The Pumpkin Man (19 page)

He wrapped his hand around the stub and lifted the top of the pumpkin off, stumbled backward when he saw what was inside. A thick black tuft of hair. Human hair.

Jones gagged audibly for a second but then recovered. He took a deep breath and reached inside to grab the hair, which was attached to the blue-white skin of a forehead; foggy blue eyes forever open in death; a purpled and twisted nose and a slack mouth, yellowing teeth exposed in a silent scream. The ragged flesh of the severed neck looked almost black. The room filled with the reek of carrion.

Kirstin screamed and looked away. Jenn shook her head and stifled a cry.

Nick screwed up his nose and whispered, “What the fuck.”

“Who is that?” Jenn whispered.

“Erik Smith,” the captain said. “We found his body last month. Just not his head. I guess
that
mystery's solved. We didn't expect to look here.”

Jones set the head back in the pumpkin and replaced the lid. Then he lifted the next lid and removed another grisly find. This one was female.

“Teri Hawkins,” he said. “She was found dead in her basement a couple days ago. Or at least, the rest of her was found.”

He lifted the last lid and pulled out a head topped with blond hair. The eyes looked frozen in fear. The nose was spotted with freckles of dried blood. The base of the neck still dripped fresh crimson.

“Jesus Christ,” Nick whispered. Jenn hugged him, but she couldn't take her eyes from that ghastly, silently screaming face.

Kirstin screamed and fell to her knees.

Brian.

“The killings began again late last year, just before your aunt Meredith died,” Captain Jones said. “But the original Pumpkin Man murders go back more than twenty years. Things have been pretty quiet around here since then. Until recently.”

He'd led the three of them back up from the basement and sent the coroner and the other two cops down to the crypt to take care of business. Jenn now sat between Kirstin and Nick, trying with gentle squeezes of her hands on their arms to comfort them both at the same time.

“Why do you think it all started up again?” she asked. “Did the original killer get out of jail or something?”

The captain shrugged. “I don't know. The original Pumpkin Man killer was never officially tried and convicted . . . though a group of people here in town thought they had him taken care of.”

“What do you mean?” Nick asked.

“The original Pumpkin Man murders were a handful of kids back in the eighties,” Captain Jones said. “They disappeared over the course of four or five years, all around Halloween. Eventually, most of the bodies were found. They never did find the heads. What they did find were pumpkins.” His eyes took on a faraway look. “Pumpkins that were carved in the likenesses of those poor, sweet children. And those pumpkins were stained in blood.”

“So, what happened?” Nick asked.

“There was a man who used to set up a stand every year on a
vacant lot in the middle of town,” Jones said. “He sold pumpkins there every October. For an extra charge, he'd carve them for you. And his carvings were like no other. I have never seen so much detail in a pumpkin face, before or since.”

“That was my uncle, wasn't it?” Jenn asked.

The captain nodded.

“The guy down at the general store said that my aunt used to be married to the Pumpkin Man.”

Jones nodded again. “Yeah. They started calling him that pretty quickly. The first couple years he set up his stand, it was like a carnival. The kids couldn't wait to go there after school to see the new face he'd created. He pretty much carved a new pumpkin every day throughout October and put it on display. Some of them were funny and others just . . . weird. I remember seeing pumpkins that looked like squirrels and dogs, and there was one that, somehow, he made look narrow and pointy enough that it actually resembled a bird. On Halloween, he'd unveil his ‘masterpiece' of the year. That one was always scary—its long, slanty eyes lit by a candle inside and teeth that looked like they might just come alive to eat you.”

The police captain smiled faintly, then continued. “One year, a local boy was reported missing on Halloween. They searched and searched but never found him. Eventually it was assumed that he'd been playing down by the estuary and was washed out to sea. River's End was hit hard by that. We're a tight-knit community here, and there's nothing worse than losing a child.

“The next year, another kid turned up missing. And the next year, another. And another.” Captain Jones eyed Jenn, Kirstin and Nick silently for a moment, his face clouded with sadness. “Then little Stevie Traskle disappeared.

“One of the local kids reported that he'd seen the Pumpkin Man carve Stevie up right there behind the pumpkin stands. The police at the time took your uncle in for questioning, but they could never find enough evidence to convict him. The bodies
they'd found at that point were so badly decomposed and eaten by fish that they could barely be identified, let alone provide any evidence of what or who killed them.” The police captain fell silent.

“So, what happened to him?” Jennica asked.

“Some people took it upon themselves to dole out justice. They kidnapped your uncle one night after dark and strung him up on the hill just outside of town. Nobody ever admitted to doing it, of course, and nobody looked too hard to find the lynch mob. But after that night there were no more disappearances. Not until last year.”

“When exactly did it start up again?” Jenn asked.

“Halloween,” the captain said. He shook his head. “I'll never forget that call. Charlie Wilbert's wife just kept crying into the phone saying, ‘He's back. He's come back.' We had to drive out there to find what she was talking about. And when we did, we found Charlie. He was just sitting there, beer bottle in hand on the front porch, like he sat every night. Only, this time, his shirt was covered in his own blood and his head had been replaced . . .”

Jones shook his head, his voice fading as if he couldn't bear to say the words. Then: “The poor man's head had been replaced by a pumpkin. And that pumpkin was carved in the likeness of his face. It was the best carving I've seen in twenty years. The best since the Pumpkin Man used to set up shop in that vacant lot. At Charlie's feet was a pile of pieces gouged from the pumpkin. They were all stained in Charlie's blood.”

Jenn's heart was beating a mile a minute.

Captain Jones looked away from them for a minute before continuing. Then his voice began again. Quieter. “Not long after, we found Hank and Angel DeVries, both of them lying dead together in bed. I can't tell you how disturbing it was to walk into that bedroom and see the two of them lying there, her in a nightshirt, him just in some boxers, both of them with
a pumpkin on their pillows. Those pumpkins were smeared in blood and looked to be screaming.

“I tried to convince myself it was a copycat killer,” he whispered. “There were a lot of differences from the original murders. For one thing, the original Pumpkin Man killer only killed children. For another, those kids' bodies were disposed of, hidden. Though we found them eventually.”

“Tried to convince yourself?” Nick repeated. “So, you really believe deep down that this guy has come back from beyond the grave? Or do you think they killed the wrong guy?”

The captain looked them each in the eye before he answered. “I think that the only man I've ever seen carve a pumpkin that realistically has been in his grave for more than twenty-five years. Still, the new murders continued. The third ‘new' Pumpkin Man killing took place a month after the last. Also at night. Also an adult. This time it was Dave Traskle. Once again, the body was found without a head, with a pumpkin carved in such detail that it looked as if the face had been not so much cut into it as transferred.”

“So the killer studied pumpkin carving,” Nick muttered.

The captain's lips pursed. “At the very least. And you might think this is simply some new nutjob with a twisted carving skill—except for one thing. The victims were parents of the kids killed twenty years ago.”

“Them?” Jenn asked. “Why now, after so long?”

“People have theories about the wait, but the
why
is easy,” Jones replied. “Revenge. Nobody looked too hard for the mob that hanged your uncle because they figured it was justice, maybe carried out the wrong way—or maybe exactly the right way. We always figured the people who killed the Pumpkin Man were the parents of the kids he'd murdered. So we all pretty much looked the other way.” His eyebrows hung low as he looked at them and shook his head in acceptance. “Yeah, I looked the other way, too. Mostly.”

Jones pursed his lips and gathered his thoughts before continuing. “Well, somebody didn't forget or look the other way. Somebody planned and schemed and worked for twenty years to bring your uncle back. And the bulk of that scheming probably happened right here in this room.”

“What are you saying? You think my aunt raised him from the dead?” Jenn asked, incredulous.

The captain's face remained stoic. “I think she found some way to get revenge. I know you probably think that sounds ridiculous. But you haven't lived in River's End your whole life. You don't know the things that have happened here. The things connected with this house, and your aunt's husband's family. People here avoided anyone named Perenais long before your aunt came to town.”

“Didn't you question her?” Nick asked. “I assume she was a suspect?”

The captain nodded. “I talked to her a bit after Charlie's murder. She acted shocked and upset that someone had tried to re-create the whole horror of what happened so long ago. I didn't press her too hard at the time because it was just a single murder. There was no pattern yet. But, after Hank and Angel were killed I had a hunch that she knew more than she was saying. We called your aunt a couple times but she didn't answer. Then I found out why. I drove up and found her dead on the floor, right here, in front of the fireplace. Just like the others, her head had been cut off.”

Jenn shivered. Her dad had never told her Meredith was murdered! She'd never really thought too hard about where or how her aunt died either. She hadn't wanted to.

“But . . . assuming it was even possible that he was brought back from the dead, why would Jenn's uncle hurt Meredith if this was all about revenge for him?” Kirstin asked.

“He wouldn't,” the captain agreed. “It wasn't him. Whoever
killed your aunt was not the same person who killed Charlie and the DeVrieses.”

He stood up and walked toward the fireplace, paced back and forth while he talked. “Meredith's murder was different. Not to be disrespectful,” he added, addressing Jenn, “but the way the killer took off her head was not like the others. No finesse. And the pumpkin he left in its place was . . . remedial. Crudely carved triangle eyes and mouth. A hack-job jack-o'-lantern. Not like your uncle at all.” He shook his head. “No, it wasn't done by the person who killed Erik and Charlie. Whoever killed your aunt was different. I figure he didn't want her to talk. She knew something about all this, and I would bet my life that she set it all in motion. But she must have had help, and whoever was helping her got scared and tried to stop it.”

“But it didn't stop,” Jenn said.

Jones shook his head. “No, it didn't stop.”

Nick stared at a stone on the right side of the fireplace, the stone that covered the Ouija board. “Genie's out of the bottle,” he said.

Jenn was quiet for a moment before she looked at the captain. “You say the heads of those kids were never found?”

Jones nodded.

Kirstin frowned. “You don't think . . .”

Jenn nodded. “I think you might find them kids just outside our back door. Someone kept a bunch of skulls in our kitchen, locked in a drawer.”

Jones released a long sigh. “Of course they were. Let's take a look.”

The day that Brian died never seemed to end. After watching cops march back and forth through the house for a couple hours, their numbers slowly growing, an ambulance team arrived. Two burly men disappeared into the back bedroom and reappeared a short time later with Brian's body on a stretcher. He was covered in a white sheet.

Captain Jones took Jenn, Kirstin and Nick back to the station to get formal statements, and so they all relived the night and morning yet again. He took them one by one into his office while the others waited in a small room with an older woman named Edie. She appeared to be the captain's secretary as well as the station's dispatcher, receptionist and barista. She kept coming out from behind her desk to refill their cups from a coffeepot kept on a warmer next to her.

They were still at the station when Officer Barkiewicz returned. The captain excused himself so that he and his subordinate could talk. The two stepped into a conference room with a window facing the reception area, and Jenn watched Barkiewicz gesturing animatedly behind the glass. The captain only nodded. At last, the captain opened his mouth to speak, patted Officer Barkiewicz's shoulder and then reopened the conference room door.

“We're going to need a day or two to comb the house,” he announced to Jenn. “I'd like you to stay someplace accessible, in case we need to talk.”

“Are we suspects now?” Kirstin asked, her forehead lined from frustration or exhaustion.

The captain shook his head. “Given what I told you about earlier, you're not very high on my list. But I need to know where you are.”

“We don't really know anyone—” Jenn began, but Nick cut her off.

“They can stay with me for a couple days, if it's okay for us to go back to San Francisco. I need to get back to work. I can give you my contact and my bosses, if that helps.”