Strange Highways (24 page)

The day was mild. Sunshine found its way through holes in the overcast, brightly illuminating some orange mounds of pumpkins while leaving others deep in cloud shadows. In spite of the warm weather, a chill gripped Tommy and would not release him.

Leaning forward with the half-sculpted pumpkin in his lap, the carver said, “You just give me whatever amount you wish … although I’m duty-bound to say that you get what you give.”

Another smile. Worse than the first one.

Tommy said, “Uh …”

“You get what you give,” the carver repeated.

“No shit?” brother Frank said, stepping up to the row of leering jack-o’-lanterns. Evidently he had overheard everything. He was two years older than Tommy, muscular where Tommy was slight, with a self-confidence that Tommy had never known. Frank hefted the most macabre of all the old guy’s creations. “So how much is this one?”

The carver was reluctant to shift his gaze from Tommy to Frank, and Tommy was unable to break the contact first. In the man’s eyes Tommy saw something he could not define or understand, something that filled his mind’s eye with images of disfigured children, deformed creatures that he could not name, and dead things.

“How much is this one, gramps?” Frank repeated.

At last, the carver looked at Frank—and smiled. He lifted the half-carved pumpkin off his lap, put it on the ground, but did not get up. “As I said, you pay me what you wish, and you get what you give.”

Frank had chosen the most disturbing jack-o’-lantern in the eerie collection. It was big, not pleasingly round but lumpy and misshapen, narrower at the top than at the bottom, with ugly crusted nodules like ligneous fungus on a diseased oak tree. The old man had compounded the unsettling effect of the pumpkin’s natural deformities by giving it an immense mouth with three upper and three lower fangs. Its nose was an irregular hole that made Tommy think of campfire tales about lepers. The slanted eyes were as large as lemons but were not cut all the way through the rind except for a pupil—an evil elliptical slit—in the center of each. The stem in the head was dark and knotted as Tommy imagined a cancerous growth might be. The maker of jack-o’-lanterns had painted this one black, letting the natural orange color blaze through in only a few places to create character lines around the eyes and mouth as well as to add emphasis to the tumorous growths.

Frank was bound to like
that
pumpkin. His favorite movies were
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
and all the
Friday the 13th
sagas of the mad, murderous Jason. When Tommy and Frank watched a movie of that kind on the VCR, Tommy always pulled for the victims, while Frank cheered the killer. Watching
Poltergeist
, Frank was disappointed that the whole family survived: He kept hoping that the little boy would be eaten by some creepazoid in the closet and that his stripped bones would be spit out like watermelon seeds. “Hell,” Frank had said, “they could’ve at least ripped the guts out of the stupid dog.”

Now, Frank held the black pumpkin, grinning as he studied its malevolent features. He squinted into the thing’s slitted pupils as if the jack-o’-lantern’s eyes were real, as if there were thoughts to be read in those depths—and for a moment he seemed to be mesmerized by the pumpkin’s gaze.

Put it down
, Tommy thought urgently.
For God’s sake, Frank, put it down and let’s get out of here.

The carver watched Frank intently. The old man was still, like a predator preparing to pounce.

Clouds moved, blocking the sun.

Tommy shivered.

Finally breaking the staring contest with the jack-o’-lantern, Frank said to the carver, “I give you whatever I like?”

“You get what you give.”

“But no matter what I give, I get the jack-o’-lantern?”

“Yes, but you get what you give,” the old man said cryptically.

Frank put the black pumpkin aside and pulled some change from his pocket. Grinning, he approached the old man, holding a nickel.

The carver reached for the coin.

“No!” Tommy protested too explosively.

Both Frank and the carver regarded him with surprise.

Tommy said, “No, Frank, it’s a bad thing. Don’t buy it. Don’t bring it home, Frank.”

For a moment Frank stared at him in astonishment, then laughed. “You’ve always been a wimp, but are you telling me now you’re scared of a
pumpkin?”

“It’s a bad thing,” Tommy insisted.

“Scared of the dark, scared of high places, seared of what’s in your bedroom closet at night, scared of half the other kids you meet—and now scared of a stupid damn pumpkin,” Frank said. He laughed again, and his laugh was rich with scorn and disgust as well as with amusement.

The carver took his cue from Frank, but the old man’s dry laugh contained no amusement at all.

Tommy was pierced by an icy needle of fear that he could not explain, and he wondered if he might be a wimp after all, afraid of his shadow, maybe even unbalanced. The counselor at school said he was “too sensitive.” His mother said he was “too imaginative,” and his father said he was “impractical, a dreamer, self-involved.” Maybe he was all those things, and perhaps he would wind up in a sanitarium someday, in a boobyhatch with rubber walls, talking to imaginary people, eating flies. But, damn it, he
knew
the black pumpkin was a bad thing.

“Here, gramps,” Frank said, “here’s a nickel. Will you really sell it for that?”

“I’ll take a nickel for my carving, but you still have to pay the usual price of the pumpkin to the fella who operates the lot.”

“Deal,” Frank said.

The carver plucked the nickel out of Frank’s hand.

Tommy shuddered.

Frank turned from the old man and picked up the pumpkin again.

Just then, the sun broke through the clouds. A shaft of light fell on their corner of the lot.

Only Tommy saw what happened in that radiant moment. The sun brightened the orange of the pumpkins, imparted a gold sheen to the dusty ground, gleamed on the metal frame of the chair—but did not touch the carver himself. The light parted around him as if it were a curtain, leaving him in the shade. It was an incredible sight, as though the sunshine shunned the carver, as though he were composed of an unearthly substance that
repelled
light.

Tommy gasped.

The old man fixed Tommy with a wild look, as though he were not a man at all but a storm spirit passing as a man, as though he would at any second erupt into tornadoes of wind, furies of rain, crashes of thunder, lightning. His amber eyes were aglow with promises of pain and terror.

Abruptly the clouds covered the sun again.

The old man winked.

We’re dead
, Tommy thought miserably.

Having lifted the pumpkin again, Frank looked craftily at the old man as if expecting to be told that the nickel sale was a joke. “I can really just take it away?”

“I keep telling you,” the carver said.

“How long did you work on this?” Frank asked.

“About an hour.”

“And you’re willing to settle for a nickel an hour?”

“I work for the love of it. For the sheer love of it.” The carver winked at Tommy again.

“What are you, senile?” Frank asked in his usual charming manner.

“Maybe. Maybe.”

Frank stared at the old man, perhaps sensing some of what Tommy felt, but he finally shrugged and turned away, carrying the jack-o’-lantern toward the front of the lot where their father was buying a score of uncarved pumpkins for the big party the following night.

Tommy wanted to run after his brother, beg Frank to return the black pumpkin and get his nickel back.

“Listen here,” the carver said fiercely, leaning forward once more. The old man was so thin and angular that Tommy was convinced he’d heard ancient bones scraping together within the inadequate padding of the desiccated body.

“Listen to me, boy … .”

No,
Tommy thought.
No, I won’t listen, I’ll run, I’ll run.

The old man’s power was like solder, however, fusing Tommy to that piece of ground, rendering him incapable of movement.

“In the night,” the carver said, his amber eyes darkening, “your brother’s jack-o’-lantern will grow into something other than what it is now. Its jaws will work. Its teeth will sharpen. When everyone is asleep, it’ll creep through your house … and give what’s deserved. It’ll come for you last of all. What do you think you deserve, Tommy? You see, I know your name, though your brother never used it. What do you think the black pumpkin will do to you, Tommy? Hmmm? What do you deserve?”

“What
are
you?” Tommy asked.

The carver smiled. “Dangerous.”

Suddenly Tommy’s feet tore loose of the earth to which they had been stuck, and he ran.

When he caught up with Frank, he tried to persuade his brother to return the black pumpkin, but his explanation of the danger came out as nothing more than hysterical babbling, and Frank laughed at him. Tommy tried to knock the hateful thing out of Frank’s hands. Frank held on to the jack-o’-lantern and gave Tommy a hard shove that sent him sprawling backward over a pile of pumpkins. Frank laughed again, purposefully tramped hard on Tommy’s right foot as the younger boy struggled to get up, and moved away.

Through the involuntary tears wrung from him by the pain in his foot, Tommy looked toward the back of the lot and saw that the carver was watching.

The old man waved.

Heart beating double time, Tommy limped out to the front of the lot, searching for a way to convince Frank of the danger. But Frank was already putting his purchase on the backseat of the Cadillac. Their father was paying for the jack-o’-lantern and for a score of uncarved pumpkins. Tommy was too late.

2

AT HOME, FRANK TOOK THE BLACK PUMPKIN INTO HIS BEDROOM AND stood it on the desk in the corner, under the poster of Michael Berryman as the demented killer in
The Hills Have Eyes.

From the open doorway, Tommy watched.

Frank had found a fat, scented decorative candle in the kitchen pantry; now he put it inside the pumpkin. It was big enough to burn steadily for at least two days. Dreading the appearance of light in the jack-o’-lantern’s eyes, Tommy watched as Frank lit the candle and put the pumpkin’s stem-centered lid in place.

The slitted pupils glowed-flickered-shimmered with a convincing imitation of demonic life and malevolent intellect. The serrated grin blazed bright, and the fluttering light was like a tongue ceaselessly licking the cold-rind lips. The most disgusting part of the illusion of life was the leprous pit of a nose, which appeared to fill with moist, yellowish mucus.

“Incredible!” Frank said. “That old fart is a real genius at this stuff.”

The scented candle emitted the fragrance of roses.

Although he could not remember where he had read of such a thing, Tommy recalled that the sudden, unexplained scent of roses supposedly indicated the presence of spirits of the dead. Of course, the source of this odor was no mystery.

“What the hell?” Frank said, wrinkling his nose. He lifted the lid of the jack-o’-lantern and peered inside. The inconstant orange light played across his face, queerly distorting his features. “This is supposed to be a
lemon
-scented candle. Not roses, not girlie crap.”

* * *

In the big airy kitchen, Lois and Kyle Sutzmann, Tommy’s mother and father, were standing at the table with the caterer, Mr. Howser. They were studying the menu for the flashy Halloween party that they were throwing the following night—and loudly reminding Mr. Howser that the food was to be prepared with the finest ingredients.

Tommy circled behind them, hoping to remain invisible. He took a can of Coke from the refrigerator.

Now his mother and father were hammering the caterer about the need for everything to be “impressive.” Hors d’oeuvres, flowers, the bar, the waiters’ uniforms, and the buffet dinner must be so elegant and exquisite and drop-dead perfect that every guest would feel himself to be in the home of true California aristocracy.

This was not a party for kids. In fact, Tommy and Frank would be required to remain in their rooms tomorrow evening, permitted to engage only in the quietest activities: no television, no stereo, no slightest peep to draw attention to themselves.

This party was strictly for the movers and shakers on whom Kyle Sutzmann’s political career depended. He was now a California State Senator, but in next week’s election he was running for the United States Congress. This was a thank-you party for his most generous financial backers and for the power brokers who had pulled strings to ensure his nomination the previous spring. Kids verboten.

Tommy’s parents seemed to want him around only at major campaign rallies, media photography sessions, and for a few minutes at the start of election-night victory parties. That was okay with Tommy. He preferred to remain invisible. On those rare occasions when his folks took notice of him, they invariably disapproved of everything he said and did, every movement he made, every innocent expression that crossed his face.

Lois said, “Mr. Howser, I hope we understand that large shrimp do
not
qualify as finger lobster.”

As the nervous caterer reassured Lois of the quality of his operation, Tommy sidled silently away from the refrigerator and quietly extracted two Milanos from the cookie jar.

“These are important people,” Kyle informed the caterer for the tenth time, “substantial and sophisticated people, and they are accustomed to the very best.”

In school, Tommy had been taught that politics was the means by which many enlightened people chose to serve their fellow men. He knew that was baloney. His parents spent long evenings plotting his father’s political career, and Tommy never once overheard either of them talk about serving the people or improving society. Oh, sure, in public, on campaign platforms, that was what they talked about “the rights of the masses, the hungry, the homeless”—but never in private. Beyond the public eye, they endlessly discussed “forming power bases” and “crushing the opposition” and “shoving this new law down their throats.” To them and to all the people with whom they associated, politics was a way to gain respect, make some money, and—most important—acquire power.