Priscila averted her eyes from that smile. Friends was not a word to which she could lay claim.
The man shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “Can you point me in the direction of the ticket counter?”
Priscila froze. Would a normal person speak the words? Or should I walk him to the farm stand? Do I want to be that visible for such a prolonged period of time?
Them’s just people, she heard the voice of Mr. Hitcher say. No sense bein’ a’scared of ‘em. Ask ‘em their name and figure out how to give ‘em what they want.
“What’s your name?” she managed.
“Mike Golding.”
He reached out to shake her hand, but Priscila pretended she hadn’t seen, and was moving quickly toward the shop. “It’s right this way,” she whispered.
When she’d made it to the barn that functioned as both ticket counter and gift shop, she exhaled an audible sigh of relief.
Mike turned and gestured toward the barn. “Thanks. I could get lost in a paper bag. Of course my buddies sent me to get the tickets, when I’m the only one that hasn’t been here before. Will you be here on Opening Night?”
“Yes. Overseeing the maze.” The words felt foreign on her tongue, but sweet too, like candy corn.
“Awesome, maybe I’ll see you Sunday night. Thanks again.” This time his smile was wide enough for Priscila to notice dimples in both cheeks. He pushed open the door, and disappeared.
“Awesome,” Priscila whispered to herself. Her scalp tingled. A strange giddiness flooded her insides.
At five, she crossed the dusty parking lot, tired, but content. The foliage seemed to transcend mere oranges and yellows in its brilliance, and the laughter of the other farm workers bothered her not. What an odd feeling, she thought. Contentment.
Priscila heaved her aching body into the front seat of her pickup truck. Upon rolling down the window to enjoy the crisp autumn air, she was surprised to hear someone call her name.
“Priscila, hey!” Stu Perkins was slouched in the front seat of his own pickup a few spots over. That season’s girlfriend sat beside him, her expression sour.
Priscila raised a hand in greeting.
“I hear you’re going to be the new Lord Commander of Castle Gourd Falls.”
Priscila stared. The words made no sense to her strung together as they’d been.
“Sorry, TV show reference.” Stu struggled to see past his girlfriend’s hunched shoulders as she stifled a cascade of laughter. “I meant that you’re going to actually be taking part in the haunted stuff this year. Nathan told us that on maze nights, you’re the boss and he’d fire anyone that didn’t listen to you.”
Priscila shrugged, but she studied Stu’s face. He seems to think me worthy of his attention for having been given this responsibility. “Nathan wants things to run smoothly,” was all she said.
“We have a lot of fun every October.” Stu started his truck. His girlfriend was examining her manicure, and missed Stu’s wink. “I think it’s cool you’re going to be more involved.”
With that, he drove off. Within seconds, the interaction began to feel like the remnants of an elaborate daydream.
Adding into account the conversations with Nathan and Mike Golding, Priscila felt even less certain of her sanity. It had been real, she told herself. All three interactions had been real.
She drove home, less convinced of her pickup’s tires spinning along the road than she was of floating to her destination on a cloud of euphoria.
—
She left her boots on the mat inside the door and moved like a cat through the pitch-dark foyer. Priscila had lived in the farmhouse since she was born, and had only become more accustomed to its creaking boards and oversized rooms since her father had left her the ten-acre property upon his death a decade earlier.
She rummaged through a kitchen cabinet until she found a pan, took a spatula from a drawer, and hummed as she slipped the chicken potpie she’d made that weekend into the oven.
When the food was hot, and after Priscila had watched the filth of the farm wash down the shower drain, she took her dinner and a bottle of beer and headed for the living room. She had to navigate around a maze-like tunnel at the center of the hall, and she pulled a cord attached to a piece of plywood, cut to match the width of the doorway, to gain access.
Priscila placed her dinner on the coffee table and sifted through a stack of magazines. She chose a recent issue of Farm & Fireside, but knocked the stack with her arm as she turned, sending half the pile falling.
The cover of one of the magazines caught her eye. With the caution of someone approaching a poisonous snake, Priscila picked up a months old issue of Family Dog, the American Kennel Club-issued periodical, with thumb and forefinger. The warming beer and cooling dinner faded from mind and she sank into her worn leather armchair to examine the vivid photo on the front.
A sturdy, stoic Rottweiler stood in a field of lush green grass, its wide mouth seeming to grin, its substantial muscles rippling beneath a black-and-mahogany coat. Priscila ran a finger along the outline of the handsome creature. Before she could blink it away, a tear fell from one cornflower blue eye and splattered against the glossy stock.
No. Not tonight. Priscila tore the cover from the magazine, crumpled it into a ball, and tossed into the fireplace. An echo came, the words her father had spoken the day her uncle had pulled up to the Teasdale farm with a flatbed full of plump, two-toned puppies: You think Priscila will do any better connecting with the other kids if her only companion becomes a hundred-and-fifty pound mass of teeth and drool and muscle?
Priscila pressed her hands to her ears. She would hear no more.
She stood and walked her untouched potpie back into the kitchen, where she deposited it into the sink. She regarded the paint-chipped lockbox on the counter. After her father died, joining the mother who had abandoned Priscila at birth, it was in this box that she’d kept the money she’d saved. It took eight months to afford male and female Rottweilers of suitable breeding.
Leaving the kitchen, she moved to a room at the front of the farmhouse. Moonlight filtered through trees slowly shedding their leaves, and cast shadows on the floor, in which Priscila could just make out the ghosts of eight puppies. Priscila had assisted in dozens of births, puppies that went first to neighbors, then to visitors of Gourd Falls Farm Hitcher had sent her way.
She would not go to the back of the house, to the spacious, many-windowed room where the corpses of flies still littered the floor and stacks of metal crates and rows of surgical tables gleamed in the dark. All remaining tours of this haunted house have been cancelled until further notice, she thought, and forced a chuckle, a smile for the dogs that had actually made it. She maneuvered through the hall, still rigged to accommodate the various litters at various stages of development, and climbed the stairs to her father’s old bedroom, hers now, though it remained unchanged.
From the window, Priscila could see rows of makeshift grave markers in the field.
Remember what happened when you aspired for more than you deserved?
But another voice, buoyed by the good day she’d had, by the feeling that she was getting a second chance, spoke back: This will be different. This time, you will make things work.
She thought of Stu Perkins—I think it’s cool that you’re going to be more involved—and the final sharp edges of her memories smoothed. She climbed into bed.
The ticking of the clock convinced her to close her eyes.
She switched off the lamp.
Tonight, she would not need it to combat the darkness of her thoughts.
—
The first night Priscila was to oversee the corn maze, the moon was full and the temperature was in the forties. On her way to find Nathan, she overheard Stu’s girlfriend complaining bitterly, outraged that the thin fabric of her deranged nurse costume wouldn’t offer even the slightest protection against the cold.
When the younger Hitcher saw Priscila approachin
g, his expression melted into one of relief. “Priscila, thank God. Follow me.”
In the storage shed, she watched him root around in a large cardboard box, muttering to himself.
“Aha,” he said, turning to hide something behind his back. “You ready?”
Priscila uncrossed her arms from over her chest.
The mask that Nathan revealed was a grotesque, exquisite model of a slightly-larger-than-average pig’s head. The pointed, pink ears had been preserved with some sort of shellac, and the eyeholes were red-rimmed, as if the flesh had only recently been pared away from muscle. Greasy black hair hung down to the snout, and its mouth had been stitched shut with thick black cord.
“What do you think?” Nathan asked.
Priscila stared.
Revulsion clashing with curiosity, she ran her fingers along one side of the sloped face. “It looks so real.” Her chest tightened at her mind’s realization that the frozen face of death could appear so similar across species, but relaxed when she imagined Stu’s reaction to the mask’s badassery.
“About that. Remember how I told you you’d have a home base somewhere along the path? I wanted you to have realistic props, in case you were keen on scaring people after all, and, well, today was slaughter day…”
Priscila pinched the mask now, getting a feel for how it yielded beneath the pressure of her fingers. “You... carved it.” She was regarding Nathan’s handiwork thoughtfully. “You made it yourself.”
“Yeah.” Nathan looked embarrassed. “Is that weird?”
“It’s really cool.” Priscila took the mask from him. She was surprised by how heavy it was in her hands.
She pried her eyes from her gift to find Nathan studying her. “What’s wrong?” she asked.
“How long has it been since you’ve had a night this full of human interaction? Have you done anything this taxing since... well, since the dogs? Are you sure you’re ready for this?”
Priscila reddened. “Please don’t ask me again. I told you I’d be fine. You’re making me feel like a freak.”
“I’m sorry.” Nathan rifled through the box again, anxious to move past his blunder. “The other stuff you can take or leave, but I thought it’d go good with the mask.” He unearthed a rubber butcher’s apron, then retrieved a bucket from the corner of the storage shed and set it down between them.
He checked the time; Priscila felt something tug in her chest as she recognized Mr. Hitcher’s pocket watch. “I should get a move on,” he said. “There are a million things to do and only a half hour ‘til we open the gate.”
He pushed the bucket across the gritty floor with the toe of his boot. “There’s a workbench on concrete blocks halfway through the trail. That’s your spot. Like I said, it was slaughter day, so why let these go to waste?”
Touched that Nathan had thought of her, Priscila peered inside the bucket, where extraneous pig parts—organs, a curly-Q tail, and four large hooves—marinated in blackish blood.
“You can use them tonight, but since our grand opening fell on a Sunday, I’ll either have to get you some rubber replacements before Friday, or…” He shrugged, the gesture unexpectedly charming. “We’ll have to slaughter another pig next week, won’t we?”
A pleasant heat rose to her cheeks at the reference to her continued involvement with the corn maze.
He jostled her good-naturedly as he exited the shed, and Priscila jerked to keep the rubber apron from slipping from her elbow. “I’m counting on you,” he called over his shoulder. “But it won’t kill you to have a little fun either.”
—
It took her longer than she’d anticipated to reach the workbench, and she wasted no time in spreading the contents of her bucket across it. She fastened a tool belt around her waist, replete with flashlight, walkie-talkie, penknife, and a small first aid kit, and donned the apron over it. She placed the mask on the ground beside the cinderblocks and listened to the rustling of the cornstalks, wondering how, exactly, she had come to be at this juncture.
She was about to radio Nathan, tell him thank you, that she never thought she’d appreciate the opportunity to shroud herself in the corpse of a pig and menace teenagers with bloody hooves, when the pounding of footsteps reached her ears. Before she could push-to-talk, a towering werewolf with blazing red eyes darted into the clearing.
It raised its snout to the moon and howled, then stalked toward her on elongated, sharp-clawed feet. Priscila opened her mouth, but did not speak. The werewolf sniffed in her direction, lifting its paws to either side of its face. When the mask had been lowered, Stu Perkins looked back at her, grinning lopsidedly. “You almost ready? I ran here from the entry point. Alex is going to let people in any minute. Where’s the rest of your costume?”
Priscila let her gaze fall to her own mask. She lifted it slowly, gauging Stu’s reaction before bringing it down over her face.
“Ho-ly shit!” She heard Stu as if from underwater. “You look… awesome! That mask is terrifying.”
Beneath her new face, Priscila smiled. So that Stu would know she’d heard, she gave him a thumbs-up.
A screech funneled through the cornstalks, devolving into peals of laughter.
“I should go,” Stu said.
Priscila nodded. From the expression on his face, she could tell that movement undertaken while wearing the mask had a mesmerizing, paralyzing effect, away from which the onlooker couldn’t turn.
“One more thing,” Stu said. His eyes went to the ground. “I didn’t invite you in the past because you weren’t really part of the Halloween crew, and it didn’t seem like you’d have wanted to come anyway, but every year, on opening night, I throw a party back at my place.”
Of course I’d have wanted to come, but how could I have told you that when I’ve never been able to articulate anything, let alone the desire to be around other people, Priscila thought wildly. But I’ll come now! Of course I’ll come now.
“Everyone wears their costumes,” Stu continued. Though he’d apparently suppressed his guilty conscience enough to lift his gaze from the ground, he’d managed to raise his eyes only to the level of Priscila’s chest. “Nathan lets the concession girls bring a bunch of food and we kick back and celebrate the start of another October.”
The laughter and shouting grew closer, and Stu raised the werewolf mask, ready to run. “Will you come?” he asked. His eyes seemed to encompass six years’ worth of remorse.
I forgive you, she thought. You’re bossy girlfriends might have convinced you to be mean to me in the past, but I forgive you because you want to make it up to me now.
“Will you?” Stu repeated.
“Yes,” she whispered.
A strand of the greasy black wig fell into her line of vision. When she’d brushed it back, Stu was gone. Priscila was alone, but she didn’t mind.
Tonight would not be a night for being alone.
—
Only once in the course of Opening Night did Priscila experience a twinge of her usual invisibility. She’d been informed over the walkie-talkie that the approaching group spouting profanities and trying to scare the female actors were the men that Alex had very nearly not let through in the first place, their levels of intoxication bordering on obscene.
Priscila steadied her breathing as she listened to the savages advance. Despite the chill and the late hour, a small swarm of flies had abandoned the fertilized fields for Priscila’s sticky banquet. They buzzed around her while the men piled into the clearing. Right away, Priscila recognized Mike Golding.
“Wh—what... the hell?” One of Mike’s friends had caught sight of her.
She saw herself standing beside the tableau of gristle and blood as they would see her: a six-foot tall pig woman with blood-tinged flesh and a dead gaze issuing forth from deep-socketed eyes, engulfed by the cloying odor of rust and adrenalized fear. The star of the freak show.
Priscila grimaced. In response, she swore she felt the mask’s snout twitch.
Mi
ke slipped a flask from his pocket. Eyes on Priscila, he unscrewed its lid.
They come here to be scared. I’m in costume, not a freak, and they come here to be scared. Maybe Mike will remember me, think I’m cool for freaking out his friends.
As she contemplated this, she sensed the men’s attention waning. They were getting ready to move on, to the next section of the maze. Intent on doing something drastic, on being seen, she rushed at them on feet more deft than her own. Her lips contorted, producing an infernal roar. One hand let fly a chunk of gallbladder as she pumped her arms; a rope of the slaughtered pig’s large intestine was flung from the other.
Mike’s eyes widened and he cried out. He tried to bolt, caught his foot in a divot in the dusty ground, and stumbled. He scuttled backward, desperate to retreat from the advancing monster. Priscila halted two feet from the men and watched as Mike pushed himself up. On one knee, he turned a face full of embarrassed hatred up to Priscila’s masked one.
“Here,” Mike’s friend said, reaching down to help Mike to his feet. Mike knocked the hand away.
Dread pooled in Priscila’s gut like bad food.
“Let’s get out of here.” The friend attempted to herd the group back toward the cornfield, but Mike remained rooted in place.
“No. This bitch took a cheap shot. We have to make her pay.” His eyes glittered in the moonlight. “Kill the pig,” he said. “Cut her throat. Spill her blood.”
Priscila flexed her fingers. Tonight was supposed to be a good night. A night I could remember for interacting with friends, for feeling included. Tonight wasn’t supposed to be a night for ugliness.
She had never had a therapist, but a dog trainer had once told her to take a single, calming breath before disciplining the puppies. She did that now, sick at how poorly her attempt at being noticed had gone over, at her misjudgment of how Mike would react to being scared.
“Seriously, Mike, the quicker we get to the end of this thing, the quicker we get back to the bar.”
Mike held the mask’s gaze, his lip curled. Finally, he allowed one side of the sneer to lift into a sinister smile. “Yeah. Okay. Let’s go.” He followed his friends through a slit in the stalks, his eyes flicking to hers for a last, cold look before he disappeared into the dark.
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