THE SPOTLIGHT FROM Ollie’s cruiser sliced a blazing hole through the black landscape. Only a few feet in front of them, Rosemarie and David were hunched over. Their frames were locked together, knotted in a struggle.
“I changed my mind, I changed my mind,” Alex said. “I wish we’d been wrong!”
Makani threw open her door and bolted through the icy air and muddy grass. The other three doors flung open behind her.
David twisted his body behind Rosemarie’s, securing an arm around her neck. His knife aimed for her throat. It was coated with a liquid shadow of fresh blood.
Rosemarie’s round face looked pinched and paralyzed. Makani saw the whites of her eyes like a spooked horse. Her long, straight hair leaned to one side as she held all her weight on a single leg. She clutched at the other.
Everything happened in an instant.
Alex screamed toward David. He turned in the direction of her caterwaul, angling Rosemarie toward her and leaving his back to Makani. Makani jumped on him. Everyone toppled to the ground, and Rosemarie cried out. Arms and legs and torsos tangled, and other hands were prying them apart, but Makani couldn’t tell whose hands were friendly and whose were his. Another cry shredded the night.
David wriggled out from the pile. His head turned back to them, and his eyes flashed as he recognized Makani. She was trapped, and he was right there.
But he was outnumbered. So he ran.
Rosemarie was curled up like a fallen leaf. Makani touched an unmoving shoulder, bracing for the worst. And then the girl looked up.
“Oh my God. Oh, thank God.” Makani began to weep. “Are you okay?”
“Just this leg. It hurts to move.” Rosemarie seemed a little dazed, but she gestured to the gash in her thigh. “How did you know—”
Darby dropped to his knees with a strangled sound. At first, Makani thought he’d been injured. But he was looking at Alex. Makani crawled forward.
No. Please. No.
It was starting to snow. Or maybe it had been snowing this whole time. Makani suddenly felt the cold wetness against her cheeks. She glanced up as David vanished into the maze. Plump flakes tumbled behind him through the car’s spotlight and headlights.
Ollie stood frozen above them. Maybe he was back inside the cereal aisle at Greeley’s, trying to decide whether to stay or give chase. The world felt locked in suspended animation. The only thing alive was the snow.
And then Darby released a gut-wrenching wail, and Makani knew. They all knew.
As Makani reached for Darby, Ollie shot toward the maze. Darby shuddered, hysterical, stretching to touch Alex but then pulling back his hand, afraid. The bumpy white vertebrae of her spine were exposed. Her neck had been slashed so deeply and so far across that she’d nearly been decapitated.
Makani’s skin went clammy. Bile rose in her throat.
Rosemarie pulled herself toward them but then turned away in shock.
“Call the police,” Makani said, clambering upright to face the enormous maze. The wind gusted, and the stalks swayed and rippled outward. Ollie dove into the current. So many people were in there. She couldn’t leave him to face the massacre alone. The cops were on the other side of Osborne; it would take them too long to arrive.
Rosemarie made a noise of surprise, no doubt discovering the missed calls on her phone. “It’s searching for a signal,” she said with frustration.
Makani nodded at Rosemarie and Darby. “Stay together.”
“No way.” Darby scurried to his feet, wiping tears and snot onto his sleeve. “I’m coming with you.”
Makani didn’t protest. They ran, full throttle.
Snapped cornstalks revealed David and Ollie’s entrance. The outer wall was at least a dozen stalks thick, and the brittle leaf blades scratched and tore Makani’s skin. Snow that had landed on the plants flew back into the air. Strobes burst erratically. A sinister soundtrack blared. Screams chorused nearby, and Makani’s chest seized, but the screams were followed by laughter. Just a couple of friends, stumbling across a costumed ghoul.
She exploded out from the stalks. Three guys shrieked, completely losing their shit. One of them was wearing a camouflage hoodie. Makani fell backward, but Darby caught her as he crashed through. The hoodie guy screamed again, but the other two were already cracking up. Thinking they were in on the haunted maze’s joke.
Makani took a second look.
It was a David Ware costume. The guy was also holding a plastic knife. She held back her fury to warn them. “You have to get out of here. It’s not safe!” She pointed toward the crushed cornstalks. “There are two girls out there who need your help!”
The hoodie guy grinned. “Ooooh.”
“You don’t understand,” Darby said. “David is inside the maze. He just slaughtered my best friend.”
“Ooooh,” the trio said together, louder. They shook their hands with the universal sign for spooky.
Makani couldn’t afford to give them any more time. “Which way did they go?”
Darby had the sense to look at the ground. Brace roots reached out from the soil like swollen fingers. Ears of fallen corn looked like blackened teeth and shrunken heads, their silks dangling like stringy hair. It was less muddy along the path—straw had been sprinkled over the whole thing—but it was muddy enough, and the indentations caused by two sets of running footprints were clear.
He pointed. “Here!”
The tracks led away from the point where Makani and Darby had entered the maze. “Go look! You’ll see them,” Makani shouted to the trio as she and Darby took off. As they rounded the corner, out of sight, Makani heard one of them ask, “Why weren’t they dressed up like the others?”
They traced over the doubled footprints, turn after turn. Every time someone screamed, Makani jumped. A sharp right, and teenage boy covered in blood and wielding straight razor leaped out at them. Makani and Darby shrieked and recoiled. But he was in Victorian costume, and the razor wasn’t real.
“So, you’ve found old Sweeney,” the boy said in a rough accent, somewhere between cockney and Australian. “But will you discover his secret?”
Darby’s brow rose with recognition. “Jonathan?”
“Ain’t nobody here who goes by that name, mate. The name’s Todd, Sweeney Todd, and—”
“Jonathan.” Makani didn’t know who Jonathan was, other than clearly he was from the drama club. “Did you see them? Did you see Ollie or David?”
Immediately, Jonathan dropped the act. Even in the violent strobe light, even underneath his pancake makeup, she saw belief—and then horror—register on his face. “He’s here? David Ware is here?”
“You have to warn them! You have to get everyone out of here!” Makani said.
“Go,” Darby said. “Go!”
Jonathan skittered away as Makani and Darby raced back down the trail. “Get out of the maze,” they shouted to everyone. “Get out of here, now! David is here!”
Nobody took them seriously. They either thought Makani and Darby were actors or that they were acting like obnoxious, insensitive teenagers.
It was snowing harder. Flakes swirled down and around them. Makani hunched as she ran so that she could still see the footprints through the white. Just as she feared they were chasing the wrong tracks, they busted through another wall. And there they were. Wrestling, like the days of middle school gone by.
David was on top, but Ollie had somehow managed to pin David’s dominant wrist. The knife shook in David’s hand, but he wasn’t letting go.
Makani screamed again and rushed them. David made eye contact with her just as she kicked him in the forehead. His muscles loosened. The bodies shifted. David rolled over, and Ollie scrambled away through the straw. They were both coated in mud.
Makani planted herself between them. Darby shouted, another voice called out, and Makani was knocked to the ground. The wind sucked out from her lungs.
David was above her. His knife was above her.
She closed her eyes as it came down for her heart.
A wave of blood crashed against David’s head and showered down onto her face. They gasped, and the pressure of his body released from her. Someone pulled her to her feet and held her securely, their arms wrapped around her waist and chest.
“I didn’t know what to do!” a panicked voice said.
Makani wiped the blood from her eyes. A tall girl in rectangular glasses and Victorian dress was holding a bucket. Brooke. Haley’s best friend. The blood trickled between Makani’s lips, and she tasted something sweet. Corn syrup.
A heart was beating against her back. Ollie.
She squeezed his arms. He hugged her tighter.
Darby positioned himself between them and David. Brooke was backing against the far cornstalks as David wiped the fake blood from his face. He flicked it to the ground in disgust, sneering at Darby. “It was almost you.”
“W-what?” Darby said.
“Before she moved here”—David pointed his knife at Makani—“I’d considered you.”
Darby was already in tears. “I don’t understand.”
David had more emotion in his voice than usual. He sounded angry. “You want out, but your roots are too strong. She’s the one who will leave.”
“You don’t want us to leave?” Darby said it like a plea. “We won’t. We’ll stay. We can help you. How can we help—”
David lashed forward, and Darby went down.
Makani screamed. Darby was on the ground, clutching the wound in his chest, which was gushing blood. Ollie pivoted to shield Makani—to place his body in front of hers—before releasing her to rush David. But David rushed Ollie first.
Ollie cried out near her ear. The blade sucked out. Squelched back in. Ollie’s breath was hot on her neck. Back out. She was still screaming as Ollie crumpled limply to the earth.
Another chest wound. Gaping. Their hearts, or maybe their lungs.
Her screams turned into hyperventilating gasps. A group of tweens appeared from around the bend and shrieked. David spun to attack, but Brooke was right there, and she shoved them, hustling them back through the maze.
Makani trembled between the bodies of her last remaining friends. David stared at her, predator to prey. His face was long and homely, but his entire head was dripping red as the coagulating theater blood mixed with the real blood. He swished his knife and more blood flew off and through the air. Blood was everywhere.
The terror was finally spreading outward. If the corn were an ocean, the cries were its waves. Manic, frenzied people tore through the dry vegetation.
But Ollie and Darby had stopped twitching.
Ollie and Darby were dead.
“What . . . what the fuck?” Makani said it quietly, exhausted. She was crying. Her question was rhetorical and not one she expected David to answer. But he did.
“The fuck is,” he said, “you were supposed to die two days ago, and I was supposed to have another week. But I pushed through. I made it work. And now we’re here, and soon the cops will be here, and it’s fitting that you’ll be my last.”
He stalked toward her. Backed her against an arrangement of hay bales and pumpkins and a life-size skeleton wearing a frilly Victorian corset.
“You’ll be here forever,” he said. “And I get to leave.”
“To prison,” she said.
“I was looking forward to turning myself in. But this gets me there, too.”
He actually wanted to be caught. “So, it’s about fame?” she asked. “You wanted a high body count so that you could be another Gacy? Another Dahmer?”
“Those assholes killed for sexual pleasure.”
“And you’re killing for the fun of it?”
“This isn’t fun,” David said as he lifted the knife above his head. “This is just something I have to do.”