Sparrow Hill Road 2010 By Seanan(78)

"Shove it up your ass, Alan," I snap.

Around the front of the barn, the hunters are cheering. One of the Barrowman kids—one of the ones in the middle, the ones that change so fast that I can't keep them straight anymore—comes quick-stepping around the corner, a candle in one hand, the fingers of the other hand curled protectively around the flame. "Mama says it's time," he says, breathlessly, as he hurries to his father's side.

"That's the bell, folks," says Matthew, and takes the candle from his son's hand (his son, who should have died in his cradle, three days old and already lost, but death wouldn't have him; that's what families like the Barrowmans get out of this arrangement, long life and health and every death a peaceful one). "Good luck out there."

I don't stick around to see him place the candle in the mouth of the waiting jack-o-lantern. I'm already turning, borrowed shoes pinching at my feet, and diving into the corn like a mermaid fleeing back into the sea. Halloween is here again, and all I have to do to stay dead is make it through the night alive.

***

My first Halloween, I was disoriented and upset as only the truly new dead can be. I ran because I was too scared to do anything else, and I escaped thanks to nothing more admirable than luck. It was luck that made me trip over the buried well cover, and fear that made me crawl inside the well, where none of the hunters thought to look for me. If I stay on the ghostroads for another hundred years, I'll never forget the sound of my heart slamming against my ribs on that first terrifying Halloween night. Sometimes I think I still have the bruises.

Two sets of footsteps fall in beside mine, and I know almost before I look who it's going to be: the football player and the star-necked girl, both of them doing their best to keep up. He's doing it easily, she's stumbling, but they're giving it the old college try. "What are you doing?" I hiss.

"Please," whispers the star-necked girl, gasping a little, already running out of wind. "Please, don't leave me."

Halloween is no time to feel sympathy; it's a time to run, and to hide, and to shove anyone who gets in your way into the line of fire, because at the end of the night, only so many of you are going to walk away. Every hunter who makes a kill is one more hunter who isn't gunning for me. There's no Halloween bonus for bringing in the greatest haul. So there's no good reason for me to slow down, to step into the shadow of a tall row of corn, and ask, "What are your names?" No reason at all. I do it anyway.

"S-Salem," says the star-necked girl, hair not quite so perfect anymore, pulse jumping in her pale-skinned throat.

"Jimmy," says the football star. He smiles at me, confident and cocky, and I realize he thinks I stopped because of him, because he's always been the kind of boy who's catnip for the kind of girl I used to be. He doesn't understand how much too young for me he is. "It's Rose, right? You've done this before?"

For more years than your parents have been alive, I think, and nod, and say, "Yeah, once or twice. I'm running, and I'm hiding. If you've got other ideas, this is where you get the hell out of my way."

"So you must know where they hide the weapons, right?" Jimmy's smile gets wider, little boy playing at being a predator. "We could win this thing."

"There's no winner on Halloween," I snap. "You want to 'win this thing,' you can go and do it without me. If you want to keep yourself safe, come with me. If not, stay here, and find your own damn weapons." I turn and start walking again, building up to a slow jog. We're in the corn. That's a start. I hear footsteps behind me, both Salem and Jimmy following, and speed up a little. They'll keep up, or they won't. Either way, I don't intend to die tonight.

I come back to the Barrowman farm year after year because it's familiar—more so to me than to any of the hunters, unless old Oscar's out there. He ran this ground as quarry before he became a killer, almost by accident, cornered and striking back because he didn't know what else he was supposed to do. Every year, I wake up in the pumpkin patch, sometimes in the hayrick, sometimes on the ground. Every year, they take us to the barn, clothe us, feed us, and set us to run like rabbits through the fields. They change things every year, because that, too, is a part of the rules...but there's only so much you can change, when geography and climate combine to limit your options. The orchards will always be in the same place; the marsh is sometimes frozen and sometimes not, but it's always on the other side of the irrigation ditch. These are the things that help. These are the things that keep me alive, year after year after year.

Once I'm in the corn, I can get to the corn maze. Not the interior, where the shape of the harvest labyrinth changes every year, but the channel around the back that the Barrowmans use for maintenance. The short-cut. From there, it's a straight shot to the apple orchard, and to the old barn beyond, where there are places a canny ghost could hide for a hundred years. I don't need that kind of time. I just need a single Halloween. Signaling Salem and Jimmy to stay quiet, I point right, and break back into a run.