My Neighbor's Pumpkins Never Rot

The Butcher boys.

Chet, Eli, and Rex.

The bane of my existence.

They singled me out back when we were still finger-painting and learning our ABCs. Maybe it was because Rex — the youngest, my classmate — didn't like the way I wrinkled my nose at his stench. Maybe it was just because I sat next to him and I was smaller. Who knows. I'll never understand what makes people enjoy hurting others, but whatever it is, the Butcher boys had it in spades.

The second Rex told his older brothers I was an easy target, my life became a nightmare. Every day after school, the hunt began. The moment the yellow bus turned the corner or the adults vanished, the Butcher boys materialized like demons — in the gloom of the pine-forest shortcut, behind tall fences, pressed against the siding of empty houses. I never knew which way home was safe, because I never knew where they'd be waiting. It was a game to them. Like lions, they'd lie in wait. And like big cats, they liked to play with their food.

In the woods or on the sidewalk, I'd run until my legs burned or my asthmatic lungs gave out. They were faster than me and they knew it, so they'd let me almost get away — and then at the last second my legs would get yanked out from under me, or I'd get dragged off the top of a fence. If I was lucky, it was just an Indian burn or getting my face rubbed in something disgusting until I choked and cried.

I wasn't always lucky.

Adults never understood that doing what they said — telling someone, fighting back — would only make it worse.

It got worse on its own as the Butcher boys got older. Their cruelty got more refined, the way a connoisseur develops a nose for fine wine. When neighborhood cats and dogs started disappearing, I didn't have to wonder where they'd gone. When my English teacher cried over damage to her car she couldn't afford to fix, I didn't have to ask who did it. I wasn't their only victim, not by a long shot — but I was the only one in their neighborhood, the only one whose parents couldn't afford to just move away or switch schools. I was the target who was always available.

Naturally, I hated Halloween. No mask or costume could hide me — Rex, Eli, and Chet always found me and took whatever they wanted, including my candy. Year after year my parents forced me to dress up and go out, convinced it would help me make friends. But since everyone knew the Butcher boys were after me, the other kids avoided me like the plague. And when I'd come home with my costume in tatters and my plastic pumpkin empty, I'd get grounded for "not trying hard enough."

I was pretty alone in hating Halloween. The whole town loved it — costumes, decorations, the works. Nobody more than Ms. Throgmorton, the old woman who'd lived by herself in the house at the end of the cul-de-sac for as long as anyone could remember. Her homemade caramel apples were legendary, though some people swore they caused strange dreams.

Trayvon Banks said after eating one, he dreamed he turned into a toad and Ms. Throgmorton used him as bait to catch other toads in the swamp by the highway.

Melissa Elder claimed that after eating an apple, she walked straight to her parents' diaries, read out all their passwords and secrets, then showed up at Ms. Throgmorton's house in her pajamas and repeated everything — word for word.

Everyone figured Melissa was lying. Except nobody could explain the ink on her fingertips or the cuts on her bare feet.

Rumors or not, Ms. Throgmorton's apples were a Halloween institution, and her decorations couldn't be bought in any store.

Animatronic talking scarecrows that always had an ironic comment or a bad pun about your costume.

Fake cobwebs that seemed to crawl with real spiders and centipedes.

Ghostly figures that burst out of rosebushes or dropped from doorways, cackling.

Ms. Throgmorton built them all by hand, with obvious love — you could see how much Halloween meant to her in the way her eyes glittered as she watched us, catlike, from her porch rocking chair. But nothing compared to her pumpkins.

The year the high school football team went to state, her carvings replayed the season's biggest plays in shades of orange and fire.

Other years she'd roast local politicians or current events; sometimes it was classic monsters and ghouls. What stood out was the lifelike skill of the carving. That was probably what drew the Butcher boys in: the chance to destroy something beautiful.

That Halloween, I'd been forced out in costume against my will, as usual. My classmates still crossed the street when they saw me. I was sulking under an oak tree across from Ms. Throgmorton's, daydreaming about a life far from this miserable town, when the Butcher boys caught up to me.

For some reason I was wearing an adult-sized Cat in the Hat outfit — my parents must have gotten it on sale, and it's not like I put in effort anymore. The Butcher boys made good use of it: they stuffed the giant hat in my mouth, straightjacketed my arms inside the oversized sleeves, and hung me from a tree branch by the costume's tail.

My mouth tasted like dusty felt. I could barely breathe through the sobs and snot. Blood rushed to my head as I swung helplessly from the creaking branch, too busy fighting to stay conscious to track their insults and laughter. When they were done with me, they crossed the empty street toward Ms. Throgmorton's.

I watched what happened next while hanging upside down, nearly blacking out — so take it with a grain of salt. The consequences, though, are undeniable.

Ms. Throgmorton seemed to have turned in for the night, most trick-or-treaters gone home. Nobody stopped Chet from smashing a carefully carved cat pumpkin to bits with the hockey stick from his Jason costume. Nobody stopped Eli from stomping a sculpted wolfman flat. Nobody stopped Rex from hurling a broom-riding witch cutout into the street, where it burst into waxy yellow chunks. That's when a dark shape appeared on the porch.

From where I hung, I couldn't hear what the Butcher boys said to Ms. Throgmorton — probably their usual mix of threats and insults. But when she spoke to them, the effect was instant. Like toy soldiers, their hands snapped to their sides. They stood up straight, then wobbled over to the edge of the rosebushes where her pumpkins had been. And then they started digging — with the frenzy of starving dogs after a bone.

A person shouldn't be able to dig a hole as deep as they are tall with bare hands, not that fast — but the Butcher boys did. Heedless of the damage, they kept going even as their bleeding fingernails peeled off and their joints cracked sickeningly with every scrape.

When the holes were shoulder-deep, they wormed their way in. Only their faces showed now — and Chet, Eli, and Rex weren't sneering anymore. Each face was blank, like a puppet waiting for its strings.

They didn't wait long. Ms. Throgmorton wobbled down off her porch and covered each head with a brown potato sack — the kind she used in her garden. Then, cackling softly to herself, she went back inside. I blacked out.

At some point the branch holding me must have snapped — otherwise their little "prank" probably would have killed me. When I woke up facedown in the predawn dew, I wasn't thinking about the three brown sacks across the street or the impossible things I'd witnessed. All I cared about was getting home.

My parents had left every light on and called the police. They were too worried to be angry. I could see the love and the regret in their eyes as they held me and promised they'd never force me to go out alone again. Those feelings only deepened the next day, when Arnold Butcher reported his three sons missing.

Manhunts, posters, police dogs — all came and went. But the three sacks in Ms. Throgmorton's yard stayed put. More out of curiosity than sympathy, I crept closer a few nights after Halloween. Just as I reached for one of the bags, I felt a presence behind me.

Ms. Throgmorton leaned on her railing, grinning at me ear to ear.

I gulped, waved, backed away — and the second I could, I ran.

That was five years ago. Every year since, Ms. Throgmorton has outdone herself with her decorations — and above all, with the three pumpkins in her front yard.

Nothing matches their lifelike expressions. Or the way they seem to be in genuine agony, the candles burning on their tongues. And if anyone else in town connected the three everlasting pumpkins to the three missing boys, they've kept it to themselves. Just like I have.

Like me, they've probably noticed that Ms. Throgmorton always has room for new decorations.