The Pumpkin Man (30 page)

Nick rushed down the dark hallway into the kitchen. The pantry door was open, and he saw the pale glint of Jenn's legs through the back door and headed into the hidden room.

“Jenn, wait!” he called. But she didn't stop. She disappeared into the dark.

Nick followed into the narrow entry. He didn't feel good about it, but he couldn't let her go into that place alone. There was something bad there, something impatient. He'd felt it this afternoon. A presence. And, that had been when the sun was shining, even if the roof kept it away. Now the sun was gone
and she was walking right into the arms of whatever waited in the darkness.

There she was.

The specter of Jenn's aunt shone in the dark like a beacon, her aura lighting the way. And then she swept off, down past the long end of the room and around, into the edge of the L. There she disappeared.

Jenn stepped forward, but the light had gone out and she suddenly felt trapped. The dark closed in around her. A faint glow came from the doorway, but it wasn't enough to see. It was a faint beacon back, but there was so much dark between here and there that she almost couldn't move. She didn't want to retreat, anyway. What she really wanted was to move forward.

She turned to where Meredith disappeared, but there was nothing, nothing but the cold fingers of dark closing in all around her. Jenn felt her chest contract. She was trapped by the night; all around her were the invisible bones of the dead. And apparently spirits lurked close at hand, too, anchored to those bones.

The mummified corpse was just a couple feet away. Jenn had a vision of that dead flesh shifting and moving, escaping its prison on the wall, slipping forward to corner her, pressing her backward until her feet stumbled on the bones of all those who had died here before. Other people had been lured into this place and never gotten out. Was it a boneyard or a torture chamber? She supposed it didn't make a difference in the end; the dead were tied here by the past. And maybe they were hungry.

Jenn struggled to step forward—no, to go back the way she'd come, to escape the room before it was too late. Panic suddenly gripped her, locked her body in place, unable to move. From the faintly visible bones beside her, she saw a glimmer of something, a smoky movement in the dark. It crept slowly.

Inch by inch the ghost grew, its tendrils reaching toward her bare feet. Somewhere far away she heard her name, but she didn't answer. She couldn't. She watched the thing growing closer and closer, and all she could do was—

When Jenn opened her mouth to scream, nothing came out. Her vocal cords were frozen as surely as her legs.

Oh shit,
she thought.
Why did I follow her here after midnight? Why did she
bring
me?

“Jenn!”

Nick's voice broke the silence, and suddenly a light appeared in the room. Only, this one wasn't ghostly. It was definitely a candle. And it was moving toward her.

“What are you doing?” Nick exclaimed, slipping an arm around her. “Why are you in here without me? Why didn't you answer?”

His touch broke the spell, and Jenn took a deep, broken breath. “I followed Aunt Meredith. Her ghost. Then she disappeared into the bones. Right over there.” She pointed. “I thought she was coming back a minute ago—her or something worse. But then you came.”

“Come on,” he said, pulling her along behind him. “Come back to bed.”

“But she was here,” Jenn insisted. “She was trying to show me something.”

Nick nodded. Then he held up his candle. Faint orange light bled off the stacks of old bones to flicker on the dusty floor.

“There's nothing here now,” he said. “And I don't think this is where we want to spend the night.”

Jenn grudgingly followed him down the long stretch of room, glancing back as they left to see that mummy nailed to the wall like some dark martyr. Its green marble eyes were following them, and she could still feel that dead gaze on her back when Nick pulled the door of the pantry shut behind them.

He pulled open the refrigerator door and poured two glasses
of milk, handing one to her. The other he took a deep gulp of before setting it on the counter with a sigh.

“Helps you sleep,” he explained.

She shrugged. “We'll see,” she said, and then drained her glass.

They went back to bed, but sleep came slow for Jenn. Her feet felt hot, then cold. She shifted beneath the covers and tossed from one side to the other. For a long time she lay staring out at the empty hallway outside, expecting movement. Expecting another beckoning glimmer. But the ghost didn't return.

Nick's deep breathing filled her ear, and Jennica finally closed her eyes and let the sound lull her to sleep. When she did, she dreamed of the bones in the pantry. The bones shifted across the floor like snakes.

Scott Barkiewicz pulled off the broken, one-lane asphalt road and onto a sandy gravel driveway next to a beat-up brown van that saltwater air had not been kind to. The house beyond was typical of those halfway up the hill on the edge of town: a pale cerulean and white frame that looked as if it needed a new coat of paint ten years ago. But, Scott expected that the inside of the small home would likely defy the outside. Looks were deceiving. The ocean air aged everything here twice as fast as anywhere else, and most of the homes he'd been in since he started on the force here were modest but well kept.

He stepped out of the squad car and walked across a string of pale pink paving blocks to a concrete step. The inner door was open beyond a screen door, and he could hear the doorbell echo inside when he touched the button.

It only took a moment for a thickset Italian woman to emerge from the back of the house. She looked about fifty, he guessed, with shoulder-length dark hair and equally black eyes. Her blouse woke the eye with a kaleidoscopic pattern, and the chest and belly beneath jiggled as she walked. Mrs. Foster was no stranger to good eatin'.

“Can I help you?” she asked through the screen.

“Emmaline Foster?” he asked.

She nodded. “That's me.”

“I was hoping I might be able to talk a bit with you and your husband.”

She raised an eyebrow. “That might prove a bit difficult.”

“Why's that?” Scott asked.

“Well, he's been dead these last twenty-plus years.” Her voice betrayed enjoyment that he'd not done his homework.

“I'm sorry, ma'am,” he said. But his stomach sank. If Harry had been dead all this time, he couldn't be involved in the current mess. And it might also explain why the local victim list remained incomplete when it came to the parents of the children murdered in the original Pumpkin Man spree: Harry wasn't here to be murdered.

Of course,
she
still was.

“Would you mind giving me a few minutes of your time?” he asked. “I'd like to talk to you about—”

“The Pumpkin Man?” she said. “You know, Captain Jones stopped by here a couple months ago.”

Scott nodded. “I was hoping to get a little different perspective,” he explained. “I'm new to town and don't have the same history he does.”

The woman gave a slight smile and pushed the door open. “Don't know what good it will do, but sure, I'll talk to you.”

When he stepped inside, Emmaline Foster's living room appeared well lived-in. The walls were a deep red, but the room wasn't dark, because there were also dozens of framed photos and pieces of art. Her walls were a gallery dedicated to her life.

“Can I get you a cup of coffee?” she asked, gesturing for him to sit on the couch. “I just brewed a pot.”

“Thanks,” he said, sinking into one of the deep brown cushions. “I'd love one. Black with a little sugar, please.”

She disappeared through an arched entryway, and Scott could see startlingly white tile and the corner of a kitchen table beyond. Its surface was black, and the chairs surrounding it were framed in silver metal with black cushion seats. Very deco, he thought.

Glasses clinked in the kitchen as he took in the room around him. It held a single couch and two light-blue easy chairs on either side of a low, stained coffee table. There was no TV or
fireplace. Where the walls weren't covered by frames, they were hidden by two bookcases and a curio cabinet. In the cabinet were a number of statuettes and some odd pieces of sculpture he couldn't quite identify from across the room. Behind him on the wall were several pictures that featured Emmaline. She was younger, her hair longer, but the basic frame of the woman seemed unchanged. And while she'd always been thickset, going by the way her arms draped various men and women and the constant smiles and glinting playfulness in those teardrop eyes, she'd always been the life of the party.

She returned with two tall ivory mugs on a small rectangular tray that she set on the table. Motioning to a small ceramic pot she said, “I didn't know how much you take, so I just brought the sugar.”

“Thanks, ma'am,” he said, and spooned in two heaps. “Was that your husband?”

He nodded at one of the photos in a black frame immediately behind his head. The tall, long-faced man appeared in several photos around the room, he'd noted. In this one, the man stood with his arm draped easily around a young Emmaline's shoulders. The pictured room was crowded, and they both were dressed in fancy clothes. They appeared to be at some formal function.

She shook her head. “No,” she said. “That was my brother George. Harry's over there.” She pointed to a picture of a heavyset, thirtysomething man with his hands on the shoulders of a young boy.

“Your son?” Scott probed, eyeing the youth.

She shook her head no but recanted. “Well, yes, he was mine for a few years. Justin was Harry's boy from another marriage. We lost him when he was just twelve years old.” She sipped from her cup and didn't elaborate.

“I'm sorry for your loss,” Scott said, feeling lame.

Emmaline shrugged. “It was many years ago. I'm afraid time leaves everyone scarred.”

“It must have been very hard for you to lose your son and then your husband,” Scott said, then again felt stupid as the words left his mouth. She only nodded and stared, waiting for him to get to the point.

Scott shifted in his seat. “You obviously know that the Pumpkin Man killings have begun again,” he said. “And most of the victims have been the parents of the children who were killed in the eighties. Are you worried for your safety?” He inwardly rolled his eyes.
That's the best fishing you can come up with?
he asked himself.

“No, I'm not worried,” she answered. “I think if he was going to come for me, it would have happened already. And anyway, I keep protection in my nightstand. He wouldn't stand a chance.” She raised her eyebrow to punctuate a grin. It said,
Just try to fuck with me and see what happens.

Scott nodded, pleased she wasn't scared. “Can you tell me a little about the original killings?” he asked. “I mean, I've read the files, but I've not had the opportunity to talk to any of the other parents.”

Emmaline laughed. “Well no, you wouldn't have, would you? Aren't many left.”

Scott felt himself blush.

“It was a horrible couple of years,” she admitted. “Everyone blamed George for it, but I knew that he wasn't guilty. My brother would never have done something like that. He wasn't like the rest of the family. He was gentle as gentle could be.”

“Wait a minute,” Scott said, feeling stupid again for not having done his homework. “I hadn't realized your maiden name was—”

“Perenais?” she finished for him. “Yes. I am Emmaline Perenais, and yes, the man everyone called the Pumpkin Man was my brother.”

The ride north from San Francisco was long and troubling. Not because he'd blacked out sometime the night before and awoken many hours later covered in blood, but because he
hadn't.

Well, he had blacked out; he'd felt that coming on in his tiny living room and sank onto the old couch begging for it to pass. The next thing he knew, the sun was in his eyes, waking him from where he lay sprawled across the bucket seats of his Honda, parked behind a rusted, beaten-up blue VW on a quiet street lined with other parked cars. He had looked around at the low-hanging tree branches and the pastel mélange of tall and narrow houses along the sidewalk and then immediately at his hands. They were clean. No blood specks on his knuckles. No crimson rust beneath his fingernails. No used rubber gloves lying on the car floor.

He'd looked on the passenger seat, expecting to see the leather pouch he'd woken up with so many times after a blackout. But it wasn't there. It wasn't in the backseat either, or on the floor or stuck between the door and the seat. He was sure. He'd gotten out of the car, down on his knees along the curb and looked. Three times.