Esprit de Corps
by Lorne Dixon

   Jenna tugged at the strings on her parka hood and dipped her head. She watched in solemn disinterest as a few brittle October leaves danced in the wind at her feet. One landed atop her shoe and wavered there. She kicked it free and stepped forward into the courtyard behind Crossington High School.

   They were waiting. As promised. Jenna could hear them shuffle.

   She forced the frown off her face before raising her eyes. The six girls were standing in a crescent formation, facing away from the nearby tree line. In the center, cigarette smoldering between her lips, stood the queen bitch herself, Vanessa Chapelle. Her perpetual smirk in place despite the bitter Pennsylvania chill. She removed the cigarette, dropped it to the ground, and dismissively stated, "I half thought you wouldn’t show."

   "I’m here." Jenna said, and crossed her arms.

   The other girls looked to Vanessa. Vanessa snorted out a small laugh at the expense of Jenna’s defiance. A chorus of giggles erupted from the other girls. Vanessa used the tip of her boot to extinguish the fallen cigarette. "You know, all the new girls have to do this. You aren’t from here. We didn’t ask you to come."

   It was an initiation of sorts. Some wicked tradition passed down from senior class bitch clique to senior class clique. Jenna wasn’t sure if it was exclusive to girls, but it was clearly only intended as an excuse for exclusion. She had seen the residual effects of refusing to be initiated or failing- cruel ostracism, vicious rumors, and even the occasional fat lip or bruised cheekbone. It was typical teenage fascism in many ways, with Vanessa standing tall as the manicured and primped despot.

* * *

   Bailie Salte, an unattractive girl with a nervous smile and a desperate willingness to befriend anyone who would have her, told her the story. "The school was built in the ‘20s, but there was an older school on the same site before that. The old school building went back to before the Civil War, back when the town had only a few dozen kids total, and only one teacher."

   "Mrs. Blakeley was the teacher’s name, and she lived in a small cottage back behind the school with her son. No one seems to know anymore what was wrong with Brion, her son, but he had an enlarged head and bottom teeth that protruded from his mouth at an angle that never allowed his lips to touch. Some say he was born that way, but others say it happened as he reached puberty. It doesn’t matter, really. Except that his appearance was so bad that his mother kept him out of the school and taught him at night in their home."

* * *

   Vanessa nodded towards an anorexic redhead wearing a backpack. The girl slipped off the pack and fumbled the zipper open. She reached inside and produced a small hatchet. It was a small, rusted tool that would have been useless except to batter the thinnest of twigs into sections. The redhead stepped forward and handed it to Jenna.

   "What’s this for?" Jenna sheepishly asked.

   The redhead smiled an excruciatingly false smile. "The pumpkin, of course."

   The redhead stepped back, both hands sliding behind her back. Vanessa spoke again, loud and authoritative. "You just follow the path. It’s a little overgrown in places, but you can’t possibly get lost. No one has yet. The Blakeley House is about half a mile back. Now when you come to it you’ll be in its back yard- well, what was its back yard. You need to go around to the front."

   Jenna surveyed their faces. Besides smug Vanessa and the idiot-grinning redhead, the others looked uncomfortable and a little scared. Jenna wondered if any of them had really been put through this ritual, or if it was a torture Vanessa had tailor made for her. "What if there aren’t any pumpkins?"

   Vanessa and the redhead hissed out some laughter. A few of the others tittered. Vanessa lit a cigarette and took a long, confident drag. She puckered her lips as if to blow a kiss, but then released the smoke in a steady stream. "There are always pumpkins back there."

* * *

   "So, Brion was never allowed to leave the house during the day. His mother thought it would upset the other kids to see him in the woods just beyond the school property. She was probably right. But he would sneak out sometimes and spy on the girls during recess. He wasn’t very good at sneaking, though, and got caught a lot. The girls would even tease each other about it- "so-and-so is Brion’s boyfriend,"- that sort of thing."

   "There was one girl, Amanda, who was always sort of an outcast. Her family was real poor and she only owned a couple of school dresses. She was made fun of every day by the others. And one day they bet her that she wouldn’t back through the woods to the Blakeley house and talk to Brion. It was October and the schooldays were long back then. It was just getting dark as school let out. Amanda gathered her things and was ready to walk home when she heard a couple of girls laughing- at her, she must have thought. So she got up her courage and walked right off into the woods, along the same path that Mrs. Blakeley walked to school each morning."

   "None of the girls waited for her to come back. They just went home."

* * *

   Jenna put a hand against an aging oak as she guided herself over a bouquet of thorny weeds at the entrance to the path. She could hear a few hushed feminine voices swirl behind her and though she could not make out individual words, she could decipher their general sentiment: most did not believe she would get this far, and none envied her. She took another step and glanced back, now enclosed in the forest. The path entrance seemed like a doorway to the normal world. Vanessa crossed her arms, cigarette wiggling between her lips.

   Jenna turned and toggled the switch to her flashlight. A feeble, narrow beam of light lit up the path that stretched beyond her. She walked, lighting the ground near her feet every few seconds to avoid tripping over bushes, fallen tree limbs, and rocks. Crisp leaves crackled with every step. The forest grew thicker, and the tree branches mixed together far over her head, blocking out the moonlight. The only remaining light came from her flashlight, and a small glimmer from the path entrance far behind her. Every instinct told her to turn back and escape to that tiny light. But she held herself in check, and continued forward. The oaks and pines gave way to ghostly white birch trees, twisted and angular. There was no wind under the natural canopy, but a vicious chill streamed up from the soil.

   The path ahead narrowed as prickly vines invaded from both sides. Jenna slowed and waded through the vegetation slowly, using the flashlight and her free hand to navigate through. Panic began a steady drumbeat on her nerves. The pathway seemed to have disappeared in the thick overgrowth. She spun around, trying to discern a clear line through the trees. None was clear. The silence seemed too complete. She cracked her knuckles to reassure herself she had not gone deaf.

   She pushed through the bushes roughly. A few thorns caught her sleeve and seemed to pull back when she tried to free herself. She stumbled forward. Her heart beat faster.

   She had thought it would be a relief to find the path again. It was not. The moment her flashlight beam lit up the distant walls of the Blakeley house, blinding fear raced through every bit of her.

   If ever there was a haunted place, this was it. Time had been cruel to the structure. Its support beams and walls had bloated and curved, leaving a building hunched and struggling against its own broken spines. The wooden siding had come apart roughly, leaving a skin of shedding scales with rotten black lumber beneath. The windows were amazingly intact, but yellowed and opaque, like cataracts.

   Long after the people inside had gone, this was a house still dying.

* * *

   "Mrs. Blakeley finished up her business as usual in the schoolhouse, put on her long coat, and locked up for the night. Then she walked the path through the woods to her house. When she got there she knew there was something wrong. Very wrong. Brion was sitting on a tree stump crying. She asked him what had happened, but he didn’t answer, even in the grunts and shouts that were normal for him. He just lurched over further and held his head in his hands and cried."

   "Mrs. Blakeley reached into her coat pocket and offered him some pumpkin seeds. They were always his favorite. Usually he would even jump up and down when she gave him some for doing his chores. But not on that day. He wouldn’t touch ‘em. Wouldn’t even raise his head and look at his mother. She finally realized she couldn’t console him and walked around to the front of the house. The door was wide open. She walked inside and dropped to her knees."

   "What was it?" Jenna had asked Bailie.

   "It was her student Amanda. Or most of her."

* * *

   The trees thinned out as she approached the house. No grass or weed grew in this opening, leaving blackish soil exposed under Jenna’s shoes. Even the limbs of the trees seemed to strain away from the structure. The sky opened above it, letting through a column of moonlight to bounce off the jagged, toothy shingles of the roof.

   She saw the pumpkins and gasped.

   The yard was peppered with them, strung along thick vines that wandered the entire unkempt back yard. The pumpkins were bulbous and monstrous, not at all like the polished and carefully plump products offered by professional farmers. These were stretched and weird, the product of free range madness and the elements. They almost glowed in the moonlight, bright orange surrounded by gray and black night.

   Jenna freed herself from the last of the thorns and stepped into the yard. The fallen leaves were nearly black in the flashlight’s beam, as if burnt. She swung the light around the yard, making sure it was empty. No one. She could make out the shape of a tree stump in the yard, surrounded by a thick halo of pumpkins and gnarled vines.

   She thought of the story. Of deformed Brion sitting on the stump and crying.

   Of a dead girl- naked, raped and torn to pieces.

   She bent down near the closest pumpkin. Though large, it was slightly smaller than the rest and probably the best candidate for her to carry. She located its vine and ran a finger against it. Its abrasive surface was dry and cracked. The skin of the pumpkin itself seemed unnaturally hard and dense. He raised the hatchet and brought it down.

   The pumpkin, loosed from its vine, toppled on its side.

* * *

   "Mrs. Blakeley sat at her kitchen table for most of that night. She couldn’t decide what to do. Amanda’s body was just a few feet away. She started drinking. Maybe she already knew what she had to do, or maybe getting drunk made the decision for her. Either way, it was past midnight when she went back into the back yard."

   "Brion had stopped crying, but was still on the stump, head propped up in his hands. Mrs. Blakeley went to the pile of firewood first, and then over to her son. She took a handful of pumpkin seeds out of her pocket again and offered them to him. This time he took them, probably more out of hunger than anything. He put them in his mouth and sucked on them- his deformed mouth couldn’t actually chew them. And as he sat there and ate his seeds, Mrs. Blakeley brought the firewood ax down on his head."

   "He fell to the ground. The blow had only cut through his scalp. His skull was thick and hard. She swung again, but still couldn’t penetrate. Then she aimed a little lower. His neck."

   Bailie had smiled devilishly. "And she chopped off his head."

* * *

   Jenna cradled the pumpkin to her chest with her free hand and headed to the house. Its hide was rough and dry like the corpse of some gigantic insect. In her arms it felt unnaturally heavy. She placed the flashlight in her mouth and ran a cautious hand over its skin. Tiny barbs prickled her flesh. The frown she had worn all night deepened. Surely her fright exaggerated her senses. She moved quickly around to the front of the house, eager to get this madness over with and head home.

   There was no front door, only a black rectangle leading into an even deeper darkness. Maybe, she thought, it isn’t a doorway at all. It’s more like a pit in the ground. Or a mouth. She shuddered and tried desperately to whitewash those thoughts from her mind. But it did look like a mouth.

   The Blakeley house said nothing. It offered no invitation.

   How could such a thing be allowed to stand? She wondered. A dark thing like this, clouding a reasonable world of cell phones and Internet service providers. This pilgrim’s temple to everything outdated and useless and-

   Jenna closed her eyes and counted. She needed to put a halt to her rampaging thoughts or she would never be able to go inside. She could, of course, simply turn around and escape the Blakeley house and the dark woods. She doubted the girls would check her work, at least tonight. And what would her punishment for failing be? For a moment she considered defying Vanessa Chapelle and her bubble gum snapping lapdogs. She was the new girl anyway, and carried the stigma of not having grown up in the town. Would failing an initiation really change anything?

   Jenna plucked the flashlight from her mouth and shined it into the doorway. Nothing. She stood too distant from the house for the light beam to penetrate. She slowly stepped closer. Nothing, only the darkness that seemed to submerge the light in its oily folds.

   Fine. She took a single step over the threshold and peered in.

   Her eyes adjusted. A bare kitchen took shape. There was no sink and drunken, pendulous doors hung loose from cabinets. Ancient wallpaper, wrinkled and stained by the elements, peeled down from the walls like flypaper. She could make out a trim that bordered the low ceiling- it was a classroom alphabet, alternating upper and lower case letters- A a B b C c.

   Jenna stepped fully inside. Two darker archways led deeper into the house. She tried her best to ignore their presence. She had no need to venture further. She only needed to leave a pumpkin on the countertop. That was it. It would be an offering to Brion Blakeley, murderer and murder victim. She was nearly done. She could run through the woods and be finished with this whole night in just a few minutes. Almost done.

   Something inside the pumpkin shifted. No, something moved.

   She dropped both the pumpkin and flashlight. The pumpkin hit the uneven planks of floor, cracked nearly in half, and rolled to the center of the room. She steadied herself and backed towards the doorway.

   The flashlight rolled in a lazy half circle before coming to a rest.

   The flashlight beam formed a line of light that stretched across the splintering floor, perfectly illuminating the shattered pumpkin. It seemed to open like a flower, each section of orange flesh unfurling. Yellow sinew and dozens of seeds spilled out. There was something else inside, too. Something slimy and translucent white and pink. Tiny incomplete hands and feet. A jutting spine. An oversized, faceless bowed head.

   Jenna didn’t scream. She fell. Her legs gave out under her and she plummeted to the floor. Her arms shook violently. Her mind, so recently full of fearful thoughts and insinuations, stopped reeling. She couldn’t concentrate. Her vision blurred.

   She could hear movement outside the house: a thousand rustling leaves and vines, roots pulling out of soil, pumpkins cracking open to release something beneath. Then, as her vision blackened and her heart raced, she heard the unmistakable sound of footfalls, and of labored breath.

   Something was being born.

   Before she lost both her sight and consciousness, she saw one last thing. It was really just a little thing. A quivering, tiny hand reached over the remains of a broken pumpkin.

   Then darkness. Not like the darkness in those woods or the dilapidated Blakeley house. A kind darkness. One that didn’t push out from the clearing and into the woods on two massive legs. A deep, massaging darkness that let Jenna escape the night. One that let her sleep.

* * *

   Bailie Salte grinned ghoulishly. "But you wanna know the worst thing? The thing that gives even Pastor Williams the creeps on Sunday morning? After Mrs. Blakeley was done splitting her son into dozens of pieces she buried him all over the yard in little holes. Like you would plant a flower bulb. And if you go back there, they say pumpkins grow every year from the spot where she buried his head. Because he couldn’t chew the seeds in his mouth when he died."

* * *

   Jenna awoke. Morning brought a vicious chill into the Blakeley house. She picked herself off the floor and scooped up the flashlight. Its batteries were dead, and its plastic eye was cracked. There was no sign of the pumpkin or its inhabitant. Still dazed, she wandered out into the yard. She made her way back towards the forest path. The back yard, which had been littered with pumpkins the night before, was empty. The soil seemed upset, but there was no evidence of the pumpkins having ever grown. Jenna didn’t react.

   In daylight, even with the thick cover of branches overhead, the path was reasonably well lit. It only took a handful of minutes to navigate through the path. She walked slowly, watching her steps carefully. She exited the tree line into the school courtyard. It was still early- too early for teachers, students, or buses.

   Living ones, anyway.

   Vanessa Chapelle and her five cronies hung from the trees at the edge of the woods. Pumpkin vines were tied tight around their bruised necks. Their eyes seemed very distant, as if daydreaming. Jenna reached up and wrestled Vanessa’s purse from her hands.

   She walked to the school and sat on a bench under a NO SMOKING sign. She rummaged through Vanessa’s bag, retrieved a cigarette and lit up.

©2003 Lorne Dixon

Lorne Dixon's short fiction has appeared in numerous small press magazines including Dark Tome (issue 7, May 1991), White Knuckles (issue 6, Fall 1996), and Widow of the Orchid (issue 12, 1998), amongst others.