Two generations of Cristanises lived in the new house, built on the opposite end of the property, and farmed the land. Two generations of Cristanises found it harder and harder to make ends meet.
Nikko's father had resisted the haunted-hayride idea, but the success enjoyed by several of the other farms in the area had persuaded him. He finally agreed, but had two rules:
• Avoid lawsuits.
• Don't cash in on real tragedy.
He forbade anything hinting at Morgan Roehmar and his obsession with good-looking boys, which was why the hayride's one dismembered body was a woman (Anne Boleyn, in case anyone asked), who'd lost her head to an ax, rather than a chain saw. And there definitely was no display suggesting a police shoot-out on a farmhouse's front porch.
Like anybody who'd lived in the area for any time at all didn't automatically connect this farm with murder.
And like the edginess of something-really-bad-happened-here wasn't the real reason Cristanis Farm's haunted hayride did better than any other in the area.
The reason the Spagnola sisters were harassing Ashley was because this barn, built by Nikko's grandfather when he had still had high hopes for the land, was constructed on the one section of the farm that wasn't given over to the new house or its front lawn, or apple orchard, or crop fields—the spot that had been cleared already because that was where the original Roehmar house had stood.
"I'm doing fine," Ashley assured one and all through the headset.
And she was, too.
Until the light went out.
There must have been a lightning strike that hit something important causing all the lights in the area to go out: After one moment of startled silence, Ashley could hear the chatter as everyone connected by the headsets whooped, as though this was just another special effect thought up by Nikko.
Another flash of lightning, and Ashley blinked because of the brightness of the lightning—and in the darkness afterward saw someone framed in the doorway of the barn.
"Ramon?" she called.
No answer.
Could Karl or any of the others be touchy enough to remain silent because she'd guessed wrong?
She reached down to the far side of the hay bale she was lying on and scrabbled for the flashlight the Cristanises provided for walking from one site on the farm to the other. Just as her fingers closed on the flashlight, she felt the tug of the wire that attached the ear-piece to battery pack. And then she didn't feel it and knew that she'd pulled the wire loose, but that was not her immediate concern.
She pressed the flashlight's switch and swung the light toward the doorway.
Where no one was standing.
She could make out the bales of hay, the farm implements since—besides the haunted hayrides—this was a real working barn, the posed dummies, the hanged man spinning slowly in the breeze. But there was no one in the doorway.
As there shouldn't be.
Maybe it was some weird afterimage left by the lightning and induced by the Halloween atmosphere on the farm or by thinking of the guys Morgan Roehmar had murdered. Or she'd seen the hanged man and, trick of the shifting light, he'd seemed farther away, in the doorway.
Or maybe whoever it was had stepped away into the darkness outside.
Still sitting on the bale of hay, Ashley flicked the flashlight so the beam of light hit the battery pack, the wire that should have been stretched out to the earpiece lying limp on the floor.
Aiming the light back at the doorway, she set the flashlight next to her and picked up both pieces of the headset. Glancing up repeatedly to make sure whoever it was—if there was a whoever—couldn't sneak up on her, she tried to thread the jagged end of wire back into what she thought was the appropriate hole of the ear-piece, but there wasn't even static.
Okay, so there was no calling for help.
If help was needed.
Ashley sincerely hoped her paranoia was in overdrive.
Still, it was no good to try to simply hope danger away. If someone was lurking out there, ignoring him was not going to make him go away. She picked up the flashlight and moved to the doorway of the barn. The rain was still beating down, giving the air a fresh, clean smell, but making a muddy puddle of the entryway.
No footprints in the mud.
Was the force of the rain enough to wash away footprints in the time—surely no more than thirty seconds—she had delayed, to check the headset?
She shone the flashlight into the darkness outside, but most of the light bounced off the sheets of rain, not making it to the trees several hundred feet away.
A well-timed bolt of lightning lit up the entire area just as a simultaneous crack of thunder jarred her teeth—and there wasn't a trace of anyone.
Of course, whoever it was—again, if there'd been a whoever—could have circled around to the back of the barn.
But there wasn't anyone, Ashley told herself. The tractor drivers kept a count of how many people were in each wagon, because Nikko would have frowned on their losing a customer. Who would be wandering around the farm on such a miserable night? The workers had all sought shelter; the customers were presumably accounted for.
Still, she pulled the barn doors shut, which was only a sensible precaution in case the wind shifted, but she was very aware that the latch and padlock were on the outside because there was never any reason to lock yourself into a barn, only to close it up after yourself. On this side there was just a piece of twine fastened to one door, whose loop end slipped over a block of wood nailed into the other door—protection against the wind swinging the doors wide open, but hardly security against someone wanting to get in.
Facing the doors as she fastened the twine, Ashley felt a tingle in the spot between her shoulder blades. A somebody's-behind-you-watching-you sort of feeling. And she realized that the person she'd half convinced herself she hadn't seen in the doorway could have ducked down when she blinked.
And could have gotten back up again while she stood looking in the totally wrong direction.
She whipped around, the beam of her flashlight skittering over Anne Boleyn's head, the hanged man, the man tied to the chair, the knife-wielding man she thought of as her murderer.
Nothing.
She played the light up in the loft. Nikko hadn't put anything up there this year, because last year's mannequin hadn't worked well—a man sitting on the edge, holding a gun to his head. When that year's barn attendant would turn the light on, there was a tape recording of a gunshot, then the man fell backward so that only his feet, still dangling over the edge, showed. Or at least that was the theory. Several times he didn't fall far enough, which looked lame. Once he fell forward and off, almost hitting the people in the wagon, not only exposing the mannequin's wires but—Nikko's father supposedly ranted—also exposing Cristanis Family Farm to a potential lawsuit. So now there were only a couple bats and world-class–sized spiders dangling from the edge of the loft.
Were they vibrating more than they should have from the wind and from her closing the doors?
No way, Ashley told herself, could someone have climbed up that ladder in the short time she'd had her back turned.
And she would have heard.
Wouldn't she?
The rain was still hitting the back of the barn with enough force that it almost sounded like hail.
She walked around the downstairs section, circling the mannequins, the bales of hay, shining her flashlight into each gloomy corner.
There was definitely no one down here.
The doors rattled.
But that was just the wind.
She was fairly sure.
She shone the light up into the loft again and weighed her options. It was almost impossible that anybody was up there, but she knew she couldn't remain in this barn without making sure. There was probably nobody outside, either, but that was more plausible than that there was somebody in here. If she left the barn, to get away from the person who probably wasn't in the loft, she might run into the
person who might be outside. And, more likely, she could have a lightning-struck branch fall on her, or she could trip and twist her ankle from the slickness underfoot, or she could catch pneumonia. And she'd have to explain why she'd left the barn, and the others would know how badly spooked she'd been, and they'd laugh at her and say she was too young to work here after all.
There is, she assured herself, nobody in the loft.
She looked around for a weapon. Just in case. The pitchfork in chair-guy's chest, the ax that had severed Anne Boleyn's head, the knife held by the man murdering the wench—all those were plastic. There had to be a real pitchfork somewhere around the barn, but it was put away so nobody could hurt themselves with it.
As she was likely to do—even if she could find it—if she tried climbing the ladder with it.
Ashley wound the wire from the headset's battery pack around her hand, figuring she could climb with that and, potentially, use it to smack any intruder. She put her foot on the lowest rung of the ladder and realized the flashlight made climbing dangerous. It was too fat: She couldn't hold it and get a secure grip on the ladder. What good would she accomplish if she proved to herself she was alone but fell to her death doing so? She tried holding the end of the flashlight in her mouth, but—besides being gross—she was too likely to gag.
So she set the flashlight down on the floor, pointing up into the loft so she could see.
Ashley once more set foot onto the lowest rung. She took a steadying breath, then climbed all in a rush, hesitating only when the top of her head came even with the floor of the loft.
She gave a quick peek.
Nothing waiting for her, anyway.
She scrambled the rest of the way up, then swung the battery pack, just in case anyone came lunging out of one of the corners. But the only thing it made contact with was her own wrist.
See, she chided herself.
Then she did see it, a crouched figure in the right-hand corner. The light from the flashlight was too dim for her to make out any details. She swung the battery pack again, and it broke loose from the wire, hitting the floor down below with a dull thud. But the shadow didn't approach, or move. Or make a sound.
That gave her the courage to take a step closer.
It was the stupid suicidal dummy from last year, abandoned and shoved into this far corner in disgrace.
Ashley realized how raggedly she had been breathing.
It smelled of dusty heat up here, despite the coolness of the October night, the air thick and hard to breathe.
But she stayed long enough to check behind the dummy, behind the hay bales—though nothing bigger than a medium-sized dog could have hidden behind them. Still. Just to be sure.
She was embarrassed with herself for being as silly as a grade-school kid scaring herself with her own campfire story. The storm was still close, but moving away, though it had brought a cold front in with it. But the force of the rain was lessening, and most people would rather see the show even if it was cold and drizzling out. If Nikko was right about no other lightning in the area...
But, no, she realized as she climbed back down the ladder: The show couldn't resume until the electricity came back on. Whether it did or the show was canceled, somebody should be noticing soon that they weren't getting any responses from her over their headsets. Nikko would send someone to check on her, and she would have to admit to breaking the headset. Maybe she could come up with a good explanation before then, an explanation that wouldn't make her sound like a klutz or like a baby, spooked by shadows.
She was unwrapping the battery pack wire from around her fingers as she turned to face the door, to pick up the flashlight. Beyond the circle of light aimed past her at the loft, she saw a figure standing in the barn, in front of one of the doors, the doors that were still fastened by twine.
Not the hanged man. Definitely not another leftover dummy.
But even as she backed away she noticed things. Like that he was not a man, but a boy about her age, or at the most a year or two older. Which, of course, did not make him any less dangerous. Despite the light from the flashlight shining in her eyes, she could see him clearly enough to make out that his hair was dry, not dripping in his face as it would have to be in this downpour.
Then lightning flashed, not that close, but visible through the gap between the barn doors, enough to illuminate where the boy stood.
Except there was no boy.
Then the barn was dark again.
And he was back.
He flung his arm up to protect his eyes, then whispered, "Please don't hurt me."
It was a relief, of sorts, that he was afraid of her, except that she knew animals sometimes attacked out of fear. Still, it indicated he hadn't come in here planning on hurting her. Except how could he have gotten in? How could he disappear in lightning that wasn't bright enough to dazzle her eyes?
Ashley darted forward, grabbed the flashlight, and swung the beam in his direction.
He disappeared. Like a movie that fades off the projection screen when the overhead lights come on, he paled into nothingness.
There was no reasonable explanation for that. Ashley backed up and tripped over one of the bales of hay, so that she sat down, hard and fast, her bottom skimming the edge of the bale, which scraped her back on her way down to the floor. The beam of light jerked up and down—over the doors, onto the floor—but she knew to hold tight, and she didn't drop the flashlight.
In the half moments the light was not shining on him, the boy reappeared, crouching on the floor, his arms over his head as though warding off a blow.
Ashley tasted blood and realized she'd bitten her lip. She watched the shadow cast by the hanged man, creeping over the far wall, over the door, as he twisted in the air currents, silent except for the creaking of the beam. She was amazed she could hear that little sound over the pounding of her heart.
"Who are you?" Ashley demanded of the boy who was no longer there. "What do you want?"
Thunder grumbled, off in the distance, but the boy didn't answer.
Ashley felt she knew who he had to be, though her rational mind kept trying to push that possibility away.
He was a dead boy, one of Morgan Roehmar's victims. Brought back ... by what? The electricity of the storm? The particular night? Some alignment of the planets?
By the lack of light, definitely. Ashley kept a firm hold of the flashlight.
Then thought about all the dark corners of the barn behind her.
Still sitting on the floor, she swung the flashlight in an arc around her.
And once more glimpsed the boy by the doors as her beam of light chased the darkness around the barn.
He was gone once she aimed the flashlight directly in front of her again.
So, apparently something confined him to that spot. Good.
She sat with the comforting realness of the bale of hay pressing against her back and tried to keep her teeth from chattering.
C'mon, Nikko, she thought.
Ramon.
Somebody.
Morgan Roehmar had lured boys into trusting him—good-looking boys, the talk went, though of course the original news coverage had been way before her time. And she had never paid attention when, every so often, there would be a retrospective in the newspapers, usually on the anniversary of the day Roehmar held police at bay for almost twelve hours before a police sharpshooter had picked him off from where he'd barricaded himself on his front porch. Even as the coroner carried his dead body out, the dogs the police had brought into the house had gone frantic, finding the two bodies the girlfriend had told the police might be there, but still the dogs wouldn't settle down till they found another. Then another. Then another. Five bodies all told, or six—Ashley couldn't even remember. It was a story for campfires, for Halloween, for parents to warn their kids with, saying, "Even here, in a quiet place like this..."
The boy Ashley had glimpsed had been good-looking, what she'd seen of him before he'd dropped into a defens
ive crouch.
She tried to remember the details. She remembered the high school runner, because there was a picture of him still up in the trophy case outside the gym all these years later. This hadn't been him. The migrant worker? He hadn't seemed dark enough, but maybe. She thought there'd been a younger boy, twelve or thirteen, tricked by Roehmar asking for help finding a lost puppy—but that might be confusing two stories into one. And she was drawing a total blank on the other two, or possibly three, guys.
The only face she could truly remember from the papers was Roehmar's—he'd been in his fifties, kind of jowly but clean-shaven. Not much hair on top of his head, either, and what was there was gray. Ashley had always thought there was an intrinsically evil look about his eyes, but maybe that came from afterward, from knowing what he did, for he didn't seem to have trouble fooling people. Somehow or other—and he had different ways for the different boys over the several years and several counties he'd done this—Roehmar tricked his victims into trusting him long enough to overpower them, then he tied them up and strangled them with electrical wire.
No wonder this kid was acting terrified. The last few minutes of his life must have been awful.
Which was no reason for him to hang around frightening her.
But she couldn't get his words out of her head: "Please don't hurt me."
There'd been nobody to help him then. Could she help him now?
There's nothing you can do, she told herself.
Nothing to save his life, obviously. But why was his spirit—his ghost, whatever (she felt silly even thinking the words to herself)—still here? Something must be wrong.
Well, duh.
Something beyond that he'd been killed in a terrible way. All the boys had been killed in a terrible way. Why was this one still here—she again cringed at the wording—haunting?
No matter where Roehmar killed them—and the police suspected it hadn't been at the house—afterward he brought the bodies back to the farm, cut them into manageable pieces, wrapped them in plastic bags, and shoved them into the basement's crawl space. Even when the police had come in response to the girlfriend's complaint, they had originally just been going through the motions required to follow up on her accusation—not taking her seriously until Roehmar freaked out.