Midnight in the Maze

by J. Leigh Bailey

  j. leigh bailey / Midnight in the Maze 46

  Midnight in the Maze

  j. leigh bailey

  Copyright © 2017 j. leigh bailey

  All rights reserved.

  I. THE FIRST KISS

  I gasped and jerked back as a man in a white mask jumped out of a dark corner wielding a hunting knife the length of my forearm. Blood dripped from the silvery blade and stained the man’s denim overalls. He stopped short at the thin-linked chain that separated his room of the haunted house from the path we took.

  Laughing like a hyena, my best friend Carter poked my back. “Pussy.”

  It’s not that I was afraid some mass-murdering psycho would hack me into little pieces. The old farmhouse someone had converted into a haunted house for the Halloween season echoed with shrieks and shouts of attendees, the hiss of fog machines, and the creepy wails and muttering of the cheesy soundtrack piped throughout. Not like I could forget where I was. But when someone jumped at you with a bloody knife, you reacted. It was instinct. Standing at the front of the line, I got hit up first. Luckily, it was the last “scare” of the house, and we could escape.

  Carter’s girlfriend Megan giggled and looped her arm through his. They’d been a couple for all of three weeks and were completely inseparable. It was sickening. When they were together, which was always, they were locked at the lips. Apparently marathon tonsil hockey was a new Olympic sport, and they intended to win the gold.

  “Isn’t this a great way to celebrate your birthday, Joey?” Megan gushed. “It must be awesome to have your birthday so close to Halloween. So many fun things to do.”

  I checked my phone. I had exactly one hour and forty-eight minutes until I turned sixteen. Yeah, a November 1 birthday meant I had my pick of “spooktacular” events leading up to it. Most of the time that was cool, but tonight, playing third wheel to my best friend and his girl while they made eyes at each was more trick than treat.

  “We’re doing the corn maze, right?” Carter looked across the packed parking area around the farmhouse and eyed the entrance to the eight-foot stalks.

  “Of course.” I slipped my phone back into my pocket. The haunted house might have been a bit cheesy, but this place did a hell of a corn maze. The field of corn stretched a full four acres, and the designers made sure the walls between the various aisles were thick enough a person couldn’t cheat and force his way through. They also went all out in decorations. Freaky-looking scarecrows lurked in corners and small lights made it appear animals watched from the stalks. The map at the entrance didn’t help much, especially for the late-night excursions. Remembering that the correct path created an outline of a lumbering zombie didn’t mean anything after the first time someone met a dead end and had to backtrack.

  Scary as it could be to wander the corn in the middle of the night, emergency lights were scattered throughout to flood the maze and made sure everyone who came in went out at the end of the night. Also, there were bells set up here and there so that if someone got lost or scared, a staff person would go in and rescue them. I knew this because Mom tended to forget I was almost sixteen, and she made me find out these kinds of details before agreeing to let me go to the corn maze with Carter. Ever since I’d told her I was gay, she’d become superprotective. As if being attracted to other boys would somehow hinder my sense of direction.

  Carter nudged me as we approached the maze’s entrance. “Look who’s on duty.”

  Blake Richards. Even his name was enough to make me sigh like a thirteen-year-old girl. Tall, gorgeous, talented. I’d practically stalked him through freshman biology last year. He sat behind me, and I’d obsessed over his shaggy blond hair and changeable light eyes. I swore his eyes changed color depending on what he wore. In true scientific form, I conducted a study. Every day I would log the color of his shirt and the color of his eyes to find out the correlation. Less scientifically, I tried to determine which hue I liked better. After months of careful documentation, I discovered that there was no correlation between the color of his shirt and the color of his eyes. It was all about his mood. When he seemed happy, his eyes were a pretty shade of blue that reminded me of summer skies. When he was upset, they turned a stormy gray. Sometimes, when I couldn’t identify his emotional state, his eyes shone green. I barely learned enough about biology to pass the class, but I knew every facet of his eyes.

  I doubt he knew who I was, though. I mean, sure, he knew my name and that we’d had a couple of classes together over the years, but he probably didn’t think about me in any real way. For sure he didn’t think about me the same way I thought about him. Compared to him, I was decidedly uninteresting. I had a few friends, but I wasn’t popular. I got decent grades, but I wasn’t one of the smart kids. I had no talent for sports, though I could at least run a mile in gym class without passing out. No big highs, no big lows, just solidly in the middle. And Blake? Blake was the apex, the ultimate. The golden king of the school to my commoner.

  I knew everything about him, down to the brand of deodorant he preferred. Everything, that was, except the one detail that would make or break my future happiness. I had no idea if Blake was gay. The evidence was inconclusive. He seemed equally flirty with boys and girls. As far as I knew, he never dated anyone. He chided his buddies for using words like faggot or fag, but he wasn’t a member of the school’s Gay/Straight Alliance. None of which confirmed his sexual orientation one way or another, much to my frustration.

  “You’re drooling.” Carter nudged me.

  My hand touched my chin before I could stop it. Carter laughed.

  “Hey, look, it’s Jared and Margo!” Megan gripped Carter’s arm, using it to brace herself as she waved like a maniac at someone across the parking lot. Her dark curls bobbed with the motion. Carter grinned at her like a lovesick moose, his braces glinting in the moonlight.

  If Blake was the golden king of the school, Jared was the dark rebel, battling his claim. Jared was tall and sleek with a sarcastic wit and an artistic flair. His black bangs usually covered at least one of his eyes, and he’d recently dyed a strip of his hair a bold red. Now Jared, I knew, was gay. That was all he and I had in common, though. He was the president of the GSA and was always ready to take action—whether it was a fund-raiser benefiting homeless LGBT youth or pushing for an education and acceptance campaign for the school.

  Jared and Blake in the same room was like Loki and Thor in a battle of wills. Sexy, dangerous, and completely combustible.

  Margo returned Megan’s wave, and she and Jared walked toward us. “I’m so excited,” Margo said when they’d reached us. “I’ve been waiting to do this for the last two years. Dad finally agreed to let me do the midnight maze run. I don’t think he would have if Jared hadn’t already gone through it a couple of times.” Margo’s dad had married Jared’s mom a couple of years ago.

  “He should have talked to my mom. She made me verify all the safety precautions before she agreed to let me go.” I don’t know why I told them that. Did I want to come off as pathetic? No one laughed, though.

  “I know, right?” Margo shook her head in obvious exasperation. “I had to do the same thing. It’s not like we’re kids anymore. Speaking of which,” she said, changing gears at the speed of thought, “it’s your birthday tomorrow, right, Joey? Sixteen?”

  “Sweet sixteen and never been kissed!” Carter crowed and punched my arm. My cheeks burned as I tried to glare lasers into Carter’s oblivious face. I glanced around, hoping nobody overheard. My eyes caught Blake’s, and I wanted die. He was going to think I was such a loser!

  When did sixteen become about kissing? Wasn’t it supposed be about cars and driving? He would totally deserve it if I pointed out that, until Megan, Carter had never be
en kissed either, and he’d turned sixteen three days before he and she had started going out. But I was too nice for that. Or, at least, too nice to say it in front of others.

  “Happy birthday,” Jared said, ignoring Carter’s comment.

  “Thanks,” I muttered. There was no reason for the warm and fuzzy feelings his words caused. So what if he was a junior and at the top of the social ladder at school and I was a middle-of-the-pack sophomore?

  “You guys want to go through with us?” Megan asked.

  “Totally!” Margo bounced in excitement.

  “Whatever.” Jared shrugged.

  Margo and Megan immediately started talking, and the two other guys and I shrugged and followed behind them. We got in line at the entrance. My arm shook and my face burned as I stood next to Blake and exchanged cash for a glow-in-the-dark orange wristband.

  The maze was pretty cool. The dark, the shadows, and the creepy light effects all kept things at the edge, just this side of scary. Voices could be heard from somewhere out of sight. Once we ran into another group at one of the intersections. They went right, we went left. It was no fun if we all made a giant train. Carter disappeared at one point, only to jump out minutes later and drag a squealing Megan into a dark corner to kiss some more. I rolled my eyes. Seriously.

  This time I followed the group rather than leading the way. If something was going to jump out, Carter could be the one to deal with the knee-jerk reaction.

  Jared played it cool, not getting involved in the debates about which way to go whenever we came to an intersection. He claimed it wouldn’t be fair since he’d been through it enough to know the best way. “Besides,” he added, “it’s more fun to watch you guys stumble around.” In his dark wool coat and scarf, he reminded me of Benedict Cumberbatch in Sherlock. Sexy and mysterious. His knowing smirk whenever we hit a dead end only added to the resemblance.

  It was edging onto midnight—closing time for the maze—when I stepped on my own loose shoelace, nearly tripping into a wall of corn stalks.

  In the time it took to tie my shoe, I’d lost the others. I didn’t hear any of Megan’s or Margo’s piercing giggles or any of their footsteps on the dried and crunchy leaves. At the closest intersection, I looked both directions and saw nothing but dark night and pale stalks. Christ, that’s just what I needed. My heart boom-boomed a bit in my chest, but not like I was scared. Not scared of something happening to me in the maze, at any rate. More the thought of having to be “rescued” from the maze while Blake was around… I wouldn’t survive the humiliation.

  I examined my two choices. There was nothing to distinguish one route from another. I pulled out my phone and enabled the flashlight feature. Cheating, maybe, but it might save me from going in the complete opposite direction of Carter, Jared, and the girls. The light didn’t help much, though. A crunch of dried corn husks sounded from the right.

  “Carter? Is that you?”

  No one answered. I hoped it wasn’t Carter playing a trick. Actually, I changed my mind. Carter playing a trick would be a better option than a wild deer passing through for a midnight snack. Deer might be placid creatures, but the hooves can be blade sharp, and they know how to use their antlers (the bucks at least) in a confrontation. I rolled my eyes. For crying out loud. Did I just admit I was afraid of a deer? How about wolves? Wolves weren’t out of the norm in this part of Wisconsin. Did I think of wolves? No, I had to worry about Bambi.

  “You are a pussy,” I muttered and turned right. More likely than wolves or deer, Carter or some other kid was lurking in the maze. I followed the sound I thought I had heard. Safety in numbers, right?

  Another noise—the creak and rustle of cornstalks—told me I picked the right direction.

  “Carter?” I didn’t yell. I said his name softly, hoping he’d acknowledge if he heard it while at the same time hoping no one else did.

  No answer. I followed the curve of the path until I reached a dead end marked by a large wooden barrel. A giant jack-o’-lantern leered at me from the top. Maybe the others hadn’t gone that way after all.

  A high-pitched squeal pierced the quiet of the night. A girl—I’m pretty sure I recognized Megan’s ear-splitting tone—burst into gales of laughter. Probably Carter dragging her aside for more kissing.

  I knew I should have gone left. I turned and backtracked a ways toward the intersection where I’d lost them, but my foot caught on a bent stalk, and I flew forward, hands sinking into the cool earth and decomposing leaves. My phone flew a few feet, the light going out. “Damn it!” I stood up and tried to decide what to do with my grimy hands. I didn’t want to wipe them on my jeans or my coat, but I’ll admit the sticky mud and whatever else on my hands felt nasty.

  Looking down, I searched for my phone, cursing myself for the matte black casing I’d chosen. In the night, with darker shadows hiding huge chunks of the maze’s path, it might as well have been camouflaged. I don’t know how long I knelt on the ground, searching in vain for my phone. Mom was going to kill me. I’d only had the phone for a few months, and there was no way she would spring for a new one. It would take me months bagging groceries at Stan’s, my part-time job, to save up enough to replace it.

  Mud and God only knew what else soaked through the knees of my jeans a few minutes later. I gave up. There was no way I would find it tonight. I’d have to call the haunted farm people tomorrow and hope someone turned it in. If they found it before the phone got plowed into the ground next spring at planting time, I might only have to get it repaired rather than replaced.

  I tried to find the barrel again as a point of reference, but in the short time since I’d seen it last, I’d gotten totally turned around. The moon chose that moment to hide behind some thick clouds, and the already dark corn maze became almost completely black. I couldn’t even tell where the next intersection was.

  I read somewhere once a person could find their way out of maze if they kept one hand on the wall at all times. Eventually it would lead the person out. A daunting task, but what were my other options? Wait for help? Did I have enough time for that? What if it took me back through every single alley and turn? I could still be working my way out by this time tomorrow. Maybe I’d find one of the rescue-me-I’m-a-loser bells. Again, the alternatives sucked.

  I stuck out my hand and started to walk. I wasn’t completely blind in the dark, but it was close. I’d only made it a couple of yards when I reached my first big gap in the corn stalks, a gap so big it could only mean I’d found my first turn. I followed the edge of the corn until I faced ninety degrees left of where I had been and took a small step that crashed into a body. Not one of the cheesy scarecrows. A real, living, breathing, body.

  “Whoops! Sorry!” Instinctively I grabbed on to the person’s coat in an effort to keep my balance.

  “No problem.” The voice was soft and husky and vaguely familiar. I couldn’t quite place it, though, since another burst of laughter, male this time, erupted from a couple of rows away. Great, people. At least I wasn’t too far away from the others.

  The only warning I had was the slight shifting of shadows, and then, wham, his mouth covered mine.

  I should have been outraged. Or, at least, a little freaked out that some stranger, possibly a serial killer in disguise, kissed me in the middle of a dark corn maze.

  I should have pushed him away, telling him to leave me the hell alone.

  I should have done a lot of things.

  But doing something would have required more working brain cells than I had at that moment.

  Whoever he was, when he kissed me, my brains started to leak out through my ears. Well, not really. Gross. But every thought, every molecule, every brain cell whirling around in my head were suddenly and completely useless. I couldn’t think, I couldn’t talk. I could only feel.

  And I felt fantastic.

  It took me a solid minute before I could do anything more than stand there and revel in the moment. Then, remembering kissing was a two-person activity,
I started to participate. The press and caress of lips against mine, the moist puffs of breath when we broke for some much needed air, all of it overwhelmed my senses. When I pressed back, changing the angle of our mouths, my kissing partner groaned and deepened the kiss, adding the smallest glide of tongue. Oh wow. I leaned closer, needing more contact.

  Who knew all the stupid kissing clichés were true? It was like dancing or flying. Like floating. Stars fell, flowers bloomed. My eyes closed, and I’m not entirely sure one of my legs didn’t kick out like some kind of old-fashioned romance heroine. I had been ensnared in a spine-tingling, toe-curling kiss to end all first kisses.

  Eventually my brain started working, though sluggishly, and I started cataloging details. His lips were cool. Not surprising given the temperatures outside. And it was a he, thank God. I don’t know how I would have handled my toes curling from a girl’s kiss. Well, maybe if it had been a girl, I could have found a way to push her aside without losing my sanity in a cloud of hormones. He was taller than me by a couple of inches, and what I could feel of his body under his bulky coat was thin. He smelled awesome. When he broke away to catch his breath, I did the same, inhaling the heady combination of fruity-scented hair products and fabric softener.

  I should have opened my eyes to actually see him, but I was so afraid it would ruin the moment or find out it was some cruel joke or even a wicked dream. A warm hand grazed my cheek. “Happy birthday,” he whispered, then stepped back, and he was gone.

  It took forever before I could finally open my eyes. Not in time to catch a look—even if I could have in the darkness—to identify my kisser, though.

  The flood lights surrounding the maze ignited with a clunk and a hiss, and the brightness nearly blinded me as effectively as the darkness had. But lights on meant it was time to go. And I still didn’t know where I was. I saw the top of one of the light poles and figured heading “toward the light” was as good a plan as any.