And then we stumble out of the darkness, and the moon seems unreasonably bright in comparison. I blink.
Allie’s a little pale, now, but Adam is grinning.
“Did someone whisper in your ear? God that was creepy,” Adam says.
I laugh, masking the shakiness I feel. “Uh, yeah.” I roll my shoulders, trying to loosen up the tightness in my neck and back.
Luckily, the path has widened again. We step forward, deeper into the maze, when a giant black creature drops in front of Allie.
She screams, an ear-splitting scream, and jumps backward, knocking me down into the gravel at the exit to the tent.
It’s a giant rubber spider. I look up and can just make out the pole supporting it extending out over the tent exit. We totally should have seen it coming.
I laugh. “Okay, that was stupid.”
Allie stands and helps me to my feet. I wipe the dust off my jeans and we set out again, surrounded by the eerie music being piped in from somewhere.
And then we emerge from the corn maze, and relief floods through me. That was quick. I made it.
But then I see the cones, guiding us across a short open field and to a second corn patch, and I realize that the pain isn’t over yet. We set out across the expanse, and for a moment, I’m just happy that we’re back in open space. No one whispering in my ear, no one dropping giant spiders on our heads. I relax a little bit, taking a deep breath, as the sprinkling of raindrops thickens to a steady drizzle.
Logan frowns and looks up, opening his mouth as if he’s about to speak. But then an engine screams out into the silence. I whirl around to see a man in a white mask standing at the edge of the first cornfield, staring straight at me with dark, hollow eyes. He revs a chainsaw and we all freeze, stare back.
And then he bursts into a dead run, glaring right at us, his chainsaw roaring into the night air.
“Holy—”
We take off, racing for the security of the cornstalks. I skid across a slippery spot of grass, and Logan’s at my elbow, catching me before I fall. The chainsaw guy gets closer, but we’re at the entrance to the second maze now. We flood into it.
The maze forks to the left, and I race in that direction, turning right and left again, until the sounds of the chainsaw drift away, and the maze falls silent. I slow to a walk, panting for breath and turn to speak to Logan—to beg him to just leave with me, but he’s not there. My stomach plunges. No one is. I’m alone, surrounded by nothing but seven-foot-tall cornstalks. I stop and twist around, trying to figure out where Logan went, just as the sky really lets loose, rain drops darkening the ground around me.
I’m cold suddenly, acutely aware of the way the shadows bend and move with the breeze, the cornstalks rustling. Above, dark clouds build, blotting out the stars and the moon. A shiver rolls down my spine.
I force myself to focus. My friends must have gone right at the entrance to the maze. I blink, fear tightening in my chest as I twist around, desperate for them to appear, to round a corner.
I don’t want to be alone in here.
Something rustles behind me and I turn around, praying it’s Logan.
It’s not.
A man in a gruesome mask steps out. The mask makes it look like his face is melting off, showing off pieces of his skull.
I step backward as he inches closer to me, and we maintain just a dozen feet between us. As I step back again, fear coiling in my stomach, my heel catches on an uneven spot in the path, and I go down, slamming into my elbows.
He chooses that moment to lunge at me. I scramble backward on my hands, like a crab, and then whirl around and bolt, slamming right into another body.
I try to scream, but it comes out as a whimper as someone’s arms tighten around me.
“Shhhh.” The word is breathy, hot in my ear, distinctively male. He hugs me tighter. “Shhhh,” comes the gravelly voice again. “It’s okay.”
The panic vanishes and I melt into Logan, the relief so swift my knees almost buckle. He came back for me.
“Sorry. I just got freaked out. That guy—” I turn and my voice cuts off as I realize he’s gone, that he’s slipped back into the cornstalks to wait for his next victim.
“What guy?” he says, as the rain comes down harder. He glances up at the sky, blinking as a drop lands on his nose. His jaw clenches as he shakes his head.
“Um, nothing.” The sounds of the rain heighten, the drops hitting the leaves around us.
“Crap,” Logan says, looking up at the darkened clouds once more. “I just realized I left a bunch of my uncle’s tools on the back deck. Power tools. They’re probably ruined already.”
“Oh, that sucks.” I turn to him, taking in his damp, nearly jet-black hair. He furrows his brow as the rain slides down his face.
“Yeah. Maybe I can still get them. Can you get a ride home with Adam?” He steps forward, kissing me so quickly I barely have the chance to kiss him back before he steps away. “I’ll call you, okay?”
And then he jogs off, back the way he came. A bolt of lightning flashes as he disappears around the corner.
“Are you trying to get struck by lightning?” Allie’s voice calls out. I turn to see her standing at the bend of the maze, her hood pulled up over her face. “Where’s Logan?”
I swallow and plaster a smile on my face. “He had to go. Let’s finish the maze and get out of here before the storm gets worse.”
I follow them into the last section of the maze. It’s all going to be okay, I tell myself. But then a car alarm goes off in the distance and I run.
CHAPTER FIVE
Adam drops me off near the back door of my house, and I dash out of his truck as the rain pounds down around me. He waits until I’m inside, honks twice, and tears out of the driveway.
Inside the empty house, the sound of the rain is a steady hum, the drops streaming down the old aluminum windows, obscuring the view of the drenched pastures. A yellow glow emanates from the barns, where I know I’d find my dad if I suddenly got the urge to look for him.
I hang my dripping jacket up near the door, then kick off my saturated cowboy boots and peel off my wet socks before going to the fridge to grab a soda. As I take the first sip, I reach into my pocket to check my phone for messages.
But there’s nothing in my pocket. Not my phone. Not my wallet. Nada. I walk back to my jacket and strike out again—there’s nothing there but my car key.
My phone is in my purse.
Which is in Logan’s Jeep.
I sigh. If it were Sunday, I’d just wait one day and get my stuff from Logan at school. But it’s Friday and I don’t want to go all weekend without my things.
I stare at the house phone, trying to remember Logan’s phone number. But I can’t even come up with the first digit. It’s programmed into my cell, so I doubt I’ve ever dialed it.
I’ve never been to Logan’s house, but I know where he lives. All he had to do was describe the place, and I knew exactly which house he meant—the one that used to belong to the Carsons. Apparently, the whole place is a wreck—Logan’s helping his uncle fix it up—so that’s why he’s never invited me over.
But I don’t think he’d be upset if I just showed up. I need my stuff. I go to the back door and slip back into my jacket, then find a pair of rubber boots from the pile on the back porch, not bothering with socks. I’ll only be gone a minute. I dash across the patio, my head ducked to keep the rain out of my eyes. I fling myself into the front seat of the battered old Honda Civic my dad got for five hundred bucks when I turned sixteen. I yank the door shut just as another bolt of lightning flashes, followed by the growing rumble of thunder.
I start my car and head toward Logan’s house, carefully navigating the twisting, winding country roads, past old farms and sprawling pastures, until I’m at the edge of town.
As I round the final curve, overgrown bushes line the street, obscuring a black iron fence. Logan’s uncle’s Suburban—I’ve seen it once before, when we ran into his uncle
in town—is just pulling out of the driveway as it comes into view, but he goes the opposite direction.
Just as he disappears around the curve, I pull to a stop between two giant pillars, each of which is topped by a sandstone lion, its mouth open in an eternal roar, exposing white stone teeth. I stare up at them through the rain streaming down my windows, before turning back to the path in front of me. To my right, an old black mailbox sits, the door cracked open.
I wonder if Logan has ever received bloody cow bones in that mailbox. I guess he would have said something if he had.
I blink away the image of blood and bones, and drive between the two black iron gates hanging crookedly on broken hinges. I glide down the splintered concrete driveway, my tires squashing the grass sprouting between the cracks.
When I reach the front of the old Victorian mansion, one of the founding homes in Enumclaw, I stop and put my coupe into park.
As I look up at the house, all the spooky stories we used to tell each other as kids come back to me. Supposedly, the estate was built in the late 1890s for the Carson family. They lived there—here—for three generations, until they all died on a dark, stormy night back in the sixties. A married couple, their three kids, and the grandmother. All found dead, all killed in different ways. They think the dad did it, but the cops were never totally convinced. It was too bizarre. Too…twisted.
Goosebumps rise along my arms. The house probably looked just like this that night, with its rain-slicked roof, lightning flashing.
I take a deep breath, attempting to quell my nerves.
Ever since the original family’s death, the mansion has changed hands over and over again until it finally started falling into disrepair. The house is beautiful and gothic, but it began showing its age years ago. Now, the paint is peeling and the grass is too long and some of the windows are covered by dark sheets, most likely to mask cracks or stop drafts.
I glance back at the way I came. The wooded entry feels even narrower, as if the trees threaten to close up and block anyone who wants to come in—or go out.
Fifty years ago, before their tragic end, the original owners started a Christmas tree farm. After they died, the farm quit selling trees, but the trees didn’t quit growing. They now form a thick forest, blocking the home’s view of the Green River valley. People say that you could once see the house from the road. But you can’t anymore. The dark shadows block it from view.
I guess that’s part of the spookiness of it. It’s hidden back here, behind fifty-year-old fir trees, just a hundred yards from the cliffside. When we were kids, it was “that house”—the one you’d dare your friends to run up to and touch. No one ever did, though. No one had the guts.
I can hardly make out the house through the raindrops snaking down my windshield, so I kill the engine and climb out, rushing across the lawn to the front porch. The old wooden steps creak as I bound up them.
Under the cover of the porch, I twist around and stare back the way I came, listening as the rain pounds the roof, spills from the overflowing gutters. Lightning streaks across the sky, and almost immediately, the thunder rumbles, building and growing until it’s like I can feel it beneath my feet.
I turn back to the door and knock, then wait, wondering belatedly if I look like a drowned rat.
No one answers. I glance back and confirm Logan’s Jeep is parked next to my beat-up car, and then knock again, this time louder. Just as my fist connects for the third time, the door creaks open.
Logan’s standing in front of me. He looks different than he did just an hour ago—more athletic? And yet somehow less relaxed. He’s changed out of his jeans and sweater and into loose-fitting track pants and a long-sleeved T-shirt with an Adidas logo, a matching ball cap slung low over his eyes, making them look darker.
His whole outfit reminds me of the soccer-ball shifter I noticed today in his Jeep.
“Um, hey,” I say, suddenly nervous. He left so soon after me freaking out and, weirdly, I feel like I shouldn’t be here.
His grin is foreign, more like the Cheshire Cat than his normal warm smile as he steps aside so that I can come into the house. I walk into the large foyer, and he shoves the door shut behind me, twisting the lock. The sound of the bolt slamming shut echoes down the empty hall.
The rain is nearly as loud inside as it is out.
I turn to Logan. “I left my purse in your car,” I say, running a hand through my damp hair. “It has my cell, or I would have called you first.”
He gives me a blank, totally unreadable look. “I know. It’s in the kitchen.”
“Oh. Good,” I say, feeling stupid. Maybe it’s because he’s still standing a few feet away, not closing the distance to kiss me like he usually does when we see each other. But I don’t think that’s totally it either. Something about my being here seems wrong, off. I try to push it from my mind. “Sorry for bugging you. I just need to get it back, and then I’ll head home.”
“Sure, Harper. Hang up your coat and come in.”
There’s something weird about the way he says my name, too. Like he’s trying it out for the first time.
“Should I take off my boots?” I ask, looking down at his socks.
“Sure.” He shrugs, and I feel awkward again. He should be smiling at me. Hugging me. Does he think I overreacted at the maze when that creepy masked guy came after me?
I kick off my rubber boots and follow him, wondering if maybe my over-the-top freak-out is what really sent him home in such a rush, and the tools were a ruse. My bare feet are silent on the worn, cold hardwood. There are dark inlaid diamond shapes in the floor every few feet, and then the narrow hall opens up into an enormous kitchen. My purse lies on the tiled countertop, which looks like it was redone—poorly—in the eighties.
He grabs it and tosses it at me, and I barely manage to catch it. “Did you want a tour, Harper?”
I blink. He is saying my name weirdly, right? It’s not all in my head? Maybe I’m just being paranoid.
“Oh. Um, yeah, sure.” I glance around, taking in the toolbox on the table and the sheets of plywood stacked up in the empty living room. They really have been working on this place.
“Great. Let’s start upstairs.”
He walks past me, and I impulsively reach for him, intertwining my fingers with his. He hesitates a second, glancing down at my hand, before he pulls me toward the stairway, and finally, I get the smile, the warmth of recognition. It transforms his face.
So maybe he had been worried. Only not about what I thought. Did he think I was angry with him for bailing so abruptly? That would explain his hesitance.
We walk up the hardwood stairs, following a burgundy-and-blue oriental runner up to a landing where rain streams down a stained-glass window. My left hand glides over the banister as we climb the second half of the stairs and Logan pulls me against him. I unwind a little, glad that weird distance between us is gone.
“My house was too quiet when I got home,” I say.
He glances back at me. “Yeah?”
“Totally. It’s not the same without you.”
Understatement of the year. In the dead silence of my house, all I do is think about Logan.
We make it up the stairs, where three dark wooden doors sit closed. “That’s my uncle’s room,” he says, pointing to the door at the end of the hall. “This one is mine.”
He twists the old crystal doorknob and we step inside. “I’ve only lived here a few months, so I haven’t really put up much stuff,” he says, slipping his hand from mine and crossing the room to look out the window.
The dim light from the fixture mounted at the peak of the roof, just outside the window, reflects oddly through the glass. It makes the shadows of the raindrops appear to be sliding down Logan’s face, making it impossible to read his expression through the dark angles and shadows.
I stand in the doorway, taking in the heavy antique furniture. A queen-sized bed with a thick red quilt takes up one wall, the headboard and footboard spor
ting enormous, twisted cordials. Opposite is a battered teak five-drawer dresser, one brass handle missing from the second drawer.
Thick, dark blue drapes adorn each of the two windows.
“It’s probably not what you expected, but I like it.”
When he turns away from the window, he stares into my eyes so intently it’s like a challenge. Like he just wants me to say that I don’t like it.
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