“You look great!” I said happily.
“You look great too!” said Druscilla.
“Let’s trick-or-treat!” I cried.
Kristy waited for us at each house. Slowly our plastic pumpkin buckets filled with candy.
“Yea!” Andrew cheered as two more Tootsie Rolls dropped into his bucket.
“We will have to sort it all out later,” I said. “Mommy will let us have only two pieces a day.”
“My mom lets me eat it all at once,” said Nancy.
“Maybe we can have a sleepover at your house,” I said. “Then we could eat more candy.”
“Good idea,” said Hannie. “My mom makes me save my candy too.”
“Okay,” said Nancy. “I will ask.”
After we had gone to most of the houses in our neighborhood, it was time to visit the haunted house. We turned the corner onto our street. First we stopped off at my house and dropped off our plastic pumpkins. Then we headed down the street to the haunted house.
“Gee, look at that,” said Hannie.
There was a long line in front of the haunted house. It went halfway down the street!
“It looks like a big success,” said Kristy.
“We will raise a lot of money for Homes for Families,” said Hannie.
“Look,” I said. “There are even some television news teams. Our haunted house might be on the news tonight!”
I wanted to hang around outside, in case any of the newspeople needed to interview someone who had worked on the house. But everyone else wanted to go in. I was outvoted.
I felt very important as we passed the long line of people waiting to get in. (We could skip ahead because we were not customers.)
Inside, the house was even spookier than it had been on Thursday. Andrew decided the house was too scary for him, so Kristy offered to take him home. She would come back for us later.
The four of us walked through the house slowly. It was hard to believe that we had helped make it look so scary. Even though we had seen it all happen from the beginning, we still jumped when things leaped out at us. The scary music and sound effects were still creepy. We still grabbed each other’s hands when lights flickered and ghosts wailed. Just thinking about the real ghost upstairs made everything twice as spooky.
“This is great!” said Hannie.
We were on the second floor, looking at the bedrooms. Both Sam’s and Charlie’s rooms were very scary. One of Charlie’s classmates pretended to be stuck in the giant spiderweb. He was all tangled up in the ropes. It looked as if the big (fake) spider were going to get him. I hoped I would not have bad dreams about it.
“Everyone did a great job,” said Nancy.
“I think your room is best,” said Druscilla. “I am glad you were able to finish it, even though the house was haunted while you were working.”
“Thank you,” I said. Then I had a sudden thought. Earlier I had decided not to try to catch the ghost after all. But now that we were in the haunted house on Halloween night, it was too good a chance to pass up.
“Uh-oh,” said Nancy, looking at me. “I know that face. Karen is about to make us do something we do not want to do.”
“It is a great idea,” I said. “But it is scary. But we should do it. But you might not want to. But I hope you do.”
“This sounds bad,” said Hannie.
“Look,” I said quickly. “The house was haunted while we were working on it. It must still be haunted. And this is Halloween night. If the ghost is going to do something really spooky, it will be tonight.”
“I do not like the way you are thinking,” said Nancy.
“We should go up to the attic,” I went on. “We will hide up there quietly. Then we will be able to see the ghost when it begins to haunt the house. We will all be together, so we will be safe.”
“This is a bad idea,” said Nancy.
“I will do it,” said Druscilla.
“Me too,” said Hannie. “If we are all together.”
“Well, I will not stay down here by myself,” said Nancy.
So we slipped under the rope across the attic stairs. We crept up the stairs and slowly opened the door. The attic was quiet and dark. A beam of moonlight shone through the attic window. We did not turn on the electric light. Quietly we hid behind a pile of old furniture. And we waited.
Happy Halloween!
I hoped we would not have to wait long. The four of us huddled together. We decided, in whispers, that we would just run for the door if we got too scared.
“Shh!” Hannie said quietly.
A cold shiver went down my back. Across the attic, a door slowly creaked open. Not the door we had come in — a hidden door! One we had not seen earlier. I bit my knuckles. It was the ghost! We were about to catch the ghost at last!
Someone — or something — crept through the door.
“Do ghosts usually carry flashlights?” Druscilla breathed in my ear.
I frowned. No, ghosts usually do not carry flashlights, I thought. They are ghosts. They can see in the dark. I squinted hard, looking at the figure. Then my eyes widened. I recognized that costume. I had seen it just a few hours earlier, at the big house. It was Sam. Sam was the ghost after all!
I was about to leap up and accuse Sam of haunting the house when Hannie grabbed my arm. She pointed to the other door, the one we had come in. It was opening too. I saw Sam quickly hide. Someone with a flashlight sneaked in through the other door. It was getting crowded up here!
Just then Sam leaped out and flicked on the light switch. I saw Charlie standing there, frozen. Well, for heaven’s sake.
“You!” Sam shouted. “I knew it was you!”
“Me?” cried Charlie. “It was you! You were behind all the tricks!”
Then I leaped out from behind the furniture, with Hannie, Nancy, and Druscilla behind me. “It was both of you!” I cried.
My brothers looked shocked. Sam even leaned against the wall with his hand over his heart.
“Admit it,” I said, with my hands on my hips. “It was both of you.”
Sam and Charlie glared at each other. I glared at both of them. Then Sam’s mouth crinkled at the corners. Charlie’s eyes twinkled. First Sam, then Charlie started smiling, and then chuckling, and then laughing.
I could not help it. I started laughing too.
When we had all finished laughing, Sam and Charlie admitted they had each played some of the pranks. Each one was trying to scare the other’s class. They had not meant to scare me or my class, but it had happened anyway.
It turned out that Sam had found the secret door to the attic. So he had made all the weird attic sounds.
Charlie had made the other eerie noises. He had found speaking tubes in the walls. In the old days, people would use them to talk to their servants on different floors. The tubes were well hidden, so we never saw where the spooky wailing was coming from.
It was just chance that they had each thought of putting a bucket of ashes over the other’s doorway.
“Yes, but which one of you put the bucket of ashes over my doorway?” I asked. “It was not very funny at all.”
Charlie frowned. “I did not do that, Karen,” he said. “I promise. I would not do that to you.”
“It was not me either,” Sam said, holding up his hands. “I would not pick on a second-grader.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Well, then, who did it? Those ashes made a gigundo mess. I had to wash my hair three times. You should apologize.”
“I would apologize if I had done it,” said Charlie. “But I did not. Cross my heart and hope to die.” He crossed his heart.
“I swear that I did not do it,” said Sam.
I looked from one to the other. They both seemed very innocent. I did not know what to think. If they had not done it, who had?
“I guess it is just a Halloween mystery,” said Nancy.
“Maybe there is a real ghost after all,” said Hannie. She looked around the attic suspiciously.
“Well, let’s go downstairs and join the party,” I said. “I will get to the bottom of this someday.”
Sam and Charlie pounded down the attic steps ahead of us. They were bickering again.
“Your ghost noises were so lame,” said Sam.
“Your chain rattling was for babies,” said Charlie.
I grinned at Hannie and Nancy. Things were back to normal. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw Druscilla. She looked very innocent. Almost too innocent. All of a sudden I saw her nose twitch.
Uh-oh!
About the Author
ANN M. MARTIN is the acclaimed and bestselling author of a number of novels and series, including Belle Teal, A Corner of the Universe (a Newbery Honor book), A Dog’s Life, Here Today, P.S. Longer Letter Later (written with Paula Danziger), the Family Tree series, the Doll People series (written with Laura Godwin), the Main Street series, and the generation-defining series The Baby-sitters Club. She lives in New York.
Copyright © 1997 by Ann M. Martin
All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Inc., Publishers since 1920. SCHOLASTIC, BABY-SITTERS LITTLE SISTER, and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.
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All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
First edition, 1997
e-ISBN 978-1-338-06034-8
Ann M. Martin, Karen's Haunted House
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