8

   "Hey!"
   The man turned around at the voice. Randy had run up behind him. "You leave him alone!" Randy shouted. He threw a rock at the man but it bounced harmlessly off of his chest.
   "Get out of my garden," the man said through gritted teeth. "GET OUT!" He lunged at Randy.
   Randy jumped backward and fell over a pumpkin. His pack fell from his shoulder and burst open. The skull rolled out of it. The man stopped moving toward Randy and stared at the skull. Randy scuttled backward on his hands and feet and then stood. Doug stepped out of the forest. "Come on!" he said, gesturing for Randy and Peter to run.
   "Where?" the man said and then looked up. "How?" He took a step forward and fell to his knees in front of the skull, picking it up and cradling it in his arms. "Why?" he asked, looking up at Randy. "Why would you take this?"
   "You're a murderer!" Randy said. "We found it in your Garden."
   The farmer laughed. "You think I killed someone? I didn't kill anyone. Someone killed me." He held up the skull. "This is me."
   "You're..." Randy's face twisted in confusion. "We found...but..." He looked back at Doug then back at the man. "What?"
   Peter climbed to his feet and carefully made his way around where the man kneeled to stand next to Peter. The man had gone back to cradling the skull in his hands.   "What do you mean it's you?" Peter aksed. "How can it be you? If it's you, you'd be dead."
   The man looked up at Peter, his large, yellow eyes brimmed with tears. "I am dead," he said flatly. "Now..." He climbed back to his feet, turned and walked over to his pitchfork, and yanked it from the tree trunk. "Get out of my pumpkin patch," he said over his shoulder.
   “How can you be dead?” Randy asked. “You’re walking around. You’re not a ghost or anything.”
   The man turned back around and looked at the three boys for a moment, considering. Then he said, “No, I am not a spirit. But I assure you. I am dead.” He stepped closer and reached up pulled the kerchief down to reveal his face.
   Peter gasped. The blackened, leathery skin was stretched tight over his skull. He looked like the pictures of shrunken heads Peter had seen — except that his head was not small.
   “Now get out,” he said through rotted teeth. “Leave my garden!” He pulled the kerchief back up to hide his face.
   Randy, Peter, and Doug turned to enter the forest, but Peter stopped at the edge of the garden to look back. The man had turned around and stood quietly in the garden, his back to them, his head down, and leaning on his pitchfork like it was a staff.
   “Are you…” Peter started but then paused. Then he stepped back toward the man. “Are you okay?” he asked.
   The man turned back toward Peter. Peter glanced over his shoulder to where Randy and Doug stood gaping at him wide-eyed. He held his hand palm up to them and mouthed the word, “wait,” then turned back to the man. The man stood, scrutinizing him, his head cocked slightly to the side.
   “Why aren’t you scared of me?” the man said.
   “Well,” Peter said. “You seem like you’re a descent guy who’s just…I don’t know…dead. And you’re not happy about it. I wouldn’t be.”
   The man nodded. “That much is true.”
   Peter stood there for a moment and looked around at the forest and the pumpkin patch. “So, can I ask? Why do you keep a pumpkin patch? I mean, if you’re dead you should be like…well…I don’t know…haunting someone or…moving on or something. I mean, why are you keeping a pumpkin patch?”
   The man did not answer but simply watched Peter for a moment, and then he sat down on the ground. “Come on over,” he called to Randy and Doug. “Come out and sit down with me. I’ll tell you my story.”

end of 8