The Pumpkin Man

by John Everson

  As Emmaline looked pointedly at Nick, a timer went off in the kitchen. Jenn jumped up and said, “I think dinner’s about ready.” She darted into the kitchen to check.

  Nick found himself alone with Emmaline.

  “Have you found the witchboard?” the woman asked. She was staring hard at him.

  Nick hesitated, not knowing if he should admit to it. Finally, he nodded.

  “Has she used it?” Emmaline’s eyes were piercing. She eyed him over the lip of her bloodred glass as she waited for his response. Again, he nodded.

  “That’s what I feared,” Emmaline said. “Did someone answer?”

  “Yes,” Nick said.

  “Was it Meredith?”

  “That’s what it claimed,” he said. “But it threatened that we were all going to die.”

  “Using the board only brings you to the attention of things that want to climb back into this world,” Emmaline said. “By using it, one puts oneself in the spotlight. It’s like painting yourself pink and walking through the streets: everyone looks at you. They can’t help it. And the things that look . . . well, great danger awaits.”

  “Great,” Nick said. “I’ve always wanted to be pink.”

  Emmaline didn’t smile.

  From the kitchen, Jenn announced, “Dinner’s ready!”

  Nick leaped up, eager for the interruption, but Emmaline didn’t rise. She gave him one final look and said, “Make her go home if you care about her. Make her leave this house—tomorrow, before it’s too late.”

  CHAPTER

  FORTY-TWO

  “That was delicious,” Emmaline said after sopping up the last bit of gravy with a crust of Italian bread.

  She was a font of local history, it seemed. The trio had spent a half hour talking about mashed potatoes, the early sunsets and most of all the history of the River’s End library, which oddly enough had been born out of a shipwreck just up the coast in Delilah that left behind two crates of wet but otherwise usable books. One of River’s End’s founders had brought those books back and started a loaning library out of his home. When he died, he left the house and all of the books to the town.

  Jenn smiled. “Thanks. It was my dad’s recipe. I’m amazed we didn’t all get to be two hundred and fifty pounds growing up the way he cooked. I mean, he didn’t drain the grease when he fried bacon up for a recipe, he put the rest of the food in right on top of it.”

  Emmaline laughed. “I think the most common spell people wanted from your aunt was something to help them lose weight. You’d think it would have been something to help them find true love, or a potion like that, but no, people are always concerned with their looks. Vanity.” She shook her head.

  “What exactly did Meredith do for them?” Jenn asked.

  Emmaline’s face was stern. “I’m sure she mixed some hot peppers and the ground-up bones of something foul and told them to put it in their refrigerator.”

  “Would that work?”

  “That’s the kind of curiosity that got your aunt in trouble,” Emmaline replied.

  “Well, I can’t help but be curious,” Jenn said. “There’s some kind of supernatural serial killer that’s been stalking me for the past two months. My aunt had something to do with magic, and so I’d kind of like to know what. It seems like the best way to protect myself.”

  “Getting away from this house would be a good start,” Emmaline announced. “The evil draws its power from here.”

  “That didn’t stop it from coming to Chicago and killing my dad,” Jenn complained. “And leaving signs for me as well. The Pumpkin Man—supernatural or not—was in my apartment just before I flew out here. There were pieces of pumpkin at the foot of my bed! I’m not safe anywhere.”

  Emmaline opened her mouth to say something but then thought better of it. There was an uncomfortable silence at the table until Nick broke it.

  “I’m taking her to San Francisco in a couple days, but the last time we were there her best friend vanished. We . . . we’d like to think she just wandered off, but that doesn’t seem very likely. We think the Pumpkin Man probably came for her. So, if you know of a way to keep Jenn safe, tell me. Even if it’s that she never comes back to this place again. I want to protect her, and I’ll do whatever I have to do.”

  Jennica looked at Nick in shock and happiness. He’d just said the words of someone who genuinely cared. Not that she hadn’t realized he cared, but in some ways she’d felt like maybe he’d been staying with her out of pity. This sounded very much like love. He’d do anything?

  “We have to stop the Pumpkin Man,” Jenn told Emmaline. “How do we do that? It sounds like you don’t want me to follow in my aunt’s footsteps, but how can I protect myself if I don’t? Running away just isn’t going to work.”

  Emmaline stared at her. Finally she said, “I don’t know, because I don’t know what Meredith did to bring him here. But I do believe this is a supernatural being and not a serial killer, and I promise I will try to find a way to bind him and keep him from hurting you. But . . . promise me that you’ll leave here no matter what. This house rests on generations of darkness. So long as you are here, you are vulnerable to the pull of that history. If you stay, you will become a Perenais just as your aunt did. You’ll become everything bad that I barely escaped. I cannot caution you enough.”

  CHAPTER

  FORTY-THREE

  The heat of summer was coming; he could feel it in the air. Not that it was that hot yet, but as the twilight descended Scott Barkiewicz could taste the coming warmth. It tasted fine. River’s End would never be a beach town, like so many places along the coast to the south, but he had been here many times in the summer, and he enjoyed the heat of the sun mixed with the salt air and the privacy of life in a small town. Read: miles of sand and blue water all to yourself.

  Driving along Route 1, Scott drank in the air. He had just done a circuit of River’s End, looking for teens getting into trouble or other problems, then took a drive up the coast. Now he was heading back to the station. Patrols in the tiny town were perfunctory for the most part, but they still had to be done. That’s what taxes were paid for. Taxes that paid for his supper.

  The tiny police station was quiet as he walked in. Silent like a tomb. Well, Scott could hear the old clock on the wall ticking away the seconds, so maybe he was being melodramatic. But where was Captain Jones?

  Through the small front office he walked, past three empty desks, and switched on the lamp on his own. The light was on in the captain’s office, he saw, so he crossed the room to look inside. Jones was there.

  The captain was sitting in his chair, staring out the window. The case files for the DeVries and Smith murders were open on his desk. Scott recognized the crime scene photos, even if the bodies were unrecognizable. It’s amazing how much of a person’s identity was wrapped up in his face. And when the head was missing . . .

  “Captain?” he asked.

  Jones started. “I didn’t hear you come in.”

  “All’s quiet out on the street.”

  “Mmmm,” the captain answered. “I don’t think that it’s going to stay that way.”

  Scott got a whiff of alcohol. What the hell? he thought. That wasn’t like the captain at all. Lax, maybe. Tolerant, yes. A drunk? No.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “The Pumpkin Man is back,” Jones said.

  “Yeah, he’s been back for months,” Scott reminded him. “And it’s high time we trapped him and put him behind bars. I wish they would have caught him and locked him up twenty-five years ago, so we weren’t cleaning up the mess today!”

  “I don’t think there’s anything more we could have done the first time around,” Jones said, turning to stare at him. His eyes were bloodshot. “And now, something’s different. He’s broken the pattern. He’s not killing kids at Halloween now. And he’s not just killing parents of the kids he killed in the past. He killed Meredith’s brother in Chicago. He killed a kid from San Francisco last week. Now app
arently he’s taken Jennica Murphy’s friend from Chicago. I don’t know how to even look for where he’s going to strike next.”

  “Well, that’s the challenge in investigating a string of murders,” Scott said. Man, the captain was really unraveling. “There is a connection, though, even if it’s not the same man. The two latest victims were friends of Jennica Murphy’s, and they stayed at that house. So did her father.”

  “Okay, fine,” Jones slurred. “But how are we going to get rid of him?”

  Scott laughed. “We catch him and lock him up. Isn’t that what we do with bad guys?”

  “Your police academy didn’t deal with how to catch the devil.”

  “We’re not dealing with the devil,” Scott answered, shaking his head. “This is a guy who’s flesh and blood. He uses knives to cut people up and he’s got some kind of pumpkin fetish, and he thinks it’s amusing to play on the fears that this town picked up a generation ago. But it’s just a guy with a knife. A guy we can catch—who we need to catch before someone else gets hurt. Have you heard anything more from the lab work?”

  “From the Perenais house?” Jones asked. “Nothing. No prints, no identifying traces of anyone outside of the kids who are living there.”

  “So the guy wears rubber gloves and a hair net,” Scott said. “Or he’s bald.”

  Jones grimaced. After a moment he said, “I know you talked to Emmaline Foster. You must have gotten some background on the Perenais family.”

  “Sure,” Scott said. “Superstition and old wives’ tale stuff. Though, she did make me nervous for the lives of those kids. Obviously that place is a focus for whoever is behind this, and I think they should get out of there as soon as they can.”

  “They went one hundred miles away and something followed them,” Jones said. “I told you what has apparently happened to Jennica Murphy’s friend Kirstin. You don’t suppose that she just went for a long walk and got lost down there in San Francisco, do you?”

  “Someone followed them, not something,” Scott reminded his captain. “And I think it’s time we filed a missing-persons report on her behalf. There could be evidence in that boy’s apartment that would help our case here, so we should get the SFPD involved.”

  Jones nodded, running a hand through his hair. “I’ll talk to Jennica about reporting it tomorrow. It’s probably better if it comes from her, considering what happened with that Tamarack kid. Plus, she’ll know the details. It’s going to look mighty odd to San Francisco regardless. Don’t need to make it worse.”

  Scott smiled. Maybe he was getting the captain back on track. He didn’t like to see him so vulnerable. Captain Jones was a nice enough guy, if a bit lenient.

  “That doesn’t help us tonight, though,” Jones continued.

  Scott’s hope faded. “What do you mean?”

  “I just have this feeling in my gut that someone’s going to die tonight. I figured it would be last night, but . . .”

  “Do you want me to stake out the Perenais house?”

  Jones nodded. “Sure, keep an eye on the kids. But . . .”

  Scott raised an eyebrow, waiting.

  “Never mind.”

  The younger officer shrugged and left the room.

  Jones sat at his desk, watching the other man leave. In his head he heard the rest of the words he wanted to say, words the other cop would never understand.

  “But . . . don’t let the Pumpkin Man see you.”

  CHAPTER

  FORTY-FOUR

  Emmaline couldn’t wipe the smile from her face the entire ride home. She’d done her best to scare the bejeezus out of those kids and she thought she’d succeeded. She hadn’t been able to find out if they had discovered the dark chapel yet, but since they’d mentioned the crypt and not the chapel she thought not. Finding that room might actually be a great lever to scare them into leaving . . . but more likely than not they’d involve the police, and after that, even if she finally got her family legacy back, it would be stripped of all that was truly valuable. So she hadn’t asked anything directly. Better to wait. Drive them away by other means.

  She let herself into her small home and kicked off her flats at the door with a sigh. Flipping one light on in the hallway, she walked immediately to the basement door and down the stairs in her bare feet. Harry remained where she’d left him, as he always did.

  Emmaline walked up to the mummified corpse of her husband and ran her fingers softly over the sandpaper rough surface of his skin. He’d been dead so long now, but she never failed to kiss him good night.

  “You should never have hurt George,” she whispered, as she always did just before she touched his lips. Then she smiled and picked up a book from where it sat on a small shelf nearby.

  Flipping to a place in the middle, she began to speak the strange and guttural words aloud, as if the shell of her husband were listening. She had read from these flaking yellowed pages every night for the past six months, ever since she’d retrieved the book from Meredith’s room. While the Perenais house had legally passed to Meredith’s brother, and shortly thereafter her niece, Emmaline had made sure that the Perenais Book of Shadows was not there. The tome had documented the rituals and occult discoveries of her family for generations. There were some things that only blood should see.

  Blood. She was the sole true blood remaining of the Perenais line. It would all end with her, Emmaline realized. It was a pity, since she’d never really grown into the family talent. The outsider, Meredith, had proven a better witch than she. Despite his disinterest in the art, her brother George had proven a better conduit for the powers of the other side. She’d never guessed he could be, given his shyness. But that hadn’t stopped his vengeance. The amusing part was that if she didn’t do something to stop it, the dark magic set in motion by her sister-in-law might just keep haunting River’s End forever, long after she was dead and buried. Who knows how many people the specter of the Pumpkin Man would claim before his vengeful fire burned out? Once she was gone, who would have the slightest idea of how to stop it? Maybe River’s End would, ironically, after its history of dark spirits, become a ghost town.

  Emmaline smiled at the thought. She had entertained many fantasies over the years of this tiny town’s ignorant populace being gutted like the cattle that they were. Maybe her selfish bitch of a sister-in-law had done something right after all.

  She read slowly the handwritten foreign words scribed in her family Book of Shadows. The text had been penned by a great-great-great-great-grandfather some 350 years before, and it referred to luring demons with human blood to entertain your bidding. The author’s name had been Willum, and while living in England he had written his secret diary entries in Latin to cloak his proclivities from the casual browser who might stumble on his diary. Thankfully the entries had remained private, hidden by the family for centuries. But Emmaline had studied them. She’d also studied her family’s notes about their own performances of his rituals.

  Willum had been a believer in the power of bones. And of blood. He’d strived to find just the right combination of the two, mixed by the light of candles molded from the fat of corpses rendered beneath the light of the full moon, corpses heated by fire lit from the embers of their own hair. He had stacked the bodies of his victims in a dark and hidden cellar and visited them on nights when the moon ascended to a particular position. Willum had also believed in the movements of the heavens being a sort of indicator of when the spirit realm was open to contact and could be exploited.

  Emmaline laughed. She’d never found that exploitation needed specific timing. It could be accomplished simply by using the proper tools. In her case, a smile. She had spent her life coercing people with smiles, and she had gotten, more or less, all the things she wanted. She wouldn’t call it magic, but she called it fun.

  The small refrigerator in the corner held a shelf of old mason jars, some of them actually bottled by her father, Satan rest his wicked soul. The family had once bottled so much that their work had
lasted a century. She’d taken some with her when she married and moved out of the house, using them in her own chapel sacraments. Over the years she’d replenished what she used, draining new offerings in the sewer beneath her house. Still, the blood that her father had spilled tasted best to her, and so she’d made those jars last. She’d open the lids and sniff the foul scent of iron wafting up from the dark red liquid, and then she would slip her fingers in the blood and deftly coat herself, lips and breasts and belly and more . . .

  Emmaline unbuttoned the blouse that she’d worn to meet her step-niece and let it fall to the dirty ground of the cellar; then she unhooked the metal tongs of her bra and let that join her top. Moments later she’d dropped her skirt and panties, and she stood naked in the mildewed basement, staring at the desiccated corpse of her husband. She still felt warm just looking at his remains, and she didn’t suppress the urges nakedness brought, fingering herself both above and below.

  Dipping those hungry fingers into the cold jar of blood, she smeared that aged redness across her chest and pressed it, cool death, between her legs. She wondered sometimes about the lives she painted on her body, but she didn’t think about them too hard. The end more than justified the means.

  Blood-smeared and horny, Emmaline knelt, feeling the perversion take her. She wanted suddenly to press a man to the ground and grind herself against him in an animalistic orgy, and she knew why: the act would satisfy the demons that watched from afar, and she wanted to satisfy them more than herself. She longed to be satisfied by them, too, to lie back and open herself to them, a horde of them, as they thrust themselves within her and spread her pelvis so wide that—

  Emmaline stopped herself with a mental slap. Her devotions had rarely resulted in the kiss of demons, no matter how she dreamed. She’d never even been able to levitate herself through the air, like she’d read some of her ancestors did. But she had, in her life, known the power of being of the Perenais family. She remembered a time in high school when she’d really wanted a particular boy. Derek Tatum, his name had been. He’d always been the weird guy in school, listening to bands nobody had ever heard of, reading banned books and getting in fights. She’d been curious about what he would be like—his taste, his smell—so she’d called on the power of her family to help her get the little bit of him that she could. She’d lured him to a private place and slaked her lust on his body. Then, when it was over, she’d taken a razor from where she kept it hidden in her bra and took the rest of him, from his anger to his fear. His last scream still echoed in her dreams. She loved the sound.