Page 16

You think the ride is over. You think you left the nightmare behind when I exited the passenger seat.

The night is just getting started, Harmony. And everywhere you go... I’ll be right behind you.

I disappear into the shadows near the entrance, pulling my hood over my head, and watch as she finally parks it under the flickering stadium lights.

Five

The Carnival

HARMONY

7:40 PM

Astrange, hollow quiet settles over the front seat the moment Ryder’s side door slams shut.

I stare through the windshield as his massive frame melts seamlessly into the gloom surrounding the carnival gates.

The engine idles beneath my feet, vibrating through the floorboards, but my hands remain glued to the leather wheel.

I should feel relief. Pure, unadulterated relief that the man I coined Death with cold eyes, bloody denim, and an unsettling knowledge of my past is no longer sitting inches away from me in a confined space.

Instead, my pulse thrums with a restless, electric heat.

The skin on the back of my neck prickles, cold air rushing into the void his presence left behind.

I hate how much he unsettled me, but as I watch the dark shadow of his jacket disappear into the neon-lit crowd, a sick, intoxicating truth settles in my gut.

I didn’t just survive the ride.

I wanted it.

I wanted the danger; to see just how far he would push me before I had to draw blood.

Shaking the dark fog from my head, I shift the car into gear and crawl down the gravel lane toward the crowded parking lot.

I park under the tall, buzzing stadium lights, cutting the ignition.

Stepping out onto the gravel, the frigid autumn night air hits my face, thick with the scent of woodsmoke, popcorn, and diesel exhaust. But as I walk toward the main entrance, something immediately catches my attention.

Police cruisers. Way too many of them.

Blackwood Sheriff department SUVs are parked along the perimeter fence, their lightbars flashing a slow, hypnotic blue and red against the dry grass.

Deputies in heavy tactical vests stand in pairs near the ticket booths, their eyes scanning the incoming crowd with an intensity that feels entirely out of place for a local autumn carnival.

A sharp knot forms in my chest.

They’re on high alert. And I know exactly why.

Ever since the night Noah died fifteen years ago, October thirty-first has carried a curse in this county.

It started with Noah on the highway shoulder. Then, each year after, a drifter’s body was found in the ditch near the old logging road. A teenager went missing during the carnival one year, and was pulled out of the river behind the lumber yard.

Every year, like clockwork, the body count along Blackwood Highway rises. Sometimes the violence even bleeds straight into the heart of town.

The Police call it a tragic statistical anomaly—a string of unrelated accidents, runaway cases, and seasonal crime spikes.

It seems Blackwood Highway has an appetite now.