Her tape played Starship’s “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now.”
Paul’s brain grew quiet and he joined her in slumber.
Two
Patrick Chance lifted his eyes to a cloudless September night. The moon was full, a bright orange light bulb with dark patches marring its surface, perhaps the fingerprints of the God or gods that hung it there. Stars spilled across the blackness, as if a vial of glitter had overturned. He spotted the Big Dipper and thought it amazing how the eye could organize shapes and patterns from such chaos.
Patrick returned his glance to the path before him, an earthen groove carved between tall cornstalks. The wind twisted his thick, raven hair into sculptures, then blew them down. Despite the brightness above, the rows remained dark, eerie.
This is a bad idea, he kept telling himself.
He’d always loved games, especially video games. Most days found him at Tony’s Speedway Market, his hand on the controls of Centipede, Dig Dug, or Donkey Kong, listening to the cheesy music and sound effects as he racked up points. In fact, one day last June, his initials graced the top five spaces on all three machines. PCG. Patrick Chance the Great. But those victories were short lived. Every night at eleven, when Tony closed up shop and turned off the power, Patrick’s achievements were erased. Winning the Wide Game would be different. Everyone would know. Everyone would remember. And it would be a victory no one could take away with the flip of a switch.
It would also be the only game he’d ever cheated to master.
Patrick was conscious of the tightly folded paper in his back pocket. He’d read it countless times, memorized each and every line until he could see the words hovering in the darkness ahead.
The object of the game is not to be seen.
If two players/teams DO see each other, they must exchange personal items.
These players/teams must then play the remainder of the game together.
If you think about deserting, remember the other player/team has your shit!
If you get to the quarry without them, they win and you lose.
The first one at the quarry gets the prize.
Tie Breaker: Without being seen, take items from players/groups you encounter.
If two players/teams arrive at the same time, the one with a personal artifact(s) taken from the other wins.
And then, at the bottom of the page ...
Game begins at 9am.
“Do you even know where we’re going?” he called out to Nick Lerner; the question was all but eaten by the roar of the wind and the rustle of the cornfields just north of Harmony.
Nick did not look back at his friend. He continued to light their way with his dad’s Maglight. A white circle of illumination revealed living walls of corn on either side. Like a funhouse hallway, they seemed to be closing in. “Of course I know. My brother won the last Wide Game, remember.”
“Did he cheat?”
At that, Nick stopped and turned his light on Patrick. “There wasn’t a thousand dollar prize in ’84, okay?” He lowered the flashlight and drew out a long breath; shadows played across his acne-scarred cheeks and swallowed his eye sockets whole. “Look, you wanna win, don’tcha?”
“You know I do.”
“Well tomorrow these fields are gonna be crawling with people, people we’ll have to share our winnings with if we bump into ’em. Do the math. I need four hundred and fifty dollars to buy Will Laymon’s old car. It’s a piece of shit, but it’s a car, and it’ll be bought and paid for.”
“We’re just gonna get caught,” Patrick whined.
“Not as long as you keep your mouth shut.”
And that was the reason Patrick was along for this ride. Insurance. Five hundred dollars to make sure no one ever found out about this false start. If he told now, he’d be just as guilty as Nick, and there would be hell to pay with the entire senior class.
“I’m no squealer.”
“I know.” A smile grew on Nick’s face. The light caught the short hairs of his beard stubble, turned them white; because of his severe acne, Nick rarely shaved. He grabbed the hood of his gray sweatshirt, pulled it over his head, then slid his hand into the pocket of his jeans. It was getting colder. “Hey, if it helps, this is more of a challenge. Any pussy can find his way there in the light o’ day.”
They pressed on down the furrow.
“I heard some kid went nuts the last time they played this game,” Patrick yelled over the hissing wind. “Chopped up a couple o’ girls, then slit his own throat.”
“First of all, that’s bullshit,” Nick said. “Second, you can’t slit your own throat.”
“You can too slit your own throat.”
“It never happened.”
“But a kid did go missing.”
Nick nodded.
That much was fact.
Russell Veal. His parents told the Harmony Police he’d played the game, but the other kids claimed they never saw him. They went so far as to drag the quarry, but never found a body. The boy just vanished.
Patrick said nothing more. Nick’s mind was made up, and he didn’t want to dwell on the subject. He let his backpack hang loose from his shoulders, pulled his hands back into the sleeves of his leather jacket for some warmth.
The Maglight dimmed.
Nick stopped in his tracks; gawked at the dying light as if it were a favorite pet hit by a speeding car. “No ... no ... no!”
“Tell me you brought extra batteries.”
“It’s rechargeable. I must not have plugged it in long enough. You got a light?”
“No!” The word exploded from Patrick’s lips in a misty cloud.
“Why not?”
“I didn’t know we were doin’ this. I thought I was just gonna sleep over, then we’d head out at nine like everybody else. What the hell were you thinking?”
“Lower your voice, will ya?” Nick looked around. “You’re startin’ to sound like my Dad.”
“I what? I can’t –” Patrick threw up his arms and laughed. “Do you know how much crap we’ve just walked into? We’re in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the night, and we have no way to see where we’re going!”
Nick’s hand was a shadow; it waved up and down. “Just shut up for a second.” He glanced at the dead light, at the moon above, then said, “Look, we can still do this.”
“Do you ever listen to anything I say?”
“This row is straight and the moon is bright ...” He gave the Maglight a shake, made certain it was gone, then looked up and down the row; the whites of his eyes floated in a pool of darkness. “We’re in the same shit if we go back or forward, right?”
“Then we should just stay right here,” Patrick said certainly. “We’ve already got a jump on everybody else.”
“You bring an alarm clock?”
“No.”
“What happens if we oversleep and somebody finds us out here? Even if they don’t figure out that we started last night, we’re gonna have to share the prize.”
“No,” Patrick repeated. “We could fall down a ravine and break our legs, or step on a rattlesnake, or ... shit. We can’t do this, okay? This is totally insane and we can’t do it.”
“And you’re gonna stop me how?”
“I’m not gonna stop you.” He said as he knelt down and sat in the earthen groove. “But I’m not goin’ with you.”
Nick’s eyes narrowed. “Fine. Sit there. Just keep your mouth shut and tomorrow I’ll still give you your share.”
“You’re going alone?”
Nick turned into the darkness, his voice filled with ambition. “Looks like.”
Patrick sat there a moment, listened as the crunch ... crunch of Nick’s steps grew faint, then looked up at the stars. He supposed he should go after his friend. If there were ravines, or rattlesnakes, or any number of other dangers, Nick may need Patrick’s help. Besides, sitting in the middle of the corn – listening to the wind, and the rustle, and the bugs – was far less appealing than t
he prospect of moving on. Patrick sighed, rose to his feet, and began to jog.
Darkness surrounded him. He stretched out his arms until his fingers brushed against the leaves of the stalks, allowing him to run a straight line between the rows. In a few minutes, Patrick heard the crunch ... crunch of Nick’s footfalls once more and called out to him, “Wait up!”
“Pat?” It was Nick all right. “I was wondering when you’d – whuuu?”
The sound of loose dirt giving way, followed by a splash.
Patrick shook his head; Nick must have slid down a creek bed. “I told you there’d be ravines and stuff.”
Around him, the field stilled as the wind withered to a gentle breeze. It was far too quiet, Patrick realized. There was no splash ... splash as someone traipsed through water. No more crunch ... crunch of shoes on dry earth. No sound of movement at all. He swallowed, then called out, “Nick?”
Silence.
Patrick strained his eyes and his surroundings sharpened. He could see up the row, but he could not see Nick. He frowned.
“Nick?” he called again, his voice becoming shrill.
He heard a noise. It was a low sound, something close to a gargle.
Fear seeped into Patrick’s body, woke the hairs on the back of his neck like an alarm and made them stretch. It swam straight to his heart and pumped into his veins, freezing his blood, making his entire body shudder. His jog faded to a walk, and his walk slowed until he took the path step after careful step.
He stopped.
Patrick’s right foot felt nothing but air beneath it. The corn had been cleared from this place, and the ground fell away in a steep slope. Someone had dug a pit. No doubt about it. He teetered on the lip of the crater, unable to go forward, unwilling to go back, and squinted into the dimness.
Someone had driven wooden poles into the earthen floor of the pit and whittled them to sharp points. Nick had fallen backward onto these stakes; they protruded from his torso, from his right arm, his left leg, and from his neck. In the gloom, the skewers looked coated in oil. They were dark and ... shimmering.
Patrick whispered his friend’s name, the word growing faint and evaporating like the misty cloud that carried it. He knew Nick was dead, and yet this fact was totally impossible. He took a slow step back from the edge of the pit, ready to run screaming into the darkness and the corn, but he felt hands between his shoulder blades ... pushing.
He fell onto the pointed stakes; the wood punched through his flesh and organs. “Oh, Jesus!” He managed to grab onto a nearby pole – used it to pull himself up, to roll onto his side. “Uhhh ... GOD!”
With numb detachment, he looked down at his body, saw the dark spots on his ruined jacket grow larger and connect, saw his legs twitch and shake – dancing to some unheard beat.
Patrick’s eyes rose once more to the stars and a silhouette moved in to block his view, a shape outlined by an orange halo of moonlight. The figure wore an open shirt or jacket that rose and fell on the swells of the wind, and there was something in its hand – something smooth and polished.
Patrick moved his blood-soaked lips. “Who ...?”
The shape made no attempt to answer him. It moved quickly. Cold metal touched Patrick’s forehead, the blade of a skate after an hour on an icy pond. It moved across his skin, left a searing wake of pain. Blood, warm and thick, flowed down into Patrick’s eyes and ears, cascaded over his nose and into his open mouth, causing him to gag and cough away his final breaths.
With his last bit of strength, Patrick moved a lazy hand to his scalp; he felt the thick brush of his hair jerked away with a violent tug, felt the wet slush of flayed sinew, felt the hardness of bone, then felt not
Three
The night sky was obsidian glass, fractured by a white-hot fork of lightning. Wind moved violently through stalks of corn, tossing them about, sounding like the heavy breathing of an animal. Paul was in a field. He ran, and, though he had no recollection of how he got there, or why he now raced down this row, one thing was certain – he had to keep moving.
Light up ahead, a yellow-orange glow flickered through cracks in a wall of stalks. Paul broke through it and saw a bonfire. A figure dancing around the flames. A woman. Young, naked, her black hair hanging to her waist, her body painted in multi-colored streaks. In her hands, she carried a stick figure made of dried cornhusks. From her lips poured a song in a language he could not understand. Somehow, Paul knew she was a Miami Indian, just as he knew there was something making him run.
Paul put his hands on his knees and tried to catch his breath, his eyes still focused on the dancing girl. Finally, he found his voice: “There’s someone in the corn!”
She took no notice of him. Instead, she finished her display and prostrated herself, depositing her “doll” on a woven swatch of cloth on the ground. The Miami girl mouthed a few words, then looked at the stranger who had flung himself into her midst. “The spirits call for their warriors.”
“What’s this about?” Paul begged.
The girl looked past him, into the corn. A crow landed on her shoulder, huge and black; its head cocked in Paul’s direction as if he were some curiosity. The stalks exhaled a cold wind, snuffed the bonfire like a candle.
“Mondamin is here,” said the Miami girl, her face bathed in orange moonglow.
Paul’s eyes sprang open in panic.
Morning sunlight revealed the five members of Duran Duran. They stared back at him from the “Wild Boys” banner Deidra had tacked to her ceiling. The oddity of the dream melted into the fear that he had fallen asleep and not gone home, the fear that his mother would find his bed empty and have him castrated if she ever found him alive. As he looked around the room, however, this fear too evaporated. Senior Skip Day and the Wide Game registered, and – most important – Paul’s mind found memories of Deidra: the feel of her body moving against his, the taste of her on his lips.
That had been no dream.
It happened.
The exquisite memories were replaced by the realization that she was gone. Paul tossed the sheet aside, put his feet onto the carpet, and saw his clothes lying in a heap. He slipped on his underwear, gave his scalp a healthy morning scratch, and moved out into the hallway. “Deidra?”
Her voice drifted up the stairs and he followed it.
She coughed. “I realize that, but I really am sick.”
Paul walked into the kitchen and saw his love standing there, phone in hand, a handkerchief wrapped around the receiver. She was dressed in nothing but an oversized nightshirt and the broken half-circle charm he had given her. Her hair was a mess. Last evening’s make-up still colored her pale, freckled face. She was beautiful.
“Thank you, Mrs. Elision ... Ahuh ... Ahuh ... Good-bye.” She hung the phone up, rubbed her hands down her face, and stared up at the ceiling.
“Having second thoughts?”
Deidra jumped.
Paul held up his hands in surrender. “Sorry.”
“I was gonna slide back under the covers with you.” Her voice held a touch of sadness. “I didn’t want you to wake up and find me gone.”
He put his hands on her shoulders. “What’s wrong?”
She brought her own hands up to rub his fingers, her eyes on the phone on the wall. “All senior absences are unexcused today.”
Over the years, everything that made Seniors special had slowly been taken away. Used to be, they got out of school a week earlier than the juniors and underclassmen. Now they went until the last day, same as everybody else. Used to be, seniors had their own locker area, The Commons, and any underclassman caught cutting through was dead meat. Now, the Guidance Office stood on the bones of that hollowed ground. Finally, there used to be a school sponsored Senior Skip Day. Now, they would be truant for observing it.
“You’re worried your parents will find out?”
Deidra smiled joylessly. “I got up early this morning because I thought Mom might come home. It would be just like her to launch a surprise
attack. I figured, if I saw her coming, I might ...”
“Push me out the door?”
“The window.”
“I see.” He buried his forehead in her hair.
Deidra turned and wrapped her arms around his neck. “It’s just that ...” She reddened and her eyes dropped. “I made a lot of mistakes when I was ... when we lived in Chicago. Now that everything’s so right, I hate that I’m still paying for them.”
Paul kissed her temple. “You’re good with me.”
She shook her head. “I don’t deserve –”
“You deserve more.”
Deidra kissed him, then jerked back. “Oh, shit, what time is it?”
Paul looked at his Swatch. There were no numbers, only neon hands on a brightly colored base. “Eight o’clock.”
“Shit ...” She broke away from him and ran toward the stairs. “I need a shower.”
“Need some company?”
She looked at him, her mind searching for words behind her eyes.
Paul’s face fell. “Didn’t realize that was going to be a big stumper.”
“I – you shouldn’t –”
“Did I do something wrong?”
Sudden insight dawned on her face. “No, not at all. It’s just that ... this is gonna sound so lame after last night ... I don’t want you to see me like that, at least not yet.”
“Lathered up?”
“You know what I mean.” She moved her hands up her body.
“What – naked?”
“Yeah.” Her face reddened again, as if it were trying to match her hair. “Hence the light being off last night.”
“Oh.” Paul couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Even in the dimness of moonlight, her figure had been clearly visible. To him, it was flawless. “I don’t understand. You’ve been –” He chose his words carefully. “– naked with someone before, haven’t you?”