THE PUMPKIN HOUSE

In the small town of Havenwood, sixteen-year-old Macy Horan has spent eleven months holding her family together since her father died. Her mother works nights in the ER, so on Halloween Macy is stuck taking her eleven-year-old brother Nate trick-or-treating in his astronaut suit, until her friends Theo, Jay, and Bella talk her into a shortcut through the Marrow Creek woods to a party on the far side. The footbridge is washed out. The road is dark. And at the top of a lonely hill stands a white farmhouse lit up like a lantern, its walk lined with fifty glowing jack-o'-lanterns and a hand-painted sign: FREE CANDY. Come On Up! The sweet old woman in the wheelchair seems harmless. Her son even fixed the Horans' furnace last winter. But there are children's shoes lined up by the door, far too many toothbrushes by the sink, and when a freezing storm drives the five of them inside, the front door locks behind them. Twice. Jay has spent months tracking a string of Halloween disappearances everyone else wrote off as runaways, and he is starting to understand exactly what this house is. Dinner will be served at midnight. There will be a family photo. And Macy has until the clock strikes twelve to get her brother out alive.