Strange Highways

grabbed Tommy by the shirt, yanked him into the room, slammed the door, and confiscated the cookies and Coke. "Thanks, snotface. I was just thinking I could use a snack." He went to the desk and put the booty beside the glowing jack-o'-lantern.
     Taking a deep breath, steeling himself for what resistance would mean, Tommy said, "Those are mine."
     Frank pretended shock. "Is my little brother a greedy glutton who doesn't know how to share?"
     "Give me back my Coke and cookies."
     Frank's grin seemed filled with shark's teeth. "Good heavens, dear brother, I think you need to be taught a lesson. Greedy little gluttons have to be shown the path of enlightenment."
     Tommy would have preferred to walk away, to let Frank win, to go back to the kitchen and fetch another Coke and more cookies. But he knew that his life, already intolerable, would get far worse if he didn't make an effort, no matter how futile, to stand up to this stranger who was supposedly his brother. Total, willing capitulation would inflame Frank and encourage him to be even more of a bully than he already was.
     "I want my cookies and my Coke," Tommy insisted, wondering if any cookies, even Milanos, were worth dying for.
     Frank rushed him.
     They fell to the floor, pummeling each other, rolling, kicking, but producing little noise. They didn't want to draw their folks' attention. Tommy was reluctant to let his parents know what was happening because they would invariably blame the ruckus on him. Athletic, well-tanned Frank was their dream child, their favorite son, and he could do no wrong. Frank probably wanted to keep the battle secret because their father would put a stop to it, thereby spoiling the fun.
     Throughout the tussle, Tommy had brief glimpses of the glowing jack-o'-lantern, which gazed down on them, and he was sure that its grin grew steadily wider, wider.
     At last Tommy was driven into a corner, beaten and exhausted. Straddling him, Frank slapped him once, hard, rattling his senses, then tore at Tommy's clothes, pulling them off.
     "No!" Tommy whispered when he realized that in addition to being beaten, he was to be humiliated. "No, no."
     He struggled with what little strength he still possessed, but his shirt was stripped off; his jeans and underwear were yanked down. With his pants tangled around his sneakers, he was pulled to his feet and half carried across the room.
     Frank threw open the door, pitched Tommy into the hallway, and called out, "Oh, Maria! Maria, can you come here a moment, please?"
     Maria was the twice-a-week maid who came in to clean and do the ironing. This was one of her days.
     "Maria!"
     Naked, terrified of being humiliated in front of the maid, Tommy scrambled to his feet, grabbed his pants, tried to run and pull up his jeans at the same time, stumbled, fell, and sprang up again.
     "Maria, can you come here, please?" Frank asked, barely able to get the words out between gales of laughter.
     Gasping, whimpering, Tommy somehow reached his room and got out of sight before Maria appeared. For a while he leaned against the closed door, holding up his jeans with both hands, shivering.

    3

WITH THEIR PARENTS OFF AT A CAMPAIGN APPEARANCE, TOMMY AND Frank ate dinner together, after heating up a casserole that Maria had left in the refrigerator. Ordinarily, dinner with Frank was an ordeal, but this time it proved to be uneventful. As he ate, Frank was engrossed in a magazine that reported on the latest horror movies, with heavy emphasis on slice-and-dice films and with lots of color photographs of mutilated and blood-soaked bodies; he seemed oblivious of Tommy.
     Later, when Frank was in the bathroom preparing for bed, Tommy sneaked into his older brother's room and stood at the desk, studying the jack-o'-lantern. The wicked mouth glowed. The narrow pupils were alive with fire.
     The scent of roses filled the room, but underlying that odor was another more subtle and less appealing fragrance that he could not quite identify.
     Tommy was aware of a malevolent presence - something even worse than the malevolence that he could always sense in Frank's room. A cold current raced through his blood.
     Suddenly he was certain that the potential murderous power of the black pumpkin was enhanced by the candle within it. Somehow, the presence of light