The Pumpkin Man

CHAPTER

NINE

Jennica woke to sun streaming through pale curtains. She had taken what presumably was Meredith’s old room, basically just tossing her suitcase to the floor and climbing into bed, but as she blinked and peered around blurrily to get her bearings she got a better sense of it than she had the night before. The room was painted a pale yellow, and a long wooden dresser with an oval mirror took up most of one wall. A closet door rose beside it.

Jenn plodded barefoot across the room and opened the closet. It had been emptied. Good. She’d started to wonder last night, given the number of things still left in the front room, if her dad really had gotten rid of any of Meredith’s belongings when he’d come out. She knew he’d wanted the place to have a furnished feel for rental, but she’d been surprised he left all the candles and books.

Looking at her suitcase, she considered emptying it and then closed the closet. She’d unpack after breakfast.

There was a second door on the same wall as the closet, and she got excited. That’d be nice if she had a master bath! She unzipped the top pouch of her luggage and pulled out her bathroom things, and then walked over to try the door. Locked!

Question: who locks their bathroom?

Answer: Jenn’s crazy aunt.

She set her toiletries on the rumpled bed and looked atop the dresser, but no keys were in sight; there were only a couple of old lamps on either end and a couple of small velvet drawstring sacks that she assumed were potpourri holders. She opened all the drawers and confirmed that her dad had emptied the dresser completely.

At a noise from the other end of the house, Jenn walked out to find Kirstin in the kitchen, already dressed and rooting around in the pots-and-pans cabinet. “Hey, sleepyhead! Been making a list for our run to town. We’ve got all the plates, bowls, pots and stuff we need, but we didn’t think to stop yesterday and pick up any actual food. No breakfast until we get in the car.”

“Do we have a coffeemaker?”

Kirstin nodded. “Not very useful without coffee, though. Already on the list.”

Jenn scanned the listed items, which already included all the basics: eggs, bread, coffee, milk, cereal, hamburger, vegetables.

“Huh,” she said. “I thought I was the practical one.”

“Yeah, well . . . I figured you needed me right now to help get your feet back on the ground. Then I can be my old flighty self again.” She tousled Jenn’s knotted hair. “Now, go. Get your shower so we can go to the store. I’m starving!”

The road to town was a lot more enjoyable in the daytime. They could actually see the blue of the ocean from the gravel path that led away from the house, and when they passed the gate and started on the steep one-lane road down the hill to the center of town, Kirstin gasped.

“Holy shit, that’s gorgeous.”

The picturesque town was nestled along the last bend in the Russian River, and on the far side, a thin strip of land ascended in another tree-lined rocky hill. To the north, the river suddenly opened up into the endless blue of the ocean.

“I can see why she didn’t come to Chicago much,” Jenn said. “Wow.”

There was one main road through the center of town: Route 1, which ran along the coast down to San Francisco. Aside from a few houses ascending the western hill, the other visible buildings were a couple bed-and-breakfasts along the waterfront, a gas station with its windows plastered with signs for bait and beer, and a small general store that boasted the very original name General Store.

Jennica and Kirstin pulled into the five-space parking lot and went inside. Bells jangled on the heavy wooden screen door. They saw makeshift shelves lining the north wall, piled with everything from bags of charcoal to dog food. A handful of freestanding shelves divided the store center, and a refrigerated dairy section was visible in back. The front of the store served as the deli and meat display, the dominant theme of which seemed to be fish.

An older couple sat at what appeared to be a repurposed patio table. The man was reading a newspaper as the woman drank coffee.

“Can I help you?” a voice asked before the door bells stilled. A short, middle-aged man in glasses and a white apron stepped into the main room from an open doorway in back. He took his place behind the deli near what appeared to be the store’s only cash register.

“We’re just picking up supplies,” Jenn said, and turned away from him into one of the aisles. She hated it when salespeople watched her shop. It was like they were just waiting for her to stick something in her purse.

“We got plenty of those,” the man replied. “We get a lot of hikers and campers out this way.”

“Oh, we’re not camping,” Kirstin volunteered. “We just moved here from Chicago.”

“Really,” the proprietor said, suddenly looking more interested. “Well, my name’s Travis.” He held out a hand. “Travis Lupe. I’d be happy to give you the lay of the land if you’ve got any questions.”

Kirstin walked up and shook his hand. Then she leaned an elbow on the white Formica countertop, affording Travis an easy glimpse down her loose, low-cut T-shirt. Cleavage bought Kirstin a lot, and she never hesitated to use it.

“Is there anything to do around here at night?” she asked, raising an eyebrow hopefully.

“Well, um . . .” Travis stammered, clearly caught between his desire to look down her shirt and trying to focus on Kirstin’s question. “There’s a fish fry over at the Bowery House on Friday nights. And once in a while a band comes up and plays Casey’s, the bar on Fourth Street. If you want music, though, you really need to drive over to Santa Rosa or down to Point Reyes Station. The Saloon there has a lot of bands that come up from San Francisco. Or you can just hop on the 101 and go down to San Francisco. Kind of a hike for just a night out, but people do it.”

“So, what do you do for fun?” Kirstin asked.

“I like to read,” he replied. His face flushed a little, and Kirstin stifled a smile. It was so easy sometimes to rile men up. “A lot. And I watch a lot of movies. We rent them here at the store.” He pointed to a wall of DVDs behind the seated couple. “I’ve seen most of those, I suppose, but we get new ones in all the time if you want to rent them. There’s one called Land of the Dead that has some great zombies in it. I really like those Saw movies, too,” he volunteered. “Makes you kind of afraid to turn the lights out at night. Have you seen them?”

“Nah,” Kirstin said. “I don’t stay in much. Figured you’d have a couple bars and some beaches to check out at least.”

“Bars? Well, I don’t know if Casey’s is going to be your speed,” Travis admitted, risking an obvious glance at her breasts, “but they’ll be glad to see you. And there are more rocks than beach here, but plenty of water. Where are you staying?”

Kirstin pointed at Jenn. “We’re at her aunt Meredith’s place up at the top of the hill. She inherited it a couple weeks ago, so we thought we’d spend some time here, see if we liked it.”

Travis flinched. Across the room, the old man set his newspaper down.

“Meredith Perenais?” Travis asked.

Jenn walked up behind Kirstin with a roll of paper towels and a box of corn flakes. She’d been following the conversation, amused that Kirstin couldn’t enter a room without stalking anything male that happened to be there. “Yeah,” she said. “Did you know her?”

When she extended her hand and gave her name, the clerk shrugged and gave a feeble shake. “Everyone knows everyone here—at least a little bit,” he said.

A deeper voice came from across the room. “You planning on staying here long?”

It was the man at the table, and Jenn realized the old couple was staring intently at her. “We don’t know yet,” she said.

“Well, don’t,” the old man advised. The pale blue of his eyes flashed like ice. “You go back to where you came from and live a happy life.”

Jenn opened her mouth to answer, then stopped. She wasn’t really sure what to say. Travis didn’t help either; his eyes roved from her to Kirstin and back, as if trying to memorize every bit of them while he had the opportunity.

She nudged her friend. “C’mon. Let’s get what we came for.”

She and Kirstin gathered their supplies, cans of beans and corned beef hash, returning every few minutes to stack things on the counter as the store wasn’t large enough to have shopping carts. Travis didn’t say anything more, and the atmosphere in the store seemed to have grown patently unfriendly. Jenn could feel eyes on her back as she moved through the aisles.

As they checked out, Travis nodded, one curl of his wavy black hair jittering nervously over his ear. Jennica had to stifle a grin.

“You take care,” he said. “Let me know if you need anything at all.”

They put the groceries in the back of the car and climbed in themselves, and Jenn looked at Kirstin with raised eyes. “What was that all about?”

“Oh, I’d say Travis likes me.”

“Not that. Everybody likes you. I meant the old guy!”

“He probably likes me, too!” Kirstin laughed. Then she looked nervous. “I’d say your aunt wasn’t very popular around here. Probably because she was a witch.”

“Not exactly the welcome wagon,” Jenn agreed.

“Yeah, and Casey’s isn’t sounding like it’s going to be a great hangout, either.”

Jennica eyed her moping friend. “I warned you that Meredith didn’t exactly live in the center of civilization. But I’m sure Travis will watch George Romero movies with you and hold your hand when you get scared.”

“Lovely,” Kirstin answered. “I can feel a trip to San Francisco coming on.”

“Well, we have to return the rental this week anyway. You can follow me down in Aunt Meredith’s car and we’ll check it out.”

The girls spent the rest of the day unpacking and settling in, stocking the fridge and putting their clothes away. Jenn felt a little strange filling her aunt’s drawers with her own socks and panties and bras. She had to keep telling herself, “This is my place now.” But it didn’t feel like it. There was too much of her aunt still here. And too many snakes! She picked up a silver serpent from the top of the dresser and shoved it in a drawer. There’d been a ceramic statue on the kitchen counter, too. Meredith had apparently been into collecting them.

Jenn unwrapped a silver frame with a photo of her dad and propped him on the dresser. At least that made it look a little more like her room. Of course, it also made her taste the draught of sadness again. As much as she’d been independent, every time she thought of him being gone a pain spread across her chest. He’d been her anchor. Distant, but solid. Whenever she’d had a problem, she knew she could count on him to help her solve it. Now there was nobody.

“Jenn, do you know how to work this can opener?”

She grinned to herself. Okay, maybe there was somebody, but the help was usually going in the opposite direction. She walked to the kitchen and helped her friend position the can correctly, then pressed the handle of the mechanical opener to make the can chug around until the lid popped off.

“Sometimes you’re really blonde,” she observed. She pulled open the kitchen utensil drawer and in a moment held up a manual can opener. “Why didn’t you just use this?”

Kirstin just shrugged.

Jenn laughed and put the opener back. Something else in the drawer caught her eye, though, so she opened it farther.

“Huh,” she said, reaching in. A key hung from a tiny nail three-quarters of the way back. “I wonder what this goes to.”

Kirstin took it from her and walked to the kitchen door, which she opened. Trying the key in the outer lock, it wouldn’t go in. “Not the back door,” she observed. “Maybe the front?”

They walked to the front room, but the key didn’t work there either.

“I bet I know,” Jenn said, and led Kirstin down the hall. “Try it on that.” She pointed to the locked door she’d discovered in her bedroom. “I thought it might be a bathroom this morning, but it’s locked.”

“Who locks a bathroom from the outside?” Kirstin laughed and tried the key. It slipped in easily. “Ha!” she exclaimed. She twisted the knob and pulled the door open.

Jennica screamed, and both girls jumped back three feet.

“What the hell is that?” Kirstin whispered, staring at the dark shape beyond. Its eyes stared straight at them. The teeth were bared, ready to bite.

Jenn held a hand to her chest; her heart pounded hard. “It’s okay,” she said and stepped forward again, forcing herself to ignore the malevolence of the creature’s gaze. “It’s dead.”

The doorway opened to a staircase that led down into darkness, but at the top of the landing, the ceiling dropped enough that you’d need to duck as you descended. Nailed to the wall at eye level was a black bat, wings spread wide. For a second, Jennica had the illusion that the bat was flying straight at her.

“Gross,” Kirstin said, peering cautiously closer. “Who nails bats up in their houses?”

“Apparently my aunt,” Jennica said. She closed the door. “Lock it. I’m not going down there.”

After dinner, they decided to try the fireplace. There was a stand of chopped wood on the side of the house.

Kirstin had never built a fire, but Jenn had, so she got on her knees with a candle and peeked into the firebox to open the flue. Then she piled some kindling into the log holder and stacked on a few pieces of wood. She held a lit match to some rolled-up newspaper beneath the logs, then sat back to watch the orange flame flicker and grow. When she was satisfied it was going to take without further help, she grabbed the rock edge of the fireplace to boost herself up.

As she put her weight on the rock, it shifted and she fell backward, letting go of the rock and landing with a thump.

Kirstin laughed from behind her. “What the hell was that?”

“The rock moved!”

“Uh-huh.”

“I’m serious. Check it out!”

With both hands, Jennica grabbed the rock and shifted it right and left. It slid out of place with almost no effort at all. She set it down on the cement ledge at the base of the fireplace and stared at the resulting hole.

“There’s something in there,” she realized, and reached her arm in to pull it out.

It was a varnished rectangular board, which she laid on the ledge next to the displaced stone. Kneeling down to examine it, she found the face etched in black with the symbols of the moon and sun at the upper left and right corners, next to the words YES and NO. The center featured the alphabet in rough yet still ornate gouges, burned into the wood in three lines. Below the alphabet, on the left side, was the word HELLO and on the right GOODBYE. There were also the numerals 1-9 and two circles with stars embedded inside.

“Whoa,” Kirstin said, kneeling beside her. “What is it?”

“It’s a Ouija board,” Jenn said, tilting it back and forth. “They use them to talk to the dead.”

“Witches? Like when they join hands and have séances and stuff?”

Jenn nodded.

“How does it work?”

“You’re supposed to be with a group of people, and all of you put your fingers on the planchette. Someone asks a question, and the spirits are supposed to work through your joined hands to move the planchette from letter to letter to spell out words.”

“What’s a planchette?”

Jennica realized that she only held the board. “I’d say it’s what we’re missing. Hang on.” She reached back into the space behind the rock and in a moment smiled. “Here it is,” she said, and pulled out a thin wooden piece shaped almost like a heart.

“Can two people use it, or do there need to be more?” Kirstin asked.

Jennica shrugged. “Beats me. But I’m guessing we have enough material here to do the research.” She pointed at the shelves of occult tomes on either side of the fireplace.

Kirstin ran a finger across one shelf and then the next. She stopped finally and slid out a fat green book. “How does Practical Magic for the Layman sound to start?”

Jenn laughed. “Sure, why not?” Then she stood up and looked on the opposite shelf for a book of her own and decided on the Encyclopedia of the Dead.

They paged silently through the volumes for a moment or two before Kirstin asked, “How does this sound? ‘To entice a fickle lover, take one hair from their comb or brush, combine it with one of your own and wind them carefully around the ripe red fruit of a honeysuckle bush. Prick your finger and drip two drops of blood on the berry. Wrap this charm in a small piece of cloth cut from an unwashed piece of your own intimate clothing, and after invoking the goddess and giving her your request, secret it inside the pillowcase of the lover. This works best if you can find a way to add a spot of blood from your subject along with your own.’”

“Sounds very practical,” Jenn said. “Though it might be easier just to ask them out.” A second later she chuckled. “I’ve got one for you. ‘Curse: to call upon unseen powers to mark someone with misfortune. Frequently curses are cast by utilizing personal items to help identify and tie the subject to the desired punishment. Generally, once cast, curses last until death.’”

Kirstin laughed. “Yeah, so where’s the recipe? I know what a curse is.”

“Oh, wait—here’s a better one. ‘Reanimation: to call upon dark forces to bring life back to the corpse of one already passed beyond. Depending on the length of time since death and the power of the reanimator, the soul possessing the body may or may not be its original. Oftentimes, a demon will seize the opportunity to wear the flesh of the departed in order to walk upon the earth.”

“Gives a whole new meaning to zombie,” Kirstin said. “But come on, there’s gotta be a definition in there for a Ouija board.”

“Hang on.” Jennica flipped back a few pages and then smiled. “Here it is. ‘Ouija board: a device used to communicate with the spirits of those who have passed on. The Ouija board, which literally translates as ‘yes, yes,’ is thought to have originated in China more than three thousand years ago. In its simplest form, the Ouija is a flat board with the letters of the alphabet. Users of the Ouija focus their energy upon a small glass, touching their fingertips to it. Upon asking a question, they allow a summoned spirit to channel through the foci of the glass to move it from letter to letter, spelling out whatever answer the spirit wishes to impart. In the twentieth century, the Ouija was mass-produced by a popular board game company who manufactured the boards in Salem, Massachusetts, capitalizing on that city’s fame as the center of witch burning and the board’s reputation as a ‘witchboard.’ This led many to dismiss the Ouija as simply a game. In truth, the Ouija can prove a powerful tool to open communication with the dead. Users must beware, however, as it is never a sure thing with whom one is actually communicating. While it might be the spirit one has called, it is equally possible that an imposter has seen the opening between worlds and used the Ouija as a tool to gain trust and thus a foothold to . . .’”

Jenn stopped and shook her head. “Okay, there ya go. The Encyclopedia of Ouija! This entry goes on for another page!”

Kirstin closed her own book and set it back on the shelf. “Your aunt was the real deal, Jenn.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, she was a witch. A real, honest-to-goodness witch, with séances and spells and potions and probably blood sacrifices in the backyard under a full moon! I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a bloody pentagram in the basement.”

“C’mon,” Jenn said. “She was my aunt. She may have been into all sorts of weird shit, and I’m sure she tried witchcraft with all the books and stuff around here, but I don’t think she was into blood sacrifices. She wouldn’t kill people for crissakes!”

“Did you see how those people looked at us today at the General Store?”

Jenn shrugged. She thought about her own years as a wallflower and having to take the nasty comments and digs from socialites. Ironically, they had been girls kind of like Kirstin: blonde and blue-eyed, and pretty, and they knew it, too. She was always amazed that Kirstin was her friend.

“People are mean like that,” she said. “She was probably just misunderstood.”

Kirstin gave her a sidelong glance. “Have you noticed any particular theme about these books?”

“So, she had interests that went beyond Sunday school.”

“Uh-huh. Would you care to go into the basement and see what else we find there below that crucified bat?”

“Pass.” Jennica closed the Encyclopedia and replaced it on the shelf. Then she picked up the Ouija board and set it in the fireplace opening, then set the rock back in place. “I just wish all this hocus pocus really meant something. Then maybe I could talk to my dad again.” She swept a tear from her eye and shook her head. “I’m wiped,” she announced. “See you in the morning?”

“What about the fire?” Kirstin asked, pointing. The logs had burned down, but there were still glowing orange embers.

“It’ll die on its own,” Jenn promised. A wave of depression rolled over her. “Just like everything.”

Returning to her aunt’s bedroom, Jennica couldn’t help but look at the door to the basement. Just beyond the white-painted wood, she could see the mummified bat in her mind’s eye. And when she looked at the dark wood of her aunt’s dresser, she imagined Meredith there, brushing her hair in the evening, thinking whatever thoughts she’d had out here in the middle of nowhere, night after night. All alone for years.

“Who were you?” she murmured. Then a shiver shook her spine. A part of her worried that her aunt might answer.

She brushed her teeth and pulled on her oversize T-shirt, then turned out the light seconds before slipping under the covers of the bed. She’d changed the sheets, but still she could smell someone else on them, smell the alien nature of her surroundings. This was not her room. This was not her house. This was not where she belonged.