Part One

It was October 31st. It was a cloudy night but a full moon glowed through the mist. In the distance, wolves howled. The leaves were almost gone from the trees, and the night was cold. The houses of the town had their porch lights on, and bowls of candy were out in the porches.

Jack was trick-or-treating, he ran past the jack ‘o lanterns, skeletons and gravestones decorating the houses. Packs of kids went up and down the sidewalks saying “trick or treat” and collecting candy. 

There was a strong breeze and as Jack was walking back home, his candy bag began to lift up like a magnet was pulling it. He gripped it hard and looked up the street: small children cried out as their bags were lifted out of their hands by an invisible force. They flew into the sky and headed out of town, in the direction of the corn maze at the top of the hill. Jack held on to his bag and was shocked as the bag lifted him off the sidewalk. Before he knew it, he was flying through the air toward the maze.

As he looked down, he saw the children of the town crying out with their hands raised toward the sky. “Our candyyyyyyyy!” they said as their voices faded away.

Jack’s hands were getting tired and he lost his grip and fell to the ground. Luckily, it was a soft landing on a hay bail. He looked up, feeling a bit dizzy, and saw a bright light coming from the corn maze. Jack was in fifth grade, and he was brave. “You can get through this. But you can’t get through Halloween without candy!” he said to himself and he walked toward the entrance to the maze…

Part Two

Jack looked around, and he saw big, flashing green lights. Bubbles floated up in the air from a cauldron in a clearing in the corn maze. He stepped in front of the cauldron, and saw a large amount of green goo. Jack noticed a small shack and as he watched a lady came out of the shack’s door holding a potion. Jack jumped backwards in fright, and the lady noticed him. When the lady looked up at him, Jack realized that she was a witch! She had a big nose, a mole on her cheek, and long, grey hair. She wore a black dress and black boots. She also wore a pointy black hat. Out of fright, the witch grabbed the potion and was about to throw it at Jack.

“Who are you?” she yelled in a cackly voice. 

“I’m just a trick or treater!” Jack yelled back. 

“Well,” said the witch as she walked toward him. “You know you’re not supposed to be here.” She lifted the potion over her head and threw it at Jack. But Jack dodged right in time. The potion bottle hit a hay bale and shattered and the bale disintegrated. Jack quickly ran behind the witch and into her shed. As he was looking at the shelves of potions, he saw one labeled “super strength.” He quickly grabbed the bottle and chugged it. His biceps started to grow. As he turned around, the witch opened the shed’s door. He punched her in the head and she got knocked back into the cauldron. “I’ll haunt you forever for thiiiiis!” she cried. Just as Jack was about to head deeper into the maze, he noticed three bags of trick or treat candy. Jack grabbed up the bags and continued into the maze, searching for a way to reach the green lights which seemed to be at its center.

Part Three

Jack came to a junction and decided to turn left, then he went forward. As he was skipping along through the maze, he ran into a big cobweb. In disgust by the big cobweb covering his face, he said “Ewe!” Just then, a huge spider dropped down from the darkness. It was black and had a big red mark on its head. Before Jack could turn and run, the spider shot a cobweb at his face, blinding him. Jack tumbled backwards, but got his grip on a stalk of corn. He got up and started walking blindly through the corn maze. He was just small enough to fit through some of the ridges in the cobwebs. The spider followed Jack, trying to catch his prey. His mouth was open, ready to bite. But because he was turning in so many directions, the spider was caught in his own web! Jack tripped again and fell face first into a puddle. The puddle helped soften the web and Jack was able to scrape it off his face until he could see again. When Jack got back up, he noticed the spider stuck in the cobweb. As much as he just wanted to run away, he saw a bag close to the web where the spider was struggling to get free. He quickly ran to the bag, picked it up, he then turned around and kept searching for the way to the green light at the center of the maze!

Part Four

Jack kept moving deeper into the maze. Up ahead he saw three zombies: two that were normal zombie size, but one that was abnormally large. Jack ran into their part of the maze, and all three zombies started walking slowly toward him in a straight formation, carrying bags of candy. Even though Jack was scared, he decided to think of something to beat the three zombies. As the large zombie came closer, Jack realized it was actually Frankenstein. The monster was as tall as a basketball player. He was pretty plump and smelled pretty bad—like a corpse. He wore a ragged black coat and pants. The monster reached out his arms and made a deep sound like “mahhhhhrgggh!”

Jack realized that he could do something to the zombies because they were in a straight formation. He picked up a heavy hay bail right next to him, but dropped it again—it was too heavy. He rolled the hay bail right in front of the zombies, hitting all of them. The zombies fell over like dominos.

“Strike!” said Jack in triumph.

Jack picked up the bags of candy lying in a line by the toppled over zombies. By now the bright light in the center of the straw maze was only a few turns away, and Jack headed toward it.

Part Five

As Jack was running, he realized he was at the core of the corn maze. There were bright green lights everywhere, it almost made him feel sick. He started to feel dizzy, and passed out. A few hours later he woke up. It was still dark, but in the green light he saw a huge jack-o-lantern over him.

“What has brought you here?” the Jack-o-lantern asked.

“I’m trying to get the candy back for Halloween, you horrid monster,” Jack answered.

“You shouldn’t talk to me like that,” the Jack-o-lantern told the boy. “You don’t know what I could do to you.”

“I can talk to you however I want!” Jack said defiantly. 

“You know,” the Jack-o-lantern said, “I felt pity for you at first. But now you’ve gone too far.” The Jack-o-lantern grinned so hard that the ends of his mouth touched his ears. Jack got up and stepped back. As he stood, he noticed a large gate opening behind the Jack-o-lantern. Jack knew that the surprise behind the gate wasn’t going to be good.

When the gate fully opened, thousands of mini Jack-o-lantern started rolling toward him. Jack realized that he could jump on all their heads and smoosh them. But the thing that he didn’t know was that the Jack-o-lantern could read his mind.

Right after the Jack-o-lantern “read” Jack’s plan, he decided to set all the pumpkin heads on fire. But the problem was, the Jack-o-lantern underestimated the wind’s power. Not only did all of the fire on the little pumpkins extinguish, but the wind also blew some of the little pumpkins away. The wind also extinguished the fire in THE Jack-o-lantern! After the fire was extinguished, all the lights went off. It was pitch black. But, because the Jack-o-lantern was so big, Jack could see its silhouette. He realized he could take advantage of this. Jack ran behind the Jack-o-lantern and started to climb up the giant pumpkin. He was praying that his plan would work. He reached the top and started to pull on the Jack-o-lantern’s stem. The Jack-o-lantern started to scream in agony and pain. Jack didn’t have enough power to entirely pull the top off the Jack-o-lantern, but he did do a lot of damage.

Jack realized he needed a sharp tool. He ran to the area behind the gate—surely there had to be all sorts of pumpkin carving tools back there. And he was surely right. He found all sorts of crazy, sharp tools.

Part Six

Jack grabbed a huge tool. It looked like an oversized saw, but it was surprisingly light. Jack ran out of the shed, dragging the huge saw behind him. He went to the back of the Jack O’ Lantern and pushed the saw into his back. The Jack O’ Lantern screamed in agony. Pumpkin seeds started rushing out of the Jack O’ Lantern’s back. Then, the Jack O’ Lantern screamed, “No! I’m leaking.” The pumpkin started to feel dizzy and fainted. His eyes somehow closed and he seemed to go limp.

Jack jumped in to where he made the cut. He started to cut into the stringy pulp and fiber of the pumpkin’s guts. The Jack O’ Lantern was orange at first, but as Jack scooped he slowly lost his color and turned pale.

Jack jumped out of the squash, he was sure he had killed the Jack O’ Lantern. He ran even closer to the green light. Finally! He had gotten to that green light at the center of the maze. Then, he noticed that there was a big metal box. He grabbed onto the door hinge and opened the box. He saw two signs with a button under each sign. One of the signs said, “You die but all the kids get their candy bags back.” The other sign said, “Or, you can leave and nothing will happen to you.”

At first, Jack didn’t know what to do but then he said, “Hmmmm……this is actually really dumb,” Jack thought to himself. He walked behind the signs and picked up loads of candy bags. His plan was to just walk slowly out of the maze, and into the city again. But as he was walking through the maze, he looked behind him and saw an army of mini Jack O’ Lanterns rolling at him. He didn’t even think twice about running as fast as he could out of that place.

When he got to the city, the sun came out again. But, when he got to the entrance of the city, a kid came up to him and asked suspiciously, “Why do you have all those candy bags. They were taken from us on Halloween a month ago.” Jack had been fighting in the maze for so long that almost a month had gone by.

Jack immediately looked into the candy bags. He saw ants and maggots eating the candy. Jack then yelled, “Are you kidding me! I have worked for one month straight just to get these candy bags!” Jack went into an outburst. The kid that asked him about the candy bags ran away. He thought that Jack was crazy. “This is the last time I’m being nice!”

The end

Epilogue

Things returned to normal in the town. Nothing weird, nothing unexpected. Jack had a great Thanksgiving and was very glad to have a happy holiday. The pies didn’t disappear and the stuffing stayed stuff. Until, his friend Jinky Joe called him the day after Thanksgiving with quite a story to tell. Jack lived in peace. Until, Christmas—when he retired as a kid and became an elf. But that’s a story for-another day.