Disclaimer: See first chapter. Additionally, I do not own Pumpkinhead either.

Warnings: This chapter contains details of a gruesome crime as witnessed by a seven-year-old boy.

Hide-and-Seek

"The power of hiding ourselves from one another is mercifully given, for men are wild beasts, and would devour one another, but for this protection." – Henry Ward Beecher

The Previous Day: Aiken's Experience

Aiken hid beneath the kitchen sink when the strange man entered his home. His mom had yelled at him to go and hide, and at first, he had been frightened and had been unable to move from his place behind his mom and brother in the front hallway. He had been frozen on the spot when the man had splintered their front door open. They had been expecting Uncle Billy and his children that morning after Daddy left. Instead, in walked the strange man and Momma had yelled at Aiken and Braden to run and hide. His older brother giving him a shove in the shoulder had been the catalyst that got him moving.

Remembering all of the times that he and his brother had played hide-and-seek, Aiken ran into the kitchen. His best hiding place had always been beneath the kitchen sink. It was just the right size for him and it was always the last place that Braden looked. He was sure that it would be a safe place for him to hide. He wondered where his older brother would hide. Braden was almost twelve now, whereas Aiken was only seven. He couldn't hide under the sink with him because he wouldn't fit, but maybe he could hide somewhere upstairs or in the basement.

His heart was pounding so hard that he could hear it in his ears like a steady drum beat, ba bump, ba bump. He hoped the beating wouldn't give his hiding spot away, that's how loud it was in his ears. He tried to calm his labored breathing so that it couldn't be heard. He and his brother had practiced this one breathing technique when they were playing soldiers with their cousins or the neighbor boys and were hiding from the enemy. He held his breath in for a slow count to five and let it out as quietly as possible while silently counting to three. He had to repeat the breathing pattern about ten times before his breathing began to come under control and his heartbeat slowed down enough for him to hear what was going on outside of his hiding spot. He opened the door to his hiding spot just enough to let a sliver of light in and for him to see out with one eye.

At first he couldn't see or hear anything. He hoped that his brother had found a good hiding spot and that his mom had been able to get away from the scary man. He took another deep breath and leaned back against the pipe to the sink, closing his eyes he let the door shut silently. He listened,

straining his ears to hear anything beyond his own breathing and heartbeat. Still hearing nothing, he relaxed a little, letting some of the tension out of his body. Everything is going to be alright, he told himself, Braden and mom will come and get me soon and Uncle Billy, Cousin Matt, and Cousin Tony will be here and we'll play soldiers. The man with the strange walk will be gone and it will be like nothing even happened.

He couldn't understand why his mom had sounded so frightened when the man pushed the door open. He only knew that he had never heard his mom sound so scared before, except for maybe the time when Braden had fallen out of the tree in the front yard and broken his arm last year. She had been so frightened that she had turned whiter than a ghost and was shaking so much that she couldn't even dial '9-1-1'. Aiken had had to dial the number and watched in fear as his mom held his unconscious brother on her lap while she sat in a kitchen chair, playing idly with his messy black hair. His brother had been alright, but he remembered worrying that Braden was dead because of how his mom had reacted. He never wanted to see her that frightened again, but here they were, not even a full year afterwards and his mom had seemed even more terrified than at that time. Everything just has to be okay, he thought from his position under the sink.

He was suddenly drawn abruptly back to the present when he heard his mom scream and a sickening crash coming from the direction of the living room, just off the entry hall from the front door. How long had it been since he had hidden? Maybe a couple of minutes, but it felt like longer than that. How long had the man been in the house with his mother and brother? When were they going to come and tell him it was alright to come out? Maybe he should leave his hiding spot and dial 9-1-1. He opened the door tentatively, peeking out, preparing to open it fully and slide out to get the phone from the kitchen counter across the room from where he hid. But he stopped his movements suddenly when he heard scattered footsteps headed toward the kitchen. He paused, the door open only an inch. He could see the fridge and the entrance to the right of it. He held his breath as he watched his brother and mother enter the kitchen followed by the man.

"Anyone else here?" The man snarled, grabbing his mom's arm roughly, causing her to gasp in pain.

"Nno," she stuttered, "please let me and my son go. Whatever you need, take it, but please just leave. We won't call the police, I promise," she begged. Aiken could see there were tears running down her cheeks and that she had a bruise on one as he stretched his neck up and to the side, looking out the slight gap that he had made in his failed attempt at going for the phone. He didn't like seeing his mom cry.

"Leave my mom alone!" His brother came in from behind the man and pounded uselessly at the man's arm. The man grabbed Braden by the front of his white t-shirt and threw him against the fridge. His head hit the fridge making a hollow-sounding crack. Aiken saw his brother hit the fridge, and nearly cried out, but bit his tongue hard enough that it drew blood. He watched his brother's body slump boneless to the linoleum floor. From his vantage point, he could see blood pooling beneath his brother's head, and inch its way toward where he hid beneath the sink. For what seemed like forever,all Aiken could see was his brother lying on the floor like a broken toy, blood steadily crawling its way toward him. He feared that the blood was going to call out, Ready or not here I come! And that he would be revealed, but instead of his brother's smiling face, it would be the distorted face of a grisly monster looming above him. Though he hadn't seen the man's face, he imagined that it was like that of Pumpkinhead in the movies he had caught a glimpse of his brother watching one night.

Terrified, he retreated further into the cool blackness of the cabinet, hoping to escape from the thin blood trail. His brother hadn't moved since he had been thrown into the fridge and Aiken's vision wavered so that he was unsure whether he could see Braden's chest moving or not.

His attention was diverted from the crimson river that crept across the sunny yellow linoleum, when he heard his mom whimpering. Her muffled cries drew his attention, and he leaned forward again, allowing his eyes to move to the right of the fridge. The man was telling his mom to shut up and he hit her. Aiken wanted to race out from his place of safety to help his mom, but couldn't make his legs move. So, he sat and watched as the man slapped his mom until she stopped crying about Braden.

When the man bent down toward his mom's face, Aiken could finally see what the monster looked like. He did not look like Pumpkinhead or like any monster that Aiken could imagine. The man looked almost normal, except for the sneer on his face. The man had dark brown hair that was long enough to touch the collar of his torn dirty jean jacket and Aiken thought he could see muddish brown eyes like his best friend Todd had. The man's face had one long scar that reached from the corner of his left eye to the lobe of his ear. It looked ugly and red as the man puffed angrily in his mom's face.

"Why are you doing this?" His mom asked warily.

"Shut up, bitch!" The man's voice sounded like a hammer to Aiken's ears. He turned red with anger from where he hid and clenched his fists, keeping the door slightly ajar with the toe of his tennis shoe. He could see that a spindly red line of his brother's blood had almost reached the kitchen sink. He worried briefly that it would draw the man's attention and that he would be found.

The man grabbed his mom and pushed her toward the kitchen counter, near where Aiken hid. He couldn't see what was happening anymore, just the man's jean clad legs and his mom's own bare legs where her white sundress didn't reach. It seemed to Aiken like the legs were a tangled mess as his mom continued to struggle against the man's hold on her. He could hear his mom choking and gasping and could see her standing up on her tiptoes, they were so close to him now that all it would take for them to discover him, would be for the man to squat down and pry open the door the rest of the way. He worried briefly that the man's leg would catch on the edge of the door where he had it ajar and open it the rest of the way.

His mom managed to get her hands up in front of her and pushed the man away from her. She moved away from the sink and Aiken could no longer see her legs, but he heard the knife drawer open and the swish of a metal blade leaving its sheath. He tried to think of which knife she would have chosen, he knew that he would have gotten the large wooden handled knife he had seen his dad carve the Christmas turkey with and so imagined her holding this knife. He closed his eyes briefly wishing his mother luck. His brother's blood was now smudged with the battle that had gone on between his mother and her attacker.

There was a moment of near silence when all Aiken could hear was labored breathing, but it was soon cut off by a panicked cry and a solid thump. Aiken opened his eyes again and what he saw burned an image in his mind forever. His mother lay on the kitchen floor directly in front of his hideaway. Her head was titled toward him, her mouth slightly open, a wooden handled knife sticking from her chest, blood bubbled from the wound as she continued to struggle to breathe. Her blue eyes looked glassy and tired, Aiken's eyes locked onto his mother's through the sliver of his opening. He caught a brief look of recognition before his mom looked away, not wanting to give her baby boy's position away. He watched the jean clad legs walk toward him straddling his mother's prone form, his breath caught in his throat, and tears ran silently down his face. But the man did not reach down and open the door; instead he turned on the water and started washing his hands. He cleaned his hands, reached down to clean the handle of the knife, and then took his shoes off, being careful not to step in the blood from his mother that had started mixing with Braden's. The man carefully walked across the kitchen and Aiken could hear him walk sock-footed through the hallway and back out the door he had entered barely an hour ago.

Aiken found that he could not stop the tears from flowing down his face and he could not push himself to move from his cramped position below the sink. He stayed huddled and soon closed his eyes, the tears stopping and drying in streaks on his face. He continued listening to his mother's ragged breathing until he could hear it no more, then his own breathing took precedence.

His ears did not register the knock on the door, nor his uncle's frantic call from the hallway. He didn't even move when his hiding spot had finally been discovered and a police officer entreated him to come out telling him that it was safe. He felt numb and stared blankly at the officer, seeing not his kind face, but that of the monster who had hurt his mother and brother. Panicking, he stiffly moved from the dark hiding place when the man's attention had been diverted and ran from the house, leaving bloody footprints in his wake, not looking back and not taking note of where he was going.