The Pumpkin Man

CHAPTER

FORTY

Something bad was going to happen, Captain Jones could feel it in his bones.

He stood on the cliff overlooking the Russian River estuary and listened to the twilight cries of the sea lions; they slipped off the embankment and swam away with hoarse, barking echoes to wherever sea lions go when the sun goes down. He stood and worried that, with the coming of the night, something horrible was due back in town, a tide of evil that no small-town cop with a gun and a green deputy was going to dissuade. He could scare the high school shoplifters and put the fear of a life behind bars into the wife beaters, but what could he do against a force that slipped in and killed, and carved, and killed again, always unseen in the darkness? The circle was broken. The devil was again on the loose.

When he was younger, the Pumpkin Man had come to town and taken the souls of children. Nobody quite knew why, but they presumed the horror stopped because of the murder of George Perenais, the last male heir of the founding family that occupied the house overlooking the town for more than 150 years. They’d become smug and certain that the evil was snuffed out, that his widow from Chicago was powerless to carry on the traditions of the family, whether those traditions were paranormal or simply sociopathic. The Pumpkin Man had been relegated to the position of urban myth. Kids whispered his name in the dark, half expecting the boogeyman to jump out when they said “Pumpkin Man” three times in a dark mirror, but it never happened. Then he—or his evil twin—reappeared a few months ago, decimating the remaining parents of the children killed two decades ago.

Jones had been powerless to intervene. He’d seen the pattern quickly enough, and he’d posted close watches on the likely victims, but that vigilance hadn’t done anything but give Officer Barkiewicz the start of a doughnut gut from sitting in squad cars outside of dark homes for hours every night. Jones had been on that watch as well, but neither he nor Scott had ever seen anyone enter the homes of the victims, even though Scott was on the curb near her house the night Teri Hawkins was killed.

A part of him had felt that the relentless slaughter of those parents was unstoppable, to be honest, vigilante justice in reverse. With the death of Teri, he’d thought the spree was done because there were no more parents to kill aside from Emmaline—and, being a Perenais, he had always assumed she’d be immune to whatever evil the family culled in the ancient graveyard behind their house. Then the killer branched out and took down the friend of Jennica Murphy, and Jones’s stomach had sunk lower than it had in years. It had made him just plain afraid.

Afraid that the evil on the loose would never stop. Afraid that he was always going to be powerless to stop it.

He stared first at the red glow of the sun on the horizon and then behind him to the deep blue night that crept in from the east, cloaking everything in mystery. Would tonight be the night? Would the Pumpkin Man take another innocent soul from River’s End and leave a jack-o’-lantern in place of its head? Jones cringed at the thought. And that he was powerless to stop it.

He lifted a coffee purchased a half hour ago from Dana’s Diner to his lips and sipped. He’d need the jolt of cream-softened caffeine. It was Scott’s night off, and something told him he’d be getting a call about something horrible before the sun rose again in the east.

“Fuck intuition,” he mumbled to himself as he sipped the hot coffee. It was bitter yet smooth. Fuckin’ Hawaiian Kona and cream. He loved and hated it in the same sip, every time.

On the horizon, the deep red of the sun was swallowed beneath the soft, rushing waves. Jones gave an involuntary shiver and took a deep and final swig from the Styrofoam cup. The night had come at last.