A Ghost Tale for Tuesday

My middle child really got into Halloween this year. He's had his costume idea since August, when they started showing ads and music videos featuring Heath Ledger as the Joker from The Dark Knight. He executed on it beautifully. They did fun Halloween activities in middle school as well - not dressing up and eating cupcakes, but writing creepy tales and watching scary movies.

The following story is one he wrote for Language Arts, using as many of the week's list of spelling words as he could. I'm not going to underline the spelling words, though - you'll have to just guess at that part. The names have been changed to single letters, at the author's request. Enjoy...

Halloween Night, an untrue story...

Once upon a time, on a Halloween night, I was running through the extensive woods near our home. The pervasive clouds tried to block out the sparse light of the full moon in meager attempt at total darkness. The moon still found a course through the accumulating clouds and mist. This has surpassed my expectations, I thought.

It was true; it was a perfect Halloween night.

As I ran, I finally came upon a small barren area surrounding a house. My brother S waited by the house. When I got to him, he called my sister's name and T got there in a moment. "Is this the house?" she asked.

"Yes," S answered. I wasn't sure, but it looked like it could be haunted. I hoped it was, or else this was a waste of a Halloween.

I had found the house three weeks ago, and we were sure of two things. One: it was abandoned. Two: there was a reason. So we'd been planning to sneak in since I found it. Now that we were here, I wasn't so sure.

We tried the door first. Locked. We tried the windows second. Boarded up. S searched around the house for a back door or something. When he got back, he told us that there weren't any back doors or secret doors. Then he said we should give up and leave. Strange, S wasn't a person who gives up easily.

T and I went around the house. T saw it first. "What are you talking about, S? There's a door right here," she said as she reached for the door knob.

"It's locked! Don't even bother!" S said, slapping away her hand. For some reason I don't know my hand shot out and turned the door knob. It opened easily. Then a wave of nausea hit me. It passed in seconds.

Sean made a strange screeching sound and lunged at me. He punched me in the nose, then started strangling me. Then he let go and acted as if nothing happened. Next I heard a sharp hiss. T and I went through the door, S following.

The room was empty except for a table. On the table was an open box. Sean hurried over and closed the box. "What?" he asked us as we stared at him. T went over to the box and opened it. S screamed a terrified scream and they both disappeared. I ran to the box. Just as I stopped, I disappeared too.

Epilogue: Three hours later...

S, T and I left the small house as the clouds finally covered all of the full moon. We started running home. Mom and Dad would be worried about us. I was hungry. We all acted as if nothing had happened. After all, nothing had happened. Then, a single ray of moonlight slipped through and shined across our gray eyes. Well, something had happened to S, T and B.

But nothing happened to us.