ONE Halloween Night BLATCHFORD WAS SCARY any night of the year not just on Halloween It was a very old part of town with crooked streets and bad lighting Cats yowled and scrapped in the alleys Teenagers with tattoos were known to hang out under the bridges by the park In the middle of it all a huge apartment building loomed like a castle darkened with age The Blatchford Arms poked up above all the buildings around When there was a full moon it looked as though the building’s two towers were nibbling at it Some said the place was haunted October 31st while there were very few children wandering around the streets in Blatchford things were different inside the apartment building Children and a few dogs raced along the hallways The costumed kids rang doorbells and shouted Halloween apples They clattered up and down the staircases Some rode the elevator which
Quit playing with that elevator Herman Spiegelman the caretaker growled at the Lubinitsky girls There were always move-outs on the last day of the month Herman had a big job ahead of him getting Apartment 713 cleaned and ready for a new tenant Don’t you be drawing nothing on these walls He shook a mop handle at the smallest Lubinitsky who did in fact have a black crayon clutched in her free hand One mark and a monster with sharp teeth’ll come and gobble you up while you’re sleeping Three floors down the Bellini sisters tried to coax their little brother Angelo away from a basket of cookies old Mrs Floss had left on a stand outside her door No Mine he shrieked He began to jump up and down trying to grab more cookies even though his hands were already full Amanita Bellini yanked at his Dracula cape while Corrina squealed and groaned like a creature in pain rescued the basket and held it out of reach The sign says Help yourself to a cookie She tried to make herself heard over his howls That means one One cookie By this time Mrs Floss had opened her door She waved her cane at Angelo She was very old and had a creaky
voice but the girls managed to hear her say That boy should be locked up in a cage in the basement Meanwhile the Hooper kids had worked their way from the top of the building down to the second floor Benjamin dressed as a spaceship was having some trouble with the narrow halls His sisters one on each side helped to steer him They had just spent half an hour fixing a display he had bumped into Six plastic skeletons and a full-size Frankenstein outside the Murplestein apartment had toppled and scattered along the hallway against their apartment door whimpering Why can’t you dress like something normal Lucy Hooper grumbled Like Batman or Raggedy Andy Or a peanut Emma Hooper added Hubert and Hetty Croop costumed as salt and pepper shakers had only managed to get down to the end of their own hall when everything went dark They would have grabbed onto each other for support but that was not especially easy for salt and pepper shakers to do Hubert tripped over Hetty’s feet fell and began to roll this way and that Hetty tried to get down on her knees to help but the stiff cardboard of her costume made that difficult Some eerie shrieks sent them scrambling back along the hall By the time the lights came on they were both huddled
Nothing rats in the alleys teens pierced like pincushions loose dogs or whiskered bin-divers was going to stop them from filling their stash-bags with candy In Blatchford there weren’t a lot of houses with their porch lights on to welcome roving ghouls and goblins but the twins knew exactly where to find them After what seemed like hours combing the streets Dwight The door opened Mrs Croop gasped Come here Sylvester she called to her husband Our children have been attacked The Fergus twins Dwayne and Dwight were faster than any other children in the building They had already visited all the floors of the Blatchford Arms Their pillowcases were half-filled with treats when they burst out the front doors lifted up his rubber Scream mask to get a breath of air What time is it Who cares Dwayne poked his brother with the long spiky fingernails on his Freddy Krueger glove Dwight scooped up a half-eaten apple someone had dropped on the sidewalk and chucked it at Dwayne It fell into his bag of treats Hey Dwayne yanked Dwight’s mask until it stretched out to nearly twice its size Then he let it snap back
