glanced at Crow, who was now helping another set of kids climb onto a second flatbed that stood at the far corner of the barn; a third tractor and flatbed was already vanishing into the far distance where the complex maze through the cornfields began. Claire was with him, sipping a Diet Pepsi that someone had given her, and chatting airily to Crow, sharing the highlights.
The shorter staffer said, “Oh, ya think?”
It took them a couple more minutes to convince the huddled teens on the flatbed that everything was all right. It was the jock who broke the spell. He forced a laugh that was supposed to sound like he knew it all the time. “It’s all planned,” he said. “Those two—the girl, the kid that got killed—all part of the show.” He patted his girlfriend’s arm. “I knew it all along. It’s more fun if you play along.”
She looked up at him with a measure of contempt on her face. “Tommy…you screamed like a girl.”
She hopped down and trotted off to the bathroom on wobbly legs, leaving the jock to try and paste on a look of cool indifference. His expression would have been more convincing if his face weren’t gleaming with sweat despite the forty-six-degree temperature.
Over at the barn, Malcolm Crow handed the tractor keys to an older man who wore an ancient Pine Deep Scarecrows ball cap over a perpetually sour face.
“Coop,” Crow said, still grinning, “you should’ve seen the looks on their faces. Jee-sus!” He laughed bent over, hands on his knees, ribs convulsing, shaking his head back and forth like a dog. “Claire and Billy—I’m telling you, Coop, we’re not paying those kids enough. I’m talking Academy Award performances. Damn near had me going.”
Coop just smiled and nodded, but his mouth had a sour twist to it. He wasn’t a bright guy at the best of times and generally didn’t like extremes. Like some of the other staffers, he thought Crow’s latest addition to the Haunted Hayride was a little over the top. He remembered days when the hayride just had kids in fright masks jumping out and going Boo! Simple stuff. Not this weird blood and guts nonsense. It meant adding a bunch of new staffers, including three sets of kids from the Theater Department of Pinelands College to play the doomed couple, one for each of the attraction’s three tractor-pulled flatbeds.
Coop didn’t think the owner, Terry Wolfe, would approve either, but the problem there was that Mr. Wolfe was also the town mayor and he never—ever—came out to the hayride. To him it was just a seasonal cash cow, and he gave Crow a free hand to do with it as he pleased.
Lately Crow seemed pleased only when the kids came back half a tic away from a genuine coronary. Coop watched Crow laugh it out and when he saw that Crow was looking at him, he measured out half a spoonful of smile.
He said, “What are you going to do if we get some kid from Philadelphia or Trenton who’s got a gun tucked down the back of his pants? Half the kids these days have guns. Bang! There’s Billy or maybe one of the ghouls shot and killed. That might not be so funny.”
Crow rolled his eyes and shook his head. “Never happen. Everyone knows this is a haunted hayride. Things are supposed to jump out at you.”
“Yeah, maybe.”
Crow checked his watch. “I’m probably going to do the nine-fifteen tour and then I’m out of here. Think you can handle it the rest of the night?”
“Have so far,” Coop said, trying to convey through his tone that having run the attraction for fourteen years before the owner had made Crow the general manager, he could somehow find it in himself to slog through another night.
If he caught the sarcasm, Crow made no sign. Instead he clapped Coop on the shoulder and went through the barn into the office.
In the office, Malcolm Crow settled into the leather swivel chair behind the desk, propped his crossed heels on the edge of a stack of boxed T-shirts, and tugged his cell phone out of his jeans pocket. He hit a speed-dial number with a thumbnail and held it to his ear.
She picked up on the third ring. “Hey,” she said, her voice husky and breathless.
“Mmm,” he said, “sounds like I interrupted you in the middle of some sordid sexual adventure.”
Val Guthrie’s dry snort was eloquent. “Yeah. I’m having wild and crazy sex with my Stairmaster.”
“You harlot.”
“I think I climbed the equivalent of Mount Rainier. I’m all sweaty, but my buns are like steel.”
“Whereas I get my strength through purity.”
“Crow, if that’s the source of your strength you would be able to bench press a daffodil.”
“So young to be so hardened.” He clucked his tongue a few times.
“Are you coming over tonight, or are you going to stay there and increase the therapy bills of every teenager in four counties?”
“I’ll be over, baby,” he said. “But—you should have heard the screams. That last trap I built—the one with the living dead dragging the kid out of the cart? Man oh man, was that hot!”
There was a slight pause and Crow could imagine her sighing and shaking her head. “You are a very, very, very strange man.”
“Your point being?”
“Oh, shut up and come over here so we can engage in something a bit more wholesome than blood and gore.”
“Hmmmm,” he said, drawing it out.
“I’ll take a nice hot shower and I’ll be all pink and clean when you get here.”
“I don’t know, I think I prefer you sweaty.”
“I don’t mind getting sweaty all over again,” she said sweetly, and hung up.
Crow leaned back in his chair and pictured her—slim, strong, with black hair and a crooked nose, and the most intelligent eyes he’d ever seen. Eyes that went all smoky and out of focus when they made love.
Suddenly gore and ghouls had less immediate appeal.
He looked at his watch. Almost time to take out his last batch, and after that it would be off to Val’s farm, and maybe a long walk in the cornfield to a spot where they both liked—well away from the house—where they sometimes made love under the stars. Even on cold nights like this one.
Crow got up and shoved his cell back into his pocket as he walked through the barn to the field. The staff would be herding the next group of kids onto the flatbed, but Crow didn’t watch them. Instead he turned and looked east. Val’s farm was that way. Miles and miles away, across seas of waving corn and knobbed fields of pumpkins. There were no lights at all in that direction, and there would be no spray of stars tonight. The sky was a uniform and totally featureless black that stretched forever.
He felt wonderfully happy. The hayride was a success, even if it did push the limits—a fact he’d never openly admit—and Val Guthrie was the most wonderful woman on earth.
Then, without warning, he shuddered. A deep shudder that raised gooseflesh along his arms and made all the hair on his scalp twitch and tingle. Somewhere beyond the veil of black nothingness
