"Inside a Jack-o'-lantern's a wonderful place to be on Halloween," he thought.
But a large gob of wax came rolling down the side of the candle . . . rolling straight down at Timothy's face. As it rolled closer and closer he tried to roll out of its way but he couldn't move. He'd fallen into a thick, sticky puddle of melted wax.
It held him down like paste.
He kicked and wiggled and twisted and turned.
Just before the gob got to his head, the wax let go. He rolled clear and stood up with a smile . . .
. . . until a white paw with sharp claws darted in through the Jack-o'-lantern's smiling mouth.
Timothy jumped back.
The claws missed him, but not by much.
The paw didn't go away. It stayed inside and tried again.
Timothy rushed behind the candle.
The paw jumped sideways. It knocked the candle over, but the fire didn't go out.
As the paw leaped this way and that, Timothy tried to stay away from it. But it kept trying to find him.
"You asked for it," he finally said. With that, he wrapped his arms around the candle and swung it toward the cat's paw.
The paw trying to find Timothy found the flame instead.
"YEEEEOWWW!!!" yelled the cat.
In the blink of an eye, its smoking paw vanished from the Jack-o'-lantern's mouth.
Timothy went to the mouth and looked out.
He saw the front yard of the house. He saw the sidewalk the curb and the street. On the street, a car went by. On the other side of the street, a few trick-or-treaters were walking by. Beyond them and down a gentle slope, he saw the river. The moon made a shiny path on its water.
He saw all that, but not the cat.
"I believe it must be gone," he thought.
But all of a sudden the pumpkin shook so hard that Timothy fell off his feet. High above his face, the top of the Jack-o'-lantern flew off.
The huge, green eyes of the cat stared down at him.
"No!" Timothy cried. The cat growled. Then its face went away. A long white cat-arm suddenly came down at Timothy with its claws out.
"Time to scram!" thought Timothy.
But he didn't dare move.
Suddenly, the pumpkin moved for him.
As it rolled, the cat cried "REEOWW!" and jerked its arm out of the hole and was gone.
The pumpkin fell, but not very far. It hit the porch railing, Bump! Then it rolled down the railing. Inside, the candle went out. Timothy tumbled, bouncing off the pumpkin's soft round gucky walls.
At the bottom of the railing, it dropped to the walkway.
"Ooomph!" went Timothy.
But he didn't break apart, and neither did the pumpkin---though the pumpkin cracked in a place or two.
Cracked but still in one piece, it rolled down the walkway and across the sidewalk and off the curb. As it rolled across the street, a ghost speeding by on a bike made a quick turn and missed it by an inch.
On the other side of the street, it rolled its way up a wheelchair ramp. It rolled across the sidewalk and into the grass and down the grassy slope and . . .
PLOP!
Into the river it splashed.
Timothy, his eyes squeezed tightly shut, hugged the candle and thought, "I'm doomed. I'm truly doomed now."
A great gob of water came down on his head.
But only one gob.
He waited for more, but more didn't come.
Still, he hugged the candle for dear life. "If the pumpkin goes down," he thought, "I'll hang on to the candle."
He had never read very much about candles.
"I do hope they float. If they don't, I'm sunk."
But the Jack-o'-lantern, though cracked, didn't seem to have any leaks. Time went by and it didn't go down.
At last, Timothy let go of the candle. He rolled onto his back. Up where the cat's face had been, he saw the night sky.
A few pale shreds of clouds were drifting past the moon. There seemed to be a million bright stars.
"It must've been like this for Tom Sawyer," he decided, thinking about one of his favorite books. "This isn't the Mississippi River and this isn't a raft . . . but it sure is nice."
Timothy smiled and sighed and soon he fell asleep.
When he woke up, the Jack-o'-lantern was all golden inside.
He yawned, then stretched, then stepped over to its mouth. Paws on the bottom teeth, he leaned forward and looked out.
It was early morning. The sun, just coming up, spread gold over the river and the trees along the shore. Timothy heard seagulls. He heard the faraway toot of a boat whistle. He heard the water washing softly against the bottom of his pumpkin-boat.
"What a wonderful morning," he said.
Then he thought about the library and its books. Maybe he would find his way back, someday. He hoped so. But he felt no great hurry to return.
"It isn't every day that's such a fine day for an adventure," he thought. "This is among the finest."
So Timothy Maywood Usher Mouse sailed on.
RICHARD LAYMON is the author of over thirty novels and seventy short stories. He received Bram Stoker Award nominations for four of his books and won the Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel for The Traveling Vampire Show. A native of Chicago, Laymon attended Willamette University in Salem, Oregon and received his Masters Degree in English Literature from Loyola University of Los Angeles. He was a longtime resident of Los Angeles, where he lived with his wife and daughter.
Laymon's fiction is published by Headline in the United Kingdom, and by Leisure Books and Cemetery Dance Publications in the United States.
ALAN M. CLARK hails from Nashville, Tennessee. Receiving his education at the San Francisco Art Institute, he became a free lance illustrator in 1984. He is the recipient of the World Fantasy Award and four Chesley Awards. He and his wife live in Eugene, Oregon.
The Halloween Mouse Page 2