by R. R. Banks
“Brock Westwood showed back up in the Hollow tonight.”
“Brock?” Bubba Ray asked. “Stormy’s ex-husband?”
“That’s him. He showed up with some big declaration of love hoping to win Stormy back and bring her home, but his chances of succeeding in that already weren’t good considering how she threw his ass out three years ago and how she’s about a month away from dropping this third baby of hers. So, she rejected him right off.”
“That must have upset him.”
“It did. It upset him right down into the cellar where he found the advent calendar that Stormy’s husband was making for her out of his specialty craft flavored moonshines. It was supposed to be a special Thanksgiving present since that’ll be right around when she’ll be alright drinking moonshine again. Well, Brock found it…. you know, I’ve never liked that name, Brock. It sounds like there should be some other part to it. Like Brockville or Brockenheimer. Von Brock. Brockenstein.”
“Jeb, what happened?”
“Oh. Well, O’Brocky found the advent calendar and he was all the way through the first two and a half weeks of December and gearing on toward Christmas Eve when Stormy and her husband finally broke down the cellar door and found him. They tried to subdue him, but he managed to escape, hotwired their tractor, and headed off. Now he’s crashed in a cornfield.”
“Oh, lord,” Bubba Ray said. “Alright, well that’s fine. He’s going to be alright. I’ve seen Brock Westwood manage much worse than a decimated advent calendar and some squished-up corn. Let’s go get him. Where’d he crash?”
“The Galloway Farm.”
I felt my stomach sink and my mind start to spin. I jumped down off of my stool and was out of the restaurant before I even heard what Bubba Ray was planning on doing. I could hear Roman calling after me as he chased me, insisting that I let him drive me. I was trembling so hard I didn’t know if I would be able to steer correctly, but I wasn’t about to just sit and let someone else drive me.
“If you want to come along, fine, but I’m driving.” I climbed into my car and stared out at Roman where he still stood staring at me. “You better hop in or I’m leaving you behind.”
He ducked into the car and I skidded away from the restaurant and back toward the farm, taking the back way that would bring us right to the cornfield.
Chapter Eighteen
Roman
Bitsy looked wild-eyed as she drove toward the farm and I found my fingers twitching on the seat where they were resting as if they were ready to latch onto the wheel if needed.
“It’s going to be fine,” I said, trying to calm her.
“How can you say that? I’ve been working myself to death for months to get the farm ready for the season and now the cornfield could be destroyed because of an idiot hopped up on festive moonshine.”
Bitsy seemed even more distraught now, but fortunately I could see people ahead that seemed to indicate that we had made it back to her farm. I helped her guide the car off the side of the road and we got out together, rushing toward the cornfield. Just as the young man Bubba Ray called Jeb had described, it seemed that a wayward tractor had indeed made its way into the cornfield, dumped its driver, and continued on its way, leaving torn up cornstalks in its wake. I went over to check on Brock and make sure he was alright, then turned back around to talk to Bitsy, but she wasn’t there. I looked around to find her, and heard the sound of footsteps crashing through the corn. I followed after them, letting the sound guide me through the destroyed path of corn, around the tractor that had finally run out of gas, and further into the still-standing stalks. I called out to her, but she didn’t say anything back. I continued to follow her footsteps until we came around the same stalks in different directions at the same time and she screamed.
“It’s alright,” I reassured her. “It’s fine. It’s just me.”
“You scared the hell out of me.”
“I didn’t do anything but follow you. Who did you think I was?”
“I’m not an idiot. I’ve watched television. I know when you hear something coming through a dark cornfield, you don’t stop to investigate. You just keep running.”
“Why?”
“Serial killers. Creepy demon children. Zombies.”
Her voice had dropped to a whisper that sounded like she was concerned if she said any of the words too loudly she would actually manage to conjure them up. I was trying to think of something to say to reassure her when a thought crossed my mind and I reached out to grab her hand.
“That’s it,” I said.
“What’s it?” she asked. “Zombies?”
“Exactly.”
“Oh, god. Where?”
“Here. I mean, not here right now, but they could be.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I think I’ve found the perfect way to prove to your grandfather that the farm can still be profitable enough for him not to sell it.”
“I’m not following you.”
I was getting so excited about the idea that was coursing through my head that I was having difficulty getting the words out, so I took a breath, gathered my thoughts, and tried again.
“Have you ever been to a haunt?” I asked.
“A haunt?” she asked.
“Like a haunted attraction. For Halloween. A haunted house or trail…or cornfield?”
“How old are you?”
I shook my head.
“Just listen to me. When my cousins and I were teenagers there used to be this farm about an hour from my uncle’s house that had an incredible Halloween haunt every year. People would come from different counties, different states even, to go to this thing. There were nights, especially close to Halloween, when they had to turn people away because there were so many there.”
“Are you serious?”
“Absolutely. The way that you were running the farm before, it was really only viable during the day when families came to pick pumpkins. After dark, it just sat there. With a haunt, we could maximize both day and night throughout the entire season. During daylight hours we still have all of the same family-friendly things. Pumpkins, doughnuts, maybe a hay romp pile. When the sun goes down, though, we bring out the frights and the entire farm becomes one big terrifying experience that people buy tickets to see. The cornfield is even perfect for it. It’s already halfway to a maze. Family-friendly during the day, crawling with creatures at night.”
I finished with a grin, expecting Bitsy to be thrilled, but she looked completely unimpressed.
“Nobody is going to give two flipping-fucking shits about a new haunt in an old tired pumpkin patch and cornfield-gone-hit-and-run-victim.”
I felt let down, but I wasn’t going to let her lack of enthusiasm sway me.
“Do you have a better idea?” I asked.
She seemed to think about it for a few seconds, then her shoulders dropped.
“No,” she admitted.
“Alright, then. A haunt it is. This will be the last-ditch effort for the farm. Your grandfather is already prepared to sell. There’s really nothing to lose. We can try this and if it works, it will be amazing. If not, it’s nothing worse than what you already expected. But at least we can try.”
“We?” Bitsy asked.
I nodded.
“Yes. We. I’ll be here for you every step of the way. I already have huge plans in my head and can’t wait to get started building them. I can have a team here in the next couple of days.”
Bitsy drew in a breath and let it out slowly, seeming to be trying to regain control as the idea rushed into action around her.
“I don’t think that we should tell Granddaddy yet,” she said. “I don’t know how thrilled he would be to find out that the farm was becoming a blood-and-gore attraction.”
“That’s probably a good idea,” I said. “We’ll start the planning and the first phases of building, and then we’ll tell Benson when we’re closer to opening.”
****
Bi
tsy
It had been several days since we pried Brock Westwood out of the cornfield and sent him back home with a souvenir corncob and a few bandages. Roman and I had spent from morning until night trying to really wrap our heads around the idea of the haunt and come up with ideas. Well, I had been spending morning until night doing it, interspersed with my continued work in the fields and taking care of Lorelei. Roman joined me at whatever hour he dragged himself out of bed and that he swore was morning but always felt to me like it was sidling up on midday. We weren’t getting very far and Roman’s continued battles with the coffeemaker didn’t seem to be helping his inspiration much.
I had already decided that I wasn’t going to help him. He seemed like the kind of man who hadn’t had a whole lot of struggle in his life, though by Nia’s account I already knew he hadn’t always been as wealthy. Even so, it was easy to see that he had become accustomed to things coming easily to him and it would do him some good to have to overcome a little adversity. Not that having to brew a pot of coffee in an old model coffeemaker was something to write a Nobel Prize winning memoir of suffering about, but maybe it would give him a little extra character.
He had just finished brewing an epic failure of a pot of coffee when Roman let out an exhausted sigh.
“I need to head back to the motel,” he said. “I need to get in the shower before Day gets in the shower in her apartment and takes all the hot water.”
I looked at him strangely.
“Does that happen frequently?”
“A couple of times. Honestly, I’ve suspected that she does it on purpose since the one time that I made the misguided choice to rush to the front office in only a towel and several shampoo bubbles to inquire about the hot water.”
I nodded empathetically, then suddenly realized I hadn’t even considered the idea that Roman was still staying in the motel.
“Since you’re going to be in the Hollow at least for a little while longer, would you want to stay in my mother’s house?”
“Are you sure?” Roman asked.
“I figure if you are willing to go through this much for me, the least I can do for you is to free you from the grasps of Day. The house should still be in really good condition. I cleaned it out myself after my mother left, and unless Granddaddy fired her like he fired all the farm hands to try to save money, there’s a woman from the Hollow who’s been coming by every few weeks for years to tidy up and make sure that the house was alright. Come to think of it, I don’t know if Granddaddy ever actually does pay her. It might just be something she does. I might need to look into that. Anyway, do you want to go see it?”
Roman looked relieved as he nodded and I grabbed my keychain before leading him out and across the property toward the house. The dark made me shiver slightly the nearer we got to the house, but I didn’t let it show. There were stories behind that that I wasn’t willing to share with him yet. Maybe ever. It had been several years since I had set foot inside the house and I drew a steeling breath before unlocking the door and leading him inside. Uncomfortable feelings and sharp, painful anxiety hit me as soon as my feet touched the carpet and I stepped back, feeling my back touch Roman’s chest as I did. The feeling of his body being there in the space with me was comforting and I didn’t move as I pointed in the direction of the different rooms, explaining the layout of the house to him. I resisted to urge to include the details, the commentary that shot through my brain when I stood here.
The place where our Christmas tree stood, burned after my father came home angry.
The kitchen where my mother stood crying every morning and every night.
The bedroom I hid in.
Refusing to let the memories claim me, I detached the keys to the house from my keychain and turned around, presenting to keys to Roman.
“Here you go,” I said. “You are officially released from the Hollow Day Inn.”
Chapter Nineteen
Roman
I had to admit that not having to run from my bed took some of the sport out of going to sleep each night, but I settled happily into the house, feeling much better being closer to Lorelei and Bitsy. The first few nights had found me getting little rest, however. Though I had been excited about the idea of the haunt when I first came up with it, I was now feeling like a failure because I couldn’t figure out what to do with it. I didn’t want to directly copy the experiences that I had had with my cousins when I was younger, but I was having trouble coming up with anything else.
Late one evening after another fairly fruitless planning session with Bitsy, during which I felt any sort of bond that we had been forming slip away even further as she got more and more frustrated with me, I found myself wandering through the farm. I hoped to get a feel for it, to get more familiar with the landscape so that I could come up with an idea. Time was getting away from us quickly and even though I had already brought in construction teams to start raising buildings, demarcating trails, and continuing the clearance of the corn maze that Brock had started, there would soon be little more that they could do until we had a concrete idea.
As if my pleas to the farm had actually been heard, an idea seeped into the back of my mind and I headed back to the house, ready to sleep. Maybe this would get us started and on our way.
The next morning, I followed Bitsy around the farm, helping her with her chores as much as I could, but seemingly mostly getting in her way. Finally, she stopped, tossing a spade to the ground, and stared at me.
“Go over that again,” she said.
She took off her gloves and wiped away the sweat already beading on her face in the late July heat.
“I was saying that maybe we don’t have to come up with the idea for the haunt completely by ourselves. The whole point of us building this is so that the people of Whiskey Hollow will want to go to it and will spend money too, right?”
“Right,” Bitsy said, sounding unsure of whether she was really following the plan that I was laying out for her.
“OK. So instead of us making something up completely out of the blue and surprising them when they come here, we get them involved from the very beginning. We give them a couple of basic scary ideas and let them tell us how they think that we should implement them in the haunt.”
“But how are we going to do that?”
“Did you know that Nia used to write horror stories when she was in high school?”
“She did?”
“Yes. A couple of them were actually pretty good. I personally have a theory that she did it mostly because the football team liked to read them, but I prefer not to dwell on that too much. The point is, I can have her send me a few of them if she’ll give us permission to use them. Then I can edit them up and get them ready. We’ll share them with the people of Whiskey Hollow and ask them to tell us what they think. They can choose which idea they like the most, give us suggestions for how they think it would work in the haunt, and offer up some of their own ideas. Then we can use that as the theme of the haunt. Not only would it help us to design the most effective haunt, but it would also get people talking about the attraction early. This will build up hype and help ensure bigger crowds when it opens. Even people who are terrified of the ideas that we come up with will want to come just so that they can prove that they aren’t completely terrified.”
“That could actually work,” Bitsy said.
I smiled, finally feeling like we were getting somewhere.
“Perfect. I’ll get in touch with Nia and have her send me her favorite stories. I’ll pick the two best and start revising them. You go to the newspaper office and find out how we can get the stories printed. Make sure that you have them include in the article that they shouldn’t write their names on their responses.”
“Why not?” Bitsy asked. “I thought we wanted to know what they thought.”
“We want to know what the Hollow thinks, not what each individual person thinks. Keeping names and identifying information off will be like when I review proposals for
my hotels without the coversheet. It maintains neutrality.”
“Neutrality? You are planning on publishing gory horror stories in a tiny little Hollow so that the people who live here can come up with the idea for the haunt, and you think that your biggest concern right now should be neutrality?”
She laughed and I gritted my teeth slightly. The longer I spent with Bitsy, the more infuriating she was becoming. She refused to open up to me at all, seeming to have totally shut down when I needed to go back to work for those couple of weeks before Lorelei’s birthday, and the more frustrated she got, the more stubborn and critical she got. I had to convince myself that it wasn’t always going to be this way. This was going to work and she was going to come around. Eventually she was going to see why I was doing this for her, and I wasn’t going to feel like I was running into stone every time that I tried to get a little closer.
Even as I thought this, though, I knew that in reality, I was little better. There was still so much of my past that I hadn’t told her, and the harder it was to get to know her, the more I felt myself getting pulled back into my old mentality, wondering if she was worth it, telling myself that I didn’t have to go through this. I could just go back to my life and live it. The more I felt those things, the more I closed up as well. I knew I needed to fight them, to remind myself of why I was here. It wasn’t just the baby, though giving her the father I never had was more important to me every time I saw her. This was also about Bitsy and how much I felt my life had changed from that first moment that I met her.
Chapter Twenty
The Holler Holler
August Volume One
Bitsy Galloway invites readers to read two spine-tingling tales of fear and write in telling her which you’d like to see as the inspiration for the all-new Halloween attraction at her grandfather’s farm this autumn. All input welcome, but she requests messages come without names to make sure that the voting stays neutral.