Free Wanted by R. L. Stine Page A

sirens blaring in my ears.
    Faster … Faster …
    I ran to the street. Ran past houses and yards. Ran till I saw only a stream of dark colors all around me. Ran under the cold glow of the Halloween moon.
    Ran … Ran …
    But to where ?
    Where could I go?



My three least favorite things in the world?
Soggy Oreo cookies.
Homework on any day of the week.
Walking in a pumpkin field at night.
    So here I was, Devin O’Bannon, walking through an endless pumpkin field on a cold October night. No moon in the sky. And chilly gusts of wind that made the fat pumpkin leaves scrape and slap one another.
    And just to make the moment perfect, my twin sisters, Dale and Dolly, both six, tagging along. Pulling my hand, tugging me through the tangles of disgusting leaves and vines, tripping and singing, and laughing at their older, wiser brother — as always.
    Did I wish I was back home, sitting on my friend Lu-Ann’s couch, tossing down handfuls of popcorn and trading insults with her?
    Three guesses.
    But like I said, here I was, walking through the pumpkin field with my sisters. My Number Three least favorite thing to do. Mainly because pumpkins are so creepy. I mean, have you ever looked at pumpkin leaves?
    They are big dudes. Fat and kind of round. They remind me of baseball gloves. They look like they’re about to grab you and pull you and suck you inside them. You know. Like those snapping plants that like to eat flies.
    And those fat, ugly leaves are noisy, too. When the wind comes up and they slap against one another, it sounds like hands clapping. Weird.
    Clap clap clap clap. A whole field of hands clapping.
    And you know why they’re clapping? Because they’ve just grabbed some poor victim and sucked him inside the vine.
    Okay, okay. Maybe that’s not true. Dad says I have a runaway imagination. And that’s what I’d like to do. Run away. Because this pumpkin farm is creepy with a capital C.
    And I haven’t even started to talk about the vines. They’re mostly hidden beneath the fat, clapping leaves. That’s so you can trip over them more easily.
    Pumpkin vines are thick and long. Wider around than snakes. Really. That’s exactly what they look like. Long, thick snakes with pumpkins growing at one end.
    Yuck — right?
    And that’s not all that’s scary about this farm. There’s a huge black cat named Zeus who follows us everywhere. Zeus has the most evil stare I’ve ever seen. Talk about bad luck. He definitely has the Evil Eye.
    And he follows me silently. Watching … always watching.
    Then there’s Mrs. Barnes. She’s the housekeeper and cook who came with the farm. Mrs. Barnes is a big, round woman with long black braids that go all the way down her back. Like vines.
    Her face is round and her body is round. As if she’s built of pumpkins!
    But I’m being unfair. She is actually very nice. She has a warm, friendly smile and a soft voice, and she gave me an extra stack of pancakes this morning, which were great.
    But not great enough — because here I was on this cold October night a week before Halloween, walking with my sisters in this endless field of pumpkins.
    â€œThis is so awesome !” Dolly exclaimed. She did a little dance on the soft, mushy ground.
    It’s such a pain to have a sister who is wrong all the time.
    It’s an even bigger pain to have two sisters who are always wrong.
    But they’re both cute as they come, with ring-lets of blond hair and big blue eyes, giggly laughs, little turned-up noses, and dimples in their chins.
    Dad calls them little leprechauns.
    Leprechauns come from Ireland, where he was born. And he means it as a compliment. But I looked up leprechauns online, and it said they were little creatures who do a lot of mischief.
    Dolly and Dale started dancing around a big pumpkin, singing some dumb Halloween song. Dale grabbed me and tried to pull me into their circle to do the