Pumpkin (3 page)

Vera was probably right about the nightmare—what else could it have been? She said the description of the face wasn’t even a coincidence, really; most kids tend to be afraid of old men and it’s only natural when they show up in their dreams.

Natural or not, David didn’t want to think about explanations now because other things were more important. Bad enough that this place bugged him, but if it spooked Billy that was the last straw. He’d made up his mind this morning; they had to get out of here. Monday he’d drive back to the city and make the rounds and this time he wouldn’t be so choosy, just take anything he could get, as long as they could move away before winter.

Right now the thing to do was revise his résumé, play down all that executive-experience stuff that might turn off employers who were only looking for somebody to fill an ordinary accounting job. A pay cut didn’t matter; what mattered was getting out.

But it was hard to concentrate, hard to figure how to rewrite the damned thing. Maybe Vera could help; she was good with words.

David looked up and called. “Honey—can you come here for a minute?”

No answer.

“Vera—”

Still no reply, only the tick-tock of the grandfather’s clock.

He pushed back his chair and rose, striding down the hall to the kitchen. He could have sworn he saw her go there only minutes ago, but the room was empty now. Where had she disappeared to?

Peering across the room he saw that the kitchen door was ajar.

It was fear that forced him forward. Flinging the door wide, he moved out into the yard, calling her name. Before he realized it, he was at the edge of the road.

For a moment David hesitated, glancing off into the purple haze haloing the ruined house, the weed-infested garden patch and the treetops rising darkly from the slope below. He wanted to stop but he couldn’t, because he knew. It hit him the moment he saw the open kitchen door.

Crossing the road, he raised his voice in a shout. No response came, and desperation drove him past the huddled house and the windswept weeds, his feet churning dead leaves as he stared at the dead limbs of the towering trees beyond.

Then he did halt, heart hammering. Something was moving down there below between the twisted tree trunks—moving and emerging.

“Vera!”

She came toward him, hair disheveled, her housedress splotched and stained. But she was smiling.

“I thought I heard you,” she said.

David stared at her, numb with relief. “Are you all right?”

“Of course. Why shouldn’t I be?”

“But what were you doing over here?”

She reached out and took his hand. “I’ll show you.”

Before he could resist she was leading him forward, down into the woods, into the forbidden forest, while the voices rose.
“No—don’t go—keep away from there, you hear?”
His aunt’s voice, and his uncle’s, dead voices echoing over the years.

Now Vera’s voice, here and very much alive. “After last night I couldn’t help it. Oh, I knew there was nothing to worry about, but I had to make sure. And I did find something—here.”

She halted in a little clearing deep down under the trees, pointing to a cluster of matted grass and wilted wildflowers which sprouted from an oblong mound. “You know what this is?”

David blinked, silent and uncomprehending.

“Can’t you guess?” Vera smiled again. “It’s a grave.”

She stooped, parting the tangled growth at the far end of the mound and disclosing a weathered wooden slab. It bore neither dates nor inscription, only the crudely carved lettering of a name:

JED HOLLOWAY

“You see?” Vera nodded toward the mound. “Now we know there’s nothing to be afraid of. He’s been dead and buried here for years.”

Nothing to be afraid of.
David nodded automatically and again she took his hand, leading him away from the dead man’s grave, past the twisted trunks of the dead trees, up the path between the skeleton of the dead house and the ruined remains of the dead garden.

But the garden wasn’t entirely dead. A flash of vivid color caught his eye in the rays of the setting sun and then he saw it clearly—the orange outline, rounded and resting amidst the weeds. Vera saw it too.

“Look, a pumpkin!” Her smile broadened. “Just what we needed.”

“Needed?” David frowned.

“Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten. Tonight’s Halloween.” She stooped, reaching toward the pumpkin, but David yanked her away.

“Leave it alone.”

“But David—”

“Leave it alone, I said!”

A sudden blast of sound interrupted Vera’s reply. The two of them turned, glancing toward the road at another orange object—the school bus, halting before their yard.

They crossed over to it just as Billy got out. The bus moved off, trailing a cloud of exhaust, and he turned to them, his face flushed with excitement.

“Guess what?” he cried. “We had a Halloween party at school. Miss Zelisko gave us a whole bunch of colored paper to make masks and black cats and witches and ghosts and we had a cake and orange soda and boy was it ever neat—”

“Take it easy, young man,” Vera said. “If you don’t slow down you’ll trip over your tongue.”

They moved across the yard to the back door. “You should of been there,” Billy said. “All the kids, they’re getting ready to go in town tonight for trick or treat. Can you drive me, Dad?”

“Sorry, son, I’ve got work to do.” Anticipating the next question, David continued quickly. “And don’t ask your mother. I’m going to need her help.”

Vera glanced at him. “Maybe for just an hour, if we went early—?”

David shook his head. “I really do need you. I’m stuck in the middle of that damned résumé.”

The boy’s smile withered, then suddenly blossomed anew. “Okay. But I can have a jack-o’-lantern, can’t I?”

“A what?”

“Don’t you know about jack-o’-lanterns? Miss Zelisko made one and brought it to class for the party. It’s a big pumpkin, only you carve a face on it. Then you squish out the insides and put in a candle to light up the face.”

“Now I remember,” David nodded. “We used to put one in the window on Halloween night when I was a kid.”

“Can I do it tonight, Dad? If we put it in the front window it would look—”

“Real neat,” David said. “Trouble is, we don’t have a pumpkin.”

“Yes we do.” Billy beamed happily. “I saw one yesterday—a great big one, too. It’s across the way in that old garden. We can get it right now—”

“No.”

“But it’s just an old pumpkin.” Billy’s voice took on a shrill edge. “Nobody even lives there, so it’s not like stealing. Why can’t I have it?”

“Because I say so, that’s why.” Ignoring Vera’s look, David took his son’s arm. “It’s getting dark. Time to go inside.”

Billy gazed up at him in mingled disappointment and defiance. “What’s the matter, Dad—you afraid of ghosts or something?”

“There are no ghosts,” Vera said.

But she wasn’t talking to Billy.

obody was talking to Billy now. He could hear Mom and Dad in the front parlor, arguing about the resumay, whatever that was. Something you showed people when you wanted to get a job, like. Anyhow he hoped it wouldn’t work because then they’d have to move back into town and he liked it here. This place was neat and even school was better than that old dump in the city. The only thing wrong was Dad, the funny way he acted lately. Like yesterday when he caught him sneaking across the road, and tonight, not letting him have the pumpkin.

No fair, that’s what it was. Other kids were going trick or treating, getting money and candy and good stuff like that. But he couldn’t even have a plain old pumpkin lying right there on the ground across the way. What good did it do to leave it? When the frost came it would only spoil. And it would make a real neat jack-o’-lantern, too, sitting there in the front window for kids to see when they came driving past with their folks on the way to trick or treat in town.

But what did Dad care? All he cared about was this resumay thing and now he was yelling at Mom again, real loud this time. So loud that he wouldn’t even hear if somebody went out the kitchen door.

Two minutes is all it would take. Two minutes to sneak across the road and get that old pumpkin. Nobody would notice, not if you were quiet.

Just to prove it Billy came downstairs slow and careful. Sure enough, both of them were sitting in the parlor at the table under the lamp and they kept on arguing without looking up.

And the lock on the kitchen door opened easy.

It was almost dark outside now, dark and sort of chilly with a lot of clouds in the sky and a big orange moon coming up over the trees. Orange like the pumpkin across the road.

Billy crossed real fast and headed for the garden patch. He could hear the leaves scrunching under his feet and the wind blowing through the trees down there in the woods. When he got to the garden it was all shadows and he couldn’t see the pumpkin lying under the weeds. The wind was sort of wailing now.

But Billy wasn’t afraid of the shadows. And he wasn’t afraid of that old house no matter how spooky it looked, because nobody lived inside. If the boards creaked that was just the wind. He was all alone here with nobody to see or stop him.

Now he saw the pumpkin next to a vine where the weeds were hiding it. Billy bent down to reach out for it.

And felt the cold hand gripping his shoulder.

shouldn’t have scared the kid,
David told himself. Sitting there in the kitchen with only the bottle for company he stared out into the moonlight and poured himself another drink.

How was he to know the kid would be so shook up? He’d been shook up too when he noticed Billy was gone, and running across the road to get him was the natural thing to do. It wasn’t as if he really feared for Billy’s safety, but somebody had to teach him to follow orders. Why couldn’t Vera understand?

But she didn’t understand, any more than Billy. Instead she took his part. “Never mind that stupid old pumpkin,” she told him. “How about you and I driving into town for trick or treat?”

Stupid pumpkin.
Stupid David,
that’s what she really meant, and it hurt. Did she think he was wigging out? All he wanted was to protect the boy, teach him a little discipline.

Instead she rewarded him for his disobedience. Naturally, Billy was overjoyed and the two of them left happily together. Left him without another word, left him alone there feeling like a fool.

David raised his glass, watching it turn orange-gold in the moonlight streaming in from the window. The whiskey was orange-gold too, and as he drank it kindled a golden glow inside, warming and expanding.

He set the glass down with a sigh.
Maybe I am a fool.
Was it the liquor talking or did he really feel that way? He wasn’t quite sure, but now he was able to face the possibility as his anger ebbed.

Perhaps he’d overreacted. After all, Billy was just a kid and his excitement was normal for his age. It wasn’t his fault David felt the way he did about Halloween and something that had happened twenty-five years ago.

Vera was right; he was a grown man now and Jed Holloway was in his grave. Why keep him alive in his own mind?

David brought himself another drink. Bottle getting empty, he was getting full. But the whiskey was helping, helping him to think straight for the first time in months.

When you came right down to it, what did he really know about Jed Holloway? Seen through a child’s eyes he’d been pure evil, but as a reasoning adult David knew nothing is completely pure or entirely evil. That talk about witchcraft was just local gossip, but even if it had been true, all it meant was that an eccentric old man got mixed up in superstitious nonsense.

There was no proof he’d ever actually harmed anyone, not even David himself. The events of that long-ago Halloween night had been colored by a child’s imagination. Nothing actually happened except that Holloway had run him off his property.

Besides, he was dead now and David didn’t believe in ghosts. So why was he acting this way? He’d only end up harming himself, and perhaps harming Billy too. No, Vera was right and he was wrong. No sense passing along his own foolish fears to the youngster.

Maybe it was already too late now, but at least he could try to undo the damage. He owed it to Billy, and to Vera. And there was a way.