The Pumpkin Man (25 page)

“End of the line,” Nick said, putting the car in park.

“In more ways than one,” Jenn murmured.

They exited the car and stretched, and then they walked up the short front path. She ducked an X of yellow police tape and stepped up to the door she'd already keyed open and shut enough times to feel like this was home. Feeling funny, she rang the doorbell. She didn't want to get arrested for screwing up an investigation, even if she was just entering her own home.

A tall, thin man opened the wooden door. Jenn explained who she was, and he looked a little stressed when he realized she intended to come inside. He pushed a pair of thin silver glasses up a long hook of a nose.

“Can you just wait a minute? I need to check in,” he begged. Then he stepped back, pulled a cell phone from his pocket and talked in a low voice for a couple minutes before hanging up and forcing a smile. “The captain will be up in just a few minutes, if you could just wait out here . . .” And with that, he closed the door and disappeared. Off to search for more blood and gore, no doubt.

“Let's take a walk,” Nick suggested. He took Jenn's hand, and they walked around toward the back of the house.

“What are you thinking?” she asked. They were following the path to the cemetery.

Nick shrugged. “I dunno. They're all focused on the house and the basement, but there's something about the cemetery that creeps me out. I have to think it's a part of all this.”

“Yeah,” she agreed. “The graveyard is definitely a part of this.”

“It's more than just the fact that it's connected to that tunnel,” Nick continued. They stepped under a rusting black metal arch and entered a small plot of gravestones. “There's just something
especially weird about this place. It creeps me out. If we're going to believe in things coming back from the dead . . .”

He knelt down to look at a weathered and pitted gravestone that read
PETER LUCAS PERENAIS
, 1854–1923. “There's a lot of history here,” he said, straightening.

Jenn nodded. “It's exactly why I wanted to come back. The answer to all of this has to be here. I just have to find it.”

“
We
have to find it,” Nick corrected. He ran his hand over the rough stone of another grave marker, but this one had deteriorated to the point of illegibility.

“No,” Jenn said. “You promised to go back to the city after you dropped me off. This is my problem to deal with. My family curse, I guess.”

Nick smiled. “One: I never promised you that. You just demanded it. And, two: Why, so you can die trying? You'll have a lot better chance if you get some help. And right now, I'm all that you've got. Unless you plan to tell everything to the police.”

Jenn opened her mouth to say something but stopped. She'd been about to say Kirstin would help.

“I don't want you to get hurt, too,” she said.

Nick slipped an arm around her waist. “I will do my best to remain unharmed,” he promised.

“I'm sure Brian and Kirstin would have said the same, and look where that got them.”

Nick nodded. “So we'll work fast.”

Jenn sighed, knowing she wouldn't be able to talk him into leaving. “Well, first we have to get into the house, if there's anything left to find there.”

“I think we may be just about to find out,” Nick replied.

A figure was making its way across the field toward them. Captain Jones. They walked a few paces to meet him.

“You're back early,” the cop said. His voice was quiet but questioning.

“When we got up this morning, my friend Kirstin was gone,” Jenn blurted. “There were pumpkin pieces left behind.”

The police captain raised an eyebrow, but he said nothing, waited for her to finish.

“We looked all around the neighborhood, but we couldn't find a trace of her.”

“Did you contact the local police?”

Nick shook his head. “We figured she hadn't been gone long enough to file a missing-persons report. We have no real evidence but those pumpkin pieces, and nobody in the city is going to believe our story. I mean, a Pumpkin Man killer from beyond the grave?”

The captain shrugged. “Some of them might have heard what's going on up here by now.” He shook his head. “But no, they probably wouldn't believe—or understand. Hell, nobody does. Even those of us who have been here our whole lives.”

“The answer is here,” Jenn said. “And this isn't going to stop until I find it.”

“I've got two of the best detectives from Sonoma County in there right now—” Jones began, but Jenn cut him off.

“And you and I both know they're not going to find a thing. Not in terms of real forensic evidence. They can take all the fingerprints and chemical readings and photographs they want, but they're not going to find a clue that really leads them to the killer. You know that. Because they
can't.
”

Jones didn't answer immediately. Instead, he looked behind her at the cemetery. “There's a lot of darkness up here,” he said. “If you're going to start turning over old ground, be careful what you dig up. I bet there are some secrets here worse than the one we're hunting. Trust me.”

He turned and slowly began walking back to the house. “Let's see how the boys are doing,” he called over his shoulder. “They should be about done, and we can probably let you back in.”

Nick and Jennica followed him down the worn dirt path. Back
at the house, Jones excused himself and went inside. When he came back out, he promised them that the place would be theirs again. For the night at least.

“The boys'll be done in five more minutes,” he said. Then he cocked his head and looked at Jenn. “I want you to know something. When your aunt first came here, she was a sweet, innocent thing just like you. I remember her as she was. This place changed her. There are plenty of mysteries here, so I'm warning you: if you dig too deep, you might never get out.”

He paused and looked from Nick to Jenn. “Don't make the same mistake your aunt did. Go back to where you came from while you still can. There is nothing you can do about this—there's nothing any of us can, not really. So don't throw away your life. I don't want to be responsible for losing another one.” The captain held her eye for a moment, then nodded. “Have a good night,” he said, and he walked back to his cruiser. The car kicked up a small spume of dust as it started back down the hill.

Nick squeezed Jenn's shoulder. “Maybe he's right,” he said. “Maybe you should just go back to Chicago and leave this all behind.”

Jennica shook her head. “Haven't you been listening? He already visited me there. He can follow me
anywhere.
” She put her hand on the doorknob and turned it, pronouncing, “This has to end here.”

They waited in the family room for the officers to finish up. Orange shafts of sunset shot through the front window like a spotlight, one of which crept minute by minute, centimeter by centimeter, down the weathered threads of the couch.

The men at last came walking out of the back hallway carrying black and gray steel cases. They gave a nod to Jenn and Nick, and the thin man who'd answered the door offered a clipped,
“Good night.” They let themselves out then, closing the heavy door behind them.

Nick and Jennica sat in silence in the shadowy room for a moment, listening as the sound of the car engines outside started up and then faded into the distance. Finally, Nick turned and looked at her.

“Okay,” he said. “We're here. Now what?”

“Good question.” Jennica laid her head against the couch cushion and considered. “I suppose the first thing is to see what they've done here.”

She pushed herself up and walked into the kitchen. “Ugh,” she said. The cabinets were all open, the counters piled with their contents. She grabbed a handful of pots and dropped them back where they went, then put some plates and bowls away in the cabinets above the sink. Then she walked down the hall to the bedrooms.

“Not too bad,” she said, peering into hers. Nick followed and watched her rearrange a few knickknacks on her dresser. But when they walked into Kirstin's room, Jenn shook her head. “I'm not touching this tonight.”

The bare, bloodstained mattress stood on its side against the wall, and all of the dresser drawers were open. One of the throw rugs was rolled up on the floor, and a pile of other odds and ends was stacked against the wall beneath the window.

“I'd say they checked every inch of this room,” Nick said.

“Lot of good it will do them.”

He shrugged. “Would you rather they didn't try?”

She shook her head and walked out. When Nick stepped past, she closed the door behind them. “I don't want to go in there for a while, I think.”

He agreed with a silent nod.

“Let's take a walk downstairs,” she suggested. They both suppressed a shudder.

The door was closed, but the old key stuck out of the lock.
Jenn turned it and then slipped the key into her pants pocket. Feeling around on the banister, she found the light cord and pulled it. Then, together, she and Nick stepped down the stairs into the basement.

The chill instantly made Jenn's skin goose-bump. Nick noticed and put his arm around her, and she smiled. It felt nice to have someone care in this manner. She hadn't felt that in a long time. On impulse she leaned up and kissed him on the lips. Then she walked over to the shelves against the wall.

“Looks like the cops took some of those jars,” Nick observed. “Guess they needed some blood and eyeballs and bat wings. Who doesn't, really?”

The shelves looked good and picked over. Jenn reached up and pulled down a jar filled with a greenish yellow liquid. At first it was too murky to make out the contents, but then she shook it gently and held it up toward the light. Two black eyes suddenly peered out.

Shit!

Jennica's hand jumped, and the glass slipped out of her grasp. She yelped and just barely caught the jar, steadying herself. The eyes still stared at her, though the tiny face didn't move. Jenn could see ghostlike wisps of something—skin? hair?—floating behind the thing's head. A pale and fragile arm pressed against the glass, its fingers so small you could barely make them out.

Her stomach clenched. This had once been alive. Moving. Maybe opening its mouth in a tiny soundless cry.

“It's a real human baby,” she whispered. “That's just so wrong.”

She tilted the jar back upright and noticed the Mason jar lid was dated 8/31/73.

“What the hell?” she said, showing the date to Nick.

He shrugged. “There were a few of these when we were here before. It's creepy, but why is it any creepier than anything else we've seen here?”

“Just seems weird. I mean, I
get
dating canned tomatoes, but . . . a canned fetus?” She shivered.

“Maybe they go bad after five blue moons,” he suggested.

“Very funny.”

She set the jar back on the shelf. Though the police had thinned them out, there were still plenty of others to look at. They had moved things around but Jenn couldn't say exactly how. She didn't really care, she supposed. But she wondered if there were any answers remaining to be found.

She and Nick gave up on the shelves. Walking through the central part of the basement, they entered the tunnel to the crypt and quickly arrived at the door. Jenn fished the key out of her pocket and opened it; then they stepped into the room beyond.

The room felt . . . empty. Jenn couldn't explain exactly what she meant, but the last time they were here there had been some palpable force, the air pregnant with malevolence and darkness. Now it was different. The coffin stood in the same place as it had, only there were no pumpkins before it. Was that what she felt? Was it simply that the evidence of death had been removed?

She hoped that was true. But, walking forward and around the pedestal, she feared with every step that there would be a fresh pumpkin around the corner. Such a pumpkin would prove her suppositions about what had happened to Kirstin.

But, no, the pumpkins were all gone. There was nothing but empty tile floor behind the coffin.

“She's not here,” Nick said.

“No,” Jenn agreed. “I still believe he took her. But why he didn't follow his pattern . . . ?”

Nick sighed. “I think you're probably right. But with the police here, it may have been a little more difficult. Unless he decided to just wipe out all the police, too. I wonder what's stopping him from doing that.”

“I dunno.” She looked around the room and shook her head.
It definitely seemed emptier than before. The stone walls felt bare, the tomb abandoned. Why had that row of pumpkin carvings made the tomb feel so much more alive?

Jenn walked around the room, her steps echoing in the confined space. Nick didn't move.

“Why here?” he pondered. “I mean, why was he collecting the heads here? What's so special about this spot? Is there anything?”