The Case of the Thirteenth Pumpkin

Every Halloween, Elm Street holds a jack-o’-lantern contest on the Hendersons’ long front porch. This year there were thirteen entries, a hundred dollars for the winner, and one pumpkin everybody expected to take it: old Mr. Abernathy’s grinning skull, which had beaten every comer two years running. I help run the contest, so I was there all evening.

At six o’clock, Grace Lindqvist lined up all thirteen pumpkins and lit their candles. Grace is easy to spot: five foot ten, in a skeleton costume, with glow-in-the-dark paint on her hands from painting stars along the porch rail. By nine, the judging was done, Abernathy’s skull had won again, and most families had drifted home. Only a few of us were still on the street.

At ten to ten, Mr. Okafor, who lives across the street, saw something glide along the porch: a tall figure wrapped in a white sheet. He called out, and the figure slipped down the side path and was gone. At ten o’clock I went up the porch steps with the prize money — and found Abernathy’s pumpkin smashed to pieces, its candle out, and the sheet stuffed into the hedge beside the path.

Mr. Okafor described the figure carefully. Its head nearly reached the porch lantern, which hangs six feet above the steps. The sheet fell smooth and round over its head — no point, no peak — and the hem hung straight, just clearing the ground, with nothing dragging or pooling behind it.

I pulled the sheet from the hedge. Its eye holes were torn, not cut, and caught around the torn edges were strands of long, gray-brown fur — the fake kind, from a costume. The sheet also smelled faintly of woodsmoke.

One thing looked bad for Grace: her glow-in-the-dark paint was smeared across the biggest piece of the smashed pumpkin. But Grace had lifted every pumpkin into place at six o’clock with those painted hands. Her paint was on all thirteen, winners and losers alike. It proved nothing at all.

Four people had no one to vouch for them at ten to ten. Grace had been everywhere that night — lighting candles, fetching chairs, checking the ballot box. Hazel Ortiz is five foot three and wore a witch costume with a tall pointed hat; she had carved the runner-up pumpkin. Eddie Vance is five foot five and wore a vampire’s long black cape. And Bruno Bell — six foot one, in a werewolf costume with long furry paw gloves — had carved the pumpkin that lost to Abernathy’s skull two years in a row.

Bruno told me he had been at the cider table by the fire pit from half past nine until ten, helping Mr. Abernathy serve. But Mr. Abernathy shook his head. “Bruno left at twenty to ten,” he said, “off to the Hendersons’ kitchen for more cups. He came back at ten — without any cups.” The way to that kitchen runs right along the side path, past the hedge. And nobody else on Elm Street had spent the night standing in fire-pit smoke.

So I lined the facts up: the height of the figure, the smooth round head, the fur in the eye holes, the paint that proved nothing, the cups that never came, and the smell of woodsmoke. Only one person fits them all. Who was the ghost on the porch?