Pumpkin Patch & Phantoms

Amberfield had a pumpkin problem, and I had inherited the worst of them.

They were everywhere. Bursting out of window boxes, lining the curb in three sizes, stacked in tidy tiers outside the hardware store. A child-sized one perched on a parking meter like it was waiting for a bus. Another sat alone on the post-office lawn with a face carved into it weeks too early, the grin set at a considering angle, and I didn't slow down to study it. I'd done the drive from Logan in six hours, the last forty minutes through a string of Massachusetts towns that all had the same yellow leaves and the same cider stand, and Amberfield still managed to be the one that put a wreath of fake gourds on its WELCOME TO sign.

“Cute,” I said, to nobody. The GPS lady said Continue straight for two miles, and the GPS lady was a liar. There was no two miles. The road bent immediately and dumped me into a one-lane stretch of crowded oak that made the rental car feel small.

A Toyota Corolla, picked up at Boston Logan six hours ago. I had been awake for twenty-six of the last thirty.

The “Check Engine” light came on as I crossed the rusted iron gates of 13 Blackwood Lane. The engine made a short, embarrassed sound and gave up.

I sat there with my hands on the wheel.

“Fine,” I told the steering wheel. “Of course. Why not.”

I tried the key. Click.

“You have one job,” I told the Toyota. “One cylindrical job. The key goes in, the engine turns—”

Click. Click.

“Turns,” I said. “The engine turns. Then you take the nice lady to a hotel with a bar. That is the entire arrangement.”

But the dashboard didn't even bother to light up.

I pulled my phone from the console. The signal bars cycled twice and surrendered. No service. The little airplane icon wasn't on. The little wifi icon wasn't on. The phone simply wasn't being a phone in this particular yard.

Great.

“Action plan,” I said, because saying it out loud sometimes worked. “Walk to the house. Find the landline. Call the rental company. Call AAA. Call a cab to a hotel. Sleep. Deal with the inheritance in the morning.”

I grabbed my tote and my coat from the passenger seat and shoved the door open against the raw air outside, sharp enough to sting my knuckles and smelling of wet leaves.

Thorne Farm awaited.

The listing, the one I'd been mentally drafting since I'd left I-90, would call it a Queen Anne Victorian with historic character, because historic character was real-estate code for roof, optional. In reality, Thorne Farm was a wedding cake the rain had been working on for too many seasons. White paint peeled in long sunburned strips that exposed the gray timber underneath. The wrap-around porch sagged on its haunches. The second-story windows held only the gray of the sky.

The wind brought the smell first. Wet wood, old vines, something composting at the base of the porch.

To my left, the pumpkin patch sprawled across an acre at least, running alongside the driveway, curling around the side of the house, vines as thick as my wrist, gourds the size of luggage. Aunt Eleanor hadn't farmed in over a decade. Whatever was growing out there was growing on its own.

The wind picked up. The dry cornstalks in the field beyond clicked against each other in a way that was probably very normal and not at all like a thousand small bones.

“Just the wind,” I said clearly, for the yard's benefit. The yard had no opinion.

My boots, Italian leather, the heels I'd bought to celebrate a client retainer that had collapsed last week, weren't designed for gravel. A pothole hiding under maple leaves nearly turned my ankle.

“Damn it.” I hopped on one foot, swore at the driveway, and kept going.

I pulled my phone out and turned on the flashlight. October dusk had finished being dusk. The beam caught wet leaves, gravel, the lower edge of the porch, and beyond that nothing my eyes could resolve into yard.

Ten years as an interior designer had trained me to read a building before I read the deed. The porch steps groaned under my weight. Termites, ten thousand off the asking price, minimum. The deductions came automatically. The front door was massive oak, with an oval glass pane frosted into the Thorne family crest. Vines. Thorns. Subtle.

I reached into my bag for the brass key the executor had mailed me.

Before my hand touched the knob, the knob turned.

It wasn't fast. It was deliberate, the slow, considered rotation of someone on the other side who knew exactly what they were doing. The latch dropped with a small, definitive click, and the heavy door swung inward.

I didn't move.

That's page one. The ghost in the pumpkin patch, the contract, the seals, the two hundred years, the soul-deep happily ever after — it's all waiting inside Pumpkin Patch & Phantoms.