The Pumpkin Man (40 page)

The door to the pantry slammed.

Jenn started again toward the front door and then realized her car keys were in the bedroom. It would do very little good for her to run for the hills without a vehicle, so she ran for her bedroom holding the book in one hand, and snatched the keys from her dresser with the other. But as soon as she picked them up she could hear Nick's feet in the hallway outside. She wasn't going to be leaving by the front.

Well, sometimes you had to sneak out through the back door. She darted toward the basement entrance, unlocked it and slammed the door behind her. She pulled the cord to light the basement, but as soon as she stepped down a few stairs, she heard the door above her open.

Fuck.

She ran as soon as she reached the floor of the basement, but she slowed when she reached the workbench. Once, long ago, Meredith's husband had used this as his office. She'd noted it before, filled with drills, saws, hammers, goggles and other hardware. The wall above the bench was filled with screwdrivers, pliers and other things, all hung from small hooks.

Jenn stopped at the bench and slipped her hand around a wooden hammer handle. It felt good in her hand.

Pulling it off its hook on the wallboard, she kept running. She raced down the corridor toward the crypt, not slowing even as she entered that cloistered room. She knew the bones of the Pumpkin Man rested here, or at least the bones of George Perenais. This demon was tied to him, wasn't it? Destroying those bones would destroy it. So she had to hope.

She thought about kneeling to ask forgiveness, but then
decided that there really was no time. “We're done,” she said at the front of the coffin.

Footsteps whispered behind her.

“Fuck,” she breathed, laying the book out atop the coffin, flipping back to the bloodstained page on banishment, praying to see anything more that might help her. She knew she could escape from him now—she could go up the back stairway to the graveyard and run down the hill toward town. But that was just a delay. He would follow her. No matter where she went.

Jenn skimmed the blood-spattered page, looking for words that could save her.
Banishment,
the page read again in French.
Destroy the place the soul calls home.

Then it was too late. She was out of time. He was there.

“Jennica,” Nick said from the doorway. “Don't run away. I love you.”

Jenn looked at the blank expression on his face and answered, “I don't believe you.” She lifted the hammer in her hand and felt its weight.

Nick moved closer, and Jenn eyed the stone casket beside her. The casket that had stood atop the hidden heart tucked in the floor of the Perenais house for the past twenty years or more. The hidden heart . . .

Jenn looked around on the floor for the wooden box she and Nick had taken out of the lockbox in the floor. It was just a yard away from her foot.

Nick—or, the Pumpkin Man, really; Jenn stared into his eyes and detected no hint of her boyfriend in the glint of murder that lived there—began to close the gap between them. Jenn took a deep breath and then dove for the ground. She grabbed the box, rolled to her feet and held it out at him in a threat.

“I have it,” she said defiantly. “Stay back.” “What do you think you have?” The Pumpkin Man sneered, still walking toward her.

She opened the wooden box and lifted out the shriveled
organ that had once been a heart. It was almost weightless in her hand.

“I'll destroy it!” she threatened.

The Pumpkin Man kept coming.

Jenn threw the heart on the ground and lifted a foot to step on it. The Pumpkin Man lunged, though, and instead of her foot coming down on the heart, she threw herself to the left to avoid his knife and stumbled awkwardly to the ground. Nick's lips curved in a smile that crowed victory.

She didn't give up. As his hand reached for her ankle and his fingers closed around it, Jenn brought the hammer around and slammed it into Nick's arm. The Pumpkin Man yelled in pain and pulled away.

It was the break she needed. Jenn shimmied to her feet and in two steps was back at the heart. She raised her foot again, and this time nothing stopped her from crushing the ancient organ on the floor of the crypt. When she lifted her foot, gray powder was all that remained. She stepped down again and again, twisting her foot back and forth, grinding the powder farther into the floor.

“Die,” she said to the Pumpkin Man. She grinned in victory.

Instead of slumping to the ground, Nick's body rose, one arm rubbing the other where she'd hit him. “That wasn't my heart,” the voice said simply. “Though somewhere I imagine the bones of P. Stephen Gifford are rolling over in his grave.”

Nick stepped closer, and his eyes were slits of dark anger. Jenn felt her heart sink. She'd thought for a moment that she'd won, that she'd broken the secret that let this devil steal people's bodies. Now, she wasn't sure what to try, assuming she was ever given another chance.

“You silly creature,” Nick's voice said, but she knew that it wasn't Nick talking. Knowing that didn't make it any easier to hear. “You think you can stop me? Me? I've been alive for centuries, and lived in dozens of human shells. Though I must
say, your aunt gave me the best story to live up to of any witch who's called me.”

He twirled the knife in his hand and grinned as he stopped and reversed its spin.

“The Pumpkin Man,” he said. “What a great gimmick. At first, I was just giving George power to carve really good jack-o'-lanterns. With those knives, he tapped into the very essence of that which he wanted to carve. But eventually, I convinced him to dip his knives deeper. That's when he began to taste their souls. And that's when he lost his soul to me.”

Jenn backed up another inch. “Why did you make him kill those kids?”

Nick's mouth laughed. “Because they taste sooooo good!”

“They were just little kids.”

Nick stepped forward. His voice lost its humor. “You should be less worried about the dead and more worried about yourself.”

“Why are you doing this?” she whispered.

“Because I can,” he said, stepping closer again. “And because I want to stay here. Souls are my bridge.”

“Why did you have to kill my dad and Kirstin and Brian? And now you've taken over Nick. You've taken everyone that was close to me. Why me?”

Nick grinned menacingly. “Because you're weak. Your life will taste so sweet, seasoned by loss. You always were a pathetic wallflower. You needed everyone else to prop you up. Your father, Kirstin . . . you could never stand on your own, and now you're about to fall for the very last time.”

Jenn felt the lure of his lies. The place in her heart that had always begged her to hide instead of seek opened at his words, threatening to suck her in. But then she thought of Meredith's words from her journal. Meredith had been brave and had never
given up on George. She'd written,
There are some things that a woman has to do to protect what she loves. No matter what.

Jenn leaned back against the casket as the Pumpkin Man moved closer, and she felt it shift a little as he crowded her, leaving her no room to run. She could smell the warmth of his breath, he was so close. She thought of Meredith's strength. And then the words of the
Book of Shadows
came back to her.
Heart and bones,
the text had read. She'd already tried to use the heart . . .

An idea occurred as the stone behind her shifted. The heart she'd crushed might have had a tie to Perenais power, but the bones of George Perenais the Pumpkin Man rested here.
The bones of George Perenais.
The bones that this vengeful soul had taken root in.

If this ancient evil had truly found an anchor in George to tie itself to this realm, then by destroying those bones, could she break the link?

The Pumpkin Man grinned. A cat to a cornered mouse. He knew she could go nowhere now. He had taken everything from her but her life . . . and that was next. He lifted the knife and raised it toward her chest. As he did, she threw herself backward against the casket, forcing it to rock. Then, as he lifted the knife to stab, she darted around the other side and with a running start threw herself with all her might against it from the opposite direction.

The Pumpkin Man gave chase, suddenly looking not victorious but fearful. But he was already too late. The casket shifted, overbalanced. It fell toward Nick's feet. There was a crack as loud and sharp as a cannon; then the stone top of the coffin opened and crashed to the ground. The bones of a dead man exploded across the stone floor.

The Pumpkin Man stood in shock amid the bones. He backed out of the human wreckage, looking lost, unsure. Jenn edged forward until she stood atop the bones, the ribs and arms and skull of a dead man strewn around her feet.

“What have you done?” the Pumpkin Man whispered.

“Oops,” Jenn said with a false smile. “Looks like I made a mess.”

“You'll be sorry for that,” Nick said, and he moved toward her, knife in hand.

“Why, are these
your
bones?” Jenn asked sweetly, bending down to finger the empty eye socket of the yellowed skull.

“No, they're not mine. But they're the bones of my host. Don't defile them,” Nick demanded.

This was the right thing, Jenn now knew for sure. She had grabbed the hammer to fend off Nick, but now she raised it and brought it down on the skull of her uncle. “It's over,” she screamed at her boyfriend's face, though it wasn't her boyfriend currently wearing it. “It's all over, leave us alone!”

The skull shattered, pieces exploding across the floor. Like with broken porcelain, a tiny cloud of white dust rose from the center.

Nick ran forward and shoved her. “Stop!”

She toppled backward but still held the hammer. Righting herself and seeing the flat expression of Nick's face just inches from her own she whispered, “It's over. Now it really is. Go back to where you came from.”

He stabbed at her with the knife, but Jenn pushed away. His blade swished past, a sharp sting down the flesh over her rib cage. Jenn responded with the hammer, slamming it into Nick's carving arm with a meaty
thunk.
He dropped the knife and clutched his biceps.

Jenn didn't wait to see how long it took him to recover; she brought the hammer down again and again, this time on every bone of the skeleton that lay around her on the floor. She pounded the hammer into each, enjoying the blows that changed each fossil-like bone into piles of fragments and dust.

She looked at Nick again, and saw him moving. He was coming very slowly toward her, as if he moved underwater. With every
crushed bone, he flinched. So Jenn slammed the point of her hammer through her uncle's skull one last time, and now the pieces gave way, fracturing the shell that had housed a demon who had deserved to die centuries before she was born.

When Jennica brought the last stroke down, the one that pulverized the skull into nothing but dust, Nick collapsed, falling helpless to the ground at her feet. Jenn kept bringing the hammer down, though, crushing bone after bone of the skeleton, knowing that with every blow she was eliminating the power of the curse.

Nick screamed. It was a horrible sound, and he rolled back to his feet. He rushed her, knife raised, but Jenn brought the hammer around and caught him in the shoulder. He swore and was knocked back, but he didn't stop. Instead, he brought the knife around and tried to drive it into her chest.

Jennica moved just in time. Nick missed. Off balance, he fell to his knee.

“Let him go,” Jenn said softly, not to Nick but to the thing inside him.

Nick's mouth opened, and the Pumpkin Man's voice simply said, “No.”

He began to rise. Jenn was prepared for that. She brought her hammer down and struck the hand that held the knife, and the weapon went clattering across the floor. The Pumpkin Man gripped his hand to nurse the pain.

“Let him go,” she repeated, this time with more determination.

“No,” Nick refused, this time wearing a smile that didn't look at all happy. He rose, and his eyes glared at her with such fire that she knew he would kill her, even if it was his last act. He came at her with both fists raised.

Jenn dove and grabbed the knife from the floor. As she picked it up, she felt his weight upon her. His arm reached around to grab her in a choke hold. She gasped, and stars shone behind her
eyes. His arm only tightened further. She could feel the blood pounding in her head like a jackhammer. He was squeezing. Her head felt as if it would explode as she gasped to try to suck in even a little bit of breath, but she couldn't, he was going to strangle her with the crook of his arm.

Jenn closed her eyes. “I'm sorry,” she whispered silently. “This isn't you.”

She flipped the knife in her hand so that it pointed behind her, and then she stabbed backward as hard as she could. Her heart sank as she felt it connect.