Knock, Knock

I grabbed my bag and walked out the door. It was Halloween night, and I decided to dress as Indiana Jones to spark a newfound chapter in my life of overcoming my youth and naivety after reaching high school. I walked over a few streets and met up with my friends Toph and Joseph, who were dressed as a ghoul and a doctor, respectively. Our goal was to knock on every door in each of our neighborhoods which we figured out to be roughly 300 doors if we excluded the more dangerous areas that our parents said were off-limits. Our neighborhoods were hardcore when it came to the holidays; one of my neighbors would turn their whole house into a spider web and had three life-size spiders that were animated and crawling up and down their web with glowing red eyes. That house gave me the chills, but I was trying to act older now that I was heading to high school and decided to head there first. When we showed up at the house, we noticed something new; they turned their shed into a spooky house with a sign labeled "enter if you dare." Long story short of our nervous jitters, we dared.

We expected to see a mass of webs and tiny spiders, but it was more like an altar with dead skeletons leading up to it, and on the pedestal at the end of this shed was a book held up by a weird claw. I looked to my friends for support, daring them to take the book, but I was ultimately pushed forward, and as I went to grab the book, there was a pen and paper there to sign. At the moment, I instinctively wrote down my name and sarcastically wrote down my Halloween outfit. I turned to take some candy, but before I left, I decided to the book as well. I did notice something weird with how the paper felt. It was different, like sucking the words from me like the paper grabbed the ink instead of me writing on it. We ran to a few more homes; Joe snagged a huge chocolate bar right as the woman began offering it. We complained, but she said there was just one left, but Toph and I knew that we would get him back for this one. The person with the most valuable candy bag at the end of the night would win this years' Halloween, and a big bar of candy like that definitely would go for a lot. We finished the first street and went to Frankenstein's home. We called it the Frankenstein home because every year, the owner and his wife dress up as Frankenstein. They allow kids to enter the shoe room of the house, where they were zapped with fake lightning toys and turned into Frankenstein's zombie army - before leaving with a piece of candy and a handwritten note as a keepsake.

This time, I let Toph go first as Joseph got the biggest candy, and I was honestly waiting for a nicer house that I know would have some ridiculous treats or maybe a whole bowl of candy sitting out front. I took the time to flip through the book that I grabbed from the shed. Looking back, I felt kind of embarrassed as I wondered if it was part of their design, and I just took it. I opened it up and noticed the pages felt really smooth like it was an expensive prop to a movie or design. As Joseph was waiting around and twirling his flashlight, I flipped the pages and noticed something sort of highlighted on one of the pages, but it only lasted for a second. I had Joseph shine the flashlight on the book again and noticed that if I held the book in one hand and held just one page up while Joseph shined his flashlight, we could read hidden words on the page.

THIS WAS GREAT! Toph was just coming out of Frankenstein's house, and we ended up sitting on the sidewalk, letting a few other kids go ahead of us. I held up a page and read each page as Joseph shined the flashlight. Each page held one word: "Go. To. 386. Mole. Street. Under. The. Rock. Is. Another. Hint." Before I even closed the book, Joseph was already running there. Mole street was a few blocks down closer to his house. We knew the woman that lived there, her name was Janet, she is a nice older woman but always asked our parents to help her with some chores. One time, I had to dig up a small tree with Joseph, and it took almost 4 hours. When we finally finished, she gave us lunch, thanked us and allowed us to use her pool whenever we liked with our friends. Hopefully, this wouldn't be as tedious. As we approached the house, we ran to the huge rock sitting on the side of her house. Joseph shined the flashlight all around the bottom, looking for a hint, and just in the corner was another piece of paper. I quickly grabbed it; this time, it said "spiders." I looked back on the ground again and found a few other pieces of paper. "Return", "to", "my", and "me". "Return me to my spiders?". I stuffed the papers back into the book. As I did, the huge rock began to shake. Confused, I started to back up, and as I did, it rolled towards me surprisingly fast. I jumped out of the way and ran to the nearby tree with Toph beside me and Joseph laying back on the ground with his face shocked as the rock rolled right next to his feet. The rock stopped, but my heart was racing; what could have moved the rock? It couldn't have been Joseph or Toph, and no one else was present. We decided to ignore it and ran back to the spider's house.

When we returned to the shed where we initially found the book, we noticed the door was locked, and there was no other way in. We moved along the yard toward the front of the house, looking for a sign as to what to do with this book. As we did, we noticed the life-sized spider's heads started to stare directly in our direction. We all sprinted simultaneously to the front door, banging on and shaking it. I grabbed Joseph’s flashlight and shined it on the door. As I did, it read, "Knock 3 times, kick once, and knock once more." In a rush, we did just that, but nothing happened.

Meanwhile, those life-sized spiders were crawling to the bottom of their webs and CREEPING ON THE GROUND. We tried it again, but nothing happened. I shined the light on the door again and noticed that it read, "Call to me at the bottom of the door." We yelled, please let us in and heard a slow thump in the house slowly getting closer. At the same time, the spiders in the yard were getting closer and didn't look friendly. Joseph took some smaller candy and threw it at them, but they just kept coming. The thump behind the door finally got close enough, and we heard the door unlock and we jumped in.

After getting in, we looked around, but we didn't see anyone there. The door slammed shut behind us and locked. Joseph shined his flashlight around and saw a table similar to the one in the shed. Above it, in big black letters on a glowing projector-like light read, "the one who chose me, come forward." I moved forward to the desk, and the words changed as I came closer. I read them aloud as I moved forward. "As you picked me up, you wrote down your path, so I made your dream come to life. The screen read "Thomas, Indiana Jones" in my handwriting. “I'm a notebook that's alive; the words on me come true, in a sense. Thank you for collecting my missing pieces; I will present you with a reward after you place me back on my pedestal.” I made sure all of the pages we collected were still inside the book and put it back on the pedestal. As I did, the pages seemed to morph back into the notebook, and it got slimmer until it disappeared. I screamed in a high pitched tone as the room lit up and the lights went on. Sitting in place of the book was a bag with "Indiana Jones – valuable goods" stitched onto it.

I grabbed the bag as my friends just stared in disbelief. When I looked into the bag, it was filled with money. Toph and Joseph ran over to see for themselves and tried grabbing some, but I held it away and grabbed a handful for each of them. We ended up heading back to my house and counted $20,000 in total in the bag. Since we all chipped in on the adventure, I decided that we should split the money equally declaring us all the winners of Halloween.