A Haunting We Will Go. (Finale.)

 

It was cold, dark and damp. Three things that were somewhat less than appealing to a ten year old boy, and after they had realized exactly what it was that they had done, surprisingly it was Marvin who held it together. 

"Guys?" He whispered to Petey and Jimmy. “We have to be quiet, or they’ll come in here after us, I know this place is supposed to be haunted but-” 

Then it was Jimmy who cut in.

“Hey, that’s right, it is supposed to be haunted, and EVERYBODY knows it! Maybe we can use that!” 

And it was then that the three boys had begun to formulate a plan. They had decided to split up and hide in three different rooms when the three bullies came in, and they would try to scare them out of the house. 

“Geez Jimmy! How are WE gonna scare THEM?” Petey asked.“Guys, look in your bags for some hard candy. Like jawbreakers or something, if they get close to where you are, throw it in another direction away from you, they’ll think the noise is one of us, and they’ll follow it, when they leave the main room we can all run out of the house!”

So each of them chose a different room and waited to see if the older boys would follow them into the Miller house. Within minutes, the three bullies hesitantly walked in the front door. 

“You little brats are gonna pay for making us come in here after you!” 

They immediately split up and began to head into different rooms, the biggest of the three went into the room where Marvin was hiding behind a chair. Slowly the larger boy stumbled through the dark room, Marvin had been in the room for several minutes, so his eyes were more adjusted to the dark, and when the boy turned his back, Marvin threw the piece of candy into the next room, making an echoing noise as it hit the floor. The bully took the bait and yelled to his buddies.

“They’re in here! Get em!” 

And he ran quickly into the next room, what happened next Marvin could not believe his eyes or ears. When the boy went into the next room, a shadowy figure seemed to have followed him, making a scraping noise along the walls. The same exact scene played out in each of the other rooms where Jimmy and Petey had been hiding, and it was all three boys that met back at the front door. They all looked at each other and then back at the dark and strangely quiet house. Marvin swung the front door open.

“Let's get out of here, guys.” He whispered to Jimmy and Petey.

Slowly they all walked out the door and ran to the sidewalk. They stopped near where the front gate had been broken on the Miller home, and as they turned to look back, here came the three bullies on a dead run, without the sacks of candy that they had plundered from the local Trick or Treater’s. Each boy ran past them without giving them so much as a second look, clearly they were scared out of their wits, as they were screaming at the tops of their lungs. The door slammed shut behind them and immediately everything drew silent. The boys all looked at each other in disbelief, and slowly Marvin moved towards the house, with a hesitant Jimmy and Petey in tow.

“Geez Marvin! What are you doing? Are you crazy, man? You can’t go back in there!” Petey yelled at him. Marvin turned around to face them.

“Ok look guys. We were in there and nothing happened to us. Now I wanna see the ghost!”

Slowly, Jimmy and Petey followed Marvin back up to the front porch, the closer they got, the colder the air seemed to get. Marvin climbed the front porch and approached the door. Slowly, with trembling fingers, he reached for the door knob, from behind him, he could hear Jimmy and Petey whispering instructions. His fingers never even touched the knob when the front door to the old Miller house swung open all by itself. Jimmy and Petey both ran back to the sidewalk, as Marvin stood alone in the doorway trying to look inside. Jimmy and Petey couldn't believe what they were seeing as Marvin slowly entered the front door.

“Marvin, no!!” they both yelled at him. 

Silence. They both headed back to the front door, which was still open. Carefully, they looked inside as Marvin came walking towards them, holding three extra bags of candy.

“They were just sitting in the middle of the floor, all three bags were. it’s the candy that those bullies stole from those kids.”

They looked at the names that were written on the top of each bag and discovered that they knew who each kid was, and they would return them as they found them. They each picked up a bag and headed back for the sidewalk, when Marvin stopped and turned around to face the house once more, the door slowly closed shut, and in the window he could see a softly glowing figure watching him, at which ten-year-old Marvin Tallmadge smiled to himself, raised his hand and slowly waved to it. It raised a hand to the window and as if a whisper disappeared from view. 

~FIN~

~Scratch A.B.T. copyright © 2008~

A Haunting We Will Go. (Part Two.)

He thought that the tail was a bit too long for his taste, but a T Rex costume was the coolest thing that he’d ever pulled off on Halloween. When he walked up to the front porch of the faded white house that the Higgins family lived in, he rang the doorbell and when Mrs. Higgins answered the door she tried half-heartedly to look afraid.

“Oh My God!” she giggled.

The muffled voice beneath the rubber dinosaur's head was unmistakably Marvin Tallmadge’s.

“It's only me, Mrs. Higgins. Marvin Tallmadge!”

Jimmy Higgins appeared at the door, smiling from ear to ear, as his mother disappeared back inside the house after giving him some last minute instructions.

“And just you remember Jimmy! You’d better bring some candy back for your little sister! She’s heartbroken that she can’t go out tonight with you!”

Jimmy slowly walked down the steps towards Marvin, trying to look saddened by the news that his little sister took sick and couldn’t go.

Marvin and Jimmy both slowly walked to the corner of Maple street, Marvin tried to lift the face of the rubber T Rex to speak with Jimmy.

"Geez Jimmy, what happened to your little sis?"

He looked back over his shoulder towards the Higgins house to make sure that his mother wasn’t within ear shot.

“She’s got a cold or something, she had a fever this morning and the doctor told mom that she shouldn’t go outside or anything.

”Soon a redheaded Frankenstein’s monster rounded the corner and was making a beeline for the Higgins porch. When Petey Fontz arrived, they all headed for March street, promising each other that they would stick together. They began walking slowly at first, nightfall was just one half of an hour away, and they had to walk three blocks to get to Maple and March.

They arrived as the sun slowly sank behind the buildings, and they found themselves amongst the first kids to reach the home of Mrs. Woods. She was always especially generous to those first children that would brave her path of spooky decorations to get the candy, and Jimmy Higgins, Petey Fontz and Marvin Tallmadge got there first. Marvin turned to Jimmy Higgins.

“What do you think that she will be dressed up as this year, Jimmy?” He thought for a moment.

“Awww. I dunno, probably a witch or something.”

When she got to the door they all stepped back a bit just to impress her, but Jimmy called it, she was all dressed up like a nasty old witch. And true to form she was indeed generous with the candy and each boy would score the object of their desire, score one for the chocolate, peanut butter nutty buddy bar gang. It was still early as the boys slipped and weaved their way back and forth across March street drawing ever nearer to Mrs. Larson’s house, and of course, at the very end of March street the old Miller place. Three quarters of the way there, the three boys had just left Mrs. Conner’s house when they began to see kids running the other way crying. Most of the kids that came out for tricks or treats were usually old enough to come out alone on Halloween night, the littler ones were usually brought by overprotective parents, and they would watch over all the kids as they went up and down the streets, but tonight Jimmy noticed there were no adults. A concerned Petey Fontz pulled one of the scared kids aside.

“Hey kid? What’s going on up there? Why is everybody running?”

“There are some older guys up there, three I think. They’re threatening to beat kids up if they don’t give them all of their candy!”

The scared boy ran down the street, leaving Marvin, Jimmy and Petey to consider their options. The three boys turned towards each other and sat down on the street curb. Marvin Tallmadge spoke up first.

“Man, Jimmy, there are still six houses on the other side of the street that we haven’t even got to yet, and then there are all the ones on the way back to Maple.”

He turned to face Petey Fontz before looking back at Jimmy.

“How about we just keep an eye out for bigger kids, and when we see them coming, we’ll just cross the street and get away from them?”

And so they decided that they would continue on with their travels along March street. Near the end, the three boys would be forced to make a decision, three dark hulking figures were making their way towards them.

“Hey, you three kids! Come here right now!” One of them said.

It was then that they made a drastic decision. Rather than surrender their sacks of precious candy to the three bullies they decided that they would rather face whatever lived inside the old Miller house, and without a second thought the three boys ran up the front porch threw open the unlocked front door and ran inside.

~Editor's Note.~This story was just too long for one or two posts, so I had to stretch it out into three parts. I’ve been experimenting with a lot of different kinds of Halloween Type of ghost stories, and for this one I was just trying to go for something with a little bit of a lighter feeling to it, with just a dash of humor. Thanks for reading, and HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!~

~Scratch. A.B.T. copyright © 2008.~

A Haunting We Will Go. (Part One)

 

He squirmed uncomfortably in his seat, all the while eying the clock on the wall as the big hand crept slowly closer to the six, 3:30 Pm. Just twenty more minutes, and he could go to meet Jimmy Higgins and Petey Fontz. This was the day that they were to plot their route out for Halloween night. A kid's route would determine the size of the bounty they would haul in treats. And this time it was Jimmy Higgins who would decide the route that they would take. Almost a quarter after now, “soon Marvin, very soon” he thought.

“Marvin Tallmadge!!”

He sat up abruptly in his seat at the sound of Mrs. Myrtle’s stern voice bellowing throughout the room.

"Young man! Are you daydreaming again?"

Shaking his head back and forth repeatedly, he struggled inside his ten-year-old mind for a viable answer.

“Umm. N.N. No Mrs. Myrtle. Umm. I was just wondering if the clock was broken, ma’am. I don’t think it's moved in like an hour or sumpthin.”

The classroom erupted into a sea of laughter just as the bell rang, saving young Marvin Tallmadge from further cross-examination by the annoyed Mrs. Myrtle. 

He emerged from Coves Port elementary school and headed on a dead run right for Jimmy Higgins house, where they would meet on the back porch to hear what Jimmy had planned for their route on Halloween night. He ran through the gate and down the side walkway beside of the Higgins home, almost tripping over the garden hose that lay across the walkway. He made the turn at the back porch and slowly walked up the steps, to where Jimmy was sitting. He had both feet propped up on the porch railing. He was running his finger across his chin, tapping his forefinger against his front teeth, and seemed completely lost in thought. Over in the corner sat the redheaded, freckle faced form of ten-year-old Petey Fontz. Both looked like someone had shot their dog.

He sat his chubby frame in the chair next to Jimmy Higgins, who was now running his fingers through his thick black hair. Marvin looked at Petey and then at Jimmy.

“So what gives? did you plan out our route for tomorrow night or what?” 

Jimmy put his baseball cap on, as he turned to face Marvin.

“Yeah I did… But I can’t go out with you guys unless I take my little sister Jennifer trick or treating with us.”

Petey was shaking his head sadly.

“Yeah.” he said. “And we saw Mrs. Woods, Mrs. Conners and Miss Alrute all over at the Bag and Grab supermarket buying bags and bags of peanut butter and chocolate Nutty Buddy bars, and Mrs. Larson was there too, and together they must have bought like fifty bags or sumpthin. And all of them live on Jimmy’s Route.” 

Marvin sat down dejected in his seat. His hands limp at his sides. He was staring at the floor.

“Man, we would have cleaned up. But Jenny. She’s only 8! man, Jimmy, she’ll slow us down.”

He thought for a minute, and slowly a look of concern began to grow on his face.

“Hey.-Wait-a-minute! Mrs. Larson lives by the old Miller place over on March street. Man Jimmy! what were you thinking?? that place is haunted! And we’d have to walk right by there!” 

Jimmy stood abruptly, extending both hands while explaining.

“Yeah? And NOBODY else will go by there, and we’ll have the whole street to ourselves!”

Now it was Petey Fontz’s turn to stand.

“Hey, this could still work! What if we take turns pulling Jennifer in that old wagon of yours so she doesn’t slow us down?” 

Marvin’s eyes lit up. 

“Man. Now that’s a plan and a half!” 

“Man. Now that’s a plan and a half!” 

And so the plan was set in motion, and the following night they would take turns pulling Jimmy’s little sister in the wagon behind them. Haunted house or no haunted house, the lure of scores of peanut butter chocolate Nutty Buddy bars was too much for a ten-year-old boy to resist. 

~Scratch. A.B.T. Copyright © 2008