Halloween Night by Mary Calhoun

4.8

Mary Phillips asked, “Are you going to have a Halloween party again this year?”

“Well sure - why not?” Katie John said. “If my mother lets me, I guess —”

“Hey, Sally!” The fat girl ran off down the school hallway. “Katie John’s going to have another Halloween party!”

“If my mother lets me!” Katie called after her.

The idea worked and developed in Katie’s mind during the school day. A Halloween party. Yes, it should be fun.

On the way home from school, Katie John and Sue were full of chatter about the idea. There could be fortunetelling and popcorn balls, and a tubful of apples in water, and hide-and-seek in the dark rooms of Katie’s house.

Mother agreed to the party. “I’ll help,” Katie promised. “I’ll help with everything. You won’t have to do hardly a thing!”

Then the girls rushed off to Katie’s room to make invitations. On the outside of folded heavy paper they colored orange jack-o’-lanterns. On the inside they printed;

The witches summon you

When: the scariest night of the year

Where: Katie John Witch house

What time: The witching hour (7:30 pm.)

Why: For fearful, frightening fun

Sue made an invitation for herself as a souvenir. Katie John finished the invitations she’d been working on and counted all they’d made. Yes, there were enough for all the girls in their room.

“Twelve,” she said. “Twelve guests.”

“No, thirteen,” Sue said. “There’ll be thirteen of us. You didn’t make an invitation for yourself.”

Thirteen! Thirteen at a Halloween party!

“Oh no-o,” Katie John groaned. “Something awful will happen!”

“Last year we had the same number and everything went all right,” Sue tried to comfort her.

Katie John was not sure. Every time she set out to do something interesting, every time she had a good idea, something went wrong! Well, this party was not going to have any mistakes! This party is going to be one time when nothing goes wrong!

Next, the girls planned their costumes. Sue said she’d wear her witch’s costume from last year. Katie John decided to be a fortuneteller, for Sue insisted Katie should be the one to tell the fortunes. It was time for Sue to go home for supper, and the girls parted, agreeing to distribute the party invitations at school tomorrow.

Katie John was dissatisfied with the idea of dressing as a fortuneteller, however. This year she’d wanted to be something really horrible for Halloween. At the supper table she asked Dad.

“I don’t know whether to be a fortuneteller or not. That’s not very horrible. What’s the most horrible thing you can think of, Dad?”

Mother spoke thoughtfully. “You know, I think the most horrible thing would be a black ghost. White ghosts are common, but imagine seeing a black ghost in the fog, floating over the white field at night. Brrr.” Katie looked at her mother. She supposed all Mother thought about was making dresses, dinners and suppers, yet here she’d come up with a piece of imagination that was truly wonderful. A black ghost! Katie John shivered.

She must be a black ghost at the party. Still, what about the fortunetelling? Katie John was doubtful. But the idea of being a black ghost was too dramatic to resist. She’d simply tell fortunes as a ghost. After all, it wasn’t everybody who had her fortune told by a black ghost.

“That’s what I want to be,” Katie John decided. “Mother, will you help me with the costume?”

As they did the supper dishes, she and Mother planned, and Katie John felt closer to her mother than she had in a long time»

“I’ll be completely black,” Katie John said.

The next day before school Katie and Sue passed out the party invitations. All the girls seemed eager for the party and free to come to it.

After school, Katie John and Sue went to Katie’s room to plan the fortunetelling. Fortunes for all the girls would be written out on folded slips of paper, numbered, and put in a bowl. With the bowl on a small table before her, Katie John was to sit under the greenglass lamp in the dining room. First Katie would read the palm of her “client’s” hand. Then she would have the girl pick a card from the deck. The number on the card would be the number of her fortune.

Katie John sharpened pencils, and she and Sue set themselves to the fascinating business of figuring out fortunes.

“They should be something really different,” Katie said. “Fortunes about dark men and journeys over water are too common. And they shouldn’t be something that the girls can prove won’t come true by the very next day. Like, don’t say ‘Tomorrow you will find a dollar.”

“You will be chased by a dog, but you will get away,” Katie John wrote. After all, it could happen sometime in a girl’s life. She wasn’t saying when.

“You will receive a present smaller and better than you ever expected,” Sue continued. Some of the girls might get wristwatches for Christmas.

Katie wanted to write something really out of the world. Oh, heavens. She sat up straight. That was an amazing idea!

“You will marry a man from another planet,” she said. “How is that for a fortune!”

Sue looked half frightened. “What a fortune!” She shivered. “I hope I won’t get it!”

Now the girls had a lot of ideas. “Your tomcat will turn out to be a girl and have kittens.”

“You will grow up to be a raving beauty.”

“A witch will be watching you when you go home tonight, but you won’t be able to see her.”

“You will rescue a squirrel with a wounded paw and make a pet of him.”

“Trouble lies in your future unless you smile every day before breakfast.”

“You will perform on television and be a tremendous success.”

“A very strange visitor will come, to your house. Beware!”

The girls finished writing the fortunes, folded the slips of paper, and put them in Katie’s dresser drawer for safekeeping.

Katie John continued the party planning in the week that remained before Halloween. Of course Sue helped, but Katie John would be the hostess, and the responsibility that nothing go wrong was on her shoulders. Careful planning right down to the last detail was the key, she decided. She’d think it all through, every difficulty. She planned exactly where the tubful of apples in water would be placed, so that no one would come running down the stairs in the dark and fall into it. She thought out the sequence of events for the party. There shouldn’t be any dull spots of aimless milling around. When everybody had arrived and admired one another's costumes, she’d start the fortunetelling. While each girl was having her fortune told, the rest, in two teams, could be passing an apple along under their chins. And if masks or costumes made apple passing hard, so much the more fun.

Next they’ll all go down to the cellar and bob for apples. But everyone couldn’t bob for apples at once. What could the others be doing? Something in another room of the basement — aha! — spaghetti worms! Sue could supervise the apple bobbing while Katie sat in the cellar with a big bowlful of cold cooked spaghetti. The girls could come in one at a time, and she’d say, “This is a test of your courage,” and she’d push the girl’s hand into the cold spaghetti. “This is a bowlful of worms,” she’d say, “and the one who eats the most gets a prize!” There ought to be plenty of screams out of that. Then she’d tell the girl that it was really spaghetti and make her promise not to tell the others who hadn’t been in.

When all that was over, they’d play hide-and-seek in the basement with the lights out — that should be lots of fun — and they’d go upstairs for refreshments. With her mother, Katie John planned the party food popcorn balls, cookies, little pumpkin tarts (Mother’s idea), and orange punch. Katie was almost afraid to help with the preparation of the food for fear she’d do something awful but Mother promised to check her on every step, working right alongside.

As to the other Halloween details, Mother and Dad agreed to answer the door to hand out cookies to the trick-or-treaters, so that Katie John would be free to run her party. Dad agreed to carve the big pumpkins for the front porch and a few small ones for dark corners of the cellar.