Norman Partridge - Dark Harvest

“I don’t have to catch your great-great grandma, stupid. I don’t have to catch anyone. All I have to do is plant myself in the right place. I’ll let my chuckleheaded cousins do the catching. They’ll flush that sucker like a prize buck, corral him in a blind alley. And that’s where I’ll be waiting, all ready to take my cuts.”

“Fat chance. You spend the night of the Run hanging out in some stupid alley, you might as well set up housekeeping there for a whole goddamn year.”

“Uh-uh. You boys’ll be the ones who end up hanging around this jerkwater town for another year, not me. I’ll have a walking nightmare’s carcass chained to my bumper, and I’ll be across the Line and gone for good by the time you take your first piss of the morning.”

Pete’s been thinking about that conversation for the last few days, putting it together with all the other stories he’s heard. Adding it up one way, then adding it up another just to see if he can make it come out any other way than the crazy spookshow equation it wears for a face.

And, hey, just lately Pete’s had plenty of time to think about all that stuff. Because it’s the tail end of October now, and his father’s had him locked in his bedroom for the last five days. Nothing to eat in there. Only water to drink, and — when the old man’s feeling generous — maybe a glass of OJ that’s a long way from fresh-squeezed. You want sufficient opportunity to become a believer, well, there you go. Try feeding a five-day hunger with some OJ that tastes like a cup of freezer burn, and nothing to wash it down but a bunch of words you can’t get out of your head.

But even with all that chewing around inside him, Pete can’t quite buy into the stories he’s been hearing. Oh, sure, he can believe the part about the kids and the crazy stuff they get up to with their baseball bats and pitchforks on Halloween night. After his run-in with Officer Ricks, he’s certain his hayseed hometown could breed a nasty little square dance like that. But the other part — the spookshow part — Pete’s not so sure he can make the whole trip there.

You can’t really blame him, can you? I mean, think about it. Remember when you were just a little kid, the first time you noticed your older brother locked up tight for five days and nights during the last week of October? Remember the first time you heard that the whole deal had something to do with a pumpkin-headed scarecrow that runs around on Halloween night? It wasn’t exactly easy to believe that one no matter how scared you were, was it?

Not until you experienced it yourself, of course.

Until you were the guy locked up in your bedroom.

Until you were the guy who saw what went down when you hit the streets on Halloween night.

But Pete hasn’t seen any of that. Not yet. Like I said, he just turned sixteen. Tonight is his first crack at the Run. So it’s not really surprising that his disbelief isn’t completely suspended . But he’s getting there. And the more Pete thinks about it, the less important the whole spookshow equation seems. The way Pete sees it, what he believes or disbelieves doesn’t really matter much when you look at the big picture.

Do that, and other stuff starts to matter.

Uh-huh. What matters is that his old man has kept him locked up for five days. What matters is that he hasn’t had anything to eat. What matters is that he’s dead cold certain it’s been just that way for every other guy in town between the ages of sixteen and nineteen. The high school is closed — has been for five days. The streets are empty. And guys all over town are pacing crackerbox bedrooms in the wee small hours, gearing up for Halloween night like bulls penned up in tight little chutes.

Pete sits on his bed and thinks about that. Right about now, it seems like a pretty full bucket of validation . So he lets his mind tote that sucker, and he gets comfortable with the load.

He thinks about baseball bats and pitchforks, and butcher knives, and two-by-fours studded with nails, and a couple hundred young guys hitting the streets as darkness falls.

He thinks about a scarecrow running around with a pumpkin for a head.

He thinks about what running down that scarecrow might mean for a guy like him.

Then, as the old Waltham clock on his nightstand ticks down the dying embers of Halloween evening, he stops thinking about all that stuff.

After that, he only thinks about a couple of things, the really important things.

He thinks about the door to his bedroom swinging open.

He thinks about what he’ll do when he steps outside.

If the October Boy had knees he’d be on them, kneeling as he is at the shrine of the autumn moon.

Or maybe it’s the shrine of the man with the knife. After all, that’s who’s looming over the October Boy like an onyx statue, his silhouette standing between the Boy and the large dome of a moon half-risen against the indigo sky.

For a moment, the Boy is lost in the man’s shadow. He tilts his blind, blank face upward. Then the man kneels, and moonlight washes both of them. The butcher knife catches the light like a mirror as he raises it. His other hand closes over the pumpkin stem, and he holds the Boy’s head steady, and he sets about his work.

Determined strokes of the blade give the Boy a face. First come the eyes, a pair of triangles sliced narrow. Then the nose, which, of course, is wider — a barbed arrowhead of a hole that will provide the illusion of flared nostrils when finished.

The blade works steadily as the nose takes shape. The pumpkin’s skin is thick, the meat beneath thicker. The carver flicks severed chunks to the dirt below. His wrist begins to ache, but his hand does not hesitate until an exhalation exits the October Boy’s spiked nostrils, warming the man’s cold fingers.

The butcher knife freezes in mid-air. The man’s own breath is quite suddenly trapped in his chest. He holds the stem tightly, and he stares at the half-face in front of him, knowing that he has made it what it is and that he will make it what it will be. As if reading his mind, the October Boy’s narrow eyes grow narrower still. He draws a shallow breath through his barbed nose, and a dull flickering light blooms behind those empty triangular sockets.

This unsettles the man, for there is no candle within the Boy’s hollow head. Still, the light is there, and so is the wet crackle of flame tasting fibrous yellow strands. These things the man recognizes clearly, though he cannot explain them.

So best not to think about it, the man tells himself.

No point in thinking, because there’s no explaining any of it.

Tonight, everything’s just the way it is.

Tonight, everything’s chiseled in stone.

Yes. The man with the knife could not possibly see this night any other way. For a long moment, he stares into the pair of flickering sockets where the Boy’s eyes should be. The man does not blink; the October Boy can’t. The Boy draws another tentative breath, and his exhalation carries the rich scents of scorched cinnamon and gunpowder and melting wax. Somehow, the mingled smells steady the man, and he raises the knife once more and sets about finishing the work he has begun.

Twin rows of jagged teeth appear below the arrowhead gap of the nose. Yellow light flickers across the man’s hand as the Boy inhales through his spiked mouth. His breaths are still shallow, still weak. But the light from his eyes paints harsh triangles on the man’s face as he carves, and the man works faster now, cutting twin ends into a wicked smile that cleaves cheekbones and just misses stabbing the October Boy’s eyes.

The man’s knife hand drops to his side; his other hand releases the stem attached to the pumpkin’s crown. The Boy’s head bobs low — by rights it should fall off his shoulders, for in truth he has no neck to support it. But this changes quickly as green creepers climb the twisted vine, which leads to the stem, twining as they go, growing thicker and darker as they angle toward the base of the pumpkin. They raise the Boy’s head on a strong, braided neck that drives barbed tendrils into the gourd itself.