She pushed forward once more, and now her hands were almost in reach of the small table where she kept the book. But it was too late: A foot ground into the small of her back, pinning her to the floor. Even if she could reach it, what good would stopping the Pumpkin Man do her? He’d already killed her. She just hadn’t died yet.
He knelt and straddled her, gently slipping a hand around her neck. He caressed that soft skin below her chin and in the lowest possible voice said, “Emmaline, I’ve watched you for so long. I’ve wanted to taste you, to show you what you could be here, with us. What you can never be
She rolled. With one knee she caught him in the groin and laughed as he jolted away from her in pain. Even demons couldn’t ignore the pain of the bodies they rode.
“I can never be anything anywhere,” she spat. “You make wonderful promises, but what have I ever gotten from you? I killed and sacrificed and worshipped and degraded myself every day for years, and for what? To live in a hovel as an outcast on the edge of a no-name town? What did you ever do for me—show me how to make a pleasure spell? Give me the ability to inflict pain on my enemies with a crude voodoo doll? I’ve gotten
Emmaline kicked out her feet and shimmied until she was able to grab the small stand and pull herself upright. The pain in her side was horrendous, but she rose anyway, determined now that her last act would be to stop the thing her sister-in-law had raised. The thing that had robbed her of her family and now her life.
She flipped through the pages quickly, the blood on her fingers sticking to the paper. The words were a blur, yet they all looked familiar. “Possession, Incantation, Entrapment. The Circle of Need, the Sacrifice of the Innocent . . .” She had read every chapter, but she knew the one that would work. The man in front of her was not the man who tried to kill her. She only needed to set him free of his spirit rider and her life would be spared, though she feared her wounds mortal regardless. Blood now leaked up into her mouth from her throat. Tiny, continual tremors in her lungs didn’t slow.
She found the page. “Banishment” read the heading, handwritten in black ink by someone with amazing penmanship. Writing was a lost art; she had considered that many times as she’d read the entries of her ancestors. Despite the years, she had always been able to read every word—unlike today, when if you saw a handwritten note, chances are you’d be hard-pressed to identify even one.
As she opened her mouth to say the first words of the banishment, the book slammed shut. The Pumpkin Man’s knife wavered just before her nose, darting uncertainly from eye to eye.
“No,” the voice said. “Your part in this is done. And now that it is, I’m going to introduce you to the same exit that I gave your son.”
Emmaline stiffened. She had refused to think about that loss for years. Now the memory of Harry’s sweet little boy came back full-force, his tiny freckles and alert blue eyes staring hopefully back at her as his high-pitched voice called out, “Momma, where are the cupcakes?”
She would always miss that child, no matter that it wasn’t hers nor how much the family had said his death was necessary. The secret room had still been used for ceremonies back then, when her cousin and uncle and aunt had still been alive, as well as George. The family had still had power, and they demanded her silence and her sacrifice. She’d regretted that the Pumpkin Man hadn’t taken her instead back then, but she hadn’t been given that choice.
Again, she felt a flicker of pain. She didn’t blame her brother. What had he done, aside from being the horse that was ridden? Harry had never agreed with her and had plotted to kill George, thinking that killing him would end the work of the demon.
Two hands grabbed her arms and lifted her away from the book. With a wicked smile, the possessed man lifted her off the ground to hang level for just a moment with his eyes. They were brown but seemed from deep within to glow with a yellow light.
“I don’t think so,” he said.
With a jolt, Emmaline was suddenly in the air and then on the floor. She looked up to see the shriveled skin of her dead husband’s mummified feet and a glint of orange color. Emmaline turned her head to confirm the horrible suspicion. Yes. There was a pumpkin here in her basement. On the floor beside her husband. Near her head.
“No,” she said again, this time with less determination.
“I want you to see something,” the Pumpkin Man said. His voice was low and soft but very determined. When the knife bit through the skin of her neck, Emmaline barely noticed. She was staring up into the mesmerizing swirl of his golden eyes. “There is a thing called the Rapture. The reuniting of all souls in an orgy upon the earth. You will help us grow and bring the Rapture back once again.”
“No,” Emmaline whispered. This time, her words blew bubbles through the hole in her neck.
“Let me show you something,” her murderer repeated, and he reached out to pull the pumpkin next to her face. He had already hollowed out its core, and he lifted off the cap to expose the orange glow within. Then he pressed his knife softly to the skin beneath her left eye. “Look and you will see,” he promised.
He pushed the blade down. Emmaline wanted to scream, but the pain was so intense, she barely released a squeak. The Pumpkin Man popped her eyeball up and out of her head, like a grapefruit segment by a spoon. He held the eye in his hand. It dripped viscous blood like violet honey. Then he held it to the dark orange skin of the gourd as his other hand began to carve around it.
Emmaline felt the vision in her remaining eye fade, though the pain had finally increased enough that she was screaming. She saw a final foggy glimpse of her own self from the point of view of the pumpkin. And then her murderer was stabbing his knife into her lips, promising with understated breaths that she would be whole again, that she would be whole forevermore thanks to him. That she would see the world through different eyes, taste the air through a different mouth, understand that the consciousness of her mind was only a piece of the greater whole.
Somehow her arms and legs had become lead, and she could only lie there and feel the excruciating pain as he severed her features. When he gently slid the blade into her nose, she could feel the resistance it met. Then he slid his bloody knife across the skin of the pumpkin, inserting the blade a centimeter at a time until it dug all the way in, pressing her blood into the space left behind. Each stroke was leaving her there—not just the blood she spilled, but pieces of her soul.
She felt herself blink and cough, and then her killer’s knife dug into her remaining eye. She wanted to cry and beg—anything to make him stop—but she’d already lost her tongue. The world grew briefly brighter as his blade cut deep, but then, as he spoke secret words in a sibilant whisper, her view changed forever. She found herself blinking out from a haze of light to see his face grinning down at her, shards of light growing and changing and swirling in violent violet eddies from his eyes.
“I gave you a new perspective,” the glowing creature answered. “I thought you’d like to see the world through different eyes.”
“No worries,” her killer said. The modern slang sounded wrong said in those sepulchral tones, but the possessed body didn’t match the thing inside either. “You won’t last there long enough to complain.”
Emmaline watched as he pulled out a long butcher knife from his rolled-up leather packet. The blade glinted in the basement’s dull light, and somehow she could see the shriveled image of Harry in it. She thought he looked angry. If he were here now, he’d probably want to kill her, too.
“I’m sorry,” she said, aiming her sentiment at her husband.
The Pumpkin Man answered. “So am I,” he said.
The demon inside the man laughed, then, and he stepped away from her pumpkin head. He ran his blade along the center of her body, deftly pulling away the material to expose her breasts as Emmaline watched. Then he slit the rest of the thin cotton and lifted that away as well. She could see herself lying naked on the dirty floor, though she knew she wasn’t entirely dead yet. The blood still flowed in shallow spurts from a half dozen wounds.
“In time you will rejoin your body,” the Pumpkin Man promised, and then he set his cleaver against the soft white of her neck. This time, he didn’t spare the pressure when he pressed down. She could hear the grinding steel as he worked his way through her vertebrae.
It was over in an instant. The Pumpkin Man stood up from her corpse, holding her severed head by the roots
