The Pumpkin Man

CHAPTER

FIFTY

Jenn led the way to the kitchen and through the pantry. Nick and Travis followed. In moments they arrived in the room of bones. Nick used a candle he’d carried from the entryway to light a couple more that were still resident in wall sconces, and then he set his flame down in the center of the floor. Finally, they all knelt and set the Ouija down between them.

Jenn sat cross-legged, and Travis, who angled himself to rest on one thigh, shook his head. “I don’t know how you can sit like that.”

“Good breeding,” she quipped. “And being a bookworm, it gives me a great area to prop my books no matter where I’m at.”

She set the planchette in the center of the board and eyed Travis, who sat to her left, then Nick, who was on her right. The coolness of the hidden room seeped up through the floor and she shivered, shimmers of light cast everywhere from the small struggling flames about the room.

As the light moved against the wall like fire ghosts, twisting and drifting in and out of focus, Jenn pushed the planchette toward Travis. “Do you want to lead? I think you have a little more experience than I do.”

He sneezed and shook his head. “I don’t know any more than you do, really. I just held the stupid ring for Meredith and tried to make my mind go blank. Which is harder than you’d think.”

“No comment,” Nick muttered.

“So, you all want me to drive this bus?” Jenn asked.

Travis nodded.

Jennica took a deep breath. “Okay. Put your fingers on the planchette and try to clear your minds. Travis, you knew Meredith, so it would probably help if you thought of her. Hard.”

The grocery clerk nodded and leaned closer to the board, squinting his eyes shut and pressing his fingers hard to the wood ring.

“Gentle touches,” Jenn reminded him. “I should barely know that anyone else is touching the planchette. Though . . . I guess I don’t really need to tell you this, Travis. You’ve apparently used this more than I have.”

She gave first Nick and then Travis a squeeze on the arm, then put her front two fingers on the planchette. “Okay,” she whispered. “Let’s talk.” She felt her blood run warm as she said it.

“Aunt Meredith,” she called out. “I know you’re near. You lived and died here, and your work continues on here. I need to talk to you. We need to talk to you. This is your Ouija board I am touching. Your witchboard. Please come to us now and advise us. I need you. We never talked much while you were alive, but I am your niece—your only remaining blood. I need you.”

Jenn paused, and she could feel the tension emanating from Nick and Travis. Each was caught up for different reasons, she supposed. Nick simply wanted this all to be over. Travis wanted . . . something else. Maybe he really did want to stop the Pumpkin Man. She hoped so.

The room had been chilly when they’d come in, but suddenly Jenn felt cold enough to see her breath. She shivered and breathed out gently, just to test, but did not see anything. Surprising.

“Meredith,” she said again. “Can you hear us? Please give us a sign.”

Jenn felt her fingers move slightly. She tried not to focus on it, because the whole point was to allow your muscles to be moved by someone else. But still, she looked down and saw the wooden ring inching across the board. It reached the left upper corner and stopped.

The ring sat atop the word YES. Around them, the candlelight flickered against the wall like the semaphore of invisible souls. Animated and engaged, but eerily wordless. Jenn could hear every breath that the men next to her drew in, and that reminded her. The world—or perhaps more specifically, the afterworld—was watching.

“Meredith,” she breathed. “I’ve tried to reach you before, and I am not sure if it was really you who answered. I hope that you can hear me now, because I’ve waited so long to talk to you and I really do need you. But things here are a little . . . messed up right now. I need to know something, and I think you can help.”

She took a quick glance at Nick and Travis. Both men had their eyes closed to slits, struggling presumably to keep their minds clear. She was the only one who wandered.

“Did the Pumpkin Man kill Kirstin?” Jenn asked finally.

The planchette shivered, as if its motion was somehow blocked. Then it slid off YES for a moment, only to slip back on. It didn’t move.

“Did the Pumpkin Man kill Brian?” Nick asked. His voice was quiet yet firm. He had to know.

Again, the wooden ring shivered and moved under all of their fingers, slightly off the mark and then quickly back on.

“No surprise,” Nick murmured.

“No,” Jenn agreed.

She quieted as she felt her fingers slip through the air; the board seemed to take control of itself for a question. All of their hands moved across the wooden surface, letters forming the first word, which Nick read out loud.

“‘Ask.’”

Huh. Meredith seemed to have a question for them. And word by word, the planchette spelled it out, moving quickly between letters and then pausing between words. Nick read them out, slowly and in order:

ASK

TRAVIS

DID

HE

KILL

ME?

At the word “kill,” Travis’s face went bedsheet white. But he didn’t immediately pull away, instead allowing the ghost to finish her sentence. The damage was already done, and he waited to see what Meredith would do to him from beyond the grave.

“Did you make the Pumpkin Man?” Travis asked, his voice reedy and desperate in the empty space.

The planchette did not move.

“Answer the question Meredith asked,” Jenn suggested. “Did you kill my aunt, Travis?”

The man pulled his hand back from the wooden circle and pushed away from her and Nick at the same time. He crawled backward, crablike, slipping farther away from them, though there was really no place he could go.

“I was only trying to help her at first,” he began.

“Did you kill my aunt?” Jenn insisted, her voice dead and cold. “Answer me.”

“Yes,” Travis said, his voice trembling. There would be no arguing with her. “I killed Meredith. But I had to. She was using the Pumpkin Man to get rid of all the people who’d hurt him when he was alive. It was wrong.”

Nick rose from Jenn’s side and stepped toward him. Travis was visibly shaking.

“What made you think killing Meredith was going to stop the Pumpkin Man from continuing to manifest? I mean, once she called him, he was loose, right?”

Travis shook his head. “He used to only come on the nights she used the board.”

“Didn’t it take some time before the bodies showed up? So, how do you know he came those nights. Did you see him?” Nick asked.

“No,” Travis said, clearly hesitating. “I know because . . . because . . .” He backed farther away from Jenn and Nick. He moved toward the bones that hung on the wall.

“I know because every night after Meredith had me use the Ouija board, I fell into a heavy sleep. In the morning, I woke up with knives on the floor covered with blood. She was using the Ouija board to open the door to the killer, and then she helped that spirit hide in my body until nightfall. So in a way, I am the Pumpkin Man. Or at least I was until recently.”

“You twisted little psychopath,” Nick yelled. “You killed Brian!” He started toward Travis, who backed toward the altar. The storekeeper didn’t refute the accusation.

“Wait,” Jenn demanded, and Nick stopped, one fist still raised. Travis leaned away with his back to the wall of bones. “If you are the Pumpkin Man . . .”

Travis shook his head. “I’m not. The Pumpkin Man . . . he just . . . ‘rides me,’ is what Meredith used to say.”

Jenn shook her head. “I get it. But if you—for all intents and purposes—are the Pumpkin Man, then that means you killed my father, too. Please tell me why. He was in another state; he had nothing to do with Meredith. They never even talked.”

Travis sighed. “Your father made one major mistake,” he said. “When he came out here to put Meredith’s estate in order, he took some things home with him. Things that needed to stay in this house. I don’t normally remember much of what happens when I’m possessed—a few memories sometimes seep back the next day—but I do remember a few things about that trip, probably because he had to take over for such a long time. He had to book a plane, fly to Chicago, find the apartment and then get back. I know some of what happened.”

Travis stared at Nick and Jenn and tightened his lips, thinking. Finally he elaborated. “Meredith bought the Pumpkin Man a special set of knives when he was alive, and she made some kind of spell over them to exaggerate his skill in carving. Don’t get me wrong, he was good without them, but with them? Well, that’s when he became known around here as the Pumpkin Man. Those knives are important in all of this. Your father somehow found the Pumpkin Man’s knives. I flew to Chicago to take them back.”

“But . . . why weren’t they at your place if you were the one who’s been using them?” Jenn asked.

Travis shook his head. “I used them, but eventually they always came back here. To this room, in fact. A night or two after I cleaned everything up, the knives would disappear from my apartment. I know because one time I opened my eyes and I was here with those knives in my hand. Believe me, I totally freaked out. I mean, I knew the place; your aunt and I used the Ouija board here. But, waking up from a dead sleep and finding yourself here, in a room full of bones, in someone else’s house . . . ?” He shuddered. “It was almost worse than knowing what the Pumpkin Man used me to do.”

Jenn opened her mouth to say something, but she stopped and reconsidered. “What did you mean when you said you were the Pumpkin Man until recently?”

“I mean, I didn’t kill Emmaline,” Travis said. “And I didn’t hurt your friend.”

“Kirstin?” Jenn offered.

He nodded.

Jenn was perplexed. “You killed the others but not them? Why?”

Travis shrugged. “I wish I knew.”

“So, what makes you think you didn’t?”

“The knives disappeared again,” Travis said. His voice shook. “I haven’t seen them in days.”

“So, where are they?” Nick asked. He didn’t announce This sounds like bullshit, but the tone of his voice did.

“I don’t know,” Travis said. “I woke up in my car near San Francisco a few days ago, and they weren’t with me. I didn’t remember driving there, which means the Pumpkin Man took me there—but I’m pretty sure I didn’t do anything horrible. Normally after any night the Pumpkin Man takes my body, I’m a horrible mess: blood, dirt, whatever. This time, though, I just woke up on a strange road in a strange place. My clothes were fine. No blood.

“I didn’t have the knives anywhere in the car either. I went home and looked for them, and they weren’t there. Usually after an . . . event, the knives are still with me and I clean them up and get rid of any other evidence. The next night they disappear. I usually remember snippets of how they disappear, though, and where. Usually they come back here, and I go back to my room and fall into a deep sleep.

“This time, that didn’t happen. There were no bloody knives to clean up. I drove myself home wondering what happened. The next day, you guys were back up here and I heard that your friend disappeared. I know I didn’t do that. And today I found out that Emmaline was killed. Well, I slept fine last night and didn’t wake up this morning feeling afraid. There were no bloody clothes to burn and no bloody knives to clean. For once I knew I had nothing to do with it.”

Travis’s eyes widened, and he leaned toward Jenn and Nick, clearly wanting to make an impression. “I think the spirit used me last week to deliver the knives to someone else. Someone he could ride better. Or easier.”

“Why did you kill my aunt?” Jenn asked. “The woman who helped you?”

Travis spat, “She didn’t help me. She used me, like I just said. Yeah, she tipped well, but that’s about all. Why did I kill her? Because I thought it would stop this insanity. I never wanted to kill anyone. She made me. Or, I guess, someone else made me. Someone she contacted. I didn’t kill anyone but her, which I only did because I wanted this to stop!”

Nick moved toward Travis, but Travis bolted across the room and around the edge of the dark L. But as he rounded the corner, he tripped and went down with a surprised “Oomph.”

Jenn moved to help before her boyfriend did something stupid. She registered something else, however. Something terrifying. Travis had fallen because there was a new pumpkin in the middle of the floor, just around the corner from the mummy. In tripping, Travis had knocked its top off, and as Jenn looked inside she saw a lock of salt-and-pepper hair and a bloodied patrician nose. She knew in a heartbeat whose head it was: Emmaline’s.

Just beyond was another pumpkin. This one Travis hadn’t knocked over, but Jenn could see through the eyeholes that there was another human head inside. A human head with blonde hair. Kirstin.

Before she could react, she noticed Nick. Rising from a crouch, he now had a knife in his hand and stepped toward her with a strange smile on his face, an expression she’d never seen outside of a horror movie. An expression of hate and hunger mixed together.

“Nick?” Jenn asked, stepping backward. Beside her, Travis scrambled to pull his clumsy self upright.

“Not right now,” Nick said in a voice that Jenn didn’t recognize. He lunged at Travis, who went down a second time, and Jenn jumped away, trying not to come in physical contact with either of them.

Travis cried out. “It’s you! He’s riding you. For God’s sake, wake up, Nick, don’t do this.”

Nick laughed. It didn’t sound quite like Nick, really. The voice was deeper, slower. It was the dark cackle of a Methuselah given one last chance at life and nothing was going to get in his way, and Jenn suddenly realized she’d spent last night making love to the man who’d killed her best friend. Who’d killed Emmaline. Travis was right.

Nick was larger than Travis. With one arm he slammed the man to the floor, and he had no problem holding the struggling clerk down. A long serrated knife popped out and pressed hard against the smaller man’s Adam’s apple.

“Nick!” Jenn screamed, and she reached out to grab his knife arm.

Nick’s strangely cold face turned to her, and he said one word with such finality that it rooted her in place. “Don’t.”

He turned back to Travis, then, ignoring her. But Jenn knew that if she did anything, it would only bring that knife down faster. She waited, uncertain of what to do. If Nick just moved the knife a little bit away from Travis’s throat . . .

“I helped you,” Travis gasped. His eyes twitched and widened, studied the face of the man who held him down. Nick’s eyes didn’t blink. His lips didn’t move. For a fleeting second, Travis wondered if the man still breathed.

“You never helped me,” Nick said. His smirk slowly widened in a shark’s grin. “I borrowed you, that’s all. You didn’t come here tonight to help me, and I don’t need to borrow you anymore. I like my current situation much better.”

He pressed the knife tighter to Travis’s throat, and Jenn saw a line of crimson begin to well up along its silver teeth. She stood frozen. Any movement might drive Nick to slit Travis’s throat. Then again, Jennica told herself, that was probably going to happen anyway.

She grimaced and tensed. She needed to try. She hoped this wasn’t the wrong move.

Gritting her teeth and praying, she kicked Nick as hard as she could in the stomach. He grunted and lifted off Travis, curling into a ball for a moment and letting out a moan of horrible pain.

Travis’s eyes widened as he realized he was free. The line of blood across his neck twisted and dripped as he pushed himself upright, and he rose to a crouch with the full intention of running for the door. But intentions don’t always play out. Nick recovered almost instantly. He came out of the fetal position and rolled to his feet. His fist shot out and caught Jenn on the cheek so hard she saw stars; she lost her balance and fell to the floor. Then Nick took three quick steps and kicked Travis’s feet out from under him.

“I have suffered you long enough,” the voice inside Nick said, and with one hand he slammed Travis back to the floor. With the other, he raised the long, thin serrated knife of the Pumpkin Man, and Jenn watched, paralyzed, still blinking back sparks in her vision, as he brought the blade down like a dagger.

The tip of the knife slipped through the top of Travis’s right eye socket without resistance. The clerk screamed, his agony a sound that brought tears to Jenn’s eyes, but the blade didn’t slow. Instead, Nick pulled the blade along the outline of Travis’s eyeball in a wet spray of crimson and pain. Then, as Jenn started to rise, Nick flipped the gory object to land with a wet splat on the floor between them. Jenn looked down and saw the pale blue iris staring up at her with vacant horror.

Nick’s arm stabbed the knife into the other side of Travis’s face, performing the exact same excision on the other eye. Travis thrashed and screamed beneath him, but he failed with his kicks and punches to dislodge his possessed assailant.

Jenn stopped moving to help Travis and instead began to back away. She knew that she couldn’t save the clerk, and her own instincts for self-preservation had kicked in. What did the Pumpkin Man have in store for her?

She didn’t wait to find out. As she watched the blade jab and slice with wicked precision into Travis’s face, she backed toward the door. She couldn’t save the dying man on the floor, but she might still be able to save herself.

From behind her, she heard the devil laugh. “You can run,” he said with Nick’s tongue as she turned and ran for the door back to the pantry and the kitchen, “but I will always find where you hide.”

She reached the faint light of the kitchen, and there Jenn turned and raced for the front door. But when she reached the front room, she slowed. Where was she going to go next? Was she going to outrun Nick in the darkness?

Travis gave a last shriek, which cut off abruptly as if someone had pulled the plug on a stereo. The house was silent.

Jenn took her hand off the doorknob and looked to the Book of Shadows, which was still sitting open where she’d left it on the end table near the couch. The thing that was in Nick was not going to go away just because she got in the car and drove a hundred miles. Or a thousand. It could live for a millennium and inhabit a hundred bodies to achieve its aim. It was going to follow her, and it was going to kill her. She could hear it laughing even now in the other room as it carved a hideous shape from the clay of Travis’s dying body.

Jennica picked up the Book of Shadows. Maybe, somehow, Meredith had left her a clue. Her aunt had started this; wouldn’t she have known how to end it? That was her only hope.

She flipped through the pages, not knowing what to even look for. Much of the text vacillated from French to Latin, and she could only make out a few words here and there. But then she found a clump of pages stuck together, and she slipped a finger between them to split them. It was obvious now why they were stuck together. The pages were glued with blood.

Emmaline’s? Hadn’t this book come from Emmaline?

Jenn’s eyes widened. Her aunt’s sister-in-law had probably been wounded by the Pumpkin Man as she read the words on this page. Emmaline would have known about this monster, would have known how to make it go away. Maybe. And, Jenn could make out some of these words herself. They were in French, and the top of the page said simply, Banishment. Beneath, a paragraph described something about destroying the home of a soul to banish it, the heart and bones—

The door to the pantry slammed.

Jenn started again toward the front door and then realized her car keys were in the bedroom. It would do very little good for her to run for the hills without a vehicle, so she ran for her bedroom holding the book in one hand, and snatched the keys from her dresser with the other. But as soon as she picked them up she could hear Nick’s feet in the hallway outside. She wasn’t going to be leaving by the front.

Well, sometimes you had to sneak out through the back door. She darted toward the basement entrance, unlocked it and slammed the door behind her. She pulled the cord to light the basement, but as soon as she stepped down a few stairs, she heard the door above her open.

Fuck.

She ran as soon as she reached the floor of the basement, but she slowed when she reached the workbench. Once, long ago, Meredith’s husband had used this as his office. She’d noted it before, filled with drills, saws, hammers, goggles and other hardware. The wall above the bench was filled with screwdrivers, pliers and other things, all hung from small hooks.

Jenn stopped at the bench and slipped her hand around a wooden hammer handle. It felt good in her hand.

Pulling it off its hook on the wallboard, she kept running. She raced down the corridor toward the crypt, not slowing even as she entered that cloistered room. She knew the bones of the Pumpkin Man rested here, or at least the bones of George Perenais. This demon was tied to him, wasn’t it? Destroying those bones would destroy it. So she had to hope.

She thought about kneeling to ask forgiveness, but then decided that there really was no time. “We’re done,” she said at the front of the coffin.

Footsteps whispered behind her.

“Fuck,” she breathed, laying the book out atop the coffin, flipping back to the bloodstained page on banishment, praying to see anything more that might help her. She knew she could escape from him now—she could go up the back stairway to the graveyard and run down the hill toward town. But that was just a delay. He would follow her. No matter where she went.

Jenn skimmed the blood-spattered page, looking for words that could save her. Banishment, the page read again in French. Destroy the place the soul calls home.

Then it was too late. She was out of time. He was there.

“Jennica,” Nick said from the doorway. “Don’t run away. I love you.”

Jenn looked at the blank expression on his face and answered, “I don’t believe you.” She lifted the hammer in her hand and felt its weight.

Nick moved closer, and Jenn eyed the stone casket beside her. The casket that had stood atop the hidden heart tucked in the floor of the Perenais house for the past twenty years or more. The hidden heart . . .

Jenn looked around on the floor for the wooden box she and Nick had taken out of the lockbox in the floor. It was just a yard away from her foot.

Nick—or, the Pumpkin Man, really; Jenn stared into his eyes and detected no hint of her boyfriend in the glint of murder that lived there—began to close the gap between them. Jenn took a deep breath and then dove for the ground. She grabbed the box, rolled to her feet and held it out at him in a threat.

“I have it,” she said defiantly. “Stay back.” “What do you think you have?” The Pumpkin Man sneered, still walking toward her.

She opened the wooden box and lifted out the shriveled organ that had once been a heart. It was almost weightless in her hand.

“I’ll destroy it!” she threatened.

The Pumpkin Man kept coming.

Jenn threw the heart on the ground and lifted a foot to step on it. The Pumpkin Man lunged, though, and instead of her foot coming down on the heart, she threw herself to the left to avoid his knife and stumbled awkwardly to the ground. Nick’s lips curved in a smile that crowed victory.

She didn’t give up. As his hand reached for her ankle and his fingers closed around it, Jenn brought the hammer around and slammed it into Nick’s arm. The Pumpkin Man yelled in pain and pulled away.

It was the break she needed. Jenn shimmied to her feet and in two steps was back at the heart. She raised her foot again, and this time nothing stopped her from crushing the ancient organ on the floor of the crypt. When she lifted her foot, gray powder was all that remained. She stepped down again and again, twisting her foot back and forth, grinding the powder farther into the floor.

“Die,” she said to the Pumpkin Man. She grinned in victory.

Instead of slumping to the ground, Nick’s body rose, one arm rubbing the other where she’d hit him. “That wasn’t my heart,” the voice said simply. “Though somewhere I imagine the bones of P. Stephen Gifford are rolling over in his grave.”

Nick stepped closer, and his eyes were slits of dark anger. Jenn felt her heart sink. She’d thought for a moment that she’d won, that she’d broken the secret that let this devil steal people’s bodies. Now, she wasn’t sure what to try, assuming she was ever given another chance.

“You silly creature,” Nick’s voice said, but she knew that it wasn’t Nick talking. Knowing that didn’t make it any easier to hear. “You think you can stop me? Me? I’ve been alive for centuries, and lived in dozens of human shells. Though I must say, your aunt gave me the best story to live up to of any witch who’s called me.”

He twirled the knife in his hand and grinned as he stopped and reversed its spin.

“The Pumpkin Man,” he said. “What a great gimmick. At first, I was just giving George power to carve really good jack-o’-lanterns. With those knives, he tapped into the very essence of that which he wanted to carve. But eventually, I convinced him to dip his knives deeper. That’s when he began to taste their souls. And that’s when he lost his soul to me.”

Jenn backed up another inch. “Why did you make him kill those kids?”

Nick’s mouth laughed. “Because they taste sooooo good!”

“They were just little kids.”

Nick stepped forward. His voice lost its humor. “You should be less worried about the dead and more worried about yourself.”

“Why are you doing this?” she whispered.

“Because I can,” he said, stepping closer again. “And because I want to stay here. Souls are my bridge.”

“Why did you have to kill my dad and Kirstin and Brian? And now you’ve taken over Nick. You’ve taken everyone that was close to me. Why me?”

Nick grinned menacingly. “Because you’re weak. Your life will taste so sweet, seasoned by loss. You always were a pathetic wallflower. You needed everyone else to prop you up. Your father, Kirstin . . . you could never stand on your own, and now you’re about to fall for the very last time.”

Jenn felt the lure of his lies. The place in her heart that had always begged her to hide instead of seek opened at his words, threatening to suck her in. But then she thought of Meredith’s words from her journal. Meredith had been brave and had never given up on George. She’d written, There are some things that a woman has to do to protect what she loves. No matter what.

Jenn leaned back against the casket as the Pumpkin Man moved closer, and she felt it shift a little as he crowded her, leaving her no room to run. She could smell the warmth of his breath, he was so close. She thought of Meredith’s strength. And then the words of the Book of Shadows came back to her. Heart and bones, the text had read. She’d already tried to use the heart . . .

An idea occurred as the stone behind her shifted. The heart she’d crushed might have had a tie to Perenais power, but the bones of George Perenais the Pumpkin Man rested here. The bones of George Perenais. The bones that this vengeful soul had taken root in.

If this ancient evil had truly found an anchor in George to tie itself to this realm, then by destroying those bones, could she break the link?

The Pumpkin Man grinned. A cat to a cornered mouse. He knew she could go nowhere now. He had taken everything from her but her life . . . and that was next. He lifted the knife and raised it toward her chest. As he did, she threw herself backward against the casket, forcing it to rock. Then, as he lifted the knife to stab, she darted around the other side and with a running start threw herself with all her might against it from the opposite direction.

The Pumpkin Man gave chase, suddenly looking not victorious but fearful. But he was already too late. The casket shifted, overbalanced. It fell toward Nick’s feet. There was a crack as loud and sharp as a cannon; then the stone top of the coffin opened and crashed to the ground. The bones of a dead man exploded across the stone floor.

The Pumpkin Man stood in shock amid the bones. He backed out of the human wreckage, looking lost, unsure. Jenn edged forward until she stood atop the bones, the ribs and arms and skull of a dead man strewn around her feet.

“What have you done?” the Pumpkin Man whispered.

“Oops,” Jenn said with a false smile. “Looks like I made a mess.”

“You’ll be sorry for that,” Nick said, and he moved toward her, knife in hand.

“Why, are these your bones?” Jenn asked sweetly, bending down to finger the empty eye socket of the yellowed skull.

“No, they’re not mine. But they’re the bones of my host. Don’t defile them,” Nick demanded.

This was the right thing, Jenn now knew for sure. She had grabbed the hammer to fend off Nick, but now she raised it and brought it down on the skull of her uncle. “It’s over,” she screamed at her boyfriend’s face, though it wasn’t her boyfriend currently wearing it. “It’s all over, leave us alone!”

The skull shattered, pieces exploding across the floor. Like with broken porcelain, a tiny cloud of white dust rose from the center.

Nick ran forward and shoved her. “Stop!”

She toppled backward but still held the hammer. Righting herself and seeing the flat expression of Nick’s face just inches from her own she whispered, “It’s over. Now it really is. Go back to where you came from.”

He stabbed at her with the knife, but Jenn pushed away. His blade swished past, a sharp sting down the flesh over her rib cage. Jenn responded with the hammer, slamming it into Nick’s carving arm with a meaty thunk. He dropped the knife and clutched his biceps.

Jenn didn’t wait to see how long it took him to recover; she brought the hammer down again and again, this time on every bone of the skeleton that lay around her on the floor. She pounded the hammer into each, enjoying the blows that changed each fossil-like bone into piles of fragments and dust.

She looked at Nick again, and saw him moving. He was coming very slowly toward her, as if he moved underwater. With every crushed bone, he flinched. So Jenn slammed the point of her hammer through her uncle’s skull one last time, and now the pieces gave way, fracturing the shell that had housed a demon who had deserved to die centuries before she was born.

When Jennica brought the last stroke down, the one that pulverized the skull into nothing but dust, Nick collapsed, falling helpless to the ground at her feet. Jenn kept bringing the hammer down, though, crushing bone after bone of the skeleton, knowing that with every blow she was eliminating the power of the curse.

Nick screamed. It was a horrible sound, and he rolled back to his feet. He rushed her, knife raised, but Jenn brought the hammer around and caught him in the shoulder. He swore and was knocked back, but he didn’t stop. Instead, he brought the knife around and tried to drive it into her chest.

Jennica moved just in time. Nick missed. Off balance, he fell to his knee.

“Let him go,” Jenn said softly, not to Nick but to the thing inside him.

Nick’s mouth opened, and the Pumpkin Man’s voice simply said, “No.”

He began to rise. Jenn was prepared for that. She brought her hammer down and struck the hand that held the knife, and the weapon went clattering across the floor. The Pumpkin Man gripped his hand to nurse the pain.

“Let him go,” she repeated, this time with more determination.

“No,” Nick refused, this time wearing a smile that didn’t look at all happy. He rose, and his eyes glared at her with such fire that she knew he would kill her, even if it was his last act. He came at her with both fists raised.

Jenn dove and grabbed the knife from the floor. As she picked it up, she felt his weight upon her. His arm reached around to grab her in a choke hold. She gasped, and stars shone behind her eyes. His arm only tightened further. She could feel the blood pounding in her head like a jackhammer. He was squeezing. Her head felt as if it would explode as she gasped to try to suck in even a little bit of breath, but she couldn’t, he was going to strangle her with the crook of his arm.

Jenn closed her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she whispered silently. “This isn’t you.”

She flipped the knife in her hand so that it pointed behind her, and then she stabbed backward as hard as she could. Her heart sank as she felt it connect.

Nick fell to the ground, clutching the knife. His expression was clearly one of surprise. “What have you done?” he whispered, and then his eyes fluttered closed.

Jenn pushed herself away, kept herself crouched in a defensive stance. After a few moments without seeing Nick move, she rose, wary of the strength of the spirit. But her boyfriend did nothing. She could see his chest rise and fall, a stain of blood seeping wider across his shirt with every breath. But who knew if she’d obliterated the Pumpkin Man? Who knew what exactly would send the evil spirit back to wherever it had come?

She took her hammer to the rest of the bones, attacking any shards larger than an inch. When she was done, the floor was covered with white powder and shrapnel. And the body of her boyfriend lay motionless in the middle, one arm extended in her direction.