Halloween Haunts: Magic Pumpkins by Chris DiLeo
My father brought in the victims, two at a time, extra large and heavy. Pumpkins. Soon-to-be jack-o’-lanterns. He was an encyclopedia editor, a quiet man who worked tediously at his desk, books stacked around him in fortress walls, a green banker’s lamp pooling light. He was equally methodical and tedious when carving pumpkins. He worked slowly, laboriously, hands careful, eyes focused behind his bifocals. He penciled faces on the pumpkins, used a ruler to make the isosceles triangle eyes and nose and the teeth, too, of course. When he took up the large carving knife, the same one used to…