One April afternoon, I lay dreaming in the smoking-room, just as I had lain two years before, and mechanically I looked among the tawny Eastern rugs for the wolf-skin. At last I distinguished the pointed ears and flat cruel head, and I thought of my dream where I saw Geneviève lying beside it. The helmets still hung against the threadbare tapestry, among them the old Spanish morion which I remembered Geneviève had once put on when we were amusing ourselves with the ancient bits of mail.
"Hey... sooo, Whatever happened to the Scarecrow?" Jimmy asks the old wizened man with red octagon lensed glasses. Jimmy tottered on his broom stick legs his orange pumpkin face contorted into a terrified grimace. The slightly moldy green and black eyes fixed firmly on the story teller.
Old Dr. Nikidik, his face as bald and expressionless as a bowling ball continued the tale, "Being ravaged and killed by the flying monkey motha fuckers, he was dead and left where he lay, straw here straw there,a little fabric, a little cloth, his painted face head all ripped to pieces"
"And Feathertop in the Hawthorne story became in the end a medley of straw and tattered garments, with some sticks protruding from the heap, and a shrivelled pumpkin in the midst. The eyeholes lustreless; with a rudely-carved gap, that just before had been a mouth twisted into a despairing grin? What is to become of me?" erupted Jimmy in an excited panic of terrible realization.
Old Dr. N, the crooked Mollkin magician from Moloch County held out his pepper box and tapped out a line of white powder onto the mirror that sat between him and Jimmy. "Dr. Pipt's Powders, son, will keep you wired for life. I will see to it that you stayed hooked up."
"But I don't like white powders, Doc! Why can't I smoke a pipe like old Feathertop?" whined Jimmy as he wiped his nose and shivered all over with a fresh wave of tension. He could feel his eye holes widen out and his heart, or what ever that served as a heart, race.
"Can't cop it kid! Mother Rigby died in the church and was buried along with her name. Nobody came. There is no more smoke to be had in this county," Dr. N snorts with a disapproving scowl. "Besides, kid, this is the same stuff your old granddaddy Jack used to get off."
"We could score some at Prospero's castle; his parties have everything."
"You gotta stay high kid, we don't have the connect. Besides you would not ever get into that party. You'd end up in the basement, your decaying face some freaks mushy moldy fuck-hole," Dr. N replies in a disinterested tone. "That's what I'm trying to tell you, Jimmy: you won't ever make it down the Yellow Sign Brick Road. You'll end up like the Scarecrow long before you even try to crash the party."
Furthermore, that the adventurer might lack no possible advantage towards a fair start in life, this excellent old dame gave him a token by which he was to introduce himself to a certain magistrate, member of the council, merchant, and elder of the church (the four capacities constituting but one man), who stood at the head of society in the neighboring metropolis. The token was neither more nor less than a single word, which Mother Rigby whispered to the scarecrow, and which the scarecrow was to whisper to the merchant.
"Gouty as the old fellow is, he'll run thy errands for thee, when once thou hast given him that word in his ear," said the old witch. "Mother Rigby knows the worshipful Justice Gookin, and the worshipful Justice knows Mother Rigby!"
Here the witch thrust her wrinkled face close to the puppet's, chuckling irrepressibly, and fidgeting all through her system, with delight at the idea which she meant to communicate.
"But what about the Black Man's wardrobe that belonged to Feathertop and the special token? You told me that these were my inheritance as a gentleman. I feel just certain that I can gain admission to the Masque of the Yellow King!" Jimmy's eyes were wide and black with a luminescence that gave even Dr. N a shiver.
"You're all crunked up, kid. Here, let me pour you some more rum into that mug you're drinking from. You getting to excited. You've been drinking too much Meth cola to be doing Dr. Pipt's... you gotta come down some. Think clearly about this. I'm just trying to help you out kid. Crap, I got ya this job and a steady supply of what's going to keep you alive. Why do ya got to go and think about leaving now?"
Dr. Nikidik did, in fact, need Jimmy. He was one of the few persons who could deal to both the vollery of crows and to the squirrel gangs on the west-side. See, Jimmy had married a black bird, giving him a voice among the crow, and his famous granddad was killed by the Squirrel King ("Jack Pumpkinhead and the Sawhorse") before the said same old king was deposed by Wild Dagga, who now controls most of the Forest. As it went, when the Squirrel King shattered Jack's pumpkin head, old Jack was rescued by The Wizard of Oz hisself, and the Squirrel King suffered politically from this humiliation, shifting the balance of power. Jack came back around from his short death and worked underground to unite the crows and Wild Dagga in a decisive battle that toppled the monarchy and gave the gang bosses control of the forest.
What could have been great turned sour fast, and the truce only lasted for a little time before the Forest split along an East/West line. Gang war was taking a terrible toll on each side and was bad for business. That's where Jimmy Pumpkinhead came in: he was able to renegotiate the peace when he married a Black Bird— well, he didn't exactly marry her but did accidentally knock her up and this child was a prophesied King of the Forest that both gangs claimed to recognize. So the talk goes; I still wouldn't go walking alone in the West Side of the Forest.
Dig up this grave, the old lady said
The thing we need lies here dormant, sleeping with the dead
You understand what you ask of me
Not even death can set your soul free
I cast this curse and you will find
An evil darkness deep inside your vengeful mind
God damn you to hell (to hell) he could not restrain
He already has some, the witch did explain
-The Misfits
"Pumpkin Head"
Famous Monsters (1999)
Jimmy Pumpkinhead later that morning while trying to sleep has a disturbing dream... he was at the Masque of the Yellow King. He was wearing a clown face that he found in a jar by the door of Mother Rigby's old cabin. In the dream she had given him the face and gave him the secret pass word to access the Party at Prospero's. In the dream she gave him a pipe that he would need to smoke with, or rather told him where he could dig it up as it lay in an old grave.
He awoke and was about 8:00 and Dr. N was finally passed out. He headed to the grave site that Mother Rigby had revealed in his dream. Once he has this pipe he was certain that he could score the smoke and kick Dr. Nikidik's harsh "powder of life".