Mrs. Patty Is Batty! (4 page)

“Boo!” the horrible creature yelled at us. He was waving his hairy arms around in the air.

“Ahhhhhhhhh!” we screamed. I think the three of us jumped about ten feet high.

“Take our candy!” Ryan yelled. “Take it
all! Just don't kill us.”

It was a hideous creature with thick brown hair all over its body. It even had a hairy mask on its face. The only thing the creature was wearing over all that hair was a pair of underwear. Tighty whities.

I thought I was gonna die.

“Are you…the Halloween Monster?” I asked, trembling.

“No, dumbhead,” the thing said as it took off its mask. “It's
me
.”

It was my friend Billy who lives around the corner!

“Hey, that costume is cool!” I told Billy.

“What are you supposed to be?” Ryan asked.

“Take a guess,” Billy said.

“A vampire?” guessed Michael.

“Nope.”

“A werewolf?” guessed Ryan.

“Nope,” said Billy. “I'm the
under
wear-wolf! Get it? A werewolf in his underwear is an underwearwolf!”

Well, the only thing funnier than getting someone to
say
“underwear,” or
seeing
someone in their underwear, is a kid
dressed up
as a werewolf in his underwear.

Billy is weird.

“Where are you guys heading?” he asked us. “I'm finished trick-or-treating.”

“We're going to 176 Norman Road,” Michael said, showing Billy the map. “Our school secretary lives there.”

“Oh, you don't want to go
there
,” Billy
warned us. “That house is haunted.”

“Haunted?” we all asked.

A chill went down my spine. I've been to haunted houses in amusement parks, but I've never been to a
real
haunted house.

“Oh yeah,” said Billy. “That lady is a witch. She poisoned her husband, Marvin, and chopped his head off. He came back as a ghost, and he's been driving her insane ever since. She still keeps his head in a bucket down in the basement.”

“How do you know all that?” I asked.

“I know everything,” Billy claimed. “I'm in the gifted and talented program at my school.”

“Wait a minute,” Michael said. “Why
did she chop his head off if he was already poisoned?”

“For the fun of it,” Billy said. “I told you she's a witch. I'm warning you, stay away from that house.”

It was hard for me to imagine Mrs. Patty poisoning her husband or chopping his head off. Every time I get sent to the principal's office, she seems so nice. One time she even gave me a lollipop.

I really wanted to see what kind of candy Mrs. Patty was giving out. But if she chopped my head off, I wouldn't be able to eat the candy anyway. I didn't know what to do.

“I don't believe you,” Ryan told Billy. “Mrs. Patty isn't a witch. And she's got
more candy than anyone in town. That's what she told us.”

“She just told you that so you'll come to her house,” Billy said. “Go see for yourself. But don't say I didn't warn you. When she poisons you and chops your heads off, don't come running to me.”

Billy left. I put my hand over my neck. Maybe Halloween isn't my favorite holiday after all.

“Maybe we should go home now,” I told Michael and Ryan. “We have plenty of candy.”

“Go home?” Michael said. “Are you crazy? We haven't been to Mrs. Patty's house yet. She has more candy than anyone in town.”

“But what if she chops our heads off?” I asked. “Stuff like that happens all the time, you know.”

“She's not going to chop our heads off,” Ryan said. “Your friend Billy doesn't know what he's talking about.”

“Yeah,” Michael said, “and Mrs. Patty told us over and over again that we
have
to trick-or-treat at her house. She might chop off our heads if we
don't
show up.”

Good point. Michael really should be in the gifted and talented program.

We kept walking down the street. It was dark now, and scary. I was looking all around, just in case the
real
Halloween Monster jumped out from behind a wall.

“Do you think Mrs. Patty's headless husband, Marvin, still lives with her?” I asked the guys.

“Ghosts have to live
some
where,” Michael said. “They're just like regular people, except they're dead.”

“I feel sorry for ghosts,” said Ryan. “They're like homeless dead people.”

We turned the corner onto Norman Road, where Mrs. Patty lives. That's when
I saw the most horrible, dreadful, disgusting, repulsive creature that ever walked the Earth.

It was Andrea Young! She was with her annoying little friend Emily, and they were dressed in their girly costumes. Emily's mom must have sewn that dumb queen outfit together again.

“What are
you
two doing here?” I asked.

“We're trick-or-treating, dumbhead,”
Andrea said. “Just like you.”

Andrea and Emily said they were heading for Mrs. Patty's house. I didn't want to walk with them, but it
did
feel safer with five of us walking together.

Finally we got to 176 Norman Road. It was a
big
house. It looked really old, like one of those haunted houses in the movies. There was an iron gate on the outside and some dead trees by the driveway.

“Wow!” Andrea said. “I didn't know school secretaries lived in mansions.”

When we got closer, we peeked through the gate and saw
Mrs. Patty's Halloween decorations. There were tombstones sticking out of the lawn. A foot was poking out of a window. There were jack-o'-lanterns with evil faces, spiders hanging from strings, and cats with eyes that lit up. Smoke was coming out of a big pot. Spooky music was coming out of speakers. There was a dummy sitting on a chair on the front porch. (I
hope
it was a dummy, anyway. If that thing moved, I decided, I was going to make a run for it.)

“This place is creepy,” said Emily.

Andrea shivered. “Mrs. Patty sure goes all-out when it comes to Hallo—”

But she didn't get to finish her sentence,
because suddenly the front gate squeaked open. Nobody even touched it or anything.

“Come inside…,” said a weird man's voice. “If you dare….”

“Who said that?” Michael asked after we heard the weird man's voice. “Headless Marvin?”

“It wasn't a person,” Ryan said. “It was one of those computer voices.”

“Let's get out of here,” said Emily, “before it's too late!”

She sounded like she was about to cry, as usual. I wanted to cry too, but I didn't want to look like a baby.

“I—I'm not scared,” I said.

“M-me neither,” said Michael.

We went through the gate and climbed the front steps. You could hardly see anything. Even though I was walking on my tiptoes, the stairs squeaked with every step.

I was trying to find the doorbell when I walked into some spiderwebs. They were all over my face. Yuck! Then I put my foot in something. It was stuck! I couldn't get it out!

“Aaaah!” I screamed, shaking my foot.

“You stepped in a pumpkin head, dork,” said Andrea.

“I knew that,” I said, finally shaking my foot free.

Any time somebody tells you that you did something dumb, always act like you did it on purpose. That's the first rule of being a kid.

Ryan rang the doorbell. It played funeral music. I was hoping that nobody would be home, but soon we heard footsteps and the front door slowly creaked open. I held my breath.

It was Mrs. Patty. She was still dressed in her witch costume. At least she didn't have an ax.

“Aha,” she said in a scary voice, “my last group of trick-or-treaters is finally here.”

“I love your Halloween decorations, Mrs. Patty,” said Andrea, who never misses a chance to brownnose a grown-up.

“What decorations?” Mrs. Patty said. “My house
always
looks like this.”

I was really sweating now.

“We better go,” I said. “It's way past our bedtimes.”

“Isn't there something you want to say first?” asked Mrs. Patty.

“Yeah,” I said, “how does that wart stay on your nose?”

“You're supposed to say ‘trick or treat,'” said Mrs. Patty.

“Oh,” we all said, “trick or treat.”

“Before I give you candy,” she said, “you must pass a test.”

“No, that's not how it goes,” said Michael. “All we have to do is say ‘trick or treat' and you give us candy. Then we leave. That's the way it's supposed to work.”

“Not here,” said Mrs. Patty. “Do you want the candy or not?”

“Okay, okay,” Ryan said, “what's the test?”

“If you go trick-or-treating,” said Mrs. Patty, “and they give out Twix bars at ten houses and Nestlé Crunch bars at five houses and Baby Ruth bars at seven houses, how many candy bars will you have altogether?”

Hey, that was totally not fair! Mrs. Patty was trying to turn trick-or-treating into math class. All day long we have to learn reading and writing and math. My brain is tired after school. I shouldn't have to do more schoolwork. Mrs. Patty isn't even a math teacher. She's a secretary!

“Twenty-two,” Andrea answered right away. “You'll have twenty-two candy bars altogether.”

“That is correct,” Mrs. Patty said as she turned around. “Come in. The candy is down in the basement.”

Down in the basement? Why couldn't she just keep a bowl of candy in the front hallway like normal people? Mrs. Patty is batty!

I didn't want to go down in Mrs. Patty's basement. I didn't want to see her husband's head in a bucket down there. It figured that Andrea had to be so good at math. If it weren't for her, we could have left.

Mrs. Patty opened a door and told us to go down the steps. It was dark. I could hardly see anything except some skulls on the walls with candles inside them. When we got to the bottom, we had to walk through a winding hallway. There were doors going off in different directions. I didn't see any candy anywhere. We weren't sure which way to go.

“We're lost!” Andrea said.

“Ouch!” Emily said. “I hit my head on something.”

“Let's turn around and make a run for it,” I said, “before it's too late.”

“I'm scared,” Michael said.

“I think I'm going to pee in my pants,” said Ryan.

“If I die,” Andrea told Emily, “you can have my candy.”

“You are a true friend,” said Emily. “You can have my candy if I die.”

I wished they would both die! I didn't even care if I got their candy or not.

We came to the end of the hallway. There was a door. A sign on the door said, “Candy in Here.” I put my hand on the doorknob.

“Don't open that door!” Michael said, just as I was about to turn the doorknob.

“Why not?” I asked.

“In horror movies,” Michael explained, “whenever somebody opens a door, a crazy guy wearing a mask leaps out with an ax or something.”

“Don't be silly,” Ryan said. “Open the door, A.J. We'll get the candy and get out of here.”

I looked at Ryan. Emily looked at Andrea. Michael looked at me. I didn't know what to say. I didn't know what to do. I had to think fast. So I turned the doorknob.

Do you want to know what was behind the door?

Well, I'm not going to tell you.

Okay, okay, I'll tell you. But you have to read the next chapter, so nah-nah-nah boo-boo on you.