The Black Pumpkin – Koontz, Dean

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THE BLACK PUMPKIN By Dean R. Koontz 1 THE PUMPKINS WERE CREEPY, BUT THE

MAN WHO CARVED THEM WAS far stranger than his creations. He appeared to have

baked for ages in the California sun, until all the juices had been cooked out

of his flesh. He was stringy, bony, and leather skinned. His head resembled a

squash, not pleasingly round like a pumpkin, yet not shaped like an ordinary

head, either: slightly narrower at the top and wider at the chin than was

natural. His amber eyes glowed with a sullen, smoky, weak – but dangerous –

light. Tommy Sutzmann was uneasy the moment that he saw the old pumpkin

carver. He told himself that he was foolish, overreacting again. He had a

tendency to be alarmed by the mildest signs of anger in others, to panic at

the first vague perception of a threat. Some families taught their

twelve-year-old boys honesty, integrity, decency, and faith in God. By their

actions, however, Tommy’s parents and his brother, Frank, had taught him to be

cautious, suspicious, and even paranoid. In the best of times, his mother and

father treated him as an outsider; in the worst of times, they enjoyed

punishing him as a means of releasing their anger and frustration at the rest