“Story! Story!” the circle began to chant.
“No, please!”
“Tell us the rest of the other story!”
This from Peter in the back of the circle. A low voice, a command.
Another “Ah.”
“Yes, tell us!”
Raylee held her hands to her ears. “No!”
“Tell us!”
“
“Tell us now!”
“I thought you were my friends!” Raylee threw her cat-paw hands out at them, her eyes begging.
A stifled cry escaped Raylee’s throat.
Instinctively, the circle widened. They knew she would tell now. They had commanded her. To be one of them, she would do what they told her to do.
Cleo stepped helplessly back into the circle, leaving Raylee under Poe’s twisted grin.
Raylee stood alone shivering for a moment. Then, her eyes on the floor, she ceased trembling, became very calm and still. There was a moment of silence. In the dark basement, all that could be heard was the snap of a candle in a far corner and the slapping of water against the lone apple in the tub behind her. When she looked up her eyes were dull, her voice quiet-calm.
She began to speak.
“They took Pumpkin Head away after that, and they put him in a place with crazy people in it. There was screaming all day and night. Someone was always screaming, or hitting his head against the wall, or crying all the time. Pumpkin Head was very lonely, and very scared.
“But Pumpkin Head’s parents loved him more than he ever knew. They decided they couldn’t let him stay in that place any longer. So they made a plan, a quiet plan.
“One day, when they went to visit him, they dressed him up in a disguise and carried him away. They carried him far away where no one would ever look for him, all the way across the country. They hid him, and kept him disguised while they tried to find some way to help him. And after a long search, they found a doctor.
“And the doctor did magical things. He worked for two years on Pumpkin Head, on his face and on his body. He cut into Pumpkin Head’s face, and changed it. With plastic, he made it into a real face. He changed the rest of Pumpkin Head’s head too, and gave him real hair. And he changed Pumpkin Head’s body.
“Pumpkin Head’s parents paid the doctor a lot of money, and the doctor did the work of a genius.
“He changed Pumpkin Head completely.”
Raylee paused, and a light came into her dull eyes. The circle, and Poe above them, waited with indrawn breath.
Waited to say “Ah.”
“He changed Pumpkin Head into a little girl.”
Breath was pulled back deeper, or let out in little gasps.
The light grew in Raylee’s eyes.
“There were things that Pumpkin Head, now not Pumpkin Head any more, had to do to be a girl. He had to be careful how he dressed, and how he acted. He had to be careful how he talked, and he always had to be calm. He was very frightened of what would happen if he didn’t stay calm. For his face was really just a wonderful plastic one. The real Pumpkin Head was still inside, locked in, waiting to come out.”
Raylee looked up at them, and her voice suddenly became something different. Hard and rasping.
Her eyes were stoked coals.
“All he ever wanted was friends.”
Her cat mask fell away. Her little girl face became soft and bloated and began to grow as if someone were blowing up a balloon inside her. Her hair began to pull into the scalp, forming a circle knot at the top. Creases appeared up and down her face.
With a sickening, rubber-inflated sound, the sound of a melon breaking, Raylee’s head burst open to its true shape. Her eyes, ears, and nose became soft orange triangles, her mouth a lazy, grinning crescent. She began to breathe with harsh effort, and her voice became a sharp, wheezing lisp.
“He only wanted friends.”
Slowly, with care, Raylee reached down into her costume for what lay hidden there.
She drew it out.
In the black cellar, under Poe’s approving glare, there were screams.
“My lunch and dinner,” she said, “my dinner and breakfast.”
Copyright
COPYRIGHT ©, 1983, BY DAW BOOKS, INC.
All Rights Reserved.
Cover art by Michael Whelan.
FIRST PRINTING, NOVEMBER 1983
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
PRINTED IN U.S.A.
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