“Don’t be a jerk, Isaac,” Christina snapped, weeding her way through a cluttered pumpkin patch.

Isaac grinned, knowing he was intentionally driving his science partner crazy. That suited him. The two of them had been told to go and collect samples of leaves from the nearby wooded lot and bring them to Biology the next day. Mr. Barrett had assigned Isaac and Christina the particularly annoying task because they were the only two out of a class of twenty-four who lived outside of town in the dense woods. All the other students lived in the main part of town where trees were sparse if there were any at all.

Christina immediately knew her afternoon was doomed. Isaac was a class clown; smart, but incredibly immature to be able to do anything with his intelligence. She would have rather gone by herself to collect the samples, but no, Mr. Barrett, the group guy, wanted to send a pair. Christina decided to go searching through the old pumpkin patch on the farthest part of town, hoping Isaac might get lost in the dense vines and shadowy trees. So far, he’d stuck right by her.

“Wow, check out that house on the hill,” Isaac murmured, pointing to a collection of blackened boards leaning dangerously to one side. Christina rolled her eyes, barley believing what she had just heard. Everyone in town knew the tales of the old Van Tassel manor now lying in a heap of crumbling wood. At one time it had held the grandest parties in town back in its glory days of the 1800’s. Before the fire in the 1920’s nearly burned the whole place to a crisp.

“Are you stupid or something, or do you just ignore the history of the town?” Christina asked sourly.

“History bores me; I prefer fiction to facts,” Isaac replied with a shrug. He gave Christina a geeky grin and stooped to examine a rather lumpy, discolored pumpkin.

“Wow, I’ve never seen a pumpkin like this before,” he exclaimed, plucking one of the black leaves off the stem.

“How could you not have? This pumpkin obsessed town always has loads of rotten Halloween stereotypes sitting on the porches like ferocious watchdogs,” Christina moaned. Isaac was really beginning to bug her.

“Maybe I just don’t pay attention,” Isaac remarked, still transfixed by the pumpkin. Christina sighed, and decided to keep walking while she had the chance to escape from her eccentric lab partner.

“Hey Christina, come look at this,” Isaac yelled suddenly, brushing mud and filth off the outer skin of the pumpkin. Christina rolled her eyes again, and stopped momentarily.

“Why?” she grumbled, crossing her arms.

“Because, there’s something really wrong with this pumpkin,” Isaac replied, squinting through his glasses. Christina huffed, annoyed, and backtracked to where Isaac was acutely examining what appeared to be just another, decaying mutant pumpkin.

“What is so important about a stupid, smelly pumpkin,” Christina asked, bitterly. Isaac pointed to a red smudge across the corner of the vegetable.

“Gross, what is that?” Christina exclaimed, horrified.

“I think its blood,” replied Isaac, attempting to remove the stain from the pumpkin.

“Eww, don’t mess with it. Who knows how long it’s been there?” Christina panicked.

“Relax, the stain’s really old, probably been on here for years,” Isaac answered. He wobbled to his feet and gave Christina a reassuring pat on the back.

“No worries, I am one-hundred percent sure that this stain is perfectly harmless,” Isaac said, comfortingly. Christina shuddered and moved away from the pumpkin, wishing she had just taken a zero for an assignment grade.

Suddenly, Christina felt the mossy ground beneath her feet begin to vibrate. The sound of hoof beats echoed through the pumpkin patch growing louder by the second.

“What the heck is that,” Christina asked, swiveling around to find the source of the noise. Isaac stood frozen and stiff, mouth open in fear.

“It’s” he began in a whisper.

Swack! Blackness.