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.~
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