The mechanics at the Thicket are good this year. When the guy in the bathtub—Spencer calls him “Norman”—writhes around every thirty seconds, the motion is just the right mix of jerky and smooth.
On opening day, he’d heard more than one kid shriek that the effects were “freaking amazing.”
Spencer shifts on his heels to crouch a little lower, trying to ease the strain on his stinging calves. At 6'4', his frame barely fits inside the broken cabinet where he is now stooped, waiting to leap out at the kids as they shuffle through the cabin in sparse, tight clusters.
It’s coming up on 7:30 pm. Still mostly light out. This means he’s only seen a couple dozen kids on the trails. Like last year, the surge on opening day has dwindled to a trickle after only a week or so. The lull will last until the beginning of October, especially during the slow hours between opening and sunset.
Spencer understands. While the temperature is still hovering near seventy and dim light is still filtering through the chinks in the rough log walls, he’s just a too-tall kid in a costume. And Norman is just a machine, rolling around in fake blood.
When the sun goes down, it’s different.
The robot lurches again on cue, its pulpy face pitching to the right, mouth open wide, back arching out of the pool of blood and guts. Norman has gone off at least a hundred times now, for an audience of one.
Spencer tries shifting his weight to one leg, letting the other leg slide over the splintering edge of the cupboard so it’s at least partially extended.
As the sound of high-pitched laughter and muffled, thudding footsteps drift into earshot, Spencer quickly draws his left foot back into the cupboard. He rocks forward onto the balls of his feet, careful not to jostle the cabinet door.
It sounds like a bigger group. Maybe tonight will pick up after all.
As the swinging door creaks open, the laughter goes quiet. By design, the kids’ eyes are drawn first to the bathtub. Even in the partial light filtering through the doorway of the cabin, Spencer knows he is nearly invisible crouched inside the frame of the decrepit cabinet.
“Oh my god,” the first kid shrieks as Norman abruptly thrashes to life in the bloody bathtub water, right on cue. “Whoa.” The last part tumbles out with a delighted laugh. It’s just a prop.
Even though Spencer has witnessed this reaction dozens of times over the past week, he smiles. Norman is pretty cool. And pretty realistic. And unlike most of the kids who walk through the swinging door to the ramshackle cabin, Spencer has seen Norman up close. Even his eyes—down to the bloodshot whites and the glassy red corneas—look real.
Three girls, cell phones held in front of them like shields, follow the boy into the room. Unsurprisingly, they’re a few years younger than the usual crowd. Spencer has even seen a few elementary-age kids this year—while it’s light out, anyway. He made the mistake of jumping out at one the week before, which got him a lecture from management.
In tandem, the kids scan the room for more surprises. Then, thinking they are alone with the gruesome robot, they huddle together in front of the bathtub for a selfie as the phone camera flashes go off, one by one.
The nearest girl’s ankle is just a few inches from Spencer’s right hand. Stylishly threadbare jeans and twee plaid flats with the soles half-covered in mud.
Spencer keeps his hand tucked against his chest, thinking of his supervisor, a loud, short woman with wide-set eyes and an androgynous haircut. You can’t touch the guests, and they can’t touch you, she’d repeated, wagging her finger back and forth between herself and the staffers at least twenty times during orientation.
Shifting back onto his heels, Spencer drums up a rattling moan in the back of his throat. Quiet at first. Then louder, harsher. The girls stop taking selfies and call out to the boy, who is almost out the back of the cabin. “Do you hear—”
Just as Norman springs back to life again in the bathtub, Spencer bangs one hand hard against the plywood cabinet, sending the crooked door flying against the wall behind him with a hollow smack. Then, careful not to bang his head on the top of the cupboard—it happened once last week—he leaps upright.
The girl in the plaid flats jumps as if she has just been electrocuted, scrambling backward against her friends. All four kids scream at exactly the same pitch. The boy, who has doubled back through the open exit door, trips over the taped-down wiring that leads from the cabin to a generator tucked behind it. He gasps loudly as he scrambles to his feet again, eyes wide.
“Holy crap, that mask is creepy,” the kid exclaims, unhurt and clearly impressed. He takes a step closer, trying to get a glimpse of Spencer’s eyes inside the dark sockets. They all do this.
Spencer takes another slow, sinister step forward. He reminds himself to check the generator connection on Norman once the kids crash out of the shed and disappear down the trail.
When he’s about a foot away, he stomps his foot and lurches forward. The girls scatter past him, squealing in delight this time.
Spencer counts the seconds as he folds himself back into the cupboard. Norman goes off once, twice, three times. The connection is fine.
Exhaling, Spencer repositions himself against the scratchy plywood, checking the time on his cell phone before crouching down on his heels. It’s 7:34. Still half an hour until sunset.
He lifts up the edge of his mask to prod at the tiny red bumps on his chin again. He wonders absently if he might be allergic to latex.
Thinking better of touching the inflamed skin, he curls his fingers back into a fist, running a hand lightly over the contours of the mask he’s wearing instead. A sleek, sharp beak juts out in the front. The beak curves downward over his nose and mouth, nearly reaching his chin. The only other embellishment on the mask is a thick line of metal rivets surrounding the gaping black eye sockets.
Originally, he thought the stark black mask was supposed to be some kind of bird. A crow, maybe. But when his girlfriend Dana saw it, she told him it was an old-fashioned medical mask, meant to hold flowers and other good-smelling stuff for medieval doctors who traveled from town to town, treating victims of the plague. To hide the smell of death.
When several minutes pass without any sign of another group of kids approaching, Spencer gives up crouching and sits down, letting both feet hang outside the cabinet door. He’s going to get a Charley horse if he sits like this much longer.
Most of the time he can hear the kids coming a mile away, exclaiming about how they’re going to pull the next guy’s mask off, or how many bags of cotton candy they can eat by the time they have to leave, or who just made out with who in the corn maze.
He’ll have plenty of time to get back into position.
Except he doesn’t.
Spencer doesn’t realize he’s closed his eyes until he feels, rather than sees, that someone has not only entered the room but is standing in front of the cabinet.
It takes a few seconds for his eyes to focus on the shape in front of him through the cabinet’s partially open crooked door.
It’s a man. He’s wearing a mask too, one of the generic blood-and-guts latex faces. Bloody lips peel back over bloody teeth. The mask has bulging yellow eyes and a thick, bulbous nose.
The man is tall. Almost as tall as Spencer. He’s dressed in loose-fitting army fatigues and a heavy black coat that seems out of place with the faint sunlight still streaming through the door at the other end of the cabin.
He’s standing close enough that Spencer isn’t sure how to gracefully get to his feet in the cabinet again, let alone jump out.
The man has seen him, anyway.
Pushing the cabinet door open until it just grazes the man’s pant leg, Spencer shifts one foot beneath him.
The guy doesn’t move.
“I like your mask.” The man’s voice is soft, almost feminine. It’s disconcertingly at odds with his hulking frame and the mask’s grinning, bloodstained lips.
Spencer glances toward the entrance of the cabin as he shifts his other fo
ot beneath him, hoping nobody else is watching this strange exchange.
Nobody is.
The man shuffles back just slightly as Spencer moves to stand. And when he speaks again, Spencer can see his real lips moving inside the puckered, stitched mouth hole of the mask. “I said, I like your mask.”
And yours is boring, Spencer thinks, annoyed now. Drawing himself upright and trying to muster some kind of authority, he points toward the exit. The opportunity for a scare has passed. He’ll punt on this one.
The kids that tramp through the woods and the cabins are, without fail, annoying. But the adults are usually worse.
The man doesn’t budge. If anything, he’s leaning forward, closer to Spencer. “Will you let me try your mask on?”
Spencer opens his mouth, ready to break character. He didn’t sign up for this. And another group of kids will walk through the door any second now.
In the bathtub, Norman bolts upright as the dark water laps back and forth against his grimy toes.
“Hey, man, if you’ll just exit that—”
Spencer closes his mouth as the guy pulls something out of the inner pocket of his thick black jacket.
It’s a long knife.
Spencer looks for the telltale glint of plastic. They can’t touch you. Then he takes a step sideways, still unwilling to give ground. “I’m sorry, I’m going to have to ask you to—”
Behind the latex mouth, the man’s real lips stretch into a smile. “I’m going to try it on now.”
CHAPTER 4
Norah pops a cinnamon-sugar donut into her mouth whole, deciding she will eat two more and save the rest for Brandon. Her phone pings, and she feels a little spark of excitement when she sees the reply from Aaron—the junior from Raft River who knew where to find pot. The excitement is followed by a pang of guilt.
Sry. Ur brother sounds like a D.
Bored and still annoyed, Norah had sent Aaron a text complaining about Brandon and his lack of social skills. It’s not like her. She’s always been the first to defend her brother, despite how obnoxious he can be. Brandon doesn’t have an official diagnosis, but she’s quietly convinced he might be on the spectrum.
Norah wipes her hands on her jeans, tucks her phone back into her sweatshirt, and scans the dusky plaza. A symphony of screams that rise and fall across the plaza and from inside the trail maze has become part of the background noise. The screams rise and fall, becoming the undercurrent for the chaotic music the DJ is playing on a loop from the center of the plaza. Every few minutes, a chainsaw starts to buzz, eliciting more screams, then laughter.
Norah wonders idly if the security guard in the tan uniform and hat she saw earlier has been trained to tell whether someone actually needs help or not. From where Norah sits, all the screaming sounds the same.
Shaking the thought aside, she texts Aaron back and eats another donut. There’s plenty left. And as soon as Brandon appears from the exit, he’ll eat the rest without so much as a thank-you.
CHAPTER 5
While Brandon walks, he pulls his phone out of his pocket to see if Jace or Cole has replied. There’s nothing. Somewhere behind him, he hears a distant series of rapid-fire screams, followed by the blare of a car horn.
The trail has turned narrow, winding through a thick grove of elms then across an empty creek bed. The remains of an old stone fence run parallel to the rocky ground, blocking the rest of the trails from view. Finally, the path opens up to yet another small structure, this one a smaller cabin with a basic log facade.
As Brandon approaches the entrance, he can see dark liquid seeping from beneath the half-open doorway, dripping onto the dirt trail and staining it a sickly black. From just inside he hears muffled, frantic splashing and loud gurgling noises.
It’s not real, he reminds himself, feeling the knot in his stomach yield just a little. He decides that whatever is inside, he’ll take one last photo to send to Andrew. Screw those guys anyway.
He’s glad he stayed tonight after all. SocialBuzz was right. Aside from that porky Freddy Krueger, the Thicket is legit this year.
From fifty yards behind him, in the farmhouse, Brandon hears more squeals of terror. “Speaking of oinkers,” he murmurs, liking the sound of it. “Bunch of oinkers,” he whispers again, making a mental note to use the phrase at school. Maybe about Mrs. Leavitt.
As Brandon walks through the threshold of the doorway, stepping over the dark swaths of liquid in the dirt, a sudden movement draws his eye to the left.
There’s a large, dingy clawfoot tub in the corner.
A man, whose face has been almost completely hacked away, is writhing on the floor of the tub, sloshing the water back and forth. Each movement sends tiny brown waves back and forth over his feet. His intestines, limp gray curls, are floating just above his stomach in the brackish water.
Blood gurgles from his nose and mouth.
“Ungh,” the bloody figure gurgles, flopping against the edge of the tub toward Brandon, making some of the water splash out of the tub.
A few drops of liquid land on the sleeve of Brandon’s sweatshirt.
Despite himself, he takes one step backward at the sound the man is making. The air has a foul, metallic tang to it, and he wonders if it’s coming from the liquid that’s pooling at the bottom of the tub.
The rest of the room is quiet and nondescript. The only sound is the bubbling liquid on the man’s lips and the wet flopping noises.
Brandon stares at the man in the bathtub for a few seconds, wondering whether there will be more to the performance. But after a few seconds, the feeble thrashing stops and his head lolls to the side.
Brandon pulls his phone out of his pocket and snaps a photo of the man’s face, this one for Andrew. Then he takes another step into the cabin. On the floor a few feet away from the tub is a dusty, broken-looking cabinet with its door hanging by one hinge.
In the dim light, Brandon can see that another figure, a second man, is concealed partway inside the cabinet.
Brandon waits for the man to jump out. When nothing happens, he steps a little closer.
Something about the position of the man’s legs is wrong.
Brandon steps even closer and tentatively tugs at the cabinet door to open it all the way.
The slumped figure is covered in blood, his head tilted back and to the side so that his chin juts out in front of him, defiant and a little cocky. What’s visible of his blood-spattered, grimacing face is obscured by tufts of long brown hair, blocking his eyes.
Brandon’s gaze follows the bloody form down to its feet, where a long, copper wire peeks out of one shoe. He cautiously reaches out to touch the man’s visible chin.
Plastic.
It’s a robot. And it appears to be broken.
Brandon shakes his head as the guy in the bathtub thrashes around a little more.
A quiet scuffling noise suddenly draws Brandon’s attention to the furthest corner of the shack. Caught off guard, he braces and peers forward. Most of the cabins along the trail have had just one real scarer and one or more robots. This tiny cabin has two.
The second scarer dressed in black takes a step toward him. He’s wearing a simple mask with deep-set eyeholes and a sharp, bulging beak. A creepy bird, maybe. Metal rivets flash in the dim light as the figure takes a step forward.
Of everything Brandon has seen tonight, this room shouldn’t be that scary. But he feels his stomach coil tight.
“Do you like my mask?”
Brandon furrows his brows. This is the first time one of the staff members has spoken to him. And he is suddenly annoyed. It ruins the effect a little.
“That guy’s mask is better,” Brandon retorts, pointing to the man in the bathtub, whose thrashing has become more erratic.
Brandon turns to look at the bathtub behind him,. He suddenly notices that there are thin copper wires sticking out of the pool of dark blood in the bathtub, too. However, the wires don’t seem to be connected to anything.
Puzzled,
he turns to look back at the robot in the cabinet. When he glances up, he sees that the scarer in the beaked mask has crossed half the distance between them.
As Brandon watches, the scarer uses one gloved hand to pull a long knife from within his coat.
The weapon isn’t that impressive compared to the ax in the slaughterhouse, but there is something different about the way the figure in the beaked mask holds it.
“Do you wish you had a mask like his?” The masked scarer points at the scarer thrashing in the bathtub.
His voice is quiet, gentle even.
Run, insists a voice in the back of Brandon’s head. But he tells the voice to shut up and takes a step forward toward the man holding the knife.
“It’s not that great,” Brandon says, walking toward the exit a few feet away.
That’s when he feels the tip of the knife run lightly over the back of his jacket. Just a gentle, dragging pressure over the denim.
They can’t touch you.
Anger flares through him along with a new kind of fear that doesn’t ask but rather tells this time.
Run.
So he does.
But not quickly enough to avoid the knife as it cuts through the back of his hoodie with a slick ripping sound and searing, white-hot pain.
At first, he can’t scream.
Can’t move.
And when the first scream does tear through his throat, he knows it’s loud enough that everyone will hear it.
But no one will come.
CHAPTER 6
Norah reaches for the cardboard tray to pick up one of the last remaining mini donuts, then puts her hand back in her lap. She can already feel her stomach starting to complain at what she’s eaten in the past forty minutes while waiting for Brandon to emerge from the trails.
She pulls out her phone and stares hard at the text she sent him twenty minutes ago, hoping to see the three little dots appear at the bottom. But there is nothing.
Norah squints through the smoky darkness at the group of kids walking toward her. She’s pretty sure she recognizes the girl with the bomber jacket and lip gloss. Everyone in the group is holding funnel cakes and caramel apples. That means they’ve been out of the trail maze long enough to wait in line at the Snak Shak across the plaza by the corn maze where Norah bought the donuts earlier.
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