Welcome to Doom Farms

by Karsten Knight

  “If we can’t outrun her, then maybe we can at least outmaneuver her!” I finally responded.

  I took a sharp right-hand turn, then a left. We followed a zigzag path, taking so many random turns that after a while even I wasn’t sure where we were in the maze.

  When we could no longer hear the racket of the queen’s trail of destruction, Charlie and I paused to catch our breath by the festival’s carousel. It had gone dark and silent for the night. We got off our bikes and crouched down behind one of the plastic horses as we listened for any sign of the creature.

  “Do you think we lost it?” I whispered when I heard nothing.

  “The queen hatched five minutes ago,” Charlie replied hopefully. “How smart could she possibly be?”

  It was then I saw a shadow drift over Charlie’s face.

  I gazed up as a thorny tail rose over the curtain behind us.

  28

  The barb on the scorpion’s tail split open and aimed straight at us. I could sense something bad was about to happen.

  “Watch out!” I cried. I pushed Charlie out of the way, and then dove in the opposite direction.

  From the end of the tail, a geyser of neon blue liquid sprayed through the space where we had been crouching a moment earlier. The substance coated a plastic horse on the carousel instead.

  To my horror, the horse began to melt off its pole. Smoke rose off its mane in a cloud. In a matter of seconds, it formed a puddle on the carousel platform.

  “Great, now it’s spewing acid?” Charlie yelled as we scampered to the other side of the carousel. “What’s next, breathing fire?”

  “Don’t jinx us!” I shouted back.

  The queen started to stalk us around the carousel, but then she abruptly stopped. In the distance, the sounds of chatter and laughter echoed through the orchard.

  It was coming from the town hall.

  We had gotten so lost in the maze that we had inadvertently led her closer to the potluck supper.

  Realizing that a much larger dinner awaited her elsewhere, the queen lost interest in us. She started to skitter in the direction of the celebration, where she would have access to a buffet of hundreds of townspeople.

  Including my parents.

  I would not let that happen. In a fit of desperation, I did the most insane thing I could think of:

  I ran over to the row of burning jack-o’-lanterns that lined the nearest path.

  I scooped one up.

  And I hurled that pumpkin with all my might at the awful queen.

  29

  Direct hit. The pumpkin sailed across the distance between us and exploded against the creature’s exoskeleton. She hissed as the fire licked at her shell.

  “Get to the town hall,” I ordered Charlie. “Warn everyone. I’ll lure her in the opposite direction to buy you time.”

  “Kayla—” Charlie started to protest.

  “Don’t worry, I have an idea,” I said.

  With a reluctant nod, Charlie took off running in the direction of the potluck supper. Seconds later, he vanished completely into the mist.

  The queen looked like she was considering chasing him, so I lobbed another jack-o’-lantern at her, then another. This time, her exoskeleton caught fire as the burning pumpkins exploded against her. She flopped onto her back, rolling in the dirt to put out the flames.

  While the queen was trying to extinguish herself, I skirted around her to where my bike lay in the grass. I hurdled over one of her claws as it flailed around to slice me in two.

  By the time she flipped back over, I was on my bike and racing through the dark orchard. A crazy plan had formed in my head, but for it to work, I needed her to follow me to the waterfall.

  My whole body vibrated as the tires rumbled over the uneven ground. The queen’s enraged howls reminded me that she was close behind.

  Good. I was counting on that.

  In the dense fog, it felt like the apple trees were closing in around me. One appeared through the mist right in my path, and I swerved sharply to avoid it.

  My front tire snagged on a gnarled root. Next thing I knew, I was somersaulting over the handlebars.

  I landed flat on my back, sending a cluster of rotting apples scattering around me like marbles. The air exploded out of my lungs. The bike flipped end over end beside me, nearly crushing my head in the process.

  Somehow, through the dull ache in my back, I sucked in a deep breath and mustered the will to stand up. I abandoned the bike to finish the journey to the waterfall on foot. There were only two choices now:

  Run or die.

  By the time I reached the river, my lungs burned for air. I limped out onto the Cannonball’s wooden platform, feeling it sway under the onslaught from the raging rapids below. The waterfall roared beneath me. One wrong step and the river would carry me right over the edge, to plummet a hundred feet to my death.

  But what was waiting for me back the way that I came was so much more terrifying.

  Before me, the giant jack-o’-lantern grinned menacingly. Flames danced in its eyes. Abandon all hope, the Cannonball seemed to be saying to me. There is no escaping the beast.

  It was true. I had reached a dead end. I huddled in front of the pumpkin, shivering as the cold mist settled on my skin while I stared into the dark.

  Over the deafening rush of water, I heard something else, a noise that made my stomach knot with dread.

  The click-click-click of long, spindly legs, marching ominously toward me.

  Through the dark fog, I watched the creature’s eyes appear like eight sapphire flames.

  Her slender, razor-sharp tail glinted above me, preparing to strike.

  I remembered back to the first scorpion I had confronted at the old well, how its barbed stinger had gotten lodged in the bucket.

  My idea had to work. It needed to work.

  I bravely stood up in front of the Cannonball. Its firelight flickered around me.

  I pounded my chest. “Come on!” I shouted at the beast. “Sting me already!”

  I caught the telltale moment when the queen went totally still, the calm before the storm.

  I dove out of the way just as her stinger plunged downward. One second later and it would have pierced my heart.

  Instead, the barb speared through the Cannonball’s thick rind. The queen tried to jerk her stinger free, but it had become trapped inside the giant pumpkin, which was almost as heavy as she was. She shrieked in panic as the fire inside began to roast her tail.

  I knew it was only a matter of time before she escaped. The queen was powerful, and any second now, she would wrestle her stinger free. I had to act quickly.

  So I scrambled across the platform.

  I wrapped my hand around the lever connected to the Cannonball’s chute.

  I took one last look at the queen. She froze and turned her glowing eyes to meet my gaze.

  Then I pulled the lever.

  The chute opened up and the Cannonball slid down into the river, dragging the queen along with it. She floundered hopelessly in the shallow water as the pumpkin stuck on her tail tugged her toward the waterfall’s edge.

  Right before she reached the falls, the queen’s giant claw clamped down on a rock protruding from the water. For a few terrifying seconds, I feared she would escape her fate and chase me down to exact her revenge.

  Then the weight of the Cannonball wrenched her claw free with a grating sound of bone against rock.

  The rapids rushed her armored body forward the final few feet, until with a squawk, the queen vanished right over the edge.

  I rushed to the railing to catch the final moment of impact when the pumpkin and scorpion crashed into the basin far below with a magnificent splash.

  When the foaming waters started to clear, chunks of pumpkin floated to the surface.

  The queen never did. The water glowed blue with her blood.

  I must have stood there for five minutes, fearing the scorpion would emerge from the basin. Finally, when I w
as sure I was safe, I collapsed with relief against the railing. The fog had begun to clear as quickly as it had descended on Orchard Falls, revealing the night sky above.

  Eventually, I tilted my head up to the starry heavens and shouted a single triumphant word as loud as I could:

  “Cannonball!”

  30

  “Hey, quit hogging the popcorn!” Yvonne said.

  “It’s kettle corn,” Charlie corrected her. He grudgingly handed her the cavernous bowl.

  The three of us sat on a picnic blanket in my backyard, surrounded by a smorgasbord of snacks. My dad had rigged a projector to play movies on a sheet draped against the back of the house. It was like having our own private drive-in theater.

  Yvonne had been in charge of picking the film for our inaugural movie night. Charlie and I were immediately dismayed when she dropped her selection of DVDs onto the blanket.

  “I couldn’t decide between Godzilla and Cloverfield,” she said. “At the last minute I thought: how about Starship Troopers?” She held up a cover that showed an enormous beetle attacking soldiers on a faraway planet.

  Charlie and I exchanged uneasy glances. “Do you have any options that don’t involve giant killer monsters or aliens?” I asked.

  Yvonne squinted at me in confusion. “Why would you want to watch anything else?”

  In the end, she grudgingly allowed me to pick a comedy from my own collection. As we watched and laughed, I could almost forget about the night of the Jack-o’-Lantern Festival a week ago.

  Almost.

  When Charlie had burst into the potluck supper that fateful evening and started screaming about a gigantic scorpion, everyone had gone quiet.

  Then they started laughing at him.

  Apparently, his reputation for trickery and pranks was widely known throughout Orchard Falls. By the time he had convinced his father to follow him, I had already vanquished the queen.

  Even all the destruction at the festival couldn’t get anyone to believe him. They just blamed all the flattened booths on a “microburst,” some sort of freak windstorm.

  The next day, when we climbed down to the bottom of the waterfall, chunks of the giant jack-o’-lantern still floated in the basin.

  The creature’s exoskeleton was nowhere to be found. The water had washed away any trace of it, except for a smear of glowing blue blood on the rocks.

  The shells of the two dead scorpions in the barn had vanished by the time I got back, as though they had simply crumbled to dust and drifted off with the wind.

  As for the one we had locked in the silo, well—

  “Who wants pie?” my mom’s singsong voice interrupted my thoughts. “Fresh out of the oven!”

  She had emerged from the back of the house holding a pie pan triumphantly above her head. The air over it rippled with heat waves.

  When she placed it on our blanket, I recoiled. The pie was bright blue.

  “Uh, Mom?” I said, suddenly alarmed. “What kind of pie is this exactly?”

  She cocked her head to the side. “Pumpkin, obviously,” she replied, as though it were the most ridiculous question she had ever heard.

  “Then why is it blue?” Charlie asked, then added hopefully, “Food coloring?”

  Mom grinned proudly and pointed uphill toward where my pumpkin patch used to be. “I salvaged some of that smashed pumpkin. The shell was so big that I didn’t want all your hard work to go to waste!”

  “Looks delicious to me!” Yvonne exclaimed. She had cut herself a slice and was bringing a big fork full of blue pie up to her lips.

  “Don’t eat that!” Charlie shrieked at the same moment that I swatted the fork right out of her hands.

  After the movie was over, Yvonne’s father picked her up first, and I walked Charlie to his bike. “You sure you don’t want any help cleaning up all that food?” he asked, nodding back toward the picnic, where a mountain of leftover turkey burgers remained uneaten. My dad had been so excited that I’d made friends that he went overboard playing caterer for the movie night.

  I waved a hand. “Nah, I’ll take care of it.”

  Charlie smiled at me. It was hard to say if we would ever become close friends, but after the events a week ago, we shared a bond and a newfound respect for each other.

  As he mounted his bike, he turned back to me. “Hey, you never told me what happened to the fourth scorpion,” he said. “You know, the one we locked in the silo.”

  I glanced back at the massive steel cylinder looming over the field. “It turned to ash like the rest of them. They all must have been linked to the queen, so that when she died, they did, too.”

  “I guess I was right about this place when I repainted your sign.” Charlie grinned wickedly. “Welcome to Doom Farms!”

  We both laughed as he pedaled off. He waved behind him as he cruised down the road.

  As soon as he disappeared beyond the trees, I returned to the picnic blanket. I picked up the overflowing tray of sandwiches and wandered across the field to the silo.

  With a deep breath, I opened a little flap in the door and slid the tray through.

  I heard a rustling from inside, and then the sounds of sharp teeth gnashing at the mountain of burgers.

  “Eat up,” I whispered through the flap to the creature inside. A grin spread across my face. “I’m your queen now.”

  Epilogue

  Inside his greenhouse, Dr. Umbra leaned over a hospital gurney. Through a pair of thick goggles, he examined what was left of the queen’s carcass. The rushing water of Orchard Falls had swept away much of her organs and gooey entrails, until all that remained was a blue, mangled exoskeleton and a single enormous claw.

  He almost didn’t hear his assistant come up behind him. “I’m sorry,” the woman in the white lab coat whispered. She had the same ageless, eerily smooth skin that he did. It was as though her scarlet hair had been pinned back so tightly that it pulled her face taut. “The queen really was quite beautiful in the fleeting time she was alive.”

  Dr. Umbra traced his gloved finger along the sharp edge of the creature’s pincers and sighed. “Such great potential gone to waste,” he said. “Of all my creations, I think I loved her best.” He took the goggles off his head and tossed them onto the gurney. “Oh well. No sense dwelling on the past when there is still so much work to be done. Will you walk with me to the Bonegarden?”

  The assistant followed him through the greenhouse. They came to a pair of glass double doors, which whisked open when they approached. A dry, hot breeze blew over them as they stepped outside, churning up the blood red sand around them.

  When the sandstorm finally cleared, they stood on the edge of a cliff, gazing out over a deep canyon. It looked like it had been scored into the earth with a skyscraper-sized knife. Giant bones protruded from the cliff tops surrounding it like broken fangs.

  If you looked closely, you would realize that the canyon itself had formed inside the fossilized ribcage of a gargantuan skeleton.

  Dr. Umbra could not help but smile as he looked out over the valley below. It glowed under the light of the three moons simmering on the horizon. Rows upon rows of colorful eggs stretched as far as the eye could see. Blue, red, green, violet, black—some were even colors the human eye could not process.

  Pods of every shade concealing creatures of every nature.

  Creatures of every nightmare.

  His assistant watched a speckled yellow egg quiver and then go still. Soon it would hatch. “So what’s our next move, father?” she asked.

  Dr. Umbra considered this. “Contact the librarian,” he replied finally.

  “And what message should I deliver?”

  A crack splintered through the yellow egg below. A single talon emerged.

  “Tell him it’s time to open the portal,” Dr. Umbra said. Then he added:

  “The big one.”

  About the Author

  Karsten Knight is known for writing books that feature mythologies from around the world. In 2011
, Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers published his debut, Wildefire, the first in a trilogy about a reincarnated Polynesian volcano goddess. Since then, he has authored the historical thriller Nightingale, Sing and the time-bending murder mystery Patchwork, and now channels his talent for terrifying readers into the Bonegarden.

  Karsten studied creative writing at College of the Holy Cross and earned an MFA in writing for children from Simmons College. A lifelong resident of Massachusetts, he lives for fall New England weather—the perfect time of year for spooky stories.

  For more information on Karsten and the Bonegarden, please visit www.karstenknightbooks.com.

  Also by Karsten Knight

  WILDEFIRE

  EMBERS & ECHOES

  AFTERGLOW

  NIGHTINGALE, SING

  PATCHWORK

  The adventure continues:

  Bonegarden #2

  THE GODS OF LAVA COVE