The Jack-o-Lantern Box Read online

Some autumn days were just perfect, still warm enough to play outside, but with occasional cool wind, just to remind you that Halloween was coming. Jessy didn't want to waste a day when it wasn't raining, or cold, or starting to snow, and it was really annoying that she had to go to school.

  At least in the fall, there was hope that the teachers might do something interesting, since they were getting into the season too. Whether it was making spider webs or collecting autumn leaves, every day with Halloween in it was a good day.

  If they were lucky, there'd be a few days during Reading class when the teacher would read something scary to the class. The teachers were usually in the middle of a book, just like Jessy herself was, but they read them a lot slower, part of a chapter, a couple of times a week. It had been awful last year when the teacher read Charlotte’s Web, and everyone had to sit silently in their desks and pretend they didn’t want to cry. But you couldn’t cry in class, no matter what, because no one would let you forget it. That was the law.

  It was still warm enough to go to the playground for recess. Kids pushed and shoved as they lined up in the tiled hallway, past all the closed classroom doors, deceptively calm and quiet with their frosted glass windows, already covered with red construction paper leaves, and brown paper acorns.

  The school had one brick wall that was covered with vines, and they passed it on the way to the playground. The vines were already so autumn red that it looked like the wall was leaking blood. That made Jessy think about real blood streaming down the brick, disguised by the vines, and pooling on the grass below. Veins behind the vines, she thought, and then she thought it really hard, over and over, hoping that she'd remember the phrase to write it down when they got back to class.

  At the playground, Jessy and her friends sat on the parallel bars. Each side had a ladder made of metal rungs. Some kids called it the monkey bars, but that was a different structure, a whole complex of climbing bars, several sections square and tall, like the frame of a building, that you could climb through, inside and out.

  On the parallel bars, when you got to the top, you could walk across it, but with your hands, since it was high enough that your feet wouldn’t touch the ground. That was where they did the chicken fighting. Two contestants would start on opposite sides. You put your hands on the bars, which felt like rough metal pipes, and stretched your legs behind you, steadied on the ladder. When someone yelled “Go,” you'd swing toward each other, moving with your hands to meet in the middle, and swinging your legs, trying to knock the other kid to the ground.

  When teachers were around, though, all you could do was climb up it, hook your hands on the bars, and swing across. It was sort of like the dive bombing. To do that, you’d just swing on the swing set, until you got as high as you could possibly go. Then, when you were sure you couldn’t get any higher, you’d launch and jump right off. It seemed kind of scary the first time, but when you didn't get hurt, you just wanted to try it again.

  Sometimes they'd get into a synchronized dive bombing. There’d be a signal, and they’d all jump together. Or they’d all jump in shifts, first one swinger, then the next. That was dangerous, though, because it took longer, and that increased the chance that a teacher would see them. Once Gary, a kid in her class, did the first round of a staggered jump, and when he got caught, he had to sit in the back of the room for the rest of the day.

  Somewhere a kid had probably banged his head and died from jumping off a swing, but they'd never heard of anybody. Jessy had done it a million times.

  “A googolplex,” Karma would correct her.

  While they talked on the chicken-fighting bars, someone would occasionally drop down over the side, hanging upside down, attached by the knees.

  “You should never play with a Ouija board,” Corey had been saying. “Because you never know what spirits are talking to you.”

  “Jessy has a Ouija board,” Karma said, which caused a buzz.

  “It's no big deal,” Jessy said. “We play with it all the time.”

  “Does it tell you things?” Allison said.

  “Yeah, but it's kind of vague about it.”

  “If you start talking to spirits, they're going to come and haunt you,” Corey insisted. “That's what my Grandma says.”

  “My cousin told me how she went to this haunted house once,” Allison put in.

  “A real one? With a ghost?” they clamored.

  “No, the ones you walk through, and people try to scare you. Like a funhouse at the carnival.”

  When they went to the county fair every summer, there had never been a funhouse, but they'd all seen them in movies and TV shows.

  “It was out in the country, by this place where they have hayrides.”

  “I wish we had something like that here,” Jessy said, wistful.

  “Or maybe a real haunted house,” Karma added.

  “We do have a real haunted house,” Corey said.

  “Where?”

  Corey looked abashed.

  “You know. The Murder House.”

  The Murder House was supposed to be haunted, except that nobody had ever seen a ghost there. It still seemed awfully creepy, since none of the kids in the neighborhood could remember anyone living in it. The grass got mowed, and the leaves got raked, but nobody was ever seen going in or out.

  “It’s not a Murder House,” Jessy said. “That’s just a story.”

  “There was too a murder,” Allison said. “It was a long time ago. They were the richest family in town, and one night, while they were sleeping, the whole family was killed. And they never found the weapon!” Every word was underlined in her voice.

  “It sure looks haunted,” Corey said. Which nobody could argue with.

  ****