Danny braced himself and leaped, this time with even less grace, catching his foot and plopping down hard on his butt. Melinda laughed at his awkward predicament. He frowned at her.
“What? I do this favor for you and you laugh at me now, ‘cause I’m cold and tired and--”
She leaned over and kissed him on the forehead as he brushed the weeds out of his hair and clothes.
“Carry this, would’ya?” More insistent than requesting, already handing him the pumpkin.
“I’m just your slave—”
“Slave to my beguiling charms.” She put on the act, puppy dog eyes and pouting lips on full display.
They started the two-mile trek back into town, their pace brisk, trying to keep warm.
“It’s probably cursed, probably why I tripped up going over the fence.”
“You’re just clumsy. There’s no curse for takin’ a pumpkin. No dead babies gonna haunt you. I’m just gonna carve a winner out of this one.”
“That stuff is true. I mean, all that about Dr. Ranier doing abortions and stuff.” He put his fingers in his mouth again, balancing the pumpkin against his chest. Apparently the cuts were deeper than he’d thought, and continued to bleed profusely.
They both fell silent for a handful of minutes, purposeful strides taking over as the night grew even colder. The overcast skies portended rain and they just wanted to make it home before it started.
And then Danny stumbled, dropping the pumpkin. Not hard, catching it before it really hit the ground, but enough to have it land with a leaden thump on the dirt.
“Damn it, klutz! Do you need walking lessons or what?” Melinda was beside herself with anger, squatting to inspect the pumpkin. All this for naught, she thought; all this for naught.
“Shit, Melinda. It’s not like I meant to--”
“You bleedin’ on it?”
“Yeah, cut my finger on the fence, bled on the stem…” Melinda scooted away from the pumpkin, inexplicably alarmed.
“How can that be? The pumpkin’s got blood comin’ from inside.” They both watched as a thin line of blood trickled from a miniscule crack towards the bottom, where it had hit the ground. The red liquid pooled in the dirt.
“T-That’s impossible,” she said. “Can’t be any blood comin’ from inside a pumpkin, only pumpkin, seeds and all. You must have bled a lot more than you thought,” she said, forcing a smile, obviously in denial of what she was witnessing. More blood seeped from the crack.
Danny pulled out his switchblade and approached the pumpkin. He knelt before it, not really sure what he was going to do, but feeling safer with the knife in his hand.
“Danny?”
With suddenness, curiosity took over, and he plunged the knife into the thick hide of the pumpkin. Blood gushed out, mixed with another unknown fluid that diluted the crimson tide, along with stringy pumpkin guts and pumpkin seeds, spattering the dirt and his shoes. He pried with the knife and his fingers, pulling the pumpkin apart.
“Oh, Christ!” He moaned in revulsion at what he saw.
Melinda squealed, “What is it, Danny? What is it? ” The pumpkin had split wide open like a cracked egg. Danny jumped to his feet, hands dripping wet. An intolerable stench was belched from within the split pumpkin, forcing him to cover his face with his sleeve, while Melinda openly retched, dry and empty. She was on her feet as well, fingers digging crescents into Danny’s arms. He didn’t feel a thing. They both just stared in horror and disgust.
Within the womb of the pumpkin, entwined within a network of ripped veins, a ruptured clear sac, and pumpkin guts and seeds, two large yellow eyes, like jaundiced moons and devoid of pupils, attempted to blindly seek out the source of intrusion. It probably did not see them, thought Danny, as his stomach roiled like a fist-sized hurricane, battering his insides.
It was a fetus, a mutation of inconceivable ugliness borne of nightmares and rumors and curses made real.
“Oh my God, Danny… Danny! ” Melinda cringed, teetering on hysterical.
The obscenity, skin stained with blood but otherwise as orange as a healthy pumpkin, turned itself in the direction of Melinda’s voice, the tiny holes where ears should be steering it in her direction, their direction.
Gurgling noises emanated from its throat, wet sounds and orange spittle passing by its lipless slit of a mouth.
“We need to go-- now! ” Melinda, beside herself, doing a nervous dance of desperation: she wanted away from here posthaste…or sooner!
“Wait,” Danny said. “I think it’s trying to…say something.” Melinda pulled harder on Danny’s arm, afraid to leave without him, the night and clouds and vast darkened landscape uninviting despite her urgency to run as far away from here as possible.
“C’mon! Let’s go! ”
The sound that rose from the baby’s mouth unhinged the muscles in Danny’s legs. He slumped to the ground, transfixed by the fetal abomination squirming and convulsing and hideously alive within the pumpkin. Melinda tumbled with him, but not for long. He scrambled to his feet and dragged her to hers, his feet pounding the dirt like a chorus of hammers, matching the freight train rhythm of his heart; his swiftness almost lifted Melinda into the air as one would a kite. The utterance, repeated again and again, insistent, scarred the night with its cawing message, resonant and haunting, cursing both of their ears forever.
One word, only one, but Danny and Melinda would remember it until the day they died.
“Daddy,” it screeched, it begged.
“Daddy!”
THE WITCH OF MISTLETOE LANE
Court Ellyn
Court Ellyn began writing historical fiction when she was 14, but her interests gradually shifted toward the fantastical. Today, she primarily writes character-driven fantasy. Her fiction has appeared in Kaleidotrope, A Fly In Amber, Silver Blade, and the anthology Explorers: Beyond the Horizon (look for it Winter, 2011). Between dragon dens and battlefields strewn with otherworldly foes, she administrates the LegendFire Creative Writing Community at www.legendfire.com. This story is her first foray outside the fantasy genre.
***
Every autumn, the clatter of leaves somersaulting along sidewalks reminds me of the October I met the witch. The small southern town of Saint Claire didn’t have a lot to boast about but the worst football team in the county, the annual watermelon festival, and Ag shows that brought the fattest pigs and beefiest steers to Main Street, where they showed their appreciation by crapping in front of the cafe, the antique store, and the True Value hardware that still sold hard candy from glass jars. Unbeknownst to the folks outside our insular world, Saint Claire had its very own witch, too.
Mothers all over town scared the devil out of us kids every time they warned us to steer clear of the rickety old house that lurked on Mistletoe Lane. My own mother joined the hype. “Colton, you leave that place alone. I see you anywhere near it, I’ll bust your hide.” To which I inevitably replied, “But why, Mama?” She’d only respond with the look that meant, “You better do as I say.”
The first time I found myself outside the witch’s gate was a complete accident. Jimmy Harden and I rode our bikes to the cow pond on his grandpa’s place, hoping the fish liked the taste of the grubs on our hooks.
They did, as it turned out, so we kept tossing our lines in till almost dusk.
Realizing the time, we tied our stringers full of half-grown bass to our handlebars and hustled back to town. We were in such a hurry to avoid a whooping for being late to dinner that we turned one street too soon. Jimmy hit his brakes; his back tire left a black streak that must’ve been a mile long before he came to a stop. Pulling up alongside him, I stared in horror at the crumbling gingerbread house. I’d only ever seen it from the corner, in passing, as Mom hit the gas to get through the intersection fast as she could.