Eddie opened it up, and read aloud:
“Little witch has come to say,
Ghosts and goblins like to play.
Won’t you come and join the fun?
There’ll be treats for everyone.”
“Yuk!” said Beth. “Who would send an invitation like that?”
Eddie stared at the name at the bottom. “It’s Mary Ruth, from school¡ This doesn’t sound like her.”
“Maybe it’s all she could find,” said Mother. “Anyway, all three of you are invited.”
Eddie kept reading. “It’s tonight¡ The party starts at the cemetery and we have to follow clues. Now, that’s more like it.”
“And it’s all girls!” said Beth.
“We won’t even go trick-or-treating. We won’t have to run into the boys,” added Caroline.
“Maybe that’s the way they do things here in West Virginia, deliver the invitation the day of the party,” Mother said. “I think it’s wonderful that you’re making friends at school. Finish your work, and you can spend the rest of the day deciding on costumes.”
The Malloy girls had always liked putting together their own costumes instead of buying them ready-made in the stores. Eddie decided to go as a football player, in one of Dad’s old uniforms; Beth would go as a robot from outer space, with a stocking over her hair to make her look bald; and Caroline would wear her Goblin Queen costume from the play at school.
Caroline simply could not wait for the party to begin, and when she heard Beth say that you went up one street to get to the cemetery, and Eddie saying no, you went up another, Caroline told them she would get on her bike and check it out.
It was almost five o’clock when Caroline left the house, and it was much colder then when they’d gone camping but still a beautiful October evening. Leaves fell down around her face and shoulders as she rode, and Caroline wondered if it ever got that beautiful in Ohio. Probably. She’d just never had as much fun back in Ohio as she did here, even though she had got herself and her sisters in trouble for stabbing the alien spaceship.
It wasn’t all her fault, though. She never would have punctured their spaceship if they hadn’t flattened Izzie. Why couldn’t the Hatford boys be normal? Or was that normal for boys? She didn’t know. Peter’s only fault was that he was a Hatford. Wally might have turned out all right if he hadn’t had Josh and Jake for brothers. It was the eleven-year-old twins she suspected of being the worst—Jake, for giving orders, and Josh, for the stuff he drew in his sketchbook.
She turned up a road at the edge of town. To the left of her were the gravestones of the Buck-man cemetery—Eddie was right—and on up ahead she could see the big iron gate at the entrance. She began pedaling up the hill, but suddenly skidded to a stop, letting her bicycle tip, and fell over into a clump of weeds.
There, not thirty yards ahead, were Jake, Josh, and Wally, taping a piece of paper to the iron gate of the cemetery.
Them¡
Caroline was torn between riding up to the boys and catching them in the act, or racing home to tell Beth and Eddie. She decided to stay put until the boys left, and as soon as they had gone through the gate and were out of sight, she pedaled home as fast as her feet would go.
She burst into the house and collapsed on the sofa, panting.
‘‘Caroline?” said Beth, coming over.
Eddie clattered downstairs. ‘‘What’s wrong?”
“Wait till you hear!” said Caroline, and told them that the boys had been taping something to the gate of the cemetery.
“Them!” cried Beth and Eddie together.
“I wondered why Mary Ruth didn’t say anything in school yesterday about a party!” said Eddie. “Those dumb boys¡ Didn’t they even think we might have called Mary Ruth to check it out?”
“But we didn’t,” Beth reminded her.
“You’re right, we didn’t. We almost fell for it. Well, there’s only one thing to do. Go over to the cemetery now and see what they’re up to.”
They took a flashlight and headed up the street. When they got to the cemetery, there was the note the boys had taped to the gate: Turn left and go to the first grave on the right.
Beth and Caroline giggled. “They must think we’re really stupid to fall for this,” said Beth.
“But we would have if I hadn’t seen them here,” Caroline reminded her.
“Let’s follow it and see what they were planning to do,” said Eddie.
They soon found the tombstone, a stone pyramid, and there was a note taped to that: Follow the winding drive to the fence.
Cautiously the girls followed the winding drive, and when the beam of the flashlight fell on the fence, there, just as the instructions said, was another piece of paper: Fifty steps to the right, then left to the shed.
They found the shed. Still another note. Follow the path on your left to the bench in the Remembrance Garden.
“I don’t like this,” said Beth. “They’re up to something, all right.”
Quietly they followed the path until they came to a bench by a high stone wall, with rosebushes all around—probably a beautiful place in the summer, Caroline thought, but sinister-looking now in the moonlight.
Eddie shone the flashlight around. There was a note on the bench: Sit here and wait for instructions, it said.
‘Oh, no, we don’t,” said Beth. “I’ll bet it’s wet paint.” Gingerly she put out one hand and tested. Dry.
“They were probably going to jump out of the trees with masks on and scare us silly,” said Caroline.
“Or throw water on us,” said Beth. “Look how we’d have been trapped here in this corner, right up against the wall.”
“Well, I think we ought to look around,” said Eddie. They climbed the bank beside the wall, making their way through the bare rosebushes, until they had scrabbled to the top of the stone wall behind the bench.
“Eddie!” said Caroline. “Look here.”
The girls stared at a pan sitting just behind the wall. It was an ordinary saucepan with a lid on it, as though someone had made a pot of stew and left it there to cool.
Slowly Caroline put out one hand and lifted the lid, as Eddie shone the light on it. “Spaghetti?” she said. And then she gave a little cry, because the spaghetti started to move.
“Worms!” gulped Beth.
“Spaghetti and worms!” said Eddie. “They were going to drop them on us, I’ll bet¡ They were going to be waiting right up there behind the wall, and as soon as we sat down on that bench, they were going to dump it on our heads!”
Caroline shivered with the thought. All three girls shivered.
“What are we going to do?” asked Beth.
“We are going to go home and leave the house again at five of eight, just as though we were going to a party,” said Eddie. “Just in case they’re watching. But after that …” She began to smile. “Trust me,” she said, and took out a pen and paper.
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
Fourteen
•
Party
Jake, Josh, and Wally sat on the wall overlooking the bench in the Remembrance Garden, and watched for a beam of a flashlight that would tell them the girls were coming.
“I can’t understand it,” said Jake. “We saw them leave the house around eight, we followed them to the cemetery … we saw them start off with the first clue before we came over here. Where the heck could they be?”
“Peter was smart,” said Josh. “He said he’d rather go trick-or-treating than get even with the girls. It’s a good thing he didn’t come. He’d never stop complaining.”
“Well, you’re doing a pretty good job of it yourself,” grumbled Jake.
“Maybe they got lost and decided to go back,” said Wally, feeling pretty cold and tired, too, and certainly ready to give up and go trick-or-treating. They had wasted enough time as it was.
“I don’t think so. Eddie wouldn’t give up that easily,” Jake told him. “They were
so close¡ There were only four clues altogether!”
“But they didn’t know there were only four. Maybe they thought they’d be here all night,” said Wally.
The boys sat huddled together another three or four minutes, scanning the dark cemetery for any sign of a light.
“Well, I don’t know what happened to them, but this is a lousy way to spend Halloween,” said Josh. “If we don’t go trick-or-treating soon, people will start turning off their porch lights and we won’t get anything. Peter’s out there getting all the candy.”
“Maybe he’ll share it,” said Jake.
“C’mon,” said Wally. “I’m not going to wait a whole year for Halloween to come again.”
“You guys give up too soon,” said Jake. “They’ve got to come.”
“Five more minutes, and then we go trick-or-treating,” said Josh.
They waited. The wind picked up, and it grew colder still. And though Wally strained to see, there was no beam of light, no voices, no sound of leaves or footsteps, no snap of a twig.
“They’ve gone home/’ said Jake. “They must have gone home!”
‘Or else they went over to Mary Ruth’s and found out there wasn’t any party,” said Josh.
“Hoo boy, if that happened, they’ll be ready to kill us,” said Wally.
Jake jumped down off the wall. “Okay, I give up. Let’s hit all the houses we can on the way back.”
“You and your lousy ideas,” grumbled Josh.
“You were in on it too!” Jake told him. “You helped choose the invitations. And you cooked the spaghetti, Wally, so don’t blame it all on me.”
“Don’t remind me,” said Wally. “What do we do with the spaghetti and worms?” He knelt down with the flashlight and lifted the lid on the saucepan. Then he gasped.
There was no spaghetti. No worms. Instead, there was a little piece of paper in the bottom of the pan, which read, You boys come home this instant. Mom.
Jake read it, then Josh.
“Oh, no¡ How did she find out!” said Josh.
“She must have missed her spaghetti. I told you we shouldn’t have used the whole box, Jake!” Wally moaned.
“Are we ever going to catch it!” whistled Josh.
But Jake wasn’t so sure. “Wait a minute,” he said. “Think about it.”
“I am thinking about it. We’re in trouble,” Wally croaked.
“Somehow this doesn’t sound like Mom,” Jake went on.
“Yes, it does,” said Wally.
Jake shook his head. “Mom would say, ‘You boys come home this minute.’ Did you ever hear her say ‘this instant’? And when she leaves us a note, she uses those little notepads from the hardware store, not a piece of yellow tablet paper. Also, she never prints, and this note is printed instead of written.”
Wally looked at Josh, Josh looked at Jake.
“Them?” they cried.
“Them!” said Jake. “They’re trying to ruin our Halloween. Somehow they found out what we were up to, and they figure we’ll go right home, confess everything, and lose out on trick or treats.”
Wally felt an enormous burden lifting off his chest. “Then we don’t have to go straight home?”
“Of course not. Somebody’s got to carry the pan, but there’s still time to hit a lot of houses.”
Wally carried the pan. They headed for the cemetery entrance, and the first row of houses just beyond.
“Where are your costumes?” one woman asked them. “You boys don’t look like trick-or-treaters to me.” But she gave them candy anyway.
The pickings were slim, however. Some people had already turned off their lights. Some houses had run out of candy, and still others were down to little boxes of raisins or pennies. The dentist was even giving out apples instead of candy¡
Desperate, they fanned out, trying to ring as many doorbells as possible. Sometimes, Wally knew, when you were the last one to come by, people dropped all the remaining candy in your bag, but it wasn’t happening now, and he had to work twice as hard and run twice as fast to fill up even his pockets.
They met again on the corner, and by twenty after nine there were no more porch lights on anywhere. A policeman cruising by stopped when he saw them and rolled down his window. “You fellas better get on home now,” he called.
Silently, glumly, Jake and Josh and Wally turned toward home, with barely enough candy to carry in their jackets. Mother always said that Halloween candy should last all year, and they’d hardly picked up enough to last through December.
“You know what I’m thinking?” Jake said as they turned up their street. “Maybe it’s time we called a truce. I mean, just give up bugging the girls. Forget about them. Find other guys at school to hang around with. Whether the Malloys stay here or not probably doesn’t have anything to do with what the Bensons decide. Those girls have ruined enough things for us. This Halloween was really the pits.”
“I’ve been trying to tell you that,” said Wally. “I’m getting a little tired of ‘The Malloys this …’ and ‘The Malloys that….’ Everything we do, practically, is connected to the Malloys.”
“Okay,” said Jake. “As of right now, we just forget about them. They can go, they can stay, it doesn’t make any difference to us.”
“I feel better already,” said Wally, with a sigh.
“So do I,” said Josh.
They went up the steps to the house.
“We should have done this long ago,” said Jake. “We’re free¡ Back to boy-stuff again.” He smiled. Josh smiled. Wally smiled. They opened the door.
There in the living room sat Eddie, Beth, and Caroline in their costumes, as well as Peter in his pajamas, a ring of chocolate around his mouth.
Mrs. Hatford hurried toward the boys. “Where in the world have you been?” she asked, and for a minute Wally thought she was going to sail right past them and on out the door. “Why did you invite these girls to a party and then not even have the decency to show up? You didn’t even mention it to me.”
“A party? “ cried Jake and Josh and Wally together.
But before they could say another word, the girls all chanted together:
“Little witch has come to say,
Ghosts and goblins like to play.
Wont you come and join the fun?
There’ll be treats for everyone.”
“Jake, I want you to take your money and run to the store for some Cokes or something. Josh, you’re in charge of games/’ Mrs. Hatford said.
And as Wally watched helplessly, his mother took all the candy they had collected, dumped it in a bowl, and passed it around the room for starters.
The Boys Start the War
Just when the Hatford brothers are expecting three boys to move into the house across the river where their best friends used to live, the Malloy girls arrive instead. Wally and his brothers decide to make Caroline and her sisters so miserable that they’ll want to go back to Ohio, but they haven’t counted on the ingenuity of the girls. From dead fish to dead bodies, floating cakes to floating heads, the pranks continue—first by the boys, then by the girls—until someone is taken prisoner¡
The Girls Get Even
Still smarting from the boys’ latest trick, the girls are determined to get even. Caroline is thrilled to play the part of Goblin Queen in the school play, especially since Wally Hatford has to be her footman. The boys, however, have a creepy plan for Halloween night. They’re certain the girls will walk right into their trap. Little do the boys know what the Malloy sisters have in store.
Boys Against Girls
Abaguchie mania¡ Caroline Malloy shivers happily when her on-again, off-again enemy Wally Hatford tells her that the remains of a strange animal known as the abaguchie have been spotted in their area. Wally swears Caroline to secrecy and warns her not to search by herself. But Caroline will do anything to find the secret of the bones and finds out the hard way that she should have listened.
The Girls’ Revenge
&nb
sp; Christmas is coming, but Caroline Malloy and Wally Hatford aren’t singing carols around the tree. Instead, these sworn enemies must interview each other for the dreaded December class project. Caroline, as usual, has a trick up her sleeve that’s sure to shock Wally. In the meantime, Wally and his brothers find a way to spy on the Malloy girls at home. The girls vow to get revenge on those sneaky Hatfords with a trap the boys won’t soon forget.
A Traitor Among the Boys
The Hatford boys make a New Year’s resolution to treat the Malloy girls like sisters. But who says you can’t play tricks on sisters? The girls will need to stay one step ahead of the boys and are willing to pay big-time for advance information. Homemade cookies should be all it takes to make a traitor spill the beans. In the meantime, Caroline is delighted with her role in the town play. Don’t ask how Beth, Josh, and Wally get roped into it—just wait until showtime, when Caroline pulls her wildest stunt yet¡
A Spy Among the Girls
Valentine’s Day is coming up, and love is in the air for Beth Malloy and Josh Hatford. When they’re spotted holding hands, Josh tells his teasing brothers that he’s simply spying on the girls to see what they’re plotting next. At the same time, Caroline Malloy, the family actress, decides she must know what it’s like to fall in love. Poor Wally Hatford is in for it when she chooses him as the object of her affection¡
The Boys Return
It’s spring break, and the only assignment Wally Hatford and Caroline Malloy have is to do something they’ve never done before. Wally’s sure that will be a cinch, because the mighty Benson brothers are coming. It will be nonstop action all the way. For starters, the nine Benson and Hatford boys plan to scare the three Malloy sisters silly by convincing them that their house is haunted. Meanwhile, everyone in town has heard that there’s a hungry cougar on the prowl. When the kids decide to take a break from their tricks and join forces to catch the cougar, guess who gets stuck with the scariest job?