Abby laughed. “Oh man—I didn’t even know they made that anymore,” she said. “It’s this weird peanut butter taffy. Dollar-store garbage. Supernasty. It’s worse than getting an apple and a toothbrush.”
“Well, then we’ve got to keep trick-or-treating,” Dan said. “I don’t want a bag full of this junk.”
He threw one of the black-wrapped candies across the road. It was too dark to see exactly where it went, but it plinked against something hard in the distance.
“There’s a whole bowl of Whoppers at the house,” Abby pointed out. “You can have as many as you want.”
“Those are for trick-or-treaters,” Cooper said.
Abby shrugged. “You’re trick-or-treaters. The only ones still out, too. All the sane kids are home stuffing their faces in front of the TV.”
Dan drop-kicked one of the generic taffies into the void. “I hate Whoppers,” he grumbled. “We all do.”
Cooper acknowledged his brother’s point with a resigned nod. “That’s why Dad buys ’em. So we won’t eat ’em all ourselves.”
They reached a dark, deserted road. They could turn left and forge on deeper into their new neighborhood. Or they could turn right and head for home.
Cooper and Abby stopped. Dan didn’t. He just turned left and kept going.
“Dan,” Abby said.
“What?” he said without slowing down or looking back.
“Dan,” Abby said again.
Thunder rumbled.
Dan turned around. “What?”
Abby pointed up at the sky. There wasn’t a star in sight—just clouds so black they even blocked out the light of the moon. “It’s gonna start pouring again any second.”
“One more street,” said Dan.
“It’s already after nine,” said Abby.
“One more street,” said Dan.
“If we’re not home before Dad gets back, he’s gonna be mad,” said Abby.
“One more street,” said Dan.
“WHY ARE YOU SO STUBBORN?” said Abby.
“One more street,” said Dan.
Abby growled and pretended to claw her own eyes out. Then she turned to Cooper.
“We’ll put it to a vote again,” she said. “What do you think?”
Dan looked at Cooper too.
“Come on, dude—one more street. Ya gotta replace that Snickers bar, right?”
Cooper thought it over.
Abby leaned toward him and lowered her voice.
“Whatever you decide is fine,” she said, her soft tone clearly adding Don’t worry if Dan calls you a little wuss.
“Don’t be a little wuss,” said Dan.
Thunder rumbled again. Louder now. Closer.
“Let’s go home,” said Cooper.
“Aww!” said Dan.
“After we do one more street,” said Cooper.
“Yay!” said Dan.
“But Abby gets to pick it,” said Cooper.
“Aww!” said Dan.
Abby flashed Cooper a smile, then faced Dan again.
“Majority rules,” she said. “Come on. We passed the perfect street back this way.”
Cooper was by her side as she turned right and headed down the road.
Dan just watched them for a moment, muttering about cruddy candy and the worst Halloween ever. Then a flicker of lightning threw a blinding-white light over everything, followed almost instantly by another peal of thunder, and he said, “Hey, wait for me!”
Not long after he caught up to his sister and brother, they reached the side street Abby had picked out. There was a sign where it started.
“Dead End,” it read.
Abby explained that it was a cul-de-sac: a short street that ended in a circle of homes.
“Cul-de-suck, more like,” Dan groused.
The lights were off in every house but one.
“A deal’s a deal,” said Abby. “This is our last street . . . which makes that our last stop.”
She started toward the house that wasn’t totally dark. It was lit dimly, with nothing but a dull orange glow behind the curtains in the front window.
“Do you think all these people really aren’t home?” Cooper asked, eyeing the darkened houses they were passing. “Or are they just hiding with the lights off till they’re sure all the trick-or-treaters are gone?”
“Maybe they think Halloween is satanic,” Dan suggested.
When he saw Cooper’s eyes widen, he continued cheerfully, mood improved by his brother’s fear. “Some people do say Halloween’s evil, you know. Really evil, not feel-good, fake-o pretend evil, like Abby was talking about. Especially out here, away from the city; there are people who believe the whole thing’s demonic.”
“Really?” Cooper said.
“Totally! They say tonight’s the night when the spirit world and our world, like, overlap or whatever, and if you’re in the wrong place at the wrong time, you’ll get caught in between ’em. People like Abby wanna pretend Halloween’s just a big costume party, but it really is the most haunted night of the year.”
As if on cue, lightning flashed, thunder rumbled.
Cooper jumped. Orange-and-black candies flew out of his bag and rained down onto the street like hail. Nobody bothered stopping to pick them up.
“Dan,” said Abby, shaking her head.
“I’m just kidding,” Dan said.
He let a few steps go by in silence, then elbowed Cooper. “But it’s all true,” he whispered.
They reached the winding walk up to the one house with light. It, and the houses around it, seemed to be from the neighborhood’s oldest days, when homes were built smaller, their yards crowded with ancient oaks and sycamores. The paint on the siding was faded, the cement in the driveway cracked. Overhead, the trees’ long, grasping branches swayed and creaked in the building wind.
Abby stopped before the porch and waved Cooper and Dan ahead.
Dan started up the steps—then noticed he was going alone.
Cooper had stopped beside Abby.
“They don’t have any decorations up,” Cooper said. “And the porch light isn’t on.”
“So?” said Dan.
“I don’t think they want trick-or-treaters.”
“Well, there’s one way to find out,” said Dan.
He grabbed Cooper by the arm and pulled him up the stairs.
“You know what? We can skip this place,” Cooper said, dragging his feet. “Whoppers aren’t that bad.”
Abby put a hand on Cooper’s back and boosted him up the last steps to the porch.
“It’s okay,” she said. “You don’t have to be scared.”
“Yeah,” Dan said, and then added under his breath. “Little wuss.” He let go of Cooper and reached for the doorbell.
Cooper felt the sudden urge to spin around and dart past Abby and run for home yelling, I am a little wuss and I don’t care! But it was too late for that.
The doorbell rang. Its two-note chime sounded muted, muffled, fuzzy.
Nothing happened.
Maybe they can’t hear it, Cooper thought. Maybe we should just leave.
He was about to say that when his brother horrified him by ringing the bell again. Twice.
Ding-dong . . . ding-dong.
“Dan,” Abby snapped. “Don’t be rude.”
“It’s rude to keep kids waiting on a night like this,” Dan snapped back.
“Maybe we should just . . . ,” Cooper began. His words faded away.
He could hear footsteps from inside the house. They grew louder, closer, until it sounded like someone was walking right up to the front door. Then they stopped.
Dan held up his bag, thinking the door was about to open.
It didn’t.
The kids just stood there, waiting. And waiting.
“Maybe we should just . . . ,” Cooper began again, the words coming out so hushed he could barely hear them himself.
Dan didn’t hear them at all. “Gimme a break,” he groused loudly.
“We know you’re right there!”
He rang the doorbell two more times.
“Dan!” said Abby. “Stop being a—!”
The door began to open. It swung back slowly, gradually revealing a tall woman with wavy, graying hair and a blank look on her long, pale face. She opened the door only wide enough to peer out at the porch.
“Trick or treat,” Dan said to her.
Cooper just stood there.
The woman stared at them, her eyes wide, watery, unblinking. It looked like she was wearing a fuzzy pink bathrobe.
“Trick or treat!” Dan repeated, lifting his bag higher and giving it a shake.
The woman looked away, staring off into space for a moment, as if listening to something no one else could hear.
“Wait here,” she said, her voice hoarse, phlegmy.
She stepped away from the door. Her slow, shuffling footsteps echoed beyond the door.
“Dan—be nice,” Abby whispered.
“I am being nice. It’s not like I said, ‘Get off your butt and get me my candy, lady.’”
“Daniel!”
Cooper felt a sudden gust push against his back. His Batman cape swirled and flapped, and a gray glob of cobwebs in the corner over the door undulated, like it was breathing.
The door creaked open a bit wider in the wind, and an unpleasant scent, sour and rotten, seemed to swirl out of the house.
Cooper gasped.
He could see the woman in the bathrobe coming back—and she wasn’t alone. A dark, shadowy shape loomed in the gloomy hallway behind her. A tall figure in a tattered black robe, a hood over its head.
Lightning flashed, blasting light over everything for a fraction of a second.
Cooper saw the face in the hood. It was chalky white, with empty eye sockets and a mere hole for a nose, and big, exposed teeth. A skeleton face.
Cooper couldn’t say anything, couldn’t move, couldn’t even think real, formed thoughts. His paralyzing fear was everything.
The thunder came then, so loud Cooper could feel it.
As the woman walked slowly toward the door, the shrouded figure disappeared, merging into the surrounding darkness of the house.
“Here,” the woman said.
She dropped something into Dan’s bag, something into Cooper’s bag, then stepped back and pushed the door shut.
Cooper looked over at his brother, expecting him to say something like Let’s get out of here! or simply Run!
Instead, Dan said, “That was not a Snickers.”
“Too bad,” said Abby. “Time to go home.”
She headed quickly away from the house, throwing a worried look up at the sky. The wind was getting stronger by the second, and fat drops of rain were beginning to smack down here and there.
Dan turned and started down the porch steps, rooting in his candy bag distractedly as he went. Cooper went with him, wishing he’d pick up his pace.
“Did you see that?” Cooper said.
“I know. It’s nuts,” Dan said. He fished a can out of his bag. “Baked beans. She gave us baked beans!”
Abby was hurrying out of the cul-de-sac as the rain began to come down harder and faster. She glanced back over her shoulder without slowing.
“Is that what that was? Hilarious!” she said. “I guess Cooper was right: she really didn’t want trick-or-treaters.”
“Yeah, right. Hilarious,” Dan grumbled. “We should go back and do a trick on her. Ring and run or something.”
“No way,” said Abby. “We need to get inside before—”
The rain finally turned into an outright downpour.
“Ahhh!” Abby shrieked. “Run for it!”
She broke into a sprint. Dan bolted after her yelling, “I can’t believe this is my Halloweeeeeeeeen!”
“Wait!” Cooper said. “Didn’t you see? In the house? Wait!”
But between their own yelling and the roar of the pouring rain, his sister and brother didn’t hear him. They were faster than him, too, and within seconds they were several yards ahead, swerving out of the cul-de-sac and dashing up the road toward home.
Cooper stopped running. Getting out of the rain didn’t matter anyway. His costume was already soaked.
He looked back at the house they’d just come from. The little orange light still glowed dimly in one window.
What had he seen there? Was it a prank, like the guy in the scarecrow suit? Or was it . . . something else?
The woman had been acting strangely from the start. Maybe she was in trouble. Maybe she was being robbed or threatened. Or maybe he’d simply been seeing things because he really was the wuss Dan always said he was.
Or maybe, just maybe . . .
That last “maybe” Cooper didn’t even want to think about.
He looked at the other houses around the cul-de-sac. They were all still utterly dark. When he turned back toward the road, Abby and Dan were gone.
There was no one who could help. No one who could do anything.
Except him.
His soggy cape fluttered limply in the wind, reminding him what he was wearing. Who he was supposed to be.
He headed back toward the house.
He started slowly but picked up speed as he went. Not because he was looking forward to getting where he was going. He was just cold and wet, and there was an awning over the porch.
Once he’d gone up the front steps and was out of the rain, he froze. Despite the murky darkness of the night, he could clearly see the doorbell: a small white circle set into the brick, by the door. But he made no move toward it.
He glanced back again. The rain was coming down in heavy sheets, and lightning strobed across the horizon. There was no Abby, no Dan. They were probably a quarter mile away by now. They wouldn’t even notice he wasn’t with them till they got home, and they’d have no idea where they’d lost him.
He was going to have to do this alone. Or not do it alone. He could just stand there till the rain stopped . . . and whatever was happening inside was over. Isn’t that what a little wuss would do?
He stabbed a hand out and pushed the doorbell, moving fast so he couldn’t change his mind.
Ding-dong.
Before the dong was even done, he did almost change his mind. It was too late to keep himself from ringing the bell, but it wasn’t too late to run.
Yet he didn’t. He stayed. And when ten seconds went by without a response, he rang the bell again.
This time he heard footsteps. Just one set, he was certain. One person.
He took a step back so that he was barely on the porch. One spin, one leap, and he could be racing across the sodden lawn. If he moved fast.
The door opened. Not all the way—only about a foot. Enough for the woman to peep out and blink at him.
“Man-Bat . . . ,” she muttered. She looked sleepy and disoriented, as if Cooper had just awakened her from a particularly powerful dream.
“Excuse me?” Cooper said, trying to see past her. But the house beyond the woman’s slack face was a wall of solid black.
“Man-Bat. You’re back,” the woman said, her words slurred. “Or are you a diff’ren’ one? Always a lotta Man-Bats on Howaween.”
As the woman spoke, her gaze drifted right, left, up, down, never quite zeroing in on anything or staying still. Cooper assumed for a second that she’d been drugged, maybe by the freak in the mask. But then a much simpler explanation occurred to him.
She’s drunk, he thought. And I’m an idiot.
He must have sensed something was wrong with the woman from the very beginning. It had thrown him off, put him on edge. The sinister figure he’d seen lurking behind her was just an easily frightened kid’s imagination run wild.
Oh, well. It could have been worse. At least he hadn’t told Dan about it.
And then the smell reached him again—the sour stink he’d noticed when they’d come to the woman’s door before. It was the odor of rotten eggs, decomposition, decay. And it was definitely coming out of th
e house.
“You wanna treat, right?” the woman said. “Lemme get you somethin’.”
As she turned and tottered away, the wind blew the door wide open like it had before. And there it was again, lurking halfway down the dark hallway.
A tall black-draped figure.
It was real. Only Cooper could see it, for some reason, but it was truly there, in the house. Though this time there was no flash of lightning to illuminate the fleshless white face inside its cowled shroud, Cooper knew now what he was looking at . . . and what was looking back at him.
And looking at the woman. She was heading right toward it, utterly oblivious.
“Why doncha come inside?” she mumbled. “Get outta the rain.”
The black form seemed to grow as the woman spoke. It was expanding, stretching out. Opening its arms.
Cooper knew what to do: turn and run away. But there was something he had to do first.
He had to run toward it.
“Come on, come on, come on!” he shouted, darting into the house and grabbing the woman by the wrist. “Please, please, please! Let’s go!”
“Wha’?” the woman said, startled in her drowsy, droopy-eyed way.
She didn’t have much momentum, and Cooper was able to swing her around and tug her toward the door.
“Whacha doin’?” she said.
She tried to set her feet, plant herself, stop. Beyond her, Cooper could see the shape still reaching for them, trying to embrace them, engulf them. The hallway around it went a shade blacker than black as it came closer.
Cooper pulled even harder on the woman’s wrist.
“Just come on! We’ve got to get away!”
The woman was already wobbly, off-balance, and she stumbled with him through the doorway and out onto the porch.
Behind her, Cooper could see the whole hall was now a void. A lightless, lifeless black pit. The doorway didn’t just lead into the house. It led to Death.
Cooper kept backing away . . . until the world suddenly seemed to disappear from beneath him, and he found himself falling. He lost his grip on the woman’s wrist as he went.
He’d forgotten about the stairs up to the porch. Now he was frantically stumble-stepping down them backward, arms pinwheeling. He managed to stay upright as he staggered in reverse down one, two, three, four, five steps. But then he tripped on his own cape, and down he went.