Panic(19)

“Shut up,” she said, and punched him in the arm. He pretended to wince. As Heather rolled down her window, she caught a glimpse of herself in the side mirror. Her face was red and her hair was a mess and her chest was still wet with sweat, but she was surprised to find that she looked kind of . . . pretty.

“How was it?” Bishop asked as they began thumping down the drive again. He’d gotten her an iced coffee from 7-Eleven: lots of sugar, lots of cream, just how she liked it.

She told him—about the runt pig that had ballooned to a huge size, the horses, the chickens and roosters. She saved the tigers for last. Bishop was taking a sip of her coffee and nearly choked.

“You know that’s totally illegal, right?” he said.

She rolled her eyes. “So are the pants you’re wearing. If you don’t tell, I won’t.”

“These pants?” Bishop pretended to be offended. “I wore these just for you.”

“You can take them off just for me,” Heather said, and then blushed, realizing how it sounded.

“Anytime,” Bishop said, and grinned at her. She punched him again. She was still fizzy with happiness.

It was a twenty-minute ride back to downtown Carp, if the Motel 6, the post office, and the short string of greasy shops and bars could be counted as a downtown, but Bishop claimed to have figured out a shortcut. Heather went quiet when they turned onto Coral Lake, which couldn’t have been more inaccurately named: there was no water in sight, nothing but fallen logs and patchy, burnt-bare stubs of trees, because of a fire that had raged there several years ago. The road ran parallel to Jack Donahue’s property, and it was bad luck.

Heather had been on Coral Lake only a few times. Trigger-Happy Jack was known for being consistently drunk, and half-insane, and for owning an arsenal of weapons. His property was fenced in and guarded by dogs and who knew what else. When his fence came into view, pushing right up to the road, she half expected him to come banging out of his house and start taking potshots at the car. But he didn’t. Several dogs came running across the yard, though, barking madly. These dogs were nothing like Anne’s. They were skinny, snarling, and mean-looking.

They had almost passed the limits of Trigger-Happy Jack’s property when something caught Heather’s eye.

“Stop!” she nearly screamed. “Stop.”

Bishop slammed on the brakes. “What? Jesus Christ, Heather. What the hell?”

But she was already out of the car, jogging back toward a sagging scarecrow—at least, it looked like a scarecrow—dumped on the ground, leaning back against Donahue’s fence. Her stomach was tight with fear, and she had the weirdest sense of being watched. There was something wrong with the dummy. It was too crudely made, too useless. There were no farms this side of Coral Lake, no reason for a scarecrow, especially one that looked like it had been dumped from the trunk of a car.

When she reached the scarecrow, she hesitated for a second, like it might suddenly come to life and bite her.

Then she lifted its head, which was slumped forward on a spindly stuffed neck.

In place of features, the scarecrow had words written neatly, in marker, on its blank canvas face.

FRIDAY, MIDNIGHT.



THE GAME MUST GO ON.





FRIDAY, JULY 1





dodge

THE CROWD WAS SMALLER ON FRIDAY NIGHT; THE atmosphere tense, unhappy. Nervous.

There was no beer, no music, no bursts of laughter. Just a few dozen people huddled silently fifty feet down the road from Trigger-Happy Jack’s fence, massed together, lit up white-faced in the glare of the bouncing headlights.

When Bishop cut the engine, Dodge could hear the sound of Nat’s ragged breathing. Dodge had spent the ride over trying to distract her by doing easy magic tricks, like making a joker appear in her jacket pocket and a penny vanish from her palm. Now he said, “Just follow the plan, okay? Follow the plan and everything will be okay.”

Nat nodded, but she looked sick—like she might puke. She was deathly afraid of dogs, she had told him. Also: ladders, heights, darkness, and the feeling you get in the middle of the night when you check your phone and see no one has texted. As far as he could tell, she was pretty much afraid of everything. And yet, she had decided to play. This made him like her even more.

And she had chosen him, Dodge, as her ally.

Bishop said nothing. Dodge wondered what he was thinking. He’d always thought Bishop was nice enough, and book smart for sure, but just like a big dumb guy who followed Heather everywhere. But Dodge was starting to change his mind. During the drive, Bishop’s eyes had clicked to his for a second in the rearview, and Dodge had detected some kind of warning there.

The night was clear and still. The moon was high and halfway to full, and turning everything to silhouette, drawing angles around the fence. Still, it was dark. A flashlight went on and off several times, a silent signal. Heather, Bishop, Nat, and Dodge walked toward it. Dodge had the urge to take Nat’s hand, but Nat was hugging herself tightly.

At least Dodge had had time to plan, to prepare. If Nat hadn’t told him about the dummy Heather had spotted on Tuesday, he might not have known about the newest challenge until this morning.

The email had come to all the players simultaneously from [email protected].



Location: Coral Lake Road

Time: Midnight