The Pumpkin Man (16 page)

“Ever get out of this place?” she asked, catching his eye.

“Some,” he answered.

“Every time I see you, you're here.”

“True,” he acknowledged, “but you don't see me when I'm not.”

Kirstin blinked. She didn't have an answer for that.

“Ever heard of the Pumpkin Man?” she asked. Not having an answer had never stopped her from talking.

The clerk glared at Kirstin now over the frames of his black glasses. His eyes were drilling holes into her. “Why do you ask?”

“Because someone told us to look out for him,” she answered. “I didn't know if that was kind of a local boogeyman or what.”

“Well, the Pumpkin Man's a boogeyman, all right,” the clerk answered.

“What do you mean?” Kirstin felt a bit of a nudge might do them some good.

“He's a legend. The legend says that the Pumpkin Man comes to River's End every Halloween and chooses a person. When he decides on his victim, he picks himself a pumpkin from the local patch and uses a knife and magic to carve that person's soul into the gourd.”

Kirstin blinked. “What do you mean, ‘carves his soul'?”

Travis Lupe shrugged. “He draws the face of the victim on the pumpkin with his knife, and by the time he's through, there's an image of the person in the gourd and a headless body left behind.”

“Beautiful.”

“Not really.” The clerk shook his head. “Kids here are scared to death of meeting the Pumpkin Man. Parents sometimes tell their kids that he'll come to their rooms to take them if they aren't in bed by midnight on Halloween night. He'll just leave a pumpkin in place of their head.”

Jenn stepped out of the aisle with a soup can in her hand. “Does he leave behind pieces of pumpkin?”

Travis nodded. “That's what the police have found every time,” he said. “Pumpkin pieces with stripes of blood. The victims surface eventually.”

“Wait a minute,” Kirstin said. “I thought you said he was a legend?”

“Every legend starts from something,” Travis said. “And a long time ago, there were a whole series of murders here. They said the Pumpkin Man killed them.”

“Well, crap,” Kirstin said. “Why the hell is he hanging out at our house?”

Travis looked at her and gave a nervous chuckle. “Well, that part's easy.” His gaze rested squarely on Jennica. “The Pumpkin Man was your uncle. The Pumpkin Man was Meredith Perenais's husband.”

The knock came just after five p.m. Kirstin opened the door. Brian stood there, holding out a bottle of chardonnay.

“You want to try this again?”

Kirstin nodded. Her grin was sheepish but bright. “Yeah,” she said. “And this time, I think we'll put a hold on the Ouija board.”

“Good idea,” Brian agreed. “Now, about that apology.”

“Yeah, yeah, I'll get down on my knees later. For now, come on in and say hi to Jenn. She's cooking dinner. And she has other issues.”

“Other issues?” Nick echoed. He flanked Brian with another bottle of wine.

“Well, when she woke up this morning, there was a pile of bloody pumpkin by her bed. Aside from that, it's been a pretty dull day,” Kirstin joked.

“Bloody pumpkin?” Nick repeated. “What the fuck?”

“We found out the door to the basement was unlocked,” Kirstin said. “We figure the psycho got in that way.”

“So,” Nick summarized, “there's a psycho who has access to this house via the door from the basement that leads to Jenn's room. That's comforting.”

“Funny, that's what she said.” Kirstin grinned. “I knew there was a reason she liked you. Anyway, we locked the door, but I don't think it really matters. Jenn found pumpkin pieces in our apartment in Chicago, and they found them in her dad's place, too, when they found his body a couple months ago. Oh, and
apparently there's an urban legend around these parts that Jenn's uncle was a nutjob called the Pumpkin Man. He used to carve up people and pumpkins alike.”

Nick pushed past Kirstin into the kitchen.

Brian put his arm around her. “This doesn't sound good,” he said. “Have you called the police?”

“What are they going to do?” she replied. “Jenn's uncle has been dead for years, and whoever is leaving these pumpkin pieces . . . well, he's apparently visited Jenn twice but hasn't killed her. And he's done it in two different places more than a thousand miles apart. To be honest, with that, the legend of Jenn's uncle and the Ouija board message last night . . . well, I guess I have to agree with Jenn. I don't think this is within the police's domain.”

“Hmmm,” Brian, said, squeezing her shoulder. “Maybe I should take a look in the basement anyway.”

Kirstin nodded. “Jenn wouldn't go down there, and I wasn't going to go alone, but I'd sleep better.”

He eyed her. “You want to come? Aren't you worried there's a monster down there with a big knife just waiting for the sun to set?”

She shook her head. “No. I think it's just another damp and musty basement. But I don't particularly want to cross the bat.”

“The bat?”

“There's a dead bat nailed to the wall above the stairs. That's what stopped us from going down the first time.”

“Dead bat. Right,” Brian said. He didn't have a follow-up.

“Hey,” Nick said as he walked into the kitchen. Jenn was cutting a long, thin loaf of Italian bread. Her face was slightly flushed from exertion, and a strand of dark hair stuck provocatively to
her cheek. She wore a tight tank top below a loose white cotton tee, and Nick instantly wanted to put his arms around her to pull her close. She looked like an angel.

“Sorry about last night,” he said. “But honestly I didn't do anything. And I know Brian didn't either. He's a crazy nut, I know, but he's not mean like that. I don't know what that shit was. Can I help you cook at least?”

Jenn smiled. “I know you didn't do anything,” she said. “I'm sorry it all blew up.”

She leaned close and kissed him. His lips were warm, and she wanted more. When he put his arms around her, she felt as if she were melting. But if they were going to eat, this was not the time to melt. She looked up instead and said, “If you want to help, you can butter the garlic bread. I need to set up the beans, get the bread in the oven and we're good to go.”

Kirstin and Brian walked in just as Nick was starting his assignment.

“Wow, she got that apron on you fast,” Brian commented.

Nick flipped him the bird. “Bite me.”

“Behave,” Jenn warned from the stove. “Or you get no dinner.”

“Well, I didn't drive all this way to go home hungry,” Brian said. “So I guess I'll behave.”

It wasn't long before they were repeating the previous night's ritual, eating and talking and, for a little while at least, forgetting what had happened just a few hours before. Nick was gloating and moaning about how amazing the Italian bread was.

“You're a glutton for praise,” his friend muttered.

“But it really is good, isn't it?” Nick crammed another piece into his mouth.

Brian just looked at Jenn. “This lasagna is
amazing.
”

After the meal was done and the table cleared, Brian suggested they face what they were all avoiding.

“Let's check out the basement,” he said. “I think if you're going to stay here another damn night, someone needs to see what's down there.”

“Uh-uh,” Jenn said. “I'm not going.”

“You'll feel better if you do, I think.”

Nick agreed. “I know I'd feel better if I saw it. Let's all check it out. Safety in numbers.”

Reluctantly, Jenn nodded. But as the key turned in the lock a couple minutes later she said, “I don't believe we're doing this.”

“Well, last week I wouldn't have believed we'd hold a séance,” Kirstin pointed out.

Jenn opened the door. Under her breath she mumbled, “Don't go in the basement.”

“Okay, yeah, that's creepy,” Nick said, staring at the bat. “What do you think it means?”

“Means?” Brian repeated. “I'd say it means they killed a bat and nailed it to a wall. Just a guess.”

Kirstin laughed, squeezing him tighter. “Very literal of you.”

“If her aunt was a witch,” Nick said, ignoring his friend, “presumably this has some meaning. It's a totem or some channeled natural power or ward.”

Brian laughed. “You been studying witchcraft yourself?”

“No, I just watch a lot of TV.”

“C'mon.” Jenn smiled and stepped forward, braving the first step. But when she felt around for a light switch, there was none on the stairway wall. “No lights,” she announced. Who didn't have lights in their basement?

“Maybe there's one at the bottom,” Brian suggested. “Do you have a flashlight here?”

“Not that I've seen,” Jenn replied. “But we could light a couple candles.”

Kirstin volunteered to get them and ran back to the front
room. She returned a minute later with four tapered candles from the fireplace mantel and a book of matches. Jenn held hers out to be lit, then started down the stairs.

The four candles barely cut the darkness as they moved into the bowels of the house, the flickering flames reflecting off the narrow stairway walls just enough so that they could see the next step down. And then, without warning, there were no more steps. They were in the basement.

Nick held up his candle, and the beams of the unfinished ceiling were revealed. He pointed at a string hanging down just in front of them.

“There,” he said. “Classic basement lighting. The bare-bulb model.”

Brian pulled the string, and the basement grew brighter. “I can't believe they didn't put in a switch,” he complained.

“Actually . . .” Nick walked over to the slat of wood that served as a banister and pointed out the second string that hung from the light and then followed the wood most of the way up. It was tucked through small circular guides. “They did. We just didn't see it.”

“Well, now we know for next time,” Kirstin said.

“Next time?” Jenn answered. “I'm not coming down here again.”

“What, you don't want to make use of this amazing fruit cellar?” Nick had walked over to some shelves where a mess of mason jars were stacked, picked up one filled with red sauce and another with something green and solid. “Check it out,” he said with a laugh. “You've got homemade canned tomato sauce and . . . pickles or something. I think your dinner menu is really going to expand.”

“Yeah, how long have these been down here?” Jenn made a face. “They could be fifty years old.”

Kirstin spoke up. “I thought canned stuff lasts for, like, ever?”

Jenn shook her head. “They usually date them. They're good for a couple years, I think, but not forever.”

Nick looked at the tomato sauce lid and his face screwed up. “Oh,” he said. He held the jar up to the light briefly before quickly setting it back. He did the same to the pickle jar, then reached out to look at another jar from a different shelf. The contents of this one were darker, brownish. Maybe mushrooms, Jenn thought, as she saw him look inside.

“Fuck,” Nick said finally.

“What's the matter?” Jenn asked.

“I don't think you're going to be eating this shit.”

“What is it?” Kirstin asked.

He held out the jar and slowly rotated it.

Brian whistled. “Is that an . . . ?”

“Eyeball,” Nick said. “It's a jar of eyeballs.”

One floated to touch the glass just right, and Kirstin shrieked as it seemed to look at her. “Ewwwwwww!”

Nick put the jar back.

“That wasn't tomato sauce either, was it?” Jenn asked quietly.

Nick shook his head. “The label says blood.”

“And the pickles?”