Fiendish Deeds (12 page)

There was heavy thumping as Tyler and his friends came down the stairs. Whooping, they spread out into the fog, slashing the air with their butcher knives.

“Check it out!” Tyler shouted. “I found a real smoke machine!” A stream of white vapor shot over their heads as Tyler hefted the heavy piece of equipment to his shoulder.

“Crank that baby!” said one of the droopy-mouthed maniacs.

“Yeah!”

Tyler fiddled with the controls and a thick white plume gushed out, blinding Joy. There must be an exit, she thought desperately—the kids ahead of them couldn’t have just vanished into thin air!

“Tyler, over here: a coffin! Smoke it, man!”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah!”

Then the heavy clouds parted. Something terrible sat bolt upright in the coffin: a skull-faced maggoty horror with blazing eyes.

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” it roared.

Tyler squealed. The smoke machine fell, hitting the floor with a thunderous bang. The basement walls resonated with a chorus of shrieks as the towering skull-faced creature climbed out of its coffin. The stairs shook as more children stumbled down into the thick soup, screaming hysterically.

A flailing arm connected with Joy’s head. She staggered back, her hair falling down in a shower of bobby pins. “Byron!” she called out, spitting out a bitter hair-sprayed lock. Groping around blindly, she finally got a hold of someone.

But it wasn’t Byron, she realized with horror as the face came looming through the fog. It was Tyler, crouching on the floor, his face streaming with tears.

“Help!” he pleaded, seizing the front of her tweed coat. Then his terrier face squinted at the face framed by two curtains of sunny blond hair. “Spooky?”

Someone suddenly switched on a light. The smoke turned a sickly yellow, with panicked children back-lit like circling black wraiths as the terrible skull-faced figure lurched at them.

Joy felt an unexpected rush of pleasure. Now this was what she called Halloween! She turned back to Tyler and twisted his finger until he released her coat with a sharp cry, then shoved him sprawling into the fog.

As she stepped back, something pulled her through a half-open door.

S
orry I punched you like that,” said Joy, standing in the laundry room. Louden Primrose sat on the dryer pressing a damp cloth to his eye, which, if it felt anything like her knuckles, was probably pretty sore.

“That’s all right,” he answered with a laugh. “I was pretty much asking for it, grabbing you like that in the smoke. Nice costume, by the way.”

“Thanks,” said Joy. Louden wore a tight-fitting skeleton suit—with his face painted white and eye sockets black just like her, she noticed with a hot flash of embarrassment.

“I have to find my brother,” said Joy. “We’re not from around here, and he’ll start freaking out if he can’t find me.”

“I would wait until my dad calms things down out there,” advised Louden. On the other side of the door, they could hear the creature from the coffin evacuating children up the steps to the garage, the exit from the Primrose house of horror. “Your brother will be all right. He knows my sister Lucy, doesn’t he, and she’s around somewhere.”

Joy nodded—it seemed impolite to get into an argument with someone sitting beside a pile of their own folded underwear. But she wasn’t convinced. The last thing Byron would want would be to sit around making small talk with some girl from his class.

And she wasn’t exactly comfortable being alone with Louden. He was looking at her with the same curious air he had worn at his sister’s party, like she was an interesting museum exhibit or something.

“So you’re from Spooking, right?” he asked.

Duh,
thought Joy—as if the whole school didn’t know that much. “Yeah,” she answered coolly, wondering what offensive observation would follow.

“It must be pretty wicked up there on Halloween—why bother coming down to Darlington?”

“It was my brother’s idea,” explained Joy, surprised. “You can get more candy down here.”

“Gotcha.”

“But this place is pretty cool, actually. Your house, I mean.”

“Yeah, my parents really go for it,” replied Louden. “They love decorating for the holidays. Halloween, Christmas, Easter…It’s one of their favorite hobbies.”

“Ah,” said Joy, suddenly considering how her parents didn’t even have a single hobby, much less a favorite. And though Mr. Wells always made sure each year to erect a dangerously lopsided Christmas tree, Joy couldn’t describe their halls as exactly decked.

A moment of awkward silence passed.

“So,” Louden continued, “what do you think of Miss Keener?”

Miss Keener? Beloved teacher of sickly school-spirited suck-ups?

“She’s okay,” replied Joy diplomatically.

“Really?” exclaimed Louden. “I thought you’d totally hate her!”

“How come?”

“Well, for one, she picks on you a lot.”

Joy blinked in surprise. “You think?”

“Sure. Keener plays favorites, and you’re definitely not one of them.”

Normally, Joy would have taken offense at this kind of blunt statement, but she sensed Louden wasn’t saying it to be cruel. It was an obvious fact—one that she had noted herself on the very first day of school.

“Aren’t you one of her favorites?” asked Joy.

“Oh, probably,” agreed Louden with a laugh. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t think she’s really annoying. Like having to say we feel great every morning?” Louden pretended to barf. “It feels like we are on some sort of stupid kiddy show or something.”

“I know!”

“And not only that, she can be pretty mean sometimes. On purpose, as you know better than anyone,” he added.

“What do you mean?”

“Like with your book report. I don’t know why she didn’t let you finish. Just because a few kids weren’t listening? It was a lot more interesting than the rest of the crap everyone had done.”

Joy couldn’t help a smile from creeping over her face, with a glimmer of tooth in it. “Really?”

“Well, sure. Especially if it’s true, like you say, that such a big important writer might actually have come from around here. Why not check into it at least? What’s to lose? I mean, how many other famous people lived in Darlington?”

The smile vanished as Joy bristled. “E. A. Peugeot didn’t live in
Darlington
,” she corrected. “He lived in
Spooking.
”

“I meant Spooking. Whatever. It’s the same thing, really, isn’t it?”

“No, it’s not the same thing,” said Joy, offended. “It’s not the same thing at all!”

“Don’t get all mad,” said Louden defensively, slipping down off the dryer. “I just meant it like Spooking is Old Darlington or something.”

“Old Darlington?” repeated Joy, incensed.

“I mean, like my parents take Lucy and me on trips to a lot of places with a really old section. It’s usually the best part where everyone wants to go, where you can buy postcards and stuff. You know what I mean? Maybe Spooking will be like that one day if, say, someone proves that a famous writer like that Peugeot guy really lived up there. And how cool would that be?”

Joy had a vision of a line of idling buses blocking her view as crowds of camera-wielding tourists in short-shorts trampled her front lawn: “
Look, honey! Up in the window! A real live Spooky!”
“No thanks,” she replied bitterly.

Louden shifted on his feet uncomfortably. “Suit yourself. It was just an idea.”

“Well, maybe you should keep your ideas to yourself,” Joy shot back.

Louden went quiet. They stood in silence for a moment as he dabbed at his swelling eye. He finally announced: “It sounds like things are under control now, if you want to go find your brother…”

“Yes,” said Joy flatly. She opened the laundry room door. Outside, the black light was now back on. Children approached the coffin with nervous giggles as the skull-faced monster sat up, moaning.

“It’s just up those steps over there,” said Louden, pointing.

“Thanks. I’m sorry about your eye.”

“Don’t worry about it. See ya, then.”

“Bye,” answered Joy. She marched past the coffin, not even looking as Louden’s father offered her a little candy-filled bag with a black cat on it.

Joy hurried up the steps and out into the garage, looking for Byron. How long had she been in the laundry room?

“Joy!” called Byron crossly, jogging up the driveway. “Where were you? I was really worried!”

“Sorry, I got stuck inside—I couldn’t find my way out with all the smoke.”

“What do you mean? Kids have been coming out for, like, ten minutes!”

“Oh—I was also talking to someone. From school. And I figured you were probably hanging out with your friend Lucy.”

Even in the dim light of the driveway she could see Byron’s face change color, transforming him into what looked like some irate raspberry. “She’s not my friend, she’s just a girl in my class!” he snapped.

“Okay, sorry!”

They began walking, not even bothering to go up to the next house, but instead heading down the street in stony silence. Byron felt his temper cool. He was wracked by the dark specter of guilt, having lied to Joy again. He hadn’t really been worried about her after all. The truth was, he hadn’t even considered her whereabouts until just a minute ago.

He had been too busy blowing his big chance.

Blinded by a face full of dry ice, Byron had finally blundered out of the basement behind a stampede of shrieking children. He’d definitely missed something in there, he was sure, like where you were supposed to get the candy for starters. And what about Joy—did she get any? He’d stopped outside the garage to wait for her. Just then the three droopy-mouthed maniacs had stumbled out and run screaming up the driveway.

“Run, you big babies!” he’d shouted after them as loudly as possible without actually moving his lips or engaging his vocal chords. “Run!”

Down the street, he’d then glimpsed a heart-wrenching head of hair approaching.

It was Lucy.

She was dressed up as a fairy princess with a billowy gold dress and delicate-looking wings made of muslin stretched over wire. With her friends Ella and Kirsten on each side of her, she was struggling to both hold her wand and carry her heavy haul of candy.

Without a moment to lose, Byron had darted across the lawn to intercept her on the path leading up to her house.

“Ah, Princess Lucy—how nice to see you,” he’d pictured himself saying, arms folded with a finger held to his chin exactly like he’d seen on a magazine. “What an enchanting costume you are wearing. These? Oh, thank you, but they’re just my work clothes. The sword? Yes, it is quite real…”

But instead he caught his foot on a cardboard headstone and disappeared into the artificial mist pumping across the Primroses’ lawn.

“I’ve had enough,” announced Byron. “I want to go home.”

“Really?” asked Joy in surprise.

“Yes.”

“Okay, if you say so,” she said sympathetically. “Let’s head back. But watch your pillowcase—you’re dropping candy everywhere.”

Byron groaned as he bent down to collect a few rockets and some packages of bubble gum from the sidewalk.

“The trouble is, we’re a bit early to meet Mom,” observed Joy as she drew out Melody Huxley’s gold pocket watch. The hands were in fact now frozen on 6:32—it needed winding again apparently. “But wait—I just remembered there’s something I need to do!”

“What?” asked Byron disinterestedly.

“I need to have a quick word with Madame Portia. So how about we just pop by before Mom arrives,” she answered casually. “Call it one last trick-or-treat.”

“The crazy lady in the bog?” shouted Byron, eyes wide in disbelief. “You want to ring her doorbell in the middle of the night?”

“Don’t be silly, Byron,” said Joy. “I’m sure she doesn’t have a doorbell!”

“I’m not going! The bog is dark and scary and we’ll get lost and drown!”

“But I brought a flashlight and we know the path now,” Joy assured him. “It’ll just take ten minutes, I promise.”

“No way, Joy!”

“Okay, okay. But I’m going. Just wait for me by the road, then.”

“Fine!”

“But I think I should warn you. Remember when I was telling you about the E. A. Peugeot story, and how the townspeople tried to make peace with the bog fiend by tying up hogs at the edge of the woods?”

“Yeah,” answered Byron sulkily.

“Well, I’m just worried it might still come by once in a while to see if anyone left it a care package.”

Joy felt bad at the sight of Byron’s frightened face, but time was wasting—and with her pocket watch out of commission, she no longer knew how much.

“Personally, I think it’s safer to come with me to see Madame Portia,” she said reassuringly as he followed after her. “After all, she’s lived in there for years and nothing’s ever bothered her. The bog fiend probably likes her for whatever reason. So I’m sure it will leave us alone once it knows we’re her friends.”

Byron gulped. “But how will it know we’re her friends?”

“Hmm, good point,” said Joy, switching on the flashlight. “Let’s run.”