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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Derrinmaloney on 2024-10-25 16:16:11+00:00.
I have a strange fear. You’ll probably laugh when I tell you what it is, but you might feel differently after I tell you why I have it.
I suffer from cucurbitophobia: the fear of pumpkins.
Fears as specific and irrational as that usually begin in childhood, and sometimes for no reason at all. But let me assure you, I have a very good reason to fear them.
I sit here now, typing this story as the living remainder of a set of twins. My name is Kalem, and I’ll tell you the tragic story of my brother, and the horror of what happened in the years since his untimely death.
It happened when we were young, only eleven years old. We were an odd pair to see - we had the misfortune of being born with curious cow’s licks of hair on top of our heads that would put Alfalfa from The Little Rascals to shame. Our mother (much to our chagrin) called us her “little pumpkins”, on account of our hair looking like little curled stalks. Our round little bellies didn’t exactly help either.
I was the calmer of us both, being reserved where my brother Kiefer was wild. He was the one who blurted out the answers in class and couldn’t sit still. The risk-taker, the stuntman, the show-off. It usually fell to me as the older and wiser sibling to watch out for him, though I was only a few minutes older.
We were walking home one blustery autumn evening, the trees ablaze with gold and orange as we huddled up from the chill of a cloudless dusk. Piles of leaves had been swept from the paths in the fear that they’d make an ice rink of the paths should it rain. The piles didn’t last long as kids kicked them about and jumped into them for fun.
Kiefer of course couldn’t resist, running headlong into the first pile he saw.
It happened so fast. Upsettingly fast, as death always does; without warning and without any power on my part to stop it. The swish of the leaves were punctuated with a crack, and autumns earthen gown was daubed in red.
A rock. Just a poorly-placed rock, probably put their as a joke by someone who didn’t realise that it would change someone’s life forever.
The leaves came to rest and I still hadn’t moved. A freezing breeze blew enough aside for me to see what remained of my twin’s head.
Pumpkin seeds.
It was a curious thought. I could only guess why the words popped into my head back then, but I know now that the smashed pumpkins on the doorsteps of that street seemed to mock my brother’s remains. How the skull fragments and loose brain matter did indeed seem to resemble the inside of a pumpkin.
I shook but not from the cold, and I suppose the sight of me collapsed and shivering got enough attention for an ambulance to be called.
I honestly don’t recall what followed. It was a whirlwind of tears, condolences, and the gnawing fear that I would be punished for failing to protect my little brother.
Punishment came in the form of never being called my mother’s little pumpkin again. I was glad of it; the word itself and the season it was associated with forever haunted me from that day on. But I never thought I would miss the affection of the nickname.
At some point I shaved my hair, all the better to get rid of that “stalk” of mine. I couldn’t bring myself to eat in the months after either, but that was okay. The thinner I got, the further away I could get from resembling my twin as he was when he passed, and further away from looking like the pumpkins that served as an annual reminder of that horrible day.
Every time I saw pumpkins, even in the form of decorations, I would lose it. I would hyperventilate, feel so nauseous I could vomit, and I was flooded with adrenaline and an utterly implacable panic to do something to save my brother that I consciously knew had been gone for years.
People noticed, and laughed behind my back at my reactions. Word had inevitably spread of what happened, and I reckon that people’s pity was the only thing that saved me from the more mean-spirited pranks.
For years, I went on as that weird skinny bald kid that was afraid of pumpkins.
I began to go off the beaten path whenever I could in the run-up to autumn, taking long routes home in a bid to avoid any places where people might have hung up halloween decorations.
It was during one such walk that the true horror of my story takes place.
It was early June; nowhere near Halloween, but my walks through the back roads and wooded trails of my home town had become a habit, and a great sanctuary throughout the hardest years of my life.
It was a gray day, heavy and humid. Bugs clung to my sweat-covered skin, the dead heat brought me to panting as woods turned blue as dusk set in. Just as I was planning to make my way back to my car, I saw a light in the woods. Not other walkers; the lights flickered, and were lined up invitingly.
Was it some sort of gathering? Candles used in a ritual or campsite?
I moved closer, pushing my way through bramble and nettles as I moved away from the path. A final push through the branches brought me right in front of the lights, and my breath caught in my throat.
Pumpkins. Tiny green pumpkins, each with a little candle placed neatly inside. The faces on each one were expertly carved despite the small size, eerily child-like with large eyes and tiny teeth.
One, two, three…
I already knew how many. Somehow I knew. The number sickened me as I counted; four, five, six…
Don’t let it be true. Let this be some weird dream. Don’t let this be real as I’m standing here shivering in the middle of nowhere about to throw up with fear as I’m counting nine, ten… eleven pumpkins.
My sweat in the summer heat turned to ice as I counted a baby pumpkin for every year my brother lived for. A chill breeze that had no place blowing in summer whipped past me, instantly extinguishing the candles. I was left there, shivering and panting in the dim blue of dusk.
No one was around for miles. No one to make their way out here, placing each pumpkin, lovingly carving them and lighting each candle… the scene was simply wrong.
I felt watched despite the isolation. So when the bushes nearby rustled, my heart almost stopped dead. I barely mustered the will to turn my head enough to see. More rustling.
It has to be a badger, a fox, a roaming dog, it can’t be anything else.
But it was.
A spindly hand reached forth, fingers tiny but sharp as needles, clawing the rest of its sickening form forth from the bush. Nails encrusted with dirt, as if it dragged itself from the ground.
A bulbous head leered at me from the dark, smile visible only as a leering void in the murky white outline of the thing’s face. It was barely visible in what remained of dusk’s light, but I could see enough to send my heart pounding. Its head shook gently in a mockery of infantile tremors, and I could feel its eyes regard me with inhuman malice.
The candle flames erupted anew, casting the creature into light.
Its face was like a blank mask of skin, with eyes and a mouth carved into it with the same tools and skill as that of the pumpkins. Hairless and childlike, it crawled forward, smiling at me with fangs that were just a crude sheet of tooth, seemingly left in its gums as an afterthought by whatever it was had carved its face.
From its head protruded a bony spur, curved and twisting from an inflamed scalp like the stalk of a-
Pumpkin.
All reason left me as I sprinted from the woods. Blindly I ran through the dark, heedless of the thorns and nettles stinging at my skin.
The pumpkin-thing trailed after me somehow, crying one minute and giggling the next in a foul approximation of a baby’s voice. I didn’t dare look behind me to see how close it got to me, or what unsettling way its tiny body would have to move in order to keep up with me.
Gasping for air and half-mad with fear, I made it to my car and sped back to the lights of town. I hoped against hope that I could get away before it could make it to my car… hoped that it wouldn’t be clinging underneath or behind it…
It took me the better part of an hour to stop shaking enough to step out of the car.
Nothing ever clung to my car, and I never had any trouble as long as I remained away from those woods. But that was only the first chase.
The next would come months later, on none other than Halloween night.
I had, by some miracle, made some friends. I suppose that in a strange way, that experience in the woods had inoculated me to pumpkins in general. After all, how could your average Halloween decoration compare to that thing in the woods?
My new friends were chill, into the same things I was into, pretty much everything I could want from the friends I never had from my years spent isolating. I even opened up to them about what happened to me, and my not-so-irrational fear, which they understood without judgement and with boundless support.
And so when I was ultimately invited to a Halloween party, I felt brave enough to accept; with the promise of enough alcohol to loosen me up should the abundant decorations become a bit much for me.
On the night, it wasn't actually that bad. I was nervous, as much about the inevitable pumpkin decorations as I was about being out of my social comfort zone. As I got talking to my new friends, mingling with people and having some drinks, I began to have fun. I even got pretty drunk - I didn’t have enough experience with these settings to know my limits. I began to let loose and forget about everything.
Until I saw him.
I felt eyes on me...
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