“But Pumpkin Head’s parents loved him more than he ever knew. They decided they couldn’t let him stay in that place any longer. So they made a plan, a quiet plan.
“One day, when they went to visit him, they dressed him up in a disguise and carried him away. They carried him far away where no one would ever look for him, all the way across the country. They hid him, and kept him disguised while they tried to find some way to help him. And after a long search, they found a doctor.
“And the doctor did magical things. He worked for two years on Pumpkin Head, on his face and on his body. He cut into Pumpkin Head’s face, and changed it. With plastic, he made it into a real face. He changed the rest of Pumpkin Head’s head too, and gave him real hair. And he changed Pumpkin Head’s body.
“Pumpkin Head’s parents paid the doctor a lot of money, and the doctor did the work of a genius.
“He changed Pumpkin Head completely.”
Raylee paused, and a light came into her dull eyes. The circle, and Poe above them, waited with indrawn breath.
Waited to say “Ah.”
“He changed Pumpkin Head into a little girl.”
Breath was pulled back deeper, or let out in little gasps.
The light grew in Raylee’s eyes.
“There were things that Pumpkin Head, now not Pumpkin Head any more, had to do to be a girl. He had to be careful how he dressed, and how he acted. He had to be careful how he talked, and he always had to be calm. He was very frightened of what would happen if he didn’t stay calm. For his face was really just a wonderful plastic one. The real Pumpkin Head was still inside, locked in, waiting to come out.”
Raylee looked up at them, and her voice suddenly became something different. Hard and rasping.
Her eyes were stoked coals.
“All he ever wanted was friends.”
Her cat mask fell away. Her little girl face became soft and bloated and began to grow as if someone were blowing up a balloon inside her. Her hair began to pull into the scalp, forming a circle knot at the top. Creases appeared up and down her face.
With a sickening, rubber-inflated sound, the sound of a melon breaking, Raylee’s head burst open to its true shape. Her eyes, ears, and nose became soft orange triangles, her mouth a lazy, grinning crescent. She began to breathe with harsh effort, and her voice became a sharp, wheezing lisp.
“He only wanted friends.”
Slowly, with care, Raylee reached down into her costume for what lay hidden there.
She drew it out.
In the black cellar, under Poe’s approving glare, there were screams.
“My lunch and dinner,” she said, “my dinner and breakfast.”
Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION: One from the Vault
THE GRAB by Richard Laymon
THE SHOW GOES ON by Ramsey Campbell
THE HOUSE AT EVENING by Frances Garfield
I HAE DREAM’D A DREARY DREAM by John Alfred Taylor
DEATHTRACKS by Dennis Etchison
COME, FOLLOW by Sheila Hodgson
THE SMELL OF CHERRIES by Jeffrey Goddin
A POSTHUMOUS BEQUEST by David Campton
SLIPPAGE by Michael Kube-McDowell
THE EXECUTOR by David G. Rowlands
MRS. HALFBOOGER’S BASEMENT by Lawrence C. Connolly
ROUSE HIM NOT by Manly Wade Wellman
SPARE THE CHILD by Thomas F. Monteleone
THE NEW RAYS by M. John Harrison
CRUISING by Donald Tyson
THE DEPTHS by Ramsey Campbell
PUMPKIN HEAD by Al Sarrantonio
The Year's Best Horror Stories 11 Page 27