The Pumpkin Man

“Good workout,” she proclaimed. When she caught her breath, she said, “Look Jenn. I know it’s all gone to hell over the past month, but life has to go on. You can’t just keep sitting here.”

“No,” Jenn agreed. “In about forty-five more days we’re going to be sitting in the street.”

Kirstin shook her head. “No we’re not. We’re going to be sitting on the beach in California ogling surfers.”

Jenn raised an eyebrow but said nothing.

“C’mon,” Kirstin continued. “We’ve got no jobs, and in a month we’ve got no place to live. You just got handed the deed to an empty house near the ocean. We should at least go check it out. It’s not like we have anything better to do! You just don’t get opportunities like this very often. And usually, if you do, you’ve got too much going on to make use of the opportunity.” She grabbed her friend by the shoulders, blue eyes hypnotic and wide. “We have no responsibilities. We have nothing to lose. We are two hot chicks with the key to a house on the beach. Let’s go to California!”

“Well, one of us is hot, anyway,” Jenn replied. Kirstin rolled her eyes. “And I don’t actually have the key to the house.”

“Puh-leez. It’ll do us both good to get out of here. We can pack this place up over the next week, put our stuff in storage and go see what your aunt left you. If we like it, maybe we’ll stay. You’ve always said you wanted to live somewhere warmer, and I’ve always wanted to live near a beach.”

“I keep telling you, I don’t think Meredith’s house is near the kind of beach where people actually swim,” Jennica protested.

Kirstin put a finger to her lips. “Where there is ocean, there is swimming.”

Jennica had to admit the idea held an attraction. She’d always hated Chicago winters. And what did they really have to lose? She had no more family, no job, and soon no place to live. But she’d always thought of herself as Aesop’s ant and Kirstin the grasshopper. Wasn’t it more prudent to stay and use the month they had left to make sure they had someplace to live and the money to pay for it?

“What are we going to do when we come back?” she asked.

“We could stay with my mom for a while if it came to that,” Kirstin said. “But maybe, if we’re lucky . . . we won’t be back.”

Jennica shook her head but didn’t say no.

Kirstin stood up and held out a hand. “C’mon, couch potato. We have a lot to pack. Know where we can get some boxes?”

Meredith Perenais’s Journal

October 23, 1984

There is a pause in the air.

“Make sense, Meredith,” you say. “Speak clearly, not in drama.” But I can say to you again, there is a pause in the air.

It’s unlike any wind I’ve felt before in any other place. Maybe it’s the influence of this house, or maybe just this hill. The movement of the sea against the rocks must brook a special power here, where the freshwater flows into the salt, where the earth rises from beneath both seeking the clouds. The moments after dark are pregnant seconds, each clock tick an interruption of some thing driven by land and sea and air. If you walk out onto the grassy hills after nightfall, if you only still your own noise enough to take it in, you can feel it. You can feel how the earth has fallen silent, how the breath of the day has drawn in.

Yes, there is a pause in the air here as the earth awaits the next movement, the next chance to give and take life, like a tide of animation. The brackish water is just an illusion before the maelstrom, for the power of that earthen pause may be the key to the magic hidden here. The pause in the air is a conductor, a promise and a threat.

That pause, I believe, is worth the silence of a thousand souls.

CHAPTER

EIGHT

The plane ride was long. Really long. Kirstin had never been good at sitting still, and four and a half hours tied to a chair was pure torture.

She shifted in her seat, crossing her legs left and then right, kicking Jenn in the shins as she did. Her friend occasionally glanced up from her book with a dark-eyed scowl to convey her indignation at being foot-butted, but mostly she stayed buried in her reading and headphones. Kirstin was plugged into her own iPod, but she couldn’t seem to settle on an album. She’d gotten bored with Lady Gaga and Katy Perry, moved to classic hair metal and jumped through Bon Jovi and Whitesnake, then tuned in to a saved podcast she had about relationships called Too Much Information (TMI). But when the hosts started talking about how to manage a successful one-night stand while on your period, she dialed away and settled for putting the iPod on shuffle.

After they finally landed, picked up their luggage, and got their rental car—Jennica had rented a car at the San Francisco airport that they could keep for a few days—it was four p.m. Pacific Time on Thursday afternoon. It was sixty degrees, but the sky was gray as they merged onto the 101 to head north out of the city.

“Maybe we should stay down here for the night,” Kirstin suggested, noting the restaurants and bars and shops that lined the streets.

“With what money?” Jenn asked. “We’ll be in River’s End by dinner. Free room and board.”

The sun dropped out of the sky like a rock. As they passed through Bodega Bay and drove the last few miles into River’s End, Kirstin felt as if they were entering Brigadoon. The night closed in like a blanket, quiet and dark both filtering down at the same time, until all that she knew was their car and a black ribbon of asphalt. Jagged branches stretched out over the road in either welcome or warning. She wasn’t sure which.

The radio seemed to have lost all stations except for a canned Top 40 outlet and a talk radio station currently suggesting a conspiracy between the U.S. government and a South American dictatorship. Their headlights opened up a hazy path through the darkness but otherwise failed to reveal anything more than the stars above. Kirstin felt as if they’d left the planet and entered the Twilight Zone.

“Are you sure we’re even on the map?” she asked.

Jennica grinned. “Not only are we on the map, but”—she pointed at a green road sign ahead—“we only have eleven miles to go.”

The road wended and curved, a yellow-striped night snake looming off ahead. It drifted through a brief string of cabins and a convenience store across from a quaint and cozy-looking place called the Rio Villa Beach Resort. That place was surrounded by dark trees, and a neon sign in front read vacancy.

“It says beach resort,” Kirstin pointed out. “But where is the beach?”

Jenn shrugged. “It does seem to be a bit of an oasis.”

As fast as they spied the little town, they were soon past it and winding through the dark again. The blackness felt almost palpable; Kirstin had to remind herself at times to breathe. And then a few minutes later, just as suddenly as the Rio Villa had appeared out of the dark, they were there, the tiny lights of homes and stores just ahead and bleeding through the blackness.

“The directions say to turn right just after the bed-and-breakfast,” Kirstin read by the light at the base of the rearview mirror. Then we take a one-lane road to the right, stop at a gate, open the gate, and go a quarter mile up a gravel road. The key is under the gargoyle.” Kirstin paused and grinned. “Cool. They have a gargoyle?”

The B&B was obvious, its wood front porch illuminated and its small parking lot filled with cars. Jenn turned right at the next street, and suddenly they were on a steep incline. When they reached a T in the road, a