The Pumpkin Man

by John Everson

  The planchette came to rest on the word YES.

  “Will you help us?” Jenn asked.

  The ring slid forward and paused on three separate letters: H-O-W.

  “The Pumpkin Man has come back,” Jenn explained to empty air. “He killed my father, he killed our friend. And he has killed others. Can you help us stop him?”

  The ring slipped from letter to letter, its speed decreasing with each movement.

  I

  AM

  BEYOND

  HELPIN . . .

  The ring stalled on the N for a long while, and Jenn looked at Nick and Kirstin, wondering what to do. It seemed as if her aunt was losing the power to answer.

  Finally, the ring shivered and slipped to the G.

  “Aunt Meredith, what can I do to stop him?”

  The ring moved again. Painfully slow. But it spelled out two more words: LEARN PERENAIS.

  “Learn Perenais?” Jenn repeated. “I don’t know what you mean, Aunt Meredith. Study the family history?”

  The planchette seemed to struggle. It jerked as it moved between letters, darting forward an inch and then stopping completely. But slowly it moved, and its movements spelled out:

  B

  E

  W

  A

  R

  Suddenly, the candles on either side of the table flared, rising from half-inch tongues to foot-high flames. Heat washed across them, and the planchette suddenly darted beneath their fingers, moving with demonic speed between letters. Nick called them out.

  “Y O U,” he said, softly reading out each word in turn.

  “WILL”

  “DIE”

  “LIKE”

  “YOUR”

  “FATHER”

  The candles extinguished.

  “Aunt Meredith?” Jenn called. “Aunt Meredith, are you here?”

  “Jesus Christ,” Nick said.

  Jenn stared at the board, barely visible in the shadows. The only light came from outside the room. She could see Kirstin’s face silhouetted with faint blue. Her friend shook her head back and forth, as if denying what had just happened.

  “Aunt Meredith?” Jenn called again, but the ring remained still.

  “She’s gone,” Kirstin said. Her voice shook. “Can we turn the lights on now?”

  Jenn looked at the darkened board for a moment. Their fingers all remained on the planchette, but it did not move.

  “Yeah,” she said at last, pulling her hand back from the ring.

  Nick withdrew his hand from hers and reached out for a table lamp. “Well, I know I feel better now,” he said. “Are you okay?” he asked, moving around the coffee table to put his arm around Jenn’s shoulders.

  “What happened there?” Kirstin whispered.

  “I think my aunt was here,” Jenn said. “But it was like she was struggling. I think whoever she was struggling with won out.”

  “I hate to say I told you so—” Nick began.

  Jenn cut him off. “I know, I know.”

  “Do you think something is loose in my apartment now? What was it?”

  Jenn shook her head. “I don’t know. Maybe it was the Pumpkin Man himself. But I think he’s gone.”

  “I wish we hadn’t done that,” Kirstin said. She had both arms wrapped around her shoulders in a self-hug as she rocked back and forth on the floor. “I don’t think I’ve ever been this scared.”

  Jennica broke from Nick’s embrace to hug her. “I know, hon. I’m not feeling really good right now myself.” She choked back a sob and fought to get her emotions under control. Her chest was tight and her legs begged to run. Her entire body wanted to just flee, now, without any more questions or séances or thoughts about death. But that wouldn’t solve anything, she knew. The Pumpkin Man could be anywhere. “Before she left, she at least gave us a clue,” she reminded them.

  “What,” Kirstin asked. “Research your family tree?”

  “Sort of. Remember, the police said the Perenais family has been in River’s End since the beginning. That house is old. Really old. My aunt came out here and married into the family . . . I know from her journal that she learned her magic from studying things she found in the house. I don’t know that anybody really taught her, because she wrote that my uncle didn’t really want her to get involved in the things the rest of his family had been into. But somehow she found out how to do it. Maybe in those old books, maybe in other things.”

  “And how are we going to find out?” Kirstin said. “Your uncle’s family seems to be gone.”

  Jenn shrugged. “I still have my aunt Meredith’s journal. There may be more clues in there. And there’s the house itself.”

  “I don’t want to go back there,” Kirstin said. “I am never sleeping in that bed again.”

  Jenn nodded. The idea of going back didn’t exactly sit well with her either.

  “I know,” she said. “But I can’t run away from this. It will follow us—or at least me—wherever I go. I need to act before it’s too late. It all began in that house. Maybe the only way it can be ended is there, too. I don’t know.”

  Nick gave Jenn a hug and then looked her in the eyes. “I don’t want to go back there either,” he said, “but I’ll do whatever I can to help you. That thing killed my best friend. And I want you to be safe again.”

  Jenn felt tears welling up in her eyes and she struggled not to cry. “Thanks,” she whispered. A tear slipped down her cheek.

  Kirstin joined in the hug and whispered, “I’ll help, too. You know I will.”

  That’s when she lost it. Jenn pictured the board spelling out YOU WILL DIE LIKE YOUR FATHER again, and then she saw Brian’s body in the bed from that morning and Kirstin’s incoherent terror. She remembered her dad’s funeral, which just reminded her how much Nick must hurt right now.

  “Thank you, guys,” she said. “I’m so sorry about all of this.”

  The sobs took over, and she began to cry harder, her breath hitching as the emotions of the past three months were finally released. Once she started, she couldn’t stop. She couldn’t catch her breath, but still the sadness streamed out. Nick pulled her gently to the couch and sat with her. He held her as she sobbed in a ball against his chest.

  Kirstin sat with them for a while and stroked Jenn’s hair. When Jenn’s tears began to slow, she got up and gave Jenn’s shoulder a squeeze. “I’m going to bed,” she said. “I’m falling over.”

  Jenn gave her a soggy smile. “Thanks for everything today,” she said. “Good night. See you in the morning.”

  Kirstin smiled grimly and went down the hall. She’d left her things in Brian’s room. She supposed that’s where she’d sleep.

  He could feel it coming again. His first response was to moan inwardly, and then came fleeting thoughts of tying himself to the kitchen table, which would stop his body from leaving home. But he’d had that thought a hundred times and knew it wouldn’t help. If his hands could tie him up, they could untie him as well.

  The first time the madness had overtaken him, there had been no warning. One minute, he’d been cooking dinner and the next, he’d awoken on his couch the following morning covered in blood, still holding a sticky knife blade. God, the fear he’d felt that morning as he stared with bloodshot eyes into the bathroom mirror, asking himself over and over again, “What did you do?” And he simply couldn’t remember.

  He’d found the passel of knives lying on the front room floor, equally bloody but tucked into a leather case. He took them all to the bathroom and rinsed the blood away, exploring each weathered knife with his fingers. While it was the first time he remembered seeing them, they felt strangely comfortable in his grasp. Familiar. Each handle fit snugly against the sore spot he felt on his palm below the thumb.

  Where did I get these? he’d asked himself again and again. They appeared to be a very specialized set of implements. This wasn’t a set of steak knives. No, each was meant for some specific kind of carving. There were long, needle-thin blades
and double-sided ones. There was a mini scimitar, and a carver with an edge the size of an X-Acto. But as different as the steel blades were, they were a matched set, each encased in a dark mahogany wood shaft.

  He had cleaned and dried the blades, watching in horror as the red water swirled down the drain of his bathroom sink.

  What did you do?

  He’d showered, trying in vain to remember anything from the night before. He’d scrubbed his hands and face and hair until he hurt.

  What did you do?

  He’d cleaned the stains from his couch and disposed of his clothes, all the while waiting for a knock on his front door and a party of men in blue.

  What did you do?

  The police never came. A couple days later, the knives were gone. He turned his apartment upside down, but they simply weren’t there anymore. He began to think that he’d dreamed the whole horrible bloody morning.

  Then, a short time later, he awoke on his couch again in the very same way. The knives were back in his living room, still wet with congealing blood. He cleaned them and himself, and eventually they disappeared again. The cycle happened again.

  And again.

  At first he’d had no warning. He simply woke up in blood with no real memory of the night before. But now was different. Each time the Pumpkin Man came, he could feel it. Just before his world went black, it was like a door opened in the back of his mind, a draft of hot wind blowing in to cloud his vision. It was happening again now. And as his sight faded, he had just enough time to cry out one phrase.

  “Please, not again.”

  But the cry was in vain.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Kirstin couldn’t sleep. She was exhausted, running on nothing. Every couple minutes she yawned, but her eyes refused to stay closed. How could she sleep after the events of the day?

  She pulled Brian’s pillow close and tried to snuggle into it as if he were there. It didn’t help. His bed was comfortable, and the pillow filled that spot where another body should be. Kirstin had always liked sleeping with someone else. It made her feel secure and loved. Maybe that’s why she was always the flirt. She wasn’t ready to settle down with someone, but she couldn’t bear to sleep alone either. And so she moved from man to man, never staying long enough to get trapped but never staying alone long enough to get lonely.

  She clung to Brian’s pillow and breathed in his scent. She’d really liked him—right away, from the very first things he’d said in the club. She pictured him then, laughing and telling jokes and buying them drinks. And then she pictured him from that morning. What was left of him.

  “Damn,” she murmured, and rolled over. The bedside alarm clock read 1:17.

  She threw off the sheets and stood up in the middle of the room. There was nothing she needed more than sleep, but that just wasn’t coming. So she pulled a loose T-shirt over her head and then slipped on yesterday’s jeans. She’d already tried masturbating, but that had only ended up bringing her more images of Brian. So she decided to take a walk. Sometimes that helped her insomnia.

  Kirstin tiptoed past Nick’s room, assuming that he and Jenn would be sleeping there, but when she got to the family room, she saw they’d never left the couch. They were stretched out together, Jenn curled up with her thighs pressed to her tummy, Nick lying behind her, one arm draped across around her shoulders and chest.

  She walked quietly past them and slipped her gym shoes on at the door. She wouldn’t go far; she didn’t know San Francisco particularly well and she didn’t want to get lost. Plus, she didn’t want to leave Nick’s apartment door unlocked for hours while she wandered the city streets. But a little air might help.

  Down the single flight of stairs to the apartment building foyer she went, and then she realized she wouldn’t be able to get back in if the front door of the building locked behind her. She debated going back upstairs to look for Nick’s keys but saw a phone book sitting in a corner under the mailboxes and smiled. Lodging the phone book in the door so that it wouldn’t close all the way, she stepped out into the moonlit night. The building could be unsecure for ten minutes, too.

  The air smelled heady with life, scented with some kind of flower and a hint of eucalyptus. There must be a tree nearby, she realized. And flowers. They seemed to grow everywhere here. She’d decided already that no matter what Jenn wanted, she was going to stay on the coast. This city had everything Chicago offered and more, and the weather was more temperate. There were beaches and plenty of tan guys, too.

  She looked back at the front entryway and repeated the address in her head—523—before turning left to walk down a tree-lined sidewalk. The street sloped gently downward along a row of tall, thin houses. The neighborhood was quiet, but in the distance she heard the occasional car and a light hum. And after spending a couple weeks in the middle of nowhere, the city was suddenly much louder.

  Walking to the end of the block, she stopped at a quiet corner, debating whether she should turn and make a loop or just go straight. She opted to simply walk straight and then back to avoid any confusion. San Francisco, she’d noted, had lots of oddly planned streets.

  She followed the sidewalk for ten minutes or so before she reached its end. There were no cars waiting for the nearby light to change. She saw a Chinese restaurant on a corner, its entryway blocked by a cage of iron bars. She wondered idly what time they pulled those bars open every morning, when the street began to wake up. With the moon shining bright overhead, it seemed strange that all the little shops were still. Like a moment out of time. She imagined the shadows suddenly growing thick and dark, manlike creatures materializing to lurch toward her, daggerlike nails pointed in her direction, leering hungrily—

  Kirstin shook away the vision and turned to make her way back up the hill. Again she thought of maybe moving to the city once things were settled. She definitely couldn’t stay out in the middle of nowhere for too long, and that’s what River’s End was. She needed this: even with it asleep, you could feel the electricity of the city.

  The walk back to Nick’s apartment was harder than the one away; the sidewalk was on just enough of an incline that Kirstin found herself breathing heavily. She stopped at an intersection where the green light ushered nobody through; there was nobody around. Well, if nothing else, she was getting a workout. She hoped it would serve to help her sleep.

  On that thought, she suddenly raised her eyebrows and let out a yawn. She nodded to herself. Yeah, now she would definitely sleep.

  The numbers 523 were suddenly visible above a doorway. Kirstin took a deep breath and approached. The phone book remained where she’d left it, so she picked it up as she pushed the door open. Once inside, she dropped it back on the floor by the mailboxes.

  Something scraped behind her.

  Kirstin straightened and looked around. The brown and white tile pattern on the floor of the foyer beyond the stairway slid from moonlight into shadow. One of the overhead lights was out. She could see down the first-floor hallway, though, since the ceiling lights at the end of that hall were still lit.

  As Kirstin stepped toward the stairs, debating whether she should run up them or if she was just being silly, a dark shadow detached from the others and moved toward her. It could be someone who lives here, she told herself, but another voice said, You left the door wide open and look what came inside.

  The figure stepped into the light.

  Kirstin saw the knife first, a long, tapered blade that glinted evilly. Then she saw the face of the man carrying it and her brow wrinkled in puzzlement. Instead of screaming or running away, she stood still and asked, “What are you doing?”

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-SIX

  In dreams, no one can hear you scream, and so nobody heard Jenn scream as she ran down long, narrow hallways populated with misshapen predatory monsters, faces twisted in hate. Some held out garish pumpkins carved into howling faces with teeth long and fanged, sharp knives looking for soft flesh to bite and maim.r />
  “Jennica,” someone called. She slowed her run and looked up to see Meredith. Her aunt’s face was weathered yet kind, and she looked both sad and happy to see her. “Jennica, don’t run away. I won’t hurt you.”

  “You’re not who I’m worried about,” Jenn replied.

  Her aunt’s lips split, revealing a set of inhuman fangs. “Maybe you should be.”

  In a flash Meredith reached out and grabbed Jenn’s arm. Black talons curled around the soft flesh just below Jennica’s wrist. Meredith growled, pulling her niece into a bear hug. “Some things are not what they appear.”

  Jennica screamed—

  She woke up panting. Nick’s hand slipped up her arm and gave her shoulder a squeeze.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked groggily.

  Jenn propped herself up on an elbow and looked around. She was on the couch of his apartment. On the table in front of them lay her aunt’s Ouija board, which caused the events of the past two days to all come rushing back. God, just twenty-four hours ago they had found Brian’s body. And then had been the day with the police, and finally the drive down here . . .

  “Bad dream,” she answered.

  “Mmmm,” Nick said. “I wish it was all just a bad dream.” She turned over. His brown eyes glinted up at her. Jenn hugged him, pulling him as tight as she could. He’d just lost his best friend. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered.

  He returned the embrace and they lay that way for a long time.

  When they finally got off the couch and took turns in the bathroom, the sun was up and the apartment bright with morning light. Nick made coffee.

  “I can offer you coffee and cornflakes,” he said after padding about the kitchen and performing a cabinet inventory. He moved to the refrigerator, speculating, “We might have some eggs.”

  He was barefoot, his hair still tousled from sleep, and he wore gray jogging shorts and a faded blue T-shirt with holes. She thought he looked adorable as he began to look for other offerings.

  “Call off the search,” she laughed. “I skip breakfast half the time. Cornflakes would be great, though.”