Halloween and Other Seasons

“Look up Genesis, chapter 2, verse 7,” Adam said. His voice was barely above a whisper, his eyes glued to the radio, it’s readout glowing green.

The car rocked, an underwater wave.

“…and this dust is not being whipped up by the wind—it is not dust from the earth or falling from the sky…”

Mary angled the bible closer to the van’s dome light, which was to her back.

“Here it is,” she said. “It says, ‘And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living soul.” She looked up, perplexed. “Wha—”

Adam held up his hand; his eyes were on the radio with a fixed look.

“…humans. I repeat: the dust itself is composed of human bone and flesh. Every human on earth, apparently, one by one, is disintegrating into the dust from which we were made…”

The tired voice said: “I think…” and then there was a small gasp and then nothing but static from the radio.

Adam looked at Mary, whose eyes were impossibly wide with fright; she was clutching Cindy to her. She seemed to be fighting for breath.

“I—”

But already she was changed, turning to something brittle and dry before Adam’s eyes, and Cindy, and Lucy, who was hugging her Harry doll in the farthest reaches of the rear seat, the same.

And then they broke into dust and bone and more dust, and were gone.

Adam reached out, and gave a choked cry, and watched his arm fall into dust from the fingertips back.

“But—”

He felt the breath sucked back out of his lungs, which went hot and dry and collapsed.

And then, at the last, he heard a voice, filled not with rage, or spite, or even wrath, but with mortification—

“Go back.”

THE PUMPKIN BOY

1

Jody Wendt, five years old, saw the Pumpkin Boy through the window over the kitchen sink, outlined against the huge rising moon like a silhouette against a white screen. Jody had climbed up onto the counter next to the basin to reach the cereal in an overhead cabinet. Now he stood transfixed with a box of corn flakes in his hands, mouth agape.

The Pumpkin Boy had a bright orange pumpkin head with cold night steam puffing out of the eyes, nose and mouth cutouts, and a body consisting of a bright metal barrel chest and jointed legs and arms that looked like stainless steel rails. Even through the closed window Jody could hear the creaking noises he made. He moved stiffly, like he was unused to walking: his feet were two flat ovoid pads, slightly rounded and raised on top, made of shiny metal. As Jody watched, one of the feet stuck in place in the muddy ground; the Pumpkin Boy, oblivious, walked on, and then toppled over with a sound like rusting machinery. He lay on the ground like a turtle on its back, making a hollow chuffing noise like Saaaafe, saaaafe, saaaafe. Then he slowly righted himself, rising to a sitting position and then turned slowly to search for his lost foot. Finding it, he fell forward and clawed his way toward it. He closed his hands around it. His head fell forward and hit the ground, rolling away from the body, and the hands immediately let go of the foot and grabbed the head, realigning it on the stilt body with a ffffffmp.

Then the foot was reattached to the leg and the Pumpkin Boy stood up with a groaning, complaining metal sound.

The Pumpkin Boy reached back down, creaking loudly, to pluck two fat organic pumpkins from Mr. Schwartz’s field that grew in back of Jody’s yard, and began to move off, away into the night.

“Wow…” Jody whispered against the window pane, making it fog. He quickly cleared it with the cuff of his shirt, and watched the Pumpkin Boy stiffly climb the fence that bordered Mr. Schwartz’s pumpkin patch from another behind it. In the process the Pumpkin Boy lost hold of one of the pumpkins he held but paid no heed.

“Wow…” Jody whispered again.

Jody was alone in the house; it was the half hour in-between-time when the afternoon sitter went home and his mother came home from her job in town.

He had been told repeatedly that he was not to leave the house during in-between-time.

The forgotten box of corn flakes lay spilling cereal into the kitchen sink as he climbed down, pushed his arms into his jacket and opened the door which led from the kitchen to the back yard.

As Jody Wendt stood on the top step of the back stoop, the storm door closing with a hiss-and-bang behind him, he saw the Pumpkin Boy once again outlined against the moon, but moving quickly away. He was already two fields over, and would soon drop behind the slope that led down to Martin’s Creek and the valley beyond.

Mouth still open in amazement, Jody was working at the zipper to his jacket, which wouldn’t zip. His feet were already carrying him down the steps, across the yard, to the split-log fence.

He dipped under the fence, forgetting the zipper, and stood in Mr. Schwartz’s pumpkin patch on the other side.

The Pumpkin Boy’s head was just visible, and then the slope down made him disappear.

Jody hurried on.

Mr. Schwartz’s pumpkin field was furrowed, bursting with fat vined pumpkins that would soon be picked and sold for Halloween. Jody tripped over the first row he came to, and landed on his hands.

He found himself face to face with a huge oval orange fruit, its skin hard and strong.

It looked like a human head.

Jody pushed himself up and stumbled on.

He fell twice more.  But still, in the distance, he could hear the metallic creaking sounds of the Pumpkin Boy. There were two more fences to manage, one again of split logs, which Jody scooted under, and the other of chain link, which he climbed with difficulty.

He nearly toppled over when he reached the top, but then, in the distance, he saw an orange flash in the moonlight: the top of the Pumpkin Boy’s head. He held on and descended to the other side.

There was a rock wall, which Jody had never known existed, separating two more pumpkin fields.

Jody was now in unfamiliar territory. Even from his bedroom window, just before harvest, the fields surrounding his house were awash in taut orange fruit, and now, for the first time, he knew just how complicated the layout was.

At yet another rock wall he paused to look back. He could no longer see his house.

He heard a sharp metallic creak in the far distance, and hurried toward it.

The pumpkin field ended in a tangle of weeds and brambles and a ledge. Abruptly, Jody found himself teetering at the top of the slope. A tuft of brambles caught his foot and twisted his ankle and, with a short surprised gasp, he was tumbling down the damp, soft bank.

At the bottom, he came up short against an uprooted oak trunk, and came to a stop with one of its gnarled roots pointing into his face like an accusing finger.

He sat up, soiled and wet.

Suddenly, he realized what he had done.

He looked back, up the slope, and shuddered with the thought that, even if he could climb the steep incline, he would not be able to find his way back home through the tangle of pumpkin fields.