"Can’t believe what." Frank asked from the drivers seat, taking his eye off the road for a second to steal a glance at his younger brother.

"What she did to us!" Joe cried out.

"Who? Cassandra’s mother?"

"Yes, Cassandra’s mother! She put a curse on us, Frank. We’re cursed! Bad luck for who knows how long." Joe moaned.

"Joe, we are not cursed." Frank replied, amused at his brothers apparent despair. "And it supposedly ends on Mischief Night, when the unthinkable occurs." Frank finished in a ghoulish voice repeating the last line of the curse.

"They’re witches." Joe said ominously. "If anyone knows how to curse you, it’s a witch."

"Joe, do you know anything about the Wiccan religion?"

"The what?" Joe asked, puzzled.

"The Wiccan religion. Witches are not witches in the sense of people who fly around on broomsticks putting curses on people. There is a religion they follow, just as other people follow the religions they believe in. These witches may use spells and charms but it’s usually for things like finding love, or prosperity or banishing bad luck. Not for cursing innocent people."

Joe stared at his brother in astonishment.

"What?" Frank said, feeling like he suddenly had a third eye in the middle of his forehead.

"Doesn’t your brain have some kind of quota on the amount of useless information it can hold?" Joe asked.

"It’s not useless." Frank snapped, slightly embarrassed. "And you have just as much useless information in that hard head of yours. It’s just that your brain is full of useless information about sports and women."

"The two most important things in life." Joe grinned.

"Oh, please." Frank muttered. "Besides, my so-called useless information just helped you, didn’t it?"

"How did it help me? We’re still cursed!"

Frank turned to glare at his brother, yelling "WE ARE NOT CURS-"

"Frank, look out!!!" Joe shouted, pointing at something out the front window.

Frank snapped his head forward and gasped. A huge pothole loomed in the road just ahead. Turning the steering wheel as hard as he could, Frank tried to avoid the large crater in the road without success.

"OW!!" Joe cried out as his head was smacked against the roof of the car by the force of the impact with the pothole. "Are you trying to kill me?!"

The intermittent bumping and thumping as he continued down the road told Frank he now had a flat tire. Disgustedly, he pulled off the road and got out of the car to check the damage. Joe followed a bit more slowly and stood beside his brother gazing at the mangled tire, absently rubbing his head where it had made contact with the roof of the car.

"Wow. You did a good job." Joe observed. "That’ll cost you a good chunk of change to get fixed. Maybe you should ask Dad for a raise."

Frank turned on him with a murderous look. "Change it!" he ordered.

"Me?!" Joe said, incredulous. "It’s your car!"

"And it’s your fault I hit the stupid pothole to begin with! If you hadn’t been ranting and raving about witches and curses, I would have seen it!" Frank yelled, the veins on his neck popping out.

"Ok, ok." Joe said, irritated. "Geez, you don’t have to get all huffy about it. I would have changed it anyway, just because I’m a nice guy."

Frank simply growled at him as he walked to the trunk to remove the spare tire and tools Joe needed to change the tire. Standing over his brother, still smoldering, Frank watched as Joe jacked the car up, removed the damaged tire and put the spare on.

Joe was tightening the lug nuts when the wrench seemed to stick on the last one. Tugging and pulling, Joe couldn’t get the wrench to come free. Readjusting his hands to get a tight grip on the wrench, Joe pulled as hard as he could. Without warning the wrench came free, slamming Joe’s hand between the frame of the car and the wrench. With a loud yelp, Joe dropped the wrench and jumped up, cradling his injured hand as he reeled off a string of colorful words, a few of which Frank had never even heard before.

"Let me see." Frank said, trying to get Joe to stand still long enough for him to check the injury. Hopping from one foot to the other, Joe held out his hand.

"Wiggle your fingers." Frank ordered, examining Joe’s hand.

Joe did as he was told, wincing slightly.

"Make a fist." Came the second order.

Again Joe did as Frank asked. "Ouch!" he cried out, stopping before his fingers curled in on his hand completely.

"Well, you can still move it, so I doubt that it’s broken. You’ll probably just have a nasty bruise." Frank said, matter-of-factly, bending to pick up the tools Joe had discarded and returning them to the trunk.

"Gee, thanks for your concern." Joe called out sarcastically, getting back in the car. Seconds later, Frank joined him.

"See. It’s started already." Joe said knowingly.

"What has started?" Frank asked as he checked the rearview and side mirrors before pulling out into traffic.

"The curse." Joe replied with raised eyebrows.

"There is no curse, Joe! I hit a pothole. A very large pothole. And I hit it because YOU distracted me!" Frank retorted, coming to a stop at the red light. "You can’t possibly believe in that stuff?"

"I never did until now."

"Joe!!" Frank looked at him, exasperated.

"Well…it’s possible. You get a flat. I hurt my hand changing it. How else do you explain it?"

"I’m not even going dignify that with an answer." Frank replied, shaking his head at his brother.

As Frank gazed at the light, waiting for it to change to green, Joe’s hand suddenly appeared in front of his face.

"Does my finger look blue to you?"* Joe asked, seriously.

Frank gave a cursory glance to Joe’s finger before looking back at the light. "Looks just as happy as the rest of them."* He quipped.

"Very funny." Joe replied throwing his brother a dirty look. "It hurts." He whined, pulling his hand back and peering closely at his slightly swollen finger.

Frank gave his brother a sideways look, amused. "Maybe I should take you to the E.R. It could be broken, you know." He said ominously. Watching out of the corner of his eye, Frank saw Joe’s expression start to change. "Who knows, you might even need surgery to repair the damage. Then some physical therapy to make sure you regain full use of your hand. I hear that’s really painful!" Frank concluded with a straight face.

"Ok, ok, you made your point." Joe grumbled.

"Stop pouting!" Frank laughed. "I’m sure when you see Vanessa she will be more than happy to kiss it and make it better."

"Yeah…" Joe perked up considerably, wondering just how much he could embellish his minor injury to get the maximum amount of sympathy from his girlfriend without arousing her suspicions.

*****

"Looks like we’re late." Frank said, pulling into the driveway of his house thirty minutes later, noting the cars of their friends parked up and down the street.

"Good. Maybe we missed the ‘planning’ stage and all we’ll have to do is eat." Joe said absently, examining his injured hand while flexing his fingers.

The Hardy’s and their friends were planning a Halloween party for Mischief Night to be held at an old mansion on the outskirts of Bayport. Legend had it that its original owners, who had been murdered in the attic over fifty years earlier, haunted the old house. Subsequent owners never stayed in the house very long, scared away by strange, unexplained occurrences.

Everything would start out fine for the new occupants, until the ventured into the attic. When they finally did, all of them swore they saw the ghosts of the murdered couple in there. Word soon got around and potential buyers eventually dried up. Finally, an enterprising realty company bought the mansion and rented it out for parties, with the days at the end of October being the most in demand.

Chet Morton, his girlfriend Liz Webling, Biff Hooper, his girlfriend Karen Allen, Tony Prito and Phil Cohen were meeting at Frank and Callie’s home that evening, along with Joe and Vanessa to divvy up the responsibilities for the upcoming party.

"I still can’t believe Chet was able to book the mansion for the night before Halloween." Frank commented as he and Joe walked towards the house.

"He just lucked out. He happened to walk into the realty office two minutes after they got a cancellation." Joe said with a grin, following Frank through the front door.

Entering the living room, Frank and Joe saw Callie, Vanessa and their friends scattered about the room sprawled on the couch, chairs, love seat and floor, engrossed in hashing out the details for the festivities.

"Hey, you made it!" Vanessa said upon seeing them enter. Jumping up, she ran to Joe, throwing her arms around his neck and greeting him with a lingering kiss.

"Did you catch your thief?" Callie asked glancing up from the paper she was making notes on and smiling at her husband. She patted the spot on the couch next to her that Vanessa had just vacated before she resumed her note taking.

"Whoa, Frank! What happened to your face?!" Brown haired, brown-eyed Chet cried out as Frank stepped over he and Liz who were seated on the floor.

Immediately Callie’s head snapped up looking at Frank intently, who was suddenly the center of attention. She gasped at the three angry scratches that stood out vividly on his cheek.

"Ouch!" Blonde, blue-eyed Biff exclaimed, wincing.

"That looks like it hurt." His redheaded girlfriend Karen added.

"It did." Frank replied, taking a seat next to Callie.

"So?" Dark haired Tony inquired with raised eyebrows.

"So what?" Frank responded, offering no explanation.

"So what happened?" Phil asked, his hazel eyes twinkling as he reiterated Chet’s question. "How’d you get the scratches?"

"In the line of duty." Frank replied vaguely, as Callie turned his face towards her and examined the bright red marks.

"That’s it?" Callie asked, arching an eyebrow. "In the line of duty is the entire explanation?"

"Well, there was this woman…" Joe began with a wicked grin, as he stood behind Vanessa, his arms wrapped tightly around her waist. When Frank shot him a murderous look, his grin widened.

"Really?" Callie looked at Frank questioningly.

"This woman was the alleged thief." Frank replied, glaring at his brother. "And if Joe had helped me when I first asked, there would be no scratches."

"She tried to bite him, too." Joe informed Callie teasingly, ignoring Frank’s killer stare. "But he was too quick for her."

"Wait a minute. Frank, you couldn’t handle this woman without Joe’s help?" Biff asked. Looking at Joe, he winked conspiratorially. "You might want to start thinking about changing careers, old man."

"So the thief was a woman?" Callie asked, a little surprised.

"Two, actually. A woman and her sixteen-year-old daughter, if you can believe it."

"Her daughter?" Phil said in disbelief.

"Mm-hmm, her daughter…who seems to have developed an instant crush on Joe." Frank replied, smiling at Joe smugly.

"And you should be glad." Joe retorted. "Otherwise, we would have been cursed twice! Once is bad enough." He held up his hand, which had started to develop an ugly bruise.

"Joe! What happened to your hand?" Vanessa asked, taking his hand in hers gently and examining it.

"The curse." Joe replied ominously, before Frank could speak.

"Curse?" Biff laughed. "This I gotta hear."

"Turns out the mother-daughter tag team are witches."

"And Mom was none too happy that we caught them. So she put a curse on us." Frank finished for his brother.

"What kind of curse?" Callie asked.

"We’re supposed to have bad luck for the next several days. Until Mischief Night when the ‘unthinkable’ happens."

"Uh, didn’t you leave something out, Frank?" Joe questioned, eyebrows raised.

"Oh…yeah. She didn’t just curse us." Frank said, looking from Callie to Vanessa. "I think she cursed you too."