There were six pumpkins on the wall when Daniel locked the front door on the night before Halloween.
He knew because he had counted them twice.
Not because there was any reason to count pumpkins, but because his daughter Lucy had insisted that each one belonged in a particular place.
Hers sat in the middle.
Daniel's was at the far left, with two crooked eyes and a mouth he had accidentally cut much wider on one side than the other. His wife Sarah's pumpkin was beside it. Lucy had carved a cat. Her younger brother Ben had managed three holes and announced that his was an alien.
The remaining two had been carved by Sarah's parents earlier that afternoon.
Six pumpkins.
Six battery candles.
Six orange faces glowing along the low brick wall at the end of the front garden.
At eleven thirty, Daniel looked through the living-room curtains before going upstairs.
The street was empty.
A thin mist had formed around the parked cars, and the pumpkins glowed through it like tiny fires.
He closed the curtain.
The following morning, Sarah noticed it first.
"Did you move Lucy's pumpkin?"
Daniel was standing in the kitchen making coffee.
"No."
"It's by the gate."
He looked outside.
Five pumpkins remained on the wall.
Lucy's cat-faced pumpkin sat on the pavement just inside the front gate.
Daniel frowned.
"Probably kids."
"What kids?"
"The sort of kids who move pumpkins."
Sarah stared at him.
"Very specific demographic."
Daniel smiled, put his shoes on and went outside.
Nothing seemed damaged. The gate was still closed. The pumpkin had simply been lifted from the wall and placed neatly on the ground.
He returned it to its place.
Lucy appeared behind him wearing one slipper.
"Why did she move?"
"She didn't."
"She did."
"Someone moved her."
Lucy considered this.
Then she looked at the pumpkin.
"Maybe she wanted to come inside."
Daniel laughed.
Lucy didn't.
Halloween morning arrived grey and wet.
Daniel opened the front door at eight fifteen and stopped.
Lucy's pumpkin was no longer on the wall.
It sat halfway up the garden path.
Facing the house.
For several seconds he simply stared at it.
Rainwater ran down the carved face and collected inside its mouth.
The little battery candle was still glowing.
That bothered him more than anything else.
He had switched all six candles off before bed.
Daniel stepped outside.
The garden gate was shut.
He checked the latch.
Still hooked.
"Sarah?"
She came into the hallway.
"What?"
He pointed.
Her expression changed.
"You didn't—"
"No."
"Lucy?"
"She's asleep."
They both looked at the pumpkin.
Sarah folded her arms.
"Someone's messing around."
"How did they lock the gate?"
"You can reach over."
Daniel looked at the gate.
She was right.
Of course she was right.
Someone had reached over, opened the gate, moved the pumpkin, then latched the gate again from outside.
Pointless, but possible.
He picked up the pumpkin.
The underside was wet with mud.
And beneath it, pressed into the lawn beside the path, was a shallow circular mark.
As though the pumpkin had been sitting there for hours.
By five o'clock, children had begun appearing in the street.
Witches, skeletons, vampires and superheroes moved between houses beneath umbrellas.
Lucy wore a black cloak and pointed hat.
Ben had changed his mind three times and eventually gone out dressed as a dinosaur.
Daniel stayed home to answer the door while Sarah took them around the neighbourhood.
He put the six pumpkins along the garden wall again and switched on their lights.
Lucy's cat went in the middle.
Exactly where it belonged.
By seven thirty, the rain had stopped.
By eight thirty, the number of trick-or-treaters had thinned.
At nine twelve, Sarah returned with the children and two bags containing enough sweets to keep a dentist employed for several months.
At ten, Lucy and Ben were asleep.
At ten forty-five, Daniel took the empty sweet bowl into the kitchen.
Sarah was already upstairs.
He switched off the hallway light and glanced through the glass beside the front door.
One pumpkin sat on the path.
Daniel froze.
Not halfway up this time.
It was on the doorstep.
Lucy's pumpkin.
Its carved cat eyes glowed against the glass.
Daniel opened the door immediately.
The street was empty.
"All right," he said quietly.
The joke wasn't funny anymore.
He stepped outside and looked both ways.
Nothing.
He picked up the pumpkin.
Then stopped.
There were still six pumpkins on the wall.
Daniel looked down at the one in his hands.
Then back at the wall.
One.
Two.
Three.
Four.
Five.
Six.
He counted again.
Six.
The pumpkin in his hands made seven.
"Sarah."
She heard something in his voice because she came downstairs immediately.
Daniel had placed the seventh pumpkin on the hallway floor.
Sarah stared at it.
"Where did that come from?"
"I don't know."
"That's Lucy's."
"I know."
"No, I mean that's exactly Lucy's."
They went outside together.
The pumpkin in the middle of the wall had the same pointed ears.
The same whiskers.
The same slightly uneven eyes.
Sarah took out her phone.
She found the photograph she had taken after they finished carving them.
Six pumpkins lined up across the kitchen table.
Lucy's was unmistakable.
Daniel carried the seventh into the kitchen and placed it beneath the light.
There was one difference.
The original had a small triangular nose.
The new one didn't.
Instead, someone had carved a tiny shape between the eyes.
Sarah leaned closer.
"What is that?"
Daniel turned the pumpkin slightly.
It wasn't a shape.
It was a number.
7.
Neither of them spoke.
Then something tapped against the front window.
Once.
Softly.
Daniel looked toward the hallway.
Another tap.
Sarah whispered, "Don't."
He went anyway.
He approached the curtain and pulled one edge aside.
The garden was empty.
The six pumpkins glowed on the wall.
Mist drifted across the street.
Nothing moved.
Daniel let the curtain fall.
Then came a third tap.
From behind him.
From the kitchen.
The seventh pumpkin was no longer on the counter.
It sat on the kitchen floor.
Sarah backed into the hallway.
"No."
Daniel stared at it.
The battery candle inside had gone out.
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then an orange light appeared behind its carved eyes.
Not the cold flicker of the plastic candle.
A flame.
A real one.
Daniel could smell smoke.
He grabbed the pumpkin by its stalk, opened the back door and carried it outside.
He placed it at the far end of the garden.
Then he came back inside and locked the door.
"Tomorrow," Sarah said, "we throw all of them away."
Daniel nodded.
Neither of them slept particularly well.
At seven the next morning, sunlight filled the bedroom.
Halloween was over.
Daniel lay still for several seconds before remembering.
The pumpkin.
He got out of bed and went downstairs.
The kitchen was empty.
The back door was locked.
He looked through the window.
The seventh pumpkin remained at the far end of the garden.
Daniel exhaled.
Ridiculous.
He almost laughed.
Then Lucy screamed upstairs.
Daniel ran.
Sarah reached the landing at the same time.
Lucy's bedroom door stood open.
She was sitting upright in bed, staring at the floor.
Her face was white.
"What's wrong?" Sarah asked.
Lucy pointed beneath the window.
A pumpkin sat on the carpet.
Small.
Freshly carved.
No candle inside.
Daniel didn't move.
On its front was a single number.
8.
Lucy looked at him.
"Dad?"
He couldn't answer.
She pointed toward the window.
"The other one came to get it."
Daniel slowly turned.
Outside, three metres below them, the seventh pumpkin was no longer at the end of the garden.
It was directly beneath Lucy's window.
Facing up.
They threw every pumpkin away that morning.
Daniel drove them himself to the recycling centre.
Eight pumpkins.
He counted them before leaving.
He counted them when he arrived.
And he watched every one disappear into the garden-waste container.
For the next eleven months, nothing happened.
Eventually the story became something the family didn't discuss.
Lucy stopped mentioning it.
Ben barely remembered it.
By the following October, Sarah had almost convinced herself that there had been an explanation.
Someone playing a joke.
A neighbour.
A coincidence.
Anything ordinary.
Then, on the morning of October 1st, Daniel opened the front door to leave for work.
There was a pumpkin on the doorstep.
No face.
No candle.
Nothing carved into it except a single number.
9.
And beside it was a smaller pumpkin.
That one had no number yet.