The Jack-o-Lantern Box Read online

The Jack-o-Lantern Box

  Karen Joan Kohoutek

  Copyright 2013 by Karen Joan Kohoutek

  (Possibly link to author page?)

  This book is available in print at most online retailers.

  ****

  Table of Contents

  Part One: Suggestions for Hallowe-en

  Part Two: Johnny the Hangman

  About the Author

  ****

  For Kathy and Jeanie.

  ****

  Part One: Suggestions for Hallowe’en

  ****

  Minnesota, October 1975

  When Jessy got to school on the first of October, her best friend Karma asked right away, “Have you started the Halloween story?”

  “Not yet,” Jessy said. “I’m thinking of something different.”

  “What kind of different?”

  “I don’t know. That’s what’s different about it.”

  Karma nodded, looking sage.

  “There’s so many spooky elements. It’s hard to pick one,” Jessy went on. “First I thought it might be about vampires. But today I’ve been thinking about ghosts. So I just don’t know yet.”

  Karma’s eyes got a little excited.

  “Vampires are great,” she said.

  “I know,” Jessy agreed.

  Jessy and Karma had been best friends since they were in kindergarten, and it seemed like they should have run out of things to talk about, but they never had. They updated each other every day before school, and at recess, and they took turns going over to each other’s houses most days after school.

  They had other friends too, but most of them weren’t as much fun. They always wanted to do things like play with baby dolls, which Jessy thought was even more boring than school. The last time she played dolls with anyone, she pretended her husband was a famous rock star who got killed in a plane crash. That was so dramatic that everybody wanted to kill off their pretend husbands. But they kept on changing their dolls' diapers, so they were still crazy.

  “I saw this movie once, and the vampire was kind of cute,” Karma went on.

  “Gross!”

  “But he was,” Karma said, with conviction.

  Jessy stared at her. “Vampires drink blood out of people’s necks.”

  “I know that.” Karma was nonchalant. “But so what?”

  “Have you ever tasted blood?”

  They thought about it for a second. Jessy thought about chewing her fingernails, and the scratchy skin around them, and how they’d bleed if she pulled on them the wrong way. Then she’d suck the blood out, hoping they’d heal up fast, so her mom wouldn’t notice how gross and raw they looked. Her mom was always bugging her about her cuticles.

  The blood didn’t taste good; it had a strange quality, kind of -- shiny in her mouth. But she had swallowed it herself, so maybe she should be nicer about the vampires and their grossness.

  “Of course vampires are icky,” Karma said. “But that doesn't mean they couldn't be cute. A guy can be cute even if you don’t like him, because it's just his face. And cuteness can be … capricious.”

  “I guess that’s true,” Jessy said. “But just think. What if you met a cute guy, and then he turned out to be a vampire. What would you do?”

  “It would depend on if he was going to drink my blood,” Karma said.

  “You’re so practical.”

  That night, when her parents were in the living room watching TV, she asked, “Mom, can I get out the Jack-o-Lantern Box this week?”

  “It’s too early,” her mom said, without even considering it.

  “It's not too early.”

  “You need to wait until it gets closer to Halloween. Otherwise, by the time it gets here, it won’t even be fun anymore.”

  “That’s not true,” she exclaimed. The very idea that she could get tired of Halloween was ridiculous.

  “You’re just going to have to wait.”

  “Mom …”

  “That’s all I’m going to say.” She didn’t even look away from the television while she was talking.

  Jessy clomped up the stairs to her room.

  “Turn on the light when you go up the stairs,” her mom yelled. So Jessy went up the stairs in the dark, and then, when she got to the top, she switched the light on.

  None of the bedroom doors ever got closed all the way, just most of the way, or else they'd stick shut. “Humidity,” her mom said. When she went to bed, Jessy left hers so the edge of the door and the edge of the frame were just barely touching. It was easier to hear the TV that way, and if their cat, Cupcake, wanted to come in, she could push it open with the top of her head.

  Her sister Twyla had hers wedged close to shut, leaving a faint line of visible light in the crack. Their mom always said she was sulking in her room. For once, Jessy could understand what there was to sulk about. She pushed her own door open, and then shut it behind her, as much as she dared.

  Right inside was a small desk with some open shelves, that had come from her dad’s antiquing. She had begged to keep it in her room; she needed a desk, to work on her stories, like a real writer. But all she ever did was pile papers and stuff on it. It was just like how her grandma kept buying her fancy blank books, and once an official diary, with a tiny key, but they just didn’t feel comfortable. Instead she’d grab a pen and her plain notebook, like the ones she used every day at school, and sit on the bed while she was writing.

  The last two Halloweens, the stories had been about a couple of girls -- obviously her and Karma with made-up names -- who thought they were witches. Cupcake, and Karma’s Yorkshire terrier, George, were also in the stories, with their real names, and they were the ones who actually had the magic powers, even though the witches didn't realize it. Jessy had illustrated them, too, with crayon drawings of George and Cupcake in capes and pointed hats, stirring a cauldron with ladles in their cartoon paws.

  The first year, the story had been really short, just scenes of the girls making potions, and then flying over the town on their broomsticks, nearly hitting the roof of the JC Penney’s store. There was a vague plot about somebody who had put a curse on Jessy and Karma’s characters, and Cupcake and George had to save the day. It didn’t make a lot of sense, but Karma had really liked that she made little shaggy George so heroic.

  Last year, the story was much more elaborate, and it had taken Jessy a lot longer than a story usually took her to write. In it, all their friends' pets met in a Sabbat on the edge of town, in a field out behind Karma’s parents’ house. They stood in a circle, on their hind legs, wearing the traditional witches' hats and long flowing gowns, and did magical battle with a group of mean pets, who belonged to nasty kids.

  She’d been really proud of one of the plot twists: when George and Cupcake made up a magic potion, they would lick it into their fur. Then the magic transferred to whoever petted them. Sometimes she still thought about that when she was petting Cupcake, the soft fat kitty plopped on her side and purring.

  This year, though, she was determined to write a story that was more grown up.

  Let's see, she thought. What do I know about vampires?

  It wasn’t much, really. She had a picture in her mind, like out of a black and white movie, and it was full of billowing fog. It’s not as if the vampires actually caused the fog, but they were clearly associated in her mind. Then she imagined a cemetery at night, and someone walking, in old-fashioned clothes. But she didn't know what would happen next.

  She wrote “If I was a vampire” in her notebook. But she knew she’d never be a vampire, so that wasn’t much help.

  Then underneath she added the phrase, “If I was a ghost.” Somehow it was easier to imagine being a ghost, although she s
kipped right over the part about dying.

  Jessy started picturing a scene of ghosts all over town, maybe just walking down the street, a whole parade of them. It was puzzling, though -- she didn't know what the ghosts would actually do. Where did they go when they weren’t busy haunting people? Were they just hanging around?

  It was hard to think of what they'd do, since she couldn’t imagine what it would be like to be dead. It all seemed so complicated. Did they have bodies, that you could touch? Or were they something misty and vague, like the fog? What would you want, if you weren’t even alive anymore?

  In the movies, it seemed like you only became a ghost if you hadn’t been very nice when you were alive. Or maybe you wanted something, like there was a message you wanted to pass on. She couldn't think of anything she'd need to say so urgently that she'd come all the way back from the grave.

  There was a knock at her door.

  “Who is it?” she called. The door pushed open, rasping slightly, and Twyla was standing there, slouched.

  “Did you go in my room?” she demanded.

  “No, and I didn’t say you could come in,” Jessy said.

  Funny that vampires could rise up from their coffins, right through the dirt, and they still couldn’t enter her room if she didn’t want them to. But she couldn’t keep her stupid sister out.

  “Don’t be a brat.”

  “You’re the brat,” Jessy replied.

  “Just answer the question.”

  Jessy glared at her.

  “Why would I go in your room?” she asked, even though there were a million reasons to go into her sister's room. She snuck in there to listen to records all the time.

  “Because you’re a snoop,” Twyla said.

  “I am not a snoop.”

  That wasn’t totally true either. She knew where Twyla had hidden a bottle of Boone's Farm Strawberry Wine, in an old purse in her closet, but that just made Jessy more indignant.

  “Like you’d admit it if you were snooping,” Twyla went on.

  “Well I didn’t, so leave me alone.”

  “Well, if it wasn’t you, it must have been Mom.”

  Music was flowing into the hallway, between the doors. Jessy knew every record that Twyla had, and all the flip sides, but this must be something new. She really wanted to ask what it was, but she couldn’t back down.

  There was a pause.

  “You think Mom snoops in your room?” Jessy asked then.

  “I fixed my drawer so I could tell if it had been opened. When I got home, I noticed right away.”

  Jessy immediately wondered about the stuff she had hidden in her own closet, mostly paperbacks with “good parts.” And she had plenty of notebooks where she'd written about boys, and even some attempts at a romance novel that had gotten pretty steamy, by her standards. Right now, their mom was probably worrying more about Twyla, but if she looked through Twyla’s stuff, maybe Jessy wasn't safe either.

  ****