The Pumpkin Man

by John Everson

  Emmaline anointed herself now in his blood, blood she had saved from Derek, blood from a man thirty years dead, and said a prayer to the spirits who loved the degraded and sick. Then she made the upside-down sign of the cross over her naked breasts and rose.

  Wadding her clothes in a ball, she stepped quickly up the plank stairs. It was long past bedtime. Still, she was anointed in blood, so she’d need a shower. Magic and demonology really had nothing on the demands of real life. In the end, all that really mattered were sleep and food. She’d had the latter and now she needed the former. She could think of nothing more than bed.

  Emmaline dropped her blouse and skirt into the hamper in her bedroom and then turned on the shower to draw out the hot water. She brushed her teeth. When she stepped inside the tub, the water ran dark red. She rubbed the shampoo across her breasts and smiled as the death washed away, and then she scrubbed her hair and leaned her head back. The blood stripped back from her skin. She’d let it all go: the soap, the sin, the evil thoughts.

  She luxuriated a final moment in the warmth of the water and then forcibly stopped, shutting off the tap with a quick twist of her hand. She was done. Now she really needed sleep.

  In moments she was out of the shower and toweled off, pulling on a nightshirt and heading with staggering steps to bed. Exhaustion had washed over her like a wave; her legs felt like tree trunks sunk solidly into the ground. But the glint of silver on the sheets woke her.

  At first she only realized there was something that didn’t belong in her room on her bed. Then the color of that errant object registered. And then the shape: a butcher knife. Emmaline stopped and looked around.

  At first, all seemed fine: The dresser with votive candles and a small painting set on a plate holder. The painting was of a symbol, if abstract and strange, just a collection of thick and thin black lines. The sight of it made the skin crawl; there was something about it that was just wrong. The eye caught that and complained on every viewing.

  But Emmaline wasn’t afraid of the symbol; she knew what it was most intimately. The Perenais family had decorated their homes with it for generations. It was the sign of the devil they had courted for over 300 years. They had given him the blood of virgins and the blood of whores. They had done deeds so evil that writing them down only led readers to laugh and nervously exclaim, “Oh, come on now.” But Emmaline’s ancestor had been one of the original members of the cult, and for generations the Perenais family had continued the study of Maldita, bringing the cult to the new world and settling in a remote location to hide their proclivities.

  She looked away from the dark symbol and saw the empty doorway. Nobody was there. But in the past ten minutes since she had walked through her room and taken a shower, someone had broken into her house, gone into her bedroom and laid a knife upon the bed.

  Suddenly, Emmaline’s life of secret evil seemed like just a game. This was no game. Someone had left her a sign. But what kind of sign?

  She racked her mind for some kind of spell, some protective ward to render ineffective someone who wished her ill. She came up with nothing. She had always been slow at turning her wishes into actionable magic, and now her mind was completely blank. She wanted to call to her ancestors for help, but she wasn’t sure of the right words.

  She stepped closer to the bed, intending to pick up the knife, but a low laugh filled the room from somewhere nearby.

  “That one’s for me, not you,” the voice said. The laughter had stopped.

  “You!” Emmaline said, staring in surprise at the face of the man who’d entered her bedroom. “But you’re . . .”

  “I am,” he agreed. “And now I’m going to show you what it really means to worship Maldita.”

  “But you aren’t one of us. You aren’t even . . .”

  He smiled, and with one hand he raised a second knife. It was long and thin in his black-gloved hand. “It doesn’t matter which hand holds my instruments. It only matters that I am here and this is now. This is now, yes?” he asked.

  Without thinking, Emmaline nodded.

  The man grinned, his mouth going wide in a way about which she’d only had nightmares. “I am here for you tonight, Emmaline. I have waited a long, long time.”

  “But,” she said, struggling to find an argument. “But, I am family.”

  He nodded. “The weakest of two hundred years. Accept without protest, and I promise my blade will be quick. Or . . . at least I will not prolong your crossing more than I need to. You will feel the transformation, though, and for a moment see yourself through other eyes.”

  “No,” Emmaline gasped, and broke for the door.

  He whirled and brought the knife down fast. She felt it slice against her spine, a cold bite that turned hot in an instant. His hand grabbed her shoulder, but she threw it off, half ran, half fell through the open door into the hallway. She felt the wetness of her life seeping out to drench the back of her nightshirt, but she forced her feet to keep moving. Time was of the essence.

  There was only one way she could think of to thwart her enemy, now that he had shown himself as such. This was not the soul of Maldita manifesting, as it might like her to think. But it was the Pumpkin Man, the thing that had possessed her brother. It was one of the cold creatures of the dark beyond, one of the things her family had courted for centuries. George had paid the price, and she didn’t intend to join him.

  Emmaline grabbed for the handle of the basement door, twisted it hard to the right and pulled. The door shot open. As it did, though, another shot of pain seared her side, horrible fire that made her long to double over and hug the floor; the Pumpkin Man’s blade had split two ribs. She screamed and felt liquid in her voice. The blood slipped like water into her lungs, and her scream ended in a wet cough.

  “Fortreaux les Demoniaque, silencia!” she choked out. She refused to let him take her easily, and the warding curse seemed to have at least a small impact, because the restraining hand slipped off her shoulder.

  Emmaline staggered over the edge of the basement stairs, grabbing at the handrail to slow a calculated fall, but pain shot through her side from the new wound like the burning of her back screamed at her to curl up. She cracked her head against the bricks on the stairwell; a flash of light crossed her vision as she coughed again, a wet, gasping, horrible sound that didn’t stop and didn’t stop and didn’t stop. She took three more staggering steps down, still coughing.

  Near the bottom of the wooden stairs, she leaned against the bricks and willed the cough to stop. It did, and her breath came in a wheeze that sounded like wind through a narrow eave. When she took her hand away from her mouth, it was dripping with blood. The sound of the Pumpkin Man came from above, and his foot set down on the first stair and then the second.

  Emmaline pushed off the wall and staggered down the last few steps. She fell to her knees on the hard-packed floor, reached out and crawled toward her late husband, but the motion sent a paralyzingly sharp pain down her middle. She choked up another gout of blood, which drizzled like warm chocolate from her lips to the mud. Then she pushed forward one more meter.

  There were two things that might stop the demon behind her. One would be destroying his anchor to this world, but that anchor was not here, she knew. The other was a banishment spell that existed in the Book of Shadows.

  She had read the book so many times she should have had it memorized, but dark magic had never come easily for her. She admired it. Yearned for it. But in the end, she had watched from the sidelines as her brother inherited both it and the family legacy and then squandered his gift with lack of interest. How unfair.

  Behind Emmaline the stairs creaked with increasing speed. As she tried once more to inch forward on the cold, damp ground of the cellar, in her mind’s eye she saw the face of Jennica Murphy. Tonight that naive girl had fed her what would be her last meal, she realized, and Emmaline laughed bitterly to herself. The poor thing would be following her soon into the darkness. Jennica had nothing to draw on to
handle this situation. Who would teach her? Emmaline herself had enjoyed a lifetime of knowledge, and it wasn’t going to do her a bit of good. She was already dead.

  She pushed forward once more, and now her hands were almost in reach of the small table where she kept the book. But it was too late: A foot ground into the small of her back, pinning her to the floor. Even if she could reach it, what good would stopping the Pumpkin Man do her? He’d already killed her. She just hadn’t died yet.

  He knelt and straddled her, gently slipping a hand around her neck. He caressed that soft skin below her chin and in the lowest possible voice said, “Emmaline, I’ve watched you for so long. I’ve wanted to taste you, to show you what you could be here, with us. What you can never be there.”

  She rolled. With one knee she caught him in the groin and laughed as he jolted away from her in pain. Even demons couldn’t ignore the pain of the bodies they rode.

  “I can never be anything anywhere,” she spat. “You make wonderful promises, but what have I ever gotten from you? I killed and sacrificed and worshipped and degraded myself every day for years, and for what? To live in a hovel as an outcast on the edge of a no-name town? What did you ever do for me—show me how to make a pleasure spell? Give me the ability to inflict pain on my enemies with a crude voodoo doll? I’ve gotten nothing from you over the years, but you’ve taken my husband, my child and my life. And now, instead of finally giving me the power, you just want my life? Fuck you.”

  Emmaline kicked out her feet and shimmied until she was able to grab the small stand and pull herself upright. The pain in her side was horrendous, but she rose anyway, determined now that her last act would be to stop the thing her sister-in-law had raised. The thing that had robbed her of her family and now her life.

  She flipped through the pages quickly, the blood on her fingers sticking to the paper. The words were a blur, yet they all looked familiar. “Possession, Incantation, Entrapment. The Circle of Need, the Sacrifice of the Innocent . . .” She had read every chapter, but she knew the one that would work. The man in front of her was not the man who tried to kill her. She only needed to set him free of his spirit rider and her life would be spared, though she feared her wounds mortal regardless. Blood now leaked up into her mouth from her throat. Tiny, continual tremors in her lungs didn’t slow.

  She found the page. “Banishment” read the heading, handwritten in black ink by someone with amazing penmanship. Writing was a lost art; she had considered that many times as she’d read the entries of her ancestors. Despite the years, she had always been able to read every word—unlike today, when if you saw a handwritten note, chances are you’d be hard-pressed to identify even one.

  As she opened her mouth to say the first words of the banishment, the book slammed shut. The Pumpkin Man’s knife wavered just before her nose, darting uncertainly from eye to eye.

  “No,” the voice said. “Your part in this is done. And now that it is, I’m going to introduce you to the same exit that I gave your son.”

  Emmaline stiffened. She had refused to think about that loss for years. Now the memory of Harry’s sweet little boy came back full-force, his tiny freckles and alert blue eyes staring hopefully back at her as his high-pitched voice called out, “Momma, where are the cupcakes?”

  She would always miss that child, no matter that it wasn’t hers nor how much the family had said his death was necessary. The secret room had still been used for ceremonies back then, when her cousin and uncle and aunt had still been alive, as well as George. The family had still had power, and they demanded her silence and her sacrifice. She’d regretted that the Pumpkin Man hadn’t taken her instead back then, but she hadn’t been given that choice.

  Again, she felt a flicker of pain. She didn’t blame her brother. What had he done, aside from being the horse that was ridden? Harry had never agreed with her and had plotted to kill George, thinking that killing him would end the work of the demon.

  Two hands grabbed her arms and lifted her away from the book. With a wicked smile, the possessed man lifted her off the ground to hang level for just a moment with his eyes. They were brown but seemed from deep within to glow with a yellow light.

  “I don’t think so,” he said.

  With a jolt, Emmaline was suddenly in the air and then on the floor. She looked up to see the shriveled skin of her dead husband’s mummified feet and a glint of orange color. Emmaline turned her head to confirm the horrible suspicion. Yes. There was a pumpkin here in her basement. On the floor beside her husband. Near her head.

  “No,” she said again, this time with less determination.

  “I want you to see something,” the Pumpkin Man said. His voice was low and soft but very determined. When the knife bit through the skin of her neck, Emmaline barely noticed. She was staring up into the mesmerizing swirl of his golden eyes. “There is a thing called the Rapture. The reuniting of all souls in an orgy upon the earth. You will help us grow and bring the Rapture back once again.”

  “No,” Emmaline whispered. This time, her words blew bubbles through the hole in her neck.

  “Let me show you something,” her murderer repeated, and he reached out to pull the pumpkin next to her face. He had already hollowed out its core, and he lifted off the cap to expose the orange glow within. Then he pressed his knife softly to the skin beneath her left eye. “Look and you will see,” he promised.

  He pushed the blade down. Emmaline wanted to scream, but the pain was so intense, she barely released a squeak. The Pumpkin Man popped her eyeball up and out of her head, like a grapefruit segment by a spoon. He held the eye in his hand. It dripped viscous blood like violet honey. Then he held it to the dark orange skin of the gourd as his other hand began to carve around it.

  Emmaline felt the vision in her remaining eye fade, though the pain had finally increased enough that she was screaming. She saw a final foggy glimpse of her own self from the point of view of the pumpkin. And then her murderer was stabbing his knife into her lips, promising with understated breaths that she would be whole again, that she would be whole forevermore thanks to him. That she would see the world through different eyes, taste the air through a different mouth, understand that the consciousness of her mind was only a piece of the greater whole.

  Somehow her arms and legs had become lead, and she could only lie there and feel the excruciating pain as he severed her features. When he gently slid the blade into her nose, she could feel the resistance it met. Then he slid his bloody knife across the skin of the pumpkin, inserting the blade a centimeter at a time until it dug all the way in, pressing her blood into the space left behind. Each stroke was leaving her there—not just the blood she spilled, but pieces of her soul.

  She felt herself blink and cough, and then her killer’s knife dug into her remaining eye. She wanted to cry and beg—anything to make him stop—but she’d already lost her tongue. The world grew briefly brighter as his blade cut deep, but then, as he spoke secret words in a sibilant whisper, her view changed forever. She found herself blinking out from a haze of light to see his face grinning down at her, shards of light growing and changing and swirling in violent violet eddies from his eyes.

  What have you done? she asked in her mind.

  “I gave you a new perspective,” the glowing creature answered. “I thought you’d like to see the world through different eyes.”

  Maybe, Emmaline admitted, reminded of her earlier dreams of power. But not these!

  “No worries,” her killer said. The modern slang sounded wrong said in those sepulchral tones, but the possessed body didn’t match the thing inside either. “You won’t last there long enough to complain.”

  Emmaline watched as he pulled out a long butcher knife from his rolled-up leather packet. The blade glinted in the basement’s dull light, and somehow she could see the shriveled image of Harry in it. She thought he looked angry. If he were here now, he’d probably want to kill her, too.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, aiming her se
ntiment at her husband.

  The Pumpkin Man answered. “So am I,” he said.

  The demon inside the man laughed, then, and he stepped away from her pumpkin head. He ran his blade along the center of her body, deftly pulling away the material to expose her breasts as Emmaline watched. Then he slit the rest of the thin cotton and lifted that away as well. She could see herself lying naked on the dirty floor, though she knew she wasn’t entirely dead yet. The blood still flowed in shallow spurts from a half dozen wounds.

  “In time you will rejoin your body,” the Pumpkin Man promised, and then he set his cleaver against the soft white of her neck. This time, he didn’t spare the pressure when he pressed down. She could hear the grinding steel as he worked his way through her vertebrae.

  It was over in an instant. The Pumpkin Man stood up from her corpse, holding her severed head by the roots of her graying hair.

  “Your tiny soul is mine now,” he pronounced, and he lifted the bloody head to gently kiss her dead lips. Emmaline could see it all from the pumpkin, though she noticed that the room seemed to be growing fainter.

  “Say good-bye,” her killer suggested.

  As she prepared to do just that, he, the pumpkin, and everything else she’d ever known, was gone.

  CHAPTER

  FORTY-FIVE

  Scott was well stocked with coffee and french fries as he sat in his unmarked car on the side of the long driveway that led to the Perenais house. Earlier that day, Jennica had offered to let him stay in the house when he told her that he’d be keeping an eye on things outside. He’d declined. That would sort of defeat his purpose. He hoped to see the killer approach, and for that he needed to have the broad view, not be trapped inside just waiting for the doorknob to turn. So hopefully he was just getting ready for a long night of nothing, offering unnecessary protection to the two kids inside. He just wished he knew more about whatever or whomever he was protecting them from.