In Laymon's Terms

Jimmy was “the Mummy.” Earlier that night, Donna and I had spent ages wrapping him up in a white bedsheet that we’d cut into narrow strips. We kept pinning the strips to Jimmy’s white longjohns. It took forever. It would’ve driven me nuts except for Donna. Every so often, she gave Jimmy a poke with a pin just to keep things interesting. We finally got it done, though, and Jimmy made a good-looking mummy.

My costume was easy. I was Huck Finn. I wore a straw hat, an old flannel shirt and blue jeans. I had a length of clothesline over one shoulder, tied at the ends to a couple of my belt loops to look like an old rope suspender. As a final touch, I had a corncob pipe that my dad let me borrow for the night.

So that was our group: who we were and how we were dressed that night.

Jimmy and me, Donna and Peggy, Alice and Olive and Nick.

Seven of us.

Except for Donna, we carried paper bags for our treats. Donna carried a flashlight. For the most part, she took up the rear. She usually didn’t even go to the doors with us, but waited on the sidewalk while we rang doorbells, yelled “Trick or treat!” and held out our bags to receive the goodies.

For the first couple of hours that night, everything went along fine. If you don’t count Nick going on occasional rampages, bopping us on the heads or prodding us in the butts with his light saber, proclaiming, “The Dark Side rules!” After a while, Jimmy’s bandages started to come off and droop. At one point, E.T. (or Yoda) fell down and skinned her knee and spent a while bawling. But nothing major went wrong and we kept on collecting loot and roaming further and further into unknown territory.

It was getting very late when we came to a certain house that was not at all like the others on its block. Whereas they were brightly lighted and most had jack-o’-lanterns on their porches, this house was utterly dark. Whereas their shrubbery and lawns were neatly trimmed, this house seemed nearly lost in a jungle of deep grass, wild foliage and brooding trees. It also seemed much older than the other houses on the block. Three stories high (not two like its neighbors) and made of wood (not brick), it looked as if it belonged to a different century.

The houses on both sides of the old one seemed unusually far away from it, as if whoever’d built them had been afraid to get too close.

Though Nick usually ran from house to house without returning to the sidewalk, cutting across lawns and brandishing his light saber with Peggy and Olive and Alice chasing after him, this time he thought better of it. All four of them came back to the sidewalk, where Jimmy and I were walking along with Donna.

“What’s with that house?” Nick asked.

“It’s creepy-eepy-eepy,” said either Olive or Alice, whichever one was the fairy godmother princess ballerina.

“It doesn’t look like anyone lives there,” Donna said.

“Maybe like the Munsters,” I said.

“I think maybe we should skip this one,” Donna said.

“Hey, no,” Jimmy protested. “We can’t skip this one. It’s the best one yet!”

I felt exactly the same way, but I never could’ve forced myself to disagree with Donna.

She shook her head, her bangs swaying across her brow. “I really don’t like the looks of it. Besides, it’d be a waste of time. Nobody’s there. You won’t get any treats. We might as well just...”

“You never know,” Jimmy interrupted. “Maybe they just forgot to turn their lights on.”

“I think Donna’s right,” I said. “I don’t think anyone’s there.”

Jimmy shook his head. By this time, all the “bandages” had slipped off his head. They dangled around his neck like rag necklaces. “If somebody does live in a place like that,” he said, “wouldn’t you wanta meet him? Or her. Maybe it’s a creepy old woman. Just imagine. Like some crazy old witch or hermit or something, you know?”

For a while, we all just stood there and stared at the dark old house—what we could see of it through the bushes and trees, anyway, which wasn’t much.

Looking at it, I felt a little shivery inside.

“I think we should just go on,” Donna said.

“You’re in charge,” Jimmy muttered. He’d been ordered by his parents to obey Donna, but he sounded disappointed.

She took a deep breath and sighed. It felt good to watch her do that.

“It’s probably deserted,” she said. Then she said, “Okay, let’s give it a try.”

“All RIGHT!” Jimmy blurted.

“This time, I’ll lead the way. Who else wants to come?”

The three girls jumped up and down, yelling, “Me! I do! Me! Me-me-me!”

Nick raised his light saber and said, “I’ll come and protect you, Princess Donna.”

“Any trouble,” I told him, “cut ’em to ribbons with your flashlight.”

“Take that!” He jabbed me in the crotch.

He didn’t even do it very hard, but the tube got me in the nuts. I grunted and gritted my teeth and barely managed not to double over.

“Gotcha!” Nick announced.