Chapter Eight
I get closer and I can tell immediately that it’s not Dylan. He’s way too tall.
“Jonas!” I shout his name, but he doesn’t turn back. My voice doesn’t carry in the stagnant air. It won’t reach him to hear.
He’s headed for the ravine that spills down into the woods and if he falls… I’m not sure I’ll be able to pull him back out. So, I run—grimacing the whole way. These boots were made for aesthetics, not athletics.
I reach him as he gets to the edge and recoil at what I see below. Eyes wide, I lurch away, grabbing his arm. I fall backward onto my ass, dragging him down with me. He’s as stiff as a felled tree.
“Jonas.” Even though I know he can hear me, he doesn’t react to his name. His eyes are like Julia’s were in the living world: all black and vaguely terrifying.
The lights are on, but no one’s home.
When I stand, he struggles to get up. Flailing like he’s a creature with a carapace, he doesn’t even try to bend at the waist.
As he works to get to his feet, I look down at what he would have fallen into.
It looks like a set from a horror film.
The ground is covered in coals with skeletal remains half buried in them.
“Fucking hell.” I mutter under my breath.
“That’s where we are,” Julia says, floating on the other side of him, scowling down at the scene.
Jonas finally gets to his feet… And immediately starts for the ravine again.
“What are you doing?” I ask as I catch him, but he’s not really here.
“Jonas, look at me.” He doesn’t respond to his name and I finally give up, slapping him. “Jonas.”
But his gaze is fixed on the burning bodies at the bottom of the slope and he licks his lips.
“His hell is a stronger draw than you are right now,” Julia says.
“Okay, so what do we do?”
“We should get him someplace he can’t see this anymore. That should help. If it doesn’t, we can take him back to the house and shove him through—which will take time—or… we can find a place to put him.”
“Why does he want to go down there so badly?”
She glances down again. “He doesn’t see what you see.”
“What on Earth could make him want to go there?”
“We’re not on Earth anymore. And he sees dozens of beautiful, naked people beckoning to him.” She looks at me askance. “He’s here because he’s lusty—because he lusted for you—his hell tried to draw him in with it.”
That makes me pause. “Am I down there?”
“Yes. You and several others.”
“Gross.”
She shrugs. “It’s hell.”
She tries to help me with him, but her hands pass straight through him. Offering an apologetic smile, she says, “He might be able to see me here, but it looks like I can’t interact with him directly any more than I could in the living world.”
If I can get him into the corn maze, that will break his line of sight.
“Do you think the scarecrow stake in the middle of the cornfield will hold him? If we can’t get him to come back to us?”
“I don’t know. This wasn’t here when I was alive. Would it hold him in the living world?”
“It’s meant to stop kids from knocking it down. And the scarecrow is held up with chains. I can use those to keep him there.”
“It might.”
And “might” is the best I can hope for right now.
I have to drag him, bodily, away and even once he’s broken sight of the embers and skeletal remains below, he struggles to get back to it.
But the further we get, the less he fights me.
“The corn should help calm him down, right?” I ask, hoping .
“It will act like a buffer.”
When I drag him into the maze, following a path I memorized long ago, he does settle.
My nerves don’t.
“Genevieve?” Jonas’s head tips back and he looks at me like he’s drunk and just come out of a black out.
“Hey,” I say, stopping and taking a moment to breathe. “How you feeling?”
He grimaces and says… “I don’t think you want to know.”
“Tell me anyway.”
Wincing, he says, “You know how they tie up bulls to make them buck in bull riding? Yeah… it’s like there’s a rope pulling me the opposite direction you are.” He steps away from me.
“I can’t let you go back there.”
“Why not?”
“There’s no gentle way to break this to you… we’re in hell.”
His eyes finally clear and he looks all around. “Oh.”
I expected more. I expected…
He flinches, breaking my grip on one hand and I grab him again, as quick as I can.
“What is that?”
I look to where he’s staring. “That’s Julia.”
“Julia the poltergeist, Julia?”
“Yep.” I test letting go of him and he starts to sway toward the maze exit. I don’t even think he’s doing it on purpose.
“So… we summoned her and she dragged us to hell?”
“No. The summoning worked, but… a different spell messed up. You and Dylan got pulled down here and we came to get you back.”
“Rescued by a poltergeist, that’s a new one.” He laughs, but it cuts off abruptly when he looks back.
“Jonas?”
His face snaps to me and he opens his eyes wide, head weaving.
Julia drifts close beside me, but she stares at him. “If I let you go, hell is going to try to drag you back to your specific entrance.”
He flinches, looking at her like he’s not sure she’s really there. “Oh, you can talk.”
And he can hear her.
His eyes dart around us. “I thought we were already in hell?”
“We’re in limbo,” I say.
“Wait.” He gets to standing and sways a little. “Limbo… Does that mean this is like. Junior year of high school ‘Dante’ hell?”
“Kind of.”
He doesn’t pull away from me as much now that his back is to the ravine.
Brows pinched, he scowls… “What hell am I destined for?”
“Lust tried to pull you in.”
He moves his head like a glitching animatronic and something bright flashes behind his eyes. “Oh… I remember now.”
I look away from the boner that has just tented his pants. “Maybe try not to.”
I test letting him go again and he starts to turn.
He holds up his other hand like he’s pledging an oath. “I promise I’m not trying to do that.”
“I know.” Which means we still need that chain. “Let’s go get something to tie you to me so that we don’t have to hold hands the whole time.”
He nods and I have to tug him along, but he doesn’t fight me anymore, so it’s a little like hauling around a six foot five toddler.
The corn stalks are an ugly purple brown and the corn inside their husks look both popped and rotten. I doubt the fuzz growing on them is anything as nice as huitlacoche. That would be a welcome sight.
This… I shiver.
Ick .
Jonas steps on one of the fallen ears and it oozes as it turns to goo beneath his shoe.
He groans and tries to scrape it off. “Fucking gross.”
“Luckily, it won’t go back to the living world with you,” Julia says, and Jonas looks up at her again.
His earlier confusion has been replaced by something a little more like awe. And I think he might be following her more than he is me.
The scarecrow at the center of the maze hangs lopsided. It almost looks like a living man. I can’t take the time to worry about that.
“Okay… when did your grandmothers start hanging up dead men for scare crows.” Jonas looks up at it with wide eyes.
“They didn’t. It’s just one of hell’s tricks.” I say as I unhook the chain with one hand.
The scarecrow falls into the cornstalks and I leave him there.
“Are you sure?” Jonas asks. “Because that looked just like the guy in my ten am poli-sci class.”
I look at Julia and she shrugs. “If he died here and hasn’t gotten to his hell yet, he might be a ‘real boy’.”
Jonas grimaces. “Sure, but Pinocchio didn’t have his chest ripped open.”
I get Jonas wrapped up in the chains, threading them through his belt loops and using a bolt to secure them.
But I don’t wrap him around myself. If I need to drop him, or tie him up to something else, I want to be able to do it quickly.
When I look up again, Jonas has turned back toward the ravine, his neck twisted at too far of an angle.
“Hey!” I snap my fingers next to his ear. “Don’t give into that. You can find a willing partner in the living world. One that will actually sleep with you instead of torturing you for eternity.”
He stares vacuously toward the hell that wants to claim him.
“He’ll probably slip in and out like that.” Julia says.
But when she moves in between him and the ravine, his unfocused gaze turns to her and he turns, like she’s got him by the nose.
“If we lead, he’ll follow.” She looks toward the path into the maze. “For now.”