The Thicket, page 15
“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 noise comes again, above the wind. A flurry of breaking corn. Then nothing.
From somewhere farther 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 farther 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 closer to 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 gray-and-white lips, glowing faintly in the dark.
Ben grins and looks at 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 focused on Tyson again. She glances at Ben, who smiles reassuringly. Didn’t anyone else hear it the whimper? “James, do you think that might have been Maren?” she asks.
Tyson tilts his head 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—and Jamie lets him. Who does he think he is? They’ve known each other for about two hours.
Jamie turns her head to look at 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, okay?”
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 Tyson, already hearing the wet, slurping 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 seventy percent to forty in the past fifteen minutes, a little lower each time she checks her texts with the roaming drain in Declo.
Nothing.
A faint swishing 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 in the dark.
She doesn’t.
And even though she knows there’s no real reason to worry—that it was probably just a scream—she suddenly feels very afraid.
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 closed the gap between them, 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 she was with looked between her and the knife as if she would give—or deny—permission to fight.
He’d moved closer, backing her farther 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 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. His pulse rises 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.
Freckle Face 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 target 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. He could usually hear the trespassers who drove to the landfill gate and then snuck in. 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.
His pulse throbs in his neck. He studies the new boy’s face through the eye holes 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 Freckle Face, 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 Freckle Face’s legs. It was considerate 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 Freckle Face’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 farther, 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 stares. 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 she falls back onto her hip.
In the glow of the penlight, the snowstorm of sawdust at her feet is turning a mottled red.
Then 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. Freckle Face 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 gloves 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 a voice, drifting from the direction of the maze.
He listens, waiting as the wind crests then dips.
It’s a girl.
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.
His gaze lingers on 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.
The familiar trickle of adrenalin pulses in the pit of his stomach as he tucks the two remaining rolls of tape back into his pocket then carefully arranges the knife next to 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.
They’ll find the phones. Later.
As he enters the outer maze, the girl’s voice is briefly audible again, muddled by the rasping stalks inside the maze. When the sound disappears, he hears another voice. Lower, but not by much. A boy, this time.
He listens intently as he moves along the corn in the general direction of the calls, pausing while he waits for the sound to come again. Marco.
Head cocked, he peers down the long corridor of the outer maze. The wind swells, and when it dies he hears a shriek from the opposite direction. Then nothing.
It’s getting late. Almost 9:00 now, by the position of the Big Dipper.
He considers this, then walks toward the eastern edge of the maze.
Despite the size of the maze, it only takes ten minutes to get from one edge to another—when you have the convenience of a straight shot through the outer maze anyway.
When he reaches the east corner, he can just see the bales of hay at the maze entrance, where a spotlight blazes at the edges of the dark, buzzing plaza.
The old guard is still there, still sitting down in the hay. At this distance, it’s impossible to make out the expression on his face. But from the way he is stooped over his knees, he’s either tired or bored. Probably both.
Satisfied, he turns back the way he came. As he walks, he listens, but he doesn’t hear the boy or the girl calling anymore. Just the usual drifting screams as the wind cuts then rises.
When he sees the dark, narrow roof of the old mill above the waving stalks, he feels the pull toward the secrets it contains.
Three. There’s no need to force the numbers.
As he starts to walk back toward the mill, he hears a sudden peal of laughter.
It can’t be more than a few yards away.
So he stops, listens, and carefully makes his way toward the sound.
A few minutes later he’s rewarded with a wet, slurping noise.
