No Exit

Jerod and Micah are jostling you as you saunter up the packed dirt road to the corn maze. Jerod’s wearing the elongated white mask from the movie Scream under his black hooded cloak - he keeps yelling “Whazaaaaa!” at the groups of kids and families heading to the fall festival. Micah has on a creepy scarecrow costume with a fake pitchfork, its tines dipped in vivid red paint. Your mom says you are too old for costumes, but you kind of wish you’d put one on anyhow. When Micah teases you, asking what you are dressed up as, you tell him “A werewolf” and when he says “where’s yer fur and teeth?” You grin and point upwards. “No full moon, dumbass.” Micah guffaws and spits his chewing gum by the row of gourds and pumpkins that line the road.

The entrance to the corn maze is guarded by two 12ft grim reapers, their glowing red eyes moving from side to side as they swish their scythes slowly back and forth over the heads of the squealing children.

“Beware, all ye who enter here!” An over-enthusiastic college kid announces gravely as he hands out tickets and takes ten-dollar bills from all the visitors. His face is a raw red gash from top to bottom, with a zipper around the outside. It’s impressive how realistic special effects make up has become, he is genuinely unnerving.

Micah’s mom is always giving him money to compensate for him not having a father, so he pays the entrance for the three of you.

“Let’s have some fun pranking these little brats,” he says, turning his phone torch on and holding it up under his chin so his burlap face grins eerily down. He tries to give an evil laugh, but his voice breaks and he squeaks it out. Jerod just about pisses his pants laughing, hands on his knees and bent over wheezing.

“Jeez dude, you sound like a farting mouse!”

Micah pushes him and a struggle ensues, but you don’t join in. A zombie is lumbering through the tight rows of corn towards you, groaning, one eye dangling loosely on a goopy red string.

“Quit it guys, you’ll get us thrown out!” You warn them as the zombie points towards the left, ushering you forward to the next section of the maze.

Soon the entrance is far behind you and the darkness of the night is lit only by the flaming tiki torches set every 6ft along the path.  Round every corner a mummy in moldering bandages or a psycho clown with a fake chainsaw leaps out at you, jangling chains or weapons menacingly. You feel the adrenaline flow through you, a little scared despite yourself. You wish again that you had a mask to hide your face behind – no way to tell if Jerod is scared with his leering grin, though Micah keeps shuffling behind you both so you think maybe he’s a little on edge, too.

“Let’s split up,” Jerod suggests as the path splits into three. “First one to make an employee cry wins a candy apple!”

They high five each other and then disappear to the left and right, leaving the middle path for you.

Here the torches seem further apart the further you walk, and the route twists round on itself, snaking its way through the dense corn until you lose all sense of direction. You realize you haven’t seen a monster actor in five minutes, the fact gnaws at you, making you start at the slightest rustle from within the field as you expect to be jump-scared. There may be no people, but they’ve certainly been generous with the fog machines – it swirls around your shins and makes you stumble over invisible pebbles.

Just as you begin to think you’ve stepped off the path completely you see a chain strung across the way ahead.

“No Exit” it reads.

You consider turning around, back to that fork in the maze, follow one of the other routes to find your friends. But you can see the farmhouse on the far side of the field up ahead – its porch lit up with string lights in orange and white. If you go out that way you can skirt around the field and beat the others to the exit, make up some story about scaring a skeleton and everything will be fine. They don’t need to know you chickened out early. They’d never let you live it down.

Warily, you step over the chain and wince as it creaks and sways. Just a few hundred feet and you’ll be out of the blasted maze for good. You break into an awkward jog, stumbling your way through the low hanging mist, eyes focused on the house ahead of you. There’s a rocking chair out front, and an elderly lady wrapped in a purple afghan sitting there with a steaming mug in her gnarled hands.

You think about turning back, don’t want to get yelled at for trespassing, but the porch looks so welcoming with its brightly carved pumpkins set out for the trick or treaters and the lady is smiling – she’s seen you.

“Come here, kiddo – did you get scurred in that nasty old maze?” She leans forward as though trying to get a better look at you, though how it is possible for her to make you out against the dark stalks of the corn crosses your mind. You hesitate.

“Don’t be afeared of little old me, child. Sure, I’m about as dangerous as apple pie and twice as sweet, so my grandsons tell me.”

You want to believe her, and there’s no real reason not to, but something lurches in the pit of your stomach, a wrongness that makes the hairs on the back of your arms rise up. Her voice is so sugary its saccharine and there’s a kind of desperation in her eagerness for you to come closer that makes you suddenly determined not to obey. You look wildly from left to right trying to find a gap in the corn through which to escape her eagle eyes.

She sighs, placing the mug down on the wrought iron table beside her and standing up.

“You’re going to be a runner, aren’t you?” she asks with disappointment in her tone, picking up a shot gun from behind her chair.

Now you are panicking. There’s an opening to the left and you dive for it, rolling on the muddy ground and grazing your elbows in your hurry to get out of sight. You can hear hurried footsteps behind you, too heavy to be the old granny, and you hear her call out into the darkness “They went that way! Go git’em, Junior!”

Now you crawl through the fog that rises up from the ground like a shroud, making you long for the inhaler in your jean pocket. Your eyes water, you’re blind without the tiki torches and frantically wriggling your way deeper and deeper into the narrow opening, ignoring the painful stalks that dig into your palms and knees. The footsteps are closer, heavy boots stomping towards you.

“You should have read the sign, kid” A deep male voice taunts you. “You can’t hide from us out here – this is our land, ‘n we know every inch of it. There’s no exit now, not for the likes of you.”

For a brief moment you have a fleeting hope – maybe this is all part of the haunt show, maybe granny and this scary man are in on it all, just one more clever trick to keep the punters screaming and coming back each year for more. Then you hear a rifle cock and the hope drains away, making you shiver.

“I know you’re in there, kid, I can smell your fear.” Now the footfalls are turning down the tight path towards you.

With no chance to avoid being spotted you push yourself to your feet and take off sprinting blindly into the dark ahead. Corn slaps your face, cuts your forehead and tears sting your eyes as you wheeze your way forward deeper and deeper into the pitch-black field.

Suddenly the ground falls out from beneath your feet, and you are tumbling, rolling forwards, grasping desperately for something – anything – to save you. You land hard, with an audible cracking in your right ankle. The pain is instant and overwhelming, so white-hot that it seems to light the world around you with its brightness.

You try to scream, but your asthma is kicking in seriously now, a combination of the fog and the running and just pure terror, so no sound comes out.

The man with the rifle is laughing loudly some distance behind you.

“They fell in the pit, Gee-mah! Didn’t have to do anything, found it all by themselves, ain’t that just a riot?”

You feel around you, and your hands sink deep into a squelching mush that repulses you so strongly you almost forget the pain in your leg. The smell, dear God the smell! Rancid watermelon juice and rotting pumpkins surround you, so deep you can’t even try to climb out, you’re sinking deeper every time you move, but still you can’t stay still. You scrabble desperately, clawing through the loathsome slurry to try to find something to grasp on to. There’s nothing. Now your chest is deep beneath the rotting fruits, being sucked still deeper beneath the viscous fluid. Flies swarm around your face and the stinking garbage juice is all over you and you long to hear Jerrod and Micah laughing, telling you what a little piss-baby you are, but Jerod and Micah are in some other world now and there is only this hell hole of rotting darkness.

“Got another one for the compost, Gee-mah!” Junior chuckles and it's an ordinary sound, not a villain laugh at all but just a farmhand, that’s what makes it even scarier. “The harvest’ll be right fine this year!”