Chapter 3 #2
We lean against the porch railing, side by side, watching the crowd with hawk eye vigilance.
“How’s it been out there?” I ask, tipping my head to where a group of teens are hanging around the entrance to the haunted trail.
"Busy, but manageable," Jasper answers, scanning the property with that predatory alertness I've come to recognize as his protective mode.
"We've got the football team running the hayrides, and Mr. Peterson is handling the corn maze.
No incidents so far, just the usual scraped knees and one kid with a pumpkin seed up his nose.
" He shifts his weight, the railing creaking beneath us.
"Sheriff's deputies did a sweep about an hour ago.
Said they're checking all the major attractions every few hours. "
I nod, feeling a tingle of unease climb up my spine.
Those “routine sweeps” are a reminder that we're all just pretending this is a normal festival.
I exhale, my breath fogging in the snap of late afternoon as I watch the sun slip behind the trees.
Around us, jack-o'-lanterns flicker to life one by one, their carved grins transforming from playful to predatory as shadows stretch across the farm.
“Time to open up the haunted trail.” Jasper says just as the first star of the evening pops up in the sky. “I’d better get going.”
I squeeze his hand, not loving the idea of splitting up with the daylight fading, but there are a dozen parents with candy-ravenous children all waiting for a proper scare, and the festival schedule is already hanging by a thread.
Before he heads off, Jasper brushes a kiss to my forehead, and hands me the twin to the battered walkie-talkies we use to keep in touch across the sprawling property. "Channel three. Holler if you need backup." His tone is joking, but I catch the edge lurking behind the words.
"Copy that, sir," I reply, giving him a crisp salute as I clip the radio to the waist of my jeans and watch as he runs across the property.
I cup my hands around my mouth. “Nice ass!” I shout after him.
He shoots me a grin over his shoulder, then disappears down the path toward the corn maze, where the orange twilight is already swallowing him up.
The haunted trail is Jasper’s pride and joy.
A half-mile loop through the dense stand of maples and oaks just east of the pumpkin patch, bordered on one side by one side by three rows of glowing scarecrows and on the other by a tangle of brambles that even deer won’t cross.
All through October Jasper makes it his mission to keep the path freshly raked, the jump-scares unpredictable, the props in a state of one-upping, and all the scare actors well-caffeinated and ready to scare the pants off of whomever dares to brave the path after dark.
The trail's become infamous for delivering at least one pants-wetting scare every year, and Jasper takes his role as scaremeister with a zeal that borders on the religious.
The last three hours seems to fly by like a witch on a broom.
Pun intended. At 8:55 p.m., we ring the closing bell and start the process of herding everyone out.
There are a few stragglers—teens hiding in the haunted maze, a couple slow-dancing to Monster Mash on the porch—but by nine, the farm is blessedly quiet.
Jasper and I do a final sweep of the patch, collecting abandoned scarves, jackets, and forgotten trash. Whiskers helps by yowling at every squirrel stupid enough to loiter after dark.
After verifying that all the hayride wagons and farm machinery are secure, we finally lock up the barn and head for the house.
I collapse onto the porch swing and let Jasper tuck a blanket around my shoulders.
He sits next to me, pulling me close, and together we stare out over the moonlit fields.
The jack-o'-lantern army glows along the fence line, their crooked grins and triangle eyes watching over the land.
“You think we’ll survive tomorrow?” I ask, already half asleep.
He squeezes my hand. “If we don’t, at least we’ll go out with a bang.”
I snort and nestle into his side, the tension in my bones melting as I listen to the distant hoot of an owl and the gentle rustle of wind in the corn.
I can't feel my feet anymore, my brain has turned to sugar fluff, and my eyelids droop with the weight of the day, but here beside Jasper, overlooking our little empire of pumpkins and terror, I find myself believing we'll weather whatever comes.
And the bone-deep exhaustion transforms into something I wear proudly, like a medal pinned to my chest rather than an anchor dragging me down.
Whatever’s waiting for us beyond the rise of the morning sun, at least we’ll be in it together.
***
The house is colder than it should be. I wake to a darkness that’s thick and woolly, pressing in through the windows like a damp towel. The digital clock on the nightstand reads 5:12, the green digits burning through the black. I reach for Jasper, out of habit, but the sheets beside me are empty.
His pillow is cold.
His smell is gone.
I yawn, stretching my arms above my head.
He probably just got up early, sneaking out to get a jump on the day's festival prep. It’s something he’s done a dozen times before, and with the crowds being what they were yesterday, and the curfew squeezing every hour for what it’s worth, I can't really blame him for wanting to squeeze in a few extra hours.
Still, I miss the snuggles.
Something prickles at the back of my neck, and I sit up, blinking at the weird hush in the house. There are no footsteps overhead, no sounds from the kitchen, no Jasper humming tunelessly as he stokes the stove or loads up a crate of supplies.
The only thing more alarming than an absent Jasper is a silent Jasper.
I swing my legs over the side, feeling for the fuzzy slippers he claims make me look like a discount Ewok. The floorboards are brittle with cold. Every creak is a gunshot in the quiet.
I wrap a robe tight around myself and shuffle down the hall. The air smells off. Not like a bad scent, but one that just feels wrong.
Stale.
Still.
Like all the warmth and cinnamon-sugar happiness from last night’s festival has curdled into something tense and acidic, clinging to the walls.
The bathroom door hangs open, revealing an empty space lit only by the nightlight's feeble glow. I push it open all the way. There is no steam on the mirror, no damp towel on the rack, and Jasper’s toothbrush sits dry in its holder.
My stomach drops.
“Jas?” I call out, my voice shattering the hush so completely that I flinch.
Nothing.
I try again, louder this time. “Jasper?”
Still nothing.
Whiskers skids into the hall from where I left him on the bed, eyes wide and red as flares in the half-light.
He’s got his hackles up, a stripe of fur like a bad toupee running from his skull to his tail.
“Someone has been here.” Whiskers hisses, his voice pitched low and urgent. "I can smell them."
My heart thuds against my chest. "What do you mean, someone's been here?"
"I mean exactly what I said." He's trembling now, his tiny body vibrating with tension.
I crouch down, and Whiskers leaps into my arms, sniffing the air with deliberate care.
“There is no way someone could get in the house with the number of wards that are up.” I say, though I’m not sure which of us I’m trying to convince.
“Besides, there were a ton of people here just yesterday. You’re probably just smelling one of them. ”
"I know what I smell, Delia. This is different. Fresh.”
I move through the kitchen, each step a fresh round of anxiety.
The back door is slightly ajar, just a hair, and a breath of wind creeps through, making the curtains dance.
My hand shakes as I pull the door wide, stepping out onto the porch.
The hush is even deeper here, like the world took a breath and never let it out.
There’s a heaviness I can’t shake, a tension that bends the darkness over the heads of the trees and the fields.
For the first time in years, I’m legitimately afraid of stepping off my own porch. The feeling crawls over me, unfamiliar and slicing, like a paper cut you don’t see until you bleed on the page. Cold air gnaws at my ankles as I step off the bottom step, the grass brittle under my slippered feet.
The grounds are empty. Or at least, they look empty.
I scan the backyard, the pumpkin patch, the fence line. Not even a stray crow hopping from stalk to stalk.
Each step feels like wading through cement, my breath hanging in clouds before me. My fingers tremble against the protection charm dangling at my throat. Whiskers has gone quiet. Now, he’s just a rigid bundle of white fur draped across my arms, his nose twitching at something I can't detect.
Suddenly, he points his paw past the barn and toward the pumpkin patch. “Over there!” he urges.
The flood lights come on as we pass the barn basking the patch in bone-white halogen.
We’re halfway through the patch when I see a disturbance in the sea of orange—a trail of trampled vines and splintered stems, leading toward the old scarecrow at the far edge.
The figure looms in the fog, arms outstretched as if to block the way.
Whiskers leaps from my shoulder and tears ahead through the pumpkin vines, his white fur a ghostly streak on the dark ground.
My heart thrashes as I sprint after Whiskers, bashing my knees on cold pumpkins and nearly losing a slipper to the sucking mud.
Whiskers stops dead ten feet from the scarecrow, his tiny spine arched and tail fully Brillo’d, and he emits a sound I’ve never heard from him before like a wet, warbling mewl that cracks and dies in the air.
It doesn’t take me long to see what has Whiskers so upset. Lying at the base of the scarecrow, half-buried in fallen leaves and trampled pumpkin vines, is Jasper.
My world collapses.
I can’t breathe. Can’t move. Can’t…process what I’m seeing.
He’s sprawled on his back, his head at an unnatural angle, one arm flung out as if reaching for something, still glazed over with ice.
His eyes are open, staring at nothing, the rich brown now flat and dull like muddy pennies.
His skin has a waxy, blue-gray pallor that no living person could wear, and there’s a dark puddle painting the ground beneath him.
And his chest…where his heart should be, there's nothing but a ragged cavity.
I clap a hand over my mouth to stop the scream that's building, but it breaks free anyway, a ragged, animal sound that tears my throat raw.
My knees buckle beneath me. The pumpkin patch, the scarecrow, the whole universe contracts to this single point of impossible truth.
I grab his shoulders, shaking him as if he's just playing some cruel joke.
"Wake up,Jas," I rasp, my voice a stranger's.
“Wake up!” I shake him again. “Please. You—you promised me forever, you shit. You promised.”
His face is locked in a terrible stillness, with his mouth half-open as if caught mid-gasp, and his eyes wide and empty as abandoned windows.
I cup his cheeks between my palms, my thumb tracing the rough stubble I'd complained about just yesterday morning, willing those vacant brown eyes to focus on me again.
They don’t.
They won't ever again.
I collapse over him; my body wracked with sobs that feel like they're tearing me in two.
This can't be real. It can't be. Just last night we were laughing on the porch swing, planning for today's festival crowds.
Just last night his hand had been warm in mine, his laugh rumbling in the darkness as we fell asleep.
How can he just be…gone?
I feel Whiskers press against my side, his small body trembling as much as mine. He doesn't speak, just presses his furry head against my arm in silent support.
I don't know how long I kneel there, cradling Jasper's head in my lap, rocking back and forth as if the motion might somehow bring him back, somehow rewind time to before this happened.
The world blurs through my tears, and my throat burns raw from the desperate sobs that wrench themselves from my chest.
"Delia." Whiskers's voice is barely audible. "We need to do something…call someone."
He’s right.
We should do something.
My hands move without conscious thought, gently lying Jasper’s head back on the ground before finding their place over the ragged hollow of his chest. I pull on my magic and begin whispering every incantation I can remember—protection, healing, binding, everything.
My fingers glow with desperate gold, sparks leaping from my nails and sizzling against the morning dew.
And still, he lies motionless beneath me.
Without his heart, there is no hope.
I rock back on my heels, my trembling hands leaving smears of his blood across my face as I wipe away tears.
The wound in Jasper's chest isn't jagged or torn.
It's a perfect circle, like someone traced the outline with a compass before carving.
Clinical. Deliberate. This wasn't some frenzied attack in the dark.
Someone took their time with my husband, harvesting exactly what they came here.
This is the same signature as the others. Thomas. Heather. Dan. And now Jasper.
My Jasper.
Whiskers crawls into my lap and curls up, his nose brushing my wrist, as he whispers, “I’m so sorry, Delia.”
“It’s not your fault,” I say, but I don’t really hear myself.
I rest my forehead against Jasper’s, breathing in what remains of his scent. “I failed you, love,” I murmur. “I should have known.”
Dawn bleeds across the horizon. Soon I'll have to share him with the authorities and then they'll take him away, and after that, I don't know. I can't even picture what comes next.
The only certainty left in my shattered world is this…whoever carved out my husband's heart will answer to me. I will hunt them to the edges of existence. And if I have to reduce this town to ashes and salt the earth beneath it, so mote it be.