The Intruder
When Catherine discovers a hidden pumpkin patch, she brings home an unusual giant pumpkin that may be more than it seems.
When Catherine drank she could not remember her dreams.
The night was like a void, a black hole into which her drinking inexorably pulled her over the event horizon.
On the second Saturday of October, while she made coffee—pushing the beans into the grinder, the water boiling furiously on the stove—she made the millionth promise to herself that she would quit.
But the moment she made that promise to herself, another thought slipped into her pounding, hungover brain: but tonight is Saturday—I always go out on Saturday.
Brandon was still asleep in the bedroom, snoring softly. Catherine poured her coffee into a mug and drank it black. But the dense fog clung at her brain. She closed the blinds and collapsed onto the sofa, leafing through a magazine.
She knew Brandon wouldn’t stir for a few more hours and she didn’t relish meeting his petulance if she awoke him prematurely. She stayed on the couch, trying to imagine what the apartment would look like with new drapes and pillows, with an elegant throw over the couch.
But the magazine quickly exhausted any interest and Catherine slipped unthinkingly onto Instagram. The first post she saw was from Shelly Parker, an old friend from college, announcing her pregnancy. The post, with its soft pink-and-white filtered glow, Shelley’s airbrushed and smiling face, hit Catherine in the gut. She hastily turned off the app.
Catherine paced her apartment, a restless energy mixing with her headache and her twisting anxiety. She opened the blinds. A pristine fall day greeted her: crisp blue sky, red and golden leaves dancing along the sidewalk, chrysanthemums lining the boulevard—little pops of crimson, yellow, and purple.
She deleted Instagram from her phone and went into the still-dark bedroom and coughed until Brandon stirred.
“I want to go to a pumpkin patch,” Catherine announced.
“What time is it?” Brandon thrashed in the sheets, looking for his phone.
“I’m going to jump in the shower. The coffee’s already made.”
“What time is it?” Brandon said. “I feel like shit.”
When Catherine came out of the shower, she found Brandon microwaving a cup of coffee, a bottle of Excedrin in his hand.
“Shower’s all yours,” she said.
They found the place on Google. It had good reviews. It was close by. Brandon was sullen in the car, but Catherine felt immune to his bad mood. It felt good to be out of that cramped, claustrophobic apartment. She could feel her head clearing, her stomach unwinding. She was going to stop drinking—today was the day! Golden sunlight splashed over red and yellow hills, illuminating rows and rows of dead cornfields that went marching past.
After they parked their car, Brandon went straight for the beer tent. “Do you want a mulled wine?” he said.
Catherine hesitated. “No,” she said.
“Are you sure?”
She wasn’t sure. How could she be sure? There was a nip in the breeze, a cold blue sky, chattering dead leaves swirling in circles. A mulled wine would be just the thing. “I’m sure,” she said.
“Suit yourself.” Brandon got in line. “Excellent,” he said. “The Viking’s game is on.”
Leaving Brandon to his beer and his football, Catherine walked alone through the pumpkin patch. The field was well-picked over, most of the good pumpkins already gone, leaving only small shriveled ones rotting in the mud. She crossed a gravel road and into a second pumpkin patch further down the field. The pickings were better, but Catherine didn’t find any that she liked. Everything good was already gone. At the end of the field, she came to a bluff overlooking an apple orchard. Rows and rows of trees all plump with fruit, some so overladen with apples the branches bowed down to the ground. She could see thousands of shiny red apples, all ripe and ready for picking.
I have wasted my life, she thought.
A cloud shifted and sunlight streamed into the valley, dusting the tops of the trees with golden light. The apples gleamed. Off in the distance, tucked amidst a tangle of thick trees, Catherine saw a third pumpkin patch, and in that burst of sunshine, she could see rows of plump, perfect pumpkins.
There was no path through the trees, but Catherine pushed her way through the thick tangle, branches scratching at her face, her jacket, cutting her hands. She kept going, certain that after only a few more feet, she would find her way through. But as she pressed on, the woods grew denser. The trees loomed over her, casting long shadows that looked like twisted hands. She wondered if she should turn back, but the thought of the perfect pumpkin kept her going, and she pushed deeper into the woods.
Then she was there. She stepped into a small clearing and found a pumpkin patch unlike any she had ever seen. The pumpkins were enormous, each one larger than a beach ball, their skin so bright and perfectly smooth they glowed in the afternoon light. They were like giant orange eggs placed lovingly in their nest, safely surrounded by the dense wood.
Catherine drifted among them, admiring their size and shape. Vines snaked lazily through the pumpkins and the dirt. The earth was soft beneath her feet. The air had a freshness to it that invigorated her. The patch was enclosed by a rotting wooden fence flecked with fading white paint. A man stood at the edge of the fence, his back to her, his arms at his side. He wore a red jacket and dark jeans. His hair was gray, tousled.
She chose her pumpkin. It was smooth, bright, and firm to the touch. It was also the largest pumpkin in the patch, the largest she had ever seen. It came up to her shoulders and was so round she couldn’t get her arms around it completely. She didn’t know how she would get it back to her car—or if it would even fit—and she considered texting Brandon for help, but she knew her request would annoy him. ‘Why did you have to get such an enormous pumpkin,’ she could her him chastising her. ‘Were none of the others good enough for you? Nothing is ever good enough for you.’
No, she wanted that pumpkin. She was going to find a way to get it home. ‘I have compromised enough in my life,’ she thought, ‘going along with what Brandon wanted for too long. Where has it gotten me? A tiny apartment, nights blacked out by whiskey and wine, a dead future.’
She pushed on the pumpkin and found that by putting all her weight into it, she could roll it through the mud. ‘But there’s no way I’ll get it up the hill,’ she thought after a few strenuous steps.
The man by the fence turned and approached. He had a weathered face, with deep lines etched around his eyes and mouth, but he carried himself with grace. She noticed that his eyes were a piercing shade of green.
“You picked a fine pumpkin,” he said. His voice was raspy but warm.
“It’s huge,” Catherine said. “I don’t know how I’m going to get it back to my car.”
The man chuckled. “I can lend you a hand, if you’d like.”
Catherine hesitated, not sure if it was wise to trust him. But something about him put her at ease. Maybe it was his gentle smile or the way he spoke. Or maybe it was because he was willing to help her with such a ridiculous task. “Thank you,” she said. “That would be really kind of you.”
Together they pushed the pumpkin past the fence. “My truck’s parked just down the road,” he said. “We can load it in there.”
The two of them pushed the pumpkin down the road and hoisted it onto his truck. Catherine was winded by the effort, but the man seemed unaffected by the exertion. “Thank you so much,” she said. “My car is parked up the hill.”
“This pumpkin isn’t going to fit in your car,” the man said, his green eyes locking onto hers. “Get in the front. I’ll take it home for you.”
“No, no, you’ve done enough. You don’t need to do that.”
“Nonsense. I’m happy to do it. Where do you live?”
Catherine felt her heart beating at her ribs. She suddenly realized how alone they were, standing in an empty field with nothing but dense trees surrounding them. There was an eerie stillness, as if all life had fled the area. She felt his gaze on her, sharp and relentless, his green eyes boring into her.
“Not far from here,” she said. “In a little apartment in town.”
“You’ll show me the way.” He climbed into the truck.
Catherine got into the passenger seat. They drove mostly in silence, Catherine occasionally giving him directions on which road to turn. She considered sending him somewhere false, getting out at a home that was not hers, waiting until he left, and then calling Brandon. But the pumpkin would never fit in her car, and she wanted it. Needed it.
She lead the man right to her place.
He offered to help her bring it upstairs, but she told him it wasn’t necessary.
“Thank you again, really,” she said after he helped her get it down off the truck bed.
“My pleasure,” he said.
She stood by the truck for a minute, wondering if she should say anything else. Was he expecting something from her? The truck’s engine was still idling. He stood by the front door, his hand on the driver’s seat. She thanked him again and rolled the pumpkin through the door and up to the elevator. As she waited for the doors to open, she glanced out the window and saw the man still standing beside his truck, his piercing green eyes staring at the front door of her apartment building.
When she got up to her place, she rolled the pumpkin into the living room and then went to the window and watched the man finally get into his truck. She realized, after he drove away, that she had never asked him his name.
Catherine put the pumpkin in the living room, in the corner by the window. It towered over everything. She could see it from anywhere in the apartment.
When Brandon returned home, he was briefly annoyed at her for abandoning him. He never asked her how she made it home. She wondered what he would think to learn that a strange man drove her. Would he care? Would he be jealous? Concerned? But he never asked and she never told him. When he saw the pumpkin, he rolled his eyes. “Did you have to find the biggest one in the state? It takes up the whole living room.”
But Catherine didn’t care. She was tired of Brandon and his negativity. When he went to the liquor store for more beer, she told him not to get anything for her. She refused to drink over dinner, which annoyed him more than the pumpkin. He kept entreating her to have a glass of wine, to relax. “It’s Saturday!” But she held her ground.
Catherine went to bed sober, and that night, she remembered her dreams.
She was in her apartment, but all the lights were off and none of the switches worked. The pumpkin was not there, but everything else was the same: the blue couch, the wingback chair by the window, the plastic stools in the kitchen. Catherine noticed there was an extra door in the dream-apartment, on an otherwise featureless wall in the kitchen. She went through it and found herself in her childhood home. All the rooms were dark there as well, the hallways twisted into unfamiliar shapes. She heard a baby crying through the walls and felt a desperate urgency to find the child. She went from room to room, but the baby wasn't in any of them. Each room was identical: a rocking chair and a small table that held a black candle, its tiny flame flickering weakly in the dark. The baby's cries grew louder and more desperate. She ran through the rooms, certain that the next one would reveal the child, but each room was empty.
The baby stopped crying, but Catherine continued searching. After a few more identical rooms, she realized the candle had gone out.
Brandon snored, and Catherine awoke to a new kind of darkness. She got out of bed and went into the living room for a glass of water. She glanced down the hall, expecting to see the strange new door, but it wasn’t there. Just a smooth, featureless wall. The pumpkin sat in the living room, glimmering in the soft moonlight.
Catherine poured a glass of water, and when she turned off the faucet, she heard another noise. A gentle, hollow tapping sound. It sounded like it was coming from the pumpkin. She put her glass on the counter and went into the living room. She heard the sound again, louder and more insistent. There was no question: it was coming from inside the pumpkin. As if something was tapping on the inside, trying to get out. Am I still dreaming? Catherine thought.
She stood in the living room, listening. But she didn’t hear the sound again, and after a few moments of silence—that nightly silence so deep one can hear the push and pulse of their body busy with the task of living—Catherine grew certain she had imagined the sound.
She went back to bed, but as she was drifting to sleep, she thought she heard that strange tapping sound. Knock, knock, knock, it said. Let me out. But sleep took Catherine and whisked her away to strange, unforgotten worlds.
The next morning Brandon awoke before Catherine and left for work. When she arose, the only thing she noticed was that he had finished all the coffee.
Catherine threw on her robe and went into the kitchen to make a fresh pot. She didn’t notice the pumpkin as she passed, nor as she poured coffee beans into the grinder and heated the water. It was only after she pressed the coffee and set a timer on the microwave that she turned and looked at the living room.
She dropped her mug and cried out.
There was a great gash on the pumpkin’s side, stem to stern. A trail of pumpkin guts and seeds sprouted from the wound, leading through the room and disappearing behind the bookcase.
Catherine became conscious of her breathing and tried to slow it down. She couldn’t understand how the pumpkin had been cut open like that. Had Brandon done it, in a fit of rage? Had someone entered their apartment during the night? Then she remembered the tapping she had heard in the night. It sounded like it had come from inside the pumpkin. But that couldn’t be.
She crept through the living room, checking for any signs of forced entry. She approached the pumpkin and gazed through the gash into the hollow interior. She went to the bookcase, her heart thundering. She waited. She realized she was holding her breath. She let out a long sigh.
Catherine peered behind the bookcase.
And saw nothing. Only a small pile of pumpkin seeds.
She spent the day at home and couldn’t shake the strange feeling that she was being watched, that something lurked just out of sight, perhaps crouched in the vents. She cleaned up the pumpkin remains and rolled it down to the garbage chute.
When Brandon came home, he didn’t even notice the pumpkin was missing.
“I threw it out,” she told him. “It was starting to rot.”
“Already? A waste of money, if you ask me. You should go back there and demand a refund.”
That night, she had another dream. She was standing in a field of pumpkins, rows upon rows of them stretching as far as she could see. The sky above her was orange, the color of rotting pumpkin flesh, and a sickly sweet smell hung in the air. She walked down one of the rows and noticed that some of the pumpkins were moving, as if they had a life of their own or something was moving inside them. They rolled over and turned towards her, their deformed faces staring at her with gaping black holes for eyes and twisted grins on their lips.
She awoke to a loud thud. It sounded like it came from the living room. Catherine slipped out of bed, stepped through the door, and saw it in the middle of the living room. It was a small dark creature, hunched and shivering. At a glance it looked like a human child, but from one angle it had the shape of a bat, and from another, a wolf. There were claws on its hands and dark fur, and what appeared to be leathery wings sprouting from its back.
The creature turned its face to Catherine and whimpered in a soft growl, its red eyes blazing with a mixture of desperation, malice, and reproach.
“Get out,” Catherine whispered.
The creature opened its mouth, revealing a set of glimmering sharp teeth.
“Get out,” she said, louder. “Get out, get out!”
Catherine moved into the room, and the creature pulled up on its hind legs and snarled. It was a hideous sound, one never heard on this planet. It slithered across the floor, heading for the window.
“Get out,” Catherine said, her voice slipping away from her. She pulled open the balcony door, cold air swirling inside the living room. “Get out,” she screamed. “Get out! Get out!”
The creature howled, and it was the sound of all the denizens of Hell screeching out of the deepest caverns of the earth to take flight into a dark, moonless night.
Catherine stood at the door, the sharp air and the night sky swirling around her. “Get out, get out, get out.”
But the beast remained, and in a hideous fit of madness, Catherine saw those razor teeth arrange themselves into a triumphant smile.