Rosemarie tightened her grip on the pitchfork and lunged.
Traffic deadened into a complete stop. Hawaii was notorious for its impassable, two-lane roads, and it wasn’t uncommon to get stuck behind a sightseer driving fifteen-under. Yet Makani had never felt road rage more intensely than she did right now.
“Her house is right there.” Ollie gestured angrily at a plain one-story just before the corn maze. The house was set back some distance off the road.
Darby and Alex reached for their seat belts. “We’ll make a run for it,” Alex said.
“No!” Makani’s rage turned into panic. “No splitting up. We stay together.”
“I agree,” Ollie said as the cruiser inched forward.
“But we can’t just sit here,” Alex said. “David could already be there!”
Darby attempted to soothe her. “Most likely, he’s in town. It’s probably okay.”
Alex fumed. “Whose side are you on?”
Ollie craned his neck to see around the gridlock. A pickup passed, and then he sharply turned the wheel and accelerated into the oncoming lane.
A semi was coming straight toward them.
They screamed. The truck blew its horn. Ollie drove straight into the ditch beside the road and kept driving. The truck flew by, and the other drivers laid on their horns, shouting obscenities, as the cruiser hurtled down the length of the ditch, kicking up dust clouds into the night sky. The car bumped and rattled and thumped and shook.
“Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God,” Makani and Darby said together as Alex shrieked, somewhere between pleasure and fear.
They hit the Holts’ driveway, which was a dirt road. The car settled into a quieter grind, roughening as they picked up speed. Makani pointed at a small building away from the main house. Its lights were on. “There!” she said.
“Hold on,” Ollie said, an instructional warning as he veered into the pasture.
Makani, Darby, and Alex screamed again.
“There was a fucking road up there!” Makani said.
“Sorry!” Ollie said as the car barreled through the grass toward the stable. “I got caught up in the moment!”
“What are we doing?” Darby yelled.
Alex shouted with the entire force of her lungs. “We’d better not be wrong about this!”
Rosemarie didn’t grow up in rodeos for nothing. She was tough. A farm girl. And she wasn’t about to be killed by a pathetic boy with a stupid knife.
David looked astonished by the pitchfork coming at him. He dodged, but he wasn’t quick enough. The far tine gouged into his side. He cried out with shock and pain.
Startled that she’d made contact—that her weapon had slid through a living human being—she pulled it out. His body squelched as it released its hold.
He staggered backward.
“That’s right!” Rosemarie said. She kept shouting at him, but she didn’t know what she was saying. It didn’t feel like any of this was actually happening.
David ran from the stable, clutching his bleeding left side.
The horses were upset. They neighed and kicked the walls as she raced through her options: She could wait for a signal and call the police. Or she could make sure that David wouldn’t come back to kill her first.
Rosemarie gripped the pitchfork’s handle so tightly that she felt bruises forming. She took a cautious step forward. Another. And another.
As she reached the stable door, a hand shot out and grabbed the pitchfork—right above her hand. She cried out as she struggled to regain control.
David pulled her toward the ground. For some reason, he’d set down his knife to seize the pitchfork, and now he was trying to pick it back up.
Like hell he would.
Rosemarie wrenched the pitchfork from his grasp. And that’s when she became aware of a pair of headlights and a car thundering straight toward them.
They were both stunned, but David recovered first. He snatched up the knife and swiped. The blade sliced into the flesh of her right thigh. She whacked him on the back with the pitchfork. She saw him double over, and then there was a blinding white light.
And then she couldn’t see anything.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
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.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Makani ducked as the knife thunked into the pumpkin behind her head.
She ran for her life.
She fled down the path blazed by the terrified people before her—a straight line through the cornstalks. Her sneakers slapped against the churned mud as David crashed through thick stalks that hadn’t yet toppled.
She burst out from the maze into a huge thoroughfare. It looked and smelled like an abandoned traveling carnival. Plastic soda bottles, hot dogs, funnel cakes, roasted corn on the cob—everything discarded and trampled in the rush to escape. Fried food blended into a manure stench as she raced past the live enclosures. Pygmy goats. A hunched zebra. Scraggly coyotes. The animals paced and howled.
Behind her, the footfalls grew louder. She glanced back just as David was close enough to swipe. She dodged and swerved, and then careened toward the vast corn pit. The parking lot was visible on the other side of it.
A split-second decision, and she hurdled herself over the edge. Corn sprayed over the rim like a pool. She hit the kernels hard. Stitches snapped in her injured arm, and her swimming muscles were weak from disuse, but her adrenaline was pumping. Makani stood, and the kernels were nearly pelvis deep. She slog-ran toward help.
Cars and trucks jammed the parking lot with everyone trying to exit at once. She yelled at them, waving her good arm, but their shouting and honking drowned her out.
She looked over her shoulder to find David hovering at the pit’s edge. He was waiting to see what she would do, determining how he should respond. He climbed onto the rim and prepared to jump.
But he didn’t see what Makani saw behind him.
David keeled forward, knocked into the pit by a blow to the head from an iron folk-art skeleton. He face-planted into the corn. His body didn’t move.
Relief shocked Makani. “You aren’t dead!”
“No,” Darby said. “I’m not.”
Mud and snow and blood spattered his tweed sport coat. He clutched the decorative skeleton by its spinal cord. He used it to gesture at David. “But is he?”