Trick Me, Treat Me, Trick Me

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Here’s a Halloween story I wrote last night:

“Don’t go playing around that old house on the corner. You know it: the front porch is shaky and it looks like it’s about to fall down.  I don’t want you to get hurt if the whole thing collapses.”

Mother didn’t have to tell me about the old Midnight House. I don’t do ghost houses and I knew it was haunted because I’d seen the ghost of Midnight Wellington a month ago.

My best friend Jacob and I had snuck out of my house when he spent the night last month. Sneaking around the backyard, we’d pitched some eggs I’d taken from the refrigerator at stuck-up Nina’s house. That’d teach her to call us “baby boys;” we were twelve years old, after all. Practically grown up.

Next, Jacob and I fed that stupid dog Duke some hamburger meat laced with my grandpa’s stool softener. I don’t know what it was, but I knew Grandpa always stunk up the bathroom when he came out after taking the pills. And, he was always smiling  real big. Maybe old Duke would be smiling, too, instead of always growling and barking at me like I was a burglar in my own backyard.

My fifth grade teacher lived across the street from me. My mother and Ms. Gardener were good friends, and when I was in her class, my life was hell. Every day, she and my mother would talk about what I had done in class and what I needed to do. It was a miserable year for me, but it was payback time.

There was an old pine tree in our backyard, weeping sap all year round. I’d scooped a lot of it in a bucket and now, it was time to make use of it. Taking an old spoon my mother’d never miss, I painted every doorknob and car door handle I could find. I even painted Ms. Gardener’s front porch and steps. Boy, was she gonna be in for a sticky surprise the next morning.

Jacob and I were about done for the night. Walking past the old Midnight House, Jacob nudged me and pointed to a shadowy figure staring down at us from a second story window. The hairs on the back of my neck stood straight up and I almost wet my pants. Nobody had lived at Midnight’s house since the old man had died way before I was born. Nobody had seen a ghost there, either, not until Jacob and I did.

I didn’t tell anybody and neither did Jacob. We’d have to explain why we’d been out so late at night and then, Nina, old Duke’s owners, and Ms. Gardener would know who had trashed them. It was a secret we’d keep to the grave.

Now, a month later, it was Halloween time and I was ready to go. This would be my last year to Trick-or-Treat since Mother had said teenagers shouldn’t be out on the streets begging for candy.

Nina’s house was dark. They didn’t give out candy at Halloween. Instead, they all went to some kind of festival at their church. It sounded boring.

Old Duke’s owners weren’t back home. I heard one of them tell my mother that they still couldn’t get the smell of dog diarrhea out of their house and were staying at their camp on the river. Old Duke hadn’t been the same after the stool softener, either. All he did now was lie around and groan.

Ms. Gardener didn’t have her light on, so she wasn’t giving out candy this year. She’d come over to my house the next day after I’d sapped her and she’d been sticky and crying. Even now, after hiring cleaners, you could still smell the pine sap and see unsuspecting people’s shoes sticking to the front porch.

Pickings were gonna be slim this Halloween. After I hit a few houses on my street, I headed over to the next street, taking the long way around the Midnight House. Although it had been a month, the hairs on my neck still stood straight up as I passed.

On the next street, I came up to a house that had one Halloween candle on in the front window. Stepping on the porch, I knocked on the front door and called, “Trick or Treat!” A thin arm held a bowl of goodies out toward me and I took a handful. Before leaving the porch, I unwrapped a Candy Tzar bar and ate it. I don’t know why I did that, but almost immediately, my stomach started rumbling.

My shoes were sticking to the porch, almost like someone had spread a layer of glue that wasn’t quite dry across the wood. It was like wading in sand and before I could reach the steps, I felt something hit my head with a squish. Looking around, more eggs pelted me from the recesses of the open front door. I couldn’t run, I couldn’t do anything because I was stuck.

My stomach was killing me and I was scared. When I started to cry, I felt a cold hand on my shoulder and a whisper in my ear.

“I’m watching you, boy,” a gravelly voice said. “Your wicked little ways brought me back and now, I’ll be keeping a tick on you.”

I thought ghosts were supposed to stay in their own houses. Guess I was wrong. Dead wrong.

J J Dare, author of the Joe Daniels’ trilogy

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Filed under Humor, J J Dare, fiction, halloween, writing

Tags: fiction, halloween, Humor, J J Dare