Appearances

APPEARANCES

         The brakes on the old bus squealed in protest as Miss Olsen pressed the pedal to the floor. The sign directing all passers-by to the Happydale Corn Maze was barely visible in the rapidly fading sunlight.
           Fourteen-year-old Jill Nightingale sat alone, staring out her window at the ancient trees that formed the hedgerow beside the road. Her best friend, Evie Jacobs, sat in the seat in front of her, and close to Evie—too close for Jill’s comfort—was Nathan McKinley, Evie’s sixteen-year-old boyfriend.
           Jill glared at the back of their heads for a moment and turned her attention back to the blurry world outside the bus.
           This is stupid, she thought. Why are we doing this? Corn mazes are boring. They’re not really mazes, because you can’t get lost. She glared at Nathan’s bushy brown head. And why did he have to come? He’s not even a freshman. Shouldn’t he be off doing some jock thing?
           Nathan was captain of the Grinville High basketball team. He had a huge following of teenage girls who flocked to all of his games, but the only girl he ever really talked to was Evie.
           Jill rolled her eyes, muttering, “Stupid jock.”
“I’ve never been to a corn maze before,” Millicent Montgomery, the school nerd, said timidly from the back of the bus. “I hope we don’t get lost.”
           “We won’t get lost, Millicent,” Jill shook her head.
           “How do you know?” Millicent fretted. “You don’t know! You’ve never been to a corn maze!”
           “Don’t worry about it,” Nathan laughed, looking back Millicent. “They hand out maps before you even get into the maze.”
           Satisfied, Millicent sat back in her seat and smiled brightly.
           Stupid chess player, Jill thought to herself. I just said the same thing. But, no. It doesn’t matter what I say. What do I know? If Nathan says it’s all right, it’ll be all right.
           She crossed her arms and sank deeper into her seat.
           “I don’t know, though,” Nathan chortled under his breath to Evie. “Getting lost might be kind of fun.”
           “Don’t even joke, Nathan,” Evie shoved him gently.
           Jill made a gagging noise and glared out the window.
            As the hedgerow ended, Jill could see far across an empty field where a large, imposing structure stood against the flaming horizon. In spite of the dim light, Jill could see tall fences crowned with barbed wire surrounding the building. At the four corners of the structure were tall towers, each equipped with a giant spotlight.
           “Wow,” Jill heard Nathan whisper suddenly. “What’s that?”
           Jill smirked devilishly, “Don’t you know, Nate? That’s the Happydale Asylum.”
           “I’d heard of it,” Nathan commented, “but I didn’t know what it looked like.”
            “Asylum?” Evie peered over the seat at her friend, her blue eyes wide. “You mean, like, where they keep crazy people?”
           “Um-hm,” Jill nodded slowly. “The state keeps all the psychos there. You know. The ones who go postal and kill everyone in sight?”
           “They’re in there?” Evie’s eyes grew wider.
            “Yep,” Jill said with a cruel snicker. “Except for one. He got out two weeks ago. No one’s been able to find him.”
           “Come on, Jill,” Nathan turned to her, “knock it off. You’re just trying to scare us before we go into the maze.”
           Jill shrugged and turned back to the window, feeling very satisfied at the fearful expression on her best friend’s face.

* * *

           “All right, everyone!” Miss Olsen shouted as the group gathered around the bus outside the corn maze. “We’ve reserved the maze for our group only. You’ll be the only ones in it. Once we get up there, the manager will explain the rules. Follow me.”
           Miss Olsen led them to a pleasant walkway that wound toward the corn maze. It was lined with eerie, glowing jack-o-lanterns and tall, leafy cornstalks. Some distance away, an old house glowed against the black velvet backdrop of night. Jill could hear ferocious barking emitting from it.
           Suddenly, lightning raked across the sky, filling the yard with silvery light. For an instant, a man appeared in the corn that lined the walkway. By the time, Jill’s eyes readjusted to the darkness, the man had vanished.
           Jill shook her head.
           You just imagined it, bozo.
           “Looks like rain,” Jill heard Nathan comment.
           “Yeah,” Evie agreed.
           Gosh, can’t she disagree with anything he says?
           The group assembled in an empty area inside the cornfield. The cornstalks reached eight feet all around them. The searchlight atop a converted windmill scraped the churning clouds above them. The wind lapped at the dust on the ground beneath them.
           A slender, athletic woman approached Miss Olsen, dark hair blending into the night.
           “Welcome, Grinville freshmen,” the woman boomed, her white teeth sparkling like the stars. “This is the Happydale Corn Maze, and I am Gretchen Miller, the manager. I’m going to go over some rules with you. Then, I’ll tell you about the game you’ll be playing, and I’ll let you go before the rain starts.”
           She pulled a notebook out of her pocket and began rattling off rules. “Don’t run. Don’t pick the corn. Don’t throw the corn. Don’t eat the corn. Don’t cut through the corn. There are paths in the maze for a reason. Stay on them. You’re more than welcome to scream, shriek, shout, holler, and howl—it’s Halloween, isn’t it?—but if I hear any profanity, you’re outta’ here!”
           Most of the teenagers groaned.
           “The old house on the hill is off limits,” Miller continued. “And, if I catch you playing tricks on each other, you’ll be removed. Is that understood?”
           Grumbles of assent echoed from the crowd of teenagers.
           “But just in case,” Miller said, “my assistant Smith will be wandering around in the maze with you to make sure you’re all behaving.”
           She gestured to a skinny man with thick glasses and close-cropped black hair. He waved at all the kids like a primadonna in a Thanksgiving Day parade.
           “Now,” Miller grinned, tucking the notebook away again, “the game is simple.” She held up a jack-o-lantern near her. “Ten pumpkins. Five ribbons. Five teams. Each team gets one map. Your job is to find each pumpkin, take your team’s ribbon, and reach the end of the maze. Whoever makes it out with the most ribbons wins the grand prize.”
           Miss Olsen divided the class into groups. She put Nathan, Evie, and Jill together, designating them as the green team.
           “The sky’s clouding up,” Miller shouted as Smith distributed the maps, “so you’ll have less time than normal to find the pumpkins. If you hear an air horn blow three times, that means the game’s over and you need to hightail it back to the parking lot.”
           After a few moments of organized chaos, the five groups lined up in front of the entrance of their choice, and when Miss Olsen blew the whistle, they all dashed into the darkness.

* * *

           “Look at that,” Jill murmured, pointing her flashlight toward the heavens.
           “What, Jill?” Evie shivered deeper into her sweater.
           “I was just looking at the stars,” Jill answered.
           “What stars?” Nathan’s voice broke in between the two girls as he shoved his head between their shoulders. “It’s all cloudy!”
           Jill grumbled something inaudible and glared at him.
           “Shouldn’t you be leading the way or something manly like that?”
           “Jill,” Evie reproved.
           “Hey, this map’s confusing!” Nathan said defensively.
           Suddenly, a scream echoed through the night.
           “That sounded like Millicent,” Evie whispered. “Hope she’s okay.”
           “She probably just saw her shadow,” Jill rolled her eyes and looked straight ahead.
           The trio continued to wind through the path in the corn. They turned a corner and stumbled onto the red team, captained by Pete and Petey Sullivan, the class clown cousins of Grinville High.
           "Hey, it’s the love birds!” Pete mocked, red hair glaring in the darkness.
           “Ooo, kissy, kissy!” Petey echoed.
           Nathan rolled his eyes and escorted Jill and Evie past the rowdy, catcalling group.
           “Retards,” Nathan grumbled as they continued through the maze.
           Takes one to know one, Jill thought with a laugh.
           They walked for what felt like hours, and although they managed to find Jeremy Jenkins’s yellow team and Pauline Applebee’s purple team, no pumpkin presented itself.
           “Gee,” Jill glanced at her watch, “it’s already 9:00.”
           “Nate, let me see the map,” Evie finally snatched it away from him. “Here’s an asterisk, and here’s where we are.” She pointed. “If we just take our first right and then the second left, we should find a jack-o-lantern.”
           “You’re the boss,” Nathan smiled and started in the direction she had indicated.
           Jill tagged along at the back, shining her flashlight into the cornstalks. She could hear the varied shouts and screams of her other classmates somewhere in the expansive cornfield.
           Another rumble of thunder sounded overhead, and Jill walked faster to keep up with Nathan and Evie. In the darkness with the light of the flashlights washing over them, the cornstalks looked alive, swaying back and forth in the breeze. Their leaves rustled together like the fabric of a skirt or like a secret whispered in silence.
           Jill stifled a shudder and increased her pace.
           “Eureka!” she heard Evie exclaim.
           In a moment, Jill stepped into a small circular area surrounded by cornstalks. In the very center was a white pedestal, and sitting on the pedestal was an intricately carved jack-o-lantern. Its toothy grin beamed maliciously at Nathan as he pulled the green ribbon off the stem.
           “Everyone else’s ribbons are still here,” Evie clapped excitedly. “We’re the first ones here!”
           “Calm down, Ev,” Nathan shushed her. “We’ve still got nine more pumpkins to go.”
           “True,” Evie turned her nose up, “but now that we’ve found the first one, we’ll be able to find the others really quick.”
           She pulled the map out again and skimmed over it, rattling off directions to the next jack-o-lantern. In a few moments, the three teenagers started off again, this time with Evie leading. Jill, however, still hung at the back.
           “This is so boring,” Jill griped, but she gasped as something rustled in the stalks.
           “What?” Evie jumped and turned around.
           “I heard something,” Jill shone the flashlight into the cornstalks.
           “It was your imagination,” Nathan pushed Evie forward.
           Jill glared at him in the darkness and peered harder into the whispering cornstalks.
And tried not to scream.
           A white face with pale eyes and silvery hair stared back at her!
           A bolt of lightning split the sky, blinding her momentarily. When the spots finally left her vision, Jill glared back into the cornstalks.
           The face was gone.
           “Whoa,” Jill rubbed her eyes. “Evie, did you see that?”
           There was no answer.
           “Evie?”
           She looked around and hurriedly shone the flashlight all around her.
           Evie and Nathan were nowhere in sight.
           “Evie, this isn’t funny!”
           They left you, her mind said. They left you behind!
           Jill stuck out her lower lip and set her jaw, muttering, “If you wanted to be alone, you could have just said so. Stupid jock.”
           Grumbling to herself about Nathan, she turned around and started wandering through the maze alone. Rain began to fall, splashing on the ground and on her shoulders. The raindrops pattering on the cornstalks sounded like a million muffled firecrackers. In a matter of moments, Jill was thoroughly soaked and becoming extremely cold.
           Three air horn blasts suddenly shattered the night air.
           “Well, that’s that,” she muttered, shivering against the wind.
           She turned a corner and ran into someone. She took a step back and looked up.
           “Mr. Smith,” she gasped.
           “Did you lose your group?” he smiled down at her.
           “They lost me,” Jill shrugged, looking down.
           “Need help getting out?”
           “Yeah,” Jill answered. “Did you hear the horn? That means the game’s over, right?”
           “Right.”
           Smith turned and started walking, and Jill followed.
           Maybe I’ll beat them back, she thought to herself. That’ll be a kick in the pants! I can’t believe they left me behind. Some best friend Evie is. I bet they’re talking about me right now.
           Lightning split the sky again. Jill happened to look up.
           The white face in the corn stalks greeted her.
           “Mr. Smith!” she gasped. “Did you see it?”
           “See what?”
           “The face? The face in the corn?”
           “What?”
           “There’s someone in the corn.”
           “It’s probably someone lost, like you,” Smith responded. “Wait right there. Don’t move. I’ll go get them and be right back.”
           Jill nodded and tried not to feel afraid as Smith wandered into the cornstalks.
           The wind blew around her, wailing and moaning like a stubborn child. It knifed through her, chilling her to the marrow of her bones. Thunder crashed above.
           She caught her breath as a hand suddenly appeared in the shadows, bony fingers grasping and groping at the air. She shone her flashlight on it and had to laugh. It was only three cornstalk leaves that had tangled together.
           Jill tapped her foot, waiting for Smith.
           Where is he?
           She lifted her light again and immediately wished she had not.
           In front of her stood a man, but it was not Smith. He was tall and burly, and he carried a shovel. His salt and pepper hair was wet and plastered to his scarred face, and his eyes were icy blue, like a frigid winter sky. He stared at her.
           Jill’s breath caught in her throat. Her heart hammered against her ribs. Her blood roared in her ears.
           It’s the guy from the corn!
           She did not think. She just ran.
           Soggy, wet leaves slapped her in the face as she darted through the darkness in a desperate effort to escape the gaze of the man.
           It has to be the guy who broke out of the asylum! It has to be! He looks scary enough!
           White clouds of vapor flowed like smoke from her mouth as the temperature dropped rapidly. Her side began to ache, and she slowed down, frantically looking every direction.
           Jill shivered again as her eyes swept the cornstalks for any sign of anything familiar. She walked forward, moving her flashlight from right to left. She walked another few yards and gasped as she entered another open area.
           “Oh wow,” she laughed, grinning broadly.
           Sitting on a pedestal at the center of the clearing was a jack-o-lantern, its eerie grin dark and four colored ribbons dangling from its stem.
           “This is the first pumpkin!” she grinned. “I’m back where we started! I’ll be out of here in no time!”
           Then the rain began falling hard again, almost totally blurring her vision.
           She stared down the path she remembered from when she, Nathan, and Evie had first entered the maze. Soon, she began to jog as the shape of the path became more familiar.
           But her left foot slammed into a muddy puddle, and she completely lost her balance. She fell forward, her flashlight smashing into the wet ground and skittering away somewhere in the corn.
           The corn to her right rustled.
           She stopped.
           It rustled again, far too loudly to be the wind. Jill did not want to move.
           Something growled.
           “It’s the wind,” she said aloud. “Just the wind in the corn. That’s all. The wind in the corn and your imagination.”
           Lightning flashed. Two glowing orbs shimmered in the darkness.
           “A dog?” she mumbled. “How did a dog get here?”
           It growled maliciously.
           “Please be friendly.”
           She was backing away.
           The huge Doberman kept barking, more loudly and more ferociously with every second. She could see the broken chain hanging from its collar. It stepped forward, still barking angrily, and with a vicious snarl, it lunged forward! Jill dodged it and bolted into the darkness, running as fast as her legs would carry her. The dog followed, still barking.
           She veered right and then left and then right again, desperately trying to throw the dog off. Nothing worked.
           She raced ahead. She could see another clearing in front of her. She could hear the dog behind her. She burst into the clearing and ran even faster.
           And bounced off something in her path. She sprawled backward on the muddy ground, splashing dirty water all over herself.
           Jill looked up and screamed. Standing over her, holding a dirty shovel, was the madman. The searchlight in the distance highlighted his burly physique, and his eyes pierced through her like daggers.
           Jill gasped as he stepped toward her, and she heard the dog coming. It raced into the clearing, but it skidded to a clumsy halt five yards away, staring at the man. The man waved the shovel at the dog, and the dog released a pitiful whine. Then, it slinked away into the corn.
         Jill could only stare. Slowly, she became aware of the rain striking the top of her head.
           The man turned and glared down at her.
           “Come with me,” he ordered gruffly and turned.
           “Why?”
           “Do you want out of here?”
           She could not answer. Her voice seemed to have vanished.
           The man started for one of the cornstalk corridors.
           Jill watched him go and turned to stare at the dark, foreboding corn maze behind her.
           Just go, her mind whispered. What the worst that can happen? He’ll kill you? He’ll chop off your head? Hey, at least he didn’t let the dog get you. That’s a plus. Right?
           Jill closed her eyes and scrambled to her feet, hurriedly chasing after the man. She caught up with him after a few moments and followed him timidly without saying a word.
           They walked and walked and walked. Jill grew colder with every step. Her fingers were numb, and her ears burned as if they were on fire.
           “Lost your group, huh?” the man finally spoke.
           “Something like that.”
           “Why’d you run away from Smith?”
           “Huh?”
           “I assume Smith told you to stay put,” the man looked over his shoulder at her, scarred face eerie in the shadows. “Why didn’t you?”
           “I got scared,” Jill spat. “How come you were following us?”
           “I do the same thing Smith does,” the man responded with a lopsided grin. “Make sure you kids don’t get into trouble.”
           “Mrs. Miller didn’t say anything about that.”
           “Of course, not. If kids know to watch out for Smith, they’ll only act up when he’s not around. That’s why I’m here. I know this field better than I know my wife.”
           “How come?”
           “I own it.”
           “You do?”
           “Yep.”
           “Really?”
           “Yep,” the man nodded. “Gretchen just takes care of the money matters.”
           “What’s your name?”
           “Ratzliff. Buford Ratzliff.”
           “Whoa.”
           “Who’d you think I was? An axe-murderer?”
           “Well, the thought crossed my mind.”
           Ratzliff grunted, “Kids.”
           “Well,” Jill felt her face growing hot, “you looked scary in the corn.”
           “And just because someone looks scary they are?”
           “Well, no. Not always.”
           He stopped and smirked down at her.
           “You ever heard that you can’t judge a book by its cover?”
           Jill looked down shamefacedly. Ratzliff patted her shoulder and started walking again. In a few moments, they had reached the exit.
           Evie came running and threw her arms around Jill’s neck, hugging her tightly.
           “Oh, Jill!” she wailed. “I’m so sorry! We just kept walking! We thought you were with us! I’m so sorry!”
           Nathan approached quietly and looked on.
           “It’s all right,” Jill extricated herself from Evie’s strangling grip.
           “Who’s that guy?” Evie asked, nodding at Ratzliff.
           Jill watched the old man walk to where Mrs. Miller was standing.
           “Well,” Jill grinned and headed toward the bus, “he’s not an axe-murderer.”

* * *

           Evie sat next to Jill on the ride home, and Nathan sat in front of them, though for most of the ride he was peering over the back of the seat.
           “What a letdown,” Evie sighed. “I can’t believe no one even won the game.”
           “That’s all right,” Jill shrugged. “I still had a good time.”
           “How?” Nathan wrinkled his forehead. “Evie and I walked off and left you. The neighbor’s crazy dog attacked you. And you got drenched from head to foot in mud. How could you have had a good time?”
           “I learned a very valuable lesson,” Jill patted Evie’s hand and smiled up at Nathan.
           You did?” Evie asked. “What?”
           I learned that appearances can be deceiving,” Jill giggled, “and that scary-looking old guys just might have a good heart if you look past their faces.”
           “I’ll agree with that,” Evie nodded. “Nathan looks like a stupid jock.”
           “Hey!” Nathan pouted.
           “But he’s got the highest math scores in school.”
           “Really?” Jill looked surprised. “I didn’t know that.”
           “There’s a lot about me you don’t know,” Nathan winked.
           “Well,” Jill took a deep breath and squeezed Evie’s hand, “I’m just going to have to find out, won’t I?”

* * *

           “Nice kids,” Buford commented as he watched the bus drive off. “Tad strange. But nice.”
           “True,” Mrs. Miller crossed her arms. “But all kids are strange now and then.”
           “Like Smith.”
           “Smith isn’t a kid.”
           “Acts like one,” Buford nodded at the skinny, freckle-faced assistant who was walking slowly across the yard. “Totally unpredictable that one.”
           “Now, Buford,” Mrs. Miller scolded. “He’s only been here for a week.”
           Buford snorted and walked away.
Mrs. Miller shook her head and walked toward the office.
           Across the yard, Smith entered the woodshed to chop some wood for the fire.