The Mad Pumpkin's Apprentice

Cecil Woodward had never known magic to be real, regardless of his unrequited love for it. Despite learning an entire library’s worth of magic tricks, his extensive knowledge of magical topics and lore, and knowing how to properly read someone’s Tarot and commune with the dead on a talking board, nothing about any of it really came out as well… magical to him. Cecil didn’t want parlor tricks, he wanted to summon lightning from the sky, bind the powers of the elements to his will.

            Cecil wanted to fucking fly.

            But Cecil was also nearing the age of seventeen and had to start thinking about putting all of that childish thinking aside. So he was told anyway. He had to start thinking about his prospects in life, his very few friends told him. He had already missed the boat on the important things such as SAT’s and college query letters and whatnot. Cecil was too busy reading. Reading about conjuring entities from beyond our world, trials of the elements, the kinds of magic actual wizards knew.

He was reading about a world that he was slowly beginning to realize didn’t exist.

That was, until Jolly showed up.

The night had been unusually warm for Halloween, but Cecil still donned a hoodie. It was New England after all, and the weather could sneak up and bite you in the ass without any kind of warning. The blue moon, the second full moon in October, hung just over the horizon in the darkening sky. On the leash ahead of him, bounding playfully was his two-year-old Labrador-Husky mix, Archimedes, Archie for short. He had short hair and was a pale tan with one ear that stuck straight up and one that flopped over at the tip. He reached back and bit the leash, tugging playfully. Archie had enough energy for three dogs, and unabashedly jumped up onto every single person he met on the street, wanting affection from all of them. Luckily for him, nearly everyone in Haven, New Hampshire was willing to give it. Haven was a dog-friendly town, well, an animal-friendly town, really. The stores down Main Street all had bowls of water out for the furry denizens of the town.

The sun had just started to go down as Cecil left the house for his usual evening walk with Archie, walking down his street to the three-way intersection bisecting Willow Ave. He took a right on Willow as he always did, trying to keep a good handle on the leash Archie was still pulling on. It took a little while for Archie to realize that all his tugging wasn’t going to make the walk go any faster than it already was. The sky above was purpling, a clear canopy of twinkling stars had just emerged, and Cecil could just make out the constellation of Orion. Upon reaching the corner of River Street, he turned, deviating from his usual route for once. Archie seemed excited about the prospect of going somewhere new and bounded happily ahead, forgetting all about the leash, and nearly tugging Cecil’s arm out of socket.

 The quick and broad Piscataqua River was running on his right, and right before the expanse of the river was the Old Haven Cemetery, one of many old graveyards that dotted the tiny township. To his left were a run of old houses, many of which had been there when the town was incorporated in the mid-1600’s. All of the houses were refinished and looking great, especially with the red and golds of the nearby trees. All of them but the one directly to Cecil’s right. It was the old Nebbins place. The house was notorious with the town. Everyone who had tried to move there had left in the night, claiming that it was haunted. The town’s youth snuck in from time to time, including Cecil on three occasions. Other than the place being a dusty wreck on the inside and a general contractor’s nightmare, it seemed pretty ordinary.

So, seeing a carved pumpkin beside the wrought iron gate leading up the walkway to the house was rather odd. The Nebbins place had sat empty for nearly three years. Normally when someone moved in, the whole town was talking about it. Cecil pulled Archie’s leash to slow him down a little while he walked by the house, checking out the boarded-up windows. There was still a No Trespassing sign on the plywood covering the front door. The place looked as vacant as ever. He looked at the pumpkin then, noticing the rather menacing face carved into it. Whoever carved it, did an impeccable job.

As Cecil was admiring the work on the oddly placed pumpkin, Archie stopped and began to sniff it. He snorted, as if smelling something he didn’t agree with, then promptly cocked a leg to urinate on the pumpkin.

“Dude, no.” Cecil scolded, tugging on the leash before Archie could desecrate it, and Archie looked up at him, confused.

“Damn, that was close.” A low, male’s voice said. Cecil stood up straight and looked around. There was no one there. He looked down and saw Archie was sniffing the pumpkin again. His tail was sticking straight up and wagging quickly back and forth.

“Hello?” Cecil called out.

“Hold on… Can you hear me?” The voice said again. Archie gave a sharp, playful bark and leapt back from the pumpkin. He arched forward, tail still wagging.

 “Uh… yes.” Cecil answered, but still couldn’t see anyone. He crouched down and looked at the pumpkin which was holding so much of Archie’s attention. Maybe there was some kind of speaker inside of it. He looked around the inside of the pumpkin and saw nothing there. Oddly enough, the pumpkin was hollowed out, despite not having the spot around the stem cut out.

“Well, if that’s the case, got a light?”

Cecil backed away from the pumpkin as Archie gave a gleeful volley of barks.

I’ve lost my damn mind. Cecil thought, backing away further from the pumpkin.

“Whoa, whoa, wait, man! Don’t just leave like that!”

“Goddamned pumpkin is talking to me.” Cecil muttered, pulling Archie back who was nearly going wild.

“Hell yes I’m talking to you! Come back! You’re not crazy!”

Cecil stopped, patted Archie to get him to calm down, then walked back over to the pumpkin. At this, it started belting out Light My Fire by the Doors, prompting Archie to explode again, and Cecil to jump.

“Damn, you’re a jumpy one aren’t you? Come on, we don’t have all night.”

Cecil glanced inside the pumpkin and found a large candle inside.

“I… I have a lighter, hold on.” Cecil spoke to the pumpkin, preparing for someone to jump out at him to call him out on one insane prank. He pulled out his lighter, as any self-respecting wizard and alchemist is never an arm’s length away from producing fire. With no other way of lighting the candle, he flicked the end, bringing it to flame, and stuck it inside the pumpkin’s mouth. It was awkward getting the candle to light, and as it did so, he half expected it to start sparking, like the fuse of a small explosive. But it lit, and as it did so, the face of the jack-o-lantern promptly came to life and started coughing. Cecil didn’t know whether or not to be horrified or amazed. It was like some kind of mad Frosty the Snowman, only a pumpkin. Archie was barking up a storm and Cecil thought it was amazing that nobody had stepped outside of their house to see what was going on.

“Ho-ly shitballs! Thanks kid! Definitely owe you one.”

“I didn’t just light the black flame candle, did I?” Cecil asked, hesitantly.

The pumpkin laughed at this, and Cecil found it hard to believe that it, of all things would have gotten a Hocus Pocus reference.

“Oh no, quite the contrary. Tonight, my friend, we are going to save the world.”

Cecil looked at the pumpkin blankly.

“What?”

“Save the world?”

“Yeah. That’s what I said. Problem?”

“Seems kinda, you know… cliché?”

He was talking to a damn pumpkin after all.

“Shows how much you know then. The name’s Jolly by the way.” The pumpkin added then coughed a few more times.   

 “Man, I can’t wait for this curse to be done with. Alright, first thing is first. Carry me over there.” Jolly said, nodding towards the graveyard across the street. When he did so, the pumpkin actually jostled forward a little.

“We need to dig up something of mine.”

Cecil’s eyes grew wide.

“No, before you say it, it isn’t a corpse. All of the bodies over there, including your’s truly have long since become bones and dust by now anyway. Take me over there. I’ll tell the pup where to dig.”

Cecil nodded and picked up the pumpkin. It was oddly heavy for a pumpkin and felt weirdly alive. He shivered at the thought, crinkling his nose in disgust. Just handling the fleshy warm thing and going across the street gave him the goddamned willies. The graveyard was small and mostly overgrown with fir trees. At the far edge near the stone fence that stopped at the river was a large drooping willow tree with the remnants of a brick burial chamber. Jolly told them to go there and then stopped them once they got to the tree.

“Put me down there.” He ordered, and Cecil gladly placed the pumpkin down on the ground before the tree where the remnants of a small stone pedestal stood. Cecil had never been back here before and was astonished at the creepy and forlorn atmosphere of something that had been hiding in plain sight. Archie sat by Cecil’s feet, oddly calm and looking at the pumpkin. The air began to grow cold and a sudden hush fell over the place. Cecil shivered as the air grew heavy with eerie quiet.

Then the pumpkin began to sing.

It was a haunting, funerary tune in a language that Cecil didn’t understand. He had to admit though, for a pumpkin, he had an amazing singing voice. Though the air was quiet and still, Cecil watched as the willow tree began to sway, the long feathery branches gliding and swishing to and fro with the tune. As the song continued, other voices joined in, some high and melodic, some even lower than Jolly’s. Then came the end of the song when Jolly held out a long, low thrumming note and Cecil jumped when out of the clear pre-night sky a loud clap of thunder shook the ground. Archie yelped and leapt back in surprise. He really didn’t like thunderstorms and usually hid underneath Cecil’s bed whenever one came around.

“Well, now that that is over with, let’s get to work. Hey, you, dog.” Jolly called out to Archie.

“His name is Archimedes. I just call him Archie.”

“Archie, here boy!” The pumpkin called out and Archie lurched forth, pulling the leash out of Cecil’s hand. The dog sniffed the pumpkin for a moment then took off towards the stone wall before the river. For a moment, Cecil swore the dog was going to bound over the wall and into the river and he felt a spike of panic grip him, until he stopped by the decrepit brick tomb and began to dig furiously.

“Hey! Archie! Stop!” But the dog kept going.

“No, I told him to dig. We need what’s hidden there.”

“What is it?”

The pumpkin made a face. Because of how menacing it was carved, Cecil couldn’t tell if it was mocking him or just confused.

“To be honest, I can’t remember. It’s been nearly three hundred years since I’ve been alive so you gotta give me a break.”

“You once lived here?”

“Not in the graveyard.”

“No, I mean in town.”

“Uh, yeah. Right in that house over there. I helped build the damn thing.”

Cecil studied the pumpkin as Archie kept digging furiously.

“How in the hell did you end up as a pumpkin?”

“Long fucking story, kid.” He said, exasperatedly. “If we don’t do what we need to do tonight, the entire town will be in a worse off state.”

“I thought you said we were saving the world.”

“We are. Localized extermination of horrors is the name of the game. If we fail, the town will be compromised, and it will no doubt spread to other towns, and it wont take long until it will be worldwide.”

“So, whatever we’re trying to stop is like a virus?”

Jolly made another indistinguishable face, though possibly a grimace.

“In light of your current shitty state of the world you inhabit, sure. Let’s go with that example.”

Cecil felt something pat the side of his leg and he looked down to see Archie sitting there, a small box on the ground at his paws. He was wagging his tail.

“Good boy, Arch.” Cecil said, picking up the small dirty box. He brushed it off and then looked at Jolly.

“Go on, open it.” He said, and Cecil did so.

“It’s empty.”

“Fuck.” Jolly grumbled. “Hold on, close it a sec.”

Confused, Cecil closed it.

Jolly grumbled something under his breath. Cecil could have sworn he had said ‘fucking shitballs’ at one point.

“Alright, open it again.” Jolly instructed.

Cecil opened it, prepared for it to be empty again. To his shock, it wasn’t. He looked at a small, clear quartz crystal and what looked like a gnarled wand of dark wood.

“A crystal and a wand.”

“Anything else?”

Cecil picked up the items and moved the box around. “Nope.”

“Damnit. Ok. Hold those and close it again.”

As he grabbed the items, he felt the wand tingle in his fingers. It felt as though it were giving off tiny electric shocks.

“What’s your wand do—”

“SHH!” Jolly hissed and began intoning something again. When he finished, the box suddenly became so heavy it fell out of Cecil’s fingers and smashed onto the toes.

“OW!” He howled.

“Oh damn. That’s not right, hold on.”

Cecil managed to wrench the toe of his shoe out from the bottom of the tiny box and had to remove it to check his toes. They were fine, but red and hurt. The box clicked after Jolly was finished.

“Check it now.”

Cecil did so and saw what looked like a scroll of paper.

“It looks like a scroll.”

“Fucking aye, it’s a scroll. Feed it to me, quick.”

Cecil looked at the demonic pumpkin stupidly.

“Pardon?”

“Put it in my mouth, quick.”

Cecil turned the scroll over in his hands.

“Don’t you want to look at it first or something?”

“Put. The. Damn. Scroll. In. My. Mouth.” He said, pausing after each word and punctuating the silences with bursts of flames from his angry eyes and nose holes.

“Alright, alright. Damn.” Cecil groaned, slipping his shoe back on and putting the scroll, like he said, into the jack-o-lantern’s mouth. As he did so, the scroll began to burn as the pumpkin’s jagged teeth began to chew it. Then the pumpkin’s face began to twist and contort. The whole shape of the pumpkin began to shift and bulge outward. Archie whined and hid behind Cecil as they both backed away. Then there was a loud crack, causing both Cecil and Archie to jump and the pumpkin vanished in a puff of black smoke. When the smoke cleared, Cecil was shocked to still see the pumpkin sitting there, still grimacing on the ground. Then a body comprised entirely of shadow began to emerge from the bottom of the pumpkin. Soon Jolly stood a foot higher than Cecil, the jack-o-lantern sitting blazing upon his shoulders.

“Aha!” Jolly said flexing his arms and legs and dancing a little jig.

“Wait, is that… do you have a cape?”

“It’s not a fucking cape, it’s a cloak.” Said Jolly indignantly, and putting up the hood. To Cecil’s shock, the entire shadowy being of Jolly vanished into a wisp of darkness.

“Holy shit. An invisibility cloak.”

“Shadow cloak.” Jolly corrected.

“But it makes you—"

“You still have the wand and the crystal, right?” He interrupted, removing the hood and coming back into focus.

“Uh, yeah.” Cecil responded, turning the still tingling wand over in his fingers.

“Good deal. Come on. We don’t have a lot of time.” He said, muttering something about a ‘fucking cape’ as he sped off into the growing darkness outside the tiny graveyard.

“Won’t someone see you?” Cecil called out to him as he watched with astonished horror as the shadow-clad pumpkin man ran down the middle of the street.

“Not now. We’re in my neck of the woods now, kid.”

“What do you mean?”

“You are currently having an out of body experience. You and your dog are both physically lying in the graveyard. So, now that you are liberated from your corporeal selves, you must listen to me and listen to me very carefully. Over here.” He said, juking to the right and nearly causing Cecil to fall over. Was he really out of his body? Everything felt real enough. It sure as hell did when that box landed on his toes which still gave a dull throb with each footfall on the pavement.

“When did it happen?”

“What?”

“The out of body experience or whatever?”

Jolly was huffing now.

“Not doing cardio in several centuries is really showing, damn. Um, when the song ended. The thunderclap that nearly made you and your dog shit yourselves.”

Cecil didn’t say anything for a moment, only responding with a pensive “huh.”

Soon Jolly stopped in front of a bare patch of ground. Cecil and Archie almost ran into him as they skidded to a stop.

“Wand.” Jolly said, holding out his shadowy hand. Cecil handed him the wand and watched as Jolly closed his jack-o-lantern eyes, concentrating. Flames began to billow out of his open chasm-like maw as his cloak billowed around him in the windless twilight. For such a weird looking thing with an even weirder name, Cecil couldn’t help but step back in awe of this display of power. The air around Jolly began to undulate with unseen waves of pressure that caused Cecil’s ears to pop. He wanted to ask why his ears were popping if he was just in a dream, but he kept his mouth shut. Jolly’s eyes opened and focused on the spot before them.

“It’s coming. Get the crystal ready and hold it in your left hand.”

“What’s coming?”

“Dude, just do as I say!” Jolly barked, and Cecil fumbled with the crystal, nearly dropping it, but placed it in his left hand. The ground before them began to shift and move, and Cecil watched with his curiosity being quickly overtaken by horror as a tar-like, writhing mass seemed to boil out of the ground where grass wouldn’t grow.

“This was the site of the old gallows in my time.” Jolly said, his fiery eyes focused on the mass that grew before them. “So many innocent lives were lost here, including yours truly, though /heh/ I wasn’t so innocent.”

“Why are you here instead of there, then?”

“I’m a goddamned wizard, that’s why.” Jolly snorted and waved the wand, drawing the thrashing blob that had started to scream further out of the ground. It looked like a standing wall of tar now and Cecil could just make out the grotesque, corpse-like faces pressing out of the undulating surface. The wall began to sprout appendages that quickly grew into rope like lashes that swiped through the air in their direction.

“Oh, they’re angry. They don’t like being woken up much, do they?” Jolly laughed, though Cecil had a hard time seeing anything funny about what looked like the kind of thing one would fight in a boss battle in a video game.

“Hold the crystal out and say these words. Ilfu septu stanis.” He said, then repeated the words as the lashes became more and more like thick tree branches instead of thin ropes.

“Ilfu septu stanis?” Cecil repeated uncertainly, holding out the crystal towards the being with his left hand.

Nothing happened.

Jolly started to laugh.

“Just wanted to see if you would do it. Had you known what you were doing, and your intention was on pointe, you would have summoned a fire demon that would have possibly burned your town to cinders.”

Cecil just stared at him.

“Ok, ok. No words. Just concentrate on the crystal, put your energy into it, and it’ll do the work. It just needs a little psychic nudge.”

Cecil shook his head, trying to concentrate. Archie was barking loudly as it continued to grow and grow.

How many people died here?

“Come on, kid, we don’t have all day. Stop lollygagging and get to work.”

Cecil concentrated again, everything he had going into the crystal. He had nearly given up before he saw a tiny glimmer of light from within the crystal. He doubled down on his thoughts and directed all his consciousness into the tiny glimmer of light. It grew and as it did a shimmering aura began to glow around him.

“That’s it. Keep going, kid.” Jolly encouraged, stepping back behind Cecil. When the first lash of the mass flew towards Cecil, he jumped, but he found with the aura around him, it couldn’t touch him. In fact, the tar-like lash was sucked into the crystal, as if it were the end of a superpowered vacuum cleaner. The wall of wretched souls screamed horribly as it began to tower above the three of them, as if threatening to crush them. Cecil’s mind started to falter and with it, the glowing orb began to wane.

“Don’t stop now, kid or you’ll join them.” Jolly warned. “You got this!”

Cecil doubled down on his focus and the light didn’t just merely glow, it had begun to blaze like a shield made of white flame. The screams of the thing being sucked into the crystal was overpowered by a high-pitched ringing in his ears as the shield of fiery light nearly became solid. The chill of the early night was replaced by a radiant warm heat from the crystal’s aura. Soon it gave a powerful jolt and flew out of Cecil’s hands. It flipped through the air and fell to the ground where it lay, glowing a dull violet shimmer. The towering tar wall was gone.

“Nice work, kid.” Jolly laughed and jumped in the air which caused Archie to bark excitedly. Cecil walked over to the crystal and then turned to Jolly.

“Is it ok to pick up?”

“Yeah, the atramental forces are contained within.”

“Atramental?” Cecil asked, glancing down at the crystal.

“Yeah, means ink black, taken from the way it looks. The realm it comes from is what we call the Atrament. Just another world for Hell, or Underworld. You know, because it needs more names than what you humans have already given it.”

Cecil picked up the crystal and then looked at him, curiously. The way he said humans puzzled him.

“You weren’t a human in life, were you?”

Jolly sighed. “It’s… well, complicated. I was human in form, and I was killed by your kind. That’s basically the extent of it.” He smiled wryly, at least, Cecil took it as a smile.

“Have you ever read Frankenstein?”

“Eh, yeah.”

“Ok, so I’m kind of like that.”

“Like what?”

“Frankenstein’s monster, only the outcome of a particularly gifted, if not woefully misguided alchemist. I was a homunculus.”

Cecil had heard of homunculus before, but never really spent much time on learning about them. He knew them only to be small alchemically created humans, and just thought the idea of them was really weird.

“Basically a child created in a test tube, only in the 1600’s. Dude named me Jolly for some fucking reason. Could literally create a blazing star in the middle of his lab but couldn’t think up of good names worth a damn.”

“How in the—”

“Not now, kid. I only have a few hours left before I go have to return. We still have some more things to attend to.” He said, motioning to the crystal.

“What you have there is cosmically more dangerous than an atom bomb. It is concentrated atramental energy. It sells for remarkably high on the black market when you know who to sell to, but we aren’t in that kind of business. Talk about bad karma, which is also real, by the way. Anyway… we need to transmute that energy stat, and we can’t do that here. We need that old bat’s laboratory.” Jolly said walking out of the bare plot of land. Cecil could sense a change in the area now. He supposed with that energy there, no one was willing to even think about setting a house on that area.

“By old bat, you mean…”

Jolly turned to him. “My former… dad, I guess. I tell you, we had one hell of a weird relationship. Anyway, it’s still intact, I think. All manner of nosy ass kids broke into the house, but none were clever enough to find the lab, though all they had to do was pay attention to the old-school Scooby Doo episodes. Follow me.”

And with that, Jolly took off running once more back down the street. Archie and Cecil took after him, then ran up to the spot where they had found Jolly as a pumpkin on the worn walkway up to the house. As Jolly approached the house he stopped. His shoulders seemed to slump.

“What’s wrong?” Cecil asked. “Did we forget something?”

“No.” Jolly said, and for once, he didn’t sound jolly at all. He sounded sad.

“Ok…” Cecil said. “I thought we were in a hurry, and isn’t this like a bomb or something.”

“We… we are. I just need a moment here. I need a sec to get my head straight. It was… you wouldn’t understand.”

Archie whined and padded up to Jolly and sat down next to him. Jolly gave him a pet on the head.

“Try me.” Cecil said.

“I always get like this whenever my dad or whatever he is, comes up.”

“Because he didn’t care about you?”

Jolly turned to him and Cecil couldn’t tell if he was angry or sullen. Maybe both.

“When I was created, Jasiah Nebbins was already an old man. He…” Jolly turned away and Cecil could almost hear the pumpkin man sniff.

“Though I was just a little boy, looking no different than anyone else my age, I was still just an experiment to him. Nothing more. I grew up, became an apprentice of sorts. I worked hard, so insanely hard trying to impress the old man because he was all I had.”

He started up the steps and stopped again, staring at the plywood covering the door.

“All he was concerned with was the preciousness of life and having created it but didn’t give a damn about what to do with me afterwards. I mastered everything the old bastard threw at me, overcoming boundaries no mere mortal would ever dare attempt. I became bitter, rash, then downright dangerous. So, when I was caught healing a small child, performing witchcraft in the eyes of the townsfolk, my dad didn’t even lift a finger to try and help me.”

“He abandoned you?”

“Oh yes. He let me die, pretended he didn’t even know me. I was a bit older than you when they rounded me up. Twenty-five in fact.”

“Couldn’t you have just run away or escaped using what you knew.”

“I knew magic that would have killed every single one of them gathered around the gallows, jeering at me. All I saw was a mob controlled by fear, and I didn’t want to live in a world where I wasn’t wanted. I let my death be a big fuck you to the old man, but all it did was curse me, trapping me in a realm between the living and the dead.”

“Why was that?” Cecil asked, concern slowly creeping into his voice as he held the glowing crystal with mild trepidation.

“That’s what I’m still trying to figure out. I originally thought that maybe it was my unnatural method of coming into the world, but I’ve come to realize that so much weirder shit has happened on this plane of existence that my unusual arrival into a living form doesn’t mean shit. I didn’t have any control over that. We are all created somehow. It took dying for me to realize that it’s what you do once you’re in the living form that actually matters, not how the fuck you got here.”

“Well said.” Cecil said, agreeing.

“Anyway, let’s get this taken care of before it blows the world in half.”

“Excuse me?”

Jolly turned and for once, Cecil could see the grin on his weird pumpkin face.

“Kidding. Come on.” He nodded onward and walked through the plywood. Archie and Cecil walked up to the plywood and Cecil put his hand out. It passed through the plywood as if it wasn’t there.

He shrugged at Archie who was looking up at him confused. The two entered the dark, musty interior of the abandoned house. Though it was dark, Cecil could see the house clear enough. The exposed floorboards were warped and many stuck up in places. The stairs leading up to the second floor was missing several planks. Cobwebs dominated the space and mold was growing rampant. Cecil was thankful that he and Archie were in a non-physical form while inhabiting this area.

“Cecil! Down here!” Jolly called out from somewhere in the house. Archie took off further into the house, following the sound of the voice and Cecil followed him. Archie bounded into an old library and Cecil remembered this room from when he was here during one of his visits, only this time, instead of the walls being completely covered in bookcases, he noticed one of them had been pulled away from the wall as if on hinges.

“Just like Scooby Doo…” Cecil laughed as he followed Archie through it and down a set of stone steps. The steps ended in a room that was awash in the light of several lanterns and candles. Glass jars and tubes and all manner of metal and bronze instruments littered the cramped space. Cecil saw Jolly standing before a table, a lantern sitting beside him and a massive tome open before him. He was glancing down at it, reading something that looked incredibly complex, at least to Cecil who approached and was studying it upside down.

“That’s a big book.” Cecil noted, and Jolly snorted.

“Blasted old man was so damn wordy. This statement here could have been explained in two words, instead it’s like half a damn page about the perfect texture of the copper to be used in the mixture. It’s just fucking copper, throw it the fuck in there and move on!” He griped and turned the page. “Perfectionist doesn’t even begin to cover how insane he was about the oddest little things.” Cecil looked down at the pages and saw that on each was three solid columns of text with no breaks for paragraphs.

“Oof.” Cecil groaned. “He didn’t believe in paragraphs, did he?”

“Hardly believed in spaces between the fucking words.” Jolly cursed, flipping a few more pages before putting one shadowy finger onto the page, following a line of hand scrawled Latin that Cecil couldn’t understand.

“Here we go.” The pumpkin man said under his breath, the flickering flame inside his head glowing brighter for a moment. “Alrighty. Sit tight and don’t let that touch anything made of lead or bismuth, and for the love of all that is living, keep any blood away from it, especially yours and the pup’s over there.”

Cecil looked over to Archie who gave a short whine.

“What would happen in either of those cases?”

Jolly darted across the room and began opening the dusty and cobwebbed covered cabinets, where he began sorting through all manner of ingredients. Cecil could hear the tinkling of glass and metal as he perused what remained, his jack-o-lantern head shedding light on the interior of each cabinet as he went by, gathering a jar or a rusty tin cannister here and there.

“Well, if you touch it with lead, the explosion will probably take the town with it. Contact with bismuth would be like ripping open the side of an above ground swimming pool, but a swimming pool the size of Lake Superior. A Lake Superior filled with molten rock. So, yeah, not the greatest idea. The blood would bind you to the crystal and your soul would be mixed in with,” he waved at the crystal with disgust, “hopelessly lost for eternity, all that shit.”

Cecil exchanged glances with Archie and could almost see his own look of apprehension mirrored on his dog’s face as Jolly brought the smattering of ingredients to the long wooden table. He blew to get the dust off, sending a burst of flame as he did so and nearly catching the surface on fire.

“Shit. Remind me not to do that again until we’re done here.”

Cecil couldn’t help but laugh, though the sight of a menacing shadowy pumpkin man breathing flames was something out of a nightmare. He was glad to be on Jolly’s side.

“I guess you want this now?” Cecil said, handing the crystal out at Jolly.

“Oh, hell no. I can’t touch that. I’m pure spirit. I’d go right into it. Why do you think I needed a living mortal to help me out?”

Cecil thought for a moment.

“Wait, aren’t I in spirit form now?”

Cecil felt a momentary jolt of panic but Jolly waved dismissively as he prepared several small plates of odd smelling powders.

“You are still alive, bound to the Earth. You have an unbreakable tether, as long as you are with me that is.” Jolly assured him, though he sounded unconcerned. Cecil could tell the spirit was concentrating on the task before him.

“Several ounces of salt… A little phosphorus…” He muttered, combining the ingredients in an odd order. He flicked a hand towards a candle, bringing it to flame beneath a steel plate. Cecil couldn’t help but notice some of the glass containers and boxes looked relatively new.

“How did you get those? I thought nobody had been down here in centuries.”

“I possess people from time to time to get the items I need. Need to keep a fresh stock.” He said as if he were discussing nothing of importance.

Possess people? Like a demon? Awesome.

“Gotcha.” Cecil said, swallowing. “So, uh, what are we doing, exactly?” He asked, now uncertain of his particularly frightening shadow companion’s motives.

“Just transmuting the highly reactive malefic energy contained inside this crystal into a pure state, aaaand using that purified energy to bring be back to life. You know, something that has never ever been done before in the recorded and unrecorded history of magical practices. So yeah, no big deal or anything.” Jolly snickered.

“Ohhhh.” Cecil responded, trying to quell the subtle giddy panic he couldn’t help but feel. He looked over to Archie and saw he was sitting calmly beside him, his tail wagging slowly. Cecil met his eyes and felt a calming weight fall over him. Archie wasn’t worried, so why should he be?

“Now, we add the bismuth.” Jolly muttered. “And just a touch of sulfur, a taste of home as the old man used to say.” He added making the face that Cecil took to be disgust, sprinkling a small amount of yellow powder on the plate. He glanced over at the book once more, looked over the assortment before him, checked the book a second time, then sighed.

“Ok. Carefully place the crystal in the center of that circle of powder on that glass plate over there.” He said, pointing to a translucent plate with a grayish powder circling the edge. Cecil did so, placing the crystal down and feeling much better about it. Jolly pulled out the wand and began waving the tip of it in slow, counterclockwise circles and muttering something. A small greenish ring began to burn into the air where the tip of his wand was swirling and the purplish glow of the crystal began to intensify. The ring of burning air fell slightly, hovering a few inches over the glowing crystal. Cecil supposed it was the energy inside the crystal fighting back, but something about this process was starting to make him feel sick.

Could you throw up in your astral state? He couldn’t help but wonder as he took a few steps back. Archie whined and clattered over to the entrance of the laboratory. Jolly laughed nervously.

“Good call. It’s one thing if I get sucked inside the crystal, quite another if it lashes out and kills you. At least I could try and fight my way back out.”

“And you had me hold it, knowing it could kill me?”

Jolly shrugged. “You weren’t threatening to it, so you were fine. What I’m doing is properly pissing it right the fuck off.”

And with that, a tar-like arm broke free from the crystal, and grabbed for Jolly, clasping hold of his wand arm.

“See.” He said with a wince. “Do me a favor and just concentrate on the crystal, will the stuff inside to stay contained.”

“Just will it to stay contained?”

“Yes! Come on, before this shit breaks free and kills us all.”

Cecil did as he was told, concentrating on the crystal. As soon as he did so, voices began to speak to him. Many of them were screaming, some of which were crying in wailing in an agony that Cecil couldn’t even begin to imagine. Some of the voices told him how they were going to kill him. Tear his body limb from limb. The anger of these were beyond human comprehension. Cecil could tell that these were the shattered and scarred remnants of human consciousness dispelled upon death and left to wallow for centuries untethered from any sense of love and wholeness. It was the most awful sight Cecil had ever experienced. In his mind’s eye, which in his astral state was much stronger, he could see the writhing forms of gray, decaying corpses from which the screams and angry words were emanating. He nearly lost himself to it but something about Jolly’s presence kept him focused entirely on the task at hand.

The gnarled tar-like arm withdrew from Jolly’s wand arm and began to flail around dangerously, knocking into implements and pans that hung from the ceiling on hooks. As Cecil kept his mind on the crystal, the arm began to shrink and slink further back into the deep violet glow. Once it had withdrawn completely, the ring of green flame shifted to red and fell around the crystal, causing the purple to deepen and grow into an intense burning light that seemed to somehow darken the space and steal the breath from Cecil’s lungs. Cecil had no choice but to look away, shuddering and gasping for breath. Archie gave a yelp as a shockwave of energy pulsed through the room, which became stifling as flickers of deep purple and red flashed before his closed eyes like shooting stars in a burning cosmos. The screams were louder now as chains and the sounds of slamming boulders and iron clashed from within a space that seemed endless.

Was this the Atrament?

An intense ringing overtook Cecil’s ears again. Through it, he could barely make out Jolly’s screaming, giving him orders to keep his concentration zeroed on the crystal. Shouting for him to not falter, as this was the moment of truth. He turned back to the crystal, the room gone in a swirling mass of colors and abstract shapes and was surprised to see the purple light within now shimmering a bright, sky blue. A pleasant cool breeze wafted throughout the space, bringing with it the smell of lilacs and roses. Cecil couldn’t help but think of spring waking up after a long grueling winter season.

The cycle of death and rebirth.

Flashes of electricity bit at the air from within the aura of blue that now surrounded the crystal, filling the room. It looked alive.

Vibrant.

Whole.

“This is it, kid! Wish me luck!” Cecil could just make out the crazy pumpkin-headed shadow man as he dropped the wand and reached out to clasp the crystal with both shadowy long-fingered hands. There was a burst of light so bright Cecil was certain that it was the world-splitting explosion he thought Jolly had been kidding about.

Cecil gasped. He opened his eyes and blinked up at the starry night sky above. The willow tree waved lazily in a slight chill breeze above him, making the light from the full moon seem like it was shimmering. A low branch with feathery leaves danced across his face. He sat up, taking a deep breath. He was in the graveyard again. Archie sat beside him and upon seeing him sitting up, started wagging his tail and licking Cecil’s face. He patted Archie on the back and got to his feet. He looked around. Jolly, neither pumpkin nor shadow man, was anywhere to be seen. Running from the graveyard with Archie tailing him, Cecil darted towards the direction of the old Nebbins house. It took him only a moment to get there and when he did, he skidded to a stop where the pumpkin had sat when he had walked by just hours earlier.

The pumpkin was sitting there once more, the strange face carved into it.

“Jolly?” Cecil asked tentatively, prodding the jack-o-lantern with his sneaker, his toe still aching from when the box had fallen onto it. The pumpkin sat there, unmoving and unspeaking. A chilly wind began to blow, and Cecil shivered. Had it all been a momentary lapse of sanity? He prodded the pumpkin a couple more times before a car drove by.

“Cecil! There you are!” A familiar voice called out from the car window as it stopped. It was his mother’s voice. He turned to her.

“Where in the hell have you been?! I’ve been looking all over town for you and was ready to call the police! Get in the car, now!” Cecil blushed, thankful that no one else was around to see this embarrassing exchange. He got into the car and felt something in his back pocket as sat down. When his fingers grasped hold of the gnarled wooden wand a familiar, odd tingle danced up his arm. Whatever his mother was yelling to him was lost to the void as he stared at the wand.

What did this mean? Did it work? So many questions flooded Cecil’s mind as he patted Archie on the head who was sitting beside him and looking down at the wand, panting. Perhaps this was payment for helping Jolly out, and Cecil’s wish to become a wizard was finally granted? The weight and tingling of the wand in his hand told him that this was in fact the truth, and with that, he recognized the responsibility holding that wand represented.

Cecil was wrong. Jolly had in fact seen the exchange between him and his mother and he delighted in every bit of it. He stood at the window of the old Nebbins house breathing in the dank, moldy air.

Breathing.

The look on the faces of the townsfolk as his swinging corpse vanished from the gallows was something he would cherish for centuries. Wrenching and displacing physical matter through the quagmire of time and space took an ungodly amount of energy. Then it was just a matter of tethering himself back to the earthly plane and, voila! He was a mortal again. He gave the boy the wand. Cecil deserved it.

The kid has a good head on his shoulders. He thought to himself. Jolly figured he would just make himself a new one, possibly out of a branch of the old willow tree he would have been buried beneath.

“Wreckless.” A voice said from behind him. Jolly sighed.

“Oh, stop. You’re just jealous.” He said, not turning to the man in the bowler hat standing behind him. There was silence for a moment. Then the man spoke again.

“Wreckless, but necessary.” He added, and Jolly could almost feel the smile growing on Abraham Aster’s spectral face. He turned to him, the eyes of the old Enforcer glowing as they settled upon him.

“Took you long enough to realize I had been right to come back all along. Wouldn’t have taken so long if you had helped me sooner.” Jolly chided. He pulled the cloak resting on his arm around his shoulders.

“I think you needed the years to achieve perspective.”

“Coming from a man whom I outdate by several centuries, but ok.” Jolly laughed.

“Either way, the boy was also necessary to bring into this. He’s one we want to keep a close eye on. An asset for sure.”

“You and your constant scheming. I’m glad I’ve been out of the loop, to be honest.” A sharpness had entered Jolly’s voice as he spoke to the old ghost. “Boss the other ones around. If you need a hand with something, let me know, otherwise, I’m going to stop the fall of this world my own way.”

Abraham put on his hat, sensing the futility of trying to negotiate with Jolly. Jolly would do this his own way or not at all. It had always been that way. Sometimes more hands getting into problems ends up making a bigger mess, and Jolly didn’t have the patience to deal with anyone else after having his soul bound to a jack-o-lantern for three centuries. “The Guardians will be overjoyed to see your return; will you be coming back with me.”

Jolly turned back towards the broken window, staring out into the chilly night.

“No. Not yet. I’ve got a few tasks I need to see to.”

The old Enforcer nodded and vanished without another word. Jolly pulled the hood up on his cloak and vanished from the house he had been bound to for ages. The jack-o-lantern sat outside near the sidewalk, beside the rusted and bent wrought iron fence, the candle within still burning. A gust of wind blew and though no one heard it, the sounds of disembodied wailing traveled with it.

The flickering candle flame sputtered and was snuffed out. And, just for a moment, a grinning face appeared in the rising smoke before vanishing into the night.