Ms. Longnails and Midnight

A Whole Class Story written with Eshu Bumpus

On the other side of a large, cold lake called Ghost Lake, there was once a huge black mansion made of wood and tiles. It was always surrounded by clouds. Next to the mansion was a pumpkin patch full of dead pumpkins and a graveyard. The graveyard contained 1000 old cracked gravestones covered with cobwebs.
In that mansion there lived a witch named Ms. Longnails. She lived with a black cat named Midnight. Ms. Longnails had a wonderful broom that she called “I don’t know.” She could make it appear out of thin air and she could fly on it.
One cool night in the middle of autumn a hard rain began to fall. Ms. Longnails and Midnight were practicing making a potion that would turn princes into frogs. Ms. Longnails dropped some ugly, dried mushrooms into the mixing bowl with a PLOP! Midnight stirred the potion with a unicorn’s horn. The potion bubbled and boiled and exploded.
They had tried many potions before that didn’t work. They realized that they needed a frog to put into the potion. So Midnight told Ms. Longnails, “You should go to our secret ingredient store to get the frog. But on the way,” Midnight warned her, “Do not go to the dark graveyard.” Midnight knew that Ms. Longnails would be scared to death of the spooky creatures who lived there.
Ms. Longnails put on her bright yellow rain jacket with a rubber ducky on it. She snapped the snaps and pulled up her hood. She said, “See you, Babe,” as she walked out the door.
As she walked out into the rainy night she thought to herself, “I wonder why Midnight doesn’t want me to go there.” She saw a couple of ghosts who were her neighbors. She said, “Have a nice night,” hoping that they did not have to go on a boring errand like this one.
They said, “We are going to a party.” Ms. Longnails wished that she could go too, but she walked on for about 20 minutes. She stopped to look up at the moon. It was a full yellow moon, and it made her think of Midnight’s yellow eyes. It made her feel glad that Midnight didn’t go with her, because Midnight hates water.
Suddenly, she realized that something was wrong. Chills tingled up her spine. Her hair prickled at the back of her neck. She sniffed the air and said, “There’s a werewolf behind me, and I am not going to turn around to see if it is there. I am just going to run!” She ran as fast as she could. She could hear him hot on her heels.
Just then, she tripped over something and fell into the dark graveyard. She felt so frightened she nearly jumped out of her clothes. The next thing she knew she was covered by a rope net that had berries all over it. She got away from the werewolf, but now she was trapped in the dark graveyard.
“Oh, no!” she thought, “this must be why Midnight didn’t want me to go here.”
Then she looked up and saw a big, ugly zombie with green skin. He smelled like he hadn’t taken a bath since he was alive – which was 200 years ago. He said, “My name is Domena Fasumena, and I am going to eat you for dinner with my special sauce!”
Ms. Longnails said to the zombie, “You know I am not going to taste good with a net.” And he agreed and pulled the net off of her. As soon as he lifted the net, she said, “You can’t eat me unless you can guess the name of my broom.”
He said, “I don’t know the name of your broom.”
She said, “You are right!” And the broom appeared in her hand. She jumped on the broom and took off into the sky.
He said, “Oh drat! Another one got away.”
Riding on the broom, it took her two hours to get to the special ingredient store. When she got home Midnight looked at her suspiciously and said, “Did you listen to me when I said not to go past that dark graveyard?”
She made up a story about how she was rolling on a log and accidentally fell into the graveyard, but ran right out. Midnight believed the story so he never found out the truth.
They put the frog into the potion and they tested it on a fake prince that they made with another potion, but it didn’t work. They needed one more ingredient, but luckily that was right in their cupboard. They just needed to add blueberries.
The End