Jack-O-Lantern’s Flame by Paul Wilson
Fred sat on his porch and worried about the monster sleeping inside his home. But that was an easy problem. That monster was always there. His other problem was the two bullies who stole his candy. His other-other problem was Janet, she of the gold hair and big blue eyes. She was beside him. She was talking to him!
Most of his friends said girls were gross, that they gave you cooties, but Fred didn’t think so. How could anyone so pretty be dangerous?
Well, Mom was pretty, and she—
Fred shook away that thought.
“You okay?” Janet asked for the third time.
Janet caught him struggling not to cry after the bullies took off with his haul. She came around the corner at exactly the right time—or the wrong time given how embarrassed he felt. Fred had willed himself to hold back, but then those big blue eyes told him they understood so he did leak a little.
“They took my candy, too,” she said. She didn’t say anything more but led him up the path to his own steps and sat down with him.
Between them was the pumpkin Fred carved earlier today. It was wonky and crooked, and he thought, kinda cool. He hadn’t meant to do it, but the right eye was bigger, and the teeth came to points. The one thing that turned out as he envisioned was the nose. He made two side-by-side slits like a skull and was quite impressed with himself. His dad hadn’t come out to look when Fred told him about it. He hadn’t even looked up from the television when Fred showed him the homemade costume he put together.
“Did you know these are magic?” Janet traced a finger down the pumpkin’s face.
“They are?”
“Especially the ones made with so much care. Didn’t your mom ever tell you that?”
“My mom isn’t around.”
“She left you? That’s what I heard.”
Fred didn’t trust himself to speak. Where did Janet hear about his mom? Were other kids talking about him? The thought made his stomach hurt.
“Any jack-o-lantern is magic on Halloween night. Do you want to know how?” She touched his arm, and Fred’s stomach settled. He came over very warm.
“I’ll show you.”
Janet was dressed as Rapunzel, in a gold and purple dress. Over her shoulder was a purse shaped like Rapunzel’s pal Pascal, the little green chameleon. She unzipped the top and removed a pad of paper.
“You write down the names of people you want to get back at.”
She handed him the pad. The top felt like one of his old belts. The pages were thick and cream colored. Fred didn’t like how they crinkled. Where had she gotten such paper? But everything about Janet was a mystery. She didn’t go to his school. She was homeschooled or so he heard. No one knew where she lived. Fred cast his memory back. It seemed Janet had been in the neighborhood since the summer, but the more he tried to remember, the fuzzier the memories grew. It hurt his head to think on it, so he stopped.
Janet offered the pad. “Take it,” she said, jabbing him with it. A nub of pencil was under her thumb. It was black, with no eraser, and deep teeth marks.
“Write down the bullies names and feed them to the jack-o-lantern. Feed them to the fire.” Janet smiled. Fred’s mouth dried at the sight. But he took the pad. Her stare demanded it.
“Just write them down.” She touched his shoulder and in that touch was something that made Fred feel better, a kind of medicine.
That’s what Daddy says when he’s drinking. He says there’s medicine in the bottle, but I’m getting old enough to know that’s a lie. Parents tell lies, like Mommy did when she said she’d always be there for me. Where is she now, huh? If she’d been with me tonight maybe the bullies wouldn’t have taken my candy. But Janet is here now . . .
Thinking of his mom made the world turn red. Anger welled inside Fred like a shaken soda. Janet sighed. For a moment he had forgotten she was there.
“Write them,” she whispered. Her eyes closed. Her breathing deepened. She excited him. New feelings crowded Fred’s throat, blocking his words. She repeated the invitation: “Write them.” Janet’s breath smelled of cinnamon fire. Fred shivered. Cinnamon was his favorite.
He didn’t know the bully’s names. They went to the high school across town, but as soon as the pencil point touched the paper, Fred ceased hesitating. He wrote: The bullies who took my candy.
“Make it more personal,” Janet said. “Add something more.”
There was just enough room between the first two words. His new sentence read: The asshole bullies who took my candy.
Janet chuckled. “Always make it more personal. Always write your feelings. That helps the magic. Now tear the paper free and fold it over to hold them down.”
Fred did as she bade and did the paper feel heavier now? A breeze blew between them and he caught her smell, cinnamon again, and something new . . . matches? It must have been the pumpkin’s candle flickering fitfully.
“Now feed the jack-o-lantern, darling.”
Fred stuck the paper through the mouth hole. The flames ate it. The paper exploded like a magician’s trick tissue, coughing red sparks. Fred drew his hand back quickly. The tips of his fingers were singed.
Janet closed her eyes and made a weird sucking sound, like she was smelling with her mouth. She released it with a long and throaty “Ohhhh,” and Fred shivered again.
Then . . .
Someone screamed. Fred saw a bright and flickering mass. Beside him Janet put her hands together as if in prayer. She grinned. There was more yelling and then the light grew. It was coming. Fred stared between the trees and found a figure, a fire-boy. Flames engulfed his body. He wobbled as he ran, screaming in a high-pitched terror-pain that hurt Fred’s ears. Fred started to cover them, but Janet reached out and took his hands.
“No, no. Listen. It’s so sweet. What music they make, yes?” Then she laughed. It was a tuneless tinkling from a broken toy piano.
The fire-boy was followed by another. It was the bullies of course. More screams came from onlookers, from parents pulling their trick-or-treaters away from danger. The two sizzling corpses slowed, stumbled, and fell in the street in front of Fred’s house. They landed with a smack. The flames darkened to blue. The smoke grew greasy and black.
“See?” Janet said simply.
The wind blew her hair. The sight of her turned Fred’s breath into a hiccup. Then one of the dying boys made a pitiful whimper and Fred remembered them. Beside each corpse was a melting plastic bag. Chocolate bubbled. He smelled burning sugar and a meatier funk that made him sick. He was going to puke.
“Breath in the pumpkin’s aroma,” Janet said. The smell of leaves, cinnamon, and pumpkin covered his nose. His stomach settled.
“We did that?”
“You did,” Janet said. Her lips were full, painted red, and was she wearing eyeshadow before? She looked like a teenager, like a girl from the high school who might have known the two bullies. Fred felt a renew heat in his legs. Janet looked like a girl from a movie or music video or one of his Dad’s magazines kept under the couch.
Fred looked back to the bodies in the street. No one was around them; no onlookers, or people on cellphones calling for help. People had abandoned them. Fred felt like he did before a big storm, all nervous stomach butterflies, but it wasn’t unpleasant.
“People run from things they know are above them.” Janet looked full and satisfied. She stretched, straining her dress. “People can tell, animals sensing danger.” She closed her eyes and sighed again but it was sad this time. “But the magic only works tonight. Surely there are others you want to feed to the jack-o-lantern’s flames.” Her eyes reflected the flickering light. Her pupils were on fire.
No way was she just a girl. Her mouth was slightly too wide, her eyes slightly too pointed. Her skin glittered as if she was dusted with frost. He wanted to touch Janet. There were no cooties, but if there were, Fred wanted them.
“Tonight is a gift. You can balance your scales without lifting a finger. Here, let me show you another trick.”
He thought of saying no, don’t hurt anyone else, but what came to him was the memory of sitting in his room and crying after Daddy said Mommy snuck off in the middle of the night. Fred remembered being abandoned.
“Damn bitch left us Freddy. Up and left us. Took all the money and silverware and left. How do you like that?” That day Fred went to bed hungry because his dad got drunk and there was no one to cook or make sure he took a bath. His dad hadn’t stopped drinking. He was drunk now. That monster slept. But Fred was awake. He was awake and scared and had stayed scare since that day—but now he found he was also angry. He hadn’t known he was allowed to be angry until Janet showed him.
“Yes,” Janet said in a breathless voice that was half moan. She spoke low, like a secret, but Fred felt the permission, the invitation to fury. It was a fire in his head, as if some clawed hand stuck a candle in his skull and it was burning him up. He didn’t tell Janet to stop her tricks. He didn’t want to now.
He felt Janet’s pleasure. And pleasing her pleased him. It was a shared dark thing. He was reminded again of his dad’s magazines and how the naked women made him feel.
“The magic only works tonight.” Janet took his chin, pulling him close. “But you can receive stuff tonight, as well.”
On her pad she wrote CANDY. Fred noticed there were fewer sheets now. He had a sudden understanding that when the night was over the paper would be gone.
“And the jack-o-lantern’s candle will go out,” Janet said. She had read his mind.
Janet fed the paper through the pumpkin’s mouth. Fred watched. As it burned, he heard a heavy thump and rattle on his steps. He turned and found two plastic bags filled with candy. He saw Snickers and Twix and Skittles, and other packages he never saw before: Bloom Balls, Choc-Bombs, and Black Cat Chocolate. He saw a red and orange box of Fire-Reds. Fred’s mouth watered. The cinnamon in those would be so hot and good. The box showed candy shaped like devil heads flecked with black specks he knew to be pepper.
“Is there anyone else you want to feed to the flames?” Janet looked at his house, back at him, and smiled. Her make-up had glitter in it now and it sparkled in the jack-o-lantern flame. Was the fire bigger? Brighter? Fred was sure.
Fred thought of his father, lazy and loud. He thought of his mother and wondered what she was doing. Daddy said she was a whore out partying, and maybe that was true, but she wasn’t here, so didn’t she deserve to burn?
But for one last time, Fred had a normal child thought.
“What do I do tomorrow? If I give them to the fire, who will take care of me?”
Janet tilted her head back and launched laughter at the sky. The tone was so genuine it made Fred smile. Her lips were a deeper red and her eyelashes long. Her breasts had swelled. Her nipples strained the child’s costume. A tattoo rode her shoulder, an intricate star pattern surrounded by brambles and thorns.
“I will take care of you. Join me and I will take care of you always.”
Fred was numb in her promise, but he didn’t doubt her sincerity. The honest want he saw in Janet was sophisticated beyond his intellect, but Fred understood it on a gut level that pulled at his soul. Someone wanted him! Mommy left and Daddy didn’t care but Janet wanted him. It was wonderful and silenced any warning that might have come from his heart or conscious. Fred shed tears in his gratitude.
“But you’re just a kid like me.”
“Am I?” Janet was now wearing a clear half-mask that covered her eyes and cheeks. It was painted like a doll’s face, complete with a crack running across the nose. Janet took off her mask with one hand. There was no string or stick to hold it in place. The tiniest thread of slime came away between the mask and her skin, but the breeze took that. Her new face was fresh, scrubbed, and glowing. For a boy who had been taught adults could not be trusted, Fred saw something he could believe in—a child-mother who wanted him.
“You’ll take care of me.” It wasn’t a question.
“I have such wonderful plans for you.”
Fred believed her. He felt Janet was wrong, and probably bad, but what else did he have? And there was power here, power to stop him from being scared, power to make him grow. And if Janet was bad, weren’t his parents worse? Bad but not as beautiful. Janet reached out and caressed his cheek. Fred felt love. Had his mother ever done that? Certainly not his father. Fred had no more hesitation, only eagerness. He bent to write his parents’ names on the pad. The jack-o-lantern began to salivate an orange cloudy drool.
“Hurry my son,” Janet said.
She began to lactate thick, cinnamon milk from her breasts. Fred hurried. He was eager to take that communion. He was eager to be hers.
—
Paul Wilson lives in a suburban neighborhood much like the one he turned into a horror playground in his novel Hostage. He lives with his wife, daughter, son, and three cats, one of which actually likes him. He has tried and failed at a spectacular list of jobs including retail district manager, a 911 operator, and the head of a college security department.
