The Pumpkin Man

CHAPTER

TWENTY-THREE

“It was supposed to end with her death,” the man grumbled. He’d just awoken after a deep sleep on his living room couch. The pale blue velour cushions were smeared with something dark. He knew what it was without looking. What he didn’t know was whose.

He twisted his legs off the couch and his foot landed on something hard yet yielding. Absently he bent down and picked it up: a smashed hunk of pumpkin. Without warning, he broke into a machine gun round of sneezing.

“Enough already!” he screamed, whipping the pumpkin piece against the brick wall north face of his old house. He’d had the drywall removed a few years earlier to enlarge the room, but the extra space had disappeared again as he slowly filled it with discarded furniture and other rescued junk. The pumpkin stuck momentarily to the brick, then peeled back and fell behind a magazine rack. Its flesh left a wet orange splotch.

He left the shard where it lay and walked to the bathroom. As soon as he flipped the light on, he wished he hadn’t. The flecks of blood on his cheeks looked like measles. His eyelids were clean, but the rest of his face was coated like he’d been painting a ceiling in dark red paint. Tiny trails of red crusted his earlobes and splotched the white seams of his undershirt. The blue button-up he wore atop the tee was mottled in stains; from his chest to his belly, you wouldn’t have been able to tell the shirt’s original color.

He stripped off both shirts, looking in the mirror to see if there was blood on his naked chest, but beneath his speckled face was simply the pale white skin of a man who didn’t get out much. His paunch bespoke a distinctly unhealthy diet, and his still unpleasantly wet and sticky jeans bespoke murder.

He angrily stripped off the pants, a tear escaping the corner of his eye and cutting a path through dried blood as it slid down his cheek. He piled the clothes in a small heap. As with so much of his wardrobe these days, he’d be burning them in the fire pit out back. He’d need to restock his fuel soon; at the rate he was going he’d be through his wood in no time. He’d had to get rid of a lot of evidence.

He stepped into the bathtub and turned on the water, as scalding hot as it would get. Then, with a rough bath brush, he scrubbed and scrubbed until his skin was as red as the blood he struggled to escape. With every stroke of the brush, he whispered to himself, but no matter how many times he said them, the words didn’t come true.

“It was supposed to be over. It was supposed to end with her death!”

Captain Harlan Jones closed the door to his office quietly, but firmly. He’d sent Scott with Jennica Murphy and her boyfriend back to the house, and Edie had stepped out for a bit, so for a little while, he had the station all to himself. His feet were heavy as he walked across the small office, and levered himself into the well-worn desk chair. He closed his eyes as he sank back, and tried to shake the events of the day, and the past few weeks, from his mind.

How could this be happening again? And what was he going to do to deal with it?

The what he needed to ponder. He knew the how. There was no question. There never had been, really.

Meredith.

Just the thought of her name made him shiver. He remembered her as she had been when she’d first arrived in River’s End, all those years ago. A young, fresh, pretty girl, not so different from her niece Jennica. But once she’d moved into the old Perenais place, she’d begun to change. It was subtle at first, but once the word got out that the “new girl” was practicing some of the “old” ways . . . well, it wasn’t long before people were walking up the hill at odd hours, sneaking about in the dark hoping to buy charms and spells from Meredith Perenais, without anyone knowing.

But everyone knew everything about one another in a small town like this. Say what you want about the modern age and enlightened thinking in twentieth-century society, but that was all just talk. Once they stripped off those fancy business suits, people at their heart remained superstitious savages, ready to dance around the campfire and sacrifice goats in the night to appease the invisible spirits that they’d scoff at during the daytime at the office.

Jones had just been a rookie back when people began to go to Meredith for magical aid, and for a long time, he had himself refused to believe in old wives’ tales. He’d laughed at the idea that Meredith Perenais was a witch. Until the night that he responded to an emergency call from the bartender at Casey’s. He remembered that night as if it were yesterday.

Jones had been working with Patrick Donovan the night that Gillan Beans phoned in that 911. George and Meredith Perenais had been out for the night at the bar along with a bunch of other regulars. The liquor had been flowing well, apparently, because comments began to fly about drinking with a “dirty witch,” and the fists had begun flying pretty fast. Gillan had screamed for George and Elden Spraig to take it outside, and they had, followed by a handful of men who’d been cheering Elden on. Then she’d called the police.

When Jones and Donovan pulled up in the squad, the two men were circling each other in the front parking lot, surrounded by the rest. Elden had picked up an iron rod from somewhere, and was swinging it wildly at George. Before they had stopped the car, Jones saw Meredith leap into the ring and grab hold of Elden’s head, but just as fast as she entered the ring, she was dragged out of it by two of the bystanders. As Jones and Donovan slammed the doors of the squad and moved in to break up the fight, the two men disappeared around the corner of Casey’s, with Meredith kicking and screaming in their arms.

“Get the girl,” Donovan said. “I’ll handle these idiots.”

Jones nodded, and cautiously walked around the side of Casey’s, gun drawn. There were no lights on this side of the bar, and Jones squinted through the shadows along the side of the building, looking for the men. Just as he reached the corner, he heard Meredith screech. As he rounded the corner, he heard one of the men laughing. The other said, “Let’s see if a witch looks any different underneath her cape than other girls. Maybe she’s got broomstick burns!”

Jones stepped around the corner to see one of the men—Gary Burton—holding Meredith to the back siding of the bar with one large burly arm, while he covered her mouth with the other.

Her eyes bugged out as she struggled and screamed beneath his hand in anger.

Meanwhile, Sid Coleman, Gary’s usual partner in crime, was pawing the girl and laughing. “Let’s take a look, shall we,” he said, and ripped Meredith’s blouse open to expose the silky swell of her breasts behind a white lace bra.

“That’s called sexual assault,” Jones announced. “You’re already in some shit here, and if you don’t want to get in any deeper, I’d suggest you let go of that woman. Don’t bother running, I know where you guys live.”

“Shit,” Sid said, as Gary released Meredith’s arms. She pulled her blouse shut as well as she could; Sid had popped a couple buttons. “We were only playing with her while Georgie and Elden was scrapping. We didn’t do nothing at all.”

“Tell it to the judge,” Jones said, and motioned them away from Meredith. “Go wait by the squad car and we’ll get this sorted out in a minute.”

“C’mon, Harlan,” Gary complained. “Really? We were all just having fun.”

“Yeah, that’s what it sounded like to me,” Jones said. “Go. I’ll be there in a minute.”

The two disappeared around the corner, cussing loudly.

Jones put his hands on Meredith’s shoulders. “Are you okay?” he asked. He could feel her trembling beneath his fingers.

“Yes,” she said, her voice on the thin edge between fury and fear. “Assholes,” she hissed. Then she pushed away and looked toward the dark. “But George . . .”

“Right,” Jones said, and let go of her. “Donovan should have settled that, but let’s go.”

Jones led her back around the dark side of the bar to the front parking lot. The sounds of fighting had died away.

But when they stepped into the glare of the one overhead spotlight above the door of Casey’s, Jones swore.

Officer Patrick Donovan lay on his back, unmoving on the ground. George was nearby, struggling to sit up. Elden, and the rest of the gang, had disappeared.

Jones sprinted to the spot, and knelt by his partner. “What happened?” he yelled at George. The other man looked groggy, and held his middle in obvious pain.

“He tried to step in to stop Elden,” George said, “but he was crazy, swinging that thing all over. He caught Patrick in the head; I don’t even think he realized he was there until he hit him.”

There was a dark red spot across Donovan’s forehead, and when Jones slipped his hand under his partner’s head, he felt something warm and wet.

“Patrick,” he said. “Patrick, wake up!”

“I don’t think he’s breathing,” George observed.

Jones put his head to the other officer’s chest and couldn’t find a heartbeat.

“Oh, man,” he whispered, and then looked up to see Gillan standing just outside the door of the bar. “Is he okay?” she asked.

“Call an ambulance,” he yelled back, and bent over Donovan to begin CPR.

Meredith watched silently as Jones pushed on Donovan’s chest and breathed into his mouth, struggling to shock his partner’s heart and lungs back to life. After a couple minutes, she whispered something to George, who stood up and walked back into the bar.

Then she put her hand on Jones’s shoulder and said quietly, but firmly, “Stop it.”

“If I don’t do this, he’ll die,” he said.

She shook her head. “He’s already dead. But you helped me. Let me try to help you.”

Meredith pushed Jones away and took over his spot, bending over the downed police officer to put her mouth on his lips. But instead of the violent, rhythmic motions of Jones’s CPR, Meredith appeared to almost be making love to the man, running her fingers down the sides of his head and chest, and breathing on his lips, while at the same time murmuring words that Jones couldn’t quite hear or understand.

When George came back holding her purse, she stopped her ministrations a moment, and reached in to pull out a small satchel. She unbuttoned Donovan’s blue shirt and placed a small carving of silver there. A circular ornament. Then she set other objects around the body in a semicircle around his head, before sprinkling a powder from the sack over his face.

“This is ridiculous,” Jones said and reached out to pull Meredith away. “He needs CPR!”

George grabbed him by the shoulder and stopped him. “You have to trust her,” he said. “She knows what she’s doing. And this is probably his only hope.”

Meredith’s blouse hung open as she bent over Donovan, and she lifted the man’s limp hand to press it to the flesh between her breasts as she continued to chant in words that sounded strange and foreign. She straddled the officer then, and bent down to press her open chest to his, her open mouth to his.

Moments later, Donovan’s feet kicked. His whole body shuddered, and Jones moved in just in time to see Meredith’s mouth leave his, a thin trail of drool connecting them for just a second as she raised herself to kneeling, and Donovan’s eyes blinked rapidly as he gasped for breath.

“Jesus my head hurts,” he said. And then, “Meredith, what are you doing?”

Meredith picked up the circular silver ornament from Donovan’s chest, and finally Jones saw what it was. The circle was actually the body of a snake. A snake eating its own tail.

Meredith stood up and pocketed the charm. She put one arm around George, while holding her blouse shut again with the other.

“You helped me,” she said, staring unblinking into Jones’s eyes. “I won’t forget that.”

In the distance, the warning bleats of an ambulance broke the quiet of the night.

“Let’s forget this,” Meredith continued, bending down to pick up the other trinkets she’d pulled from her purse. “I am not going to press charges. It was all a misunderstanding. Just let it go.”

“But . . .” Jones began.

She shook her head. “I don’t want any more trouble,” she said. “I’ll make sure that this doesn’t happen again.”

With that, she turned away, pulling George along with her to their car.

Jones knelt next to Donovan, who looked confused.

“Her eyes . . .” he began.

“What about them,” Jones said absently, as he watched Meredith walk away.

“Her eyes were on fire.”