Sacrificing Virgins (20 page)

“I used a dog for that one,” the Pumpkin Man called.

Steve choked and balled his fists. “C'mon,” I said, and pushed him to leave. The others followed. Behind us, I heard the Pumpkin Man start to whistle.

“I don't know what he does,” I told Steve later, as we sat by the tree in his front yard. My butt was cold and damp from the leaves, but we didn't retreat to the warmth of his house. We had secrets to share.

“I was there looking at the pumpkins,” I said. “It was the day Rusty disappeared. I heard a screech, like something was dying. When I went to look, I saw him carving a pumpkin, and when I picked up what he threw away from it, my hand was covered in blood. Something's not
right
about the Pumpkin Man.”

“Let's check it out,” Steve said.

“What do you mean?”

“Tonight. Let's see how he does it.” His eyes glimmered with unshed tears and he turned away. I knew he was thinking about Rusty. All I could think about was the spine-curling scream of a mutilated pumpkin.

We left our bikes at the Thompsons, two houses away from the vacant lot which was now filled with pumpkins. It was dark, after 8 p.m., and the moon was nowhere to be found. I shivered beneath the heavy down of my olive-green coat. I'm not even sure if it was because of the cold.

We threaded our way between the piles of warted squash and miniature gourds and beach-ball-sized carving pumpkins. We stepped carefully, not wanting the crunch of gravel to give us away. In moments, we were face-to-face with the blazing wall of flaming, smoking faces.

The rat-faced pumpkin seemed even more shriveled than this afternoon, the curl of its teeth leaving it look gummy, geriatric. The snarling dog-faced gourd caught Steve's eye again, and I had to pull him away.

“C'mon,” I said. “He'll be back here.”

We stepped around the back of the pumpkin shed the same way I had two weeks before, but this time, the Pumpkin Man was nowhere to be seen. The carving table was there, unused in the midst of the empty clearing.

“Maybe he's back here,” Steve whispered, pointing to a small pickup truck trailer. You couldn't see the pickup from the street with all the pumpkins and the display shed, but now it was obvious how the Pumpkin Man got around. He could pack everything into the truck and then sleep in it as well.

Steve stole around the side of the truck and disappeared into the shadows. I waited for him to round the other side of the rusting hulk of a vehicle, but he didn't reappear. The night only grew more still. Then something snapped. I froze.

From nearby, I heard a now-familiar whistle. This time I recognized the tune. It was “Nowhere Man” by The Beatles. I retreated from the pickup until the rear wall of the display stand was at my back.

That's when I saw him. The Pumpkin Man sauntered around the side of the truck where I had been expecting to see Steve. Something was clutched in his arms. It was covered in a brown blanket or tarp. He kept whistling, seemingly calm, but whatever he had trapped was wrestling and kicking like hell.

He dragged the covered form over to the table, sat down, and with one hand scooped up a pumpkin and set it on the table. With the other, he forced the form in the blanket down on the table next to the gourd.

I'm not clear exactly what happened then. It was dark, and the Pumpkin Man's back was to me. And I was scared. But I know this. From the depths of the night I heard Steve cry my name. And then, the Pumpkin Man's arm raised up high in the air. When it came down, a flash of silver against the sky, I heard the most piercing scream I've ever heard in my life, before or since.

The blanket thrashed and kicked against the Pumpkin Man's body as he wedged it tight to the pumpkin on the table, and dug his blade into the gourd again, and again. Dark shapes flew in the air as he gouged chunks from the pumpkin and tossed them aside. On the table, a new face took shape, and I struggled to keep my teeth from chattering, as I watched him draw eyes and a smile that were hauntingly familiar. The light was poor, and the Pumpkin Man's back hid his work, for the most part, from my spying eyes.

But when the screaming faded to gasps, and the Pumpkin Man dropped his now-still blanket of inspiration, I saw a shrieking face more horrible than any of the laughing, scowling faces on the stand directly behind me.

On this pumpkin, captured in abject terror, the Pumpkin Man had carved Steve's crying face.

I never saw Steve again. The kids at school talked the next day about the amazing new pumpkin that the Pumpkin Man had on display, but I didn't go see. I already knew what it would look like.

The police came to our house on Halloween night, and asked if we had any knowledge of Steve's disappearance. They asked when I'd last seen him, and wrote carefully in their notebooks when I told them that we'd been at the Pumpkin Man's just two nights before, and that the Pumpkin Man had carved Steve's face into one of his creations. Had carved
Steve
.

They didn't believe me. I knew that they wouldn't. Even my parents shook their heads. That's why I didn't even bother to go to my dresser, where the shriveling shard of a pumpkin triangle rested, hidden away in my top drawer. I had picked it up from the ground, the night the Pumpkin Man carved Steve into a pumpkin.

I think he knew I was there that night. At one point, he looked over his shoulder, and smiled a horrible toothy grin in my direction. He started whistling again then, as if he knew I could never do anything to stop him.

And he was right. Who would believe a kid that says a pumpkin carver was killing stray dogs and children to make his grotesque creations all the more real?

But I still have the last piece of Steve they'll never find. Shriveled like leather in my drawer.

Its sunset skin is still faintly smeared by a dull, violent red.

The Tapping

The tapping again. Every night, the tapping.

And every night tapping louder than the one before.

The wind howls around my window frame like the fabled hounds of hell, but louder still, the tapping shatters the breath-held stillness of my room. I'm afraid. Afraid that I won't make it through this night.

And afraid that I will.

I made a grave mistake, pun woefully intended. And learned a thing or two in the aftermath, not that it will do me any good now. But maybe this tale will help someone else. You, perhaps. Maybe this will save you from the ghoulish trap that I have sprung. God, I can only hope that someone will find this and steer left of the devil. Here's what I have learned:

Never take your friends for granted, one day they will be gone.

Never take an oath beneath the orange stare of a full moon.

Never take a dare to disturb the sleeping bones of a tomb.

The last might seem obvious, but marinaded in three martinis well into Halloween night, I was open to anything. So was Al. The sweat of intoxication glowed on his forehead like the sheen of death, and Ramondo played on both of our sorry states. Which is no excuse, because he'd downed at least three beers before we met up with him at the Excelsior. We made a motley crew—I was recently divorced, Ramondo couldn't seem to settle on a single pair of legs, and Al couldn't seem to
land
a single pair of legs. And so while all of our other friends carted kids around to costume parties and trick-or-treating, the three of us had met up for a cocktail—or five—at Excelsior. Not surprisingly, given the occasion, our conversation turned to the macabre.

Ramondo was poking fun at one of our workmates, who generally seemed about as aware of what was going on around her as a blind narcoleptic.

“You think Maria would notice if one of her trick-or-treaters today was an actual skeleton, instead of a kid wearing a painted shirt?” Ramondo asked.

“Naw.” Al grinned. “She'd drop a couple Milky Ways into its hand and not even notice when they fell through the bones to the sidewalk.”

“You're assuming she'd hear the doorbell in the first place,” I said.

Ramondo laughed and tilted another Genuine Draft. “Yeah, she'd be too busy feeding her cats to pay any attention.”

Al shook his head and raised his glass. “We're making fun of the old girl, and really we should envy her. I wish I could be so happy in my own little world. Here's to oblivion.”

“To oblivion,” Ramondo and I replied, and downed another swig.

The conversation continued in this vein, until the dim strands of orange-bulbed Halloween lights strung across the bar seemed very bright and everything shone with a golden aura. I was very drunk. And Al was nearly comatose. He seemed to end every word with an “s”.

“I'll tell you what we ought to do,” Ramondo finally vouched, one great, black caterpillar eyebrow trembling as if it were considering wriggling right off his forehead. “We ought to go down to Resurrection Cemetery and check out one of those crypts.”

“You mean those little stone houses they put the bodies in aboveground?” Al slurred, and Ramondo nodded, his mouth widening into a dangerous grin.

“We could get ourselves a real skeleton hand. I bet tomorrow at work, we could stick it out, shake hands with Maria, and she'd never know the difference.”

What can I say? It sounded good at the time.

Resurrection was just down the street from Excelsior, and we decided to take a little walk. To anyone on the street, it probably looked more like a big stagger.

Excelsior was on the end of a low traffic street, partially due to it sharing the neighborhood with a cemetery, and by this time of night, all the trick-or-treaters had long since counted their candy and gone to bed with the start of new cavities. The street was silent, but for the gusts of October chill, and the rattle of chocolate wrappers across the sidewalk. We didn't care.

“Does it have to be a whole hand, or just a finger bone,” Al slurred, at one point, and Ramondo was adamant.

“No half-assed bones,” he declared. “You ever try to shake hands with a finger bone? We need the whole hand. In one piece!”

The cemetery gates were locked. They stood ten feet tall, sharp-edged green metal bars locking into a beveled, curved iron door that was as much decorative as imposing.

“Looks like they want to keep us out,” I said.

“Or keep the dead folks in,” Al mumbled.

“I can pick it,” Ramondo said and went to work on the lock with a paperclip he pulled from his pocket. I didn't ask. He has some skills I don't want to know about.

The wind whipped up and I hunched over, pulling my coat tighter.

“Shoulda brought one for the road,” Al said, and then burped. I didn't think he needed anything else for the road but a driver. But I said nothing.

“Got it,” Ramondo announced, and with a shove, the heavy metal gates swung inward with a slow-building screech. I looked around, fearful of discovery, but the street remained dark and silent.

The three of us ducked through the entry and presently stood at a crossroads just inside. Three dark asphalt roads led away from the gates, one directly to the heart of the cemetery, the other two encircling its borders like grasping arms.

The shadows of row upon row upon endless row of praying, prostrating memorial statuary reached out towards us; the moon was late in rising, and its full orange eye lit the entire landscape with a bloody light. A night bird fluttered somewhere in the distance, and I trembled.

“We're heeeere,” Al announced, and I elbowed him.

“What?” he asked, cocking an angry brow my way. “You think I'm gonna wake the dead?”

At that exact moment, an owl shrieked, and he jumped as much as I.

“Maybe.”

Ramondo turned to look at the two of us and laughed. I hated that laugh. The slight upturned snarl of that long lip, the bright white of perfect teeth that he flashed briefly, quickly, like a striptease. The jaded, cynical smile that attracted women to lick at his face like lemmings following a mad rat over the edge of a cliff. There was nothing wholesome in Ramondo's smile, and maybe that's why chicks dug it—at least at first. Whatever its attraction, I hated it when that sardonic grin turned on me.

“Livers showing their true colors?” he crowed. “Lily white?”

“Bone white,” I said. “Like the skeleton hand I'm gonna bitch slap you with. But what's the bet? What's the prize? If we all come back with a bunch of bones, who wins?”

Ramondo nodded and put a finger to one pouty lip. Another trait women seemed to go for. Maybe it reminded them of a Chicano Elvis or something.

He dropped to a crouch after a second, and with a loose stone drew a white X on the asphalt.

“Okay,” he said. “Here's the mark. First one back to the mark with a complete,” he looked at Al, “
complete
, skeleton hand wins.”

“And the winner gets?” I prodded.

“The mutual respect and admiration of the other two,” Al offered.

Ramondo snickered. “I think graveyard violation is worth more than a little respect. Actually, perhaps it doesn't deserve any respect at all,” he said, laughing again. “How about fifty bucks from each of the losers?”

“Steep,” Al said.

“So hurry,” Ramondo responded.

I just nodded. I wasn't sure how I was gonna get in and out of a tomb the fastest, but I knew I sure as hell wanted to get this over with as fast as humanly possible.

There was a moment of silence, and then the wind gusted and chilled my ears in shivery squeal.

“So are you both in?” he asked.

I nodded. Al shrugged. His eyes seemed glazed and I wondered if he was going to puke.

Ramondo extended his arm and nodded at the top of his hand.

I laid my palm on his knuckles and after a moment, Al's covered mine.

“Swear,” Ramondo said.

“Damn,” Al replied.

“That's not what I meant,” Ramondo said. “Swear that we will all break into a tomb tonight, on Halloween, the night that all souls twist restless in their sleep. Swear that you will sever the hand of someone long since gone to their heavenly, or hellish, reward. Swear that you will return to this X with that hand, ready to shake with the rest of us…and eventually, Maria.”

I may not have mentioned it before, but Ramondo also had an annoying sense of the dramatic. Another reason the girls liked him. Some girls, anyway.

“Swear,” we all murmured.

The moon seemed to paint our joined hands a sallow orange and we pulled away from our clasp as something fluttered again in the distance. To my ears, the cemetery seemed strangely restless this night. But I shrugged the thought off as the product of a guilty mind.

“Who wants a paperclip?” Ramondo asked then, and pulled a half dozen shining slips of metal from his pocket.

“You working as office help on the side these days?” I asked.

“Cheap help?” Al echoed.

“Take it or leave it, fellas,” he said, and we both grabbed for a clip. The last time I tried to use a paperclip to get through a lock was in high school when I'd been grounded and gone out anyway, without my keys. As I'd been picking the lock of my own house, my dad had turned on the outside light, thrown open the front door and nearly clocked me to the carpet with his fist. I wasn't looking forward to this attempt, but it couldn't be much worse, I thought. After all, if a corpse answered the door to my lock picking this time, it couldn't possibly pack as much of a wallop as my dad.

The mausoleum read Tchichovesky. Even in the low light of the moon I could make out the ornate, deeply chiseled letters above the double door entryway. The stone hut had obviously been at Resurrection for a long, long time. Its base was overgrown with gnarled, bare-branched bushes that hid the roots of the vines bulging from its walls and roof like fat, black veins.

We had separated, one to a road, and gone in search of our hand bones like ghouls, heads dipped low and legs creeping. Ramondo took the center path and Al the right. I took the left. I'd always been a liberal at heart.

Soon I spied the squat stone hut perched behind a row of six-foot marble statues in the shape of a weeping Christ, a cheerful mother Mary and a score of harping and praying angels. I ducked beneath a low-hanging tree branch, sending a litter of dead brown leaves to the ground and stood still, holding my breath before the double doors. Its shadow stretched long and dark across the graves to the right of its doors, and I felt naked on its stoop, standing stock still at the lock, ready and armed with a paper clip to brave the inner crypt and disturbed the dead.

If the world hadn't been spinning, just the tiniest bit, I'm sure I would never have continued.

But the world
was
tilting, just a little bit, and my arms seemed both light as air and heavy as lead, and my lips burned with the bitter, secret, pine power of gin, and I pulled out the paper clip and stuck it inside the small padlock holding shut the entrance to the Tchichovesky family's crypt.

I had little hope of tripping this lock fantastic; its hook was rusted and dark, and even if I could fool the mechanism inside, I doubted whether I could convince the metal to part from where it falsely joined.

The moon fell across my shoulder, and a tree branch somewhere nearby moved back and forth, making it feel as though the dead themselves were sighing and leaning and breathing across my shoulder as I picked and twisted at the innards of the padlock with my small metal barb.

My flesh shivered and I shoved the paper clip deep into the lock like a spear, jamming and twisting it with neither finesse nor delicacy.

And it sprang.

I couldn't believe my eyes. Not only did the lock trip, but the U lifted away from the shank and I had easy, free clearance to the tomb.

Shit
.

I was far more prepared to try, fail, and pay the $50 than I was to venture inside the black house of death. But I was also enough of a competitor that I couldn't intentionally throw the game.

I slipped the lock from the clasp and let it drop to the ground. And then I pulled the aging steel door open. It creaked far louder than the cemetery gate, and for a moment I didn't breathe.

The stones around me stayed still, angels and saints frozen in timeless gazes, staring, witnessing my unholy violation. The wind slipped like scarves around the trees and whistled. There was no more safety outside than in, I concluded and threw the door open wide to the wind.

Stepped inside.

Gasped.

The air was heavy and cold. Stale. Foul.

The breath of the crypt.

I waited 'til my eyes adjusted, wondering if rats awaited my prying fingers. Slowly, the moon shadow proved bright enough to light the crypt, and I stood before the bronze marker holding the name of a long-dead corpse.

Benito. 1902-1946.

I grasped at the handle of his deathly bed and pulled. Pulled. Felt a muscle gasp in my back and pulled again. Icy sweat slid down my back, whether from fear or exertion, I don't know.

In moments, Benito's casket lay exposed before me, slipped from the hollow confines of his stone bunk bed, and I stared at the dirty cover. Was I really about to rob a grave for $100?

Yeah
, an inner voice whispered.
Get on with it.

There were clasps on the edge of the wooden frame and one by one, my hands slipped along the edge of the lid and threw them.

Did I really want to do this?

Get it over with,
the voice in me screamed, and I propped both palms against the coffin lid and pushed upward.

Another creak, a wooden scream, and the lid was up, and my nose assaulted with a rush of stale fetid air like a hammer blow across the skull.

I gagged, sneezed, and cursed, but refused to let go of the lid.

I stared down, in the pale, diffuse moonlight, at the mummified vellum skin of a man once called Benito. He still wore the dusty dark shards of a suit, its buttons caught and reflected the faint light of the devil moon behind me. His palms were crossed over his chest, and I shuddered.