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[chloe-voss-blog]

The Maze

It was late September when the signs started to go up for all the local farm’s pumpkin patches and corn mazes, and the magic of fall lingered in the air.

         My cousin, Clare, and I decided to go to Hickory Ridge Farms, a place we had been going to since we were kids, and being whole official teenagers of thirteen, we had to do their enormous corn maze alone. 

The corn maze on Hickory Ridge Farms was known for counties around for being the biggest and most difficult to get through. It was the kind where they had families carry flags incase they got lost or needed help; the kind so huge that workers stood on wooden watchtowers to help guide people out; the kind so twisty and turny to not allow kids under the prestigious age of 13 in without an adult. 

         No match for us, but after a grueling two hours and twenty-three minutes, and a small bout of heat exhaustion from roasting in the early October sun, we finally made it out.  But Clare noticed something was missing, her necklace.

 “Could it have fallen off?”, I asked.

“No, I had it on all day, no way it would have just fallen off now, and I know I had it on when we came in.”

“Hm, weird.  Did you want to go back and look for it?”

“Uh - absolutely not, no way we’re getting lost in that thing again. I’m exhausted, plus it was cheapo shit. It doesn’t really matter, just weird is all.”

          As Halloween approached, my older brother, Derek started talking about going to do one of the haunted houses or hayrides in the area, I suggested we go back to Hickory Ridge. He said they don’t do anything spooky there, it's all kiddy stuff, for little kids like me.  Little kids like me? Whatever. I knew exactly how to get him to eat his words.  

“Well we should just do the corn maze at night, I bet you’d be scared shitless, even without the weird theater kids from school in masks and make up.” I said.

“No way, I’m sure its so well lit it might as well be daytime at that place, I’m sure it’d be a cake walk.”

“Wanna make a bet on it?”

          My brother, my cousin and I, all ended up at Hickory Ridge a little past nine a few days later, ready to conquer the behemoth of a corn maze in the night.

There was an eeriness as we approached the empty field. 

Not a soul was seen on the farm. No lights on, at all. 

Luckily, we did bring some flashlights, just for precaution.

         We began the trek into the cornfield, and since me and Clare had been through it before, decided to see if we could make it out in record time, but every corner we turned, seemed to be the wrong one.  

Then we heard a rustle, right behind us. It was something pretty big… maybe a dog from on the farm or something…

  Clare and I convinced ourselves that this path was the right one, just seemed to curl endlessly into the middle of the maze.  We decided that we were just getting freaked out, and it was making us all turned around, we began to pull ears of corn off the stalks, to leave a trail behind ourselves.  

The rustling came again… it had to just be a dog… just a lost hound dog…

  Derek instinctively flashed his light behind us.

 “There’s no fucking way.”

“No, we must just be imagining it, we’re just freaked out…”, Clare choked out, as we checked behind ourselves to see the trail of corn ears - gone.  

We kept going, by my guesses we were in the dead center of this thing now, and there was no way to see how to get out, the path just kept twisting and turning and I knew it was all wrong but we just had to keep going.

 There was a rustle again, this time in front of us, and just a few steps ahead of us, Clare’s necklace laid on the ground.

 “See! We’re fine! We must be getting close to the exit!” Clare said in a high nervous tone.

Then there was a rustle, a big one, not like a hound at all, but like a person walking.  Too slow to be an angry farmer, and no apparent flashlight to be looking for teenagers up to no good.

 Then we saw it, just cross the path, from the corn, just to disappear right back into it.

 “Sir! Excuse me Sir!”I said far louder than necessary for it to hear.

 He didn’t turn around.

It just kept, walking into the corn.

 Then, we began to run. As fast as we could in the opposite direction, but we seemed to get nowhere in this godforsaken maze.

We heard the rustling again, this time two...things…

We knew they were not human, not even close - their gait was loose and floppy, what should have been smooth arms of muscle and bone, were lumpy and misshapen. All we could do was just keep running. 

 “We’re gonna have to run through it, there's no way we’re getting out of here on the path.” Derek said.

We joined hands, hoping to not lose one another to whatever was creeping all around us, and darted through the corn stalks towards the open field that housed the entrance.

Whispers masked in muffled groans erupted from the rustling stalks 

All it could make out of the strained voices was a faint and mumbled single word - Stay. 

 I was the middle of the chain, I felt Clare being pulled, hard, in the other direction.

A something had a death grip on her arm. 

 It looked like a child that had been made into a scarecrow.  It was overstuffed and distended with straw, threatening to tear right through its thin, decrepit skin.  The buttons in place of eyes were sewn on whenever the poor kid that became this thing was still alive, with dried blood caked around the glistening black edges, like tears made of mud. Its mouth still moved underneath loose stitches.  The creature painfully tried to croak words out, pulling the stitches around its lips taught enough to cause them to slowly rip and pop loose, exposing the straw and rotting flesh inside it.

By the amount of rustling behind us, we knew this wasn’t the only one.

 It wouldn’t let go. Its hand flaying under its own grip, exposing its hay and carrion insides, with straw and shards of bone digging into Clare’s wrist.

In one swift motion, Clare let go of me and kicked it hard enough to get away, blood streaming down her hand from her shredded wrist.

 We just kept running.

The rustling kept getting closer. And the muffled groans only continued to grow louder,

licking at our heels

But the corn was getting thinner.

And our time seemed to be running out…but-

We made it.

We made it out.

We didn’t stop to gasp for air, we just kept running, until we made it all the way back to the safety of the house.

 We never went back to Hickory Ridge, because whatever those things were, had that cheap fucking necklace, that one little piece of Clare, and we feared a return would ensure they would keep us there for good this time.  

[chloe-voss-blog]

Numero Uno

I was told to start a blog because I want to write.  So write I shall.