The Pumpkin Man

it’s time we filed a missing-persons report on her behalf. There could be evidence in that boy’s apartment that would help our case here, so we should get the SFPD involved.”

Jones nodded, running a hand through his hair. “I’ll talk to Jennica about reporting it tomorrow. It’s probably better if it comes from her, considering what happened with that Tamarack kid. Plus, she’ll know the details. It’s going to look mighty odd to San Francisco regardless. Don’t need to make it worse.”

Scott smiled. Maybe he was getting the captain back on track. He didn’t like to see him so vulnerable. Captain Jones was a nice enough guy, if a bit lenient.

“That doesn’t help us tonight, though,” Jones continued.

Scott’s hope faded. “What do you mean?”

“I just have this feeling in my gut that someone’s going to die tonight. I figured it would be last night, but . . .”

“Do you want me to stake out the Perenais house?”

Jones nodded. “Sure, keep an eye on the kids. But . . .”

Scott raised an eyebrow, waiting.

“Never mind.”

The younger officer shrugged and left the room.

Jones sat at his desk, watching the other man leave. In his head he heard the rest of the words he wanted to say, words the other cop would never understand.

“But . . . don’t let the Pumpkin Man see you.”

CHAPTER

FORTY-FOUR

Emmaline couldn’t wipe the smile from her face the entire ride home. She’d done her best to scare the bejeezus out of those kids and she thought she’d succeeded. She hadn’t been able to find out if they had discovered the dark chapel yet, but since they’d mentioned the crypt and not the chapel she thought not. Finding that room might actually be a great lever to scare them into leaving . . . but more likely than not they’d involve the police, and after that, even if she finally got her family legacy back, it would be stripped of all that was truly valuable. So she hadn’t asked anything directly. Better to wait. Drive them away by other means.

She let herself into her small home and kicked off her flats at the door with a sigh. Flipping one light on in the hallway, she walked immediately to the basement door and down the stairs in her bare feet. Harry remained where she’d left him, as he always did.

Emmaline walked up to the mummified corpse of her husband and ran her fingers softly over the sandpaper rough surface of his skin. He’d been dead so long now, but she never failed to kiss him good night.

“You should never have hurt George,” she whispered, as she always did just before she touched his lips. Then she smiled and picked up a book from where it sat on a small shelf nearby.

Flipping to a place in the middle, she began to speak the strange and guttural words aloud, as if the shell of her husband were listening. She had read from these flaking yellowed pages every night for the past six months, ever since she’d retrieved the book from Meredith’s room. While the Perenais house had legally passed to Meredith’s brother, and shortly thereafter her niece, Emmaline had made sure that the Perenais Book of Shadows was not there. The tome had documented the rituals and occult discoveries of her family for generations. There were some things that only blood should see.

Blood. She was the sole true blood remaining of the Perenais line. It would all end with her, Emmaline realized. It was a pity, since she’d never really grown into the family talent. The outsider, Meredith, had proven a better witch than she. Despite his disinterest in the art, her brother George had proven a better conduit for the powers of the other side. She’d never guessed he could be, given his shyness. But that hadn’t stopped his vengeance. The amusing part was that if she didn’t do something to stop it, the dark magic set in motion by her sister-in-law might just keep haunting River’s End forever, long after she was dead and buried. Who knows how many people the specter of the Pumpkin Man would claim before his vengeful fire burned out? Once she was gone, who would have the slightest idea of how to stop it? Maybe River’s End would, ironically, after its history of dark spirits, become a ghost town.

Emmaline smiled at the thought. She had entertained many fantasies over the years of this tiny town’s ignorant populace being gutted like the cattle that they were. Maybe her selfish bitch of a sister-in-law had done something right after all.

She read slowly the handwritten foreign words scribed in her family Book of Shadows. The text had been penned by a great-great-great-great-grandfather some 350 years before, and it referred to luring demons with human blood to entertain your bidding. The author’s name had been Willum, and while living in England he had written his secret diary entries in Latin to cloak his proclivities from the casual browser who might stumble on his diary. Thankfully the entries had remained private, hidden by the family for centuries. But Emmaline had studied them. She’d also studied her family’s notes about their own performances of his rituals.

Willum had been a believer in the power of bones. And of blood. He’d strived to find just the right combination of the two, mixed by the light of candles molded from the fat of corpses rendered beneath the light of the full moon, corpses heated by fire lit from the embers of their own hair. He had stacked the bodies of his victims in a dark and hidden cellar and visited them on nights when the moon ascended to a particular position. Willum had also believed in the movements of the heavens being a sort of indicator of when the spirit realm was open to contact and could be exploited.

Emmaline laughed. She’d never found that exploitation needed specific timing. It could be accomplished simply by using the proper tools. In her case, a smile. She had spent her life coercing people with smiles, and she had gotten, more or less, all the things she wanted. She wouldn’t call it magic, but she called it fun.

The small refrigerator in the corner held a shelf of old mason jars, some of them actually bottled by her father, Satan rest his wicked soul. The family had once bottled so much that their work had lasted a century. She’d taken some with her when she married and moved out of the house, using them in her own chapel sacraments. Over the years she’d replenished what she used, draining new offerings in the sewer beneath her house. Still, the blood that her father had spilled tasted best to her, and so she’d made those jars last. She’d open the lids and sniff the foul scent of iron wafting up from the dark red liquid, and then she would slip her fingers in the blood and deftly coat herself, lips and breasts and belly and more . . .

Emmaline unbuttoned the blouse that she’d worn to meet her step-niece and let it fall to the dirty ground of the cellar; then she unhooked the metal tongs of her bra and let that join her top. Moments later she’d dropped her skirt and panties, and she stood naked in the mildewed basement, staring at the desiccated corpse of her husband. She still felt warm just looking at his remains, and she didn’t suppress the urges nakedness brought, fingering herself both above and below.

Dipping those hungry fingers into the cold jar of blood, she smeared that aged redness across her chest and pressed it, cool death, between her legs. She wondered sometimes about the lives she painted on her body, but she didn’t think about them too hard. The end more than justified the means.

Blood-smeared and horny, Emmaline knelt, feeling the perversion take her. She wanted suddenly to press a man to the ground and grind herself against him in an animalistic orgy, and she knew why: the act would satisfy the demons that watched from afar, and she wanted to satisfy them more than herself. She longed to be satisfied by them, too, to lie back and open herself to them, a horde of them, as they thrust themselves within her and spread her pelvis so wide that—

Emmaline stopped herself with a mental slap. Her devotions had rarely resulted in the kiss of demons, no matter how she dreamed. She’d never even been able to levitate herself through the air, like she’d read some of her ancestors did. But she had, in her life, known the power of being of the Perenais family. She remembered a time in high school when she’d really wanted a particular boy. Derek Tatum, his name had been. He’d always been the weird guy in school, listening to bands nobody had ever heard of, reading banned books and getting in fights. She’d been curious about what he would be like—his taste, his smell—so she’d called on the power of her family to help her get the little bit of him that she could. She’d lured him to a private place and slaked her lust on his body. Then,