The Pumpkin Man

Teachers like you.”

The sister offered a callback number, which Jennica still knew by heart. It was the switchboard number at the front office of Holy Name High.

She thumbed the phone off and set it down. “What the fuck,” she said aloud. “You can stab me in the back for no reason, and then you think you can just call me up and have me come back no questions asked?”

Ignoring Sister Beatrice’s message, she skipped back to the entry from Captain Jones and hit the callback command. A moment later, the heavy voice of River’s End’s top cop filled her ear.

“Captain Jones,” he announced.

“Jennica Murphy,” she responded, answering his formality with her own.

His voice softened. “Hello, Jenn,” he said. “How are you?”

“Okay,” she replied. “You called?”

“Yeah,” he said. There was a pause. “I wanted to tell you about something. And . . . I have something for you. Something that I hope will be useful.”

“Should I come down to the station?” Jenn asked.

“No,” he answered. “I’ve got to make some stops first, so I’ll come up to you. Will you be home in twenty minutes?”

“Sure,” she said.

Twenty minutes? Maybe she wouldn’t blow-dry her hair today.

She got dressed and entered the living room. Nick was already there, sprawled back on the couch, reading an old book. She could see the flakes of yellowed paper falling like dandruff on his black T-shirt.

“Did you know there used to be these crazy devil worshippers who would cut the hearts out of women while they were still beating and feed them to their lovers?” he asked, looking up in amazement.

“Yeah, and they used to have sex on other people’s bones,” she said. “People are fucked-up.”

“And apparently always have been,” he said. “Who called?”

She told him about the messages.

He nodded. “Are you going to go back to Chicago?”

Jenn didn’t answer right away. She thought about growing up there and of winters sledding through the hills of the forest preserve over a hillside of brush-ridden ice. She thought of her acquaintances, the teachers she’d talked to in the lounge at Holy Name, and of the people she’d said hello to every day coming and going from her apartment. Most of all she thought about Kirstin, and about the things they’d done together; especially the things Kirstin had guilted her into doing—and that she’d grudgingly enjoyed.

“No,” she said. “I don’t think so.”

A knock came on the door a short while later. Jennica answered, and she wasn’t surprised to see the heavy face of Captain Jones on the other side.

“Mind if I come in?” he asked.

She opened the door wider and ushered him in. The captain paused when he saw Nick still seated on the couch, but she calmed his concerns.

“It’s okay,” she said, picking up on his reaction. “He’s with me in all of this now. We’ve both lost someone.”

Jones paused, nodding, as if assessing how he was going to address both of them. Finally he looked at Jennica and said, “Your uncle’s sister Emmaline was found this morning.”

“Found?” Jenn repeated.

“Yes. Someone called when they saw . . . when they saw a pile of pumpkin fragments on her porch as they left for work this morning. They called her house but no one answered. Knowing what’s been going on around here they called us. We found her in the basement.”

“And Emmaline’s head . . . ?” Jenn prompted.

Jones sighed. “Missing.” He offered up an old book he’d been holding. “This was in her basement, next to where her husband was hung from a rope.”

“Wait a minute,” Nick offered from the couch as Jenn blanched but gingerly accepted the book. “Wasn’t her husband—?”

Jones nodded. “Dead these past twenty years. You want to feel your skin crawl?” he asked. “Go into some woman’s basement some time to discover her headless corpse and find a naked, mummified body of a guy you last saw alive when your hair wasn’t gray.”

The captain paused, realizing the deceased was Jennica’s relative, if only through marriage, and he quickly apologized.

“Don’t worry about it,” Jenn said. “I only met her for the first time last night.” She thought for a second and then felt alarm. “You don’t think that we—?”

Jones shook his head. “No. But I think coming to this house might have been her undoing. Just like I think it will be yours if you don’t leave. I can’t make you leave, of course. It’s your house now. But”—he looked at the ceiling and the fireplace and the hallway into the kitchen—“nothing good has ever come to anyone who lived here.”

“What is this?” Jenn asked, holding up the book she’d been given and using it to change the subject.

“I don’t know,” Jones said. “I couldn’t read it. Foreign languages aren’t my thing. But I see it’s somehow connected to the Perenais family, and as the sole remaining heir, I think it belongs to you. And I think it might do you a little more good now than if it sat in a police evidence bag for the next six months. If you can learn anything about what the Perenais family called into this world, use it.”

He glanced at the door, clearly uncomfortable. Jenn let him off the hook by saying, “Thanks. I appreciate you going out on a limb like this for me. I know how much it means for you to be giving me something from a crime scene. I’ve been reading a lot of Meredith’s notes lately, so I will dig into this and see what I can translate. I’ll let you know if I find anything.”

Jones nodded and began backing toward the door. “I’ll have someone stationed nearby tonight,” he announced. “Just to help keep you safe.”

“Thanks, Captain,” Nick said, rising from the couch. “We’ll keep the doors locked, too.”

“Good idea,” Jones agreed. “But make sure you lock the basement door as well.” His voice dropped a notch. “I think you’ve got more to fear from within than without.”

Jenn shut the door behind the police captain and leaned her back against it, staring at the faded leather binding of the ancient book he’d given her. “Everything about this place relates to books,” she said.

“Yeah,” Nick agreed. “Books and blood.”

She walked over to the couch and sat next to him. His arm slipped around her shoulders, but she barely noticed. She’d turned over the cover of the book and looked at the handwritten title on the first page.

“Whoa,” she breathed.

Nick leaned close and read the foreign words without recognition. “You can understand that?” he asked.

“I took French in high school,” she said.

“What does it say?”

“Book of Shadows,” she breathed. “It’s the family book of spells. It’s what I was looking for.”

Jenn turned the page and began to haltingly translate words and fragments. Even without being able to complete a sentence, in her head she saw images of death and bones. Then she flipped deeper, and the page at which she arrived suddenly switched from French to English:

We’ve brought the bones from the old country to the new, the script read. In casks disguised like wine they come, the remains of our saint and his virgin offerings. They’ve loaded them onto a carriage here at the San Francisco dock, and we will be off for the north coast in the morning. We will start here anew, though with the old blood and the virgin bones. We will bring our father’s legacy alive again in the New World. His spirit is never far away from the lives of his children, and we are never far from feeding him death.

“What does it say?” Nick asked.

“It says we’re all doomed,” Jenn muttered.

“Uh-huh.” Nick laughed quietly. “I’m serious.”