In Transylvania, Pumpkin Carves You!

As Halloween enthusiasts (fanatics, really) Jessie and I had always wanted to visit Transylvania on the spookiest day of the year. And now, thanks to an unexpected inheritance from a recently-deceased relative, we were making our dream a reality.

After landing in Bucharest, we immediately jumped on a train to Cluj-Napoca, the second largest city in Romania and right in the heart of Transylvania. It was an eleven-hour ride, but we figured it would be a great opportunity to see some of the amazing countryside.

As we traveled through the small communes and villages, Jessie and I began to talk seriously about the idea of hopping of the train and staying in one of these smaller, quaint little villages for a couple of nights. We had plenty of time to see the city, but wouldn’t it be fun to see how the locals lived for a bit? By the time we pulled into the station in Monor, we had booked a spare room in one of the houses on the outskirts of the village.

The old woman who owned the house was warm and welcoming, and she spoke just enough English for us to get by. She encouraged us to sightsee in the adjoining village of Gledin, and we promised to bring her back some essentials from the market there. While shopping for the list of items the old woman had given us, we also saw the cutest, most beautiful pumpkins for sale. Since it was getting close to Halloween, Jessie insisted that we buy a couple and carve them into jack-o-lanterns to adorn the old woman’s front porch.

By the time we returned to the house, the old woman had fallen asleep in her rocking chair, so we quietly borrowed a couple of knives from the kitchen and set to carving the pumpkins on the front porch. We must have been talking a little too loud, because the old woman came outside a few minutes later.

“What are you doing?!” she cried, staring aghast at our handiwork.

“Pumpkin carving?” Jessie offered. “We thought we could put them on the porch and make this place a little more festive.”

“Isteni kegyelem,” the woman muttered, along with a whole string of Hungarian that Jessie and I couldn’t even begin to decipher. “Pumpkins are not for carving. They are for cooking only. To carve a pumpkin is to insult the Gourdians.”

“The Gourdians?”

“Pumpkin people who live in the nearby woods,” she said with no trace of sarcasm. “They gift us with the bounty of the land in exchange for being left in peace. To carve a pumpkin for amusement or fun is to disrespect our bargain and bring misfortune upon us all. Get rid of those immediately.”

She stormed back into the house as abruptly as she had come.

“Can you believe that?” Jessie asked.

“Some people are really superstitious,” I offered, not knowing what else to say.

“Well, we’re not going to let a little local superstition ruin our annual tradition of making jack-o-lanterns, are we?”

I shrugged. “I suppose not.”

We finished our carvings and decided to put the pumpkins on the back porch, where they were less visible. We may have decided to do our own thing but we weren’t looking to create any problems with our temporary landlady. At that point it was starting to get dark, so we went out to help the old woman prepare dinner and proceeded to share a delightful meal and conversation.

As the clock creeped toward midnight, the conversation waned and we all decided to turn in. Jessie and I drifted off to sleep in our cozy little room, a faint bit warm light spilling under the door from the lantern the old woman had left on to light out way to the bathroom should we need it in the middle of the night.

                   

A low moan jolted us both awake in the middle of the night.

“Is she having a nightmare?” Jessie whispered to me.

“Probably,” I said, not really having any idea. “I’m sure she’s fine.”

The moan sounded again. We both looked toward the door, and that’s the shadow from a short pair of scrawny legs skittered across the light as they passed the door. Then another pair. Then another. They were almost inhumanly tiny and slender.

“Wha--” Jessie started to say.

“Shh!” I whispered back.

But it was too late. Several pairs of the legs returned and were now standing directly outside our door. Our eyes were transfixed on the shadows of the legs under the door.

And then the light in the hallway went out, plunging us into full darkness.

As our eyes strained to see, the door slowly creaked on its hinges.

We heard the sound of little feet scurrying into the room.

And then dozens of tiny hands grabbed us, pulling us off the bed as we screamed. The little hands were surprisingly strong, dragging us out of the room and down the hallway. We were brought into the master bedroom and left on the ground. Jessie and I felt around in the dark, bumping against something in the middle of the floor.

Someone turned on the lamp and Jessie and I got our first glimpse of the Gourdians. Short, dirty, orange skin; they almost looked like offspring of a grey-man alien and an Oompa Loompa. It was the most bizarre, horrifying sight Jessie and I had ever seen... for about ten seconds until we looked at the object next to us in the middle of the floor.

It was the old woman, gagged with the bedsheet and with a glassy, vacant look in her eyes. Agony etched across her face, likely brought on by the carvings on her stomach. The Gourdians had turned her into a human jack-o-lantern and looked poised to do the same to us.

Maybe pumpkin carving wasn’t such an innocuous tradition after all...


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994 words
Prompt: write a story that has something to do with carving a pumpkin.

Originally written for "Holiday Short Story Contest - closed"  and "I Write in 2018" .