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nobody could match him in speed or artistry. In years past, he had performed his carving magic for audiences at festivals and carnivals and even private parties, albeit with less terminal consequences. He was like a sidewalk caricature sketch man, turning pumpkins into the garish portraits of boys and girls, men and women, even dogs and cats. It was almost as if he imprinted their souls in the gourds, his viewers had marveled. But they also shivered.
    Why did they shiver? It was creepy to take your pumpkin home, prop it in the window and then later walk into your living room and see yourself staring back, lit by the flickering tremor of a candle flame. And, moms got a frightened feeling when they watched him duplicate little Billy or Sarah on the skin of a twenty-pound pumpkin. They cringed when he touched their children, though he did so gently with one hand while the other stabbed the gourd. He always touched his subjects as he worked. The connection helped him pour something of them into his art. It made his carvings true. It almost gave them breath.
    But, that had been then. This was now, and now he had to work fast. And to work fast, he had to do more than touch his subjects with a finger. No . . . he stabbed the knives into them,and carried the blood over to the pumpkin as he re-created their faces on orange canvas.
    The carver sneezed and impatiently honked to clear his throat as he sliced the knife deep into the man’s cheek, drawing out the essence with a deft slice and then removing the knife from the heat of the dying face to transfer the model’s essence to the pumpkin. The flicker of energy in the man’s glare was fading. With short, tiny slices the carver slit the vinyl-like skin in the pumpkin to form the tiny breaks in the man’s smile. The man’s pumpkin-cut smile.
    He dipped his blade into the man’s bloodied, tongue-less mouth, and it returned a brilliant, vibrant red—both color and lubricant. Then he drew a long, thin slit on the side of the gourd and brought the blade around, like following the delicate spiral of a conch shell. He repeated the motions on the other side, providing the pumpkin head with the representation of ears. Then he held his palm over the man’s mouth, as if trying to stop the last breath of life from escaping.
    The carver chose a different knife; thinner, razor-sharp. He stared into his victim’s dying eyes, his other hand working seemingly without guidance, shaping and refining the features already roughed out on the pumpkin skin. The hand finished the mouth with a long flourish, slicing away a millimeter of orange pulp and casting it to the floor. It glimmered there in the half-light, the last viscera of the act of transference.
    His model choked on his own blood, eyes blinking frantically in the final moments of life. So the carver picked up a heavier, longer blade. He sat astride the man’s chest, held the butchering blade to his throat. Then, with one hand, he pressed his fingers to the new face he’d fostered on the pumpkin.
    It ended quickly. The man beneath him gave a short cough in sync with the pull of his knife. The carver pulled the knife through again. And again. At last the blade rebounded from the wood of the floor with a
clink
, and when it was finished, thecarver lifted his model’s head from its body by the hair. He set it momentarily to the side and replaced it with the glistening pumpkin. The dead head looked deflated without its eyes, and with trails of blood from the thin tears in its cheeks. But the new head, next to it . . . now that was a work of artistry!
    He stood back to admire his work, sneezed again and rubbed his arm against his face in disgust. Then he gathered his knives and the man’s head and walked out of the house into the black of night. Nobody saw him come or go. But the next day the entire town knew one thing for sure:
    The Pumpkin Man was back.

Meredith Perenais’s Journal
    April 23,