The Pumpkin Man

CHAPTER

THIRTY-THREE

Jennica woke to the light of the moon streaming in through the window across her naked hip, silently limning her skin with iridescence. She pulled a sheet up to cover herself but then realized the reason she’d awoken would force her out of bed. Snuggling back into the warm, snoring body of Nick was not an option. Not for long.

She pushed back the sheets and slipped out of the bed as quietly as she could, trying not to wake him. The light of the moon made it easy to see her way to the bathroom, and she did her business as quickly as she could. But just as she was rising from the toilet and about to flush, she heard something thump deep within the house. Her stomach clenched, and she hunched back down for a minute to listen.

The house remained still. The silence made the hair on her skin stand up. Jenn flushed the toilet and stood, softly padded back toward the bed.

Thump. The noise sounded like it had come from the kitchen.

Jenn looked at the bed where Nick lay snoring. She reached out toward his feet but stopped. Something glinted at the side of her vision. A light?

She looked to her right, toward the bedroom door, but saw only the wall of the hallway. The edge of the hallway closet was a darker area carved into the shadows, though she could just make it out. The light of the moon was strong in the bedroom, but there was something else, too. Another light? Yes. A faint, glimmering mist between her and the hallway.

Jenn turned and crept closer to the bedroom door. There was something about the way the light played. It twisted and twined, mistlike, looking for a second like a windblown fog and then coalescing into something else entirely: a cigarette smoke ghost, with spectral arms and a face that made Jenn gasp.

The face. It was familiar! She could see the hall closet through those ghostly cheekbones, but still she knew these features. She’d seen them in a hundred pictures. She even had a vague memory of childhood meetings.

“Aunt Meredith?”

The mist contracted and moved toward her. Then, a second later, like a breath huffing out, it dissipated and blew away down the hall toward the family room.

“Wait!” Jenn hissed. All of her questions might be answered by her aunt, but now her aunt was leaving. She couldn’t let that happen.

She followed the luminous mist as it slipped out of the room. Into the hall she stepped, seeing the glowing tail disappear into the kitchen. Without thinking, she moved forward, anxious to catch up.

In the kitchen, the light of the moon struck her face in a blinding white beam. The celestial orb was brilliant tonight, and it shone even stronger here than in her bedroom. The white light almost washed away the eerie fog she’d followed, but as Jenn’s eyes adjusted she caught that separate glow again.

Meredith. The woman’s spirit hung before her in the air.

It was her aunt; Jenn was sure of it now. The soft jaw, the thin nose so much like her dad’s. The shadowed, deep-socketed eyes. But as the specter of her aunt stared at Jenn, something within Jenn’s soul froze. The look in those dead eyes was not a look of love. It was the look of obsession.

“Aunt Meredith?” Jenn whispered again.

The floor seemed to shake. She could feel the noise vibrating all around her, a movement that shook the room and the very air.

Thump-thump.

Thump-thump.

Jenn’s teeth chattered with the sound, and she looked at the stern face of her ghostly aunt. “What’s going on?”

The fog that was her aunt, or the ghost of her aunt, or simply a dream come real for a moment, faded away. Or, really, it slipped away. It suddenly blurred and shifted, the area that was brighter—just barely—than the light of the moon streaming in from the windows, and it moved to the corner of the kitchen. To the door of the pantry.

She stepped forward, but it was already too late. The ghost of her aunt had gone, and she knew exactly where. Into the room with the mummy, the altar and the bones.

Finally, Jenn did what she’d wanted to do five minutes before. She went back to her bedroom and reached out to shake Nick’s thigh.

“Wake up!” she begged.

He moaned and shifted beneath the sheets. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s Meredith,” Jenn said. “We have to go into the room behind the pantry.”

“Okay,” Nick mumbled, already falling back asleep. “We’ll do that tomorrow.”

“No,” Jenn complained. “We have to go now. She’s waiting for us.”

“What?” Nick’s eyes opened.

“I just saw her, and she was leading me to the pantry. Come on,” Jenn insisted. “Or I’ll go by myself.”

“What the hell,” Nick said, slowly rising. But by the time he blinked his eyes enough to really take in the room, Jenn was gone.

“Damnitall,” he grumbled, and slapped his feet to the cold floor. Calling out for her to wait, he hurried to follow.