Halloween

by Paula Guran

  “No,” said the pirate girl. “You told us to trick you. We did. Happy Halloween!” She grabbed Jack’s arm and ran down the front path toward the street. The other children followed.

  “That was the coolest,” said the pirate girl. “How’d you do it?”

  “I used up my little finger.” Jack waved his left hand, showing that it only had three fingers and a thumb left.

  “Ewww!” said three of the children.

  “What happened?” asked the grownup waiting in the street for them.

  “She told us to trick her!” said the dog. “She didn’t give us any candy,” yelled the zombie. “She was trying to scare us,” said the witch, “but then her hat burned.”

  “Really?” asked the grownup, a tall slender woman with long dark hair, wrapped in a big dark coat with a collar lined in brown fake fur.

  “She said she’d call the police on us,” said the pirate girl.

  “That doesn’t sound good,” said the grownup. “Let’s get out of here.” She switched on a flashlight and led the flight down the street.

  They ran until they turned the block, passing a number of groups of other kids, some of whom cackled at them or shrieked things.

  When they slowed, the pirate girl said, “What’s your name?”

  “Jack,” said Jack. “What’s yours?”

  “Nell. The dog is Ben, and the witch is Amber. The ghost and the zombie are friends of Ben’s. I don’t know them.”

  “Do you not like them?”

  “That thing you did with your finger,” said the witch, Amber, joining them. “Was that a magic trick?”

  “I guess,” said Jack.

  “Did you set the fire by magic?” asked Nell.

  “It was all part of the same trick,” said Jack.

  “Can you do it again?” asked the ghost.

  “I don’t like to repeat myself,” said Jack.

  “Wait a sec,” said the grownup. “You set the fire? Who are you, anyway?”

  “This is my friend Jack,” said Pirate Nell. “I asked him to join us.”

  “Jack,” said the grownup. “I’m Ben’s big sister Sandra. I’m supposed to be in charge here. I’d prefer to know who is in the party. Did I hear right? You set the witch’s hat on fire?”

  “Yes,” said Jack.

  “I’m not sure that was a good idea.”

  “I’m not about good ideas. I’m about doing things that make me laugh,” said Jack. He thought back. He hadn’t laughed about this one yet, though it had struck him as funny. The look on her face—

  He laughed, enjoying the trick in hindsight. In a moment, the rest of them were laughing too, though the zombie looked confused. Maybe he didn’t get the joke. Even the grownup laughed.

  “Let’s do another,” said Jack. He led them up a path to a front porch and rang the doorbell. The other kids were close behind. As the occupant of the house opened the door, all the children screamed, “Trick or treat!”

  The bald man laughed and held out a bowl of candy. “Help yourselves,” he said.

  Jack lifted a hand, but Nell took his arm. “You don’t trick them if they offer you a treat,” she whispered.

  “But I want to,” he said. While the other children selected candy from the bowl, Jack spent a finger and a thumb convincing the man’s hair to come back, wildly. Dark brown hair waved up out of the man’s scalp.

  “What?” he said. He set the bowl of candy on a nearby table and reached up as hair grew out of his scalp and flowed down around his shoulders. Jack spent another finger to inspire the man’s beard and mustache to grow out, too. “Hey!” The man didn’t seem so much angry as astonished. “What the hell?”

  All the kids had gotten candy except Jack. “Run away,” Nell said, and they pelted across the man’s lawn back to Sandra.

  “Now what?” Sandra asked.

  “He was nice and gave us candy, but Jack played a trick on him anyway,” said Ben.

  “Did you?” Sandra asked. “I guess we better run again.” They ran around another corner.

  “It was a good one!” Jack said when they stopped running. He laughed, and again the rest of them laughed too. They couldn’t help themselves.

  “How’d you do that?” Ben asked when they had laughed themselves silly.

  “Used up some more fingers.” Jack held up his hand. He had only an index finger left.

  Sandra gripped his hand. “Oh my god oh my god oh my god, we better get you to a hospital,” she said.

  “No,” said Jack, and he spent his index finger and palm turning Sandra into a child, younger than the rest of them, swallowed by her grown-up’s clothes.

  “What?” she cried, her voice much higher than it had been.

  Jack laughed. They all did. Nell stopped first, and said, “Jack? I don’t know if I like you anymore.”

  This troubled Jack, because he liked Nell. He spent his other hand making her like him no matter what he did, but some hard part of her fought that. It made it even more fun. He liked that she was hard to convince.

  Sandra strode up to him, elbows out, hands on her hips, her clothing bagging around her and almost tripping her. She was a head shorter than he was. “Hey.”

  Nell gripped his shoulder. “Be nice.”

  “You need a costume,” Jack said, to be nice. He spent a forearm spinning Sandra’s clothes into a tight-fitting black cat costume, complete with whiskers growing from below her nose. Even her eyes changed, yellow with slit pupils.

  “Rowr,” she said. “Why does everything look different?” She studied her forearms (black), flexed her now-black fingers and watched claws emerge from her fingertips. “Hey.”

  “Let’s get candy,” said the ghost, and before Nell or Sandra could object, the rest of them ran up a front walk to another front door, this one decorated with a glow-in-the-dark skeleton. The zombie pressed the doorbell.

  “Well, aren’t you the cutest little monsters I ever did see,” said the large smiling woman who opened the door. “I have just the thing for you to polish your fangs with after you eat all that candy.” She gave them each a toothbrush.

  “Trick.” Amber nudged Jack.

  He spent a toe giving the woman long, pointy teeth so large she couldn’t close her lips over them. She lifted a hand to her mouth, her eyes wide, and Ben ran, the others following. They laughed so hard they couldn’t breathe. “I bet she bites through the floss,” said the ghost.

  Sandra tugged on Jack’s streamers. “How long do these tricks last?”

  “Always.”

  She narrowed her yellow eyes. “I’ll wake up tomorrow as a dwarf cat?”

  “The costume will come off.”

  “But her teeth—?”

  “I might be lying,” Jack said. He didn’t think he was.

  “I’d like it if you turned Sandra back into herself,” said Nell.

  “Maybe later.” Should he spend some more body parts to make Nell stop telling him what to do?

  “Candy!” Ben yelled, and they approached another house.

  “Trick,” Amber whispered to Jack before anyone rang the bell. She had laughed the hardest of them all. Jack wondered if he liked her more than he did Nell.

  A woman wearing a short black dress and black-and-white striped stockings opened the door. Her hair was big and green. She smiled while the children yelled, “Trick or treat!” and offered them candy bars. As Jack leaned over the bowl, she snagged his shoulder and said, “Trade you treats for a trick!” Her hand was sticky; he couldn’t shake it off. “How silly you are to walk around like that, such a tempting little powerball,” said the witch. “I know what to do with you!”

  “You can’t have him,” said Nell, who liked Jack no matter what. “He’s mine.”

  “Finders keepers,” said the witch. She wadded Jack up as though he were a bundle of rags and stuffed him into a silver bag she wore at her waist.

  Nell lunged forward and bit the witch’s hand, snatched the bag from her belt, and ran.


  “A curse on you!” cried the witch, but Nell ran so fast the curse was lost before it reached her. She ran so fast she left all the other children behind. She stopped in the forest on the hill, and then she opened the bag and pulled out what was left of Jack.

  He uncrumpled into the form of a boy missing parts, and lay on the ground looking up at her. He was glad to be rescued, though he was sure the witch would have made more mischief with him.

  “Can you take back the things you did?” Nell asked.

  “No, only do different things,” said Jack. He felt tired now, less inspired.

  “Never mind, then,” Nell said. She sat on the fallen leaves and looked down at the neighborhood. Jack pulled himself together and decided to spend the rest of himself on Nell. He seeped into her skin and made her into someone who would play tricks on others and laugh.

  Nell, itchy, irritated, different, rose to her feet and headed downhill. Her fingers tingled with trickery.

  PUMPKIN NIGHT

  Gary McMahon

  Gary McMahon provides us with a gruesome little tale involving a creature with a pumpkin for a head. Most likely, this isn’t the first story you’ve ever read featuring a squash-noggin (and it won't be the last you'll find in this anthology).

  Literature's most famous pumpkinhead, however, may not be exactly as you’ve seen depicted or recall. In Washington Irving’s “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” (1820), Ichabod Cranes sees “a horseman of large dimensions . . . mounted on a black horse of powerful frame,” and later sees “the goblin rising in his stirrups, and in the very act of hurling his head at him.” The next morning “the tracks of horses’ hoofs deeply dented in the road, and evidently at furious speed, were traced to the bridge, beyond which, on the bank of a broad part of the brook, where the water ran deep and black, was found the hat of the unfortunate Ichabod, and close beside it a shattered pumpkin.” Despite the usual illustrations and depictions, Irving did not mention if the pumpkin had a faced carved into it.

  “Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased with tales, so is the other.”

  —Sir Francis Bacon, “Of Death,” Essays (1625)

  The pumpkin, faceless and eyeless, yet nonetheless intimidating, glared up at Baxter as he sat down opposite with the knife.

  He had cleared a space on the kitchen table earlier in the day, putting away the old photographs, train tickets, and receipts from restaurants they had dined at over the years. Katy had kept these items in a large cigar box under their bed, and he had always mocked her for the unlikely sentimentality of the act. But now that she was dead, he silently thanked her for having such forethought.

  He fingered the creased, leathery surface of the big pumpkin, imagining how it might look when he was done. Every Halloween Katy had insisted upon the ritual, something begun in her family when she was a little girl. A carved pumpkin, the task undertaken by the man of the house; the seeds and pithy insides scooped out into a bowl and used for soup the next day. Katy had always loved Halloween, but not in a pathetic Goth-girl kind of way. She always said that it was the only time of the year she felt part of something, and rather than ghosts and goblins she felt the presence of human wrongdoing near at hand.

  He placed the knife on the table, felt empty tears welling behind his eyes.

  Rain spat at the windows, thunder rumbled overhead. The weather had taken a turn for the worse only yesterday, as if gearing up for a night of spooks. Outside, someone screamed. Laughter. The sound of light footsteps running past his garden gate but not stopping, never stopping here.

  The festivities had already started. If he was not careful, Baxter would miss all the fun.

  The first cut was the deepest, shearing off the top of the pumpkin to reveal the substantial material at its core. He sliced around the inner perimeter, levering loose the bulk of the meat. With great care and dedication, he managed to transfer it to the glass bowl. Juices spilled onto the tablecloth, and Baxter was careful not to think about fresh blood dripping onto creased school uniforms.

  Fifteen minutes later he had the hollowed-out pumpkin before him, waiting for a face. He recalled her features perfectly, his memory having never failed to retain the finer details of her scrunched-up nose, the freckles across her forehead, the way her mouth tilted to one side when she smiled. Such a pretty face, one that fooled everyone; and hiding behind it were such unconventional desires.

  Hesitantly, he began to cut.

  The eyeholes came first, allowing her to see as he carried out the rest of the work. Then there was the mouth, a long, graceful gouge at the base of the skull. She smiled. He blinked, taken by surprise. In his dreams, it had never been so easy.

  Hands working like those of an Italian master, he finished the sculpture. The rain intensified, threatening to break the glass of the large kitchen window. More children capered by in the night, their catcalls and yells of “Trick or treat!” like music to his ears.

  The pumpkin did not speak. It was simply a vegetable with wounds for a face. But it smiled, and it waited, a noble and intimidating presence inhabiting it.

  “I love you,” said Baxter, standing and leaning towards the pumpkin. He caressed it with steady hands, his fingers finding the furrows and crinkles that felt nothing like Katy’s smooth, smooth face. But it would do, this copy, this effigy. It would serve a purpose far greater than himself.

  Picking up the pumpkin, he carried it to the door. Undid the locks. Opened it to let in the night. Voices carried on the busy air, promising a night of carnival, and the sky lowered to meet him as he walked outside and placed Katy’s pumpkin on the porch handrail, the low flat roof protecting it from the rain.

  He returned inside for the candle. When he placed it inside the carved head, his hands at last began to shake. Lighting the wick was difficult, but he persevered. He had no choice. Her hold on him, even now, was too strong to deny. For years he had covered-up her crimes, until he had fallen in line with her and joined in the games she played with the lost children, the ones who nobody ever missed.

  Before long, he loved it as much as she did, and his old way of life had become nothing but a rumor of normality.

  The candle flame flickered, teased by the wind, but the rain could not reach it. Baxter watched in awe as it flared, licking out of the eyeholes to lightly singe the side of the face. The pumpkin smiled again, and then its mouth twisted into a parody of laughter.

  Still, there were no sounds, but he was almost glad of that. To hear Katy’s voice emerging from the pumpkin might be too much. Reality had warped enough for now; anything more might push him over the edge into the waiting abyss.

  The pumpkin swivelled on its base to stare at him, the combination of lambent candlelight and darkness lending it an obscene expression, as if it were filled with hatred. Or lust.

  Baxter turned away and went inside. He left the door unlocked and sat back down at the kitchen table, resting his head in his hands.

  Shortly, he turned on the radio. The DJ was playing spooky tunes to celebrate the occasion. “Werewolves of London,” “Bela Lugosi’s Dead,” “Red Right Hand” . . . songs about monsters and madmen. Baxter listened for awhile, then turned off the music, went to the sink, and filled the kettle. He thought about Katy as he waited for the water to boil. The way her last days had been like some ridiculous horror film, with her bedridden and coughing up blood—her thin face transforming into a monstrous image of Death.

  She had not allowed him to send for a doctor, or even call for an ambulance at the last. She was far too afraid of what they might find in the cellar, under the shallow layer of dirt. Evidence of the things they had done together, the games they had played, must never be allowed into the public domain. Schoolteacher and school caretaker, lovers, comrades in darkness, prisoners of their own desires. Their deeds, she always told him, must remain secret.

  He sipped his tea and thought of better days, bloody nights, the slashed and screaming faces of the childr
en she had loved—the ones nobody else cared for, so were easy to lure here, out of the way, to the house on the street where nobody went. Not until Halloween, when all the streets of Scarbridge, and all the towns beyond, were filled with the delicious screaming of children.

  There was a sound from out on the porch, a wild thrumming, as if Katy’s pumpkin was vibrating, energy building inside, the blood lust rising, rising, ready to burst in a display of savagery like nothing he had ever seen before. The pumpkin was absorbing the power of this special night, drinking in the desires of small children, the thrill of proud parents, the very idea of spectres abroad in the darkness.

  It was time.

  He went upstairs and into the bedroom, where she lay on the bed, waiting for him to come and fetch her. He picked her up off the old, worn quilt and carried her downstairs, being careful not to damage her further as he negotiated the narrow staircase.

  When he sat her down in the chair, she tipped to one side, unsupported. The polythene rustled, but it remained in place.

  Baxter went and got the pumpkin, making sure that the flame did not go out. But it never would, he knew that now. The flame would burn forever, drawing into its hungry form whatever darkness stalked the night. It was like a magnet, that flame, pulling towards itself all of human evil. It might be Halloween, but there were no such things as monsters. Just people, and the things they did to each other.

  He placed the pumpkin in the sink. Then, rolling up his sleeves, he set to work on her body. He had tied the polythene bag tightly around the stump of her neck, sealing off the wound. The head had gone into the ice-filled bath, along with . . . the other things, the things he could not yet bring himself to think about.

  The smell hit him as soon as he removed the bag, a heavy meaty odor that was not at all unpleasant. Just different from what he was used to.

  Discarding the carrier bag, he reclaimed the pumpkin from the sink, oh-so careful not to drop it on the concrete floor. He reached out and placed it on the stub of Katy’s neck, pressing down so that the tiny nubbin of spine that still peeked above the sheared cartilage of her throat entered the body of the vegetable. Grabbing it firmly on either side, a hand on each cheek, he twisted and pressed, pressed and twisted, until the pumpkin sat neatly between Katy’s shoulders, locked tightly in place by the jutting few inches of bone.