This is stupid. How many times did my father tell me that places can’t be bad? I reach into my backpack and grab the athame, then get out of the car. The puddles reach up to my shoelaces, and my feet are soaked by the time I get to the Audi’s trunk. Both Carmel’s and Thomas’s cars have been outfitted and stocked like survival outposts, with flares and blankets and enough first-aid supplies to satisfy the most paranoid hypochondriac. Thomas is beside me, stepping gingerly through the mud. Carmel pops the trunk, and we grab three flashlights and a camping lantern. We walk together in the dark, feeling our feet go numb and listening to our socks squelch inside our shoes. It’s wet and cold. Stubborn snow patches still cling to the bases of the trees and around the sides of the barn.
I’m struck again by how ominous the barn looks. Worse even than Anna’s falling-down Victorian house. It crouches like a spider, waiting for us to get just close enough, pretending to be inanimate. But that’s stupid. It’s just the cold and the dark getting under my skin. Still, I wouldn’t necessarily give a thumbs-down if someone decided to come out here with gasoline and a match.
“Here.” I hand Thomas and Carmel their fresh protection spells. Thomas puts his in his pants pocket. Carmel holds hers like a rosary. We turn on the lantern and flashlights just outside the door, which creaks back and forth like a come-hither finger. “Stay close,” I whisper, and they press in on either side.
“I tell myself every time that we’re crazy for doing this,” Carmel mutters. “Every time, I think that I’ll just wait in the car.”
“It’s not like you to stay on the sidelines,” Thomas whispers, and on my other side, I sense Carmel’s smile.
“Get a room,” I mutter, and reach forward to pull open the door.
Thomas has this annoying habit of going in hot, flashing his beam of light every which way at a million miles an hour, like he’s expecting to bust a ghost mid-haunt or something. But ghosts are shy. Or if not shy, at least cautious. Never in my life have I opened a door and found myself staring directly into a dead face. I have, however, stepped inside and instantly known I was being watched. Which is what happens now.
It’s a strange sensation, that feeling of intense awareness from somewhere behind you. When you’re watched by the dead, the sensation is weirder, because you can’t pinpoint which direction it’s coming from. It’s just there. Annoying, but there’s nothing you can do about it. Sort of like Thomas’s strobe-flashlight.
I walk to the center of the barn and set the camping lantern on the ground. The air smells heavy with dust and old hay, which is scattered across the dirt floor. When I turn a slow circle, my flashlight beam steady and careful, it whispers and crunches beneath my feet. Carmel and Thomas pay close attention and stay right beside me. I know that Thomas at least, witch that he is, can feel that we’re being watched too. His flashlight beam zips up and down the walls, seeking out the corners and the places to hide. He’s giving too much away, instead of using the light as a decoy and paying attention to the dark. The sounds of clothing are loud; Carmel’s hair rustling back and forth over her shoulder as she looks around is like a fricking waterfall.
I put my hands out and step away, letting the light from the camping lantern break through our huddled mass. Our eyes have adjusted, and Carmel and I turn off our flashlights. The barn is empty except for what looks like the skeleton of an old plow in the south corner, and the camping lantern colors the room a muted yellow.
“Is this the place?” Carmel asks.
“Well, it’s good enough to stay in for the night,” I say. “In the morning we’ll try to walk somewhere with better reception and call a tow truck.”
Carmel nods. She’s caught on. The stranded traveler act works more often than you’d think. Which is why it shows up in so many different horror movies.
“It isn’t any warmer in here than it is outside,” Thomas comments. He shuts his flashlight off too, finally. There’s a rustle of commotion overhead, and he jumps a mile, does the quick-draw on his flashlight, and points the beam at the ceiling.
“Sounds like pigeons,” I say. “Good thing. If we’re stuck out here too long we might have to do some yard-bird rotisserie.”
“That’s … disgusting,” says Carmel.
“It’s low-rent chicken. Let’s check it out.” There’s a rickety, rotting ladder that leads up to a trapdoor. I assume that all we’ll find is a hayloft and a bunch of roosting pigeons and sparrows. But I don’t need to tell Thomas and Carmel to be alert. They stay right behind, in constant contact. When Carmel’s toe strikes the tines of a pitchfork, half-buried in the hay, she makes a face. We look at each other and she shakes her head. It can’t be the same one, the same pitchfork that the farmer’s wife fell on. That’s what we say to ourselves, though I guess there’s no real reason it can’t be.