4: Pumpkin People In The Park

"BREAKFAST'S READY!" came Jake's mom from the kitchen.

Jake appeared from his room and headed to the dining table where he met his dad who was filling a mug with coffee.

He gave his dad a 'what the hell is going on' look.

"Don't look at me, I had nothing to do with this," his dad responded before taking a sip from his mug.

Jake's mom had prepared some pancakes, okay...a lot of pancakes; croissants; eggs, which came in scrambled, beaten and even a few pouched ones; bacon and sausages.

Jake grabbed a pancake just as his mother returned from the kitchen with more pancakes.

"Wow, you were up early..." began Jake.

"What? Can't a mother cook for her family?"

Jake's mom grinned widely and took off her apron and had on a black skirt topped with a white blouse.

"Where's the party?" Jake's dad spoke this time.

"Well, the studio called in and I have to be set at Pumpkin Park for tonight."

As mentioned earlier, Jake's mom was a reporter-the town's lead journalist and was to host an exclusive on the annual Pumpkin People in the Park event that day.

"You didn't have to do all this, you know..." came Jake's dad as his wife raised a hand at him.

"What? I think I did great!"

Jake's mom never cooked. Dad was the one who did it. She was a terrible cook.

Jake went on to take a bite off of the pancake he had in his hand and almost spat it out but held it in his mouth when he noticed that his mother was looking at him, probably waiting to see his reaction.

To show his mom the good boy he was, Jake forced himself to chew down the pancake which tasted like sand mixed with water until he swallowed it, finishing with a smile to his mother.

"I'll see you guys later," she said after kissing Jake on the cheek and her husband.

With that, she grabbed her bag and passed by Ryan's room.

"Hey, sleepyhead, breakfast's ready. Get it while it's still hot!"

She was soon out of the door.

"So, I'm guessing you're not going to go see your mom's exclusive?" Jake's dad began.

Robert Fowler-or rather, Dr. Robert Fowler-was a corporate lawyer with a successful business firm in Chatham and had a doctorate in psychology but he didn't need that to know his older son hated Halloween and all that mumbo-jumbo crap.

"Well, I might be going this time..." Jake muttered and found himself taking a bite out of some bacon which turned out to be surprisingly good.

"You change your mind?"

Ryan walked out of his room and Jake frowned in disgust when he noticed some drool over his lower lip.

"Something like that, I guess..."

"It's okay to try something new. A little fun wouldn't kill you!"

"Ha! Dad talking about fun!" came Ryan as he worked his way to the kitchen, "that's new!"

"Just because I'm a lawyer doesn't mean I don't know how to have fun," Jake's dad added, "my line of work can be pretty fun."

Both Ryan and Jake threw disapproving glances at him.

"Okay...maybe not that much fun," he ended up saying.

"Jake's going to that lame pumpkin party!" snorted Ryan while chugging down a glass of milk.

"At least I'm going somewhere!"

"Oh, I'll be over at Glenn's house making my Halloween costume!" Ryan responded with such zeal one would have thought he was going on some kind of top secret mission.

'And he calls me lame...'

Jake said in his mind as he shook his head and turned to go back to his room upon hearing his phone begin to buzz.

"Dammit, dad!" he heard Ryan say just as he was locking the door behind him, "what happened to breakfast?"

Jake got a text from Matt, checking to confirm that he was still going to the event and would not bail like he had always done in all the previous events.

In last year's Saturday before Halloween, Jake lied he had a cold and ended having to put up with his annoying brother at home.

It's not that he was scared or anything(except from the dark). Hell, he was a big fan of horror stories and movies like Friday the 13th, The Shining, The Amityville Horror and his personal favorite, It. It was just that trying to bring to life such stuff seemed like a very stupid idea to him.

'Fuck Halloween,' he found himself muttering and turned to switch off his phone when he noticed something.

Just below Matt's text dialog box, another dialog seemed to have popped up and Jake thought he saw the words, we'll see about that before disappearing and immediately after, his phone's screen began to glitch and then it stopped.

'What the...'

Jake checked the dialog and the box was gone together with the text.

Probably just some system error with the phone.

The Pumpkin People in the Park event was already underway towards six o'clock in the evening as the sky was filled with a low orange glow from the setting sun sinking in the sea side's horizon.

Jake had just gotten there after making sure his brother had gone to the neighbors' house. His dad had gone back to Chatham earlier in the afternoon and would probably be back later in the night.

The event was so big, almost as big as Halloween itself except that instead of having everyone dressed up in some dark spooky fashion (except for Jake of course), pumpkins were the talk of the day.

Jake was almost run over by an incoming pick up truck and quickly stepped aside before noticing the huge pumpkins piled up in the back of the truck, all of which were carved into jack-o'-lanterns.

One of them toppled off of the truck and rolled to where Jake was standing.

He took a moment to look at it with its carved out eyes and mouth designed to give a demonic appearance but this looked as if it was grinning at him, mocking him.

You fucking idiot! Why do you hate Halloween!

Don't worry, the pumpkin didn't speak but it might as well have as Jake looked at it from a different angle and thought it could actually be in a world of pain. One that humans had no idea about.

How I miss the days when all you had to worry about was going down some hungry human's throat and now I'm being cut up like a freak!

A bug then crawled out from one of the jack-o'-lantern's eye and Jake watched it until it touched the ground before someone placed a hand on his shoulder, causing him to gasp a little.

"You actually made it!"

It was Matt, who Jake noted was carrying a small digital camera with him. Gabriel was standing next to him.

"I think I'll be ditching you guys early," Gabriel started.

"Why?" Jake asked.

"Well, Mama's boy here got a little company today!" Matt responded, laughing.

"My overly paranoid mom couldn't let me come here alone so I had to drag her along and now she has her eyes set on me like a leash."

"Where is she, now?"

The answer came soon enough.

"Gabe, dear! What did we say about wandering off and leaving your mother alone?"

Gabriel's mother.

She was a fairly plump woman and a bit of a hypochondriac which seemed to have been passed down to her son who would always be seen sanitizing his hands and would never touch anything without being sure it wasn't dirty. Poor Gabriel. He always freaked out about his mother but had no idea he was almost as paranoid as her.

"Man, I'm having the worst day!" Gabriel cussed and turned to leave, leaving Gabriel and Matt.

"I came with Julia," Matt was saying as the two proceeded down to the stalls where contestants were setting up their pumpkins.

Julia was Matt's sister-a twelfth-grader and also a member of the schools cheerleading squad. She was cool, pretty but obviously a bit old for Jake-as if he had any chance with her!

"You're lucky to have a sister!" Jake added as they passed a stall where one contestant was arranging his jack-o'-lanterns in a kind of circular manner, piling them up over the other to resemble a large cone made of pumpkin.

Matt took a snap of the presentation with his camera.

"So, let's talk about the elephant in the room!" Matt said while they stopped towards the second stall.

"Oh, he's stayin' over at some neighbor's house."

"What? Not your weird brother, dumbass!" Matt scoffed, "Nicole!"

"Is she even here?"

" You came here, why wouldn't she?"

"That doesn't make any sense, Matt."

"You've never come to this events, tonight should be pretty different for you..."

"What?" Jake winced, still not getting what his delirious friend was trying to say.

Two girls appeared from behind them.

"Hi!" they began, chattering excitedly as Jake figured they were from his school.

"Are you a photographer?"

"Could I be?" Matt countered.

"Well, you have a camera!" came the girls again.

"I may have a camera but am I a photographer...?" Matt went on with his goofiness, this time narrowing his eyes at the girls.

Jake shook his head slightly, wondering where exactly his friend was going with this.

"Okay...so which is it?" the girls asked, their excitement waning, "are you photographer or not?"

"Well, I guess..."

"Matt!" Jake shoved him in the shoulder, warning him to cut it out.

"Okay! What can I do for you today, ladies?"

Matt left with the girls further down the stalls to do some shooting with a group.

"Ok...and now it's just me," Jake sighed.

"Jake?" the familiar voice made him freeze instantly as he turned round.

She was standing next to a stall, observing an extremely large pumpkin that was hollowed out with a large mouth but with no eyes and had a low light glowing inside it.

Nicole moved from the stalls and approached Jake.

"Huh, I've never seen you in this kind of places before."

Crap! What should I say? What should I say?

"Are...are you sure? I come here all the time!" he found himself throwing out the first thing that came to his mind.

He watched her face and noticed she was smiling.

Yes! Keep it up, Jake! You still have the ball!

"But you know...not like everytime," he went on blabbering, "just every year when they hold the event, otherwise it would be stupid to come here everyday and..."

He stopped talking, realising what he was doing.

I think she got the point.

"I saw your mom."

"Yeah, she's the lead reporter on the event!"

Enough with the obvious statements! Ask her out!

"Nicole."

Her face seemed to light up but not in the stupid Disney princess kind of way. More like a pretty glow when he mentioned her name, which was actually the first time Jake had ever used her name in front of her.

"Yes, Jake?"

"I...I..." Jake began to break down, his entire face flushing red just as darkness crept in and he hoped Nicole couldn't see that.

Everything went to crap almost immediately after a group of girls, probably Nicole's gal pals, grabbed her and left with her to go to some photo shoot that was creating quite a buzz.

'Gee, thanks a lot, Matt!'

Jake cussed, with most of the humiliation directed at himself.

"And he lost the ball!" he ended up saying louder than he excepted whilst leaning against a stall.

"Life can be pretty tricky..." came a husky voice from behind him.

"What?" Jake turned to the stall which was the one that had the big jack-o'-lantern Nicole was admiring earlier.

The stall had no lighting except for the jack-o'-lantern as Jake tried to make out where the voice had come from.

"Hello?"

He stretched his head over the stall, trying to peer

through the darkness and thought he saw some eerie movement in the shadows but could not make out what it was, no matter how hard he squinted.

"Careful, boy, you'll find a lot hidden in the dark!"

Jake thrust his head back before turning to find a tall hooded figure suddenly standing next to him.

He quickly noticed that it was the same person he had seen the previous night outside the Pumpkin Park, with his long dark tattered robes and a hood over his head.

"Is this your stall?"

"Why? Because I'm standing next to it? You are, too."

"What?"

"Not important," the figure went on, with his husky voice which reminded Jake of Bill Wilkins' ghost in The Conjuring 2 movie.

"This town is filled with things way beyond imagination, kid, most of us are just too blind to see it..."

"I think I'm gonna go now..."

Jake was just turning to leave when he felt his arm get tugged and grasped by a powerful grip.

"I sense great desire and ambition in you...kid!" the figure added, still holding onto Jake's arm who was already getting scared.

"Okay, lemme go before I call sec..."

Jake lost his words, literally. He was speaking, moving his lips but no sound was coming out.

His heart began to pound as the figure went on.

"Yessss...such a strong mind and all you wish for is to have a damsel by your side when you have the power to do more than that and you don't even know it!"

Jake wriggled his arm, trying to break free from the figure's grip but nothing was working.

"I don't have much time now. Ever since I laid my eyes on you I knew it had to be you and I'm sure by now you have already started experiencing the hidden."

The figure gasped in a most horrifying way and let go of Jake who fell down on his back.

Jake watched to his shock as the figure let out a sharp scream and his hood fell off, revealing a middle-aged man with a terribly scarred face. His eyes seemed hollowed out with a darkness around them. He fell to the ground and managed to lift his head toward Jake.

Everyone else seemed oblivious of what was going on at that stall and at one time Jake thought he heard her mother's voice as she interviewed a contestant.

Jake was frozen from where he lay and could only watch on as the man dug out something from inside his robes when a darkness of some kind suddenly began to fill up his mouth and nostrils then his eyes.

"Destroy... " he said to Jake, his voice barely a whisper this time.

There was something in his hand, the one he had pulled from his robes. Jake wasn't looking at it but was busy watching the man's head collapse to the ground and begin to decay. His flesh rotting away into nothing until only his skeleton was left, huddled under the tattered robes.

Jake was trembling with the entire of his back drenched with sweat, his t-shirt clasping back into his skin.

What the fuck!

He was still gasping for breath from hyperventilation when he noticed something under the skeleton's hand.

A book?

He crawled towards the skeleton whose empty orbits were looking up at him, reminding him about the skull Cole had tossed at him except this was real!

He slowly pulled the book from underneath the skeleton and turned it over. There was not much on it except for the fact that it was pretty old and heavy, with a symbol on top of it.

He had seen that particular symbol many times before. A five-pointed star-the Pentagram. It had fine golden edges.

That couldn't be good. Unless...

I'm dreaming. I have to be dreaming! Cole couldn't pull such a prank on me. I watched a man die!

He then felt a creaking. The skeleton.

It started rattling, its bones colliding with each other as the robes began to sway and move up from the skeleton, hovering like a ghostly figure.

For a split second, the robes remained suspended in air and everything became so silent which was weird considering where Jake was and then without warning, the robes charged at him.

Jake raised a hand over his head to protect himself and felt a cold wave pass through him. The robes were gone, leaving only the skeleton.

Just when he thought he had more than enough mayhem for one night, something else began to stir, making him to turn to the stall.

Jake might as well as have wished he could just hit himself and wake up from this terrible nightmare when he watched the big jack-o'-lantern come to life! Its wide mouth was frothing with what looked like a dark red substance as it turned towards him.

It would have been less terrifying if it had eyes, Jake began to think. The pumpkin toppled over the stall and was rolling slowly towards Jake who was shaking like a leaf.

Any moment and its huge mouth would land on his face and tear him apart with those carved out teeth.

Jake yelped and grabbed the huge book which he smashed the pumpkin with after which it exploded, covering him with a thick gooey substance all over his torso and half of his face.

"Dude!"

Matt was suddenly standing in front of him, his camera dangling from his neck.

"I thought you came here to talk to Nicole!"

"I..." Jake was about to open his mouth and begin explaining everything when he stopped and looked all around his body.

Nothing. There was no pumpkin juice on him.

"Damn, this is a nice piece!" Matt responded,taking another snap at the stall next to him.

Jake gasped when he saw the killer pumpkin set in its stall like it had been earlier.

His eyes instinctively moved to the side where the figure had accosted him.

No bones. No skeleton. No shit!

What the fuck was going on?

No. There was no way he could've imagined all that.

"But..."

Jake dashed towards the stall and entered the booth behind it. There was no one there.

"Yo, what are you doing? Get outta there!" Matt called out, "You trying to get us in trouble?"

"No, but..."

"If you're looking for Nicole in there, I think I saw her leave the party like twenty minutes ago."

The big old book was also missing.

"I got a few shots of her and some other girls here if you wanna see," Matt was still saying as Jake went on to frantically search for unfindable, "but it's gonna cost you!"