Pumpkin Eater. Jeffrey Round

as? he asked like some overeager junior detective. Urine and feces, he was told. Sometimes blood and vomit.) Thank god he hadn’t had to take a leak, or worse. Also in his favour, he’d confined his trespassing to the concrete walk and wire grill, avoiding obliterating other tracks that might have formed in the ash-covered areas of the room. All by luck, of course; it wasn’t as though he’d been expecting to find a corpse. If his steps had knocked anything into the troughs under the grills, they’d find it. He breathed a sigh of relief when they said that. At least his blundering wouldn’t allow the killer to go free on the grounds that he’d compromised the evidence.

      “Can you describe the person you saw, Mr. Sharp?”

      “Not really. It was very dark and it happened very fast.”

      “But you’re sure it was a man?”

      “I’m not sure of anything. I made the usual assumption that if someone attacked me then it had to be a man. Not true, of course.”

      “So you were attacked then?”

      Dan thought about it. “I can’t even say that for sure …”

      One of the officers sighed, foreseeing the defence in court a few months hence: So you agree, sir, that you didn’t actually see or hear anything?

      “… though I’m inclined to believe I was. As I told you earlier, something whizzed past my head and I think whoever was in here took a swing at me with a bat or pipe.”

      Lights were splayed over the ground, offering several choice possibilities for weapons — a blackened pipe, some rebar with concrete chunks twisted onto the end, and a lengthy piece of wood that had somehow escaped the conflagration.

      The officer turned to him. “But you weren’t hurt?”

      Dan shrugged. “Not really. I skinned my hands when I fell, but I wasn’t struck because I fell down first.”

      “What made you fall?”

      “I seem to remember something shifting underfoot and then suddenly I was on the floor.”

      “Where were you when you fell?”

      “Right here,” Dan said, without hesitation. “More or less beneath the body.”

      The fleshy officer shone his light on the floor. A piece of blackened grid jutted up, just the right size and angle to trip a man wandering about in the dark like a fool.

      “I thought you said you had a flashlight.”

      Dan felt his face colour. “Yeah. I wasn’t using it. I didn’t want to alert anybody inside. I wanted to catch my misper by surprise, if he was here.”

      “Do you have permission to be in here, sir?”

      “Afraid not.”

      “You were taking one hell of a risk wandering around in the dark.” The admonishing note at last.

      The officer shook his head in a fatherly fashion. He escorted Dan from the murder scene back to the entrance, where the flashing cruisers lit up the night like a blue and red bonfire.

      “Sergeant Bryson will take your statement, sir.”

      The first officer left as another came up to them. This one was tall and jowly, his face grim and cadaverous from too many midnight shifts. Bryson looked gravely at his watch like an executioner about to start his work, jotting the time in a notebook. His questions were routine. He glanced up at Dan now and again, but otherwise noted his words in silence.

      “Is there any chance of learning if this is the man I’ve been searching for?” Dan asked when he’d finished giving his report.

      “Not at the moment,” the officer said.

      A voice called from inside the ruined building. Bryson turned to Dan. “Wait here, please, sir.”

      Dan slumped against the wall, easing down onto his heels. The evening had actually begun quite agreeably. He’d spent it with his teenage son, Ked, and his partner, Trevor. After a late dinner, they retreated to the rec room in the basement, hoping to beat an ongoing heat wave the city had endured for the past week.

      Watching movies was a mutually agreed upon way of passing the time with little or no physical exertion. That night it was Ked’s turn for choosing a title. He was spoiled for choice, but invariably picked something from the horror genre. Dan teased him for his selection, predicting the film would prove a snore of the first rank rather than the thrill its reputation presaged. Ked’s eyes flashed a challenge at him.

      Ked: “Dad, Exorcist was voted, like, the scariest movie of all time. Do you really think kajillions of people can be wrong?”

      Dan: “Yes. Just look at Elvis. Or Madonna.”

      Ked: “Okay, never mind. Just watch it, all right?”

      To Dan’s surprise, the opening scene at an archaeological dig in Iraq piqued his interest. He found himself engrossed. In his experience, horror films seldom boasted cultural anecdotes let alone gifted actors in leading roles; this one promised both. Before long,

       the room was silent except for the film’s dialogue and the eerie soundtrack that would accompany him to the slaughterhouse later that evening.

      At the first sign of a break, a lump on the floor that appeared to be a lifeless bit of fur lifted its head and sniffed the air for signs of a walk or even just a few well-aimed kernels of popcorn. A thumping tail rewarded everything tossed in its direction.

      “See? Even Ralph likes Exorcist,” Ked proclaimed.

      After a pee break and popcorn refill, the movie resumed. In the intermittent scenes between thrills and chills the threesome amused themselves by formulating a list of rules for surviving a horror film. By common consent, Rule Number One was, “Don’t go into a room with the lights off.” This sensible injunction — which Dan would recall with irony just a few hours later — was followed closely by Rule Number Two, “When you arrive at a deserted town, don’t stick around to find out why it’s deserted.” Rule Number Three was, “Never go down to the basement alone.”

      As Ked passed the popcorn to Trevor, a sudden onscreen apparition made him jump, sending miniature white bombs flying through the air.

      “Arggh!” he cried. “Ralph, treats!”

      The dog leapt up instantly.

      Dan glanced over at Trevor. “I’m particularly fond of Rule Number Four: If someone says your child is possessed by the devil and things start flying through the air, call in a priest immediately.”

      Ked’s eyes widened into an approximation of dem-

       onic possession. “Aaarggghhh!” he cried, his expression more ludicrous than scary.

      Ellen Burstyn had just had her second fit of over-acting as the possessed girl’s mother when Ked snorted in derision. The suggestion by a credulous doctor that Linda Blair’s feats of levitation might be attributable to puberty and a brain lesion brought further scorn from Ked.

      “Is that supposed to be scary?” he asked when a lugubrious face appeared onscreen and faded out again.

      The game continued. Trevor held up a finger. “I know! Rule Number Five: Never run from monsters in high heels.”

      Dan looked over. “I’ve never seen a monster in high heels before.”

      “Your father’s a funny guy,” Trevor said, offering the popcorn bowl to Ked. “Lucky you’re not warped too.”

      “I know!” Ked replied.

      They watched the screen in silence for a while.

      “Have you ever noticed how all these horror movies happen in quiet places like Amityville or Georgetown?” Dan asked.

      “Which proves indisputably that the source of all evil is suburban USA,” Trevor added.

      “Hey,