Don't Look Back! On a Windy Night by Nancy Raines Day

ON A WINDY NIGHT ON A WINDING ROAD
A BOY WALKS HOME WITH A HEAVY LOAD.

WHAT'S THAT? HIS HEART FLIP-FLOPS WITH FEAR.
A WHISPER RUSTLES IN HIS EAR.

CLICKETY-CLACK. BONES IN A SACK.
THEY COULD BE YOURS IF YOU LOOK BACK.

It's a setup for a really creepy tale. A boy walks home carrying a heavy sack, the clouds scuttle over the moon, and it's almost too dark to see. But as he walks down a hill and into a dark wood, he just knows he's hearing a whisper in his ear:

CLICKETY-CLACK. BONES IN A SACK.
THEY COULD BE YOURS. DON'T LOOK BACK!

WHO? DO YOU MEAN ME?
WHO ELSE? OWL HOOTS BACK FROM HIS TREE.

In the woods rough ghostly fingers seem to brush his face, and as he emerges into the windswept field, skeletons dance with much clicking and clacking. Fast and faster the boy goes, but when he stumbles and falls to the ground his fingers graze a motionless head that feels like it's dead!

Then he's almost home, running into his own backyard where a dark shadow seems to grab at his legs. Will he be caught here, almost at his own back door?

THE HAIRY BEAST SITS ON HIS SHOE.
AND IT MAKES A MEEK--ME-EW.

SO THE BOY SCOOPS UP HIS CAT.
THEY BOTH GO HOME--AND THAT IS THAT.

In Nancy Raines Day's just-in-time for Halloween On a Windy Night (Abrams, October, 2010), her rhyming text sets the reader or listener up for a truly scary dash through the dark, with something so scary just behind that we dare not look! Ghosts, skeletons, scary heads, hairy beasts, all those figments of the dark imagination are there. And at first glance, the illustrations set the scene for the same story.

But in a closer look, almost concealed by the dark, we see what's behind all these scary sounds. Dry leaves and bare branches brush the boy's face and legs; dry corn stalks crickle and crackle in the wind, ripe pumpkins scatter across the field, and a little black cat jumps out to greet his boy with a pounce--and finally, as a mouse spills the boy's trick-or-treat candy bag onto the floor with a clickety-clack, we know what that rattle and clack that seemed to follow the boy all the way home really was. It's all in great fun, and the scary walk home after Halloween trick-or-treating becomes a funny case of overblown imagination. Whew! What a trip!

For Halloween fun, pair this one with Linda Williams' wonderful classic, The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything, for a duo of just-scary-enough Halloween stories for the young.