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.