The Pumpkin Man

CHAPTER

ELEVEN

The apartment was quiet and dark. Shadows clung to the walls like semitranslucent drapes or fog. Walking through the entryway felt as if she were entering a haunted house. The place was familiar, and yet, something in the air tasted dangerous. Metallic. Wrong.

Jennica cringed as the door shut behind her with a snap. She stepped across the wooden hallway and silently urged her shoes to make less noise. The walls seemed to close in as she walked five paces to the front room. She wanted to call out a hello, and yet, somehow, as soon as she’d crossed the threshold, she felt prevented from speaking.

Her shoe slipped. Skidded, really. She held her hands out for balance.

“Daddy?” she called, teetering on the brink of falling.

Her father didn’t answer.

She couldn’t recover her balance and went down hard. Her elbow met wood and she cried out in pain. The sound of her voice was swallowed up by dark. Her cheek met the hard surface of the floor, and she rolled, pulling her face up and slapping her hands to the wood. Something wet and sticky clung to her cheek. She could feel something slick beneath her fingers. Something cold and thick.

She sat upright and waited for the stars to clear from her vision. The blackness eventually separated into gray shadows, and she could see the faint outline of a man lying before her. At least, she thought it was a man. The figure wore jeans and a polo shirt.

She pulled herself a little closer and then stopped. The man had no head.

But the hands and the shirt looked familiar. Horribly, achingly familiar.

“Dad?” she asked the darkness, bending closer to see if it was indeed her father who lay there headless on the hallway floor of his apartment.

From behind her, she heard a creak. Jenn opened her mouth to call out for her dad, then remembered he was there, beneath her hands.

Something cold and sharp touched the back of her exposed neck.

“Jennica,” spoke a whisper. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

Jennica screamed and woke in a sweat. The sheets stuck to her skin, but she was loath to push them aside after the dream. She wanted to hide.

But, wasn’t that what she was doing here—hiding? She’d come out here and left her old life behind to live in the shadows of her aunt’s. To live in this shell of a home her aunt once kept.

Jenn stifled the urge to cry. She couldn’t turn back. She had nothing but this, the remains of the life of a woman she’d never known. She had no money, no friends, no future. She was here in this strange room, needing to sort it all out.

“I want to go home,” she whispered. But how could she go home when she had no home left to go to? How could she make this place her own? How would she make it her own?

The dark had no answer.