The Pumpkin Man

by John Everson

  “Don’t worry about it,” Jenn said. “I only met her for the first time last night.” She thought for a second and then felt alarm. “You don’t think that we—?”

  Jones shook his head. “No. But I think coming to this house might have been her undoing. Just like I think it will be yours if you don’t leave. I can’t make you leave, of course. It’s your house now. But”—he looked at the ceiling and the fireplace and the hallway into the kitchen—“nothing good has ever come to anyone who lived here.”

  “What is this?” Jenn asked, holding up the book she’d been given and using it to change the subject.

  “I don’t know,” Jones said. “I couldn’t read it. Foreign languages aren’t my thing. But I see it’s somehow connected to the Perenais family, and as the sole remaining heir, I think it belongs to you. And I think it might do you a little more good now than if it sat in a police evidence bag for the next six months. If you can learn anything about what the Perenais family called into this world, use it.”

  He glanced at the door, clearly uncomfortable. Jenn let him off the hook by saying, “Thanks. I appreciate you going out on a limb like this for me. I know how much it means for you to be giving me something from a crime scene. I’ve been reading a lot of Meredith’s notes lately, so I will dig into this and see what I can translate. I’ll let you know if I find anything.”

  Jones nodded and began backing toward the door. “I’ll have someone stationed nearby tonight,” he announced. “Just to help keep you safe.”

  “Thanks, Captain,” Nick said, rising from the couch. “We’ll keep the doors locked, too.”

  “Good idea,” Jones agreed. “But make sure you lock the basement door as well.” His voice dropped a notch. “I think you’ve got more to fear from within than without.”

  Jenn shut the door behind the police captain and leaned her back against it, staring at the faded leather binding of the ancient book he’d given her. “Everything about this place relates to books,” she said.

  “Yeah,” Nick agreed. “Books and blood.”

  She walked over to the couch and sat next to him. His arm slipped around her shoulders, but she barely noticed. She’d turned over the cover of the book and looked at the handwritten title on the first page.

  “Whoa,” she breathed.

  Nick leaned close and read the foreign words without recognition. “You can understand that?” he asked.

  “I took French in high school,” she said.

  “What does it say?”

  “Book of Shadows,” she breathed. “It’s the family book of spells. It’s what I was looking for.”

  Jenn turned the page and began to haltingly translate words and fragments. Even without being able to complete a sentence, in her head she saw images of death and bones. Then she flipped deeper, and the page at which she arrived suddenly switched from French to English:

  We’ve brought the bones from the old country to the new, the script read. In casks disguised like wine they come, the remains of our saint and his virgin offerings. They’ve loaded them onto a carriage here at the San Francisco dock, and we will be off for the north coast in the morning. We will start here anew, though with the old blood and the virgin bones. We will bring our father’s legacy alive again in the New World. His spirit is never far away from the lives of his children, and we are never far from feeding him death.

  “What does it say?” Nick asked.

  “It says we’re all doomed,” Jenn muttered.

  “Uh-huh.” Nick laughed quietly. “I’m serious.”

  “I’m not joking—much,” she replied.

  Meredith Perenais’s Journal

  November 30, 2009

  George isn’t himself anymore. Whatever he was is gone. Eaten. I can’t talk to him now, no more than I could in the last days before his death. He’s getting his revenge—that much is clear. But I don’t know if he’s thankful for it. I don’t even know if he knows I’m here or if he’s got me at the bottom of his list and he’s just crossing off checkboxes one by one until he reaches me.

  And I can feel something else gathering, too. Something that my wards can’t stop. It’s too dark to see what it might be, but it’s coming for me, I can feel it.

  The door to hell is paved with both dreams and knives. I wrote those words a long time ago, and they’re still true. We never, ever believe the truth until it’s too late.

  CHAPTER

  FORTY-EIGHT

  The pounding caught Jennica by surprise. She was in the kitchen, cleaning up the dishes from dinner. Nick had barbecued hamburgers, so it was simply plates with grease rather than armies of dirtied bowls and burned pots.

  “I’ll get it,” she called, drying her hands off on a dish towel before walking into the front room. Behind her she heard Nick close the back porch door, probably headed to the front room as well, wondering who was here.

  As soon as she opened the wooden door, a voice began to speak. “You used it, didn’t you?”

  The small dark-haired man at her door was the man from the supermarket; Jenn recognized him almost immediately. The thirty-years-out-of-date Buddy Holly glasses. The slightly hunched demeanor. She could picture him in a white stock coat instead of the gray T-shirt he wore now. He stepped inside, not waiting for an invitation.

  “You used the Ouija board, didn’t you?”

  Jenn shrugged. “Sure, I guess.”

  He rolled his eyes as his shoulders sank. “Then we’re all screwed,” he said.

  Nick walked in and stopped short when he saw the shopkeep.

  “Travis Lupe,” the short man said, holding out a hand. “I work at the general store.”

  “Hmmm,” Nick said. “Great. So, why are you here?”

  “You all used the Ouija board that Meredith left behind,” the man repeated.

  “I wanted to call her,” Jennica said in her own defense.

  Nick stepped forward, trying to help. “How do you know?” he asked. “And why do you care?”

  Travis absently pushed his glasses up with one finger and then answered, “Because I used to use it with Meredith. And because the Pumpkin Man’s back.” He looked around the room as if expecting something to jump out at him. “So it’s your fault.”

  “Whoa,” Nick said. He pointed to the couch, and Travis walked over to it. Nick shut the door behind him. “Tell us how.”

  The man from the grocery looked from Jenn’s eyes to Nick’s, and then he nodded, quickly. As if he were going to cop to a very big secret.

  “Look,” he said. “Meredith was nice to me. She always tipped me good when I delivered groceries up here. One day, she asked if I could stay a little longer after my delivery to help her out with something. The next thing I knew I was holding her palm with one hand and the wooden circle of a Ouija board thing with the other, we were sitting here in a dark room calling for spirits—and she was happy about it!” He paused. “Oh yeah, she was really happy, ’cuz then I was helping her talk to, like, devils.”

  “The Pumpkin Man,” Nick urged. “You said that we were responsible because of the Ouija. How?”

  Travis looked at him over the top of his glasses and laughed bitterly. “He’s not a man,” he said. “He’s some kind of devil. Meredith used to call and tell him what to do using the Ouija. So, if you’ve used it, that explains why he’s loose again. Why he killed Teri Hawkins and Erik Smith.”

  Jenn sat down on the couch. “We did use the board, and it worked, but we didn’t tell anyone to kill—”

  “You opened the connection,” Travis interrupted. “You let him back in.”

  “Bullshit,” Jenn snapped. “He’s been here for a while. He killed several people before I came to River’s End. Hell, he killed my father all the way out in Chicago. I didn’t start this.”

  “I didn’t say you started it,” Travis admitted. “I just said you opened the connection again and made it easier for him to come back. Meredith set it in motion and then you made it worse.”

  Jennic
a snapped. “Blame me as much as you want,” she said, “but tell me what we have to do to stop him. That’s all I care about. We have to stop him.”

  “We need to use the Ouija again,” Travis said. “But this time we need to do it right.”

  “Meaning?” asked Nick.

  “This time we need to keep him from ever coming back.”

  “And you know how to do that?”

  “I know how to try.”

  “And how is that?” Jennica asked.

  Travis watched her for a long time, his lips drawn in a tight line. Finally he spoke. “We need to talk to your aunt. Meredith started this. She is probably the only one who can finish it.”

  “Oh no,” Nick interjected, holding up a palm. “We’ve been down this road before.” He looked pointedly at Jenn and said, “We tried to talk to Meredith at my apartment, and the next morning we found a bunch of pumpkin pieces and Jenn’s best friend Kirstin was gone. If the Ouija board is what gets the monster moving, then I don’t think it’s a very good idea to use it again.”

  Travis made a face, his frustration palpable. “Don’t you see? The only way to get the genie back in the bottle is to open the bottle fully and—”

  Nick shook his head. “No! I don’t want to wake up dead tomorrow.”

  “Well, you wouldn’t really wake up, then, would you?” Jenn asked.

  Nick rolled his eyes. “Very funny. Do you really want to do this? Risk this?”

  Jenn sighed. “I would like to reach Meredith just once. I don’t think that was really her before.”

  “And why would it be any different now?”

  Travis butted in. “Because you’re in her house,” he said. “She’s closest in this location. You said you guys tried reaching her in another apartment, so God knows what kind of ghost you talked to there. Probably some old guy who hung himself in your bedroom.”

  “I don’t think anyone ever hung themselves in my bedroom,” Nick argued.

  “Whatever,” Travis said, before Jenn interrupted.

  “We did try to reach Meredith here,” she said. “But if she came, she never was able to stay . . .”

  “If you try to reach Meredith here with me in the room, I think it might work better.” He held up both hands, asking them not to interrupt or ask why. “Please,” he implored. “She knew me. And I need to talk to her one more time myself. And I really think she can help us stop this. I don’t think you want anyone else to die.”

  Jenn looked at Nick and bit her lips. “Let’s give it one more try.”

  Watching Nick’s face, she could tell he was going to give in. Somewhere along the line he had completely fallen for her. He would do whatever she asked, no matter what he thought of it. It was a feeling of power she’d never had before. So this was what it was like to be loved. She felt drunk with the feeling of possession. Human possession. It felt good.

  “I don’t want to wake up in the morning with a pumpkin for a head,” he warned.

  “I’ll ask him to use a cucumber instead.”

  “Nice.”

  “Just trying to be helpful.”

  “To who—you or me?”

  Travis looked pained. “Could we just try?” he asked again. “Please?”

  Jenn nodded. “I want to do this. I want to stop this. And”—she looked at Nick—“I want to know where Kirstin is.”

  Nick looked torn. “Once more,” he finally agreed.

  Jenn smiled and jumped up from the couch. Opening the stone from the fireplace, she pulled out the Ouija board and planchette and turned to set them down on the coffee table.

  “Not here,” Travis said. “There’s a better place.”

  “Where?” Jenn asked.

  “There’s . . . there’s another room in this house,” Travis said. “A room with no windows.”

  “The room off the kitchen?” Jenn asked.

  Travis nodded, looking surprised she knew it. “Meredith always said the wall to the other side was thinnest there.”

  Nick frowned. “Maybe that’s because she was trying to talk to the Pumpkin Man, and all of the bones of his victims are right there. I don’t think that’s who we want to reach.”

  Jenn shook her head wildly. “No!” she agreed.

  Travis didn’t blink. “The bones from the Pumpkin Man aren’t the only bones there, and they’re probably not the most powerful. I think the reason the room is useful has more to do with the things that have happened there.”

  “Such as . . . ?” Nick prompted.

  “Death. Sex with virgins. Ritual bloodletting. Burials.” Travis paused and pointed at the books on the bookshelves, the ones Nick and Jenn had been reading. “When the Perenais witches needed power for their spells, they went to that room. Meredith told me as much.”

  Jenn’s eye roved to the Book of Shadows. She had only had the chance to look at a small bit, but one of the themes amid its cryptic, rune-riddled pages was the importance to magic of place. She’d seen that in Meredith’s journal as well, and in some of the other books she’d skimmed in her aunt’s library. Magic was all about using symbology to tap into the power of the beyond. Symbols held power because of the truths they represented, places held power because of their stories. Spirits were drawn to both symbols and places.

  “Let’s go,” she said. “Do we need candles or incense or anything?”

  Travis shook his head. “Meredith lit candles, but there should still be some down there.”

  CHAPTER

  FORTY-NINE

  Scott pulled up the one-lane road on the hill that was River’s End and stepped out of the car to open the gate. The path beyond led to the Perenais house. He’d spent a lot of time there lately. There was something about this place. Something very wrong. He knew it in his soul, though his mind still wanted to simply follow up on evidence and catch a serial killer.

  He pulled up the gravel road and shut off his headlights before he got close enough for anyone in the house to notice. For a second, he felt as if he were sitting in limbo. Behind him, the soft rush of the ocean whispered. Ahead of him, the vague silhouette of the small house stood against the deep blue of the sky. The darkness of the edge of the world rushed over his car like a wave.

  Scott leaned back in the cushion of his seat and took a deep breath. He didn’t know whom or what he was watching for, but he knew that tonight he had to stay awake. He had to try to protect those kids in this house from whatever might be coming to get them.

  He didn’t know that he was already too late.

  CHAPTER

  FIFTY

  Jenn led the way to the kitchen and through the pantry. Nick and Travis followed. In moments they arrived in the room of bones. Nick used a candle he’d carried from the entryway to light a couple more that were still resident in wall sconces, and then he set his flame down in the center of the floor. Finally, they all knelt and set the Ouija down between them.

  Jenn sat cross-legged, and Travis, who angled himself to rest on one thigh, shook his head. “I don’t know how you can sit like that.”

  “Good breeding,” she quipped. “And being a bookworm, it gives me a great area to prop my books no matter where I’m at.”

  She set the planchette in the center of the board and eyed Travis, who sat to her left, then Nick, who was on her right. The coolness of the hidden room seeped up through the floor and she shivered, shimmers of light cast everywhere from the small struggling flames about the room.

  As the light moved against the wall like fire ghosts, twisting and drifting in and out of focus, Jenn pushed the planchette toward Travis. “Do you want to lead? I think you have a little more experience than I do.”

  He sneezed and shook his head. “I don’t know any more than you do, really. I just held the stupid ring for Meredith and tried to make my mind go blank. Which is harder than you’d think.”

  “No comment,” Nick muttered.

  “So, you all want me to drive this bus?” Jenn asked.

  Travis nodded.

&
nbsp; Jennica took a deep breath. “Okay. Put your fingers on the planchette and try to clear your minds. Travis, you knew Meredith, so it would probably help if you thought of her. Hard.”

  The grocery clerk nodded and leaned closer to the board, squinting his eyes shut and pressing his fingers hard to the wood ring.

  “Gentle touches,” Jenn reminded him. “I should barely know that anyone else is touching the planchette. Though . . . I guess I don’t really need to tell you this, Travis. You’ve apparently used this more than I have.”

  She gave first Nick and then Travis a squeeze on the arm, then put her front two fingers on the planchette. “Okay,” she whispered. “Let’s talk.” She felt her blood run warm as she said it.

  “Aunt Meredith,” she called out. “I know you’re near. You lived and died here, and your work continues on here. I need to talk to you. We need to talk to you. This is your Ouija board I am touching. Your witchboard. Please come to us now and advise us. I need you. We never talked much while you were alive, but I am your niece—your only remaining blood. I need you.”

  Jenn paused, and she could feel the tension emanating from Nick and Travis. Each was caught up for different reasons, she supposed. Nick simply wanted this all to be over. Travis wanted . . . something else. Maybe he really did want to stop the Pumpkin Man. She hoped so.

  The room had been chilly when they’d come in, but suddenly Jenn felt cold enough to see her breath. She shivered and breathed out gently, just to test, but did not see anything. Surprising.

  “Meredith,” she said again. “Can you hear us? Please give us a sign.”

  Jenn felt her fingers move slightly. She tried not to focus on it, because the whole point was to allow your muscles to be moved by someone else. But still, she looked down and saw the wooden ring inching across the board. It reached the left upper corner and stopped.

  The ring sat atop the word YES. Around them, the candlelight flickered against the wall like the semaphore of invisible souls. Animated and engaged, but eerily wordless. Jenn could hear every breath that the men next to her drew in, and that reminded her. The world—or perhaps more specifically, the afterworld—was watching.