, too, and Danny Filus, and Junior Jacobs … “

  Danny? Junior? They were in our class.

  There were more crackles, and little bits of what other people were saying—the secretary, Mr. Crabtree, parents—” … left him at the Mystery Swamp … saw him with some ghost … brought her little sister and now she can’t find her …”

  At this, Louella grabbed Howard out of his stroller as if she thought he might just suddenly decide to get up and follow the crowd.

  “ … call the police? … here in the school … top to bottom … “

  There was a loud clunk … and no more news on the PA system.

  We all looked at one another, and everyone was thinking the same thing—Was this it? The Curse of the Herdmans?

  “Any place will be safer,” Imogene had said, “than Woodrow Wilson School tonight.”

  I looked around for Alice, to see if she remembered anything else about that conversation. Had Imogene said something that I didn’t hear, like, “Don’t bother to do your homework. You won’t need it after tonight”?

  But Alice had left, still looking for an outlet, and we could hear all her ornaments, clicking and clacking as she went down the hall.

  The scarecrow was gone, too, but he (or she, depending on which teacher it was) had probably gone to the office to find out what was happening.

  “I knew it!” Joanne squeaked. “I knew this would happen. And somehow they knew it would happen, and that’s why they’re not here. You know what Imogene said.”

  Everyone knew what Imogene said: “Any place will be safer.”

  “And the PA system isn’t working, so we don’t know who else is missing,” Joanne went on, “so you better hang on to your little brother, Louella.”

  Louella didn’t need to be told that. She was holding Howard so tight around his middle that he was all folded over. If he’d had anything to say about it, he would probably rather be missing than be halfway upside down.

  It was Joanne’s idea for us all to stay together—so if we disappeared, I guess, we’d have company our own age instead of all the first-graders.

  And, naturally, it was Albert’s idea for us to hang out near the cider and doughnuts “ … before they’re all gone,” he said. “Remember the spring concert!”

  All those refreshments disappeared after Leroy Herdman set off the fire alarm in the middle of Alice Wendleken’s piano solo. Of course everybody had to vacate the building, and of course there wasn’t any fire, and of course there weren’t any refreshments left when everybody got back. No more piano solo either, though, which was good news for everyone except Alice and her mother.

  It wasn’t unusual for food to disappear when the Herdmans were around, but it would be unusual, now, for seventeen dozen doughnuts to disappear when they weren’t around, so I didn’t think Albert had anything to worry about.

  I didn’t think I had anything to worry about either, till Howard’s stroller got caught on something and the something turned out to be my mother’s slipcover, with all its safety pins and eyeholes.

  I remembered what Cecil had said: “If something happens and I have to get out of the slipcover in a hurry, can I just leave it there?”

  I must have said yes, because here it was.

  “You must have said yes,” Louella echoed.

  “But why would they get out of their costume?” I couldn’t understand this because they wanted to be in the costume parade and maybe win the prize. “I was even supposed to find them and be sure they were still all pinned together.”

  “Maybe they saw Albert in his laundry basket,” Louella said, “and figured he would win the costume prize. Maybe they just got discouraged. Or maybe, like Cecil said, something happened.” And then she added, “To them.”

  Normally I would have said, “Come on, Louella. What’s going to happen to my brother that hasn’t already happened to him? He’s been painted green, wallpapered, stuck in a revolving door.” Normally I would have figured that Charlie just fell out of his costume somehow.

  But I didn’t have a chance to say anything because at that very minute all the lights went out, leaving Woodrow Wilson School as black as the Halloween night outside.

  10

  At any other time it wouldn’t matter if the lights went out at Woodrow Wilson School. For one thing, we probably wouldn’t be there if it happened at night … and when it had happened, once, in the daytime, Mrs. Hazelwood turned it into a lesson about energy sources and we had to draw wiring diagrams for extra credit.

  But now … on Halloween night …

  “I knew this would happen!” Joanne said, again, but of course she didn’t know this would happen. She didn’t even know what had happened.

  Nobody knew what had happened, except Donald Sycamore, because Donald was the only person around when Alice finally found an outlet and plugged herself in.

  Donald said later that it was very exciting, “ … just like the Fourth of July. There was this loud crack and a lot of sparks and Alice yelled and the lights went out.”

  Alice wasn’t hurt, but for a long time she claimed to have loose electricity in her fingers, and she wouldn’t turn anything on or plug anything in because of it.

  In the meantime, though, everyone was stumbling around in the dark.

  Normally when something unexpected happened, Mr. Crabtree would get on the PA system and tell us all about it: the big red stain on the lunchroom floor was catsup, not blood; the kindergarten slide was missing from the playground, and the kindergarten kids were not allowed to use the big slide; today’s scheduled fire drill would be postponed till next Tuesday.

  “What do you think he’ll tell us about this?” Joanne’s voice came out of the darkness.

  “Probably tell us the lights are out,” Stewart said.

  “No, he won’t.” Boomer sounded funny. “He can’t tell us anything. Remember? The PA system’s broken.”

  “Then what’s that?” Louella said, after a second.

  I had heard it, too—a low, drawn-out whistle, like wind through a loose window … but there was no wind here, and no loose window.

  “I can’t see anything!” Joanne said. “I don’t even know where we are!”

  “I don’t even know who we are,” Louella whispered to me, “because, listen … Howard’s stroller is gone. It was right here, and now it’s gone. Who took Howard’s stroller?” She raised her voice. “Who took Howard’s stroller?”

  “Not me-e-e,” someone said, just like that: “me-e-e.”

  “Don’t fool around, Boomer,” Louella said. “I have to find Howard’s stroller.”

  “I’m not fooling around,” Boomer said. “I don’t know who that was. It wasn’t me.”

  It also wasn’t Albert or Stewart or Joanne or Maxine or me, so we didn’t hang around there—wherever “there” was. Joanne was right. Ever
ything seemed different with all the lights out and no way to tell one room from another.

  “But who was it?” Louella said as we picked our way down the dark hall, bumping into what we hoped was each other, “and where is Howard’s stroller?”

  I didn’t know who “it” was, but I did know that we’d better find Howard’s stroller in a hurry, or I would have to help Louella carry him, and Howard was a lump.

  We headed for voices, because we weren’t the only people temporarily lost in Woodrow Wilson School. Everywhere there were kids and parents hollering for other kids and parents—”Jolene! … Gloria! … Wayne, where are you? … Boyd Liggett, you come here to me by the office!”— and Mr. Crabtree was yelling, “Lights! Lights!” as if just yelling about them would turn them on somehow.

  We did see a little flicker of light, way at the end of the hall. “Like a flashlight!” Boomer said. “Austin Hubbard had a flashlight because he’s a floor lamp. Hey Austin!” he called. “Wait up!”

  But the light bobbed up and down and back and forth, and then went out.

  Maybe Austin didn’t hear us, I thought. Or maybe it wasn’t Austin. Maybe it was … Who? or What?

  Something brushed against my head—one of the cardboard bats?—and then Louella squealed, “O-o-o-h! There goes Howard!”

  Of course he didn’t go far, and he didn’t seem to mind being dropped on the floor, but I had to feel around a little bit so I wouldn’t pick him up by one leg or something … and by accident I grabbed Joanne, who also squealed.

  “It’s me!” I said. “It’s just me.”

  “How am I supposed to know that?” she groaned. “You could be anybody … or anything. I’m going to sit down on the floor and stay right here till the lights come on. But somebody has to stay with me.”

  I had the perfect person—Howard—but before I could hand him off to Joanne, we heard somebody yelling, above all the other noise.

  “It’s alive! The whole cauldron is alive with worms!” The somebody was my mother.

  11