Strange Highways

inside its shell was dangerous, a triggering factor. Tommy did not know how he knew this, but he was convinced that if he was to have the slightest chance of surviving the coming night, he must extinguish the flame.
     He grasped the gnarled stem and removed the lid from the top of the jack-o'-lantern's skull.
     Light did not merely rise from inside the pumpkin but seemed to be flung at him, hot on his face, stinging his eyes.
     He blew out the flame.
     The jack-o'-lantern went dark.
     Immediately, Tommy felt better.
     He put the lid in place.
     As he let go of the stem, the candle refit spontaneously.
     Stunned, he jumped back.
     Light shone from the carved eyes, the nose, the mouth.
     "No," he said softly.
     He removed the lid and blew out the candle once more.
     A moment of darkness within the pumpkin. Then, before his eyes, the flame reappeared.
     Reluctantly, issuing a thin involuntary sound of distress, Tommy reached into the jack-o'-lantern to snuff the stubborn candle with his thumb and finger. He was convinced that the pumpkin shell would suddenly snap shut around his wrist, severing his hand, leaving him with a bloody stump. Or perhaps it would hold him fast while swiftly dissolving the flesh from his fingers and then release him with an arm that terminated in a skeletal hand. Driven toward the brink of hysteria by these fears, he pinched the wick, extinguished the flame, and snatched his hand back with a sob of relief, grateful to have escaped mutilation.
     He jammed the lid in place and, hearing the toilet flush in the adjacent bath, hurried out of the room. He dared not let Frank catch him there. As he stepped into the hallway, he glanced back at the jack-o'-lantern, and, of course, it was full of candlelight again.
     He went straight to the kitchen and got a butcher's knife, which he took back to his own room and hid beneath his pillow. He was sure that he would need it sooner or later in the dead hours before dawn.

    4

HIS PARENTS CAME HOME SHORTLY BEFORE MIDNIGHT.
     Tommy was sitting in bed, his room illuminated only by the pale bulb of the low-wattage night-light. The butcher's knife was at his side, under the covers, and his hand was resting on the haft.
     For twenty minutes, Tommy could hear his folks talking, running water, flushing toilets, closing doors. Their bedroom and bath were at the opposite end of the house from his and Frank's rooms, so the noises they made were muffled but nonetheless reassuring. These were the ordinary noises of daily life, and as long as the house was filled with them, no weird lantern-eyed predator could be stalking anyone.
     Soon, however, quiet returned.
     In the postmidnight stillness, Tommy waited for the first scream.
     He was determined not to fall asleep. But he was only twelve years old, and he was exhausted after a long day and drained by the sustained terror that had gripped him ever since he had seen the mummy-faced pumpkin carver. Propped against a pile of pillows, he dozed off long before one o'clock
     -and something thumped, waking him.
     He was instantly alert. He sat straight up in bed, clutching the butcher's knife.
     For a moment he was certain that the sound had originated within his own room. Then he heard it again, a solid thump, and he knew that it had come from Frank's room across the hall.
     He threw aside the covers and sat on the edge of the bed, tense. Waiting. Listening.
     Once, he thought he heard Frank calling his name - "Tooommmmyy" - a desperate and frightened and barely audible cry that seemed to come from the far rim of a vast canyon. Perhaps he imagined it.
     Silence.
     His hands were slick with sweat. He put the big knife aside and blotted his palms on his pajamas.
     Silence.
     He picked up the knife again. He reached under his bed and found the flashlight that he kept there, but he did not switch it on. He eased cautiously to the door and listened for movement in the hallway beyond.
     Nothing.
     An inner voice urged him to return to bed, pull the covers over his head, and forget what he had heard. Better yet, he could crawl under the bed and hope that he would not be found. But he knew this was the voice of the wimp within, and he dared not hope for salvation in cowardice. If the black