1
The evening skyline of Halloween Town is dotted with tiny pinholes of starlight, and across the town square, pumpkins glow a sinister copper orange. From Jack’s house atop Skull Hill, the town looks different—draped in long, fingerlike shadows. The air smells different, too, like black licorice and raven wings and a little like pumpkin jam, nothing like the foul stench of sodium chloride and rubbing alcohol that permeates Dr. Finkelstein’s lab, a place that was once my home—but also a prison.
The memory of it churns inside me, entwined with a feeling of stark relief that I will never again sleep inside that cold observatory. Never lie awake, alone in a narrow, moth-eaten bed, staring through a tiny window up at Jack’s house in the distance, daydreaming of living within its walls someday.
It feels like a fairy tale from one of those happily-ever-after books where the princess storms the castle, slays a goblin-dragon, and takes over the kingdom for herself. Except I am not golden-haired or fine-boned. I have no bones at all.
I am a rag doll who married a skeleton king.
A rag doll who woke from the impossible daydream and found herself in her own heroine story—a tale whose ending hasn’t yet been written; but instead, is only just beginning.
I leave the terrace overlooking the town and move back into the bedroom I now share with Jack, facing the tall, spiderweb-cracked mirror leaning against the slanted wall. I run my fingers through my hair, pulling it forward over my shoulder, the scarlet strands so coffin-straight that they could never be coiled or coiffed or pinned up with bat-bows. I press my palms against my patchwork dress, staring at my reflection in the glass: the crossed seams along my chest, the smile seams at the corners of my mouth, the places where Dr. Finkelstein stitched me together. Needle and thread and sinister midnight conjurings.
His creation, made in the dark, damp shadows of his lab.
A dead leaf pokes out from the seam along the inside of my left elbow—my stuffing coming loose—and I quickly push it back into place. My threads need to be re-stitched, leaves gathered and restuffed.
“You ready?” Jack asks. I turn, and he’s standing in our bedroom doorway, holding a black velvet suitcase, the bottomless caverns of his eyes like graves I would happily tumble into, down, down, down, forever without end. A spider—a remnant of the wedding—skitters free from inside the suitcase and runs along the handle before it drops to the floor and falls into a crack. I had wanted to gather herbs from the garden—nightshade and bottle thorns—to take with us, just in case, but Jack assured me that I wouldn’t need such things on our honeymoon.
Potions and poisons aren’t necessary outside of Halloween Town, he had said. There would be no need to poison or put anyone into a deathly sleep.
But it’s hard for me to imagine a world where such things aren’t needed.
I turn to smile at Jack—the seams on my cheeks stretching wide—and place my hand around the sturdy bones of his arm. My husband. The man I have loved for so long, at times it felt like it might crack me open. And together, we step out into the cool twilight of Halloween Town.
At the front gate of our home, guarded by two iron cats, spines raised, Jack pushes open the gate to face the waiting crowd—eager to catch a glimpse of the newly married king and queen—and he clears his throat. “My wife, Sally, and I are off on our honeymoon,” he announces, grinning, showing all his corn-kernel teeth. “We’ll be back tomorrow. If anything should happen, the Mayor will be in charge.”
The Mayor, who stands beside one of the fanged metal cats, jerks his shoulders back at the same moment his face spins around, revealing the down-turned slope of his crooked mouth, and the deep worry in his small eyes. “Is that such a good idea, Jack?” he asks nervously. “Perhaps someone else should be in charge. Or maybe we should elect a committee. I’m not sure I can make decisions if an important matter were to arise. Or you could delay the honeymoon until after Halloween. It’s only two weeks away,” he reminds Jack. “Spring is a perfect time for a trip, or better yet, just skip the honeymoon altogether.”
“You’ll do great,” Jack says, clapping the Mayor on the shoulder. The Mayor briefly reveals his smiling face, as if for a half second he believes he’s up for the task, before his features swivel back around—lips a grim blue, worry rimming his terror-struck eyes.
But Jack is unfazed by the Mayor’s apprehension—it’s nothing new—and we make our way through the crowd, Jack shaking hands, accepting the congratulations of the townspeople who shuffle close, too close—crushing against us, hands reaching out—to see us off. But I slink back; the eyes of everyone on me feels like thorny stabs across my linen flesh, pulling me apart bit by bit. I’m not used to the attention, the whites of their eyes like hollowed-out ghosts, peering into my empty soul, judging, appraising. Sally the rag doll, our Pumpkin Queen. There is a festering thought inside me: perhaps they’ll think I’m not worthy of the
title. A rag doll should never be queen. A rag doll who should go back to the darkness of Dr. Finkelstein’s lab, cold and solitary and alone.
They look at me like they’re considering eating me whole.
Some of them probably would.
But then I catch a flash of white to my left, and Zero appears, pushing through the onlookers to nudge me in the elbow with his glowing jack-o’-lantern nose, and I stroke his ghostly white coat—the soft transparent feel of his fur, his sagging ears. The tightness in my chest calms, and he smiles his loose, open dog grin. To Zero, I’m no different than I was yesterday, before I married Jack, before I became queen.
With Zero hovering at my side, I follow Jack through the town center, ducking through the last of the crowd just as Lock, Shock, and Barrel—also known, woefully, as Boogie’s Boys—shout, “We’ll miss you, Pumpkin Queen!”
They’ve removed their trick-or-treat disguises, revealing their true faces—which are, somewhat perplexingly, identical to their masked facades—and they grin like the young children they are. Yet there is always a sly, crafty undertone hidden in their shimmering eyes that can’t ever be trusted. It isn’t their grins or their scheming giggles that sends a chill down the uneven stitching of my spine, however. It’s the name they called me: Pumpkin Queen.
It’s the first time I’ve heard it said out loud, and it rings in my ears all the way into the forest, to the Hinterlands, and the grove of seven trees.
“Are you sure it’s safe?” I ask Jack, his face marred by shadows from the towering, spiny branches overhead. There was no wind on our walk through the woods, yet now the circle of trees shivers and vibrates, beckoning us closer. Jack taps a finger on the broad tree with a perfect heart, painted a buttery pink, carved at the center.
We are standing in the circular grove of seven trees that lead to seven holidays, where last year Jack slipped into Christmas Town and kidnapped Sandy Claws.
I’ve never been outside Halloween Town, never ventured beyond its borders, and I spin around now, slightly breathless, marveling at each strange carved tree. Each with its own peculiar doorway.
A green four-leaf clover adorns the tree for St. Patrick’s Day; a red firework for the Fourth of July; a giant turkey marks the entrance to Thanksgiving; a pale painted egg for Easter; a Christmas tree with tiny baubles and lights leads to Christmas Town; and lastly, a grinning orange pumpkin for our home, Halloween Town.
After a pause, Jack steps toward the painted-heart doorway; a pink-and-white-striped box set near the trunk of the tree. “Of course,” he answers, and I can hear the excitement in his
voice. He’s been to all the holidays, all the towns, except this one. He’s been saving this tree for me. “I imagine Valentine’s Town will be more wondrous than all the rest. And now we’ll see it together.” He kisses the back of my hand, eyes tumbling into mine, then he tugs open the heart-shaped door nested in the trunk of the tree. A wind coils out from inside, soft and warm, smelling faintly of sugar cookies and wild roses.
I’ve never smelled anything so wondrous.
Still, nervously, I spin the bone-white wedding band on my finger, my eyes tracing the deadly nightshade vines engraved along the outer edge—a plant that has meant freedom for me, a way to escape Dr. Finkelstein each time I poisoned him with nightshade from the garden. You are free now, I remind myself, because although there is a buzzing of curiosity in my chest, there are also nervous crow wings flapping in my stomach.
But when I lift my gaze to Jack, his moonless eyes settle the restless crows, and the corners of my mouth tip upward. “I trust you,” I say. Because I do, more than anything.
Jack nods, stepping his long, spidery legs through the opening into the tree, and pulls me in after him.
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