direction.
The Pumpkin Man gave chase, suddenly looking not victorious but fearful. But he was already too late. The casket shifted, overbalanced. It fell toward Nick’s feet. There was a crack as loud and sharp as a cannon; then the stone top of the coffin opened and crashed to the ground. The bones of a dead man exploded across the stone floor.
The Pumpkin Man stood in shock amid the bones. He backed out of the human wreckage, looking lost, unsure. Jenn edged forward until she stood atop the bones, the ribs and arms and skull of a dead man strewn around her feet.
“What have you done?” the Pumpkin Man whispered.
“Oops,” Jenn said with a false smile. “Looks like I made a mess.”
“You’ll be sorry for that,” Nick said, and he moved toward her, knife in hand.
“Why, are these
“No, they’re not mine. But they’re the bones of my host. Don’t defile them,” Nick demanded.
This was the right thing, Jenn now knew for sure. She had grabbed the hammer to fend off Nick, but now she raised it and brought it down on the skull of her uncle. “It’s over,” she screamed at her boyfriend’s face, though it wasn’t her boyfriend currently wearing it. “It’s all over, leave us alone!”
The skull shattered, pieces exploding across the floor. Like with broken porcelain, a tiny cloud of white dust rose from the center.
Nick ran forward and shoved her. “Stop!”
She toppled backward but still held the hammer. Righting herself and seeing the flat expression of Nick’s face just inches from her own she whispered, “It’s over. Now it really is. Go back to where you came from.”
He stabbed at her with the knife, but Jenn pushed away. His blade swished past, a sharp sting down the flesh over her rib cage. Jenn responded with the hammer, slamming it into Nick’s carving arm with a meaty
Jenn didn’t wait to see how long it took him to recover; she brought the hammer down again and again, this time on every bone of the skeleton that lay around her on the floor. She pounded the hammer into each, enjoying the blows that changed each fossil-like bone into piles of fragments and dust.
She looked at Nick again, and saw him moving. He was coming very slowly toward her, as if he moved underwater. With every crushed bone, he flinched. So Jenn slammed the point of her hammer through her uncle’s skull one last time, and now the pieces gave way, fracturing the shell that had housed a demon who had deserved to die centuries before she was born.
When Jennica brought the last stroke down, the one that pulverized the skull into nothing but dust, Nick collapsed, falling helpless to the ground at her feet. Jenn kept bringing the hammer down, though, crushing bone after bone of the skeleton, knowing that with every blow she was eliminating the power of the curse.
Nick screamed. It was a horrible sound, and he rolled back to his feet. He rushed her, knife raised, but Jenn brought the hammer around and caught him in the shoulder. He swore and was knocked back, but he didn’t stop. Instead, he brought the knife around and tried to drive it into her chest.
Jennica moved just in time. Nick missed. Off balance, he fell to his knee.
“Let him go,” Jenn said softly, not to Nick but to the thing inside him.
Nick’s mouth opened, and the Pumpkin Man’s voice simply said, “No.”
He began to rise. Jenn was prepared for that. She brought her hammer down and struck the hand that held the knife, and the weapon went clattering across the floor. The Pumpkin Man gripped his hand to nurse the pain.
“Let him go,” she repeated, this time with more determination.
“No,” Nick refused, this time wearing a smile that didn’t look at all happy. He rose, and his eyes glared at her with such fire that she knew he would kill her, even if it was his last act. He came at her with both fists raised.
Jenn dove and grabbed the knife from the floor. As she picked it up, she felt his weight upon her. His arm reached around to grab her in a choke hold. She gasped, and stars shone behind her eyes. His arm only tightened further. She could feel the blood pounding in her head like a jackhammer. He was squeezing. Her head felt as if it would explode as she gasped to try to suck in even a little bit of breath, but she couldn’t, he was going to strangle her with the crook of his arm.
Jenn closed her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she whispered silently. “This isn’t you.”
She flipped the knife in her hand so that it pointed behind her, and then she stabbed backward as hard as she could. Her heart sank as she felt it connect.
Nick fell to the ground, clutching the knife. His expression was clearly one of surprise. “What have you done?” he whispered, and then his eyes fluttered closed.
Jenn pushed herself away, kept herself crouched in a defensive stance. After a few moments without seeing Nick move, she rose, wary of the strength of the spirit. But her boyfriend did nothing. She could see his chest rise and fall, a stain of blood seeping wider across his shirt with every breath. But who knew if she’d obliterated the Pumpkin Man? Who knew what exactly would send the evil spirit back to wherever it had come?
She took her hammer to the rest of the bones, attacking any shards larger than an inch. When she was done, the floor was covered with white powder and shrapnel. And the body of her boyfriend lay motionless in the middle, one arm extended in her direction.
CHAPTER
FIFTY-ONE
On the tile floor of the crypt, Nick moaned. His voice was different. More familiar.
“Nick?” Jenn asked. She stopped hammering the small shard of bone she was pulverizing and moved next to him.
“It hurts,” he wheezed. “I can’t breathe.” His voice was definitely warmer, fuller. Even riddled with pain it sounded more like her Nick, not the monster that had taken him over.
“I’ll go call an ambulance,” she promised. She leaned over and kissed his lips.
“No,” he said, his hand clutching her shoulder. “Don’t leave me down here.”
“I don’t think you should move,” she said. “I’ll be right back.”
“Help me up,” he insisted.
Carefully, slowly, Jennica wrapped an arm around him and helped him to his feet. He grunted and moaned with each movement, but at last he was leaning on her for support as they walked out of the crypt, through the basement and one by one up the stairs. Jenn looked at the jars of blood and dead things at the base of the stairwell as they passed and wondered if something there would help right now, if she only knew how to use it. In the back of her mind she vowed to study the things that Meredith had left behind.
She helped Nick to the couch and laid him back. He was gasping in pain. Sweat rolled down his forehead.
“Do you remember anything?” she asked.
He shook his head. “We were trying to use the Ouija board to talk to your aunt and then . . .”
“Then the Pumpkin Man came,” Jenn finished. When he moaned, she kissed his head. “Wait here a moment.”
She ran into the kitchen and ducked through the pantry. Inside the hidden room, the body of Travis lay motionless. Jenn grabbed it by the ankles and dragged it into the kitchen. She grabbed a large spoon from the sink and then ran back. She found the eyeballs lying there on the floor, and with the side of a finger pressed them onto the spoon.
“Ew,” she said to herself, but took them anyway. She tossed them on the tile floor near the body when she got back to the kitchen. Then she backed up and locked the hidden room before closing the pantry. The police didn’t need to know about that room, she’d decided. Not until she knew more about it herself.
After a survey of the kitchen, Jenn nodded, returned to the front room and picked up the phone to dial 911. “There’s been a murder,” she announced when a woman answered. “And another man is gravely hurt.”
