The Thicket

by Noelle West Ihli

  Then he slips back into the main maze, hands tucked into his pockets.

  As the wind ebbs and the stalks momentarily stop rasping, he hears a high peal of laughter in the distance.

  He listens carefully, waiting for the wind to fall again.

  Then he makes his way toward the sound.

  CHAPTER 36

  Ben’s mouth, as it turns out, tastes like cologne.

  Did he eat some of it by accident? Taylor wonders. Maybe it’s just boy Chapstick. At least it isn’t Taco Bell.

  She pushes the thought out of her mind and tries to focus on the kissing tips Maren read aloud from Seventeen a couple of weeks ago. Use your tongue sparingly. Check. Keep your eyes closed. Check. Get out of your head, stay in the moment. Well …

  To be honest, Ben is so into the makeup session that she’s not sure he really notices what she’s doing. She estimates that they’ve been kissing for about twenty minutes now. His hand has been making steady progress from her hip to the lower half of her rib cage. Five more minutes and they’ll definitely be at second base. Or third. There’s an ongoing argument about the bases between Jamie and Maren.

  “Mmm,” Ben sighs, sliding his hand up another inch, alarmingly close to the bottom of her bra strap underneath her sweatshirt. Taylor takes half a step back and he follows, pulling her toward him again. A layer of broken cornstalks scrapes across their jeans while the partially frozen mud gives a little beneath their feet with a slow sucking sound.

  Her face makeup can’t be in good shape. She opens her eyes a sliver, trying to see if any of the white and gray greasepaint has transferred to Ben’s face. But all she can see is his up-close eyelashes and the skin between his eyebrows. She makes a mental note to stop at a gas station bathroom to wash her face before the drive back home.

  As Ben’s hand starts to roam again, Taylor takes a full step back, running into the wall of corn behind them with a loud crunching sound. There is gray and green greasepaint all over the lower half of Ben’s face. A lot of it. She cringes and watches his expression fall.

  “Uh, sorry. I thought you were into it,” he says, shoving his hands into his pockets and looking down.

  “Oh, um, I was,” she lies. “Am. I’m just freezing. I stepped in a puddle of mud somewhere, and my foot is totally numb.” That part isn’t a lie. It’s getting legitimately cold outside, even with a sweatshirt and coat. She can see faint puffs of air as she speaks into the darkness between them.

  He looks wary but relieved, pulling her back toward him with one hand. “Gotcha. Do you want to—”

  To their right, there is a small crash in the corn, followed by a flurry of pounding footsteps. Then silence.

  They listen for a moment, but the sound doesn’t come again. “Uh, okay.” Ben shuffles his feet, digging into the muck at their feet with one foot. “Should we see if we can find our way back? Or—”

  The sound comes again, above the wind. A flurry of breaking corn. Then silence.

  From somewhere further away, there’s a series of screams, and Taylor’s stomach tightens. “Yeah,” she whispers. “It’s a little creepy out here. I can’t believe we haven’t seen—”

  The sound of faint giggling floats through the air as the wind dies momentarily.

  Taylor lets go of the breath she’s been holding and motions for Ben to follow her. Then she quietly leads the way along the path, in the direction the giggle came from.

  Sure enough, it’s Jamie and Tyson. They’re standing in a dead-end, two pathways over.

  Taylor wonders if they’ve been there the whole time or if they’ve just wandered over from further inside the maze. She rolls her eyes.

  Tyson’s back is to them, and Jamie’s face is just visible over his hunched shoulders. He’s kissing her neck while she runs her hands up and down along his shoulder blades.

  Ben holds a finger up to his lips and creeps toward them. When he’s about a foot away, he lifts his hands in the air, crouches slightly, then pounces on Tyson’s back with a loud yell.

  Tyson windmills his arms backward and whirls around, nearly knocking Jamie over in the process. “What the hell—”

  When he sees that it’s Ben, he looks first relieved then annoyed. “Seriously, dude? Busy here.” He casts a glance at Taylor. “You guys done already, huh?” He lifts an eyebrow and nods at Ben’s now gray-and-white lips, glowing faintly in the dark.

  Ben grins and turns toward Taylor with a shrug. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”

  As he takes her hand, there is an ear-splitting scream—and a crash—so close that both Taylor and Jamie yelp.

  Beneath the steady rattle of the stalks, there’s a distinct whimper. Then nothing.

  It sounded like Maren.

  Taylor looks at Jamie, who is already turning back toward Tyson. She glances toward Ben, who smiles reassuringly. Didn’t anyone else hear it? “James, do you think that might have been Maren?” she asks.

  Tyson tilts his head toward her and grins. “Probably. Aaron knows how to make a lady scream.” He laughs, and Jamie joins in.

  Taylor replays the scream in her head, trying to reach the same conclusion. Maybe it wasn’t Maren. And even if it was, they were in a dark cornfield in the middle of the Thicket. Why wouldn’t she scream?

  No.

  Maren likes to play it cool. At all costs, sometimes. She wouldn’t scream like that over a scare—or a boy, for god’s sake, whatever Tyson might think.

  “Seriously, James. Will you come check with me? Make sure everything is okay?”

  She feels an overwhelming sense of indignation as Tyson pulls Jamie slightly closer toward him—and Jamie lets him. Who does he think he is? They’ve known each other for all of twenty minutes.

  Jamie turns her head toward Taylor, but even in the dark Taylor can tell that she’s not meeting her eyes. “I really don’t think that was Maren, Tay.” With one hand, Jamie reaches to pull up her devil corset, which Taylor suddenly realizes is maybe three inches lower than it was the last time she saw Jamie. “Send her a text, ok?”

  Taylor feels Ben squeeze her hand. “Come on, I’ll look for her and Aaron with you. I’m sure everything’s cool. There’s lots of people screaming,” he adds gently.

  She lets him lead her away from Jamie and Aaron, already hearing the wet, slurping sounds of their lips—and heaven knows what else—before the sounds are swallowed up in the scratchy rattle of the corn.

  Taylor listens intently, but the scream doesn’t come again. Nothing that sounds like Maren, anyway. She can hear the drifting cries and shrieks coming in the direction of the plaza, and the cabins. But right now, the loudest noise is the stalks bending and dipping in the wind.

  Taylor pulls out her phone, the blue-lit screen making her blink to focus. “Where RU? Corn maze is creepy. Hah.” She adds a smiley face, still willing to keep it lighthearted.

  She watches, just in case a string of bubbles appears below the text she just sent. Her battery has dipped from 70 percent to 40 in the past fifteen minutes, a little lower each time she checks her texts with the roaming drain in Declo.

  Nothing.

  A faint swishing sound comes from a few yards to the left, but when they walk in that direction, all they find is another wall of corn.

  Ben squeezes her hand again as Taylor peers down a dark dead-end, hoping she’ll see the back of Maren’s neon purple skeleton ribs glowing faintly in the dark.

  She doesn’t.

  And even though she knows that there’s no real reason to worry—that it was probably just a scream—she suddenly feels very afraid.

  CHAPTER 37

  The girl with the black-and-purple corset had been a gamble. He’d seen the flicker of subversion in her eyes as he stepped closer, wagging the knife back and forth in front of her as she untangled herself from the kid with the painted-on stubble.

  “Hell no,” she’d muttered, turning fully around to face him, ready to fight. Ready to run from the black figure looming in front of her. The boy sh
e was with looked between her and the knife as if she would give—or deny—permission to fight.

  He’d stepped closer, backing her further into the dead-end while she hesitated. Fight or flight. Life or death.

  She should have chosen flight.

  As she lunged at him he had raised the knife, dragging it hard across her arm. He hadn’t really wanted to cut her. Not yet. But she’d forced his hand.

  She’d screamed of course. Half in pain, half in shock that the knife he was holding was real—and had just entered her skin.

  He’d cut her straight down the shoulder, which was exposed in the open coat she was wearing, and down to the top of the heaving corset. No arteries.

  And then, as he knew it would, the girl’s expression had changed. The hope went out of it that maybe everything would still be okay or that this was some kind of joke her friends were playing. It was that unique teenage fable that carried some special adults into middle age. The one that led you to believe you were basically a character in a video game. That nothing could really hurt you.

  That bubble of optimism disappeared quickly when something really did hurt you.

  When she’d started to cry, her good arm pressed tight against the weeping blood that bloomed in a dark river over her exposed skin, he lifted the dripping knife and motioned to the path to their left. The outer maze was only a few yards away. “Shut up. And walk that way. Or I’ll do that again but to your stomach this time.”

  The boy with the smeared stubble was still rooted to the ground where he stood. His eyes remained glued to the girl’s arm. “You too. Unless you want me to gut her right here? Move.”

  And so they did. He still can’t believe how easy it was to herd them. They moved silently and invisibly, like ghosts through the corn.

  He finishes winding one last strip of Gorilla tape around the new boy’s arms, already pulled tight behind his back with the kevlar. Then he pauses, dipping into his pocket to touch the three thin rectangles that have replaced the rolls of tape, weighing heavy in his coat. At his feet, the plastic sheeting shifts slightly as he stands up to inspect the three phones a second time.

  Beneath him on the plastic, the boy with the black stubble and flannel shirt watches him with wide eyes in the dim penlight as the plague doctor presses the webbed, fractured glass of each phone’s home button.

  Nothing.

  Satisfied, he tucks the three phones back into his pocket and kneels again to finish taping the new boy’s legs. The dusty old mill feels alive again, filled with possibility. He can feel his pulse rise as he winds the Gorilla tape around and around, methodically weaving in and out on the bare skin at the ankles and calves, not the jeans.

  The freckle-faced boy is lying in the sawdust an arm’s length away, face upturned toward them even though it places his neck at an odd angle. He’s taking fast shallow breaths through his exposed nostrils, and his pupils are wide and black as he stares into the middle distance.

  His nose is making a whistling sound as the air rushes in and out. If he doesn’t stop that soon, he’ll pass out. Which would be fine. He’ll wake right up.

  The plague doctor inspects the new boy’s legs, satisfied that they’re secure. He notices that his own hands are trembling ever so slightly.

  Three. This is more than he’s ever had.

  Tim was the first, of course.

  The next time he’d done it, there were two. He’d taken a part-time job at a landfill the year after the temp gig at the Thicket. They’d made him a supervisor when he produced a resume he found online, citing managerial experience at a retail chain that had closed the year before. He always offered to take the night shifts, knowing that the right trespasser would come along eventually.

  And they had. A man and a woman. There were drugs involved—evidenced by the quick shuffle of their hands and the looks of their teeth when he shined the flashlight on them in the dark. They’d come on foot. He could hear the trespassers who drove to the landfill gate and then snuck in from at least a mile away. These two were different though. They’d come on foot. He wondered how many times they’d met here, in the stink and the warm, rotting mountains of trash, to enjoy a few hits on a cold night. He’d guessed, correctly, that they were homeless.

  He’d used a long section of rebar that time. First the man. Then the woman. It wasn’t a particularly hands-on job. But watching them go under the compactor afterward had been interesting.

  No one had ever shown up at the landfill to ask questions in the months that followed. There was no news coverage. No missing person’s report. No police. It was like the couple had vanished. And he had done the vanishing.

  He can feel the pulse in his neck now. He studies the new boy’s face through the eyeholes in the tape, noticing the sheen of sweat and real stubble under the smear of black paint on his upper lip.

  It’s getting sweaty inside the beak mask too. So he takes it off, placing the mask on a dusty bench shoved against the perpendicular wall at a crooked angle in the rank sawdust.

  The boy with the painted black stubble makes a low noise in his throat, thrashing a little on the tarp. He’s louder than the freckle-faced boy, but not by much. The plague doctor leans down to inspect the wad of sweatshirt inside his mouth, forcing it in a little deeper.

  The girl with the skeleton corset is lying in the sawdust on the opposite side of the tarp, a pool of red beneath one shoulder. When he turns toward her with the penlight, he sees that she is watching him—not her friends. Her nostrils flare above the Gorilla tape wrapped around her jaw, her expression cut in half but still readable.

  She studies his bare face, and he sees the dissonance in her analysis. He knows he looks normal underneath the mask. Kind, even, in the right moment. Someone’s dad or uncle.

  He smiles at her and turns back around, enjoying the feel of her eyes on him as he double-checks the tape on the freckle-faced boy’s legs. It was kind of him to bind her arms with just the Gorilla tape, instead of the rope. The fibers would dig right into the open flesh, sinking into the wound and increasing the bleeding.

  When he glances up a moment later, it’s the look in the freckle-faced boy’s eyes that tips him off.

  The boy isn’t staring into the middle distance anymore. He’s holding his breath now, neck craned even further, eyes fixed on a point behind him.

  The plague doctor turns around just in time to see the girl with the black and purple corset launch herself at him, balancing precariously on her fused legs.

  Her left arm—the one he cut earlier—is free, in front of her. A long strip of Gorilla tape dangles from it, whipping wildly as she lunges forward, struggling to stay upright. The whites of her wide eyes flash in the dim beam from the penlight.

  The blood, he thinks, knowing he should have accounted for it. Slippery bitch.

  He watches her fall before she even gets close to him, landing with a muffled thud at the edge of the plastic sheeting. But still, she manages to catch herself with her dripping free hand, landing hard on her hip, and somehow twisting to grab hold of a long, narrow piece of plywood half-buried in the dirt.

  Fascinated, he watches. She’s faster—and braver—than he initially gave her credit for, given her choice of costume.

  Breathing heavily through her nose, she rolls onto her knees to face him, holding the plywood in front of her, still meeting his eyes.

  The whole thing is so poorly executed, it’s pitiable.

  He stares at her for a moment. Her eyes are open wide, and she’s making a sound deep in the back of her throat. The corset has twisted to the side, nearly exposing one breast. The purple ribs are jutting into the skin at her armpits.

  He rises from where he is kneeling and takes a step toward her.

  She grips the piece of wood—blunt, with a few splinters peeling off the ends—tighter in her red-stained fingers. As if she’s in any position to harm him.

  He retrieves the knife from the inner pocket of his coat. She coils back against her bound legs, ready
to strike first.

  Clucking his tongue, he reaches for the piece of plywood, grabbing the end with his gloved hands as she swings—hard, but not hard enough—at his head, then falling back onto her hip. In the penlight, he can see that the snowstorm of sawdust at her feet is turning a mottled red.

  And then, of course, he does the only reasonable thing.

  He kills her, firmly driving the blade of the knife beneath her chin.

  There is a slick gurgling sound as she kicks at him for one, two, three seconds.

  After that, she goes still.

  He shakes his head and looks at the two boys. The freckle-faced boy lies motionless, his pinpoint pupils fixed on the sawdust, away from the blood. The other, the boy with the black stubble, is struggling against the ropes and the tape. Until the plague doctor walks closer. “Do you need something?” he asks gently, quietly. And then the struggle stops.

  He looks down at his hands. Only a little blood. Not bad.

  He wipes the blood onto his pants, inspecting the latex surface for rips or tears.

  It’s better this way, he decides. She was trouble from the start. And it will keep the other two quiet and still—for a while at least.

  He is suddenly aware of voices, drifting from the direction of the maze.

  He listens, waiting for the sound to come again as the wind crests then dips.

  It’s a girl’s voice.

  He looks at the two boys and cocks his head, listening. The sound comes again, faintly. Three drawn-out syllables. Someone is searching, he decides.

  He looks at the boys.

  He’s hesitant to change his plans.

  He’d be happy with three.

  But if he finds another couple, there would be five.

  He feels the familiar trickle of adrenalin pulse in the pit of his stomach as he touches the two remaining rolls of tape in his pocket, then carefully tucks the knife alongside them.

  It’s not too late.

  And it will be easy enough.

  As he walks back toward the outer maze, he stops to pull the three phones from his pocket. For good measure, he wipes the phones with a tissue from inside his coat. Then he tosses the destroyed phones into the middle of the narrow ditch just beyond the irrigation sprinklers with a quiet splash. The water isn’t running anymore this late in the season, but the center is still a murky puddle.