Halloween Haunts: The Great Pumpkin Massacre
Halloween Haunts: The Great Pumpkin Massacre
By Paul Carro
Okay, we all know one. A neighbor. Yeah, that neighbor. The one that might not quite be a demon but certainly knows them personally. My neighbor (let’s call him Toby) was my friend by proximity. He lived two doors down from me, but make no mistake, in any other universe, I would have run in the other direction were I to encounter him in the streets.
It is with some pride that I admit I survived the Toby experience. Then again, I became a horror author, so I guess we really write what we know. On a good day, Toby, who was bigger than me and who had a brother Scott who was bigger than the two of us together, would find it in his heart to fistfight for no good reason. My parents never questioned the cuts, the bruises, the bloody noses or black eyes. They understood that hanging with Toby meant danger, but what else was there to do in a small town with nowhere to go?
Yes, whether convincing me to walk across icy ponds that were not fully frozen or pissing on electric fences, the mind control monster known as Toby held a sway over me. (Mostly because their house had food while mine didn’t.) But around Halloween, Toby turned that knob up to eleven and beyond. His family joined in on the shenanigans that time of year as well.
It was at Toby’s house where I first experienced a true Halloween party days before Halloween. We reached into curtains where his mom held items for us. She described them as we touched the gross and slimy objects that remained out of view of us kids. There were the eyeballs (I now know were grapes), the brains (spaghetti), the lungs (liver), and other essential body parts. Toby’s parents made it clear they were running low on body parts and would therefore relieve some of us of ours before the night was over. If it weren’t for all the free candy, I would have been out of there.
That shows how the mom was in on it. How about the dad? Well, that’s where the hayride came in. This is years after the pumpkin massacre, but we will get to that soon. As Halloween neared, the family would go on a long hayride in a horse-drawn carriage. Everyone sat in rows across from one another in the back, covered in blankets. Toby had an older sister, Sue, who I was head over heels for and we flirted with abandon. She was a cheerleader and seventeen to my sixteen. I sat alongside Toby and his mom while Sue sat across from me next to her dad.
The way the blankets were positioned, they met in the middle of the wagon. That allowed me to stretch my leg underneath them to play footsie with my cheerleader crush. After it went on for some time, (She smiled when I smiled. It was working, right?) Sue’s father asked her to grab something near the front of the wagon. She rose, but I was still playing footsie. What? That was when the father smiled. I shrank to nothingness as I realized I had been playing footsie with Sue’s dad. Normally, he would have killed me, but I think he figured I suffered enough.
That was one of the last times I interacted with the family. As I grew older, wiser, and more susceptible to injuries, I spent less time with my friend down the street. I had survived, though—barely. Toby’s mom cut my hair often, but I was a squirmy kid, so she sliced my ears several times with scissors. I won’t say she did it on purpose, but she was not a shaky hands kind of person. Then there was the claw hammer into my skull at age nine. That one was special. I do not recommend. Zero stars.
But back to Halloween specifically. Here were the three special memories. First was the barn incident. Unlike my small house down the street, Toby lived on a large farm. They had a massive barn on their property. Well, one day Toby led me up to the second floor of the barn into this converted hayloft. What and why we were up there? I cannot remember to this day not that it matters.
Toby led me to a door at the end of the hayloft. It had a padlock on it. He unlocked it and asked me to go first. It was kind of dark, but I stepped in. Immediately, he slammed the door closed, and I heard him replace the padlock. I was trapped! I stepped a few feet forward where light seeped in through an external second floor hayloft door and cracks in the walls. Stretching the entire length of the room were dozens of mannequins!
Why? Who the hell knows? I was trapped inside with menacing mannequins and their loose body parts. I knew they were one more breath away from coming to life! In a panic, I raced for the distant hayloft door (threading the needle by walking past all of them). Arriving at the distant door, I was relieved when it opened. But it opened to a two-story drop. I did not care. I leaped. Thanks to youthful anatomy, my tuck and roll left me unscathed. Physically, at least.
The next incident was the hay bale maze. Toby’s father set up a hay bale maze. Not one you can stand up in. You had to crawl through on all fours. It was enormous and elaborate. It would be easy to get lost because it was pitch black once inside. Toby went first, and all seemed okay. I went next and found it to be fun. It was cool to work through it, turning around and backtracking once a solid wall appeared. It seemed impossibly large for a neighborhood attraction. I was happy to explore, be close to the earth, and enjoy the season. I was about seven then.
But this was Toby’s house, so something had to go wrong. After a long time in the tunnels, I turned one corner and came face to face with glowing red eyes. The beast let out a terrible growl. It was pure darkness. I saw nothing but blazing red eyes. Peeing myself seemed like a good idea. but instead, I leaped, hit the tight ceiling, and pushed my way through. I broke free of the maze and ran. I heard Toby’s father swearing as I ran for the hills. He was not happy I collapsed the maze (on him?) but hey, act like a monster, then be treated like a monster. I slew and ran.
Noe for the great pumpkin massacre. Toby and I were eight, old enough now to go door to door and sell pumpkins for his father. His father would get most of the loot, but we would get a cut. The thing was, we were eight and a wheelbarrow full of pumpkins is heavy as shit, even for adults. But load the wheelbarrow, we did. Each of us grabbed a handle, and we moved onto the street. (Hey, that’s safe!)
Pavement was the only option, though. The wheel sank in the dirt next to the road because of the weight, so we had to stay on the road. Small town anyway, little traffic. We live in an area where there are massive hills on the roads. One direction was uphill, the other downhill. We could barely handle the wheelbarrow, so we decided we could only visit neighbors downhill.
We started on a straightaway and visited a few houses. Nobody bought any, so our barrow remained full of massive pumpkins. We kept going for some time and were exhausted. We were worried his dad would be upset we had made no sales. After we had travelled about a half mile, we were ready to turn back. An enormous downward hill was dead ahead. Toby decided that a certain person downhill was likely to buy, so we should do that last one and move on.
I agreed with the promise that we would then go back. As we started down the hill, we only made it a few steps before gravity took over. That wheelbarrow wanted to rock and roll. Each of us planted our feet and gripped hard on our individual wheelbarrow arms, to no avail. It was going to go. Except my side slipped before Toby’s did. Because one arm still gripped one side, the wheelbarrow rolled AND tipped!
Pumpkins dumped from the wheelbarrow, and they rolled down the street in a sea of orange. They rocketed, picking up speed, some bouncing into the air after hitting tiny pebbles on the way. Toby and I gave chase, trying to catch the errant orange missiles. No luck, they were too fast. A few bounced off the side of the road into the adjacent stretches of forest, abutting both sides of the road. We would rescue those later. We had to first stop those rocketing downward to infinity and beyond.
We fought to remain on our feet as the road made us pick up speed. We were kids out of control, following the path set forth by speeding balls of orange. They were cannonballs and we could never catch up. As the hill finally gave way to a straightaway followed by a hairpin turn, the pumpkins shot off the road and into the nearby trees. We heard the pops and cracks of branches and the bursting flesh of seasonal gourds.
It was a pumpkin massacre. Like those carved jack-o’-lanterns puking on people’s porches during Halloween, we saw plenty of pumpkin guts. Pumpkins exploded against pavement, rocks, and tree trunks. Some halved, some quartered, some in conditions too awful to mention. We did not save any. We touched some on the way, pretended there was something we could do, but we were absentee landlords that day. Under our care, those poor unsuspecting pumpkins suffered a massacre.
In the end, we climbed the hill, brought the wheelbarrow up to solid ground, then recovered the lucky few that survived. We carried them up the hill one at a time, placed them in the much lighter wheelbarrow, and made our way home.
What happened after that? I don’t know. My house was two before his house. No way was I facing his dad. I went straight to my room and pretended the massacre had never happened.
Is that the end of the story? Not quite. Just a few years ago, Toby’s nephew came to LA to become a screenwriter. His mom, my former crush, sent him my way. He is a nice kid, very talented. We wrote several projects together which we are now shopping around Hollywood. He seems normal, like someone who doesn’t have secrets (or mannequins) in his closet. I guess certain things do skip generations.
Unlike Toby, the nephew keeps his monsters on the page. I think I prefer it that way, even on Halloween.
Bio: Paul Carro survived the great pumpkin massacre and went on to work in TV and film in LA before finally returning to his horror roots with his debut horror novel The House. He has since written several more novels including Abject Fear, and edits and writes for The Little Coffeeshop of Horrors Anthology series with his nephew Joseph Carro and latest author S. Alessandro Martinez. Before dropping his newest novel, Paul has two novellas on the way. The first, In the Shadows Where the Boys used to Play, was just released. The second will be announced soon. His books can be found here: https://a.co/d/cBOM9kl