Chapter Four: Stranded

Arnold turned and looked up at the tall, rotting house which loomed over them on top of the small rising hill, giving it a closer inspection from where they were.

It had two stories in the main part with dark, square windows and what looked like a round attic window for the third. There was a taller section next to the porch on the left side that looked a lot like a tower the same length as the house, with more square windows, one for each of the three stories. There was a long, wrap-around porch out front. The windows of the bottom floor were all boarded up, as was the front door, and the other windows were black with missing glass in the square frames. The house had missing shingles on the parts of the roof that could be seen, and missing wooden siding in various parts of the worn and peeling white paint job. The two dead trees on either side of the house only had their large main trunks and a few of the larger branches left between the two of them.

"Oh man, what a dump," Helga said, scowling up at the house.

"It appears as if the house is completely dormant," Phoebe said after a quick observation.

"Yeah, and it doesn't look as if anyone still lives here either," Eugene said, adding his own two cents.

Helga frowned and said, "See, no ghost. No nothing but a rotting old house and a small spit of land in the middle of the lake." She sighed and said, "What a perfectly good waste of a Halloween night."

"Now what, Arnold?" Gerald asked, looking over at him, lifting the eyepatch from his left eye.

Arnold hadn't thought about that part of this adventure. He just shrugged and said, "Well, um, we came here to prove that we could do it. I guess now all we have to do is wait here for an hour till Earl comes back for us."

Helga snorted, "Yeah, right. Like I'm gonna just sit around here for an hour with you chuckle-heads waiting for that old fart to come back."

"Come on, Helga, there isn't anything here but an old house that looks like it's falling apart," Arnold said.

"Well then, what the heck are we waiting for, lets go take a look." Helga said turning to start up the hill.

"Helga, wait!" Arnold said, grabbing her arm quickly. "That place is condemned and it doesn't look very safe. Plus the signs say no trespassing."

Helga roughly wrenched her arm from Arnold's grasp and said, "Fine then, hair-boy, what do you suggest we do with our time?"

To be perfectly honest, the idea of sitting by the pier for an hour in the fog didn't sound to Arnold like much of a way to pass the time.

"Hey guys, I still have some marshmallows that I was munching on when I went trick or treating," Eugene said, pulling a half a bag of large, white marshmallows from the deep pocket of his costume. "Why don't we start up a camp fire and roast the rest of them?"

The others all nodded their agreement smiling. "Great going, Eugene!" Arnold said, patting him on the back. Gerald grabbed his left shoulder and shook it happily, "My man!" Helga smirked and said, "Well, the little geek actually came through."

Arnold said, "We should try and gather some firewood and make a fire."

"Wait, how are we supposed to make a fire?" Phoebe asked looking at everyone. "Did anyone bring any matches?"

Helga snorted again, "Criminy, none of us have any matches, were just kids!"

"I do," Curly said, speaking up suddenly and pulling out a book of matches. The rest of them looked at him oddly for a moment.

"Um, Curly, why do you have matches?" Gerald asked him, raising an eyebrow suspiciously.

Curly just paused and then said, "Sorry, Jo Jo, that's classified information. That's just between me and Wilson – no, you can't tell him! It's a secret!" The latter part was directed at the volley ball.

"O-kay," Arnold said and dropped the subject. Then Arnold and the others went along the pier and gathered up some old sticks, dried brush, rotten planks and other combustible things they could find near the shore. Eugene and Curly both found plenty of hand-sized rocks to put in a circle and cleared off the space inside of it.

After the gang was finished, Curly lit the sticks and brush at the bottom with a couple of the matches. It took no time at all for the fire to start blazing away. Curly whooped with glee and began to dance in front of the fire and sang out, "Behold! Look what I have created!"

"Oh pipe down, you weird little gerbil!" Helga said annoyed.

Everyone then sat down and Gerald passed around some long sticks to roast the marshmallows that Eugene passed around, thankfully without dropping any of them. Arnold sat with his back to the house, while Phoebe sat to his left with Gerald on her other side. Curly sat next to him with Wilson resting on his lap, while Eugene sat next and finally Helga, who sat on Arnold's other side, secretly happy to be there, and smiling slightly, though she pretended it had to do with the idea of roasting marshmallows.

Not long after the five of them (not including Wilson) sat down on improvised seats of old buckets and driftwood, the smell of roasting marshmallows filled the foggy air around them. The moonlight was now sporadic between the coming dark clouds overhead, making the lighting even more dark and mysterious. The fog was now getting a little thicker over the island itself, but not so much that it blocked the view of the house on the hill. Off in the distance lightning flashed and thunder sounded.

Eugene sat there, roasting his marshmallow with a huge grin on his face, still humming that same annoying tune from before, though not too loudly. Everyone was in good spirits now that they had something to do.

Phoebe smiled a little and glanced at Gerald. "You know, the spooky ambiance of this island, as well as the campfire does seem to add a little to the whole spirit of Halloween."

Gerald looked over at her and smiled in a flirty way, "Yeah, it does, doesn't it?" Phoebe smiled back bashfully at his smile.

Helga rolled her eyes and then glanced over at Arnold, who looked down at the fire and his own marshmallow, with a small smile on his oblong face. The fire made his eyes look like they were sparkling. She resisted an urge to sigh lovingly and looked back down at her own marshmallow, which was starting to burn, since her mind had been elsewhere. She drew back the stick and the burning marshmallow, which now resembled a small, dark piece of charcoal. Then she let out a small growl of frustration.

Arnold saw this and then handed out his own stick and perfectly roasted marshmallow, "Want mine, Helga?" She looked over at him, blinked and then nodded, "Um, yeah, I guess." She took it from him and handed over her own stick. Then she paused and said gently, "Thanks, football-head."

Ignoring the nickname, Arnold only smiled and said, "No problem, Helga. Next time, try to hold the stick just over the fire."

Helga snorted and said, "Hey, I know how to roast marshmallows, doofus." She turned back to eating Arnold's marshmallow. Arnold looked at how she looked in the firelight and actually thought that it added to the creepy effect of her Halloween costume, but in a cool way. She actually looked somewhat pretty. He blinked and suddenly had the urge to look down and get busy roasting another marshmallow, his face felt hot.

'Must be the fire,' he thought to himself, sticking a new marshmallow onto the stick.

Time drew on for what seemed like a long time. Soon all of the marshmallows were eaten, and a few burned (or dropped in Eugene's case). Now the five kids sat around the fire waiting impatiently for Captain Earl to return. In the meantime the moon was blotted out by the clouds overhead and the thunder became louder, even bone-rattling.

Finally after an hour, Helga voiced everyone's impatience. "Criminy, where the heck is he? He said he'd be back in an hour, and it's been over an hour."

"Sixteen minutes over an hour to be exact," Phoebe specified then sighed sounding tired.

"Oh don't worry guys, I'm sure that Captian Earl will be along anytime to pick us up," Eugene said in his usual overly cheerful, optimistic way. Then he sighed and added, "Yep, any minute now."

Arnold looked over at Eugene and said, "Eugene, please do me and everyone else a favor and don't say that again." He remembered the last time Eugene said those words both he and Arnold were stuck in a tree for hours on end waiting for help to arrive. Eugene passed the time humming and muttering those words over and over at various intervals. It was an experience that Arnold tried very hard to forget.

Eugene looked at Arnold, "But I was only trying to be optimistic. I mean, what am I supposed to do, say that he isn't coming back, that were stuck here on this haunted island all alone?" He looked as if he was starting to get a bit worried now.

"Maybe Old Man Wylie got him out there in the fog and he's slowly making his way here to get us next?!" Gerald said, looking very anxious. Phoebe looked scared and grabbed his arm for support. A flash of lightning in the background added to the eerie effect of those words.

"Oh come on, Gerald, it's more than likely he fell asleep in his boat back at the docks," Arnold said, trying to be the voice of reason.

Curly sighed and looked beside him at the face painted on the volley ball. "Well, Wilson, it looks like you and I are castaways on this small, deserted island."

"Oh this is just great," Helga said looking annoyed once more. "We're stuck here in an island in the middle of the deserted part of the lake. I don't even have my candy with me. Humph, some Halloween." She folded her arms across her chest and looked out at the black water.

The wind picked up making the flames of the campfire dance more and chilling all of them slightly. More thunder and flashes of lightning could be heard in the distance, as well as another passing train on the trestle beyond the fog.

"What if we're stuck here all night?" Phoebe suddenly asked looking very anxious now.

"Don't worry," Arnold said reassuringly. "My grandpa knows where we went and if we don't return home in a few hours then someone will come looking for us."

"Oh great, what could be worse than this?" Helga snorted. Then all of a sudden, the wind settled a little and it began to rain. Just a few drops at first, then it started to pour. The fire began to smoke and go out.

"Now what, Arnold?" Gerald asked, pulling his costume shirt over his head.

Arnold thought for a moment and stood up. "Come on, let's go over to the house and stay under the porch till the rain stops."

From the looks on the faces of Gerald, Phoebe and Eugene, that was about the last thing that they wanted to do. Curly crossed his arms over his chest. "Arnold, are you crazy?!"

"There's the pot calling the kettle black," Helga muttered looking at Curly holding onto "Wilson" protectively. She stood also, "For once, I'm with the football-head, let's get out of this rain before we're soaked." She turned and started up the weed-covered, cobblestone path from the docks toward the house.

"Helga, wait up," Arnold called out following her. A moment later, Gerald and Phoebe shared a worried look, then took the other's hand and started up after their best friends. Eugene followed closely behind them.

Curly shook his head, "No way me and Wilson are coming up to that house!" Just after he muttered those words, a strong blast of thunder rattled his bones and a large bolt of lightning came from the sky striking the water not far from the pier. "Wait up!" He snatched up the volley ball and followed them.

Unknown to the five stranded preteens, someone was watching them make their way up the path from one of the windows upstairs through the tattered and worn curtains. Had any of them looked at the old house when the last lightning bolt flashed, they might have seen a tall, dark silhouette in the window for a moment.

To Be Continued . . .