Startled by the piercing scream, Arthur, Fern, and Francine turned their faces toward the Tibble house. The screaming continued for several seconds.

"It's her!" Fern exclaimed. "Come on!"

As she hurried down the sidewalk with Arthur and Francine at her heels, they saw the front door of the Tibble house fly open. Trixie Tibble emerged, still screaming frantically, her face pale, her eyes wide as saucers. With her arms tightly wrapped around the midsections of the confused Tommy and Timmy, she raced toward the parked limousine. Before Fern and her friends could reach the terrified woman, she had loaded herself and the twins into the vehicle and ordered the driver to depart at top speed.

"What do you suppose that was about?" mused Francine as she watched the limo accelerate down the street.

"Something must have scared her," Fern observed. "Let's go inside and find out what it was."

Arthur and Francine watched nervously as the still open front door swung slowly back and forth in the cold breeze.

"I've got a better idea," said Arthur. "Let's forget the whole thing, go to my place, and practice for the concert."

"I like that idea," said Francine. She and Arthur started down the sidewalk, leaving the annoyed Fern standing alone.

Determined to find out what had frightened Trixie Tibble, Fern marched up the stairs and through the doorway, closing the door behind her to keep out the winter air.

The lights were still on in the living room. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, except for the fact that the old wooden door leading to the cellar was hanging open. She gazed into the darkness of the corridor that had greeted her with a face full of cobwebs during her previous visit.

No, thanks, she thought. I'm not going back in there without a flashlight.

----

Muffy's bedroom was furnished with every luxury that might warm a little girl's heart, but she felt cold and miserable inside. In her hand she gripped the note that Mr. Pryce-Jones had written and tied with a shiny red ribbon, intended for the eyes of Muffy's father. Her father, who was once again late returning from the car lot. She sighed impatiently.

Two rooms away, Mrs. Crosswire sat on the living room couch, bouncing baby Tyson on her knee in a vain attempt to stop his crying. She called toward the kitchen. "Claude, is the formula ready yet?"

"Oui, madame," replied the Crosswires' French manservant, who momentarily entered the room clutching a bottle filled with white fluid.

As Mrs. Crosswire proceeded to feed Tyson and Claude politely departed, the front door quickly opened. In marched Ed Crosswire, clad in the green sweater that he customariy wore at the lot during the cold season. His face was a mask of single-minded determination, and he seemed to have added three lines to his forehead since morning.

"Dinner's in the kitchen, dear," said his wife Millicent, smiling.

"I'm not hungry." It was the same response he had given every evening for the past week. Mrs. Crosswire watched with disappointment as her husband pulled off his sweater and trudged toward his study. "If you need me, I'll be in the war room," he muttered wearily. She knew that his real meaning was, "Don't bother me."

Muffy, note in hand, intercepted him as he arrived at the entrance to his study. "Dad, I need to talk to you."

"Not now, Muffin," said the exasperated Mr. Crosswire.

"It's important," Muffy insisted. "Mr. Pryce-Jones wants you to read this."

She unfastened the ribbon and handed the note to her father. "This had better be short," he grumbled. "Dear Mr. and Mrs. Crosswire," he began to read. "Hmm hmm...your daughter...hmm hmm...failing grades...hmm hmm..."

"Dad, I'm failing fourth grade," Muffy lamented. "If I don't bring my grades up, I'll have to repeat it."

Mr. Crosswire lowered the note. "And what's so bad about that?" he asked emotionlessly.

Muffy looked up at her father with pleading eyes. "I'm not good enough for Uppity Downs, even with Mrs. Stiles tutoring me. I...I want to go back to Lakewood."

"Out of the question," said Mr. Crosswire gruffly.

"Please, Dad!" Muffy appeared to be on the verge of tears.

Without a word, her father stepped through the doorway into his study and closed the door behind him.

Mrs. Crosswire, holding Tyson in her arms, approached Muffy and placed a hand on the sad-faced girl's shoulder.

"Why does he spend so much time in there?" asked Muffy without looking up. "Why won't he talk to me?"

"He's doing this for you," her mother answered. "He's fighting for your way of life."

----

"...but Mr. Pryce-Jones says that children don't benefit from reading about sword-and-sorcery heroes fighting dragons and evil wizards," Beat related. "He says the real heroes are the leaders and volunteers who go into the world and fight against poverty and ignorance."

The aardvark woman Penny Simon, who was sitting at her computer developing ideas for her next fantasy sequel, looked at her daughter with disdain--not for Beat, but for the private school teacher whom she had spent most of the last half-hour quoting.

"What does he know?" said Mrs. Simon flippantly. "The man's never fought a dragon in his life."

Beat opened her mouth to defend Pryce-Jones, but was interrupted by the ringing of her cell phone. As he yanked it from her belt and flipped it open, she took a seat on the easy chair in her small apartment. "Hello? Oh, hi, Muffy."

"It's no use, Beat," Muffy complained on the other end of the line. "My dad won't even talk to me about it. I guess I'm doomed to become the world's oldest fourth-grader."

"I wish I had your problem," Beat said to her. "I'd like nothing better in the world than to enroll at Uppity Downs, but my mum and dad could never afford it."

"I wish I could help you with that," said Muffy. "My folks have enough money to send three or four kids to Uppity Downs. Only problem is, your dad's suing my dad."

As Beat chatted earnestly with Muffy, Beat's father, Roger Simon, wandered into the room. The rabbit man listened curiously to the conversation for a few seconds, then turned to his wife. "It's rather romantic, isn't it?" he said in a sophisticated English accent.

"What is?" Mrs. Simon responded.

"That our daughter has made friends with the daughter of our enemy."

"Hmm," Penny grunted thoughtfully, as she started to type again.

Roger folded his arms and watched wistfully as Beat went on singing the praises of Cedric Pryce-Jones into her cell phone. "I only hope they'll still be friends after Crosswire Motors has been reduced to a pile of smouldering cinders," he remarked.

----

Having plucked two barren branches from the tree in his yard, George placed them on top of the head of his snowman to transform it into a snow moose. As he adjusted the faux antlers to his taste, he noticed Fern walking past the front fence of his house, carrying a large metal flashlight.

"Hey, Fern, what's up?" he called out in a friendly voice.

Fern stopped and smiled. "I'm going on a spook hunt. Wanna come?"

George grinned eagerly. "Sure." He hurried through the gate and followed Fern down the sidewalk.

"Something in the cellar of the Tibble house scared the twins' mother out of her wits," Fern explained to him. "I intend to find out what it was."

"Was it the yellow blob?" asked George excitedly.

"I don't know," Fern answered. "And it wasn't a blob. It was more of a weird shiny cloud."

"I'll bet it was the ghost of Grandma Tibble," said George.

"There's no such thing as ghosts," Fern retorted. "Besides, Grandma Tibble was a nice old lady. Why would she come back as a ghost and scare people?"

"Maybe she was just trying to be friendly. Like Philo the Phriendly Phantom. He just wants to have friends, but everybody runs away from him because he's a ghost." George began to sing badly. "Philo the Phriendly Phantom, phloating down the street... Philo the Phriendly Phantom, the scariest phriend you'll ever meet."

"Stop singing, George. You'll scare away the ghosts."

Momentarily the two children arrived at the front door of the Tibble house. Fern opened it and peered inside. The lights were on in the living room, and everything looked the same as it had during her last visit.

She took several steps inside, and then heard a scream of terror behind her. She whirled and saw George quaking before the suit of medieval armor that stood next to the door. "Relax," she said to him. "It's empty."

"Are...are you sure?" George stammered anxiously.

Gripping the flashlight with one hand, Fern grabbed George's arm with the other and pulled him away from the imposing suit of armor. "Oh, you'll make a fine ghostbuster," she muttered impatiently.

Finding the door to the cellar still partially open, she switched on the flashlight and stepped intrepidly into the dark corridor. George, glancing around, followed hesitantly.

"Watch out for spiderwebs," Fern warned George as she waved the flashlight from side to side in order to illuminate the gloom.

The stairway leading down to the cellar looked even more sinister in light than in darkness. The warped wooden steps appeared that they might crack under the slightest pressure. The ceiling was draped with cobwebs, some hanging so low that no adult could hope to pass without running into one. While Fern deftly dodged one spider nest after another, George shortly found that his antlers had become coated with strands of webbing.

"Uh, Fern, I think this is what scared her," said George, his voice quivering.

"You may be right," Fern responded as she carefully laid her foot on the first downward step. "I'd freak out too, if I got spiderwebs all over my nice fur coat."

She walked slowly until she was halfway down the stairs, then heard George cry out. Turning her head, she saw the moose boy brushing his nose with his hand while gasping with fear. "What happened?" she asked.

"S-s-spider," George stuttered. "B-big one. Landed right on my nose."

Fern pointed the flashlight at him and widened her eyes. "It's going into your coat!"

"Argh!" George quickly zipped open his down jacket and started to brush his sweater, hoping to drive off the insect.

"It's going into your pants!" cried Fern.

"Argh!" George reached for his pants zipper...then stopped when he noticed that Fern was giggling uncontrollably.

Fern giggled and laughed until she thought she would burst. George glared at her indignantly. "Girls," he groused. "Always wanting to see me with my pants down."

As George began to step timidly down the stairs, Fern pointed the flashlight at the bend leading into the cellar and continued on her way. She placed her free hand over her mouth and struggled to stifle further giggles.

Seconds later, George arrived at the bottom of the stairway and stood behind Fern, who was aiming the flashlight at the dresser mirror in the middle of the cellar. The reflection of the light beam in the fractured glass was almost blinding after the blackness through which they had just wandered.

"I was standing in front of that mirror when I saw the yellow cloud," Fern informed George.

The moose boy glanced around the large room in astonishment. The ancient furniture, the old trunks, the cobwebs lining the walls...it all seemed to him like a Halloween theme ride.

"This place is so totally creepy," he said in a low voice. "It's, like, Ghosts-R-Us."

Overcome by curiosity, Fern walked toward one of the more colorful trunks and heaved the lid open. She was greeted by a swarm of moths, who fluttered around her face as she frantically waved her arms to ward them off. After several seconds of this barrage, during which she imagined she had swallowed two or three of the creatures, the moths established a holding pattern inside of the beam from her flashlight.

Fern sputtered as George approached her. "Maybe that's what you saw," he theorized. "A big cloud of little moths."

"It wasn't moths," said Fern as she gazed at the moth-eaten, foul-smelling garments lying within the trunk.

"See anything scary yet?" asked George.

"Yeah," Fern replied. "You." She then placed the flashlight beam directly in front of George's face. The moths, attracted to the light, began to orbit around the boy's head as he swatted uselessly at them.

Upon deciding that George had been tormented enough, Fern withdrew the flashlight and wandered toward another of the trunks, accompanied by an entourage of moths. "What do you suppose is in this one?"

"Let me open it," George offered. "Maybe it's the lost treasure of Blacktooth the Pirate."

"Maybe it's thecursed treasure of Blacktooth the Pirate," said Fern ominously.

"Cursed?" George looked fearfully at the old gray trunk. "What do you mean?"

"There be a terrible curse upon any who shall open me treasure," said Fern in her best pirate imitation. "Me ghost shall haunt them, and their children, and their children's children, for as long as one of them shall walk the earth or sail the seas! Arrr!"

George stared at her blankly. "You're making all this up, right?"

"Of course," Fern replied in her normal voice. "Go ahead, open it. It's probably more clothes and moths."

Half an hour later, Fern and George walked out of the Tibble house, strands of spider silk still dangling from their clothes. The sky had grown dark, and no stars were visible.

Fern sighed. "Well, that was a disappointment."

"Yeah," said George. "We didn't find any ghosts. Well, at least now I know of a good place to hold a Halloween party."

----

"I need a room for the night," said Trixie Tibble to the clerk at the checkin desk of the Elwood Mairzydoats hotel. "Me and the two boys."

"Are we gonna live here, Mom?" asked Timmy. Next to him, Tommy was trying to see how far he could tip a potted fern before it fell over.

"No, it's just for the night," Trixie replied. "I hope so, anyway."

Several minutes later she was walking down the hall on the third floor of the hotel, her stiletto heels leaving round imprints in the carpet. The twins followed after her, occasionally distracted by fascinating items like fire hoses and vending machines.

"323," the woman muttered (meaning that she spoke with a normal tone instead of an affected falsetto). "This is it."

She inserted the entry card into the reader and pushed the door open. "Oh, cool!" cried Tommy as he rushed into the hotel room and gazed at the beautiful furnishings.

"Don't break anything, boys," called Trixie as Timmy raced past her. "This time I mean it."

Tommy and Timmy climbed onto the double bed and began to jump and bounce while Trixie eagerly pulled off her fur coat. "This thing itches like crazy," she grumbled.

As she draped it over a nearby chair, she noticed that someone had left a handwritten note on the nightstand, next to the complimentary Elwood City tourism guide. She picked it up...and her heart almost stopped when she read the words.

In large, crude capital letters was written, TOMMY AND TIMMY BELONG TO ME. GIVE THEM BACK OR ELSE.

(To be continued...)