A Halloween Adventure

"Scared?" I grinned as I glanced at my fleshy friend, his eyes wide and trembling as they stared at the door of the cabin. I poked the rickety wooden door with a sneaker-clad toe. It wasn't latched and swung open with a soft, mangled squawk to release a pungent billow of musty air.

"Of course not," Chuck replied loudly, his eyes narrowing as he pulled the wrapper of his Butterfinger bar down with a loud crinkle.

"Sure…” I taunted, my eyes already roaming the dark interior of the rickety wooden cabin. It was lit only sparsely by the dim moonlight streaming through the doorway.

"Come on, Jim. No one would hide a bunch of treasure in an ancient-as-heck pile of boards like this." Chuck took a massive bite of his candy bar. Shards of the hard, buttery substance showered the front of his sweatshirt like toffee-colored snow.

I stepped forward, aiming my phone’s flashlight before me. I should have stuck with the moonlight. With my phone, I could see nothing but a swirling cloud of dust. I stepped forward a second time, the creak of the misaligned floorboards seeming painfully loud in the silence of the night. I winced as I felt silky strands draw taut against my lips. “Mmmphh! Stupid spiderweb!”

Rocking backward on the balls of my feet as I frantically clawed at the dusty cobweb, I felt the ancient floorboards bend under my weight.

I heard a *whoomph* from behind me, a splatter of alarmingly warm liquid splattering against the back of my neck. My hand instinctively flew to slap at it before drawing forward into the light of my phone.

My fingers were covered in speckles of warm, liquified chocolate.

I whirled, giving Chuck a dirty look.

He looked sheepish. “Sorry, dude. When you jerked back, you scared the heck out of me. I sort of gasped, and, well…” He shrugged.

I turned back to the interior of the cabin and took another cautious step forward.

I heard a staccato flutter, felt the razor-sharp brush of bony wings against my cheek. I stumbled backward, crashing into my friend, knocking us both to the rough wooden floor as a bat zig-zagged through the air above us. It flew jerkily through the door into the night with a victorious screech.

“Was that a bat?! It was wasn’t it?” cried Chuck, bouncing on the balls of his feet, eyes alight with wonder. “That’s so dope!”

Chuck extended a chocolatey hand toward me, and I took it, getting back to my feet.

“It’s just like that scene in Batman Begins where kid Bruce Wayne falls in that well, and⁠—” Chuck stopped immediately, looking at me with newfound awe. “You know what this means? You can become a superhero! It’s like a sign or something!”

“Don’t be stupid,” I told him, though I was secretly pleased. I mean, what boy didn’t dream of growing up to be Batman? “Want to go further into the house?”

Chuck looked mortified for a moment, before his wide eyes narrowed to accommodate the wide grin growing on his lips. “Heck, yeah.”

I gave him a fistbump, then reached to the floor for the phone I’d dropped. As I brought it before me once again, its tiny LED light sprayed an eerie pattern of shadows on the wood plank walls of the cabin.

“This place is totally creepy,” said Chuck.

I didn’t respond, creeping forward into the darkness as I approached another room. As the light from my phone illuminated its contents, I saw a crusty, moth-eaten mattress on a metal frame. Phone outstretched before me⁠—partly for light and party to intercept the plethora of cobwebs in the place⁠—I stepped inside the doorway, turning to examine the rest of the room.

My eyes scanned dusty, dry slats of wood until finally settling on something else. A large leather trunk sat pressed against the wall near the foot of the bed.

“Score!” I cried, the joy of the discovery causing me to forget my earlier caution. I dropped to my knees and flung open the large box, visions of a dozen banded hundred-dollar bills cartwheeling through my imagination…

…but it was empty, save for a lone slip of paper.

“Dude!” said Chuck excitedly, rushing toward me, a cacophony of squawking floorboards playing counterpoint to the beat of his heavy breathing. “You found it?!”

“No,” I said glumly. “There’s nothing here but a piece of paper.” I snatched the paper from the chest, then rose to my feet, pacing as I unfolded it. I read the message aloud.

”I knew you’d fall for it, Jim. You were always a sucker for treasure hunts. Too bad you missed trick-or-treating tonight. Better luck next year. -Loraine”

“What?!” Chuck bellowed despondently. “So no treasure? Even after all that work?”

I sighed, flashing Chuck a wry smile. “Well, it wasn’t really that much work. We just came out to the woods, walked into an abandoned shack, and opened a trunk.”

Chuck puffed out his chest, cherubic cheeks turning a shade rosier than normal. “Well, it seems like a lot when we miss trick-or-treating and everything else tonight with nothing to show for it. I can’t believe Loraine pulled a prank like that!”

“I agree with you there,” I said, tapping my finger to my lips as they curled into a sly smile. “But I’ve got a plan to get even.”

***

Chuck and I crept toward Loraine’s house behind the cover of her neighbor’s hedge row. We had arrived just in time to see the girls return from trick-or-treating, giggling and laughing as they opened the door and skipped inside.

I put a finger to my lips to tell Chuck to stay quiet, then motioned for him to stay put. I leapt over the hedge and ran for the door before it shut, jamming the toe of my sneaker in the crack. I heard the telltale clunk of plastic pumpkins and crinkly woosh of full Halloween bags hitting the hardwood floor, grinning broadly as I continued to wait. I couldn’t wait to give Loraine a taste of her own medicine.

A few moments later, I was rewarded for my patience when I heard footsteps thumping up the stairs, a whiny voice saying, “Why does it take all four of us to get a stupid calculator?”

“Because we’ve got to measure the haul this year! Do you want to count all that candy by hand?”

“Well, I don’t see how using a calculator makes counting any easier. And I don’t understand why it takes four people to go get one!”

I stifled a giggle. This was going to be even easier than I’d thought!

“It’s math, dummy. And we can’t trust you alone with the candy.”

“What?!”

“Remember last year? Somehow your bag ended up with 29 more pieces of candy than mine!”

“It’s not my fault that the candy-givers liked my unicorn costume better than your silly pineapple getup!”

“That pineapple costume was the bomb!”

I could almost hear the second girl’s eyes roll.

“Fine,” she said with an exasperated sigh.

As the voices and footsteps grew distant, I pushed the front door open, glancing in both directions to be sure that the coast was clear.

No kids. No parents. Excellent.

My scanning eyes quickly zeroed in on a pumpkin and three large bags of candy at the foot of the stairs.

Snickering, I dashed forward, sweeping up all four bags with one well-placed swipe of my hand. Pulling the plunder into my chest, I threw down the note I’d prepared. I darted back out the door, closing it softly behind me. Hustling across the front lawn to the edge of the yard, I hurriedly tossed the bags of candy over the bushes before hurdling them myself.

Chuck eyed the candy, licking his still-chocolatey lips, a dark gleam in his beady eyes. “Nice work, Jim!”

I chuckled with glee as I ducked my head behind the bushes, gathering up my share of the loot. As we turned to crawl away, we heard a chorus of horrified screams from inside the house. A moment later, Lorraine appeared in the doorway, cheeks flushed, ponytail bobbing, blue eyes manic as they darted this way and that.

“Owe you a treasure?” she cried into the night. “Just wait ‘til I catch up with you, James Murphy! I’ll show you what payback really looks like!”

With that, she stormed back into the house and slammed the door shut, the sound of angry bickering audible from inside. Chuck and I grinned broadly at one another, then crept away, dragging our sugar-laden treasure behind us.

1,462 words