Bill Pronzini: Pumpkin

Then she thought: Come on, Mandy, that’s superstitious nonsense, just as Harley says. The pumpkin is only a pumpkin. Nothing is going to happen here tonight.

But it was so quiet…

Abruptly she turned from the window, went to the stove, picked up her spoon to stir the hot cider. If Harley didn’t come back pretty soon, she’d put on her coat and go out to the barn and fetch him. She just didn’t like being here alone, not tonight of all nights.

So quiet …

The back door burst open.

She had no warning; the door just flew inward, the knob thudding into the kitchen wall. “Harley!” she cried as he came in out of the foggy darkness. “For God’s

sake, you half scared me to death! What’s the idea of-”

Then she saw his face. And what he held dripping in his hand.

She screamed.

He rushed toward her, and she tried to run, and he caught her and threw her to the floor, pinned her there with his weight. His face loomed above her, stained with stringy pulp and seeds, and she knew what the cider and his brooding had led him to do tonight – knew what was about to happen even before the thing that had been her husband opened its goblin’s mouth and the words came out in a drooling litany of evil.

“You’re next…you’re next…you’re next…”

The handful of dripping pulp mashed against her mouth, forcing some of the bitter juice past her lips and stifling another scream. She gagged, fought wildly for a few seconds…and then stopped struggling, lay still.

She smiled up at him, a wet dark orange smile.

Now there were two of them, the first two – two to sow the seeds for next year’s Halloween harvest.