In the month of October, for R.I.P. XVI (Readers Imbibing Peril), I am planning to read several short stories from Halloween Horrors, an anthology of spine-tingling stories compiled by Richard Chizmar and Robert Morrish. For my first selection, I just dived into the first story in the anthology, which was by Dean Koontz. This is my first experience reading that author.
"The Black Pumpkin" by Dean Koontz
Tommy is a twelve-year-old who lives a miserable life. His parents and his older brother Frank mistreat him. And when he and Frank visit a pumpkin patch a day before Halloween, it looks like things are going to get worse. Frank buys a specially decorated pumpkin, painted black and with a disturbing design. The pumpkin carver will take any amount of money that Frank wants to give him, but warns him that "You get what you give." And Frank gives only a nickel.
The story was very scary, tense, and horrifying. And really not my kind of story. Just the way Tommy is treated by his family was horrifying. But... it was well-written and a good read, in the sense that once I started it I could not stop reading. And the ending was pretty good.
In the comments on my R.I.P. post, Todd Mason provided additional information on the Halloween Horrors anthology. It is a 2010 reprint of October Dreams: A Celebration of Halloween, which was published by Cemetery Dance Publications in 2000. The book has 22 short stories of Halloween fiction (some are new, some are classic reprints), plus a good number of short pieces by authors recalling their favorite memories of Halloween and essays on Halloween.
"The Black Pumpkin" first appeared in Twilight Zone Magazine in December 1986. In 1995 it was published in a collection of stories by Dean Koontz, Strange Highways.
