The Pumpkin Man

by John Everson

  He knelt down to look at a weathered and pitted gravestone that read PETER LUCAS PERENAIS, 1854–1923. “There’s a lot of history here,” he said, straightening.

  Jenn nodded. “It’s exactly why I wanted to come back. The answer to all of this has to be here. I just have to find it.”

  “We have to find it,” Nick corrected. He ran his hand over the rough stone of another grave marker, but this one had deteriorated to the point of illegibility.

  “No,” Jenn said. “You promised to go back to the city after you dropped me off. This is my problem to deal with. My family curse, I guess.”

  Nick smiled. “One: I never promised you that. You just demanded it. And, two: Why, so you can die trying? You’ll have a lot better chance if you get some help. And right now, I’m all that you’ve got. Unless you plan to tell everything to the police.”

  Jenn opened her mouth to say something but stopped. She’d been about to say Kirstin would help.

  “I don’t want you to get hurt, too,” she said.

  Nick slipped an arm around her waist. “I will do my best to remain unharmed,” he promised.

  “I’m sure Brian and Kirstin would have said the same, and look where that got them.”

  Nick nodded. “So we’ll work fast.”

  Jenn sighed, knowing she wouldn’t be able to talk him into leaving. “Well, first we have to get into the house, if there’s anything left to find there.”

  “I think we may be just about to find out,” Nick replied.

  A figure was making its way across the field toward them. Captain Jones. They walked a few paces to meet him.

  “You’re back early,” the cop said. His voice was quiet but questioning.

  “When we got up this morning, my friend Kirstin was gone,” Jenn blurted. “There were pumpkin pieces left behind.”

  The police captain raised an eyebrow, but he said nothing, waited for her to finish.

  “We looked all around the neighborhood, but we couldn’t find a trace of her.”

  “Did you contact the local police?”

  Nick shook his head. “We figured she hadn’t been gone long enough to file a missing-persons report. We have no real evidence but those pumpkin pieces, and nobody in the city is going to believe our story. I mean, a Pumpkin Man killer from beyond the grave?”

  The captain shrugged. “Some of them might have heard what’s going on up here by now.” He shook his head. “But no, they probably wouldn’t believe—or understand. Hell, nobody does. Even those of us who have been here our whole lives.”

  “The answer is here,” Jenn said. “And this isn’t going to stop until I find it.”

  “I’ve got two of the best detectives from Sonoma County in there right now—” Jones began, but Jenn cut him off.

  “And you and I both know they’re not going to find a thing. Not in terms of real forensic evidence. They can take all the fingerprints and chemical readings and photographs they want, but they’re not going to find a clue that really leads them to the killer. You know that. Because they can’t.”

  Jones didn’t answer immediately. Instead, he looked behind her at the cemetery. “There’s a lot of darkness up here,” he said. “If you’re going to start turning over old ground, be careful what you dig up. I bet there are some secrets here worse than the one we’re hunting. Trust me.”

  He turned and slowly began walking back to the house. “Let’s see how the boys are doing,” he called over his shoulder. “They should be about done, and we can probably let you back in.”

  Nick and Jennica followed him down the worn dirt path. Back at the house, Jones excused himself and went inside. When he came back out, he promised them that the place would be theirs again. For the night at least.

  “The boys’ll be done in five more minutes,” he said. Then he cocked his head and looked at Jenn. “I want you to know something. When your aunt first came here, she was a sweet, innocent thing just like you. I remember her as she was. This place changed her. There are plenty of mysteries here, so I’m warning you: if you dig too deep, you might never get out.”

  He paused and looked from Nick to Jenn. “Don’t make the same mistake your aunt did. Go back to where you came from while you still can. There is nothing you can do about this—there’s nothing any of us can, not really. So don’t throw away your life. I don’t want to be responsible for losing another one.” The captain held her eye for a moment, then nodded. “Have a good night,” he said, and he walked back to his cruiser. The car kicked up a small spume of dust as it started back down the hill.

  Nick squeezed Jenn’s shoulder. “Maybe he’s right,” he said. “Maybe you should just go back to Chicago and leave this all behind.”

  Jennica shook her head. “Haven’t you been listening? He already visited me there. He can follow me anywhere.” She put her hand on the doorknob and turned it, pronouncing, “This has to end here.”

  They waited in the family room for the officers to finish up. Orange shafts of sunset shot through the front window like a spotlight, one of which crept minute by minute, centimeter by centimeter, down the weathered threads of the couch.

  The men at last came walking out of the back hallway carrying black and gray steel cases. They gave a nod to Jenn and Nick, and the thin man who’d answered the door offered a clipped, “Good night.” They let themselves out then, closing the heavy door behind them.

  Nick and Jennica sat in silence in the shadowy room for a moment, listening as the sound of the car engines outside started up and then faded into the distance. Finally, Nick turned and looked at her.

  “Okay,” he said. “We’re here. Now what?”

  “Good question.” Jennica laid her head against the couch cushion and considered. “I suppose the first thing is to see what they’ve done here.”

  She pushed herself up and walked into the kitchen. “Ugh,” she said. The cabinets were all open, the counters piled with their contents. She grabbed a handful of pots and dropped them back where they went, then put some plates and bowls away in the cabinets above the sink. Then she walked down the hall to the bedrooms.

  “Not too bad,” she said, peering into hers. Nick followed and watched her rearrange a few knickknacks on her dresser. But when they walked into Kirstin’s room, Jenn shook her head. “I’m not touching this tonight.”

  The bare, bloodstained mattress stood on its side against the wall, and all of the dresser drawers were open. One of the throw rugs was rolled up on the floor, and a pile of other odds and ends was stacked against the wall beneath the window.

  “I’d say they checked every inch of this room,” Nick said.

  “Lot of good it will do them.”

  He shrugged. “Would you rather they didn’t try?”

  She shook her head and walked out. When Nick stepped past, she closed the door behind them. “I don’t want to go in there for a while, I think.”

  He agreed with a silent nod.

  “Let’s take a walk downstairs,” she suggested. They both suppressed a shudder.

  The door was closed, but the old key stuck out of the lock. Jenn turned it and then slipped the key into her pants pocket. Feeling around on the banister, she found the light cord and pulled it. Then, together, she and Nick stepped down the stairs into the basement.

  The chill instantly made Jenn’s skin goose-bump. Nick noticed and put his arm around her, and she smiled. It felt nice to have someone care in this manner. She hadn’t felt that in a long time. On impulse she leaned up and kissed him on the lips. Then she walked over to the shelves against the wall.

  “Looks like the cops took some of those jars,” Nick observed. “Guess they needed some blood and eyeballs and bat wings. Who doesn’t, really?”

  The shelves looked good and picked over. Jenn reached up and pulled down a jar filled with a greenish yellow liquid. At first it was too murky to make out the contents, but then she shook it gently and held it up toward the light. Two black eyes suddenly peered out.

&n
bsp; Shit!

  Jennica’s hand jumped, and the glass slipped out of her grasp. She yelped and just barely caught the jar, steadying herself. The eyes still stared at her, though the tiny face didn’t move. Jenn could see ghostlike wisps of something—skin? hair?—floating behind the thing’s head. A pale and fragile arm pressed against the glass, its fingers so small you could barely make them out.

  Her stomach clenched. This had once been alive. Moving. Maybe opening its mouth in a tiny soundless cry.

  “It’s a real human baby,” she whispered. “That’s just so wrong.”

  She tilted the jar back upright and noticed the Mason jar lid was dated 8/31/73.

  “What the hell?” she said, showing the date to Nick.

  He shrugged. “There were a few of these when we were here before. It’s creepy, but why is it any creepier than anything else we’ve seen here?”

  “Just seems weird. I mean, I get dating canned tomatoes, but . . . a canned fetus?” She shivered.

  “Maybe they go bad after five blue moons,” he suggested.

  “Very funny.”

  She set the jar back on the shelf. Though the police had thinned them out, there were still plenty of others to look at. They had moved things around but Jenn couldn’t say exactly how. She didn’t really care, she supposed. But she wondered if there were any answers remaining to be found.

  She and Nick gave up on the shelves. Walking through the central part of the basement, they entered the tunnel to the crypt and quickly arrived at the door. Jenn fished the key out of her pocket and opened it; then they stepped into the room beyond.

  The room felt . . . empty. Jenn couldn’t explain exactly what she meant, but the last time they were here there had been some palpable force, the air pregnant with malevolence and darkness. Now it was different. The coffin stood in the same place as it had, only there were no pumpkins before it. Was that what she felt? Was it simply that the evidence of death had been removed?

  She hoped that was true. But, walking forward and around the pedestal, she feared with every step that there would be a fresh pumpkin around the corner. Such a pumpkin would prove her suppositions about what had happened to Kirstin.

  But, no, the pumpkins were all gone. There was nothing but empty tile floor behind the coffin.

  “She’s not here,” Nick said.

  “No,” Jenn agreed. “I still believe he took her. But why he didn’t follow his pattern . . . ?”

  Nick sighed. “I think you’re probably right. But with the police here, it may have been a little more difficult. Unless he decided to just wipe out all the police, too. I wonder what’s stopping him from doing that.”

  “I dunno.” She looked around the room and shook her head. It definitely seemed emptier than before. The stone walls felt bare, the tomb abandoned. Why had that row of pumpkin carvings made the tomb feel so much more alive?

  Jenn walked around the room, her steps echoing in the confined space. Nick didn’t move.

  “Why here?” he pondered. “I mean, why was he collecting the heads here? What’s so special about this spot? Is there anything?”

  Jenn shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe because his bones are here? I wonder if we can find out.”

  “Sure,” Nick agreed. “Can’t hurt to look.”

  Jenn walked across the room to the gold handles bolted into the limestone. She pulled on them but nothing happened.

  “What are you doing?” Nick asked, stepping up behind her and putting a hand on her tummy, but Jenn ignored the intimate touch. “Do you think it’s smart to open that?”

  “There’s something about this room and the Pumpkin Man,” she said. “There has to be a clue here.”

  “I thought you were just going to look for a name,” he said. “Your uncle’s, I guess. What else are you hoping to find?”

  Jenn shook her head. “I’m not entirely sure. But the police were looking for fingerprints and blood and stuff, which isn’t going to help.”

  “It’s not?”

  She shrugged and pointed at the seam in the stone. “These handles are obviously meant to open something. And there’s a crack here.”

  “Try pushing instead of pulling,” he suggested.

  She did, and he leaned in to help. They both groaned with the effort but were unsuccessful.

  “Maybe it slides?” Nick suggested.

  Jenn pointed along the smooth face of the wall. “If it was going to slide, it would have to be in front. There’s no place for it to go. All the walls are evenly faced.”

  “Yeah, and there are no hinges for a door mechanism either,” Nick noted.

  They tried pulling the handles sideways, but nothing happened, just as they expected. Nick walked along the wall, pausing every ten or twelve paces to point out a tiny seam in the limestone. “Maybe they just had handles on the last two pieces of stone to help set them,” he suggested.

  “Maybe,” Jenn agreed halfheartedly.

  She walked around the stone pedestal twice. There was something about the way it was positioned in the room—not quite at the center, not against the wall—that had bothered her since the first time they entered. While everything else about the circular crypt was geometric, the coffin was off-kilter. She knelt at one corner of its stand where a fist-size chunk of stone had been chipped away from the base. Perhaps the men who’d had to lever it up the hill and then down the stairs had dropped it.

  The floor looked darker near the missing hunk of rock. Jenn pushed against the stand, and it shivered a little but didn’t budge.

  “Hmmm,” she murmured.

  Nick was on the other side of the room, searching the outer walls, but Jenn had a hunch. Pressing both palms to the coffin stand’s bottom, she pushed with all her might. The entire stand seemed to shift, but only a hair. She could see that the tile beneath looked different. Dull black, not tile.

  “Help me move this,” she called. She gestured.

  Nick glanced over and shivered. “The coffin stand? I don’t want that damn thing tipping over and opening,” he said. “You push from that side, and I’ll pull on the other. Maybe we can squeak it along.”

  They set to work. Soon the small chamber was full of heavy breathing, grunts and curses of frustration. The veins stood out on Nick’s forearms, and sweat stuck Jenn’s T-shirt to her chest. But little by little, the stone coffin stand slid across the tile. Surprisingly, it moved smoothly without scraping.

  “I think there’s something on the bottom of this that’s helping us shift it,” Nick observed. “It weighs a ton. There’s no way we could have budged it if the base was flat.”

  Jenn agreed. “That, and we’re not gouging up any of the tile. Probably it’s something like those little feet they put under stereo equipment. Though I’m betting these aren’t rubber.”

  “No,” Nick gasped, pulling as hard as he could. “They’d have to be hard and smooth as Teflon! So why the fuck couldn’t they have just put normal wheels on it?”

  Jenn laughed, blowing a strand of sweaty hair off her mouth. “Maybe this was put here before wheels were invented.”

  “Okay, one more try,” Nick said. “On three. One, two . . .”

  Jenn pushed so hard she yelled, and Nick’s cries echoed hers. At last he fell away from the stone to lie on the floor, breathing hard.

  “That’s all I got,” he said.

  “That’s all we need,” Jenn whispered. She tapped him on the arm without looking. Her eyes were fixed on the black space they had revealed.

  The black tiles she’d first spied at the edge of the pedestal base were only the start. An intricate, undulating design lay beneath, black and highlighted by tiles flecked with silver. At the far end, just before the spot where the pedestal would have stopped in its original spot, a thin pink tongue protruded from a head.

  “A snake,” Nick said. “Why would they use a coffin to hide the picture of a snake?”

  Jenn crawled across said snake on her hands and knees, staring intently at the intrica
te yet faint patterns in the tile that gave the stone serpent the appearance of scales. At its middle the shape bulged, obscenely bloated.

  She ran her finger across the center of that bulge, and in her mind Jenn gave a silent whistle. Secrets hidden within mysteries, she thought, tracing the circular gap that ran all the way around the center of the snake. Then she fingered a narrow hole directly through the circle’s middle. “I don’t think the snake is what they were hiding.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “There’s a keyhole here.” Jenn pointed it out and looked up at him with a cocked eyebrow. “The belly of the snake is the entry point to something.”

  “Sounds almost biblical.” Nick’s stomach suddenly felt like a home for bad eggs. This place just got more and more fuckedup. He knelt down next to her and put a finger on the irregular slot in the center of the serpent. “Soooo,” he began, hating to even ask. “Any idea where the key might be?”

  Jenn reached into her pocket. “Works for everything else,” she suggested, holding up the key to the basement door. When she fit it into the floor slot, the key slid easily inside.

  Too easily. The key to the doorway swam in the opening, and Jenn twisted it back and forth without meeting a tight fit.

  “Works for everything but this,” she amended. “Figures.”

  “Maybe that’s not such a bad thing,” Nick suggested. “Where do you think this goes?”

  Jenn shrugged. “God knows. But somebody didn’t want it accessed very easily.”

  Nick agreed. “No, I don’t think people were swinging this casket stand back and forth every weekend. But, what were they trying to keep hidden? What’s locked up under here?”

  Jenn wiped the sweat from her forehead. “No idea. It’s too small to be a doorway.”

  “Unless it’s for rats,” Nick suggested.

  Jenn sat back on her calves and sighed. She’d thought they were going to find something or at last uncover an answer. Now she just had more questions. Where was the key to this? What was inside? Did she really want to know?