It was Halloween night, and Lance was all ready to start trick-or-treating!
With his costume on, and his pillowcase, for candy, in hand, he rushed
out of his house, and ran up the street to catch up with his sister,
Mallory, and her friends.
When they saw Lance, they stopped to gape at him: He had painted himself
all green, and was wearing a plastic horn on his head, plastic hooves
on his feet.
“What are you supposed to be?” asked little Annie Brickhouse.
“A Martian?”
“No!” replied Lance, proudly.
“A seahorse?” someone else guessed.
“No”, said Lance, “I’m a lime-flavored gummi
unicorn!”
“A lime-flavored gummi unicorn!” repeated Annie. “What
a dumb idea for a costume!”
Then everyone started laughing. Embarrassed, Lance turned to his sister,
Mallory, for support, but she was laughing along with all of the others.
“Look”, she giggled. “Lance is wearing the silliest
costume ever! He’s a lime-flavored gummi unicorn!”
Tormented, Lance burst into tears, dropped his pillowcase on the sidewalk,
and fled back into his house. He passed his mother on his way up the
stairs.
“Why aren’t you trick-or-treating with the others?”
she asked.
“Because they all hate my costume! I can’t go trick-or-treating
looking like this! I can’t even leave the house! Oh, mother! It’s
the worst Halloween ever!”
Lance spent the entire night, lying in bed, berating himself, crying.
Why?! Why couldn’t he choose an acceptable costume like everyone
else? Now, he was missing out! Missing out on Halloween! Missing out
on all of the good candy he would have collected! But worst of all,
he was missing out on an event that the whole school had been talking
about for months – ‘THE HOUSE OF HORRORS’!
Mr. Bice, the school janitor had completely transformed his home. He
had filled every room with walking and talking mechanical monsters!
Skeletons! Witches! Vampires! Werewolves! Mummies! Ghosts! Ghouls! Goblins!
Bats! Zombies! He had even made cackling, Psychotic Automaton Clowns!
Mr. Bice had built the ultimate ‘House of Horrors’, but
Lance was never going to see it! He was missing out on everything!
The next morning, Lance moped all the way to school. In the playground,
he saw little Annie Brickhouse.
“Oh no!” thought Lance. “She’s going to start
bragging about her costume, and about Mr. Bice’s terrifying ‘House
of Horrors’!”
But little Annie Brickhouse did not start bragging at all. Instead,
she stiffly scooped up some candy wrappers, and deposited them into
the dumpster, muttering, “Must clean the school! Must clean the
school.”
“Hmm,” said Lance, watching her. “That’s out
of character.”
Inside the school, Lance saw more examples of this odd behavior. The
hall was filled with children, and all of them were cleaning - sweeping,
mopping, scrubbing graffiti off of lockers.
When Lance tried to distract them, they just smiled pleasantly and muttered
the same phrase over and over again: “Must clean the school! Must
clean the school.”
“Something strange has happened!” concluded Lance. “But
what? WHAT?!” Determined to solve the mystery, Lance began studying
his classmates, hunting for clues.
Later on, little Annie Brickhouse raised her hand during music class
and announced, “Must go to the Girl’s Room. Must go to the
Girl’s Room.”
Curious, Lance excused himself as well, so that he could follow Annie.
As he suspected, she did not have to go to the bathroom at all. She
passed right by the Girl’s Room, and entered another room instead
- The Boiler Room!
Lance slipped in behind her and searched for little Annie in the darkness
of the boiler room. Finally, he found her in the corner, standing completely
still. Moving closer, Lance saw that the top of her head was opened
up. Wires were coming out, and the wires all led to extension cords,
which were plugged into the wall. Then Lance noticed that little Annie’s
eyes were glowing bright red, and that she was making light, electronic
humming noises.
“She’s a robot!” gasped Lance. “Mr. Bice must
have kidnapped all the kids from school and replaced them with identical
twin automatons, all programmed to keep the school spotless! I’ll
bet the kids are still in his basement, except frozen! I’ll bet
Mr. Bice is keeping them in giant jars!”
After school that day, Lance rushed to Mr. Bice’s house. He crawled
through an open window, crept down to the basement, and saw that he
had guessed correctly: Mr. Bice had frozen all of Lance’s schoolmates,
and was storing them in giant jars inside his freezer!
Swiftly, Lance grabbed a hammer and an ice pick. He smashed all of the
jars, chipped the children free.
“Mr. Bice is responsible!” Lance explained to them as they
thawed. “He used his House of Horrors to trap you! It was all
part of an ingenious plot to make his job easier!”
“That’s right”, a deep voice replied. Spinning around,
the children saw that it was none other than Mr. Bice!
“I admit it!” he shouted. “What Lance says is true!
But please, children, please try to understand! The school’s so
big! And you’re all so messy!”
But the children wouldn’t listen. Eager for revenge, they stormed
out of the freezer, lifted the old janitor, and threw him into his own
robot-building machine.
The machine puttered, shook, buzzed and honked until finally, out of
one end popped a jar containing Mr. Bice frozen inside a slab of ice.
Out of the other end popped a Mr. Bice robot twin. Grabbing a broom,
it rushed past the kids, its eyes glowing bright red.
“Must clean the school. Must clean the school.” it cried.
The children jumped up and down, laughing and cheering, as the robot
scurried out of the house.
“Look”, someone suddenly announced. “I found where
Mr. Bice hid our Halloween candy! It’s all still here!”
“Hooray!” they all replied.
Then Mallory stepped up beside her brother. She grabbed Lance’s
hand and raised it high. “Since Lance saved our lives, we should
share our candy with him!”
“Alright”, agreed little Annie Brickhouse, reluctantly.
“ But just this once.”
Then they all started eating, gorging themselves on chocolate bars,
lollipops, and especially gummi candy! They chewed, and they slurped,
and they grunted with joy. But no one was more joyful than Lance! Surrounded
by candy, and by all of his new friends, Lance decided that this was
not the worst Halloween after all - It was the best! This was the best
Halloween he’d ever had!
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