by JL Bryan
The middle scarecrow had been removed. Stacey had been mounted in its place. Her toes dangled a few feet off the ground. Rope and torn strips of scarecrow clothing lashed her to the tall wooden framework that had previously held the baker scarecrow upright.
Stacey had been dressed in the puffy chef hat the scarecrow had worn, and its ratty old coat had been loosely draped around her. A strip of stiff, dirty denim was tied across her mouth.
“Stacey!” I shouted. I hurried to slide off the horse as it came to stop. It turns out that getting off a horse is not something you want to do in a hurry when you're not familiar with the procedure. I plunged several feet straight down and slammed into the dirt.
I pushed myself to my hands and knees, trying to catch my breath as quickly as I could. Then I stood, more or less, and staggered toward Stacey.
“Stacey,” I gasped, hoarse because I was still short on air.
“Mmmf,” she replied. Then she added: “Muh uhh uh go gah gy umf.”
“I get it, you're gagged.” I pulled the thick strip of denim from her jaws. “What happened to you? Where's Michael?”
“Jacob's message,” Stacey said. “Michael attacked Jacob and locked him in the trunk of his own car.”
“What?” I took the small Swiss Army knife from my utility belt and went to work trying to cut her free. Her arms and hips were bound into place by coils of rope, flannel shirt-cloth stripped from the scarecrow, and more of the scarecrow's ripped denim jeans. They were tightly knotted, with no hope of being untied, so I had to start sawing the material with my knife.
“Jacob called when he finally got someone to set him free.” Stacey looked at Corrine on the horse. The horse looked tense, sniffing the air. “Why is Corrine here?”
“Long story. She stowed away in the van. What's going on with Michael?”
“He grabbed me when I said I got the message from Jacob,” I said. “He carried me out here. Jacob says—”
“Someone's coming,” Corrine whispered. She pointed toward one of the paths that converged on our clearing.
“—Michael's possessed by something pretty bad,” Stacey finished, her voice dropping low.
At that moment, I could believe it. There had been some signs that things were amiss with him, but I'd been too focused on how I wanted our relationship to be something sound, how I needed Michael's presence to create at least the illusion of stability and connection in my life. They say love is blind, but I guess love can be blinding, too. Maybe love's just bitter about being blind and wants to blind everyone else, I don't know.
I thought of the imposing black clock Michael recently purchased for his little side business of restoring and reselling them. It had been taller than me, carved to look like a dark castle with parapets, steps, arrow slits, and other minute features rendered in careful detail. The spring-driven automatons that came out every hour were an assortment of hand-carved wooden chess pieces that gave me the creeps.
I'd urged him not to buy it from the antique store, but why listen to a professional ghost hunter when it comes to bringing scary old things into your home? He'd seen a major restoration challenge with a lot of potential profit. He was almost obsessed with bringing dead, delicate mechanisms back to life. I mean, there are easier ways to make extra money.
“Did Jacob say anything about who or what was possessing him?” I asked Stacey. That's my training, keeping me logical and functional on the surface while locking away my feelings down inside. I owed Calvin for that. Because honestly, I just wanted to collapse. It was too much, and too much of it all at once. The horseman was out there stalking us, almost certainly gearing up for another attack, and now Michael was around the bend, possessed by something malevolent enough to kidnap both Jacob and Stacey.
Even more frightening was how the entity possessing Michael had managed to stay mostly in character, wearing Michael's mind and personality like a costume. The costume may have been somewhat ill-fitting, with gaps here and there, but either I hadn't been looking closely enough or I hadn't wanted to admit to myself that there might be a real problem unfolding with him. It takes a strong ghost to possess living humans against their will, but it takes a very intelligent one to puppeteer that person from the inside and try to keep the possession hidden. Michael had been acting a little off, but it wasn't like his head had been spinning in circles while he yakked pea soup all over the room and threatened to see us all in hell.
“No,” Stacey said, while I sawed desperately at her bonds. Someone had done a clever job here, braiding, twisting, and knotting the different materials used to tie her up, to make sure she couldn't be cut free too easily. It was as if some evil-genius Boy Scout had done the job, earning himself merit badges in both knot-tying and kidnapping.
“He's here,” Corrine whispered, drawing her horse a little closer to us. The mare stamped and let out a nervous chuffing sound.
A tall, broad-shouldered shadow emerged from the corn, a handsome face smirking at us in the moonlight. It was Michael, but it wasn't. Everything about how he moved and held himself was wrong. He walked with the attitude of a tiger approaching its prey, a predator who had no doubt that the kill was his.
“Eleanor,” he said, and everything inside me froze. I knew the voice. It was him. And that was impossible. He was supposed to be trapped in the ground, buried with the remnants of my childhood home and the ashes of my parents, and the ashes of all those he'd burned to death over the centuries.
Chapter Nineteen
“Keep cutting,” Stacey whispered low, not moving her lips. My whole body had locked up at the voice of Anton Clay, as if I had no control over myself in his presence.
“Eleanor, step away from that other girl,” he told me. “We will all remain here together.”
“You can't be here,” I said, my voice almost certainly too low to hear. I felt powerless in his presence. He'd taken everything from me, he'd ruled my life from that pivotal moment in my past. He'd stalked my nightmares. He'd made me into who I was.
And now, inexplicably, he was free of the spot where he'd been bound since his own death in 1841. I can't begin to explain how much that terrified me.
“I have waited long years for you,” he said, approaching us. The row of corn directly behind him erupted into flames, as if they'd been drenched in gasoline and were just waiting for a match. The fire spread down the row, lighting up one of the paths out of the clearing.
“Corrine, go!” I said. “Now!”
“I don't want—” she began to protest.
“Someone has to protect the horses at the stable,” I told her. I doubted the stable was in much immediate danger, but I hoped that would motivate her to get going. Although it was entirely possible that Anton Clay, my own personal demon, was about to engulf the whole farm in flames, and there was no hope for any of us.
Corrine nodded, trusting that I knew what I was talking about, and she started toward another path out of the clearing. Both rows of corn ignited, the fire spreading away in parallel rows that momentarily made me think of the DeLorean in Back to the Future. The flames grew thick on either side of the path, making it impassable for humans as well as horses.
The brown mare reared up in a panic, wisely refusing to plunge into the flames. Corrine managed to get her back down to four legs, but she was clearly trapped in the clearing with us. Every path out was lined with stalks of highly flammable corn.
“Let her go, Anton!” I shouted at Michael. “She's not a part of this. Neither is Stacey.” I resumed hacking at the bonds that held Stacey in place.
“I instructed you to leave her tied there.” He nodded, and the scarecrow candlestick maker burst into flames. The fire spread across his hat, scarf, and coat, and the electric bulbs cracked in the heat. The plastic pumpkin face began to melt at the corners of the jaunty triangular eyes and grinning mouth. “I could burn her just as easily.”
“You came for me,” I said. “Here I am, so let them go.”
“The other girls will m
ake lovely additions to my collection.” Michael—Anton, I reminded myself, and surely Michael's eyes had never danced with infernal glee like that—took a moment to look over Stacey and Corrine, as if they were cuts of meat he intended to cook and eat. Veins of fire spread through the maze, out in every direction from us, setting the field ablaze and trapping us inside with the evil, crazed ghost.
I walked toward him, doing my best to conceal an obvious tremble in my knees.
“I should have trapped you years ago,” I said.
“But you did not. Why?” He smiled, and it was all cruelty, the smile of a torturer or a hangman. He reached out as if to caress my cheek, and I halted.
I hadn't done it because Calvin said Anton Clay was too dangerous, and that he was already as good as trapped as long as the site of my old house remained undisturbed.
“How did you escape?” I asked him.
“A fascinating opportunity arose, and I took advantage,” Anton said. Michael's face was like a thin mask now; I could almost see Anton through it. Certainly I could feel his presence, and I could smell his smoky musk, the scent of burning wood and smoldering flesh, death and cremation. “I've had much time to reflect on my peculiar condition, Eleanor. I refuse to remain a bit of lost memory, endlessly caught within myself. The truth of my current state is now clear to me. I am no pale shade, destined to fade like old smoke. All these years, I never understood, but now I do. Now I see I am something more like...a god.” He smiled. He was less than a foot away, his pupils reflecting the growing fires all around us as he looked into my eyes.
“You didn't answer my question,” I managed to say.
“What do we do?” Corrine asked. Her horse was shifting around nervously. The big mare had performed admirably, even heroically, but the growing inferno was going to make her panic.
“Stay calm,” Stacey advised her, which didn't help much.
The fire had spread so far and so high that a strong wind, blowing across the flames and turning them sideways, could very well roast us all alive. I was sweating all over from the heat.
“Why don't you just die?” I asked him. “Just let go and move on. It's long past time.”
“Let go? Move on? I have only now gained my freedom. Only now do I know my full potential.” He took my hand and raised it to his lips. “You say I belong among the dead, but you belong there, too, Eleanor. You were meant to be with me. You've spent the years since thinking of me, looking across with longing at the far bank, at the land where the spirits dwell, because you know where you belong. You became a ghost the night we met, the night you were meant to die.”
His hand tightened around mine. His grip was blistering hot. None of my usual ghost defenses would work now, while he commanded a living body. My only chance of survival was to defeat him physically, and between his pyrokinetic powers and the great strength of Michael's body, there wasn't much chance of that.
I was going to die. I could accept that—Clay had a point. Most of me had already died that night, long ago. This was the proper end for me, death by fire, joining my parents on the roster of Anton Clay's victims. Some part of me had always known it would end like this.
But I wasn't willing to let the others die.
“Let them go,” I said. I didn't need to speak much louder than a whisper, his face was so close. “Let it be just you and me tonight. No other girls.”
He stared at me, and I watched the irises of Michael's eyes turn to circles of glowing red. His hand gripped mine tight enough to make my bones creak, and his skin burned even hotter. I hissed in pain.
“Ellie, just get away from him!” Stacey said. “Don't worry about me.”
I stared back at Anton Clay. “Let them go,” I said again.
“No,” he finally said. “I want you all. But don't fear, Eleanor. Your parents will be so pleased to see you again. They've missed you terribly.” He bared his teeth, as he twisted that old knife right into my heart. Then he gestured toward a burning patch of corn nearby. “See them, Eleanor. See them all.”
I looked, and whatever remnants of strength, courage, or tough-girl bravado I still had left instantly drained away.
For a moment, I could see them, and I could hear them screaming. It was a cluster of burning skeletons standing close together, maybe two dozen of them, fire rolling from their empty eye sockets and open jaws. Red-hot chains held them close together, like prisoners or animals. One such chain ran across the ground, up into Michael's hand, so hot that it seared and steamed the flesh there, though his face registered no pain.
Then the screaming, burning skeletons were gone, along with the coils of heavy red-hot chain. Michael's hand—the one that wasn't slowly crushing and overheating mine—was empty again.
“Did you see?” he asked.
I didn't answer. I understood. Though he was free of the patch of soil where he'd been rooted so long, he still had the power granted by the little slivers of soul he'd shaved off from all his murder victims over the years.
“Are my parents with you?” I whispered.
“Would you like to be with them?” he asked. With the screams gone, the sound of the swelling, growing fire roared in my ears like the ocean during a storm.
“Let my friends go.” I gave him my best desperate, pleading look, which was easy to do because it was how I felt. I squeezed his hand back as tightly as I could, and then I moved my face toward his. Anything to keep him from noticing what I was doing with my other hand, which was digging into my pirate-trouser pocket as furtively as I could manage.
I moved even closer, as if I meant to kiss him. It was so strange to see Michael's face with another soul behind it. It was as if every muscle in his face had altered slightly, creating a different person inside his skin.
The fires all around us roared and rose again, as if my closeness inflamed him somehow, stoking up the acres of fire that he was creating to kill us all. Stacey would die, and Michael, and Corrine, and our violent deaths would leave some remnants of us in his control, fueling his growth into an ever more powerful monster. Now that he was free to roam, I knew he would become a living nightmare, burning new victims every night, if he could.
Perhaps he'd already claimed some victims, somewhere, before coming after us. He was more powerful than I'd ever seen him, and newly self-aware in a way that was dangerous. Ghosts can have all kinds of powers—moving effortlessly through walls, throwing objects with their mind, getting into your head to share their pain and horror with you. Usually they are just stuck in repetition mode, so they keep pacing the same ground, slamming the same doors, forming the same frightening apparition. A ghost who actually understood his condition and was ready to take full advantage of it presented a larger and more unpredictable threat.
Stacey watched me, silently, as if in shock. More likely, she was just being careful, waiting for her chance to help. I noticed her tugging with one hand, trying to finish tearing the bonds at which I'd been cutting. Corrine was somehow keeping the horse on this side of full-blown panic.
I had to try to save the two of them.
Anton Clay had to be stopped. If I died, that was a price I would pay to protect Stacey and everyone else from him...even if that meant Michael had to die with me.
While Anton's red eyes burned into mine, I held out my free hand and spread out my fingers a little. I struggled to hold onto the slippery necklace. My fingers were dripping sweat. I felt like I was standing in the middle of a bonfire.
According to the broken remnants of her journal, the antique coral necklace had been a gift from the highwayman to the farmer's daughter he'd apparently impregnated. Josef Bracke, Mildred Neville. If we'd gotten our research right, based on what loose and generally unconnected fragments of evidence we had.
If I was wrong, or my move simply didn't work, we would all be consumed by the corn-maze fire. Anton was stoking it higher and higher as he moved even closer to me. He embraced me with his other arm, in what almost felt like some kind of formal dance move.
Then he pressed his lips, Michael's lips, to mine, and did what he'd been wanting to do to me since I was fifteen. He surrounded me with heat even as he drew me close with his arm. My skin flash-dried and began to feel like it was cracking. I could smell my own hair beginning to singe. The air was so hot that it stung my lungs.
It was, in so many ways, the death I'd always expected.
The fires rose straight up—ten feet, fifteen feet, like tidal waves of flame preparing to roll in from all sides, turning us all to ash and bone. Everyone screamed. Stacey, who'd only managed to work one hand free. Corrine and her terrified horse, frantically turning in circles as if there were some way to escape.
Anton's lips lingered on mine. I was waving the necklace back and forth, clinking the beads together. A small sound, but a persistent one, at least.
The horseman had been trying to tell us something. Once we'd penned up the Neville family ghosts, the horseman's first act had been to reveal the box hidden inside the old wall, containing the relics of Mildred's life. It was in the same room, Maya's room, where Mildred's ghost liked to crawl at night, as if searching for her old belongings.
I hoped I'd understood his message correctly. If not, we were all dead. There was no time to devise a new plan, no other options left.
I swung the necklace back and forth, clacking the beads, as the surging heat began to bake me inside my blousy pirate shirt.
Just as the heat pressed in around me, on the verging of roasting me alive, the blast of cold air hit. It was more than welcome; it was salvation, a wall of icy air quelling the deadly heat.
I opened my eyes.
He'd carved a trench through the burning maze, soaking up heat as he rode toward the sound of Mildred's necklace, leaving darkness in his wake.
The horseman's eyes remained concealed in the shadows of his black tricorner hat. The lower half of his face was bone white. His smile had not returned.