“That was awesome,” Liam said.
“Yeah,” Connor agreed. “Can we do it again?”
“There are people behind us, buddy. We have to keep moving. But maybe after we get to the end, we can go back through if the line isn’t too long.”
Both boys cheered. Connie groaned. They moved on. Connor and Alex ran ahead. Liam and Connie held hands.
Running footsteps pounded toward them. A man dressed like a werewolf rounded the corner, clutching his rubber mask in his hands. His eyes flashed terror.
“It’s my grandma,” he shouted, racing past them. “She’s down there!”
Liam reached for the fleeing man. “Is she hurt?”
The volunteer werewolf brushed by him, barely stopping.
“No, man. She ain’t hurt. She’s fucking dead! Has been for twenty years.”
He ran past them and disappeared into the woods.
“That guy was weird,” Connor said, staring in confusion.
“It’s just part of the show,” Liam said, trying to reassure his family. “It’s all an act.”
Connie frowned. “Well, I definitely don’t approve of his language.”
“Come on,” Alex urged. “Let’s keep going.”
More screams and laughter drifted out of the maze house as they started down the trail again. Curiously, there were now screams ahead of them, as well.
“I thought we were the first ones through,” Connor said.
“We are,” Liam assured him.
“So who’s screaming?”
“It’s just the people hiding up ahead. They’re trying to psyche us out.”
The trail sloped downhill and then began to curve around, heading in the other direction. Liam guessed they must be at the halfway point. The trail grew darker as they reached the bottom of the hill. The white lines on both sides of the path faded, as if eaten by the dark. It was colder here. Connie and the kids shivered. The string of orange lights flickered. The screams increased in pitch and intensity, and then abruptly ceased.
Liam frowned. “What the—”
As they watched, the lights began to go out, one by one. Then they realized that they weren’t going out—they were being blacked out. Something was creeping across them. Something that moved like smoke.
It was the night.
The night was moving.
“Look at that,” Alex gasped.
Darkness flowed across the forest floor like water and wound between the trees like a snake. Everything it touched disappeared, encased in an impenetrable, obsidian shroud.
Connor grabbed his mother’s hand and squeezed.
“T-this is part of the show, too, right, Daddy?” Alex asked.
Liam couldn’t answer him because Liam was speechless. Tasha, the girl he’d had the affair with, stepped out of the darkness, naked and glistening with ebony liquid. The dark matter dripped from her pores. She reached for him, breasts heaving, and Liam gasped, terrified that his worst nightmare—Connie finding out about Tasha—had now come true.
Except that Connie didn’t notice because Celeste was gripping her hand. A second ago it had been Connor. But when she glanced down to reassure her son, she saw Celeste’s arm instead, sliced from palm to elbow, flayed skin hanging down in flaps, and black blood dripping from the wound.
For Connor, the darkness sounded like a flock of baby birds. Their wings beat against his upturned hands.
For Alex, the sky rained black coins, all stolen from his father’s dresser. They pelted his skin, their impact like bullets.
The O’Bannon family screamed as one and Nodens began to feed.
At the entrance to the Ghost Walk, Ken nodded at each customer as they climbed aboard the waiting hay wagon. Many of them reacted to the sounds drifting out of the woods. Some of them looked frightened. Others looked excited.
Grinning, Ken nudged the security man next to him.
“Listen to that. You hear those screams?”
“I sure do, Mr. Ripple. Sounds like it’s a big hit. People are having fun and getting spooked. We should get some great word of mouth tomorrow.”
More screams echoed across the field.
“Yeah.” Ken smiled. “It really is beautiful, isn’t it? That’s the sound of success. We’re doing good things here tonight.”
Nodens continued to feed, sending tendrils and feelers in all directions, consuming every living thing it touched—taking the form of their greatest fears and confronting them with it, waiting until their energy peaked from terror and pain and regret, and then gorging itself, draining them dry and spreading onward.
It pushed more of itself into the world, and felt the walls shake around it. They grew more fragile with each passing minute. Soon, they would shatter altogether and the feast would truly begin.
Until then, Nodens was content with the appetizers. It took plea sure in the horror it caused. It relished the destruction. Reveled in the anguish that it knew the Creator must feel every time it or one of the other Thirteen did this. Every time they snuffed out another of His favored creations.
The darkness continued to expand, engulfing everything in its path.
Another group of people had just emerged from the maze house when a wave of darkness rolled over them. It flowed through the building’s exit, racing down the winding hallways—darker than the darkness around it. It crashed over the roof and wrapped itself around the trees towering above the maze house. Then it gushed down the other side of the building and sent ebony tentacles rushing into the entrance, as well, trapping those inside. Their screams faded quickly.
Tammy Hays had volunteered to be a Ghost Walk runner. She was delivering hot chocolate to the other volunteers when the darkness took her. For Tammy, the darkness looked like snakes.
Benson Nugent was hiding behind a wall of cornstalks, waiting to jump out at a group of teens. Benson wore glasses and they kept fogging up beneath his rubber mask. He heard the screams all around him, but the sound didn’t concern him. There was supposed to be screaming. When the teens faltered, Benson pulled off his mask and quickly tried to clean his lenses. He noticed the darkness pooling around his feet. Then it turned into a pool of water, just like the pond he’d almost drowned in when he was nine.
Doris Anderson, Philip Nguyen, Steve Midler, and Sara McCauliff heard Benson’s screams. Doris and Sara screamed along with him, frightened by the outburst. Philip and Steve laughed, assuming it was part of the show. Then a wave of darkness swelled out of the forest and crashed down on them. Doris saw spiders, Philip saw the parents who’d given him up for adoption, Steve saw his drunken father, and Sara drowned as the darkness filled her lungs and throat. They were all swept away in a flood of black.
Jim “Jimbo” Sylva and Brandon Clark had a sweet setup. They’d located their hiding spaces directly across the trail from each other. They jokingly called it The Gauntlet. Passersby had no choice but to walk between them, at which point Jimbo and Brandon could jump out and give them a double-whammy of a scare. When they heard footsteps approaching, they leaped out onto the path—only to be confronted by a nine-foot-tall cancerous tumor and a wall of black fire, respectively.
Some surrendered to the darkness right away. Others, driven mad by its touch, insane by having their fears exposed, pulled away and attacked the others around them.
Christopher Jones had listened to Ken earlier. He’d removed his chain from his chainsaw. But now, after just reliving the car crash that had killed his parents, he’d changed his mind. He dug through his toolbox, hidden behind his wall of cornstalks. The darkness hovered around him, enjoying the emotions pouring from his body. Christopher grabbed a wrench and put the chain back on. Then, repositioning his Leatherface mask, he began to systematically slaughter others along the trail, until the darkness took him completely.