Nick withdrew his hand from hers and reached out for a table lamp. “Well, I know I feel better now,” he said. “Are you okay?” he asked, moving around the coffee table to put his arm around Jenn’s shoulders.
“What happened there?” Kirstin whispered.
“I think my aunt was here,” Jenn said. “But it was like she was struggling. I think whoever she was struggling with won out.”
“I hate to say I told you so—” Nick began.
Jenn cut him off. “I know, I know.”
“Do you think something is loose in my apartment now? What was it?”
Jenn shook her head. “I don’t know. Maybe it was the Pumpkin Man himself. But I think he’s gone.”
“I wish we hadn’t done that,” Kirstin said. She had both arms wrapped around her shoulders in a self-hug as she rocked back and forth on the floor. “I don’t think I’ve ever been this scared.”
Jennica broke from Nick’s embrace to hug her. “I know, hon. I’m not feeling really good right now myself.” She choked back a sob and fought to get her emotions under control. Her chest was tight and her legs begged to run. Her entire body wanted to just flee, now, without any more questions or séances or thoughts about death. But that wouldn’t solve anything, she knew. The Pumpkin Man could be anywhere. “Before she left, she at least gave us a clue,” she reminded them.
“What,” Kirstin asked. “Research your family tree?”
“Sort of. Remember, the police said the Perenais family has been in River’s End since the beginning. That house is old. Really old. My aunt came out here and married into the family . . . I know from her journal that she learned her magic from studying things she found in the house. I don’t know that anybody really taught her, because she wrote that my uncle didn’t really want her to get involved in the things the rest of his family had been into. But somehow she found out how to do it. Maybe in those old books, maybe in other things.”
“And how are we going to find out?” Kirstin said. “Your uncle’s family seems to be gone.”
Jenn shrugged. “I still have my aunt Meredith’s journal. There may be more clues in there. And there’s the house itself.”
“I don’t want to go back there,” Kirstin said. “I am never sleeping in that bed again.”
Jenn nodded. The idea of going back didn’t exactly sit well with her either.
“I know,” she said. “But I can’t run away from this. It will follow us—or at least me—wherever I go. I need to act before it’s too late. It all began in that house. Maybe the only way it can be ended is there, too. I don’t know.”
Nick gave Jenn a hug and then looked her in the eyes. “I don’t want to go back there either,” he said, “but I’ll do whatever I can to help you. That thing killed my best friend. And I want you to be safe again.”
Jenn felt tears welling up in her eyes and she struggled not to cry. “Thanks,” she whispered. A tear slipped down her cheek.
Kirstin joined in the hug and whispered, “I’ll help, too. You know I will.”
That’s when she lost it. Jenn pictured the board spelling out YOU WILL DIE LIKE YOUR FATHER again, and then she saw Brian’s body in the bed from that morning and Kirstin’s incoherent terror. She remembered her dad’s funeral, which just reminded her how much Nick must hurt right now.
“Thank you, guys,” she said. “I’m so sorry about all of this.”
The sobs took over, and she began to cry harder, her breath hitching as the emotions of the past three months were finally released. Once she started, she couldn’t stop. She couldn’t catch her breath, but still the sadness streamed out. Nick pulled her gently to the couch and sat with her. He held her as she sobbed in a ball against his chest.
Kirstin sat with them for a while and stroked Jenn’s hair. When Jenn’s tears began to slow, she got up and gave Jenn’s shoulder a squeeze. “I’m going to bed,” she said. “I’m falling over.”
Jenn gave her a soggy smile. “Thanks for everything today,” she said. “Good night. See you in the morning.”
Kirstin smiled grimly and went down the hall. She’d left her things in Brian’s room. She supposed that’s where she’d sleep.
He could feel it coming again. His first response was to moan inwardly, and then came fleeting thoughts of tying himself to the kitchen table, which would stop his body from leaving home. But he’d had that thought a hundred times and knew it wouldn’t help. If his hands could tie him up, they could untie him as well.
The first time the madness had overtaken him, there had been no warning. One minute, he’d been cooking dinner and the next, he’d awoken on his couch the following morning covered in blood, still holding a sticky knife blade. God, the fear he’d felt that morning as he stared with bloodshot eyes into the bathroom mirror, asking himself over and over again, “What did you do?” And he simply couldn’t remember.
He’d found the passel of knives lying on the front room floor, equally bloody but tucked into a leather case. He took them all to the bathroom and rinsed the blood away, exploring each weathered knife with his fingers. While it was the first time he remembered seeing them, they felt strangely comfortable in his grasp. Familiar. Each handle fit snugly against the sore spot he felt on his palm below the thumb.
Where did I get these? he’d asked himself again and again. They appeared to be a very specialized set of implements. This wasn’t a set of steak knives. No, each was meant for some specific kind of carving. There were long, needle-thin blades and double-sided ones. There was a mini scimitar, and a carver with an edge the size of an X-Acto. But as different as the steel blades were, they were a matched set, each encased in a dark mahogany wood shaft.
He had cleaned and dried the blades, watching in horror as the red water swirled down the drain of his bathroom sink.
What did you do?
He’d showered, trying in vain to remember anything from the night before. He’d scrubbed his hands and face and hair until he hurt.
What did you do?
He’d cleaned the stains from his couch and disposed of his clothes, all the while waiting for a knock on his front door and a party of men in blue.
What did you do?
The police never came. A couple days later, the knives were gone. He turned his apartment upside down, but they simply weren’t there anymore. He began to think that he’d dreamed the whole horrible bloody morning.
Then, a short time later, he awoke on his couch again in the very same way. The knives were back in his living room, still wet with congealing blood. He cleaned them and himself, and eventually they disappeared again. The cycle happened again.
And again.
At first he’d had no warning. He simply woke up in blood with no real memory of the night before. But now was different. Each time the Pumpkin Man came, he could feel it. Just before his world went black, it was like a door opened in the back of his mind, a draft of hot wind blowing in to cloud his vision. It was happening again now. And as his sight faded, he had just enough time to cry out one phrase.
“Please, not again.”
But the cry was in vain.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-FIVE
Kirstin couldn’t sleep. She was exhausted, running on nothing. Every couple minutes she yawned, but her eyes refused to stay closed. How could she sleep after the events of the day?
She pulled Brian’s pillow close and tried to snuggle into it as if he were there. It didn’t help. His bed was comfortable, and the pillow filled that spot where another body should be. Kirstin had always liked sleeping with someone else. It made her feel secure and loved. Maybe that’s why she was always the flirt. She wasn’t ready to settle down with someone, but she couldn’t bear to sleep alone either. And so she moved from man to man, never staying long enough to get trapped but never staying alone long enough to get lonely.