The Pumpkin Man

CHAPTER

FORTY-ONE

“Something’s ringing!” Jenn called as she flipped the pepper steak with a spatula in the big wrought-iron pot on the stove.

She hadn’t really known what to make tonight, but ordering in pizza seemed the wrong way to meet even distant family so she’d defaulted to a slightly more formal favorite. Pepper steak slow cooked with onions, red peppers, sherry and mushrooms. She’d grown up with it as a Sunday afternoon staple that filled the house with the smell of warmth and happiness. Jennica missed those Sunday afternoons, so cooking today was a cathartic experience.

It seemed the right offering for her dad’s sister-in-law. Jenn felt the comfort of her childhood return while she braised the meat and sautéed the onions and mushrooms. Then she’d peeled potatoes and thrown them in a pot to boil down then mash with milk and butter, and she’d mixed up another pot with cream of celery soup and freeze-dried onions for a baked bean dish.

Dinner was due in an hour, and Emmaline was due at the door in fifteen minutes. The last rays of the sun were already coloring the front room and hallway deep red. It got dark early and fast up here, Jenn had discovered.

Nick walked into the kitchen and fished the ringing cell phone from his black jacket, which hung on the back of a chair. “Hello?” he said, quickly walking out of the room.

Jenn flipped the meat, stirred the potatoes, and then peeked into the living room. Nick was on the couch, talking in low tones. He didn’t meet her eye, so she walked back to her bedroom to look in the mirror. She’d worn a casual lavender shirt with her good jeans. Her hair was flaking out because of the humidity of the kitchen, but she didn’t suppose her aunt-in-law would care.

“What do you hope to learn here?” she asked her reflection. The mirror didn’t answer.

When she returned to the kitchen, Nick was waiting. He said, “I have to go back to San Francisco the day after tomorrow. They’ve set up Brian’s wake and funeral. Closed casket, obviously.”

“I’ll go with you,” Jenn offered.

“You don’t have to,” Nick said. He put up a hand.

“I want to.”

“Well, we’ll have to let the cops know, I guess,” he said. “If we’re going to disappear out of town again.”

“We can call them,” she agreed. But she felt vaguely unsettled by the whole exchange.

The chime of the doorbell interrupted.

“Game on,” Nick joked, and pointed through the living room. Jenn supposed he was right.

She walked out to open the front door. A woman stood on the other side of the screen, a woman who had seen a year or sixty but who still had the bright light of life in her eyes. She had graying but well-coiffed hair, dark eyes, and she appeared to have had more than a passing acquaintance with big-plate dinners.

“Hi,” Jenn said. “I’m Jennica Murphy.”

The woman grinned with one side of her mouth as the screen door was opened to her. “Hi,” she answered. “I’m your aunt’s sister-in-law, Emmaline. It’s nice to meet a member of the family. Haven’t been many of us around here these past few years.”

Jennica smiled as warmly as she could, considering the fear that was burning through her. “Come on in,” she offered. “I assume you’ve probably been here before.”

“I grew up in this house,” Emmaline agreed, stepping inside.

Jenn ushered her to the couch, feeling foolish. “Can I get you something to drink? Wine? Beer? Pop?”

“Bloody Mary?” Emmaline asked.

“I can do that,” Nick spoke up. He grinned at Jenn and said, “I picked up some spicy V8 when I stopped at the store earlier. And your aunt left us plenty of vodka.”

Jenn and Emmaline exchanged pleasantries while Nick fixed drinks. When they all sat down, Emmaline put a blade to the veneer of social interaction.

“You didn’t ask me here to get to know the old folks from town,” she said. “So, let’s talk. What do you know? What do you want to know?”

Jenn hid her surprise with a crooked smile, feeling at the same time she should be careful of coming across as accusatory. “I want to know what went on in this house,” she admitted. “I want to know how my aunt got a reputation as a witch. I want to know why the basement has such strange things. I want to know a lot of things. It all seems so . . . unreal!”

Emmaline tipped back her drink and smiled, swallowing the heady mix of tomato and vodka that Nick had made purposefully rich. “There are a lot of things to know,” she agreed. “The question is, how deep do you want to go?”

“I’ve been reading Meredith’s journal,” Jenn explained. “I know that she was trying to tap into powers and things that I don’t really understand. And I know that there are things hidden in this house . . .”

She paused, glancing at Emmaline to gauge her reaction, but the older woman gave up nothing; she sipped her drink, put her glass down and stared stolidly back.

“I was hoping you could tell me some of the secrets about this house,” Jenn sallied, pushing forward again. “I mean, there’s a door from my bedroom that leads to a cemetery.”

Emmaline gave a rueful smile. “I know,” she said. “We used to play down there as kids. We had to go through my parents’ bedroom whenever we wanted to go downstairs.”

“So, you know about the graveyard and the crypt?”

Emmaline nodded. “Of course. My grandparents—or maybe great-grandparents—had the tunnel built so that no matter what the season was, no matter if it was hot and stifling or cold and snowing, they could get to the vault of their ancestors to give prayers. The Perenais family was very close.”

The woman shifted on the couch and leaned down to pick up her glass from the coffee table. As she did, her blouse shifted until the freckled and creamy skin of her bosom pressed against the outer rim of her shirt. Jenn had the distinct impression that the woman was intentionally positioning herself to get Nick to look at her boobs. And, when she looked over at her boyfriend, damn him if he wasn’t. Louse!

“Why did people in town distrust your family?” Jenn asked.

Emmaline laughed. “Distrust? They hated us. I mean”—she leaned in conspiratorially—“how could they not? We have given and taken away life a hundred times in the last fifty years. Nobody’s appreciative of the good things that others do, they only remember the bad.”

Jenn blanched. “What do you mean?” Had the woman really just said that she’d taken life?

“I mean that your aunt married into a family of power,” Emmaline explained. “And she appreciated and understood that. She embraced it. She wasn’t the kind of woman I would have selected for my brother, but he loved her. That’s all that matters, I suppose.” She sipped her Bloody Mary.

“I want to do right by my aunt,” Jenn said, “but with all the things we’ve found in this house, well . . . I’m worried that she might have done some horrible things.”

“You and me both,” the woman said. “Meredith always had a fascination with the darker paths. I don’t know if it was because George locked her up here until she was bored enough to invoke demons or if that’s just the way she was. I didn’t ever get to know her that well—though, from what I saw she was interested in some horrible things. Tell me, what have you found, exactly?”

Jenn started to answer, but Nick cut her off. “There’s a stairway to a crypt at the foot of her bed,” he said.

Emmaline shrugged. “As I said, we used to play down there. Coffins won’t hurt you.”

“No,” Nick said. “But a Pumpkin Man will.”

Emmaline’s face was unreadable. “Perhaps.”

The conversation paused. Jenn looked sideways at Nick, who still appeared to be eyeing the dark line of the older woman’s cleavage. When his eyes flicked her way, he smiled—a little falsely, she thought.

“Some people in town obviously thought the Pumpkin Man killer was my uncle,” Jenn said. “Your brother. Do you think that’s true?”

Emmaline shrugged. “If his body did the killing, George wasn’t in it at the time,” she said.

“What? What do you mean?” Nick asked.

“George was shy and quiet. He would never have hurt a fly. He hardly seemed to belong in the family, actually. The rest of us . . . well, let’s just say the Perenais line is strong-willed and outspoken.” She smiled and sipped her drink again. “George? He was the quiet one. Artistic. That’s how he got into pumpkin carving. When he was a boy, he was always painting and sculpting something.”

The woman paused and looked around the room, pointed to a clay figurine on the fireplace mantel: a man and woman merged at the groin but bending backward away from each other with their hands and heads. “That’s one of his pieces there,” she said. “He would never have killed anyone. Now if Meredith got him possessed, I suppose it’s possible.”

“Possessed?” Jenn repeated.

“Your aunt was very interested in talking to spirits,” Emmaline explained. “She used a witchboard quite often and tried to seek the counsel of spirits. But, talking to the dead is dangerous business. I warned her of that many times.”

“How did she get into that stuff?” Jenn asked. “I remember meeting her when I was little. She seemed normal to me then.”

“How? Look around you,” Emmaline said. “This house is filled with books on magic. My family has always been a center for the mystical; the house has always been a lodestone for people with such interests. Townies always knew you could come to the Perenaises and pay for simple charms and spells, they knew it long before your aunt. As woman of the house, Meredith took on that responsibility. She wanted it.”

“But how did she learn? Who taught her?”

“I did,” Emmaline admitted. “Some. Other things she learned from books or came to on her own. It’s not exact, magic. Much of what people call sorcery is simply learning to invoke your will on the unseen. There’s no recipe for that. And some people simply don’t have the knack. But . . . your aunt was a natural.”

“Would you be able to teach me?” Jenn asked.

Nick glanced up. “Are you crazy?”

“No,” Jenn said. “It seems like a prerequisite to living here.”

He rolled his eyes and shook his head. Emmaline looked surprised herself.

“If you have any of your aunt’s affinity, then yes, I’m sure I could. But I wouldn’t recommend it. Magic isn’t something to be trifled with. It’s a lifelong study. Your aunt came to it late, already an adult, and I’m afraid it ultimately ruined her. And if George truly was the Pumpkin Man killer . . . well, then, she ruined him as well. Stay away from this stuff. For your own good and for the good of everyone you love.”

As Emmaline looked pointedly at Nick, a timer went off in the kitchen. Jenn jumped up and said, “I think dinner’s about ready.” She darted into the kitchen to check.

Nick found himself alone with Emmaline.

“Have you found the witchboard?” the woman asked. She was staring hard at him.

Nick hesitated, not knowing if he should admit to it. Finally, he nodded.

“Has she used it?” Emmaline’s eyes were piercing. She eyed him over the lip of her bloodred glass as she waited for his response. Again, he nodded.

“That’s what I feared,” Emmaline said. “Did someone answer?”

“Yes,” Nick said.

“Was it Meredith?”

“That’s what it claimed,” he said. “But it threatened that we were all going to die.”

“Using the board only brings you to the attention of things that want to climb back into this world,” Emmaline said. “By using it, one puts oneself in the spotlight. It’s like painting yourself pink and walking through the streets: everyone looks at you. They can’t help it. And the things that look . . . well, great danger awaits.”

“Great,” Nick said. “I’ve always wanted to be pink.”

Emmaline didn’t smile.

From the kitchen, Jenn announced, “Dinner’s ready!”

Nick leaped up, eager for the interruption, but Emmaline didn’t rise. She gave him one final look and said, “Make her go home if you care about her. Make her leave this house—tomorrow, before it’s too late.”