Pumpkin Head

By Richard I. Gargus

            The kids had argued for years about whether or not anyone lived in the house.  It had been a kid’s haunted house or witch house or whatever horrible creepy kind of house was ‘In’ during that era, for generations of residents of Cobbled Tree.  The City council had argued tearing down the old derelict but they couldn’t find any records showing jurisdiction over the land to touch it legally.  Fearing a law suit from whomever finally did show up as the owner, they chose to leave it standing.  After all, it would likely soon fall over by itself.  So went the reasoning of the City Council ever since Cobbled Tree had a City Council.  Still the old house with it’s tattered drapes, and occasional reflection inside that made people swear they had seen moving lights in the windows and all sorts of other claims.  The house sat up on a hill, about 200 yards off the road, and it was hard for most people to see a lot of detail.  For that reason, no one believed anyone and their wild imaginings about the place.  It wasn’t really that, that kept them away.

            There had been records of death associated with the place, but details were mostly sketchy.  It seemed about once every 25 years, plus or minus a few weeks, someone dies there.  Usually though, the circumstances can’t be pinned on the place, just situations happen on the property.  One of the earliest records was a hunting accident.  Another more recent event was a car hitting a tree on the property killing the driver.  Really hard things to pin on a house.

            But yet, this Halloween was year number 25 again.  And two weeks before Halloween, someone noticed from the road that someone had put a pumpkin head on the porch of the old place.  The facts about the land were well known, and kids did hang around up to the 25^th year and after the 26^th or so to prove how brave they were, but on the 25^th year, no one in Cobbled Tree was stupid enough to go on the property for any reason.  So, whoever put the pumpkin on the porch, was either not from around here, or there was someone in the house.

            For days, there were some people brave enough to drive by just for the oddity of saying they had seen the pumpkin head on the porch.  People continued to get more curious as the dreaded date came and went by.  Soon it was nearing Thanksgiving and the town was ready to celebrate the last year of the curse of the house.  The date was now 4 weeks past the dreaded window of death, and no one had been killed.  There was of course one boy missing.  He was pretty much a rowdy, he had likely been run out of town again by some jealous boyfriend or even husband.  But besides the pumpkin head and the odd smell wafting from the old place there had been no accidents, no bodies.  The curse was over with the old place at least.

            Maybe it had been the sun.  It was an especially hot October, and the porch overhang didn’t cover the area around the pumpkin well.  It could have been a tanning action.  Perhaps choking reddened his face and after he strangled his flesh swelled extra fast bloating his head into a big fat blob.  Up closer even you would swear it was a pumpkin at first, but as the weeks went by, no one could any longer deny that with binoculars the pumpkin head had shrunk, and turned white after the animals finished with the rotting flesh.  But when they finally got brave enough to check it out, they could only guess what Jeremy had been at the house for.  They could only guess and how he had broken through the porch flooring.  His neck got caught between two splintered ends wedging him into a tight grip on his throat and suffocating him while at the same time supporting him by his neck.

            The next party included everyone in town and was held right up through the week after Thanksgiving.  They had a lot to celebrate.  No one local really felt a particular lose at Jeremy’s passing, and besides, it was safe now for 25 more years.