The Pumpkin Man

by John Everson

  Emmaline slipped a long tartan skirt over her tan hose and tucked in her blouse, then slipped on a pair of black flats; she’d outgrown the masochism of heels twenty-five years ago. She chose a small handbag, picked out a small key from her jewelry box and then walked out of her bedroom and down the hall. At the back stairs, she unlocked a door and flipped a light switch.

  Down she went, one gray plank at a time, until she stood on the soft earth of the fruit cellar. Most of the homes in River’s End were without basements; when half a town is built into the side of a cliff, it’s difficult to excavate too far down without hitting solid stone. But Harry and a friend of his had worked like dogs one summer when she and he first married, and together they’d build this cellar she’d told him she’d always wanted. Little did he know he was digging his own grave.

  The fruit cellar wasn’t as grandiose as the dark chapel beneath the Perenais family estate, but it served her purposes. Emmaline picked up the old, hand-bound book set reverently on a small table near the brick wall, and flipped to page sixty-nine. She knew the page by heart, because she turned to it almost every day when she descended the stairs and made her visitation. It contained words handwritten in the blood of a virgin drained and drunk by her ancestor three centuries before atop the bones of Maldita. The Perenais family had drunk the souls of virgins for centuries.

  She looked up at the shriveled skin of the sallow nude body that leaned against the far corner of the cellar. In some ways, the years hadn’t aged him; his hair remained black, where hers was salted with gray. He’d always had a weakness for beer, and it showed in the rounded sag of his gut, though his paunch looked small compared to the panniculus she had nurtured over the years. She had always been one to indulge. Indulgence was something of a Perenais religion.

  His face. She wished it had preserved better. The eyelids and surrounding skin were sunken in a strange way around the marbles she’d used to replace his eyes, which now hung suspended in a jar on the shelves behind her. And the rictus of his lips looked painfully drawn against yellowed teeth that jutted forward much more than they had in life. They looked crude, animalistic. Death did not become him, Emmaline decided. Perhaps he would have survived the years better if she’d been able to remove him from his burial plot sooner than she had all those years ago.

  “I’m going out for the evening, Harry,” she said to her husband’s corpse. Then, before she left, she read the words she pronounced over his dead flesh every day. It still made her tingle inside.

  “Dans l’enfer je te célèbre

  dans le sang, je te vénère

  et dans le sexe je te tue.”

  To hell, I commend you.

  In blood, I love you.

  In sex, I kill you.

  An evil prayer, the credo of Family Perenais.

  CHAPTER

  FORTY

  Something bad was going to happen, Captain Jones could feel it in his bones.

  He stood on the cliff overlooking the Russian River estuary and listened to the twilight cries of the sea lions; they slipped off the embankment and swam away with hoarse, barking echoes to wherever sea lions go when the sun goes down. He stood and worried that, with the coming of the night, something horrible was due back in town, a tide of evil that no small-town cop with a gun and a green deputy was going to dissuade. He could scare the high school shoplifters and put the fear of a life behind bars into the wife beaters, but what could he do against a force that slipped in and killed, and carved, and killed again, always unseen in the darkness? The circle was broken. The devil was again on the loose.

  When he was younger, the Pumpkin Man had come to town and taken the souls of children. Nobody quite knew why, but they presumed the horror stopped because of the murder of George Perenais, the last male heir of the founding family that occupied the house overlooking the town for more than 150 years. They’d become smug and certain that the evil was snuffed out, that his widow from Chicago was powerless to carry on the traditions of the family, whether those traditions were paranormal or simply sociopathic. The Pumpkin Man had been relegated to the position of urban myth. Kids whispered his name in the dark, half expecting the boogeyman to jump out when they said “Pumpkin Man” three times in a dark mirror, but it never happened. Then he—or his evil twin—reappeared a few months ago, decimating the remaining parents of the children killed two decades ago.

  Jones had been powerless to intervene. He’d seen the pattern quickly enough, and he’d posted close watches on the likely victims, but that vigilance hadn’t done anything but give Officer Barkiewicz the start of a doughnut gut from sitting in squad cars outside of dark homes for hours every night. Jones had been on that watch as well, but neither he nor Scott had ever seen anyone enter the homes of the victims, even though Scott was on the curb near her house the night Teri Hawkins was killed.

  A part of him had felt that the relentless slaughter of those parents was unstoppable, to be honest, vigilante justice in reverse. With the death of Teri, he’d thought the spree was done because there were no more parents to kill aside from Emmaline—and, being a Perenais, he had always assumed she’d be immune to whatever evil the family culled in the ancient graveyard behind their house. Then the killer branched out and took down the friend of Jennica Murphy, and Jones’s stomach had sunk lower than it had in years. It had made him just plain afraid.

  Afraid that the evil on the loose would never stop. Afraid that he was always going to be powerless to stop it.

  He stared first at the red glow of the sun on the horizon and then behind him to the deep blue night that crept in from the east, cloaking everything in mystery. Would tonight be the night? Would the Pumpkin Man take another innocent soul from River’s End and leave a jack-o’-lantern in place of its head? Jones cringed at the thought. And that he was powerless to stop it.

  He lifted a coffee purchased a half hour ago from Dana’s Diner to his lips and sipped. He’d need the jolt of cream-softened caffeine. It was Scott’s night off, and something told him he’d be getting a call about something horrible before the sun rose again in the east.

  “Fuck intuition,” he mumbled to himself as he sipped the hot coffee. It was bitter yet smooth. Fuckin’ Hawaiian Kona and cream. He loved and hated it in the same sip, every time.

  On the horizon, the deep red of the sun was swallowed beneath the soft, rushing waves. Jones gave an involuntary shiver and took a deep and final swig from the Styrofoam cup. The night had come at last.

  Meredith Perenais’s Journal

  November 23, 2009

  Three brains of raccoon

  Five sprigs of Fellwort

  The heart of a child harvested from its mother at birth

  The bone of a priest

  The finger of a slayer

  The spit of a lady

  I’m keeping the spell bag with me. I know that totems and bones don’t really do much, but I have to believe that they will. It is belief not words that gives power.

  I believe that I am in danger.

  I believe that George still loves me.

  I believe that I am going to die soon.

  Scratch that. I’m trying not to believe the last part.

  CHAPTER

  FORTY-ONE

  “Something’s ringing!” Jenn called as she flipped the pepper steak with a spatula in the big wrought-iron pot on the stove.

  She hadn’t really known what to make tonight, but ordering in pizza seemed the wrong way to meet even distant family so she’d defaulted to a slightly more formal favorite. Pepper steak slow cooked with onions, red peppers, sherry and mushrooms. She’d grown up with it as a Sunday afternoon staple that filled the house with the smell of warmth and happiness. Jennica missed those Sunday afternoons, so cooking today was a cathartic experience.

  It seemed the right offering for her dad’s sister-in-law. Jenn felt the comfort of her childhood return while she braised the meat and sautéed the onions and mushrooms. Then she’d peeled potatoes and thrown them in a pot t
o boil down then mash with milk and butter, and she’d mixed up another pot with cream of celery soup and freeze-dried onions for a baked bean dish.

  Dinner was due in an hour, and Emmaline was due at the door in fifteen minutes. The last rays of the sun were already coloring the front room and hallway deep red. It got dark early and fast up here, Jenn had discovered.

  Nick walked into the kitchen and fished the ringing cell phone from his black jacket, which hung on the back of a chair. “Hello?” he said, quickly walking out of the room.

  Jenn flipped the meat, stirred the potatoes, and then peeked into the living room. Nick was on the couch, talking in low tones. He didn’t meet her eye, so she walked back to her bedroom to look in the mirror. She’d worn a casual lavender shirt with her good jeans. Her hair was flaking out because of the humidity of the kitchen, but she didn’t suppose her aunt-in-law would care.

  “What do you hope to learn here?” she asked her reflection. The mirror didn’t answer.

  When she returned to the kitchen, Nick was waiting. He said, “I have to go back to San Francisco the day after tomorrow. They’ve set up Brian’s wake and funeral. Closed casket, obviously.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Jenn offered.

  “You don’t have to,” Nick said. He put up a hand.

  “I want to.”

  “Well, we’ll have to let the cops know, I guess,” he said. “If we’re going to disappear out of town again.”

  “We can call them,” she agreed. But she felt vaguely unsettled by the whole exchange.

  The chime of the doorbell interrupted.

  “Game on,” Nick joked, and pointed through the living room. Jenn supposed he was right.

  She walked out to open the front door. A woman stood on the other side of the screen, a woman who had seen a year or sixty but who still had the bright light of life in her eyes. She had graying but well-coiffed hair, dark eyes, and she appeared to have had more than a passing acquaintance with big-plate dinners.

  “Hi,” Jenn said. “I’m Jennica Murphy.”

  The woman grinned with one side of her mouth as the screen door was opened to her. “Hi,” she answered. “I’m your aunt’s sister-in-law, Emmaline. It’s nice to meet a member of the family. Haven’t been many of us around here these past few years.”

  Jennica smiled as warmly as she could, considering the fear that was burning through her. “Come on in,” she offered. “I assume you’ve probably been here before.”

  “I grew up in this house,” Emmaline agreed, stepping inside.

  Jenn ushered her to the couch, feeling foolish. “Can I get you something to drink? Wine? Beer? Pop?”

  “Bloody Mary?” Emmaline asked.

  “I can do that,” Nick spoke up. He grinned at Jenn and said, “I picked up some spicy V8 when I stopped at the store earlier. And your aunt left us plenty of vodka.”

  Jenn and Emmaline exchanged pleasantries while Nick fixed drinks. When they all sat down, Emmaline put a blade to the veneer of social interaction.

  “You didn’t ask me here to get to know the old folks from town,” she said. “So, let’s talk. What do you know? What do you want to know?”

  Jenn hid her surprise with a crooked smile, feeling at the same time she should be careful of coming across as accusatory. “I want to know what went on in this house,” she admitted. “I want to know how my aunt got a reputation as a witch. I want to know why the basement has such strange things. I want to know a lot of things. It all seems so . . . unreal!”

  Emmaline tipped back her drink and smiled, swallowing the heady mix of tomato and vodka that Nick had made purposefully rich. “There are a lot of things to know,” she agreed. “The question is, how deep do you want to go?”

  “I’ve been reading Meredith’s journal,” Jenn explained. “I know that she was trying to tap into powers and things that I don’t really understand. And I know that there are things hidden in this house . . .”

  She paused, glancing at Emmaline to gauge her reaction, but the older woman gave up nothing; she sipped her drink, put her glass down and stared stolidly back.

  “I was hoping you could tell me some of the secrets about this house,” Jenn sallied, pushing forward again. “I mean, there’s a door from my bedroom that leads to a cemetery.”

  Emmaline gave a rueful smile. “I know,” she said. “We used to play down there as kids. We had to go through my parents’ bedroom whenever we wanted to go downstairs.”

  “So, you know about the graveyard and the crypt?”

  Emmaline nodded. “Of course. My grandparents—or maybe great-grandparents—had the tunnel built so that no matter what the season was, no matter if it was hot and stifling or cold and snowing, they could get to the vault of their ancestors to give prayers. The Perenais family was very close.”

  The woman shifted on the couch and leaned down to pick up her glass from the coffee table. As she did, her blouse shifted until the freckled and creamy skin of her bosom pressed against the outer rim of her shirt. Jenn had the distinct impression that the woman was intentionally positioning herself to get Nick to look at her boobs. And, when she looked over at her boyfriend, damn him if he wasn’t. Louse!

  “Why did people in town distrust your family?” Jenn asked.

  Emmaline laughed. “Distrust? They hated us. I mean”—she leaned in conspiratorially—“how could they not? We have given and taken away life a hundred times in the last fifty years. Nobody’s appreciative of the good things that others do, they only remember the bad.”

  Jenn blanched. “What do you mean?” Had the woman really just said that she’d taken life?

  “I mean that your aunt married into a family of power,” Emmaline explained. “And she appreciated and understood that. She embraced it. She wasn’t the kind of woman I would have selected for my brother, but he loved her. That’s all that matters, I suppose.” She sipped her Bloody Mary.

  “I want to do right by my aunt,” Jenn said, “but with all the things we’ve found in this house, well . . . I’m worried that she might have done some horrible things.”

  “You and me both,” the woman said. “Meredith always had a fascination with the darker paths. I don’t know if it was because George locked her up here until she was bored enough to invoke demons or if that’s just the way she was. I didn’t ever get to know her that well—though, from what I saw she was interested in some horrible things. Tell me, what have you found, exactly?”

  Jenn started to answer, but Nick cut her off. “There’s a stairway to a crypt at the foot of her bed,” he said.

  Emmaline shrugged. “As I said, we used to play down there. Coffins won’t hurt you.”

  “No,” Nick said. “But a Pumpkin Man will.”

  Emmaline’s face was unreadable. “Perhaps.”

  The conversation paused. Jenn looked sideways at Nick, who still appeared to be eyeing the dark line of the older woman’s cleavage. When his eyes flicked her way, he smiled—a little falsely, she thought.

  “Some people in town obviously thought the Pumpkin Man killer was my uncle,” Jenn said. “Your brother. Do you think that’s true?”

  Emmaline shrugged. “If his body did the killing, George wasn’t in it at the time,” she said.

  “What? What do you mean?” Nick asked.

  “George was shy and quiet. He would never have hurt a fly. He hardly seemed to belong in the family, actually. The rest of us . . . well, let’s just say the Perenais line is strong-willed and outspoken.” She smiled and sipped her drink again. “George? He was the quiet one. Artistic. That’s how he got into pumpkin carving. When he was a boy, he was always painting and sculpting something.”

  The woman paused and looked around the room, pointed to a clay figurine on the fireplace mantel: a man and woman merged at the groin but bending backward away from each other with their hands and heads. “That’s one of his pieces there,” she said. “He would never have killed anyone. Now if Meredith got him possessed, I suppose it’s possi
ble.”

  “Possessed?” Jenn repeated.

  “Your aunt was very interested in talking to spirits,” Emmaline explained. “She used a witchboard quite often and tried to seek the counsel of spirits. But, talking to the dead is dangerous business. I warned her of that many times.”

  “How did she get into that stuff?” Jenn asked. “I remember meeting her when I was little. She seemed normal to me then.”

  “How? Look around you,” Emmaline said. “This house is filled with books on magic. My family has always been a center for the mystical; the house has always been a lodestone for people with such interests. Townies always knew you could come to the Perenaises and pay for simple charms and spells, they knew it long before your aunt. As woman of the house, Meredith took on that responsibility. She wanted it.”

  “But how did she learn? Who taught her?”

  “I did,” Emmaline admitted. “Some. Other things she learned from books or came to on her own. It’s not exact, magic. Much of what people call sorcery is simply learning to invoke your will on the unseen. There’s no recipe for that. And some people simply don’t have the knack. But . . . your aunt was a natural.”

  “Would you be able to teach me?” Jenn asked.

  Nick glanced up. “Are you crazy?”

  “No,” Jenn said. “It seems like a prerequisite to living here.”

  He rolled his eyes and shook his head. Emmaline looked surprised herself.

  “If you have any of your aunt’s affinity, then yes, I’m sure I could. But I wouldn’t recommend it. Magic isn’t something to be trifled with. It’s a lifelong study. Your aunt came to it late, already an adult, and I’m afraid it ultimately ruined her. And if George truly was the Pumpkin Man killer . . . well, then, she ruined him as well. Stay away from this stuff. For your own good and for the good of everyone you love.”