Kiera
Rain lashed the window, making it almost impossible to see out into the dark night. My wipers worked overtime, while the inbuilt GPS barked instructions on how to get to the location Jackson had sent me.
There was no way I was going to make it in time. The countdown in the corner of the GPS ticked down to my ETA, a constant reminderthatI would be five minutes late, and no matter how fast I tried to drive in the horrific weather, Ijustcouldn’t make the time up.
I never should have disagreed with Jackson. I should have gotten straight in the car and hit the road, acceptingthatI was at his mercy. Now, I was racing against time in a bid to stop him from destroying me once and for all.
Instead of hoping Megan would call and ask me to pick Billie up, I was prayingthatshe didn’t,thatmy daughter wasn’t asking for her mom to collect her so we could go home and eat cookie dough.
A tremor had taken residence in my entire body, pulsing through me with every beat of my pounding heart. My brain spiralled with thoughts of what would happen if Jackson leaked the video. For the umpteenth time, I muttered a curse at my own stupidity for going tothatdamn party.
Headlights flashed in the rear mirror, and my attention snapped to them, my brows creasing at how quickly the vehicle was speeding toward me. A knot pulled in my stomach, fear instantly building at the thoughtthatthe maniac behindthe wheel was going to slam straight into me. Whoever was in the vehicle was drivingwaytoo fast,evenif it hadn’t been hammering down.
I pushed the gas harder, my car lurching to a speed I wasn’t comfortable with, given the conditions. And still, the truck behind gained on me. My heart accelerated to an impossible rate when the vehicle caught up to me, flashing its headlights and beeping their horn.
With the truck on my tail, I squinted past the bright headlights, barely making out a battered truck. In the driver’s seat was a hulking silhouette of a person—a man I presumed, given their size, but not a familiar figure. From the glimpse I caught, it looked as though the driver had something covering their face, which did nothing to ease my anxiety.
“What the hell do you want?”I screeched as the driver kept flashing their headlights, my frantic gaze darting between the truck behind and the dark road ahead.
Hoping theyjustwanted to pass, I eased off the gas, slowing my car down. But they didn’t pass, slowing down too, and creating a gap between us. I pressed the gas again, only this time, my car didn’t surge forward like I wanted it to.
A deafening beep rang out from my dashboard computer, startling me. I dropped my gaze to find all the warning lights flashing, and to my utter horror, no matter how hard I pressed my foot to the pedal, the car began to slow.
Forgetting the truck behind for a moment, I scanned the computer, hoping to find a sign of what was wrong. But when the screen turned black, along with all the interiorandexterior lights switching off, and the wipers coming to an abrupt halt mid-way across my window, I had no choice but to stop.
Managing to drift my car into a nearby rest stop, dread seeped into the marrow of my bones as, through the darkness and the rain, I realized I’d come to a stop by a cornfield; one of my many worst nightmares.
When I was eight, my parents dropped me off at a school friend’s house for a play date. It had been a warm, sunny afternoon, and she thought it would be fun to play hide and seek in the cornfield next to her house. I wasn’t sure, especially when we reached the field, and the rows of corn toweredominously over us.
She didn’t listen to my protests and ran off into the field, yelling at me to count to sixty before I went to find her. Not wanting to spoil her fun, I did as she instructed, counting for more than a minute before heading off into the maze of corn.
I couldn’t find her. Worse, I couldn’t find the way out. The maze went on for whatseemedlike forever, and as night began to fall, I stumbled across a man in the field. A man, taller than any human could have possibly been, with rough, pockmarked skin across his face, black eyes, and an evil grin.
I screamed and screamed until my throat hurt, but no one came until long after nightfall when her dad stumbled across me, curled up into a ball between two rows, and sobbing for my mom.
When I calmed down to tell him about the scary man in the field, he and my friend laughed at me, telling methatI’d stumbled across their scarecrow.
Ever sincethen, I’d had a fear of cornfields and scarecrows, avoidingevenlooking at them whenever I drove past one. And now, I was stopped right next to one, alone in the dark as the rain pounding on the roof echoed eerily around the car.
Turning the engine off, I jabbed theonbutton again, hoping the electronicsjustneeded to reset, only for the engine to sputter before dying completely.
“Shit,”I hissed, my moment of panic turning to terror at glancing in the rear mirror to find that the vehicle tailing me had also come to a stop several feet behind.
With shaky hands and adrenaline pumping through my veins, I grabbed my purse and rummaged through it for my phone, only to spit another curse at finding I had no signal. Grabbing the phone Jackson had given me, my heart sankevenfurther when I discoveredthatit too had no signal.
The slamming of a car door snapped my attention from frantically jabbing at the phone’s buttons. My gaze whipped to the mirror, and an invisible hand wrapped around my throat, preventing me from breathing.
The figure had gotten out of the truck and was prowling toward me, a shiny object clutched in their hand, glinting off the headlights of their truck.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,”I squealed, twisting to slam the lock down on the door.
But it didn’t stay down, the resounding click telling methatallthe doors hadjustunlocked. I slammed my hand down on it again, but the second I released it, it popped back up. Looking into the rear mirror, nerves fired through me at finding the figure had disappeared, but when I checked the side mirror, I couldn’t stop an alarmed gasp flying free.
As if knowing what one of my biggest fears was, the figure—definitely a man—was nearing my door with his hood pulled up, and aterrifyingscarecrow mask covering his face. In his hand, still glinting under the shine of his headlights, he clutched a knife.
Oh, shit.
There were always news articles from around the country, reporting random murders or disappearances. Wasthatmy fate? Did the man behind the mask want to murder me? What if he raped me first?
