The day of the long anticipated Halloween Party at the boarding house arrived. Gerald and Arnold both felt proud of themselves. They felt like real men being invited to associate with all the grownups of the neighborhood. Instead of being sent off to bed, as they might have in previous years, they both left Gerald's house to prowl towards Arnold's home boarding house with purpose. Manfully, they left Timberly, dressed as a pumpkin, behind on Gerald's front porch with a jealous frown and Gerald's mother's with a wide smile on her face. Down the street-light illumined sidewalk, they paced toward their destination. Its exterior looked different tonight. The lightbulbs in all the lamps of the boarding house had been switched to green bulbs for an extra spooky effect so that all the windows glowed green. The outline of a giant spider's web was taped on the stoop's topmost step, and webbing climbed the door. Giant plastic tarantulas and glowing eyes dangled on either side of Gerald as he bravely rang the door bell.

"Hello?" Grandpa Phil swung the door open. "Oh, it's you boys! Come on in! It won't be a party without you!"

"Thanks!" Gerald smiled as he strode through the door. He had been to the boarding house a million times before but tonight, his arrival was extra special. He puffed out his chest as he stuck his fingers into the collar of his superhero costume.

"Oooh, Arnold, and you're looking especially frightful tonight!" Grandpa Phil said admiringly of his grandson. Arnold pushed off the little black face mask off his forehead and grinned so that a pair of plastic vampire fangs might be revealed.

"Thanks!" the boy beamed. Arnold's costume was that of a vampire with a twist.

Arnold and Gerald walked into the party area. Arnold's living room had been transformed. It was the same space where they might have gathered to watch sports games or exchange Christmas presents. Only now, instead of tinsel or sports pennants, they found several dozen adults wearing scary or fun costumes. There, displayed on a table where the pumpkins they had each carved. Grandma Gertie had added her creation, too, but her jack o'lantern was a carved watermelon instead of a proper pumpkin. The first person they met on entering the party was Susie, who was carrying a bus tray like a hostess.

"Trick or treat!" she sang out as she paused with the tray for Arnold and Gerald to select something from it. There were what appeared to be caramel candy apples on it. Gerald reached for one, but Arnold stopped his hand abruptly.

"No, no this one!" Arnold explained as he snatched up two of the treats. He turned towards Gerald to explain after Susie had walked away to show the tray full of food to other people at the party. "Susie really likes crushed almonds so she always decorates the candy apples she makes with almonds. See?" Arnold held the two treats aloft before passing one to Gerald.

"Then what are the ones with coconut on 'em?" Gerald questioned his friend. Before answering, Arnold finished chewing a bite of caramel apple.

"Caramel coated onions," Arnold explained as two of the other guests simultaneously bit into the tricks Susie had so carefully made. Mr. Green's face soured after he had bit the onion and Harvey the mailman gagged at the unexpected flavor.

Arnold and Gerald studied the room all the around them. Grownups were walking back and forth or conversing in groups. To one side of the room was a dining table with many chairs clustered around it. Arnold sat down in one of the chairs and turned toward the plastic skeleton sat in the chair beside him as if he might talk to it.

"Why, hello Arnold!" His Grandma Gertie exclaimed as she found her grandson. She poured Arnold some juice from a clear glass pitcher with fake spiders in the ice cubes. Arnold held up the glass she gave to him to see one of the icecubes better.

"Thanks, Grandma! What's your costume?" he asked politely.

"I'm the dentist, don't you know!" Gertie cackled. "VERY scary! Oh, and for you boys, I've got toothbrushes instead of candy!" she cackled some more.

"Now that is scary," Gerald observed as he received his own cup of spider juice.

"Oh!" Grandma Gertie observed as the doorbell rang. "That might be another guest! Arnold, will you be a dear and answer the door? Your grandpa is busy lending a hand with ring toss."

Arnold turned his head to look. His grandpa was hiding behind a ring toss board with fake severed hands on it and other creepy things. One of those hands was actually his Grandpa's real hand suck through the back of the board. He reached up and tried to snatch the rings midair, much to one of the guest's fright.

"Sure thing, Grandma," Arnold said pushing himself up from the table and away from his juice cup. Arnold strolled back down the hall. He cracked open the door.

"Helga! And Phoebe and Harold and Sid and Stinky. How are you all doing?" Arnold asked. Helga sniffed.

"What, you're not going trick or treating tonight?" Helga asked. Arnold shook his head softly.

"Nah. Although you can probably come to Grandpa's party for a bit if you like. Mr. Huynh is going to do a fortune telling."

"Oooh," Phoebe uttered, impressed.

"Ha!" Helga scoffed. "That's nice, Arnold, but aren't you forgetting something? Some door greeter who forgets the candy!"

"Oh. Sorry. The candy's in here," Arnold said lifting up a small box like a treasure chest. Phoebe opened up the lid and was startled as a tropical snake toy and some bats dangled from its lid from a bit of fishing line. The shy girl leapt backwards on her feet.

"Ah-ha, nice trick, Arnoldo," Helga blurted out with impatience. "Now pay up!" she said holding out her already half-filled candy sack.

"Fangs. It's neck to see you!" Arnold wise-cracked, in keeping with his vampire costume.

"Smarty-pants," Helga grumbled as Arnold dropped a few salt water taffies in her Halloween treat bag. She wiped her feet on the Halloween greeting mat at the door to stroll inside.

What Helga, Phoebe, and her friends found there was Mr. Huynh sitting in a corner with a cardboard box and a crystal ball on it. Mr. Huynh himself was seated on a braid rug and wearing a fortuneteller's hat. He grinned as Phoebe settled herself on the carpet across from him.

"Hello little girl!" he said. "Would you like to have your fortune told? I see.. Behind you is a ghost!" Someone in a costume leapt out and shouted "boo!" at Phoebe. After a small fright, she got to her feet and let Sid sit down in her place.

"Oh, and for you," Mr. Huynh said to Sid. "I also see a ghost!"

"Boo!" the man said again, sounding an awful lot like Ernie.

"I can't believe you fell for that twice!" Helga lamented. Mr. Huynh gestured a finger towards her.

"Come 'er little girl! You, too! Would you like a fortune read?" Helga sat down on the carpet.

"And within my crystal ball I see it!" Mr. Huynh uttered out ominously. "I see a great secret revealed!"

"Ah-ha," Helga coughed as she tugged her shirt collar out of anxiety. "Now that is a scary fortune if ever I heard one."

"Aw, come on you guys!" Harold declared after some time. "Let's get back to trick-or-treating! Or else all the candy that'll be left is old man Ziggy who gives out boxes of raisins!"

"Yeah," Sid and Phoebe both agreed.

"Hm, well thanks for coming," Arnold lamented. "Bye!"

"Ooh, well, if you're trick-or treating," Grandpa Phil spoke up suddenly, causing the kids to pause and turn at the door, "how about I show you the best of all places in Hillwood to go? I'll be your chaperone!"

"What are you talking about, Grandpa?" Arnold asked, suddenly wondering, faintly, at the back of his ordinarily trust-obscured mind if his Grandpa was up to new tricks. Grandpa's next words did not help to inspire his faith.

"Oh, come on trust me!" Phil said with a bit too much glee. Nonetheless, Arnold and his friends watched Phil don a fireman's hat with hatchet on it, then followed him up the street. He turned, then turned again to a small roundabout. They paused in front of a house with ravens on its door. Phil rang the doorbell.

"Trick or treat!" Arnold and his friends chorused together, which was the funnest part. The women who answered the door wearing a witch costume dropped some candy in their treat bags.

"Ooh!" said she. "You are brave children coming down this street."

"And why is that?" Sid pried.

"Haven't you heard?" the woman asked. "On this street there used to a little girl who owned a ferret. One day, the ferret got loose. It ran out of the house and got hit in the street. And ever since then, it's roamed undead, following little children around to try to play with them. You should be careful that it doesn't try to follow you home." Phil and the neighbor gave one another a cunning wink.

"Thank you, Mrs. Gedarlb!" Phil waved happily. "Let's hit a few more houses, then wrap up shall we?" The group of kids and one adult began to walk back down the dimly lit street. Then all of a sudden, they heard a thump. Sid cringed.

"You don't suppose the story that lady told was true, did he?" Sid gulped. "About the undead, zombie-ghost ferret?"

"Of course not!" Harold spoke up loudly. "I don't believe that!" And yet, both boys jumped at the sound of rolling trash can.

"Let's just... Get home, alright?" Phoebe squeaked. Helga snuck along the street close beside Arnold.

As they walked further on, they could not see they were being followed by Ernie and Mr. Kokoshka. The two men ran along behind a wooden board fence, then peered out at the kids and an all-knowing Phil. As Phil winked and gave a thumbs up, Ernie thumped a scrap of wood against an upholstered board to make a strange thud. The thuds began to come every three seconds, growing in strength from dim to loud.

"Ack! What's that?!" Sid gasped. "Run!"

"Willikers!" Stinky exclaimed in his own fright.

The kids all jogged back to the boarding house. Gerald, a little frightened himself, sagged against the door after it had been closed behind him. "Ah, we're safe!" he sighed with relief from behind the locked door. Mr. Huynh appeared in the hall.

"What are you so frightened about?" Mr. Huynh asked them.

"Oh, nothing much!" Phil said smugly. "Just we have a zombie ferret following after us 'cause he likes children! Maybe for breakfast!"

"Grandpa!" Arnold objected, narrowing his eyes at the man. There were more thuds from behind the door.

"Oooh! The wrath of the ghost?" Mr. Huynh exclaimed. "Come with me! Here, we will go upstairs to hide!" Mr. Huynh walked up the staircase. But it was pitch-black in the hall.

"Ooof! What's all this black cloth doing here?!" Helga asked as some fake wood planks slammed shut on them to make a fake barricade. They were boardered by black cloth on one side and the fake wood on the other.

"Ack! We're trapped!" Sid panicked. Someone made a hissing sound like a ferret and shone a flashlight around on them to scare them further. The hair stood up on everyone's but Arnold's head. But Arnold was calm. He examined the fake wood.

"Relax!" Arnold said with a firm frown. "They're just trying to scare us! These boards aren't even real wood! They're cardboard with marker drawn on it. See?" Harold punched through the cardboard easily.

"Yeah!" the boy agreed as they escaped the trap of the hall. Arnold was a little peeved now.

"Grandpa!" Arnold scolded the invisible air, now that his grandfather had vanished. He and his friends walked back down to the party. "Susie, where's Grandpa?"

"He and the others went out to the backyard," Susie said, blinking as innocently as she could. Arnold stomped outside of the boarding house to the backyard, looking for his rascally Grandpa.

"OOOOOOOOO!" Ernie, Mr. Huynh, Mr. Kokoshka, and Phil all rose from beneath leaves and other things to spring out at them. All four men wore their zombie costumes now, although Mr. Kokoshka was so unmotivated that he did not run forward towards them as the others did.

"You go get them," Mr. Kokoshka said, breaking some of the illusion by speaking. "I'll wait right here."

But it was enough to cause the seven kids to run, scattering about the yard in fright. Sid ran into a wall of damp stripes of cloth cut from a towel hung from a tree like tentacles and screamed, "no, no, no!" as he struggled to free himself from the before a zombie Ernie reached him and Stinky. Mr. Kokoshka threw a bucket of ice water on Gerald, who glared up at him with his wet hair. Phil paused.

"No, no, you big ninny!" the man explained, lifting up a second pail of ice water. "You put your hands in the water to make them all cold and clammy! Like this!" he demonstrated.

"Oh, sorry," Mr. Kokoshka grinned, still in his zombie costume.

Phil and Mr. Huynh chased Arnold, Phoebe, and Helga down into a knot between them. Phil began to tickle Arnold with his cold hands, but Arnold stood his ground.

"Alright, alright, Grandpa! We know it's you!" he exclaimed. "Cut it out!"

"Okay, fine, you got us," Phil relented finally to leave Arnold alone. "But we got you good, didn't we?"

"Yeah, you got us," Arnold used his hand to sweep back a bit of his scraggly hair after Grandpa had given him a rough, but friendly, pat on the top of his head. He looked up.

"But you'd better watch it! We might get you back next year!"

"Oooh, the big man has plans! I look forward to it, Arnold." Phil beamed. "Glad to see not all humor's lost on you."

"Hm, well there are only so many tricks we can pull," Gerald disagreed with his friend, on principal. "But maybe we can think about. We've got a whole year!"

"Yeah!" Arnold nodded with gratitude toward Gerald for not refusing to back him up despite what he had so suddenly said.

"Ack!" Helga grimaced as she caught her breath. "You'd better hope I didn't drop any candy thanks to you!" She glared up at Arnold's Grandpa. "Well, we've been here long enough, Phoebes! Let's go home and count our loot! See you around, Arnold!" She waved as she turned on her heel to stomp away.

"Yeah, see you Arnold!" Sid, Stinky, and Harold all muttered as they, too, dispersed.

Grandpa chuckled.

"Well, a successful Halloween party if I do say so, myself! Well, let's go back to the snack table. Maybe there'll be some pudding left!" Phil said with much hope.

Arnold, Gerald, and his Grandpa Phil went back inside to enjoy the remainder of the party. While Arnold was enjoying the party, Phoebe was weighing Helga's candy on scales and scribbling on a noteboard to do a detailed analysis of each kind of treat, sorted in color coordinated piles as Helga watched. Sid, Stinky, and Harold all sat on the floor of Sid's room swapping treats one by one. And above them all, the orange and creepy full moon of Halloween still glowed bright. Maybe somewhere out there, a ferret-zombie was creeping and hissing to scare more trick-or-treaters on the streets. But probably not. The end.