Short Story: Julie Presents ‘Hay Girl’

The following story was first featured in my book Julie by the Fire. Given its Halloween setting, I thought it only appropriate to share the story on its own as a seasonal treat. For those who need the refresher, Julie Harper is a slasher of my own design, a campfire story, an urban legend, a girl who can strike at any time, in any place, for any and possibly no reason at all. Please enjoy this special Halloween tale of the girl who killed the girl next door…

Nick looked forward to the hayride every year. He knew it was stupid, but he couldn’t help it. Towns like Dunham weren’t home to a whole lot of excitement. There wasn’t a ton to do, but there was a lot to look forward to, whether it was the football season, or the basketball season, or — for a weird kid like him — Halloween. He had loved the hayride ever since he was a young boy. He’d loved it from the year it started. Now he was eighteen and too old for trick-or-treating. He would love the dance if he had anyone to go with, but he didn’t. So outside of egging houses and soaking windows, he didn’t really have many other options. It was hell loving Halloween at his age and as deeply as he did. He wanted to put on a costume, something elaborate that would wow everyone who saw it. Wanted to run around town getting candy, wanted to go back to a time when the possibilities felt endless and the night felt infinite.

Right now, he was cold and he loved it. The chill of autumn meant local spirit for the football fans, which were most everyone in town. It meant dread for others, who could only think of the blizzards and icy roadways that would be following in a month, if that. Air this biting only meant pumpkins to him. It meant a month of horror movies on nearly every channel, most of which were from before his time, which only strengthened the appeal of the season. Forget the mountain of homework he was piling up. That was education.

He wiped his nose on his sleeve as he walked through the nearly empty downtown area. Storefronts were decorated with witches and ghosts painted by children or faded decorations that went back at least forty years. Within a week, they’d be packed up for another year, so he figured it was good to stare. Get as much out of them as he could, let them fulfill their purpose before they went away again.

In no time at all, he’d walked from one end of town to the other, with the second of Dunham’s two gas stations marking the end of civilization as he knew it. At least, it was true for most nights. On this one, however, Dunham was a ghost town and he walked through it to find that civilization had simply relocated. As he approached the campground, which had been closed for the winter and converted into this annual event, he saw that a crowd had already formed. Nick had to admit, it warmed his heart a little. Even though he was sure he’d still feel the embarrassment of being a lone teenager surrounded by families with small kids, having to be sorted with the single riders, he was delighted to see just how many people had turned up. It was almost like a football game. Looked like the whole town was here.

Satisfied at the local display of Halloween spirit, Nick got in line. He stood there for a few minutes warming his hands and hoping for it to hurry up, even as much as he loved soaking up the atmosphere. When darkness fell like this, it was damn cold. Too cold. He couldn’t stand it.

The sun had almost completely set behind the trees and just like that, everything was darkness. Nick was as used to the solid black of New England nights as he could be, having grown up in them, but they could still make him uncomfortable. Looking into the darkness of the trees, it was easy to let his imagination run away with him.

Thankfully, he had something else to distract him.

Up ahead of him, maybe separated by two families in line, Nick saw the most beautiful girl he had ever seen in his life. Granted, it wasn’t the first time he’d seen a pretty face and had that thought, but it didn’t make it any less true. She was also alone, like him, and now his imagination began to run away in a different direction. He thought of walking up and talking to her, maybe riding the hayride together, maybe even sharing a kiss.

For a moment, he almost thought he might get his wish. The girl looked back at him, her dark hair blowing over her face in the cold wind. She brushed the hair out of her eyes and, catching him looking, gave a small smile that absolutely made Nick melt.

He tried to smile back, but she had already turned away.

By the time he got to the front to pay his ticket, the girl was nowhere to be seen. Nick figured she must have gotten on one of the rides already, and realized he had probably missed his shot. The disappointment hit him hard, but lasted only a minute when he saw the first hayride pull up and watched everyone get on, murmuring excitedly, a group of preteen girls nervously giggling. Just like that, he’d almost forgotten his mystery girl and remembered what he was actually here to do. At eighteen, with the local embarrassment of being seen by his peers, it was harder to reconnect with his youth than he’d like. But he was determined to try.

There was a scream up ahead of him. Nick looked through the crowd to see a werewolf that looked inanimate until you got up close. Classic trick. That was what he loved most about it. He’d seen better haunts in other places, of course, but the do-it-yourself attitude of the Dunham Haunted Hayride made it the pinnacle of the season for him. Making something imaginative out of store bought decorations and hand-me-down Halloween masks, that was what it was all about. There was a beauty in it, and an excitement that could not be recreated, no matter the budget. This was Halloween. Right here.

Nick thought about that as he paid his admission and took a seat on the hay bail, sandwiched between a dad holding his nervous young son on his lap and an old man with a bit of a sad look in his eye, which Nick figured meant that he was also supposed to go with a kid and got stood up, figuring he might as well take the ride if he was already here.

Nick was pulled from the thought by the opening scare: a crazed lumberjack that he recognized as a grocery store stock boy who had once complimented him on his shoes. He knew he’d liked him then and only felt reaffirmed in that belief now.

“This is some corny bullshit,” muttered the old man to his right.

The dad to Nick’s left clasped his hands over his son’s ears, but it was too late. “Some what, dad?” The dad shot the old man a look, but it went unnoticed.

Next, they came upon the foyer of an old haunted house. For a local haunt, there was an element of craft that took Nick by surprise. The gate was made of foam, granted, and the paint job wasn’t exactly perfect, but the Victorian creepiness came through loud and clear and there was some notably impressive carpentry involved. A wailing spirit popped out through the window as they went by and managed to scare the little boy into covering his eyes.

From there, a turn back into the woods. Sounds of chainsaws. In an added touch that made Nick smile, the saws had been removed of chains so that they made actual, physical contact, tickling people’s knees and make them both laugh and scream in shock as the hayride pushed on.

Nick rubbed his still tingling leg and looked up ahead as they began to come upon a pumpkin patch. It was fake, though the pumpkins were real, with monstrous looking Jack-o-Lantern faces intermingled between them. There was a scarecrow in the center of the patch, masked head hanging to one side. He watched as the scarecrow lunged forward, genuinely scaring the crowd in front of them. Louder screams than Nick had heard yet, which excited him as they rounded the corner.

But the scarecrow didn’t lunge at him. It just stood totally still and watched. Nick couldn’t see the eyes behind the mask, but he could feel them on him all the same. For the first time since he’d gotten on the hayride, he actually felt scared. Then the tractor kept moving and the feeling left as quickly as it had come.

The old man continued to complain as the tractor pulled them along. Up ahead was the most ambitious thing they had seen yet, fog machine and strobe lights creating something that was either meant to evoke a bog or an undersea atmosphere, Nick couldn’t decide which. Ghosts wrapped in seaweed — which he was sure were real — came forward to reach out at him. Fishing equipment, shark bones, all local, he knew. Some stuff Nick figured he could probably place if he looked long enough. He watched the latex fish people reaching out and grabbing, the seaweed ghosts moaning in his face.

And he was so taken by this that he barely registered the scarecrow pop back up to pull the old man from the ride, hay scattering into the air as he went.

Nick spun around, eyes wide. Even the fish people looked surprised. Scarecrows certainly didn’t fit the under the sea aesthetic. Nobody else had been pulled off the ride. So Nick couldn’t help but wonder: was that supposed to happen? He knew that haunts often planted people on rides for exactly this kind of purpose, but that would be a little advanced for the Dunham Haunted Hayride. And that man certainly hadn’t seemed like an actor.

Nick was about to say something about it to the dad beside him when the tractor pushed onward, toward the back of the campground, brushing up against woods that he’d always felt didn’t need any props or actors to be scary. Those woods had scared him ever since he’d come out to this campground with his dad as a little boy. These dark, hateful trees he remembered from his youth were all he needed to convince himself that something had happened to the old man, that something strange and terrible was going on here.

But here? At the Dunham Haunted Hayride? Nick couldn’t believe that. It was a small town, and while it had its own share of affairs and accidents and yes even occasional murders, it never had anything like this. Something that felt so ripped from exactly the kinds of urban legends and ghost stories that he and his friends used to tell to hype each other up when they stood in line for this very ride as children. It was impossible. The old man had to be an actor.

This far back in the campground, the trail got bumpier, happily knocking Nick out of his thought process. There were large roots jutting up from the ground, sending hay flying in a way that he couldn’t help but smile at. The dread was subsiding, the sense of seasonal joy returning by the second. Even if he hated how dark the woods looked under this pitch black, moonless sky.

From that darkness, a sound. It was a kind of electric hum. Interested, the little boy leaned forward, eager to discover its source and see whatever there was to see. It was only a moment before they rounded the corner and saw it for themselves.

The most haphazard setup yet was also, in some ways, the showiest. The flashing lights, the low buzzing sound, they did a lot to cover the utter cheapness of this makeshift Frankenstein lab. It was a lighter area in general. Nick only saw two actors, one being the mad scientist, and another as the body on the slab. The mad scientist was masked, for whatever reason, and wearing a wig. For the second time tonight, Nick felt himself make eye contact with whatever was behind the dark, mesh eyes of a Halloween mask. But he forgot all of that within an instant once he took another look down at the body he’d initially assumed to be the monster.

While certainly mutilated, it was not the Frankenstein Monster. It wasn’t an actor or a prop or a dummy. It was the old man who had been sitting next to Nick only a few minutes ago. In that time, his throat had been slashed vertically, all the way down to his belly button, and his eyes had been removed. They were now held in a glistening, wet mess in man’s open palm. And they were looking straight ahead.

They were looking at him.

Seeing the lightbulb go off in Nick’s head, the masked mad scientist put all doubts about their identity to bed and gave Nick a knowing wave. They weren’t just a random actor paired up with a corpse in the back stretch of the hayride, they were the scarecrow. The murderer. And they disappeared behind the stage and into the black cover of the trees as the ride kept moving onward.

“Stop,” Nick found himself saying. “Stop the ride.”

Nobody listened.

“Stop the ride. Hey! Come on! Stop the ride!”

The little boy squirmed uncomfortably and the dad, feeling it, shot Nick a look and spoke up for the first time. “What the hell are you doing?”

“We have to get off this ride,” Nick said.

“What? Stop it. Hey. You’re scaring my kid.”

Nick barely heard him. “We have to get off this ride. There’s a… a…”

The annoyed dad waited. “A what?”

“A body! A man! The man that was here on this ride. The old man. He’s dead and his body is, it’s- it’s lying on a slab back there!”

The dad gave a frustrated sigh. “The ‘old man?’ That’s Pat Donovan, he goes to my bank and he’s always complaining about the government and how the American job market is being outsourced overseas.”

“And he’s dead!” Nick pressed, but he could clearly see that the man wasn’t about to hear any of what he was saying.

The little boy pressed his face into the safety of his father. The dad looked down at his frightened child and then turned back to Nick. “You’re scaring my kid, asshole.”

“Didn’t you see? He was pulled off the ride.”

“Hey, look, buddy, I think you’re getting a little too worked up over,” he gestured around at the trees and haphazard displays of spooky spirit, “this.”

Nick shook his head. He was too convinced of this. He knew what he’d seen. “The old man, Mr. Donovan or whoever, he was pulled off the ride. His body was lying back on the slab in Frankenstein’s lab. He’s been killed.”

“Stop saying that crap in front of my kid. No one thinks you’re funny,” the man kept his gaze fixed on Nick, hard and serious. “Consider that your last warning.”

“I am not trying to be funny, damn it.”

“Even if he was pulled off the ride, there’s no way that he…” the dad stopped, having to consider the boy for himself now, realizing how easy it was to let things slip in front of him. He cleared his throat. “There’s no way that was him.”

“And even if he was pulled off the ride, don’t you think that’s a little much for a rinky dink local haunted attraction like this one?”

The dad shook his head. He wasn’t hearing it. “Nothing. Happened.”

Nick stared at him in disbelief as it finally clicked, hearing the wavering uncertainty in the dad’s voice. “You believe me, don’t you?”

The dad went silent and turned away. “Leave me and my kid alone,” he said.

Nick leaned back, sighing. “Un-fucking-real.” With nothing else to do, he turned his eyes forward to the next area on the ride, but as he did, he caught something out of the corner of his eye and turned back to it. There, peeking out at him through the darkness of the trees, was the mask of the scarecrow. Still and silent. Staring at him.

He didn’t even try to get the dad’s attention, knowing now that there was no point. Instead, flushing with anger, he looked right at it and said, “I’ve got you!” And with that, he leapt off the ride and into the darkened mass of trees he had feared for so long. He reached out for the mask. He pulled it easily, hearing the snapping of branches as he did.

There was no one here.

The mask had simply been hanging in the trees, fixed in between the branches. Now he held it in his hand, looking at it dumbly, in disbelief. Nick turned back to the ride, where he saw the scarecrow, maskless, dark hair flowing down their back, crawling up onto the ride. “No!” he screamed, rushing to catch up. He could not see the scarecrow’s face as they took his seat upon the hay, sitting comfortably beside the dad. And his son.

Nick didn’t think the ride could have possibly been going that fast, but he found himself struggling to catch up. Up ahead, he saw the end of the ride, where he could hopefully find and catch the killer, something he had never once imagined he would have to do in his entire life. The end of the Dunham Haunted Hayride was a tradition that dated back as far as Nick had been riding it. The big showstopper, the last hurrah of this slice of hometown horror, was a walkthrough haunted house. Every year, an old and unused barn was converted for the event. Nick had only found himself wondering just how safe it really was as he’d gotten older. Before now, though, he hadn’t really cared.

Now, watching that last ride pull up, he knew exactly what a deathtrap it could be.

There was no one around to warn as Nick reached the haunted house. Everyone had already gone inside and the volunteers that were usually placed out front to help people off the ride weren’t there. No one to ask him what happened, why he was out of breath, what ride he was with. Which meant no one who’d slipped into the haunted house expecting nothing more than a bowl of peeled grapes knew how dangerous it really was.

Nick, knowing exactly how dangerous it was, found it remarkably easy to open the door and head inside.

In the haunted barn, it was almost as difficult to see as it had been in the woods. There was light, but it was a low, cold blue. Just enough to reveal the low-hanging fog from the whirring, outdated fog machine. Enough to reveal cobwebs that could very well have not been decoration. Just enough to make the monster masks and skeletons scary without giving away too much and showing the seams, but it made it hell to navigate without a crowd to guide him through it.

A plastic zombie sprung forth from a coffin, accompanied by a sting of spooky sound FX. Nick, already on edge, actually jumped at it, then sighed. “Jesus,” he muttered, and kept walking. He knew the barn was not actually that big, he’d seen it plenty of times in the daylight. But in the low light it looked like an endless maze, one he could get lost in and never find his way out of.

Now the reality of it had begun to hit him. After all, there was every chance he could never find his way out of here. He had just chased a killer into an old barn. He’d done that. He went in alone knowing what they’d done, seeing the mutilated corpse of an old man with his own eyes. What did he think was going to happen now? That he’d bring them to justice? Turn them in? What was he, Spider-Man? No, walking into the old barn felt like much more of a Scooby Doo situation. After all, he’d already pulled their mask off, hadn’t he? It felt like he was long overdue for a reveal and a convoluted motive.

As much as he tried to downplay it, Nick was legitimately terrified now that the stupidity of what he was doing had begun to weigh on him. He’d rushed in after a killer without once taking into consideration the thought that the killer could actually win.

That thought seemed to cement itself the moment he rounded the corner, stepping into a wide room lined with old Halloween masks and decorations, a table set up with the peeled grapes he’d been expecting, and in the corner, the dad from the ride. Father to a boy that Nick still could not see. But the sight of the man was enough. His eyes were glazed over, blood running down his face. He was already dead. The top of his head had been opened up, its contents removed, like a haphazard autopsy conducted on a man who had no doubt been alive throughout the whole procedure. The cranium had not been neatly severed. This had been a rushed job, by no means precise. And given the amount of blood and the fact that the man, even with half his head missing, looked otherwise alive, Nick could only guess that this had happened minutes ago. If not seconds.

Which meant…

Sure enough, he turned to see the killer in the room with him, standing in the opposite corner. They stepped into the light. They were wearing the scarecrow costume, but it was the face that stuck out to Nick now. It was her. The girl from the line, the most beautiful girl he’d thought he’d ever seen. A thought that now, seeing this, made him sick.

Nick’s mind buckled under the weight of the situation it was attempting to process. In a way, it was easiest to talk about the one variable missing from the room, rather than all of the things he couldn’t believe he was looking at. So he said, “Where’s the kid?”

The girl shrugged. “He’s around.” Then, sternly, “He’s safe. I’m not a weirdo.”

“You made him an orphan.”

She shook her head. “I’m sure there’s a mom in the picture somewhere. Call me crazy, but I’m a glass half full kind of gal.” She glanced over into the corner. “Plus, dear old dad there kind of sealed his own fate, don’t you think? Could have gotten off the ride when you’d told him of a killer in his midst, but he didn’t. Even when I climbed up on the hay and took a seat behind him, he denied it was even happening. Convinced it was just a part of the show. As if a place like this puts that kind of thought into production. So you see, he could have avoided all of this…” She picked up something from a bowl on the table, something wet and pulpy, and threw it at him. It splashed against his chest and hit the floor with a soggy thud. Nick doubled over and threw up as he realized what it was. The girl just flashed a wicked grin and said, “If he only had a brain.”

Nick wiped his mouth but still felt too weak to stand. “You’re sick.”

The girl shook her head, smile still glued to her face. “Please, it’s Halloween.” She kicked the lumpy mess of brain matter out of her way. “I’m celebrating.”

Nick looked around for something, anything, that he could use as a weapon. All he found was a shovel, and he nearly fell over in the dark as he reached for it. He knew he was a pathetic sight, but the girl wasn’t laughing.

“You know what I am?” she asked. “I’m an opportunist. A small town in the middle of nowhere with a thrown together Halloween attraction where nobody would ever notice if someone just slipped in between the ghosts and ghouls. Everything’s so hectic and do-it-yourself that nobody pays any attention. And when they finally see the scarecrow, sure, nobody knows them, but everybody assumes they missed it. Until, of course, it’s too late.”

“You’ve killed people. These are… Jesus, you killed somebody.”

She rolled her eyes. “Please. I’ve killed a lot of somebodies. I’m Julie. I don’t care if you know me or not. But I have. The old man? This guy here? You? It’s just another night.” She pulled the shovel from his hands with ease and threw it to the ground. “I had to do something a little more extravagant, though, right? It’s the reason for the season.”

“Why me?”

Julie stopped. “What?”

“Why me?” Nick said again. “You saw me in line, you smiled, you singled me out on the ride, threw the mask into the trees where I’d find it, waved, you wanted me to see, to find you. Why?”

Julie stared silently for a second. Then she broke out laughing. “I’m sorry, I don’t want to be rude, but…” She laughed again. “Jesus, dude, you guys really are all the same, aren’t you?”

Nick froze. Something twisted in his gut. “What?”

“You saw me look at you and, what, thought we had a connection? Thought we were going to get on a ride together and fall in love? Then you see what I really am and, what, think I was out to make you my Laurie Strode? Thought I was leaving clues just for you? I killed the old man because he was old and therefore easy. I got rid of the mask because it was hot and stinky and the ride was almost over.”

Despite everything, Nick felt crushed and Julie saw it clearly.

“Look,” she said. “I know you probably wish I’d let you down easy, but I’ve found that when guys get attached and start projecting fantasies, you’ve really got to nip that shit in the bud. So I’m here to tell you, if it wasn’t already clear: it ain’t gonna happen. You don’t mean anything to me. I don’t even know your name and I’ll be honest, I’m not in a rush to learn it.”

Nick found himself struggling to say something else, but he couldn’t. And as she closed in, he thought of love, and fantasy, and how easily one could clearly be mistaken for the other. He thought of nostalgia, and the bittersweet and misleading taste it carried, one which he had never understood until now. He did not even fight back. He froze, remaining exactly the way he’d been his whole life: trapped inside his own head. With a forceful swing, Julie brought the knife to his forehead and began to cut him free.

Julie by the Fire and Slices of Julie are currently available to own.