Oh Jack, my dear pumpkin child. How I wish that you could speak this night. The shadows are busy with restless life, and the moon is like a great blind eye vainly trying to see. It is Halloween, Jack! And I cannot help but wish, as always, that I had given you a voice.

I know that you forgive me for that oversight, my son. No one has had as faithful a child as you. Yet still, you are young, and there are years yet for you to grow to despise me. A voice is a wonderful thing to have and never more so than on this enchanted night!

It was on an evening exactly like this one that I created you, my son. With the power of my voice I lured the elusive spark of Life into your sturdy stick limbs and orange visage. I was lonely, so lonely, and wanted to have a loyal son to love and cherish - and such a fine son I have made!

Come, Jack, look out the window. Do you see the land beginning to stir in the darkness? The sun is like a memory and dawn is a thing of myth. See how the torn clouds flutter like flags, and the sluggish mists roil! On a night exactly like this, Jack, one year ago, I created you. How impatiently I waited for your stiff limbs to tremble! I despaired at ever seeing light kindle in your empty eyes. But you awoke, Jack! Do you remember? You rose up from that very table which stands there, and stood before me like something from a dream. A silent dream... Alas, my boy, I cannot forget your lack of a voice.

Halloween is an important time to have one, my pumpkin son. There is a special sound that one can make this night which has more meaning now than at any other time of the year. It is called a Scream, Jack, and it is something that only someone with a voice can make. For this entire long year I have fretted as tonight approached, not knowing what to do. The idea of my own son not being able to scream on Halloween night fills me with shame and grief.

But I have come to a decision, Jack! I have made up my mind to give you a voice this very moment!

Here, my dear son, lay upon the table as you did what now seems so long ago. Do not be afraid! This is the very same knife that I used to make your eyes and nose, and to trim your wooden arms and legs. You must lay very still, Jack, for to give you a voice you will need a mouth, and a mouth is not an easy thing to make. You do want a voice don't you? Yes, yes, I see that you do, and I shall give you one so that you may scream this night.

How the form on the table shudders and bucks as the old man goes about his work. With a hand almost as gnarled and hard as his creation's own he holds the writhing figure by the throat, sawing at the soft orange flesh of poor Jack's face. Blood, thin and pale as vegetable juice, but blood nonetheless, spurts upon the table top as the blade slices deeper and deeper.

"Do you hear it, Jack!" the old man cries, as twig fingers claw at his face, tearing deep grooves in the wrinkled skin. "Do you hear it?"

For indeed a sound is rising in the dim room. Soft at first, easily mistaken for the chill breeze whispering beyond the window glass, but growing steadily with each rasping passage of the knife through pumpkin flesh. Now it is as tiny and shrill as a boiling tea kettle grating in the bloody ears that Jack has half torn from his father's skull. Growing, ever growing, as does the widening split in the pumpkin son's face. Now it battles for dominance with the howl of Halloween shades awaking once more beneath a starless sky. Hear it as it  rises screeching towards the ceiling intertwined with the muffled shrieks of anguish coming from the old man who struggles to free the voice of his thrashing son whom he loves so much.

The last cuts are sloppy and ragged but Jack will have to forgive his father for with the poor man's eyes pierced by his own thorn-sharp fingers, he could no longer see his handiwork.  As the last pulpy strings of flesh part before the sharp knife, Jack finally manages to hurl his antagonist aside like a broken doll. A great hole now gapes in his once blank face, and from that hole comes the most treasured noise of all to be heard on any Halloween night:

A Scream. A wonderful, agonized scream!

From where the old man lays sprawled upon the floor, his blinded face a mask of blood, half of his body smoldering unheeded upon the glowing coals of the fireplace, that sound is the most beautiful thing in the world. He ends what is his last Halloween, and Jack's very first, listening to his dear son scream, and scream, and scream, and scream, and...