The Pumpkin Man (27 page)

Jennica had retreated to the family room to peruse the Perenais library.

“Okay, there are, like, a dozen keys in here,” Nick called from the kitchen. They were both looking for clues to the mystery in the crypt. The sound followed of silverware crashing together.

“We'll try them all!” Jenn answered, not looking up from her book. Labeled simply
The Veil
, its cover was unadorned by author names or other design. The title was embossed in gold on a pale red fabric stitched into board. It was an old text; she could feel the pages separating from the binding as she turned them. The sound as she leafed carefully through gave her chills. It was as if she were breaking history.

“Are there other locks around here you can't open?” Nick called.

“Not that I've found,” she said. “But I wouldn't be surprised.”

She stopped turning pages when she reached a chapter titled “The Crypt.” A small piece of faded blue paper marked the spot.

So, Meredith had thought this was of interest, perhaps?

Jenn began to read:

 

The burial place is a seat of some power and must be approached with caution. The spirit is often drawn to linger here, even more so than the place of death. The veil at this location can be especially
thin for the deceased, as the spirit maintains a connection to its body's physical remains. In ancient times, the crypt was frequently used as the point of ceremony to invoke the dead, to seek their counsel. There are myriad stories of druidic rites invoked in the underground burial chambers of Europe. These rituals could range from the simplistic—chanting the names of the dead repeatedly while standing in a power circle around the bones—to more elaborate exercises of invocation, frequently involving the shedding of blood.

The Maldita sect, active in Britain in the late 1600s, sought to borrow arcane power from the dead to further their positions in business and political life. Once a month, during the high point of the full moon, they took torches into the catacombs beneath St. Smithwick's in Brighton County and addressed the dead there in a particular fashion. They invoked the spirit of Peter Maldita, a man who in life held positions in parliament and whom many believed was the power behind the Duke of Pettigrew. They also believed him to have uncovered the darkest secrets of magic.

Maldita rarely appeared in public, but when he did, he was always accompanied by three beautiful young women. They attempted to mask their beauty with long robes and shawls and veils, but there was no mistaking the glint of health in the women's cheeks, the fire of lust in their eyes and their shapely forms. And while age-wise the women could have been his granddaughters, it was well-known that they did not behave as his progeny, for many reported seeing the old man engaged in unseemly acts with the three in his carriage just before he exited to address parliament. (In some circles, Maldita's family crest—two sinuous serpents surrounding a triangle—was altered to appear as the head of a goat.) The women walked proudly—and possessively—at Maldita's elbow until his death, which was well into his nineties. The three never appeared to pass twenty years of age, and many believed that Maldita had found the fountain of
youth through some dark bond with the women. Or perhaps he'd bestowed youth upon them.

Years after Maldita's death, this sect grew up in secret, founded by P. Steven Gifford, an ambitious young man who had studied the dark arts himself and who believed that Maldita's soul could be lured back to share its knowledge and power with supplicants through a dark ceremony involving the debauching of comely virgins. Gifford sought in vain to find the three mysterious young women who always accompanied the old man, but the trio had vanished; there were no clues about where they'd come from or where they'd gone.

Gifford's next option was to find equally seductive women to bring to Maldita's tomb, presumably to seduce the dark lord from beyond the grave. He enlisted the help of a handful of other practitioners of the dark arts, and together in the midnight hours they devised a blasphemous ceremony of sex and magic held every month for more than seven years. They hypothesized that there was power in repetition, ceremony and numbers. And so their devilish ceremonies continued.

While the full details of their final ceremony are unknown, the early days of the attempted invocations saw the group drug and blindfold a comely woman and keep her in one of their homes until nightfall. As the moon rose, they would lead her into the cold drafts of the underworld, stripping her naked upon the lid of Maldita's tomb. When the victim awoke, she was made to engage in acts of extreme degradation with the druids, who called out Maldita's name all the while promising to give the girl to him as his new dark bride.

Early victims of this cult were kept blindfolded but ultimately set free with the admonition to tell nobody of what had occurred upon pain of death. The fear and embarrassment of the degraded women no doubt kept the secret for some time. Eventually, however, word did get out, and it became more difficult to access
the catacombs where Maldita's old bones lay. Guards were posted outside the burial grounds.

The Maldita druids were not deterred. On the night of one full moon, the guards were overpowered by a group of dark, disguised figures. The following day it was discovered that the bones of Maldita had been stolen from the crypt, and after that the ceremonies of Maldita were reportedly performed by the druids atop the naked bones of the dead man himself. None of his new “brides” was set free afterward. It is assumed that each virgin was killed before her night was over.

Many in occult circles believe that Gifford ultimately achieved his goal in raising the spirit of Maldita, though perhaps not in the fashion he anticipated because stories of this particular druidic sect simply ceased. Gifford himself was neither arrested nor ever heard from again, and a handful of other men believed to have been part of that cult also vanished at roughly the same time. Nobody was ever able to discover Maldita's new final resting place or the nature of the final ceremonies.

Some practitioners of the dark arts believe that Maldita accepted Gifford's offerings and ultimately took the leader and his druids back with him to revel in the wicked pleasures of the other side. Others believe that Gifford and his men literally opened the doorway to hell and were sucked without succor into the everlasting fire. Regardless of Gifford's final fate, his achievements are universally acknowledged and his tale is but one of the myriad stories of using the crypt as the focal point to contact the dead and break through the veil.

In Italy, where the catacombs stretch on for—

“Here's what I got,” Nick said, interrupting her reading. He held up a black steel ring with four old-fashioned skeleton keys. In his other hand was a pile of alternatives, keys ranging from those with long black barrel shanks and thin bits extending from
the end to more modern house keys of silver and gold. Lifting one of the shinier examples he suggested, “I'm guessing this is not what we're looking for.”

Jenn laughed. “No, I'm thinking this particular lock wasn't put in by the guy at Ace Hardware.”

“There are also some things in those kitchen drawers that . . .” Nick paused. “Well, I'm no chef, but I just don't think they're meant for cooking.”

“I don't think Aunt Meredith restricted her kitchen activities to preparing food,” Jenn agreed.

“No. Most people don't keep a drawer full of human skulls next to their pots and pans.”

“You don't want to know all of the things she did in the kitchen.” Jenn grimaced. “Some of the, um, recipes in her journal do not sound at all edible.”

Nick made a face, too. Holding up the keys again he said, “Where there are keys, there are locks. Any idea where these might lead?”

Jenn shook her head. “The door in my room and that kitchen cabinet were the only locks I've seen. Of course, we haven't exactly looked for any secret passageways.”

“I think we'd better,” Nick said. He nodded at the book in her hand. “Find anything?”

“Just some perverted ceremonies involving virgins and old bones that I think Meredith marked. I haven't finished skimming the chapter yet, though.”

“Ah,” Nick said. “I'll keep looking and leave you to it.”

As he disappeared back into the kitchen, Jenn leafed ahead a few pages and then settled back to read more.

 

More so than a graveyard, where bones are usually encased in wood and covered by many feet of earth, a crypt offers the best place to contact the dead. The veil here is extremely thin, especially those crypts housing the mortal remains of many, and
the bones of the one to be contacted are likely only shielded by a thin layer of wood or stone. Many practitioners over the ages have insisted that, at a minimum, the lid of the coffin be removed before invoking a spirit, while still others have insisted that only through the physical handling of bones can full contact be achieved. (The disturbing of the bones of the dead can have other consequences, however. As the mortal remains offer a spirit's sole tie to this earth, if they are altered or damaged substantially, that tie is broken forever.)

There are many ways to actually contact the dead, the most popular being the use of a spiritual medium, a person well versed in achieving trance states that allow temporary possession of the body by a spirit. This, however, can prove extremely dangerous. For, unless it is a ceremony involving a crypt and specific, segregated bones, a séance provides an open door for any spirit. Frequently the result is that a medium calls not the hoped-for entity but some other malevolent, willful force. Such possessions can involve demons.

One way to ameliorate the danger of medium possession is the use of the spirit board or witchboard. The witchboard allows a group of people to pool their mental energies to open a small window to the spirit world. Generally, no one member of the group gives up their identity or control of their body; rather, the spirit uses the combined energy of the group to move a small piece called a planchette across a wooden board graven with characters. The group can ask this spirit questions. If it is a cooperative soul, those questions are answered via the movements of the planchette. Witchboards originated hundreds of years ago but grew in popularity in the 1800s. They were also frequently used by laypersons as a parlor game—a dangerous parlor game indeed.

While they can be used in virtually any location, the witchboard can be especially helpful when used in proximity to the bones of the intended contact. As the earthly remains maintain a hold on
the spirit, this relationship can be played upon to bring focus to a session. It's for this reason that some witchboard practitioners in the late 1800s would steal into cemeteries at night, armed with gaslights and shovels, to dig up the bones of the deceased. Some would even carve a planchette out of the skull of the dead, in this way creating a sort of magnet for the spirit. However, the defiling of bones risks bringing forth an angry spirit, and once the veil is broken a soul can frequently maintain contact with the earthly realm and reappear outside of the bounds of the original calling . . .

Jenn shivered and closed the book. Her mind was filled with images of people traipsing through cemeteries, digging up graves and handling skulls by candlelight. Jesus, had her aunt really done this stuff? She'd always thought Meredith was one of those hippies into lots of herbal stuff and “Peace, man,” or maybe even into the spirit-of-the-earth stuff, crystals and shit, but the woman kept skulls in her kitchen and had the secret entrance to a crypt in her bedroom. She bookmarked pages about digging up the dead. What had her aunt Meredith really been into? And how had a nice Catholic girl from the Midwest ended up that way?

Jenn slipped the book back into place on the shelf and stared again at the titles beside it.
Medieval Magic
.
The Occult and the Mystery
.
Shamanism in the Old World
.
The Power of Earth
.
Aleister Crowley and the Hidden War
. And then she saw another:
The Amazing Gourd
. It seemed incongruous amid the others. At least, it would have before recent events.

When she pulled it out, she was sure the book deserved a place on this shelf. The cover jacket was faded; she thought the book likely printed before she was born. But the yellowing, tattered sleeve featured a color photo of a veritable mountain of gourds of all shapes and sizes, from acorn squash to fist-size, warty old orbs, to yellow-and-green-striped tubelike zucchini
squash, to butternuts. And at the center was their king: a giant, deep orange pumpkin that looked like it must weigh a couple hundred pounds.

The book wouldn't have drawn Jenn's notice a month or so ago, but to see it here, now, in this house? And a tiny slip of blue paper caught her eye amid the pages.

What? Had Meredith marked this page, too? What could she possibly have found here, and would it be important to this search?

She sat down, set the faded book on her lap and flipped to the marked page.

The Mythology of the Gourd

 

Being hard-shelled fruit with sweet soft flesh inside, gourds have long been seen by certain peoples and cultures as gifts from the gods, and by others as a temple. Many of these cultures used gourds in ceremonial rites. The Poblayen Indians felt that one gourd in particular represented fertility, which is why they held numerous ceremonies with it. Late every fall they held a betrothal ceremony for young couples, the unions each represented by a pumpkin. That gourd was to be taken home and prepared by the woman, with the seeds preserved and saved for eating by the new husband. It was said that eating these seeds would give him the power to sire a child on his wife that would be healthy and strong.