Once Upon a Halloween Read Online Free PDF

"You remember their names from last Halloween?" he asked.
        "Huh uh."
        "No?" Mandy asked. "Then how do you know them?"
        Bret hesitated.
        Uh-oh, Jeff thought. What'd he do?
        "Oh, well, I phoned 'em up."
        First I've heard about this, Jeff thought.
        "You phoned them?" he asked.
        "What for?"
        "Just school."
        "What about school?"
        "Spill the beans, kid," Phyllis helped.
        "Why exactly did you call them?" Jeff asked.
        "On account of Mrs. Carter saying how there's no such thing as ghosts."
        "Mrs. Carter, your teacher?"
        He nodded. "She read us about the Headless Horseman so that's how ghosts came up."
        "When was that?" Jeff asked.
        "Wednesday."
         "This Wednesday?"
        He nodded. "So Mrs. Carter, she said there's no such thing as ghosts."
        "So naturally," Mandy said, "you corrected her."
        "Well, sure. She was wrong. Only then she said I was wrong, and how ghosts are nothing but fragments of the imagination, I said they're as real as she is, and then everyone laughed at me."
        "Can't imagine that," Phyllis said.
        At the foot of the long driveway, they walked through a glow of light and stepped into the middle of the road. This close to the dead-end, there was little need to worry about traffic.
        The kids started across the road, heading toward the house at the far corner.
        "Hang on," Jeff said. "Don't go traipsing off just yet."
        They came back to him.
        "So what possessed you to phone those two women?" he asked his son.
        "Shannon and Laura," Bret said.
        "Right. Them."
        "It was 'cause they live in a haunted house." Phyllis snorted.
        Bret glanced at her. He didn't look angry, though. He simply looked as if he knew more than she did, but chose not to hold it against her.
        "What makes you think their house is haunted?" Mandy asked.
        "You told me so."
        Mandy's mouth fell open. "Huh?"
        "Don't you remember? We came trick or treating and nobody was living in the house..."
        "Gosh, that was years ago."
        "I was four."
        "Jeez!"
        "And you said nobody lives in there 'cause of the ghosts."
        "Huh?"
        "You did. You said how old Mr. Witherspoon chopped his wife up into little pieces and ate her..."
        "Mandy?" Jeff asked.
        She grimaced at him. "Well, he did."
        "And you had to tell Bret about it when he was four years old?"
        "Neat play," Phyllis told her.
        "Butt out," Mandy said.
        Bret spoke up again. "And then how Mr. Witherspoon hung himself..."
        "Hanged," Jeff corrected him.
        "Mandy, she told me they were both haunting the house with their ghosts, and that's how come nobody wanted to live there. But then somebody moved in. Shannon and Laura. We saw them last year and the year before and I liked them. So I phoned them up to see if they'd seen the ghosts."
        Smiling, Jeff shook his head. "You actually... interviewed them?"
        "Well, we talked. They were real nice."
        "How'd you get their number?" Mandy asked.
        "The operator."
         "You 're the operator," Phyllis said.
        "So had they seen any ghosts?" Mandy asked.
        "Uh-huh."
        "Is that a yes?" Jeff asked.
        "Uh-huh."
        "They got a long-necked ghost. That's Mr. Witherspoon. And they got a ghost in pieces. That's Mrs. Witherspoon. They see Mr. Witherspoon walking around in the middle of the night sometimes and his neck is like about a foot long 'cause that's what happens when you get... hanged."
        "Sure," Phyllis said.
        "Laura said he was really scary at first, only later on they got use to him. Then he wasn't so scary anymore. But Mrs. Witherspoon, pieces of her keep showing up. Like in Shannon's cornflakes? And sometimes when Laura's making