Halloween Party by R.L. Stine

right? What’s next—a pie in the face?”
    Terry just stared at the empty closet, relief flooding through him like a dam breaking.
    It hadn’t been real. Maybe he was going crazy. But having hallucinations was better than Les being dead.
    â€œTerry?” Now David sounded concerned. “You all right?”
    â€œHe was here,” Terry said. “Exactly the way I described it. I guess I must have somehow been—”
    He stopped talking as his flashlight beam picked something up on the bottom of the closet.
    â€œWhat is it?” asked David. And then he saw it too.
    A thick, dark puddle on the closet floor.
    Trembling, Terry reached down to touch it. His hand came away wet and sticky—and red.
    â€œThere’s more,” David said. Now his voice was shaking too.
    Leading from the closet were drops and smears of blood.
    Without a word, the boys followed the trail around the piles of boxes in the attic. Followed it to a window in the back.
    The window was open, and rain slanted in, soaking the worn floorboards. A single smear of blood streaked the wall below the windowsill.
    Terry didn’t believe his heart could pound so loud and so fast. What had happened to Les’s body? Had he—it—gotten up from the closet and escaped through the window?
    Had Les somehow joined the Undead in the Fear Street woods?
    â€œI’m going to look outside,” David said. He sounded even more frightened than Terry felt.
    Slowly David pushed the window the rest of the way open and stuck his head out into the rain. Terry crowded next to him.
    They spotted it at the same time.
    There, directly below them, on the peaked roof of a second-story dormer, lay Les’s crumpled body, the knife glinting in the lightning.

chapter

13
    â€œ W e’ve got to get him,” David said.
    Terry couldn’t think why, but he was glad to have something to do.
    â€œOne of us will have to go down there,” said David. He found a piece of rope on the floor and began unwinding it.
    â€œI’ll go,” said Terry, without thinking. He climbed onto the slippery windowsill, then dropped onto the shingles of the dormer below. The wind stung his face, and the rain was blowing so hard he could scarcely see.
    He slipped and nearly fell, but caught the edge of the roof and steadied himself. “Hold on, Les,” he said. “I’m coming.”
    David dropped the rope from the window. Terry caught the free end, then began to inch toward where Les lay.
    The knife still stuck out from his chest, like somestrange sort of growth, and for the first time Terry realized not only that Les was dead, but that someone had killed him.
    Murdered him.
    Someone at the party was a murderer.
    Terry forced himself to put that thought out of his mind and concentrated on crossing the sloping shingles. One step at a time, he told himself.
    Les’s glasses had fallen off and his skin was no longer warm. But his eyes were still open, and Terry tried not to look at them as he tied the rope around Les, above where the knife was sticking out.
    Then he pulled and dragged the body till it was just under the window and lifted while David pulled on the other end of the rope. Somehow, they got the body up over the windowsill and into the room. Then Terry boosted himself up through the window.
    For a moment both boys just stared at their dead friend, both breathing hard. Finally David shut the window. “We’ve got to cover him up with something,” he said.
    Terry nodded. They searched in the dusty attic till they found an old blanket. They straightened Les’s body, then covered him.
    Now that they had finished, Terry realized they had to face the next big hurdle—what to do next.
    â€œWe’d better call the police,” he said.
    David nodded. “Shouldn’t we tell everyone what happened?”
    Terry thought a moment. “Not till we talk to the police,” he said. “After