Chapter I

"Wishes"

I never wanted to be the Pumpkin King. My dad says it's in my blood. Jack Skellington's my father's name; perhaps you've heard of him. He's famous for scaring people out of their wits. Halloween…Pumpkin King…chills…fright… They all circle around me like some sort of Ferris wheel.

"You are going to be the most frightening Pumpkin King the mortal world has ever known!" Dad would tell me. "DIMITRI! THE PUMPKIN KING!"

"Don't pressure the boy, Jack," my Mom would tell him calmly. "Dimitri is only fourteen years old."

"Sally, the boy needs to know basics when he's young so he can be the best scarcer he can be."

I would go up to the top of Spiral Hill and carve my name sadly in the dirt. Dimitri Skellington; the Pumpkin King.

"This needs to stop." I said one night to Zero, who I brought with me. "Dad should stop trying to make me a…a…a clone of him." I began to walk to the edge of the hill and it unraveled. I sighed "I'm sick of scaring; the terror, the fright. I'm tired of being something that goes bump in the night." I walked into the nearby forest with a heavy heart and tears in my soul. All I wanted to be was a normal kid; to hang out with the other normal kids in Halloweentown. Everyone said I looked just like my dad.

"Why can't I be normal?" I asked Zero. "Why did I have to be the heir to the throne?"

All the kids in Halloweentown looked up to me.

"Normal…" I repeated as I opened a Pumpkin Door in a tree and went through in awe.