“I am going to kill you, Sabrina!”

She rolled her eyes from her seat on the stairwell. Sabrina was always getting into trouble with her older brother, Ichabod. It wasn’t Sabina’s fault that she had to retaliate after Ichabod had made the fatal mistake of eating the last slice of pumpkin pie. Who knew that the spider was going to crawl on his face during his afternoon nap?

“Shut up, Ichy. It’s not like the spider bit you. Can you come up here? I need your help with something.”
After a bit of grumbling, Ichabod trudged up the stairs. He was wearing a Jack Skellington shirt with black skinny jeans, and his jet black hair covered his right eye. His red, pimply face was pulled into a snarl, revealing his black braces. His Hot Topic name tag glittered in the light. 

“Don’t call me Ichy. I’m only helping you because it’s Halloween.” Ichabod muttered. 

“Shut up, Ichy, I know you know today’s my birthday. I need you to pick the lock on the attic.” Sabrina said, pushing d her poorly-dyed red hair out of her face. That was one key difference between her and Ichabod: he used his hair to blend in, while she used her hair to stand out.

Ichabod eyed the attic door wearily. It was a rickety door, with a rusty doorknob and chipping white paint. It was the only out of place thing in their white picket fence house.

“I don’t know, Sabrina. Don’t you remember the last time someone went into the attic?”

“There is no correlation between Uncle Murphy opening the attic door and then having a heart attack right after.” Sabrina continued to glare at her brother menacingly. “I swear to God, Ichy, if you don’t pick this lock right now, I’m telling Aunt Marcy what really happened to her crystal vase.”

Ichabod rolled his eyes and took out a paper clip. As he got to work, Sabrina pulled out her emergency Snickers bar, because let’s face it, she wasn’t herself when she was hungry.

After a bajillion years, Ichabod got up and opened the door.

“Took you long enough, loser.” Sabrina shouted as she ran up the stairs. Ichabod balked.

“Wait, Sabrina, you can’t go up there alone! What if you have a heart attack? Or worse, and asthma attack?!”
“I don’t even have asthma! Come on up then, scaredy cat.”

Sabrina watched from the top of the attic stairs as Ichabod walked through. Every time a step creaked, he jumped back in horror. She sometimes wondered if Ichabod was afraid of his own shadow. When Ichabod reached the top of the stairs, he sighed in relief and wiped the sweat off his brow. Sabrina clapped sarcastically.

“Ichy, it’s literally taken you two minutes to walk up the stairs. Congratulations, that an all time record!”
“Don’t call me Ichy.” Ichabod growled.

Sabrina snorted and turned around. The attic was constantly lit by one light bulb that hung from the ceiling, as no one knew how to turn it off. Piles of furniture and boxes were covered in sheets all around, and cobwebs hung from the exposed wooden beams. As Sabrina searched the room, her lilac eyes found what she was looking for: a vault partially concealed by a painting of Charles Dicken on the far left wall.

“There it is, we found it, Ichy!” Sabrina exclaimed, running towards the vault. Ichabod, however, stayed back.
“And what, exactly, have we found?” Ichabod said, scratching at his pool noodle arms.

“The place where Mom hid my birthday presents, of course!” said Sabrina, running her fingers over the translucent keypad. “Don’t you see? There are fairly recent fingerprint marks. Someone must’ve put something in there in the past couple of days.”

Ichabod sneered. “Okay, and how do you expect to open this vault? You can’t exactly ask me to pick it, now can you?”

Sabrina stopped in her tracks. How was she going to open the vault? Sabrina zoned out, staring at Charles Dickens oil-painted face. Then, a metaphorical lightbulb lit up over her head.

“Dickens!” Sabrina shouted as she sped over to the moldy bookcase. Her hands traced over all the books, until she found what she was looking for: A Tale of Two Cities.

“There’s a reason Dickens is the painting placed in front of the vault! A Tale of Two Cities is the least dusty out of all of the books, and I bet if I open it…” As Sabrina aggressively tore open the book, a small slip of paper fell out, with the numbers 8725665 on it. “This is it! This is the combination!”

Ichabod balked. How could his dumb thirteen year old sister figure this out while he was stuck in remedial math?

Sabrina back to the vault and punched in the code with her blood red fingernails. The vault beeped open. As Sabrina pulled open the door, she held her breath. She peered slowly inside to reveal…a pack of chewing gum. As Sabrina screamed in frustration, Ichabod looked and burst into laughter.

“Oh look, there’s a note too! ‘Better luck next time!-Mom.’ In your face, Sabrina! That’s what you get for putting a spider on me.”

Sabrina huffed, and took a handful of cobwebs from the wooden beam and stuffed it down Ichabod’s shirt.

“Have fun in the attic, Ichy!” Sabrina called as she ran down the stairs and shut the door behind her.

Sabrina giggled as she heard Ichabod scream “I am going to kill you, Sabrina!”