Free Rabble Starkey by Lois Lowry Page A

town was
out. Far down the road, under a porch light, we could see three people dressed as ghosts, with sheets over them, standing by a front door. Then, after the door closed, they ran down the steps and headed off in another direction, holding their sheet costumes up so they wouldn't trip over the dragging parts.
    Everything seemed spooky and strange. A bush would move, and Veronica and me, we would jump, all startled, thinking someone might be hiding there. The wind blew the tree branches so that their shadows moved on the road in the moonlight, dark and scary, so different from the normal tree shadows in daytime.
    Gunther tugged at us and we found ourselves nearing Millie Bellows's little house. Vines hung down from her porch roof. In summer they were shiny green, and we pretended they was poison ivy because we found Millie Bellows so poisonous herself; but of course it was only regular old vines, planted there for shade once and overgrown now because no one ever thought to trim them back. And probably years ago none of her husbands ever had the time, they was all so busy dying off one by one.
    The vine leaves was all papery now, in October. Lots of them had fallen off, but the ones that still hung there was rustling against each other like the newspaper pages heaped on the couch Sunday mornings.
    Millie Bellows, crabby old evil-tempered thing, hadn't turned her porch light on. Everybody left their porch lights on for Halloween, to guide the ghosts and gypsies. But not Millie Bellows. Not her. She probably
hoped the kids would trip on their costumes, or on her rickety porch steps, and skin their knees. She probably hadn't even fixed any treats to give. She probably hoped no one would ring her bell.
    But we lifted Gunther up so's he could, and when he mashed the button we could hear it buzz inside the house. There was a light on inside—we could see it through the curtains—and a TV playing. Even though he was chilly, Gunther was still prancing about, all cheerful, waiting to do another ballerina dance when the door opened. But the door didn't open, and we didn't hear no footsteps inside.
    "She probably couldn't hear it, with the TV going," Veronica said, and she pushed the doorbell again, hard and long. "She's hard of hearing, being so old."
    I didn't really believe that. Well, maybe she
was
hard of hearing, but what I thought was that she was just sitting all hunched up in front of the television, ignoring us. Shoot, the only time she ever paid attention to us was when she called scoldings from her porch—scoldings we didn't even need.
    "She won't come," I muttered to Veronica while Gunther pranced, singing to himself, around the porch. "She hates us."
    "Well, she did bring that Jell-O," Veronica said, calling my attention to the day that Mrs. Bigelow went away to the hospital.
    "Hah. Melty old Jell-O," I said. "Here, let me ring it one more time." And I pushed the doorbell, holding it down with my thumb for a long, loud time. It was awful dark on the porch. Even with the moonlight
outside, the creepy old vines made Millie Bellows's porch awful dark, and we could hear Gunther bumping into chairs as he twirled around in his ballet shoes.
    "Shh! I think she's coming!" Veronica said. We all three stood still and listened. Sure enough, we could hear her shuffling toward the door. If I walked that way, Sweet-Ho would say, "Rabble, lift your feet, honey." But I suppose you can't fault someone so old for their walking habits. Maybe by the time you're ninety years old, you just keep grabbing onto the ground with your feet for fear you might be plucked up to heaven any minute when you're not dressed for it.
    "Get ready to do your dance here in front of the door, Gunther," Veronica whispered. Gunther hitched up his droopy tights and got into his dancing position. Millie Bellows, muttering, pulled the door open so the light fell out onto the porch just like a spotlight falling over a dancer on a stage. Veronica and