Long. Blond. Tangled.
“. . . Sandie?”
My pulse kicks into overdrive as I take a step closer. The air turns sour, like something left too long in a drain. Flies buzz around the post, thick and lazy.
I swallow and force myself forward.
When I step around the post and look up, my stomach twists inside out.
It isn’t straw holding her head in place.
It’s roots.
Thick black vines crawl from her eyes and spill out of her open mouth, threading through her scalp, stitching her to the wood. They pulse faintly, slick and alive. Her face has gone gray, lips split and cracked. Mascara streaks down her cheeks in thick black lines.
I stagger back, bile burning my throat.
“Jesus Christ!” The words rip out of me and vanish into the open field.
Then I turn and things aremuchworse.
Three shapes stand just inside the corn maze, half swallowed by the stalks. Their carved faces stare straight at me. Jagged smiles split too wide, pulp and seeds drooping from their mouths in stringy curtains, like jack-o’-lanterns forgotten too close to a flame.
One steps forward.
The axe drags behind it, blade scraping the dirt in a leaden, patient rhythm.
Shhk. Shhk.
The sound crawls up my spine and settles behind my eyes. The other two slide into place at its sides, perfectly synchronized.
My brain tries to lie to me.
Halloween prank. Stress. Hay fever hallucination.
Then the truth punches through.
Those aren’t just pumpkins.
They’re sitting on bodies.
Drew. Fred. Sandie.
Bent wrong. Twisted wrong. Vines dig into their shoulders, their ribs, their legs, pulling them along like puppets. Their boots leave crooked tracks in the dirt. Their arms jerk when the vines twitch.
Drew’s fire-red letterman jacket flares against the field, bright and wrong, a splash of school spirit in a place that stinks like mold and blood. Guilt punches through me.
This can’t be happening. This doesn’t happen in real life.
Drew lifts the axe.
This isn’t a scare.
This is a harvest.
At the glint of the raised blade, my brain finally stops arguing.
This isverymuch real.
