Norah watches the group of kids until they disappear into the darkness of the dusky plaza. The aroma of sizzling dough and sugar manages to mostly mask the ever-present smell coming from the corn syrup factory just a few miles away. But above the treeline, she can still make out the distant outline of the factory, where steady puffs of white smoke are drifting skyward.
It’s the smell that dooms Declo to a population of about 500 most of the year. The Snake River Sugar factory acts as a magnet of sorts for the locals willing to overlook the cloying stench—employing nearly 70 percent of the rural Idaho town, including Norah’s dad. It repels pretty much everybody else.
Halloween is the notable exception to the rule. Every year, Declo’s infamous Thicket with its wooded trails and bordering cornfields draws kids from all over Idaho, Utah, and even Colorado and Washington.
Norah’s attention shifts to a stout security guard wearing a tan uniform. The light-colored fabric highlights the dark circles under his arms as he passes beneath a strobing light. He looks young. Norah’s gaze automatically shifts to his hip. He doesn’t have a gun, which confirms what Kenny—Aaron’s friend who sometimes joined them to smoke—told her. Kenny had worked as a scarer at the Thicket last fall after school and claimed that there was no actual security experience required. Just a tan hat, tan shirt, and an official-looking pin-on badge.
Norah watches as the wannabe guard smiles at two girls who are trying to snap a selfie with a hooded grim reaper standing at the entrance to the trails. The reaper is blocking the gap between the hay bale walls with a scythe to prevent anyone from skipping the line.
While the girls are focused on perfecting the photo angle, the guard motions to one of the other scarers—who is dressed as a toothy werewolf. The werewolf weaves through the sparse line until he’s right behind the girls. When the wolf pounces into the girls’ photo, they drop the phone with an ear-splitting scream, nearly colliding with the hooded grim reaper.
Norah smiles slightly and turns her gaze back to the exit of the trails, where another huddle of kids is emerging. She can’t hear what they’re saying over the thumping music and the rise and fall of screaming kids running through the plaza.
She almost follows the guard in the tan outfit as he turns to walk the perimeter of the plaza but decides she’ll wait ten more minutes. She’s being silly. Brandon is being Brandon, and it’s his own fault the few donuts that remain will be cold.
* * *
Norah waits twenty more minutes before tossing out the last of the cold, waxy donuts. The temperature has dropped with the sun, and she knows that Brandon is wearing only his ratty, thin Aquaman hoodie.
Norah makes her way across the park to an Airstream trailer where a woman with a pink mohawk and red eyeshadow is taking tickets.
The line is a bit longer now, and Norah hovers in the yellow glow of the trailer’s light until the woman with the pink hair finishes her transaction. There’s a large map of the Thicket plastered across the side of the trailer, boasting “Biggest Haunted Attraction in the USA.” Norah counts twenty log cabins marked on the trail map, each with its own creepy name. “The Slaughterhouse.” “The Kill Floor.” A callout that reads “310 full acres!” is overlaid across the map of the corn maze. She tries to imagine how big 310 acres is but can’t. She feels the first tendrils of guilt for leaving Brandon on the trail.
The woman with the pink mohawk directs Norah to wait on a bench outside the trailer, and a few minutes later a guy who introduces himself as the head security guard—Dave—appears. Dave is wearing what appears to be an actual police uniform and a badge but no gun. He listens patiently while Norah tells him about Brandon.
Norah is interrupted twice by the radio clipped to Dave’s jacket blinking green, spitting static. Kid crying … ticket booth … too scary … Trying to get a hold of the parents … couple teens peeing on the props … bringing them up front.
Dave is not unkind when he points to the map that Norah has already seen and tells her that the Thicket is a big place. This week he’s tracked down more than half a dozen middle schoolers who hadn’t quite found their way out of the maze by the time their parents arrived. Still, he tells her he will have one of his security guards do a walkthrough with Brandon’s description.
Ten minutes later, the portly guard Norah saw earlier—the one with the pit stains and tan uniform—trudges toward the Airstream from the plaza. He takes a sip of water from the water pouch tucked beneath his thick polyester shirt. Dave explains Norah’s concerns then heads back inside the trailer. Norah realizes she’s been handed off.
The big guard with the armpit stains, who introduces himself as Bill, talks a mile a minute as he leads the way through the thumping plaza. Norah follows on his heels, still clutching the cold donuts, struggling to hear what he’s saying over the chaos.
“I’m supposed to keep security pretty low-key outside the plaza. That’s why we have the staff trails,” he explains. “People come here to be freaked out, you know? When they see too many clowns in uniform,” he grins and points to his own chest, “the killer clowns don’t seem as scary, you know?”
Norah doesn’t respond, but Bill keeps going. “Not that I’m dying to get out on the trails. One of the guys out there got punched twice last year. Kids get strung out on cotton candy and adrenaline and things get wild sometimes.”
Norah laughs awkwardly, only half hearing what the guard is saying while she scans the plaza for Brandon. For a second she thinks she sees the back of his blue and teal hoodie at a cotton candy stand. Her heart leaps even as she prepares to tell him how selfish he’s been. It’s been an hour now.
The kid in the hoodie turns to laugh at someone behind him. It’s not Brandon. Norah checks her phone again. Nothing.
Bill is still talking. “I mean, that’s the official line from management. Personally, I think we could use a few more guards. This early in the season, it’s really just me and an old fart who gets to sit on a bench outside the corn maze. I do all the walking.”
That explains the pit stains, Norah thinks.
She follows Bill to the same bench she was sitting at earlier. He’ll “take a peek” along a few of the staff trails, he assures her. Hang tight. Stay right here. It’ll take some time. Call the number on this card if your brother shows up. It’ll route you to the ticket booth. Service is spotty on the trails, but the boss has a radio.
As Bill walks away, Norah pulls out her phone one more time, hoping that she will see a text. That she can report it’s all been a misunderstanding. That Brandon is on the other side of the plaza waiting in line for a corn dog. But there is nothing.
Now that it’s finally dark, the plaza has come to life. Everywhere Norah looks there are small groups of kids gleefully squealing, taking selfies, or hurrying toward the next attraction. Just before Bill slips through a nearly invisible blind in the hay bales, an ear-splitting chorus of staccato screams pierce the air to his right.
Norah watches him pause to glance in the direction of the screams while he takes a sip from his CamelBak. Then he turns left and disappears from view.
CHAPTER 7
The man in the beaked mask looks at the body on the floor. Shaggy, dirty-blond hair curls over the boy’s ears. Too-short jeans reveal skinny white ankles. And a deep red puddle at the nape of his neck is slowly seeping down the back of his thin blue hoodie.
He can hear the next group of kids coming down the path. They’re nearly at the cabin now.
But it doesn’t matter. He has time.
The boy will be easier to lift than the staff member. He can’t weigh more than a hundred pounds. But the man in the beaked mask decides to leave him where he is lying, face down on the cement floor, adjacent to the cabin’s exit.
The babbling voices are nearly at the doorway now.
He wipes a bloody hand on his pants leg and leans against the far wall, turning away from the boy and toward the newcomers.
Darkness is falling quickly now. The kids cast long s
hadows in the gray light as they step inside the cabin. They move tentatively at first, then crane their necks as they bunch in front of the bathtub.
They ignore the body just a few yards in front of them on the floor. “Oh my god, this one looks real,” the first girl exclaims, burying her nose in the collar of a puffy white coat. “It even smells real. What is that?”
He glances at the brackish, bloody water in the bathtub. The body is still now, its head lolling down against its chest. Drying blood cakes the face, hair, and ears. The portion of his shirt above the water line is already beginning to dry and darken.
There are more voices from the trail, another group. Traffic is picking up.
Taking a step toward the bathtub, the man in the mask lifts the bloody knife in front of him, letting one shoe drag along the concrete with a quiet scraping sound.
The boy at the front of the group of four chokes out a yelp and takes a step back. When he recovers, he laughs. “Damn, I didn’t even see that guy.”
The girl in the white coat, who is still holding her nose in front of the bathtub, grabs his arm with her free hand and hurries him past the body on the floor, toward the cabin’s exit. “Come on you guys!” she calls to the couple behind her who laugh and rush past him. They brush close enough that her white coat flaps against the wet knife, leaving a smear of dark red.
He follows them out of the shack, and they shriek with delight, walking backward to watch him as he raises the knife above his head. He stomps toward them erratically, miming stabbing motions as they scatter in front of him.
The group disappears down the trail, toward the next attraction. He lets his arm fall to his side, watching them until he can just make out their silhouettes.
Behind him, he can hear the rise and fall of new shrieks inside the cabin. New exclamations of terror and glee as they see the bathtub, the body lying on the ground, and the blood that covers nearly every part of the dirt floor.
Keeping his mask on, he follows the trail away from the cabin. Just past the aspens, a stone’s throw from the worn dirt footpath, he sees what he is looking for. The dim outline of a tiny white “Staff Only” sign. It’s almost invisible, unless you know what you’re looking for.
Wiping his hands on his pants again, he tucks the knife into the inner pocket of his coat and ducks through the brush next to the sign, revealing a narrow side trail.
In the distance, he can see dim flashes of light coming from the main plaza. Soft, smoky yellow beams from the headlights of the food trucks. And strobing, fluorescent bursts of light from the DJ booth that pulse in time like the faint bass rhythm of a heartbeat. As he gets closer, he can smell caramel corn beneath the ever-present stink of the corn syrup factory.
He’s almost there when he hears the crunch of footsteps approaching along the narrow exit trail, coming from the direction of the plaza.
He considers turning around, taking a different staff exit. If he doubles back, he’ll find another one further along the trail. But why? Instead, he stuffs his bloody gloves into his coat pockets and walks faster.
A few seconds later, a stout twenty-something wearing a collared tan shirt and a wide-brimmed tan security hat appears around the bend in front of him. The guard has his head down while he studies the radio in his hand.
For a moment, he thinks the guard will walk right past. But as he approaches, the guard looks up and sees him, inhaling sharply. Then he lets out the breath in a loud whoosh that separates his ample lips. “Jesus, Spencer. You nearly gave me a heart attack.” He laughs, adjusting the tan hat that has fallen slightly to the side of his head as he looks back down at the radio and continues walking.
The man in the beaked mask turns and watches through the deep-set eyeholes as the guard’s crunching footsteps fade into the darkness of the Thicket.
He considers that maybe he should have stayed a little longer after all, even with the growing crowds. It could be all night before anyone notices that something is amiss in Cabin Twelve.
He gently brushes the idea aside and continues walking.
Caution is the better part of any undertaking. Including murder.
The plaza is filling up with dark silhouettes. The ticket line already stretches beyond his view, into the parking lot. The screams come from every direction now. Short, long. Delighted, pained. High-pitched and trilling, deep and barking.
As he steps through a blind in the hay, a girl wearing a unicorn mask stops to watch. She peers at him expectantly in the smoky darkness.
He growls and lunges toward her, just close enough to brush the tip of her swinging ponytail with his gloved hand. She turns on her heel and squeals, bolting away from him to catch up with her friends.
He watches her go. Then walks toward the ticket trailer at the entrance, through the middle of the plaza.
As he passes near a crackling orange fire barrel sending popping sparks onto the jackets of the kids huddled around it, two teenage boys wolf-whistle at him. When he ignores them, they turn back to the fire. They are laughing, miming as if they will push one another into the barrel.
He continues toward the cluster of food trucks. When he passes through the headlights, a few of the kids standing in line crane their necks to get a better look at his mask. One girl jumps out of his path with a yelp, grinning sheepishly when he doesn’t react. Most of the kids, however, ignore him.
He’s not the only monster here, after all.
Fifty yards to his right, in the pulsing lights of the DJ booth, a clown with long, yellow teeth and a thick ax through the middle of his head is juggling what appears to be his own bloody eyeballs. Straight ahead, a disheveled woman dragging a heavy burlap sack behind her cackles as she weaves in and out of the food truck lines.
When he reaches the ticket trailer at the edge of the grassy plaza, a woman with a pink mohawk glances up at him for a fraction of a second. Then she averts her eyes and reaches out to take a handful of bills. She doesn’t wave in greeting, and he doesn’t acknowledge her either. Staff members aren’t supposed to interact with each other in any way that might break the spell.
Not in front of guests.
On a whim, he steps into the yellow circle cast by the streetlight directly above the ticket trailer, then turns back toward the dark plaza.
Behind the mask, he smiles. And waves.
The first five rows of the unlit parking lot—which isn’t so much a parking lot as it is a long field that has been mowed over to allow for parking—are packed with cars. Still, the lot is maybe a tenth full. In October, all of the rows will be packed. A steady stream of blinding headlights and glowing red taillights will snake through the reflective rope switchbacks that lead to and from the Thicket exit.
His car is tucked into the darkness at the very edge of the lot, where the scrubby cut grass and leveled dirt give way to cornfields. The breeze is picking up now, rattling the half-dry stalks in a soft, papery patter.
He opens the driver’s side and stands in the spiky grass while he removes the mask, his shoes, and his clothing down to his underwear. He carefully places the knife and mask on a tarp laid across the passenger seat and nestles the pile of dirty clothing on top. Then he pulls on a fresh pair of sweats and a hoodie from a backpack in the backseat.
As he eases into the driver’s side, he wonders how long it will be before they find the bodies.
And how long it will be before the trickle of thrill-seekers realize that they brushed past the real thing.
CHAPTER 8
Norah registers the sirens in the distance as she scrolls through her Facebook feed. But it isn’t until she looks up to see the woman with the pink mohawk—the one who was taking tickets earlier—walking toward her that she knows in her gut something very bad has happened.
The screams that have become part of the rise and fall of the background chaos in the Thicket feel like a chorus as the woman with the pink hair takes Norah by the hand. She squeezes it hard and says, “I need you to come with me, sweetie.” Then she lead
s the way toward the trailer.
Around them, the food stalls are rapidly closing down. And scarers cloaked in fur, blood, and latex masks begin to herd confused teens toward the exits. Norah doesn’t ask why. Because the look in the woman’s eyes tells her to cling to these last few minutes of not-knowing like a life raft.
CHAPTER 9
He keeps the TV on Channel Two while he stands, stripped down to his underwear, in front of the washing machine. He slowly adds the baking soda, then another bottle of spray-and-wash.
He should get into the shower, but he doesn’t want to miss anything when the story breaks.
He waits another thirty minutes. An hour.
Just as he turns on the water to the shower, he hears the anchor say, “. . . breaking live at the Thicket …”
He turns the stream of hot water off.
A reporter is standing near the ticket trailer at the Thicket, gesturing to the empty plaza.
Red and blue police lights fill the scene as the woman tells Channel Two what she knows.
Two dead.
Multiple stab wounds.
Heinous crime. Brutal murders. Premeditated.
The Thicket has already made an official statement, expressing their outrage and deep condolences to the families of the victims—and pledging metal detectors and better security.
The reporter promises to share all new developments as they emerge.
There are no leads.
CHAPTER 10
October 1st
The trampoline sways up and down while Jamie talks, motioning with her hands. Her long auburn hair flies across her shoulders in soft waves as she bounces. Taylor closes her eyes and smiles, content to let Jamie go on.
The Thicket Page 3