Mr. Jacobson sticks his head into our tiny alcove, and it just happens to be when Grady has his hand up my shirt, pressing me against the hay bales wall.
He coughs to clear his throat, and Grady quickly pulls his hand down from under my shirt, tugging it down around my hips.
“You about ready, Grady?” Mr. Jacobson asks quietly.
“Yes, sir,” Grady replies.
“Ready for what?” I ask. I look from Grady to Mr. Jacobson and back. Mr. Jacobson just grins.
“Do you trust me?” Grady asks as he squeezes my hand.
“I don’t know,” I answer warily.
He stares at me for a moment, and then he grins. “You trust me, Evie. I’m the only person you’ve ever trusted one hundred percent. You trust me to take care of you. And you can. You can always trust me to take care of you.” He holds out his hand. “Want to take a walk through the maze with me?”
I stare at him. “No. You know I don’t like to be scared, Grady.”
“I got you, Clifford,” he says softly. “Let’s go try it. If you end up catatonic on the ground, I’ll carry you out just like I did last time. Then I’ll hold you and rock you, and I’ll take care of you. Because that’s what men do for the women they love.” He gives my hand another squeeze. “Trust me.” He tugs my arm so I’ll follow him. We walk toward the maze entrance, and I see that the line is gone and no one is here.
“It’s closed, Grady,” I say. “We’re too late.”
“It’s still open,” he replies. He tugs my hand again. “Come on, scaredy-cat.”
I follow him to the mouth of the maze, and Mr. Jacobson hands us both a glow stick. Grady cracks mine and gives it a shake before he hands it to me.
I tentatively walk around the first corner, and see a woman sitting behind an old metal school desk. She’s dressed in a pretty dress and wearing a white apron. Her hair is pulled back perfect. She sits blowing bubbles, and she smiles at me as we get close.
“Good evening,” she says, her voice lilting and light. Then she turns her head, and I nearly jump out of my skin. The other side of her face looks like it has been chewed by a zombie. One eyeball is dangling from its socket. “Have fun,” she sings out as we walk past her.
“That same woman has done that same gig every year since she was six,” Grady explains in my ear.
“She was doing it the last time we came through here, but she was younger then. Do you remember her?”
“Vaguely,” I reply. I grab the bottom of Grady’s shirt and stay behind him as we walk around the next corner. That set-up is just a couple of zombies. I shiver. “They look so real.”
“I know, right?” Grady responds. He pulls me up so that I’m next to him as we make room for the zombies to shuffle by. After a few steps I am grabbed by the arms from behind and I squeal and nearly jump out of my skin.
Barbara-Claire and Junior start to laugh, and I’m so embarrassed that I completely didn’t recognize them in the dark. “Damn it, y’all. I think I just peed my pants a little bit,” I complain.
“Gotcha!” Junior is terribly pleased that they were able to pull that off.
“Yeah, you got me, but just you wait, I’ll get you back when you least expect it.”
Barbara-Claire laughs and tugs Junior away. Grady and I continue on through the maze.
We walk around another corner, and a paintball splats into the center of Grady’s forehead. “Oops! Sorry, Grady,” Jake says. “That was supposed to fly right past you.”
Grady lifts his shirt tail and wipes the fake blood from his forehead.
I relax a little when I see Katie, Jake’s wife, around the next corner. She’s with her kids, and they’re all dressed like little Cabbage Patch Kids. But then the younger ones run toward us and we can see that they have morphed into little demon Cabbage Patch Kids. The smallest ones even try to bite at our ankles. Grady laughs as he tries to gently shove them back.
“That’s enough,” Katie calls, and they all go running back to her. “They love this shit,” Katie says with a laugh as she high-fives each of them in turn.
“I want to teach our kids to do that,” Grady says to me.
I stop and look up at him. “Our kids?”
He grins down at me and kisses me quickly. “Yeah.”