My skin crawls.
Thunk.
I lift my head.
A pumpkin sits on the stump to my left. Big. Smooth. Perfect. Like it posed itself there.
I frown. “Pretty sure I didn’t put you there.”
I tighten my grip on the sledge and step closer. The air presses in, damp and heavy. Each step sends a faint tremor through the ground.
Thunk.
I spin.
A smaller pumpkin on my right rolls a few inches, then stops.
My mouth goes dry. “Nope. No. That didn’t happen.”
The vines at the edge of the patch twitch. Just a little. Like fingers flexing.
My pulse quickens. “Okay. Chill,” I mutter. “It’s just gravity. Wind. Something.”
Except there is no wind.
The corn stands still. Dead quiet.
The vines at the edge of the patch begin to move. Not swaying. Not shifting.
Crawling.
They drag across the dirt, slow and sure.
My mouth goes dry. “What. The. Fuck.”
One pumpkin slowly turns toward me. Then everything goes still.
Maybe I imagined it. Maybe the fumes are messing with my head.
Then everything rushes me.
Vines snap around my boots, slick and strong, locking in tight like they know exactly where to grab. I stumble and swing the sledge on instinct. The impact lands with a crack on a rolling pumpkin. Seeds spray across my arms and chest. The aroma makes my eyes burn.
“No. No way,” I gasp, coughing as I swing again.
The hammer caves in two pumpkins. Thick, dark orange pulp spills across the ground like raw meat dumped from a carcass.
Pain detonates in my arm as something snaps tight around it.
It yanks. Squeezing. Squeezing.
Then—
Bone punches through skin with a squelchy pop that doesn’t sound human. My scream tears out of me and the sledge drops from my hand, useless. Hot blood slicks down my forearm and the world tilts.
I swing with my good arm, wild and desperate. My boot connects with a pumpkin and sends it flying into the corn maze. Another follows. They vanish into the stalks.
Three more roll in to replace them.
