by John Everson
“Would you mind giving me a few minutes of your time?” he asked. “I’d like to talk to you about—”
“The Pumpkin Man?” she said. “You know, Captain Jones stopped by here a couple months ago.”
Scott nodded. “I was hoping to get a little different perspective,” he explained. “I’m new to town and don’t have the same history he does.”
The woman gave a slight smile and pushed the door open. “Don’t know what good it will do, but sure, I’ll talk to you.”
When he stepped inside, Emmaline Foster’s living room appeared well lived-in. The walls were a deep red, but the room wasn’t dark, because there were also dozens of framed photos and pieces of art. Her walls were a gallery dedicated to her life.
“Can I get you a cup of coffee?” she asked, gesturing for him to sit on the couch. “I just brewed a pot.”
“Thanks,” he said, sinking into one of the deep brown cushions. “I’d love one. Black with a little sugar, please.”
She disappeared through an arched entryway, and Scott could see startlingly white tile and the corner of a kitchen table beyond. Its surface was black, and the chairs surrounding it were framed in silver metal with black cushion seats. Very deco, he thought.
Glasses clinked in the kitchen as he took in the room around him. It held a single couch and two light-blue easy chairs on either side of a low, stained coffee table. There was no TV or fireplace. Where the walls weren’t covered by frames, they were hidden by two bookcases and a curio cabinet. In the cabinet were a number of statuettes and some odd pieces of sculpture he couldn’t quite identify from across the room. Behind him on the wall were several pictures that featured Emmaline. She was younger, her hair longer, but the basic frame of the woman seemed unchanged. And while she’d always been thickset, going by the way her arms draped various men and women and the constant smiles and glinting playfulness in those teardrop eyes, she’d always been the life of the party.
She returned with two tall ivory mugs on a small rectangular tray that she set on the table. Motioning to a small ceramic pot she said, “I didn’t know how much you take, so I just brought the sugar.”
“Thanks, ma’am,” he said, and spooned in two heaps. “Was that your husband?”
He nodded at one of the photos in a black frame immediately behind his head. The tall, long-faced man appeared in several photos around the room, he’d noted. In this one, the man stood with his arm draped easily around a young Emmaline’s shoulders. The pictured room was crowded, and they both were dressed in fancy clothes. They appeared to be at some formal function.
She shook her head. “No,” she said. “That was my brother George. Harry’s over there.” She pointed to a picture of a heavyset, thirtysomething man with his hands on the shoulders of a young boy.
“Your son?” Scott probed, eyeing the youth.
She shook her head no but recanted. “Well, yes, he was mine for a few years. Justin was Harry’s boy from another marriage. We lost him when he was just twelve years old.” She sipped from her cup and didn’t elaborate.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Scott said, feeling lame.
Emmaline shrugged. “It was many years ago. I’m afraid time leaves everyone scarred.”
“It must have been very hard for you to lose your son and then your husband,” Scott said, then again felt stupid as the words left his mouth. She only nodded and stared, waiting for him to get to the point.
Scott shifted in his seat. “You obviously know that the Pumpkin Man killings have begun again,” he said. “And most of the victims have been the parents of the children who were killed in the eighties. Are you worried for your safety?” He inwardly rolled his eyes. That’s the best fishing you can come up with? he asked himself.
“No, I’m not worried,” she answered. “I think if he was going to come for me, it would have happened already. And anyway, I keep protection in my nightstand. He wouldn’t stand a chance.” She raised her eyebrow to punctuate a grin. It said, Just try to fuck with me and see what happens.
Scott nodded, pleased she wasn’t scared. “Can you tell me a little about the original killings?” he asked. “I mean, I’ve read the files, but I’ve not had the opportunity to talk to any of the other parents.”
Emmaline laughed. “Well no, you wouldn’t have, would you? Aren’t many left.”
Scott felt himself blush.
“It was a horrible couple of years,” she admitted. “Everyone blamed George for it, but I knew that he wasn’t guilty. My brother would never have done something like that. He wasn’t like the rest of the family. He was gentle as gentle could be.”
“Wait a minute,” Scott said, feeling stupid again for not having done his homework. “I hadn’t realized your maiden name was—”
“Perenais?” she finished for him. “Yes. I am Emmaline Perenais, and yes, the man everyone called the Pumpkin Man was my brother.”
CHAPTER
THIRTY-SIX
The ride north from San Francisco was long and troubling. Not because he’d blacked out sometime the night before and awoken many hours later covered in blood, but because he hadn’t.
Well, he had blacked out; he’d felt that coming on in his tiny living room and sank onto the old couch begging for it to pass. The next thing he knew, the sun was in his eyes, waking him from where he lay sprawled across the bucket seats of his Honda, parked behind a rusted, beaten-up blue VW on a quiet street lined with other parked cars. He had looked around at the low-hanging tree branches and the pastel mélange of tall and narrow houses along the sidewalk and then immediately at his hands. They were clean. No blood specks on his knuckles. No crimson rust beneath his fingernails. No used rubber gloves lying on the car floor.
He’d looked on the passenger seat, expecting to see the leather pouch he’d woken up with so many times after a blackout. But it wasn’t there. It wasn’t in the backseat either, or on the floor or stuck between the door and the seat. He was sure. He’d gotten out of the car, down on his knees along the curb and looked. Three times.
He hadn’t felt comfortable staying where he was. He’d reached into his jacket pocket and found his car keys right where he always kept them, started up the Honda and pulled out onto the road, not having any idea which direction he was facing, let alone where he was, but he’d thought he could figure those things out once he got a little farther down the road. A little ways away from the scene of the . . . nap? He couldn’t be sure there’d been a crime.
He didn’t see any weapon. Which was a large part of what worried him. He had never felt the blackout come on and then not awoken without the blood of some poor soul drenching him. And he’d never awoken from a blackout without those knives. Had he cleaned himself up for some reason at the scene of the murder but forgotten the blades? Would the police be able to trace any fingerprints on the knives to him? What exactly had he done? He’d never been sloppy before, not while under the control of the force that he now thought of simply as the Other, and this new wrinkle worried the hell out of him.
It hadn’t taken long before he realized he was somewhere in San Francisco not Santa Rosa. He’d stopped at a burrito joint, gotten some huevos rancheros to go and directions back to the 101. Now, an hour and a half later, he pulled into River’s End and the driveway of his apartment.
The first stop inside wasn’t the toilet but rather the shelf where he normally kept the knives after cleaning them. They always disappeared a day or two later, never stayed in his apartment long, but they were always there for a day or two after an incident. That was why he’d clean them.
They weren’t there. They weren’t in the utility space near the washer and dryer either, and they weren’t anywhere in his bedroom. He stood on a chair and looked on the top closet shelves and then got on his knees and peered under the bed. He turned the entire place upside down, but the knives did not come to light. He thought he knew why: he’d taken them somewhere on behalf of the Pumpkin Man.
But, something different had happened
this time. Maybe he’d used them, and maybe he hadn’t. He had no way of knowing.
It was an indisputable fact that the knives, the trademark of the Pumpkin Man, had not returned to River’s End with him. Months ago, he had flown all the way to Chicago to bring them home—not that he remembered much of the trip. But he felt responsible for them now.
In a sense he was glad they were gone. At the same time, he was scared to death. What had he done with them? Worse, what story would they tell when they were found?
CHAPTER
THIRTY-SEVEN
Emmaline Foster née Perenais watched the earnest young police officer walk down her crooked sidewalk and back to his squad car. The poor man was leaving with more questions than he’d brought, she imagined. She couldn’t help but smile at the memory of his expression when she’d told him she was Meredith’s sister-in-law. He’d come here thinking he could offer her protection. He hadn’t expected that she was related to the witch!
Her smile soured, however, when she thought of the reason that he came. The evil had risen yet again over the past few months. The legacy of Perenaises. From the house atop the hill, the house that was rightfully hers but had passed to an innocent from Chicago, a girl who would no doubt die at the hands of the evil if she chose to try to hold on to it.
Emmaline had never gotten along well with Meredith, and so she’d been unsurprised when the will left her unnamed. Still, she was a patient woman. Lord knows she’d lived with Harry long enough! She had been biding her time, waiting for someone to finally decide to dispose of the house following Meredith’s death—at which time she would put in her bid and take it back. Then the Perenais estate would revert to someone truly of the family. Emmaline knew things about the old house that nobody in town could ever imagine, no matter how their imaginations might wander the fields of superstition and fear. Even now, she could almost see the face of the elder crying out in the night from his hidden room up there.
Crouching down before her old coffee table, she pulled out the bottom drawer. From beneath a pile of colorful magazines and books she pulled a small red leather-bound tome that had once occupied a bookshelf of the Perenais family home and opened it to a well-worn page. It always made her feel better to read the spells of old before working on her own personal magics.
To Talk to the Dead the page title read.
CHAPTER
THIRTY-EIGHT
The ride down the hill from Emmaline’s house to River’s End seemed to last forever. That was in part because Scott Barkiewicz was not doing the speed limit through most of it. He and his squad car were thinking. Well, he was thinking. The car was just creeping along.
Emmaline Perenais was apparently the only person left in town related by blood to the Pumpkin Man. She’d said that George, her brother, was the last of the male line to carry the name, and that Jennica Murphy, the current heir of George’s house, was likely to die. The two things weren’t necessarily connected, but, out of the hour conversation they had, they were what Scott remembered.
He thought of the latter because he was sworn to protect the innocent; he’d had his doubts about Jennica Murphy, mostly, he admitted, because of his own personal prejudices. But now he worried he might be letting her down. The former fact worried him differently. Maybe he’d missed something in his questioning of Emmaline. He didn’t know what else he could have asked, but her relationship to the Perenais family and the fact that she was really the last of the line gave him a feeling that there was more to her than met the eye.
On a whim, he turned his car off the route to the police station and went in the opposite direction. Doing so, he pressed his foot down on the gas pedal with some urgency. A couple minutes later he stopped in front of the gate to the Perenais house. He let himself in, and the car crunched up the gravel road to stop in front of the house. He had parked and walked up to the front door before it occurred to him that he didn’t know what he was going to say.
The door opened before he’d had a chance to formulate a plan. Twice in one day he’d appeared on someone’s doorstep without fully doing his homework. This wasn’t like him at all.
“Hi, Officer.” Jennica stood in the doorway, her dark hair still kinked and curled funny from sleep. It cascaded down her oversize T-shirt and, looking at her, Scott had to laugh at himself internally for ever suspecting that she could have any complicity in a string of murders. Jennica Murphy was the ultimate girl next door, pretty in an understated way and pleasant as a sunny spring day. And apparently she slept late.
Her boyfriend appeared behind her, also looking somewhat rumpled. Scott suddenly wondered if he’d interrupted them, and if Jenn’s ratty (though still beautiful) hair was actually mussed from something other than from sleeping. Sex hair, they called that. Not that he saw it much.
“Is there some news?” the boyfriend—Nick, was it?—asked.
Scott directed his answer at Jenn. “No suspects captured, if that’s what you mean. But I did just visit with someone I found rather interesting. I believe she’s the last in-law your aunt had.”
Jenn’s eyes widened. “There’s a Perenais still in town? I thought Uncle George was basically the last.”
Scott shook his head. “Apparently his sister lives up on the ridge. I guess she’d be your aunt. Step-aunt? Her name’s Emmaline Foster. She lost her son to the original Pumpkin Man killings. She told me something that bothered me, so I wanted to stop up here and see if everything was all right.”
“We’re okay,” Jenn offered, opening the door farther. “Did you want to come in?”
Scott shook his head. “I don’t want to intrude. I just wanted to know if you’d seen or heard anything unusual since you got back from San Francisco.”
Jenn opened her mouth to speak, but Nick answered first. “No, it’s been quiet so far.”
“What did this Emmaline say that bothered you?” Jenn asked.
Scott hesitated a minute and then decided it hurt nothing to warn the girl. Something bad was on the loose and, like it or not, she’d plopped herself in its epicenter. “She told me that you were in danger living here in this house.” He shrugged. “I didn’t want to let you back in right after a murder myself, but the captain figured you had no place to go. So . . . keep an eye out, okay? And keep your doors locked. I’ll check up on you whenever I can.”
Nick nodded, but said nothing. Scott searched for something more to say, but came up with nothing. Feeling awkward, he stepped back off the porch “Call me if you see anything unusual. Anything at all.”
He hadn’t felt this unprofessional in all his days. Not that he’d had too many of them.
Jenn and Nick watched the policeman get into his squad car. He’d been unfriendly when they first met, but this time he’d been a heck of a lot more considerate. Nervous. She wondered what he knew—or what he thought he knew.
She mumbled under her breath, “Unusual? Well, there’s this dead guy behind my pantry, and last night I followed a ghost in there. Other than that, nothing strange at all.”
Nick elbowed her. “I didn’t think you wanted the cops ripping the house up again, and if you started talking about ghosts and bones and mummies, they’d either insist on seeing the evidence or cart you off to talk to the nice doctor about what the ink blots look like.” He pushed the door shut and turned the lock before folding her into his arms and bending to kiss her. Her lips tasted warm and softly sweet. Wonderfully familiar after the past few days.
“I think that he gave you a lead for your own investigation, though,” he admitted.
“How’s that?”
“Emmaline Foster. Maybe you should invite her over for dinner.”
“What do you think she—?” Jenn began, but Nick cut her off.
“Jenn, she was George Perenais’s sister. I bet she could fill us in on this house. She grew up here. She’ll know more about it than anyone in town, and I’m betting she’s not telling the cops a thing about the secret mummy room, though I would bet my right arm she’s b
een inside it. How could you grow up in this house and not know about that room? Kids find every hiding place there is!”
Jenn’s eyes widened. “He said Foster with an F, right?”
Nick nodded.
“Grab the phone book.”
CHAPTER
THIRTY-NINE
It was turning out to be quite the Wednesday, and Wednesday’s child was likely filled with woe. Lots and lots of woe, Emmaline Perenais Foster thought to herself. The thought filled her with great comfort. Other people’s woe would become her pleasure.
Pulling a fresh white blouse from her closet, she drew it over her shoulders, stretched her arms and then tugged on the bottom until it felt comfortable. She hadn’t worn it in a long while, and her old clothes just didn’t feel the same way on her body that they used to. She wasn’t invited to many social engagements these days, so her wardrobe was meager and dated. Not that this was strange. The Perenais family had never been embraced with open arms, even though they’d been among those families that founded this town.
She looked in the mirror and buttoned the first of four buttons that would close the blouse up to her neckline if she chose. She left the last buttons open, though, offering a glimpse of cleavage. Just for fun. Emmaline was fifty-seven years old and thrice her girlhood girth, but she still prided herself on her bosom. It had helped her get what she wanted on many occasions.
Leaning close to the mirror, she drew a smooth line of deepest red across her lips and then pursed those lips. Her deep brown eyes and cutely slanted nose still offered an attractiveness that would seduce the world, she believed, a world that would never know what wickedness lived beneath. Her painted lips split into a satisfied smile. The townsfolk may have shunned her as a Perenais, but they really would have choked had they known it all.
“Truth is stranger than fiction,” she murmured to herself. And it was. Most of the things the town believed of the Perenais family were simply fiction. Oh, they thought the Perenais clan was bad news. Generations upon generations of bad seeds. They had no idea.
