"It Came From The Pumpkin Patch" by Andrew Nicolle

It Came From The Pumpkin Patch

by Andrew Nicolle

The end of the world began with a pumpkin. At least that’s how Jay would’ve explained it if anyone else was still alive to ask how it had happened. It wasn’t nuclear war, 9/11, Y2K, or any other of dozens of scenarios he’d imagined as a boy growing up in the 90s and early 2000s. Instead, the whole thing had kicked off at his family’s farm.

He wondered if it could’ve been avoided. If he hadn’t taken a late night stroll into the field and discovered the evil thing hiding in the pumpkin patch, maybe they could’ve called some people with experience in such things, and they might have suggested encasing it in concrete, Chernobyl-style. Maybe he, his parents, and other residents in a one hundred-mile radius would’ve been evacuated just before they’d nuked the pumpkin patch into oblivion. Would’ve, could’ve, should’ve. It didn’t matter now.

Jay had been in his bedroom working on a paper late into the night when he’d seen the rock fall from the sky. Ordinarily he would’ve blown off his homework, playing Quake III Arena online with his friends. He probably wouldn’t have even noticed it. But now he was on academic probation and risked flunking out. Without demonstrating some serious improvement, his dreams of going to college and studying astronomy would crash and burn, and he’d be flipping burgers with Pete or bagging groceries like his older sister Stacy for the rest of his life.

He was startled by a blinding flash, followed by a dull thud. He leaped from his chair and ran to the window, but saw nothing in the darkness outside. Jay debated ignoring the commotion, but he figured he deserved a break.

Snatching up a flashlight, he snuck along the hallway to the back door and slowly opened it before heading outside.

The cool night air was abuzz with the sound of cicadas and other insects. The normally earthy smell of the farm had an undercurrent of rot.

He rounded the house toward his bedroom and inspected the window and rose garden beneath. Several stems had snapped and plants were buried under clods of soil coated with vine fragments and pumpkin flesh.

Training the flashlight on the pumpkin field, the damage was readily apparent. A small crater was surrounded by broken pumpkins and shredded vines. The pumpkins furthest from the impact site were rotting and coated with a strange grayish-purple fuzz. An odd purple glow emanated from the crater.

A wave of nausea overcame him. The smell of rotting pumpkins was overpowering. He lifted his shirt and used it to cover his mouth and nose as he peered into the crater. Within a pile of pumpkin innards sat a glowing purple stone. The stone’s glow had a hypnotic effect, and before he could stop himself, he’d grabbed it.

The stone filled his mind with images of vast expanses of space and a sensation of time stretching into infinity. Eldritch shapes blindly flitted by. One shape, larger than the rest, came into focus. The formless mass seemed to notice him, and snaking tendrils of ice tunneled through his body, causing him to shiver uncontrollably.

At the center of the mass a glowing purple orifice snapped open, revealing an immense unblinking eye. Simultaneously, the stone scorched his hand and he howled in pain. As soon as he dropped it, the terrifying visage disappeared and he found himself standing back in the field. While the stone’s light had faded, the grayish-purple fuzz on the surrounding pumpkins began to pulse ominously.

As Jay crouched to retrieve the flashlight, he noticed his right hand. His fingers had developed an unnatural purple cast and undulated of their own accord. He grasped them, but their writhing continued unabated. The half-digested contents of his dinner rushed up his esophagus, and he vomited until the sour taste of bile coated his mouth and throat.

Jay stumbled back to the house and collapsed just outside his parent’s bedroom. The last sounds he heard before he lost consciousness were hurried footsteps and his mother’s screams.

He awoke in bed, sweat coating his face and a sickly coppery taste in his mouth. That had been one hell of a nightmare!

“That was no nightmare,” a voice in his head boomed. “Get moving.”

The voice had interrupted his own inner monologue and filled his head with static, making it hard to think.

Jay soon found himself walking down the hallway. Red lights strobed through the window beside the back door. He really needed to pee, but rather than making a left toward the bathroom, instead his bladder released and urine streamed down his leg. He tried to cry out, but like the rest of his body, his vocal cords no longer responded to his commands. Jay was now nothing more than a helpless passenger in his own body.

Just before he reached the back door, he peeked into his parents’ bedroom. The lights were on, and the entire room was spattered in blood. A tentacle-mouthed horror wearing his mother’s nightgown turned to look at him, glistening viscera dangling from its mouth. On the bed beside it lay what remained of his father, a bloody skeleton almost picked clean of flesh from head to toe. The horror tilted its head in acknowledgment and returned to its meal. Jay’s facial muscles contorted into an imitation of a smile.

He returned to the hallway and opened the back door with a thrust of tentacled hands. As he approached the ambulance parked in the driveway, Jay noted a pair of uniformed bodies on the ground beside the vehicle. They were coated in blood, along with a grayish-purple fuzz which made them look like costumed Halloween characters.

Jay felt another bout of nausea which was thankfully quickly suppressed.

“Relax, guy,” he found himself saying. “We’ve got a busy night ahead of us!”