Chapter Six
Hazel
“You haven’t been eating a bunch of junk food, have you?” my mother asked from my phone set in the holder on my dashboard.
Sitting in the lot at work, I leaned back against the headrest, closed my eyes, and let out a slow breath, seeking some patience.
After our usual hellos and how-are-yous, that was the first thing she asked.
Not about my new job, about my apartment, whether I’d made any friends, or if I missed home.
If I’d been eating junk.
I bit back the knee-jerk reaction to lie, to assure her that I was doing exactly what she raised me to do—count and villainize every calorie.
“So much,” I admitted. “Work has these awesome apple cider donuts. And this area has the best pizza I’ve ever tasted.”
There was a beat of silence, my mother trying to wrap her head around this new dynamic.
“Have you found any good gyms? Pilates classes? You can’t neglect your core as you’re aging.”
“I’ve been taking some hikes. And my job is very active,” I told her. “How have things been down there? How’s Hannah?”
The topic of my baby sister always got my mom off the topic of ragging on me. She talked about her for a solid twenty minutes before my break was over and I had to say my goodbyes.
I expected to feel the same twinge of homesickness I’d been feeling each time I talked to my family since the move. This time, though, all I felt was a deep sense of rightness about where I was.
It seemed like the physical distance had finally allowed me to untangle the messy web of our mother/daughter relationship and emerge from it more independent than I’d been in Florida.
Grabbing my coffee, I took the last sip, closed my eyes, and leaned to look out the sunroof at the night sky dotted with stars.
Just a moment of calm before the chaos continued.
A loud knock on the window had me jolting forward, a scream caught in my throat.
My head whipping to the side, I caught sight of one of my new hires, a tall, skinny guy who played a really good machete-wielding psycho.
Half of his face was painted white; the other half, black. His entire outfit was tight and black as well.
He was too young for me, but I understood why so many of the teens and young women swooned over him when he came running toward them. Or, better yet, when he started slowly stalking around them.
The guy probably got twenty phone numbers a shift.
“Jesus, Ant, you scared the hell out of me,” I said as I opened my door.
“That is my job.”
“In the woods. Where you belong. What are you doing out here?”
“Well, there’s no easy way to say this, but someone in the last group blew chunks all over the path.”
“Oh, lovely,” I grumbled. “Good thing I don’t have a weak stomach. I’ll go grab a shovel.”
“You’re kind of the boss here. Why don’t you make someone else do it?”
“Feels unfair to make a bunch of kids making minimum wage deal with throw-up,” I said, shrugging.
“Why? It’s good practice for all the late-night basement parties in their future.”
“Speaking from experience?” I asked as he reached behind his ear to produce a cigarette, then flicked open one of those fancy, reusable lighters.
“Maybe,” he said, lighting the cigarette.
“Come on, isn’t your generation too smart for those things?”
“Could switch to weed when I’m working if that’d make you more comfortable,” he offered, shooting me a smirk.
“Yeah, no,” I said, getting a little chuckle from him.
“Just make sure you put that out before you get back to the guest areas,” I demanded, going behind the shed to grab one of the shovels.
“Will do, boss,” Ant said before sauntering away.
I grabbed a bucket, lined it with a black garbage bag, then made my way toward the path as all the performers made their way out, weapons down at their sides, some already wiping off their makeup, others discussing their plans to head to a restaurant for some food.
“Have a good night, guys,” I called, getting a chorus of goodbyes as they all made their way toward the parking lot.
When I first started this job, there was a creepy factor to the woods at night, with all the tree branches casting shadows, the leaves falling, catching me off guard and making my heart stutter.
After a few treks through it with scream tracks, spooky laughter, and chants from creepy little kids filtering through the speakers, the sound of the crickets chirping and the leaves crunching became kind of soothing.
Pulling the headlamp off the carabiner on my belt loop, I put it on my head and set it to the brightest setting so I could make sure to find all of the ick.
I pulled down some of the ropes so I could move deeper into the woods to toss the shovelfuls of sick and dirt.
I was on my way back from the third trip when something to the side caught my eye.
“Hello?” I called.
My hair pricked, and a little shiver slid down my spine as I realized that everyone who worked at the garden center was long gone and I was all alone.
Maybe the smart move was just to turn around and walk away, to show up early the next day and inspect things in the daylight.
But the manager in me—and you know, my moral compass—didn’t want to walk away in case someone was hurt.
I mean, sure, it seemed like someone clearly moved off the marked path again.
But that didn’t mean I could leave them there if they were passed out drunk or suffering from some sort of medical emergency.
I inched closer, my headlamp shining on the body on the ground, the white t-shirt splashed with blood.
“Oh, ha ha,” I called to the woods, my voice raised. “Playing a prank on the boss. Very funny. Is that you, Stewart?” I called, taking in his larger frame.
Normally Stewart carried a chainsaw, though. And that was a big knife on the ground beside him, the stage blood looking almost black in the low light.
“Alright. That’s enough, guys. You know this won’t work on me. I don’t have a reaction to jump scares anymore.”
There was a little quiver in my voice that betrayed my words, though.
“Bobby, get up. You’re going to be filthy.”
The leaves crunched under my feet, the sound making my pulse ratchet up.
“Come on. This is stupid.”
Without realizing it, my gaze was trained on the guy’s back, like something was needling me about the sight up ahead.
As I crept closer, my stomach churned harder as my fingers clenched around the shovel handle.
I started to stare, unblinking. As I did, sweat trickled down from my neck, tracking my spine.
Five seconds passed.
Ten.
Twenty.
And the guy’s chest didn’t appear to be rising and falling.
“Hey, uh, Bobby…”
Only as I got closer could I see things I had missed before.
Namely, that this guy’s hair was darker and shorter than Bobby’s light brown that he always had pulled into a hideously thin man bun at the top of his head.
This wasn’t one of my employees.
This wasn’t some silly, harmless workplace prank.
Someone else was in the woods long after the crowds had left, after my coworkers had gone home for the night.
And he didn’t seem to be breathing.
“Hey,” I called, trying not to focus on his clothes. Maybe he was just dressed for the occasion with stage blood spread across his white tee.
I mean, that was weird. But not outside the realm of possibilities.
As were the knife cuts in his shirt.
“Hey, you have to get going… the tours are over.” My breath was caught somewhere under my ribcage as I took the last step. “Are you okay?” I asked.
There was no sound, no movement.
“Hey,” I called, voice choked as I stuck out a leg and gently poked his hip. “Hey, are you o—” I poked him again, harder this time.
His body wobbled, then fell face-forward into the ground.
“Shit,” I hissed, reaching down to grab his belt loop and pull him onto his back.
Only to wish I hadn’t done so.
His dirty face was staring up at me, open-eyed, slack-jawed, face caught in pain and terror for eternity.
Because he was dead.
And that ‘stage blood’ all over him? Those fake stab marks through his shirt? That was all real.
Because there were more wounds to his front. And one hideous gash across his throat.
A gasp caught in my own throat as I staggered back. My pulse stumbled, then started up again, my heartbeat tripping over itself.
Stabbed.
Someone had been stabbed in the woods just a couple dozen yards away from the path where a hundred people or more passed by, completely unaware. The crime was covered up by creepy sounds on speakers and genuine screams from people who paid to be terrified.
Crime.
The word became a chorus in my mind as I whipped around, sure the perpetrator might be right behind me, ready to ratchet up the body count.
My hand tightened around the handle of the shovel, the wood biting into my palms as I turned around and around until I was dizzy, my gaze scanning the tree line, looking for eyes, for the puff of breath, some sign that I wasn’t alone.
Belatedly, I reached up, flicking off my headlamp, not wanting to draw attention to myself if there was someone nearby.
If nothing else, I had the home-field advantage. No one knew the paths and woods better than I did at this point.
I couldn’t say how long I stood there, just pulse and panic, a strangling sensation closing around my throat, squeezing the air from my lungs.
At some point, though, my legs carried me back over toward the body, some part of me wanting to deny it, to look again and see that I was mistaken, that it was just a super-realistic horror decoration.
I wanted more than anything to be overreacting, to have been tricked by clever artistry and my own eyes.
The body was still lying there, staring unseeing up at the half-bare tree limbs above.
This time, the only light on him was cast down from a mostly full moon, casting him in more eerie shadows. It should have made him seem more fake, more plastic, less believable.
Somehow, though, he only looked more real to me, the light catching on a slight bit of wetness still in his mouth, the glassiness of his eyes, the imperfect, uneven eyebrows.