The Pumpkin Man

the house and all of the books to the town.

Jenn smiled. “Thanks. It was my dad’s recipe. I’m amazed we didn’t all get to be two hundred and fifty pounds growing up the way he cooked. I mean, he didn’t drain the grease when he fried bacon up for a recipe, he put the rest of the food in right on top of it.”

Emmaline laughed. “I think the most common spell people wanted from your aunt was something to help them lose weight. You’d think it would have been something to help them find true love, or a potion like that, but no, people are always concerned with their looks. Vanity.” She shook her head.

“What exactly did Meredith do for them?” Jenn asked.

Emmaline’s face was stern. “I’m sure she mixed some hot peppers and the ground-up bones of something foul and told them to put it in their refrigerator.”

“Would that work?”

“That’s the kind of curiosity that got your aunt in trouble,” Emmaline replied.

“Well, I can’t help but be curious,” Jenn said. “There’s some kind of supernatural serial killer that’s been stalking me for the past two months. My aunt had something to do with magic, and so I’d kind of like to know what. It seems like the best way to protect myself.”

“Getting away from this house would be a good start,” Emmaline announced. “The evil draws its power from here.”

“That didn’t stop it from coming to Chicago and killing my dad,” Jenn complained. “And leaving signs for me as well. The Pumpkin Man—supernatural or not—was in my apartment just before I flew out here. There were pieces of pumpkin at the foot of my bed! I’m not safe anywhere.”

Emmaline opened her mouth to say something but then thought better of it. There was an uncomfortable silence at the table until Nick broke it.

“I’m taking her to San Francisco in a couple days, but the last time we were there her best friend vanished. We . . . we’d like to think she just wandered off, but that doesn’t seem very likely. We think the Pumpkin Man probably came for her. So, if you know of a way to keep Jenn safe, tell me. Even if it’s that she never comes back to this place again. I want to protect her, and I’ll do whatever I have to do.”

Jennica looked at Nick in shock and happiness. He’d just said the words of someone who genuinely cared. Not that she hadn’t realized he cared, but in some ways she’d felt like maybe he’d been staying with her out of pity. This sounded very much like love. He’d do anything?

“We have to stop the Pumpkin Man,” Jenn told Emmaline. “How do we do that? It sounds like you don’t want me to follow in my aunt’s footsteps, but how can I protect myself if I don’t? Running away just isn’t going to work.”

Emmaline stared at her. Finally she said, “I don’t know, because I don’t know what Meredith did to bring him here. But I do believe this is a supernatural being and not a serial killer, and I promise I will try to find a way to bind him and keep him from hurting you. But . . . promise me that you’ll leave here no matter what. This house rests on generations of darkness. So long as you are here, you are vulnerable to the pull of that history. If you stay, you will become a Perenais just as your aunt did. You’ll become everything bad that I barely escaped. I cannot caution you enough.”

CHAPTER

FORTY-THREE

The heat of summer was coming; he could feel it in the air. Not that it was that hot yet, but as the twilight descended Scott Barkiewicz could taste the coming warmth. It tasted fine. River’s End would never be a beach town, like so many places along the coast to the south, but he had been here many times in the summer, and he enjoyed the heat of the sun mixed with the salt air and the privacy of life in a small town. Read: miles of sand and blue water all to yourself.

Driving along Route 1, Scott drank in the air. He had just done a circuit of River’s End, looking for teens getting into trouble or other problems, then took a drive up the coast. Now he was heading back to the station. Patrols in the tiny town were perfunctory for the most part, but they still had to be done. That’s what taxes were paid for. Taxes that paid for his supper.

The tiny police station was quiet as he walked in. Silent like a tomb. Well, Scott could hear the old clock on the wall ticking away the seconds, so maybe he was being melodramatic. But where was Captain Jones?

Through the small front office he walked, past three empty desks, and switched on the lamp on his own. The light was on in the captain’s office, he saw, so he crossed the room to look inside. Jones was there.

The captain was sitting in his chair, staring out the window. The case files for the DeVries and Smith murders were open on his desk. Scott recognized the crime scene photos, even if the bodies were unrecognizable. It’s amazing how much of a person’s identity was wrapped up in his face. And when the head was missing . . .

“Captain?” he asked.

Jones started. “I didn’t hear you come in.”

“All’s quiet out on the street.”

“Mmmm,” the captain answered. “I don’t think that it’s going to stay that way.”

Scott got a whiff of alcohol. What the hell? he thought. That wasn’t like the captain at all. Lax, maybe. Tolerant, yes. A drunk? No.

“What’s the matter?”

“The Pumpkin Man is back,” Jones said.

“Yeah, he’s been back for months,” Scott reminded him. “And it’s high time we trapped him and put him behind bars. I wish they would have caught him and locked him up twenty-five years ago, so we weren’t cleaning up the mess today!”

“I don’t think there’s anything more we could have done the first time around,” Jones said, turning to stare at him. His eyes were bloodshot. “And now, something’s different. He’s broken the pattern. He’s not killing kids at Halloween now. And he’s not just killing parents of the kids he killed in the past. He killed Meredith’s brother in Chicago. He killed a kid from San Francisco last week. Now apparently he’s taken Jennica Murphy’s friend from Chicago. I don’t know how to even look for where he’s going to strike next.”

“Well, that’s the challenge in investigating a string of murders,” Scott said. Man, the captain was really unraveling. “There is a connection, though, even if it’s not the same man. The two latest victims were friends of Jennica Murphy’s, and they stayed at that house. So did her father.”

“Okay, fine,” Jones slurred. “But how are we going to get rid of him?”

Scott laughed. “We catch him and lock him up. Isn’t that what we do with bad guys?”

“Your police academy didn’t deal with how to catch the devil.”

“We’re not dealing with the devil,” Scott answered, shaking his head. “This is a guy who’s flesh and blood. He uses knives to cut people up and he’s got some kind of pumpkin fetish, and he thinks it’s amusing to play on the fears that this town picked up a generation ago. But it’s just a guy with a knife. A guy we can catch—who we need to catch before someone else gets hurt. Have you heard anything more from the lab work?”

“From the Perenais house?” Jones asked. “Nothing. No prints, no identifying traces of anyone outside of the kids who are living there.”

“So the guy wears rubber gloves and a hair net,” Scott said. “Or he’s bald.”

Jones grimaced. After a moment he said, “I know you talked to Emmaline Foster. You must have gotten some background on the Perenais family.”

“Sure,” Scott said. “Superstition and old wives’ tale stuff. Though, she did make me nervous for the lives of those kids. Obviously that place is a focus for whoever is behind this, and I think they should get out of there as soon as they can.”

“They went one hundred miles away and something followed them,” Jones said. “I told you what has apparently happened to Jennica Murphy’s friend Kirstin. You don’t suppose that she just went for a long walk and got lost down there in San Francisco, do you?”

“Someone followed them, not something,” Scott reminded his captain. “And I think