“Crow’s a friggin’ goof,” Barney said, scratching at the adhesive bandage that held the knife.

Iron Mike considered for a moment. “Yeah, he’s just about weird enough.”

Just a minute or two after Crow vanished into the night, a pair of headlights cast the parking lot in whiteness. Barney and Mike turned to see a station wagon pull into the lot and crunch across the gravel toward them. Mike hesitated for a moment, then smiled and waved.

The station wagon rolled to a stop and the driver’s door opened. Vic Wingate unfolded himself from behind the wheel. He was a big man, just over six feet tall and very muscular, with a military-​style blond crew cut and a Marine Corps jawline. That jaw was set as he walked over to meet Mike.

“Hi, Vic!” Mike said, forcing his voice to sound pleased to see the man. “I guess they told you what happened. My bike’s in the—”

Vic hit him.

It was a savagely fast, stunningly hard blow. Not a slap, but the full rock-​hardness of Vic’s fist. It caught Mike in the stomach and seemed to smash back every bit of flesh between shirtfront and backbone. All of the air whooshed out of Mike’s mouth along with a strangled cry of surprise; after that Mike had no breath even to scream. The pain was worse than anything he had ever felt. Worse than the broken rib, worse than all the bruises from when he’d gone off the road. Worse than any pain from any punishment Vic had ever given him. It was the first time in his life Mike had ever been punched by an adult. Before that it had been slaps, hard slaps with Vic’s hard hands, but just slaps. The punch was so crushingly hard, and so unexpected, that Mike felt as if his entire body had shrunk down into a single twisted knot of white-​hot pain. He lay on the gravel in a fetal position and tried to breathe.

“Yo! mister!” Barney called in alarm, stepping forward. Vic wheeled toward him and pointed a finger at the kid’s nose. The finger was like a steel dagger and it stopped Barney in his tracks.

“You got something to say, shit bag?”

Barney’s stood there, speechless, powerless, shocked, and scared beyond action. He watched in horror as Vic jerked open the rear passenger door, then bent and caught Mike by the belt and the hair, hoisted him off the ground, and literally threw him into the backseat. Mike slid across the seat and thumped against the opposite door.

All the time Mike’s mom just sat in the front passenger seat and looked down at the floor. Barney tried to catch her eye, to make some kind of appeal, but she wouldn’t look at him. Barney wished Crow was still there, though what Crow could do against a guy like Wingate he didn’t know.

“Where’s his fucking bike?” Vic demanded, closing on Barney.

All Barney could do was point. Vic stalked over and yanked it out of the back of Crow’s trunk. He didn’t bother to close the hood. He crammed the bike roughly into the bed of the station wagon, slammed the rear door, and then stalked around to the driver’s side. Over the top of the car he again leveled a finger at Barney. “This is a family matter, do you understand me?”

Barney nodded.

“Good, then keep your mouth shut or it won’t be a plastic knife you’re gonna find sticking out of your chest. Now get the fuck out of the road.”

Barney retreated and watched in mute horror as Vic made a screeching turn and left the lot in a spray of kicked-​back gravel.

3

Crow bounced along the road, following the path he knew so well. The Haunted Hayride covered a huge area, spread out over parts of three different farms, two of which were now owned by Terry Wolfe, one of which leased acreage to the mayor for his attraction. It was wrapped like a horseshoe around the north end of the Pinelands College campus and was itself wrapped in the arms of the vast Pine Deep State Forest. Most of the land was given over to pumpkin patches, cornfields, and wheat fields, but since the harvest had begun in earnest for most of the town, much of the crop had already been cleared. Some of the corn stood unpicked, it having been planted later for a late fall harvest. A lot of the local farmers staggered their harvests so they could keep sending fresh produce to the markets up until the very edge of winter.

Crow loved the place. Even though he had designed every part of it, and knew all of its theatrical ins and outs, he loved the feeling of supernatural dread that he always sensed when he was covering these dark lanes. For a lark, he’d even spent a couple of nights as one of the monsters, scaring the bejesus out of the ten-​dollar-​a-​head tourists.

The hayride was set up so that one main path led through all of the traps. The traps were the spots where costumed staffers waited to leap out and, in their own scripted or improvisational way, go “Boo!” Some of the traps were set scenes, such as a witch trial that showed a poor wretch being crushed beneath planks weighted with rocks, or tied to a chair and dunked into the creek; or where a line of victims were led up to a chopping block where a burly headsman (the defensive lineman for the Pine Deep Scarecrows) waited to shorten them by a head. Some of the traps were shockers, which had either mechanical or human monsters leaping unexpectedly out at the customers during lulls in the ride. There were a few interactive traps as well, such as Leatherface from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre rushing at the flatbed with his chainsaw buzzing. The chain on the saw was totally blunt, so when he tried to cut through the planks on the side of the flatbed, he really got nowhere, but Crow had added plastic bags of sawdust taped to the outside of the planks that would burst as soon as the chainsaw was pressed against them. The swirling sawdust and the buzz of the saw made it really appear as if Leatherface was really cutting his way through the wood and was actually going to dismember the paying customers.

The nicest touch this season, though, was the Valley of the Living Dead trap. This was a new one, and was Crow’s pride and joy. Just past the halfway point of the hayride, the tractor would pull the flatbed through a patch of mud. The mud was only surface muck kept wet by a sprinkler system, but in the darkness it looked real enough to create the illusion that the tractor had become hopelessly mired. Coop, or whoever was driving, would ease the tractor into neutral and just gun the engine, growling and swearing (in a thoroughly PG manner, of course) at the predicament. While all this was going on, dark shapes would begin to move in the bushes near the flatbed. These dark shapes would slowly—very slowly—advance on the flatbed. They were white-​faced, decaying corpses, slouching and shuffling with all the gracelessness of reanimated bodies. It would be a race to see if Coop could unmire the tractor and get them on their way before the legions of walking dead could reach the flatbed.

Of course, timing was everything. Coop would get “unstuck,” but just a moment too late. The ghouls would manage to reach the flatbed and would, amid a chorus of ungodly screams, drag one poor soul off into the bushes. The screams would be truly terrifying, and as the flatbed was towed away, the stricken survivors would look back and see ghouls staggering away nibbling on an arm or a leg or a string of intestines.

As a set piece, it was a corker. The tourists, especially the ones who had never been to a haunted hayride before, were stunned to a stricken silence. Until, of course, the next monsters leaped out at them. The “victim” was a staffer posing as a tourist, and the victim was changed almost every day so that repeat customers could never tell who was going to fall prey to the living dead.

There were other traps as well, but the Valley of the Living Dead was the star attraction on the Hayride, and had even been written up in Sci-​Fi Universe and Fangoria magazines, as well as every newspaper on the East Coast. When it came to producing genuine horrible thrills, Crow was a genius, albeit a twisted one with a penchant for very dark humor.

Now that twisted genius was skimming along on his ATV. He stopped periodically to tell the staffers that the ride was closing down. He told the Creature from the Black Lagoon to cut across the swamp and let the Pod People know. He sent the Wolfman and the Brainiac down through the gully to bring in the Mole People, the Headsman, and the Flying Monkeys. He had Jack the Ripper go back to the shed for another ATV and sent him heading backward along the path of the ride to tell the Vampire Children and the Bog Beasts to stand down.

Ten minutes later he caught up with the tractor just as Henry Pitts was being dragged into the bushes by the ghouls. Crow honked his horn and flashed his headlights off and on. The ghouls straightened from their bloody feast, and Henry sat up, too, amazingly unhurt despite the entrails dripping from the mouths of the zombies.

Coop killed the engine of the tractor and the Valley of the Living Dead grew quiet except for a faint buzz of inquiring voices.

Dismounting, Crow walked over to the tractor and looked up at Coop.

“Hey…what’s going on?” Coop asked. He was a middle-​aged man with a paunch, loose jowls, and a look of almost total stupidity.

Crow turned to face the mass of confused and semifrightened tourists. “Folks, I have some bad news. Because of severe technical difficulties beyond our control, we are going to have to close down the Haunted Hayride for tonight.” He had to raise his voice to be heard over the chorus of groans. “Everyone will receive a full refund, plus a free coupon good for any night you wish to return. Mr. Wolfe regrets having to do this, but as I said, it is beyond our control.”

“What’s the deal, man?” someone asked.

Relying on the speech he’d rehearsed all the way over, Crow said, “There is a bridge just a half mile ahead. It has buckled and won’t take the weight of the tractor. We are going to have to turn around and go back. There’s just no way that the tractor can go any farther forward in safety. I’m sure you all understand.”

From the moans, groans, and curses, it seemed they not only didn’t understand, they damned well didn’t like it, but they were also resigned. Crow had affected the attitude of “someone in charge” and it really left no room for argument.

Thunder rumbled overhead and lightning danced through the clouds. A few wet raindrops fell, not many, but enough to dampen any further arguments.

Crow called Coop down from the tractor seat and climbed up himself, and with very little to-​do, he pulled the tractor free from the “mud,” angled over onto the clearing near the road, and turned around. The tourists, some of them still standing in postures of indignation or disappointment, continued to grumble, but said nothing directly to Crow. The Ghouls, and the late Henry Pitts, stood to one side and waited, then climbed up onto the flatbed as it passed. Coop, looking disconsolate, followed on the ATV.