October 30th, 1992

Brisk winds tore down the streets of Nankaput under a cloudless October afternoon sky. Green leaves clutched to undressed branches as brown, red, and yellow decay tumbled and rustled on grass and concrete. The drone of afternoon traffic competed with the howl of nature without a clear victor.

Beverly DeWitt glanced at the cars with a twinge of jealousy. How wonderful it would be to sit and relax in a warm space! Her wool coat and scarf were high quality garments that kept her warm enough, but her calves were freezing up and nothing could help her walk headlong against the gusts of wind. She had no car, there was no bus that would take her to where she wanted to go, and her roommate Heather had work until almost midnight at Ed's Diner. It was either walk or don't go. Even with the elements against her, Beverly decided to go.

If she had stayed home, this late October day may not have been the last day of her life.

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The Pennsylvania town of Nankaput was little more than a blip on the map. Here's your Main Street USA with a hardware store, barber shop, grocery, drug store, local bank and Ed's Diner. Here's your side streets with homes that have been standing for over fifty years with their warped wood front porches and chipped white paint on the window shutters. Here's your post office, fire department, police department, municipal building, and library.

No school here; children went west to Claudeville Elementary or south to Baker High. No hospital, either; Mercy General was in Baker, too. Lord knows that town needed doctors on standby with how many bars were there.

There was no sign saying "Welcome to Nankaput!" on the edge of town. If you asked the old townies, they would tell you they didn't need one. The only sign you needed to see to know you arrived was the sign for Granger's Farm.

The farm covered the northeast quarter of town. They raised cows, pigs, and chickens that were kept in a petting zoo. They grew corn, wheat, barley, oats, gourds, tomatoes, and pumpkins (which ones and when depended on the time of year, of course), and crafted a corn maze each fall that never failed to get a fly-by from the  helicopter from ABC 10 News. There was a storefront that sold their meats, crops, and dairy, complete with the creamiest scoops of ice cream in twenty flavors and made in-house.

Granger's Farm was small by farm standards, boring by entertainment standards, and redneck by city standards, but the only standards the farm ever had to meet were Nankaput standards, and they met those expectations with a neighborly environment and a peaceful way to spend an afternoon with the family.

Beverly's destination was on the edge of Granger's Farm. A cluster of pine trees packed the half mile stretch between the nearest neighborhood and the pumpkin patch on the south end. She broke off from the sidewalk onto the dirt path she had worn down herself, thankful for the cover of the trees against the wind.

Beverly could have walked her path in total darkness without missing a step. She knew the roots to step over and the branches to duck under. She knew where to hold her arm in front of her face just in case a spider had left a web, and where to change course if her normal path had become a mud-gunked mess. Almost a year of traveling the same path turned many of her movements into second nature.

Twenty minutes after leaving her apartment, Beverly arrived. Her secret spot seemed unremarkable at first glance; a few trees, the edge of the pumpkin patch, a small clearing, a rotted tree stump. Nothing out of the ordinary. But just like how Granger's Farm was enough for Nankaput, the secret spot had enough for Beverly.

The trees blocked most of the wind and any view that the Farm's patrons would have of her from the entrance or the store. The field left an open sky for the afternoon sun to light up her clearing and help keep her warm. The stump was her seat once she put her cushion on it, and the cushion and blanket she used were sealed in a massive ziplock bag she stuffed in the hollow knothole of one of the trees.

Beverly got herself wrapped up and seated with a library book in her hand. The sun provided all of the light she needed. The volume of the cars rolling through town were muffled to a whisper. Clean, cool air filled her lungs. A smile spread across her plain, round face.

How could she ever stay in her apartment when she could be here? The heated air became thick and uncomfortable and tasted like sawdust if you had to breathe it for long enough. The engines and mufflers and horns of traffic ranged from distracting to downright aggravating.

And the loneliness she felt when she was alone at home was all but vanquished by the peace and calm her secret spot provided time and time again.

The feeling of pins and needles raced across Beverly's thawing legs. She took in a deep breath and opened her book with a content sigh. Her eyes began to dance along the words, her worries melting away as steadily as the chill in her calves.

She read for a while, lost in the fantasy world laid out on the pages in her hands. Only the shifting sun marked the passage of time for her. A half hour had passed before her eyes flickered away from the pages. She was turning to the next chapter when she noticed something odd about the pumpkins in the field.

Beverly hadn't really looked at them when she arrived. After all, what was there to notice? Just the same pumpkins that had been growing there all season. But they looked...wrong, somehow, like they had secrets of their own lurking in their pulp.

She stared at them, trying to see what was different, her book almost forgotten. Nothing came to mind for nearly a minute before it clicked.

"They're...much closer than before..." Beverly was not aware she had said this out loud.

The field ended about 15 feet away from her. Up until today, the pumpkins did, too. But some of them were laying just a few feet from her stump, their rinds resting on the dirt and pine needles of the clearing. Vines connected them to the others in the field.

She leaned forward to look closer, trying to find a logical reason for them to have moved so much in just two days, but the pumpkins looked even stranger up close. None of the ones in the clearing had any brown spots or discoloration. The tones of orange were too uniform, too exact, like they were drawn in a cartoon instead of mere feet from her. The stems lacked fine details; where the field pumpkin stems had grooves and knots that she could see from her seat, the clearing pumpkins had stems like brown electrical cables, smooth and disturbingly round.

A bolt of fear spiked Beverly's body with a shock that paused her. Her stomach crawled with anxiety she did not understand. Her mind was saying 'investigate' while her body said 'run, and never come back.' She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment and opened them. Still the same odd pumpkins. Still the same feeling of dread.

"This is foolish," Beverly said. "Maybe they're fake or...or...some different hybrid..."

She put her book down beside her and leaned forward. She extended a hand toward the closest pumpkin and noticed her fingers were trembling. She stretched her arm, her fingertips getting closer. Her hand was a few inches away, but Beverly's bottom was still firmly planted on the stump.

("Get yourself together, Bev. It's just a pumpkin. It's just a pumpkin. It's just...")

The mantra played in her head on a loop. Without leaning back, Beverly attempted to scoot forward on the stump. She landed where she was already sitting.

("...a pumpkin just a pumpkin")

She tried again with more force than she wanted and lost her balance. Her legs were bound in her blanket and caused her to stumble sideways to the ground. She didn't have time to yelp, let alone scream, as her right shoulder smacked the packed dirt and her head landed face-first on one of the eerie pumpkins.

Her first thought was 'this pumpkin is softer than my pillow at home'. Her second was 'I can't breathe'.

If Beverly's head had landed on a field pumpkin, it would have bruised her face and possibly cracked under the force. But her head landed on one of the impostors in her clearing. Her head had sank into in. Her face was completely covered. Her left ear was slowly disappearing under the sickeningly bright orange rind that was not only unharmed but seemed to be growing back to its original size around Beverly's head.

Panic overtook her. She fell onto her back. She opened her mouth to
(scream)
breathe and thick orange goo squeezed in. Her hands clawed wildly at the pumpkin doppelgänger but could not find a grip. Her back arched and straightened, her chest rose and fell as she hyperventilated, which only served to suck the unnatural goop into her nostrils and past her molars. Her vision was black, her legs were flailing pistons, her ears were muted to sound and filling up, her head was encased, and her brain was screeching in tongues of madness and peril.

As Beverly Dewitt spent her last conscious moments in horrified desperation;

As the oxygen in her lungs dwindled;

As the useless thrashing of her body slowed to sluggish dragging and involuntary twitches;

The rind on the side of the pumpkin that blocked Beverly's face began to change.

Two sideways triangle eyes and a jagged mouth of pointed teeth engraved themselves onto the surface. Any of the old townies in Nankaput would have told you it looked like a proper, old fashioned jack o' lantern.