Halloween in Little Cemetery

A few days before Halloween, a new shop opened on the high street in Little Cemetery. Tom Midd and Pete Night went immediately to investigate. It was a gloomy Saturday morning: grey clouds scudded low over the little town and shoppers hurried by, hunched inside their coats. Another long winter was on the way. The boys stood outside Pumpkins Forever and stared up at the sign. They gazed in through the window at an impressive array of pumpkins, large and small.

“I never heard of a pumpkin shop before,” Tom said. “It must be the only one in the whole world.”

Pete nodded and they went inside. The shop was cool and quiet and festooned with pumpkins and nothing else. There was a huge collection heaped in one corner as if the wind had blown it there (some were as big as beach balls); there were boxes of pumpkins piled high all around the shop on shelving and upon the floor, and still more rested on the counter.

A bell over the door jingled as they entered and a rather small and certainly very old man promptly scooted through some bead curtains and took up position behind the counter. He was munching his way through a pack of seeds.

“Good morning!” he said, surprisingly brightly. “Welcome to Pumpkins Forever! We’ve got everything – big pumpkins, small pumpkins, fat pumpkins, thin pumpkins, good pumpkins, bad pumpkins, pumpkin seeds and pumpkin pie. We’ve got pumpkin puzzles, jigsaws and crosswords, pumpkin pizza…”

“Did you say bad pumpkins?” Tom asked.

“I did indeed!”

“As in rotten?” Pete enquired.

“As in devious, wicked, misbegotten and up to no good,” the shopkeeper declared. He leaned forward and the boys observed a rather malicious gleam in his eyes behind his thin spectacles. “Would you care to see?”

They nodded, wide-eyed. The old man gestured toward the back of the shop. “Follow me.”

The room he led them to was rather bare compared with the shop itself. A few stray pumpkins lay about but most, it seemed, were on display out front. There was a table laden down with empty cardboard boxes, a notice board stuffed with receipts and other paperwork, and a very large, much-worn armchair. The old man drew back a curtain in one corner to reveal an alcove in which stood a metal cabinet on four legs. The cabinet had a glass front and inside lurked a very large pumpkin. It was darker than all the others and Pete immediately thought that it looked like it was in a very bad mood.

“Behold the bad pumpkin!” the shopkeeper said softly. He gazed at the fruit behind the glass quite dreamily. “There are many bad people in the world, boys, but only a handful of bad pumpkins. Which is fortunate, I suppose, because bad pumpkins are really bad! Nasty, noxious, nocturnal and naughty. Very, very naughty.”