by Jess Lourey
“That wasn’t Tina.”
“Really? It’s so hard to see in these woods.” His bad joke had a dark edge.
“Weston, I think we should get back to the festival.”
He grabbed my arm protectively. “I agree. After you.” Weston kept his eyes on Tom until I was nearly out of the woods, and then he followed. “You know, this town is an odd place.”
We broke out of the thick woods and were immediately back in the world of family and fun. “You don’t know the half of it.”
“You know that guy?”
“I know who he is. His wife is a friend of mine, but that wasn’t his wife.”
“I see.”
I sighed. “Me too. I see too much. And I don’t know what I’m going to tell her.”
“You want my advice?”
I looked at Weston’s face, tall enough to block the sun from my eyes. His untamed flop of hair was over his glasses, which were sliding down his nose. “You know what? I really do.”
“Don’t tell her anything. Nobody wants to hear that they’re being cheated on.”
“You wouldn’t want to know if your wife was sleeping around on you?”
His eyes darkened for a moment, and I wondered if I had hit a nerve. I glanced at his left-hand ring finger—no ring, just like I thought. His eyes cleared so fast I decided I had imagined it. “I bet that guy’s wife already knows. If she wants to talk to you about it, she will.”
I thought back to Tina’s convincing me to spy on her store. Had she suspected Tom was cheating and used me to find out? Nah. Tina didn’t have a duplicitous bone in her body. “You might be right. I’ll have to think about it. You want to walk through the maze with me?”
He glanced around at the crowd we were in, bottlenecking the entrance. “Sure. It looks like we might have to wait awhile, though.”
He was right. There were over a hundred people forming a circle between us and the entrance, the sun baking their heads and shoulders. Behind them, tall green corn stalks stood as still as sentinels. “That’s odd that everyone is standing in a circle. Usually, people here are pretty good about making lines. Should we go see what’s going on in the middle?”
“I don’t know. I don’t do so well in crowds, and I’m still feeling warm.”
I shaded my eyes to glance up at Weston. He did look a little green around the gills. “Why don’t you wait over there, by the edge of the woods, and I’ll pop in here real quick. After I see what’s going on, I’ll grab us both a couple cold sodas and we can wait it out in the shade until there’s fewer people. Deal?”
“Deal,” he said gratefully.
I watched him wobble off into the sparse shade and hoped he wouldn’t stumble across any more forest-lovin’ locals. The crowd around me was drinking beer and laughing pleasantly, but the farther into the circle I pushed, the less drinking and joy there was. Also, many people were holding their masks instead of wearing them, and their faces were tight. The nearer to the center I got, the easier it was to make out the shouting that was holding everyone’s attention. I elbowed my way to the very front and was dismayed to see Robert and Naomi Meale holding court.
Robert was dressed starkly in a black button-down shirt and slacks, his dark shoes as shiny as a mirror. His 1970s shop-teacher glasses magnified his entire face and made his eyes big and ominous. One of his fists was pumping in the air, and the other was holding a sign that said, “No False Religions! The Time to Repent Is Now.” He had one foot resting on his wife’s wheelchair, as if she were a piece of furniture.
She was staring fiercely up at him, her thin hair tied back, her face free of makeup. She was also dressed in a dark top and had a lap quilt peppered with an autumn leaf design covering her from the waist down. They were as overdressed for the heat as Weston. There was no sign of Alicia.
“Leave this heathen festival and return to the waiting arms of God! He will provide!” Robert Meale thrust his sign into the air as he spoke, swiveling his head to make eye contact with the guilty faces surrounding him. I didn’t look away when his face lit on me. “‘Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour,’ says Peter! And I say to you, the devil is about at this Festival. Is he going to devour you?”
A shiver slid down my spine, giving me vertigo in the crowd and heat. I was distracted from my queasiness by a glimpse of a mousy-haired woman three back in the crowd. She looked like the rapturous woman I had seen staring at Naomi at the Creation Science Fair, the one I was sure was Naomi’s sister and Les’ lover, but when I threaded my way through the crowd, she had vanished. I pushed my way back to the front of the gathering to observe Pastor and Mrs. Meale.
Naomi was still watching her husband intensely, an inner light burning behind her eyes like a fever. On her left hand she wore the gaudy ring I had noticed when we first met, and from this angle, it looked like a cross, or maybe a crucifix, set on a band. Was it the same design as the strange necklaces Alicia and Sarah Ruth wore? I was jostled by the crowd before I could get close enough to verify the design. I made my way farther around, so Mrs. Meale was directly in front of me, and her husband was behind her. Unfortunately, I was on her right side, and she had put both her hands under the quilt. She stared hungrily up at her husband.
“From the Galatians, we know we should ‘be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.’” Pastor Meale pumped his fist with every syllable.
“It’s just a party!” a heckler yelled from behind me.
“And we got a drought!” someone seconded.
Pastor Meale yelled back, his neck veins popping. “‘He that observeth the wind shall not sow; and he that regardeth the clouds shall not reap,’ Ecclesiastes, chapter 11, verse four!”
The feel of the crowd was dangerous. Those here for a good time, a reprieve from this dry summer and their long workdays, were growing agitated, but a fair number of people appeared shamed by the pastor’s words. I was wondering where Gary Wohnt was when I saw someone flip a lit cigarette from the crowd. It arced and landed on Naomi Meales’ lap, not five feet from me. I was the only one who appeared to notice it except for Pastor Meale, who flicked a glance at the thin wisp of smoke snaking up from her blanket, glared balefully at me, and then went back to yelling.
I waited for Mrs. Meale to spot the smoke, but like the rest of the crowd, she was transfixed by her husband. I was loath to put myself on center stage, but the cigarette had quickly burned a hole in the fleece lap quilt and was working on whatever layer she had underneath, whether that be skin or cloth. I jumped into the circle and ripped the quilt off her lap. The butt flew off with it, but I saw that the ember had already melted through her slacks, leaving a red mark on the skin of her undernourished thigh. “You’re burned!”
Naomi snatched the quilt from my hand and covered her legs up quickly. “I’m fine.” She looked back at her husband with fierce adoration.
“What?” Had she noticed that her leg had been on fire? “Your leg is burnt. You need to get some ice on it.”
“We’re fine.” Pastor Meale took his foot off the wheelchair and glared at me.
“I don’t think you are. Your wife’s leg is burnt. Someone accidentally threw a cigarette on it.”
The unintentional intermission the butt had caused woke the crowd from their reverie. They began to look around, at the masks in one hand and the beer in the other. A couple shook their heads (“If they were in charge of evolution, we’d still be monkeys,” I heard someone mutter), and all but a few hardcores turned back toward the maze and their friends and family.
“I said, we’re fine.”
“Shouldn’t you ask your wife if she’s fine?”
Naomi spoke without meeting my eyes. “For the wife does not rule over her own body, but the husband does,’ 1 Corinthians 7:4.”
“What’s going on here?” Gary Wohnt elbowed his way next to me.
Pastor Meale dropped his angr
y expression and offered his hand. “Gary! Welcome!”
Gary shook it, turned back to me, and repeated himself. “What’s going on here?”
“Well, these two were picketing the festival, and I came to see what was up when I saw someone flick a cigarette that landed on Mrs. Meales’ lap. I brushed it off her, but wanted to make sure she was okay.”
“She is,” Pastor Meale said firmly. “And now, I think we’ll be on our way. I believe we’ve conveyed our message. If we can turn away one person from this ungodly exercise, we will have done our duty. Good day to you both.” He pushed his wife’s wheelchair toward the main entrance.
“You go to their church,” I said accusingly. He didn’t respond. “And you’re at the Festival. Don’t you see a conflict?”
“I’m on the clock.” He strode off toward the entrance of the maze.
For my part, I stared longingly at the keg of beer across the commons. If Weston hadn’t been waiting for me, I might have put my mouth to the hose. I settled for two Diet Cokes and a handful of salami-cream-cheese-and-pickle tubes and made my way back to the woods. We munched and talked and traveled around groups of people as the sun set and the air became bearable. I didn’t much like small talk, but Weston was good at it, as long as it was only with a few people at a time, so I played shadow. The highlight was when I caught a glimpse of Alicia Meale, who must have expertly avoided any run-ins with her parents, dressed like a Fly Girl and holding hands with a flop-haired brute. I smiled to myself, a titillating hunch taking shape in the back of my head.
When I heard the sounds of Not with My Horse warming up on the north side of the festival, I asked Weston if he was ready to brave the maze with me before the sun was completely off the horizon.
“Do you mind going without me? You know that guy I was talking to about the correlation between rainfall and mosquito reproduction? I told him I’d wait here for him. He had to run and pick up his girlfriend, and then he was going to finish telling me about a wood tick he pulled off his dog last week. Said it didn’t look like any other tick he’d ever seen.”
I rolled my eyes. “Not a problem. I’ll probably head home after I get through the maze. See you around?”
“Deal.” Weston squeezed my arm and then turned back to wait for the inside track on a wood tick, his fingers quivering in anticipation like he was playing little pianos at his side.
I strode firmly past the keg, grabbed an apple out of a bowl, and entered the maze. Most people had already gone through, so I was alone in the entrance space with only the play between the setting sun and burgeoning full moon for company. The first fork appeared at twenty feet, and I chose left. I followed that winding path for ten minutes before I realized it was a dead end. I could hear distant chatter and the squealing riffs of Not with My Horse’s opening number when I returned to my initial starting spot, choosing right this time.
The clean, peppery smell of corn tassels tickled my nose as I marched over the hay lining the ground. I considered for a moment turning back. It was going on full dark, and if the rising moon went behind a cloud, I wouldn’t be able to see. Glancing at the clear sky, I decided to continue on. If nothing else, I could yell for help if I got lost. But would anyone hear me over the cranking of the band?
My fingers trailed over the smooth leaves and rough stalks of the six-foot-tall, thick-as-thieves corn, and on a whim, I tried to bend one. It was like a steel rod. I didn’t know what sort of genetically modified corn went into making a maze, but it was solid. I gave a yank to the stalk, and the ground didn’t move. I couldn’t even push it far enough apart to squeeze through and cheat. I guess the only way out of the maze was to follow the paths. As I walked, the sound of the band grew louder. The techno-punk-country-fusion was painful to listen to, but it served as a beacon for the exit.
I took what I hoped was my last right when I was brought up short by a scream, long and shrill like an animal being butchered. It sounded close, maybe twenty feet straight ahead, and it turned my blood to ice. I rushed forward but met a wall of corn, planted so close together it felt like a bamboo jungle. I had to take a run at it to break through the first three layers with my shoulder, but behind it were just more layers.
I darted back and around, and then around again, searching frantically for a way to reach the scream. When I heard another shriek, this one so full of terror it made my stomach turn, I realized I was getting farther away, not closer. I raced back, and then left, and forward, and right, and forward, and right again. I was just about ready to scream myself when I saw a wide opening ahead, a lighter black then the corn walls surrounding me. I charged forward and stumbled out of the maze. Straight ahead was the stage, but most people were turned toward a sobbing teenage girl crumpled on the ground not far from the exit I had just ran out of.
“They took Lydia! They just grabbed her and pulled her out of the maze!”
Lydia, the bubble-nosed brunette from Tom and Tina’s Taxidermy, Lucy’s friend and fellow cheerleader, was missing. According to her friend, Julie, two men dressed in black had jumped out of a corner on the forest side of the maze and dragged both teens to a hole whacked into one of the outside walls. Julie had escaped by biting the arm of her captor and running, but Lydia had not been so lucky.
As Julie sobbed inconsolably in the arms of a woman, a pall hung over the crowd, everyone thinking the same thing: Lydia was going to be shot in the back, just like Lucy Lebowski. Parents ushered their crying children away, and men and women exchanged worried glances before buzzing into action.
Someone called the state police, and a search party was forming out of the townspeople gathered around. I listened to all of this, feeling like one of those firecrackers that spins on the sidewalk, pointlessly shooting sparks. Instead of waiting for instruction, I took off around the east side of the corn maze until I spotted the hole. Gary Wohnt was already standing there with one of his deputies, and I cut into the hardwood forest on the maze’s perimeter before he spotted me.
I wished I had my flashlight and spider knife on me, but I would have to make do with the full moon and a big stick I kicked up. The woods were fairly cleaned out, which made walking easy, especially when I found the path Weston and I had been on earlier. I walked the path back toward the maze until I was about fifty feet south of the cut-out exit. I stepped in something sticky and looked down. Someone had spilled a large amount of liquid where the trees met the field, and they had done it after Weston and I passed over this spot. Two evenly spaced tracks ran through mud, each about two inches wide and half an inch deep. I stuck my fingers into the ooze and smelled it—water and dirt.
I backtracked on the path into the woods, searching for more clues. Trees loomed over me, casting long-limbed shadows. I felt like I was in another maze, only larger, and my senses were heightened by a blend of fear and anger. How dare someone terrorize the festival! Would another mother have to learn that her daughter was murdered, that nowhere was safe?
I had an idea that I’d keep going until I came out at the lakefront property in the hopes of finding some evidence of Lydia having been taken this way, but the deeper I walked, the less able I was to see amid the trees. I was about to turn around when a shaft of moonlight through the trees outlined a figure, maybe six feet tall, his arms out. He was headless. I froze, my heart knocking around in my chest. Was it Lydia, shot through the back and hung in the trees? Was it one of the kidnappers? I was too afraid to tear my eyes away. I opened my mouth to yell, but nothing came out. In the distance, I could hear the rumble of people shouting Lydia’s name, searching, agitated, but they were all too far away to help me.
I stayed, frozen to my spot, and a breeze rippled through the treetops. The form did not move. A larger gust blew, raising the arms of the figure. When the wind died, so did the arms. I stepped cautiously toward it and reached up. It was a dark, empty coat, caught in a branch. I pulled it down and felt inside. The pockets were empty and the interior was smooth except for a rip in the left shoulder. I forced m
y breathing to slow and relaxed ever so slightly. I scanned the immediate area and found nothing else.
I made my way back out the woods and straight to Gary Wohnt, who was still standing at the hole the girls had been dragged out of. He was taking notes and barking orders. When he took a breath, I said, “There’s something I want you to see.”
He raised his eyebrows but followed me without complaint, motioning to one of his deputies to finish assigning tasks. When we reached the tracks in the mud, I pointed.
“What?” He asked.
“Those tracks. See them? They’re the same tracks I found outside the Fortune Café after it was vandalized.” I had a theory forming in my head. The vandalism at the Fortune, Lucy Lebowski’s murder, and Lydia’s kidnapping were all connected, and I was working on an idea of who was behind it.
“Wagon tracks. They brought the kegs through here to avoid the crowds.”
“And the tracks at the Fortune?”
“Was the ground wet there, too?”
“No,” I said reluctantly. “It wasn’t. They were just faint tracks in the dry grass. But they were the exact same tracks that are right here. What made them?”
“I don’t know. Another wagon? Why didn’t you point them out to me when I was there?”
“It didn’t seem important then. It does now.”
“I don’t see how.” Gary abruptly turned on his heel and walked away.
We weren’t friends, but he had never been this dismissive of me. What was going on? I looked at the coat I had found in the woods, now draped over my shoulder. It was either navy blue or black. I looked at Gary’s retreating back, remembered him shaking hands with Pastor Meale as the pastor picketed the festival. I wasn’t sure any longer which team Gary was playing for. I would keep the coat to myself for now. I made my way back to my car. After a quick stop at home to grab my knife and flashlight, I was going to head directly to New Millennium Bible Camp.
___
The traffic was light. Almost everyone had stayed at Hershod’s, knowing they wouldn’t find Lydia there but unwilling to go home without trying to help. When I drove back past the corn maze, hundreds of flashlights bobbed in the night like fireflies, or the torches of villagers hunting a monster.
