Chapter 3 #2
I slip away along the fence line while the crowd surges toward sugar and spectacle.
The fog drapes itself over the path. The jack-o’-lanterns along the rail burn lower, their faces collapsing a little, grins sagging into something tired.
My boots grind on gravel, then hush on packed dirt.
The night feels thinner here, like skin over a drum.
The crow leaves the maze sign and takes to the air. I hear the wingbeats before I see the shape. It skims low, then perches on the next post ahead like a guide I didn’t hire. Its head tilts. One glossy eye stares. My heart does a stutter-step but it’s not fear exactly.
“Not tonight,” I tell it. My voice fogs and my breath tastes like pennies.
It cocks its head as if to say, “ yeah right .”
I pass under it, and it lifts. Flits to the next post. Perches again.
Repeat. A black stitch running the seam of my route.
I pretend not to notice while noticing everything—my own footfalls, the high whistle of wind through the corn, the distant tractor grumble sagging off into silence.
Closer, a different sound—A breath that isn’t mine, matched to mine like a mockingbird.
Don’t look back. That’s how you trip. That’s how you die in movies. Besides, if it’s just a guy in a costume, looking back rewards him. If it’s ? —
Stop .
The veil is thin, I can feel it on my skin. Smell it in the air. The old stories say the dead can slip a finger through and touch your cheek. The cult had a hundred names for it.
Crossing. Black Hour. Devil’s Breath.
You can feel it if you grew up in it. The static prickle over your forearms. The way candles drown in their own wax.
The metallic taste you can’t swallow away.
The sense of angles being watched from above, as if the whole night is a chessboard and you’re a piece that forgot you can only move in straight lines.
The crow croaks once. Not loud. But the sound sinks into the dirt and hums under my boots.
I speed up.
The lights from the farm thin behind me; Main Street is a long, dark throat ahead. The trees along the ditch lean in like gossips. My shadow lengthens, elongates, slips sideways along the shallow river along the path. Another shadow slides after it a beat late.
I tell myself it’s nothing, that it’s me. I tell myself it’s anything but him .
I want it to be him so badly my teeth hurt.
That’s the worst part. Not the fear. The wanting inside it, pinned like a moth. I can’t tell where one ends and the other starts. I picture his hands on my hips, the softness of his lips against my neck?—
No. Stop.
“Text,” I tell myself out loud, like a parent. I fish my phone out and type.
Me
Leaving the farm, taking main street past the mill
40 mins i’m home or i’m dead
Miles replies instantly.
Miles
I will hunt god if u die
Me
cute. kiss jamie thru a cider donut for me
Miles
rude and hot. go home rn, Salem.
I slide the phone into my pocket and keep walking.
Gravel gives way to the old asphalt strip that passes for a road.
A single streetlight buzzes at the corner like it’s chewing the dark and losing.
My boots thud hollow. The crow drops from a pole and ghosts along beside me at head-height, then ahead, then back, flitting like a thought I can’t shake.
“Thanks for the escort,” I mutter.
The night inhales.
It’s subtle. A small theft of heat from the pocket of air around my throat. I know that feeling. It’s the moment before a hand covers your mouth. It’s the breath you take before you run but already know you won’t get away.
I don’t run. Running makes noise. Running is an admission. So I keep walking exactly this fast, exactly this measured. My palms sweat; I rub them on my dress and pretend I’m smoothing wrinkles.
A sound to my left, beyond the cattails. Not a step. A decision. The kind of quiet that has weight.
My heart knocks twice and then slips into a harder rhythm, one I know too well. The same one it found under Finn’s mouth the first time he kissed me in secret. The same one it kept while he said mine into my throat, a whisper. A fucking brand.
“Don’t,” I whisper to the night, and I don’t know if I’m telling it not to stop or not to start.
Ahead, the last turn before Main Street opens like a mouth. The crow leaps from the wire and sails it in one clean stroke, a black underline. I follow. The fog thickens at the corner, like pouring milk. The air there smells like damp stone, and long-dead fire.
My steps slow without me. My skin knows something my brain refuses. I want to turn around and I want to keep walking. I want to be caught and I want to never be seen again and all of it stacks on my ribs like hands.
“Finn,” I say barely, like if I say it small the night won’t hear.
But the night hears.
The crow croaks once. The sound is a pin in fabric, holding the dark taut so nothing slips.
I keep moving. Because if I stop I’ll shatter. Because if I run he’ll think I don’t want this. Because if I call out again and it’s not him I’ll dissolve.
Main Street’s first lamp spits weak light onto the sidewalk in front of the old mill.
The bricks sweat. The windows are dead eyes.
My reflection ghosts in one pane and startles me, then stands, stubborn as ever—short hair still damp at the ends, jacket zipped to my throat, a girl trying to look like steel with moth wings pinned underneath.
Something like footsteps unfurls behind me. Too soft for boots. Too certain for wind.
I swallow hard and force my voice out. “If you’re some asshole in a mask,” I say to the dark, “I have a key between my knuckles and a mean right hook. I will ruin your whole fucking Halloween.”
Silence, but the fog breathes.
I close my eyes for one heartbeat and let the truth bloom where it’s been waiting all night—I want it to be him. I want it like oxygen. I want it like sin.
The veil is thin enough, and the crow is watching.
I open my eyes and keep walking. “Catch up,” I whisper, to the night, to him, to the part of myself that never stopped running toward the woods and never will. “If you’re coming, then come.”
The crow launches, arrowing ahead, a black stitch pulling the street tight. I follow, every step a dare and a prayer, every breath a confession I won’t say out loud.