The Pumpkin Man

CHAPTER

SEVENTEEN

Sleep had not been easy or deep. Jenn plodded into the kitchen rubbing her eyes.

Kirstin was not in evidence, but the coffeepot was full. Jenn poured herself a cup, then walked into the front room. Kirstin was there, flopped on the couch in gray sweatpants and a T-shirt, reading a book.

A book? Decidedly unlike her.

“What are you doing?” Jenn asked.

Kirstin looked up and smiled. “I thought I’d use this library of the weird to see if there were any references to a Pumpkin Man.”

A chill ran up Jenn’s spine. “And?”

“No luck so far.”

“Hmmmph.” Jenn pushed Kirstin’s feet off the edge of the couch and sat down. “Something spoke to us last night,” she said. It was both a fact and a question.

“I didn’t move that thing around,” Kirstin replied. “So . . . yeah.”

“That’s fucked-up.”

“Yeah,” Kirstin agreed. “It was.”

Jenn sipped her coffee and thought about the night. “So . . . Nick and Brian didn’t mess with the Ouija board.”

“Probably not,” Kirstin said.

“But you threw them out. So, now what?”

“You can call them today and tell them your roommate’s a ditz, that they should come back up. And that they should ignore me.”

“I should do that?” Jenn said.

“Or I guess I could.”

Jenn nodded. “I am pretty sure that’s your call to make.”

Kirstin looked annoyed. “You going to help me research?” she asked, setting down The History of the Occult, Vol. 3 and reaching for a different book. She’d set a stack on the end table next to the couch.

“No,” Jenn said, finishing her coffee in a single gulp. “I’m going to go take a shower.”

She got up and deposited her cup in the kitchen before heading to the bedroom. Today was about getting out of the house, maybe hanging out and exploring River’s End. Jenn did not want to spend the morning poring over books of the dark arts.

As she stepped into her bedroom, she stopped as if she’d run into a brick wall. Her eyes grew wide. There, at the foot of her bed, lay a pile of pumpkin shards: orange-skinned triangles, their flesh bright and clearly still moist. Spattered with crimson. It couldn’t be what it looked like. Someone was messing with her.

Her chest tightened. “Shit. Shit. Shit,” she whispered. “Not again.”

Had they been here when she woke up? Jenn looked around the room and then back at the bits of pumpkin. The edge of her comforter hung partially over them, which meant they must have been. She’d been so drowsy she must have stepped right past them, her mind only focused on coffee.

“Kirstin?” she called, struggling to keep the tremors from her voice. “Could you come here?”

In a moment, her roommate rounded the corner.

Jenn pointed at the floor. “Did you leave me some pumpkin for breakfast?” she said, trying desperately to lighten her inner terror. “Maybe as a joke?”

Kirstin went pale. “Um, no.”

“Well, someone did.” Jenn stared her roommate in the eye. “Someone was in my room last night while I was sleeping.”

“Fuck. I didn’t hear anything.” Kirstin’s eyes were wide. “Do you think one of the guys came back and . . . ?”

Jenn shook her head. “How would they know?”

“We’ve got to get out of here.”

“I don’t think that’s going to help,” Jenn realized. “They found pumpkin shards in my dad’s apartment. I found pumpkin pieces last month in Chicago. Last night, some freakin’ spirit told us to beware the Pumpkin Man. Now there are pumpkin pieces here. Something is following me, Kirstin, and I think we need to find out what it is. Because hopping a plane didn’t seem to make any difference.”

Her friend looked pained. “I want to know how it got in.”

“I’d like to know why it left me pumpkin pieces with what looks to be blood on them!” Jenn replied.

Kirstin pursed her lips before murmuring, “Not to mention how it got pumpkins out of season. I haven’t noticed any specialty grocery stores around here.” Her eyes lit on the door to the basement, and on a whim she reached out and grabbed the knob. It turned with no resistance.

“We never locked the door,” Kirstin whispered.

“We sure the hell did,” Jenn replied. She saw the black wings of the bat nailed to the wall and with one hand pressed the door back closed. “Get the key,” she added. “Please.”

Kirstin disappeared into the kitchen. A minute later she returned with the key. After turning it in the lock, both of them tested the knob. The door would not open.

“Okay,” Jenn said. “I’m taking a shower, and then we’re getting out of here for a while.”

While Jenn showered, Kirstin went back to the kitchen to get a plastic shopping bag, scooped the pumpkin bits in and took them to the trash. She did her best not to touch the pieces. She did her best not to think about how they got there. And, by the time she was done, she was more than anxious to leave the house. Because someone had come into their home in the middle of the night and stood over their beds. She didn’t know that making sure the basement door was locked would help.

“Damn,” she said as the pumpkin pieces fell to the bottom of the green garbage pail in the garage.

“Damn and fuck,” she added, closing the garage door.

“I called Brian,” Kirstin said. “I apologized.”

Jenn smiled. Her hair was still wet from her shower, but she’d pulled on jeans and a T-shirt. She didn’t plan on dolling up today.

“I asked if they’d come up again tonight. Said that we could make it up to them. He said yes.”

“They’re coming back?” Jenn asked. Her plan to dress casual went right out the window.

Kirstin nodded. “Yes. So, we need to pick up something good for you to cook for dinner. ’Cuz I promised them a good meal.”

“But you threw them out. Shouldn’t you cook dinner?” Jenn asked.

“I’ll drive you to the store and pay,” Kirstin promised.

They arrived at River’s End’s General Store an hour later with a list and an extremely disgruntled cook.

“I didn’t tell them to leave,” Jenn had pointed out several times.

“But I can’t cook,” was Kirstin’s rebuttal.

They stepped into the market, and Jenn shook her head and walked down the main aisle to grab ingredients. Kirstin, meanwhile, headed to the front of the store.

The same clerk was at the register. Travis Lupe, she remembered.

“Ever get out of this place?” she asked, catching his eye.

“Some,” he answered.

“Every time I see you, you’re here.”

“True,” he acknowledged, “but you don’t see me when I’m not.”

Kirstin blinked. She didn’t have an answer for that.

“Ever heard of the Pumpkin Man?” she asked. Not having an answer had never stopped her from talking.

The clerk glared at Kirstin now over the frames of his black glasses. His eyes were drilling holes into her. “Why do you ask?”

“Because someone told us to look out for him,” she answered. “I didn’t know if that was kind of a local boogeyman or what.”

“Well, the Pumpkin Man’s a boogeyman, all right,” the clerk answered.

“What do you mean?” Kirstin felt a bit of a nudge might do them some good.

“He’s a legend. The legend says that the Pumpkin Man comes to River’s End every Halloween and chooses a person. When he decides on his victim, he picks himself a pumpkin from the local patch and uses a knife and magic to carve that person’s soul into the gourd.”

Kirstin blinked. “What do you mean, ‘carves his soul’?”

Travis Lupe shrugged. “He draws the face of the victim on the pumpkin with his knife, and by the time he’s through, there’s an image of the person in the gourd and a headless body left behind.”

“Beautiful.”

“Not really.” The clerk shook his head. “Kids here are scared to death of meeting the Pumpkin Man. Parents sometimes tell their kids that he’ll come to their rooms to take them if they aren’t in bed by midnight on Halloween night. He’ll just leave a pumpkin in place of their head.”

Jenn stepped out of the aisle with a soup can in her hand. “Does he leave behind pieces of pumpkin?”

Travis nodded. “That’s what the police have found every time,” he said. “Pumpkin pieces with stripes of blood. The victims surface eventually.”

“Wait a minute,” Kirstin said. “I thought you said he was a legend?”

“Every legend starts from something,” Travis said. “And a long time ago, there were a whole series of murders here. They said the Pumpkin Man killed them.”

“Well, crap,” Kirstin said. “Why the hell is he hanging out at our house?”

Travis looked at her and gave a nervous chuckle. “Well, that part’s easy.” His gaze rested squarely on Jennica. “The Pumpkin Man was your uncle. The Pumpkin Man was Meredith Perenais’s husband.”