The Pumpkin Man

by John Everson

  “Meredith,” she breathed. “I’ve tried to reach you before, and I am not sure if it was really you who answered. I hope that you can hear me now, because I’ve waited so long to talk to you and I really do need you. But things here are a little . . . messed up right now. I need to know something, and I think you can help.”

  She took a quick glance at Nick and Travis. Both men had their eyes closed to slits, struggling presumably to keep their minds clear. She was the only one who wandered.

  “Did the Pumpkin Man kill Kirstin?” Jenn asked finally.

  The planchette shivered, as if its motion was somehow blocked. Then it slid off YES for a moment, only to slip back on. It didn’t move.

  “Did the Pumpkin Man kill Brian?” Nick asked. His voice was quiet yet firm. He had to know.

  Again, the wooden ring shivered and moved under all of their fingers, slightly off the mark and then quickly back on.

  “No surprise,” Nick murmured.

  “No,” Jenn agreed.

  She quieted as she felt her fingers slip through the air; the board seemed to take control of itself for a question. All of their hands moved across the wooden surface, letters forming the first word, which Nick read out loud.

  “‘Ask.’”

  Huh. Meredith seemed to have a question for them. And word by word, the planchette spelled it out, moving quickly between letters and then pausing between words. Nick read them out, slowly and in order:

  ASK

  TRAVIS

  DID

  HE

  KILL

  ME?

  At the word “kill,” Travis’s face went bedsheet white. But he didn’t immediately pull away, instead allowing the ghost to finish her sentence. The damage was already done, and he waited to see what Meredith would do to him from beyond the grave.

  “Did you make the Pumpkin Man?” Travis asked, his voice reedy and desperate in the empty space.

  The planchette did not move.

  “Answer the question Meredith asked,” Jenn suggested. “Did you kill my aunt, Travis?”

  The man pulled his hand back from the wooden circle and pushed away from her and Nick at the same time. He crawled backward, crablike, slipping farther away from them, though there was really no place he could go.

  “I was only trying to help her at first,” he began.

  “Did you kill my aunt?” Jenn insisted, her voice dead and cold. “Answer me.”

  “Yes,” Travis said, his voice trembling. There would be no arguing with her. “I killed Meredith. But I had to. She was using the Pumpkin Man to get rid of all the people who’d hurt him when he was alive. It was wrong.”

  Nick rose from Jenn’s side and stepped toward him. Travis was visibly shaking.

  “What made you think killing Meredith was going to stop the Pumpkin Man from continuing to manifest? I mean, once she called him, he was loose, right?”

  Travis shook his head. “He used to only come on the nights she used the board.”

  “Didn’t it take some time before the bodies showed up? So, how do you know he came those nights. Did you see him?” Nick asked.

  “No,” Travis said, clearly hesitating. “I know because . . . because . . .” He backed farther away from Jenn and Nick. He moved toward the bones that hung on the wall.

  “I know because every night after Meredith had me use the Ouija board, I fell into a heavy sleep. In the morning, I woke up with knives on the floor covered with blood. She was using the Ouija board to open the door to the killer, and then she helped that spirit hide in my body until nightfall. So in a way, I am the Pumpkin Man. Or at least I was until recently.”

  “You twisted little psychopath,” Nick yelled. “You killed Brian!” He started toward Travis, who backed toward the altar. The storekeeper didn’t refute the accusation.

  “Wait,” Jenn demanded, and Nick stopped, one fist still raised. Travis leaned away with his back to the wall of bones. “If you are the Pumpkin Man . . .”

  Travis shook his head. “I’m not. The Pumpkin Man . . . he just . . . ‘rides me,’ is what Meredith used to say.”

  Jenn shook her head. “I get it. But if you—for all intents and purposes—are the Pumpkin Man, then that means you killed my father, too. Please tell me why. He was in another state; he had nothing to do with Meredith. They never even talked.”

  Travis sighed. “Your father made one major mistake,” he said. “When he came out here to put Meredith’s estate in order, he took some things home with him. Things that needed to stay in this house. I don’t normally remember much of what happens when I’m possessed—a few memories sometimes seep back the next day—but I do remember a few things about that trip, probably because he had to take over for such a long time. He had to book a plane, fly to Chicago, find the apartment and then get back. I know some of what happened.”

  Travis stared at Nick and Jenn and tightened his lips, thinking. Finally he elaborated. “Meredith bought the Pumpkin Man a special set of knives when he was alive, and she made some kind of spell over them to exaggerate his skill in carving. Don’t get me wrong, he was good without them, but with them? Well, that’s when he became known around here as the Pumpkin Man. Those knives are important in all of this. Your father somehow found the Pumpkin Man’s knives. I flew to Chicago to take them back.”

  “But . . . why weren’t they at your place if you were the one who’s been using them?” Jenn asked.

  Travis shook his head. “I used them, but eventually they always came back here. To this room, in fact. A night or two after I cleaned everything up, the knives would disappear from my apartment. I know because one time I opened my eyes and I was here with those knives in my hand. Believe me, I totally freaked out. I mean, I knew the place; your aunt and I used the Ouija board here. But, waking up from a dead sleep and finding yourself here, in a room full of bones, in someone else’s house . . . ?” He shuddered. “It was almost worse than knowing what the Pumpkin Man used me to do.”

  Jenn opened her mouth to say something, but she stopped and reconsidered. “What did you mean when you said you were the Pumpkin Man until recently?”

  “I mean, I didn’t kill Emmaline,” Travis said. “And I didn’t hurt your friend.”

  “Kirstin?” Jenn offered.

  He nodded.

  Jenn was perplexed. “You killed the others but not them? Why?”

  Travis shrugged. “I wish I knew.”

  “So, what makes you think you didn’t?”

  “The knives disappeared again,” Travis said. His voice shook. “I haven’t seen them in days.”

  “So, where are they?” Nick asked. He didn’t announce This sounds like bullshit, but the tone of his voice did.

  “I don’t know,” Travis said. “I woke up in my car near San Francisco a few days ago, and they weren’t with me. I didn’t remember driving there, which means the Pumpkin Man took me there—but I’m pretty sure I didn’t do anything horrible. Normally after any night the Pumpkin Man takes my body, I’m a horrible mess: blood, dirt, whatever. This time, though, I just woke up on a strange road in a strange place. My clothes were fine. No blood.

  “I didn’t have the knives anywhere in the car either. I went home and looked for them, and they weren’t there. Usually after an . . . event, the knives are still with me and I clean them up and get rid of any other evidence. The next night they disappear. I usually remember snippets of how they disappear, though, and where. Usually they come back here, and I go back to my room and fall into a deep sleep.

  “This time, that didn’t happen. There were no bloody knives to clean up. I drove myself home wondering what happened. The next day, you guys were back up here and I heard that your friend disappeared. I know I didn’t do that. And today I found out that Emmaline was killed. Well, I slept fine last night and didn’t wake up this morning feeling afraid. There were no bloody clothes to burn and no bloody knives to clean. For once I knew I had nothing to do with it.”

  Travis’s eyes widened,
and he leaned toward Jenn and Nick, clearly wanting to make an impression. “I think the spirit used me last week to deliver the knives to someone else. Someone he could ride better. Or easier.”

  “Why did you kill my aunt?” Jenn asked. “The woman who helped you?”

  Travis spat, “She didn’t help me. She used me, like I just said. Yeah, she tipped well, but that’s about all. Why did I kill her? Because I thought it would stop this insanity. I never wanted to kill anyone. She made me. Or, I guess, someone else made me. Someone she contacted. I didn’t kill anyone but her, which I only did because I wanted this to stop!”

  Nick moved toward Travis, but Travis bolted across the room and around the edge of the dark L. But as he rounded the corner, he tripped and went down with a surprised “Oomph.”

  Jenn moved to help before her boyfriend did something stupid. She registered something else, however. Something terrifying. Travis had fallen because there was a new pumpkin in the middle of the floor, just around the corner from the mummy. In tripping, Travis had knocked its top off, and as Jenn looked inside she saw a lock of salt-and-pepper hair and a bloodied patrician nose. She knew in a heartbeat whose head it was: Emmaline’s.

  Just beyond was another pumpkin. This one Travis hadn’t knocked over, but Jenn could see through the eyeholes that there was another human head inside. A human head with blonde hair. Kirstin.

  Before she could react, she noticed Nick. Rising from a crouch, he now had a knife in his hand and stepped toward her with a strange smile on his face, an expression she’d never seen outside of a horror movie. An expression of hate and hunger mixed together.

  “Nick?” Jenn asked, stepping backward. Beside her, Travis scrambled to pull his clumsy self upright.

  “Not right now,” Nick said in a voice that Jenn didn’t recognize. He lunged at Travis, who went down a second time, and Jenn jumped away, trying not to come in physical contact with either of them.

  Travis cried out. “It’s you! He’s riding you. For God’s sake, wake up, Nick, don’t do this.”

  Nick laughed. It didn’t sound quite like Nick, really. The voice was deeper, slower. It was the dark cackle of a Methuselah given one last chance at life and nothing was going to get in his way, and Jenn suddenly realized she’d spent last night making love to the man who’d killed her best friend. Who’d killed Emmaline. Travis was right.

  Nick was larger than Travis. With one arm he slammed the man to the floor, and he had no problem holding the struggling clerk down. A long serrated knife popped out and pressed hard against the smaller man’s Adam’s apple.

  “Nick!” Jenn screamed, and she reached out to grab his knife arm.

  Nick’s strangely cold face turned to her, and he said one word with such finality that it rooted her in place. “Don’t.”

  He turned back to Travis, then, ignoring her. But Jenn knew that if she did anything, it would only bring that knife down faster. She waited, uncertain of what to do. If Nick just moved the knife a little bit away from Travis’s throat . . .

  “I helped you,” Travis gasped. His eyes twitched and widened, studied the face of the man who held him down. Nick’s eyes didn’t blink. His lips didn’t move. For a fleeting second, Travis wondered if the man still breathed.

  “You never helped me,” Nick said. His smirk slowly widened in a shark’s grin. “I borrowed you, that’s all. You didn’t come here tonight to help me, and I don’t need to borrow you anymore. I like my current situation much better.”

  He pressed the knife tighter to Travis’s throat, and Jenn saw a line of crimson begin to well up along its silver teeth. She stood frozen. Any movement might drive Nick to slit Travis’s throat. Then again, Jennica told herself, that was probably going to happen anyway.

  She grimaced and tensed. She needed to try. She hoped this wasn’t the wrong move.

  Gritting her teeth and praying, she kicked Nick as hard as she could in the stomach. He grunted and lifted off Travis, curling into a ball for a moment and letting out a moan of horrible pain.

  Travis’s eyes widened as he realized he was free. The line of blood across his neck twisted and dripped as he pushed himself upright, and he rose to a crouch with the full intention of running for the door. But intentions don’t always play out. Nick recovered almost instantly. He came out of the fetal position and rolled to his feet. His fist shot out and caught Jenn on the cheek so hard she saw stars; she lost her balance and fell to the floor. Then Nick took three quick steps and kicked Travis’s feet out from under him.

  “I have suffered you long enough,” the voice inside Nick said, and with one hand he slammed Travis back to the floor. With the other, he raised the long, thin serrated knife of the Pumpkin Man, and Jenn watched, paralyzed, still blinking back sparks in her vision, as he brought the blade down like a dagger.

  The tip of the knife slipped through the top of Travis’s right eye socket without resistance. The clerk screamed, his agony a sound that brought tears to Jenn’s eyes, but the blade didn’t slow. Instead, Nick pulled the blade along the outline of Travis’s eyeball in a wet spray of crimson and pain. Then, as Jenn started to rise, Nick flipped the gory object to land with a wet splat on the floor between them. Jenn looked down and saw the pale blue iris staring up at her with vacant horror.

  Nick’s arm stabbed the knife into the other side of Travis’s face, performing the exact same excision on the other eye. Travis thrashed and screamed beneath him, but he failed with his kicks and punches to dislodge his possessed assailant.

  Jenn stopped moving to help Travis and instead began to back away. She knew that she couldn’t save the clerk, and her own instincts for self-preservation had kicked in. What did the Pumpkin Man have in store for her?

  She didn’t wait to find out. As she watched the blade jab and slice with wicked precision into Travis’s face, she backed toward the door. She couldn’t save the dying man on the floor, but she might still be able to save herself.

  From behind her, she heard the devil laugh. “You can run,” he said with Nick’s tongue as she turned and ran for the door back to the pantry and the kitchen, “but I will always find where you hide.”

  She reached the faint light of the kitchen, and there Jenn turned and raced for the front door. But when she reached the front room, she slowed. Where was she going to go next? Was she going to outrun Nick in the darkness?

  Travis gave a last shriek, which cut off abruptly as if someone had pulled the plug on a stereo. The house was silent.

  Jenn took her hand off the doorknob and looked to the Book of Shadows, which was still sitting open where she’d left it on the end table near the couch. The thing that was in Nick was not going to go away just because she got in the car and drove a hundred miles. Or a thousand. It could live for a millennium and inhabit a hundred bodies to achieve its aim. It was going to follow her, and it was going to kill her. She could hear it laughing even now in the other room as it carved a hideous shape from the clay of Travis’s dying body.

  Jennica picked up the Book of Shadows. Maybe, somehow, Meredith had left her a clue. Her aunt had started this; wouldn’t she have known how to end it? That was her only hope.

  She flipped through the pages, not knowing what to even look for. Much of the text vacillated from French to Latin, and she could only make out a few words here and there. But then she found a clump of pages stuck together, and she slipped a finger between them to split them. It was obvious now why they were stuck together. The pages were glued with blood.

  Emmaline’s? Hadn’t this book come from Emmaline?

  Jenn’s eyes widened. Her aunt’s sister-in-law had probably been wounded by the Pumpkin Man as she read the words on this page. Emmaline would have known about this monster, would have known how to make it go away. Maybe. And, Jenn could make out some of these words herself. They were in French, and the top of the page said simply, Banishment. Beneath, a paragraph described something about destroying the home of a soul to banish it, the heart and bones—

/>   The door to the pantry slammed.

  Jenn started again toward the front door and then realized her car keys were in the bedroom. It would do very little good for her to run for the hills without a vehicle, so she ran for her bedroom holding the book in one hand, and snatched the keys from her dresser with the other. But as soon as she picked them up she could hear Nick’s feet in the hallway outside. She wasn’t going to be leaving by the front.

  Well, sometimes you had to sneak out through the back door. She darted toward the basement entrance, unlocked it and slammed the door behind her. She pulled the cord to light the basement, but as soon as she stepped down a few stairs, she heard the door above her open.

  Fuck.

  She ran as soon as she reached the floor of the basement, but she slowed when she reached the workbench. Once, long ago, Meredith’s husband had used this as his office. She’d noted it before, filled with drills, saws, hammers, goggles and other hardware. The wall above the bench was filled with screwdrivers, pliers and other things, all hung from small hooks.

  Jenn stopped at the bench and slipped her hand around a wooden hammer handle. It felt good in her hand.

  Pulling it off its hook on the wallboard, she kept running. She raced down the corridor toward the crypt, not slowing even as she entered that cloistered room. She knew the bones of the Pumpkin Man rested here, or at least the bones of George Perenais. This demon was tied to him, wasn’t it? Destroying those bones would destroy it. So she had to hope.

  She thought about kneeling to ask forgiveness, but then decided that there really was no time. “We’re done,” she said at the front of the coffin.

  Footsteps whispered behind her.

  “Fuck,” she breathed, laying the book out atop the coffin, flipping back to the bloodstained page on banishment, praying to see anything more that might help her. She knew she could escape from him now—she could go up the back stairway to the graveyard and run down the hill toward town. But that was just a delay. He would follow her. No matter where she went.