Strange Highways

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