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There was a grinding crunch as Waverly’s shoes hit the asphalt of the parking lot. She jumped, startled, as the door slammed behind her, followed by the sound of Wynonna clambering out of the driver’s side of the old blue pickup.
You can’t be scared already, she scolded herself. You’re only in the parking lot.
It was too late to back out now. After days of begging, pleading, cajoling, and finally bribing, Wynonna had finally convinced her to go with her to the Haunted Woods on its opening day.
The two sisters had a lot in common— a traumatic childhood, a high alcohol tolerance, a love of bonfires— but they had always disagreed on the best way to celebrate Halloween. Because their father had hated the holiday, they had been forbidden to celebrate as children— with dire consequences if they were caught disobeying.
Now that they were adults and their father lay in an early grave, Waverly liked the idea of reclaiming the holiday as a happy, fun celebration. She was very much in the “eating candy from a pumkin-shaped bucket while watching Hocus Pocus in cute costumes” camp. Not that she was a coward— far from it. But Halloween scares specifically had a unique, icy cold grip on her. Something about them had gotten tangled up with her worst memories of their father, and they still activated some instinctive fear in some small, childish part of her.
Wynonna, on the other hand, apparently still harbored some lingering resentment towards the holiday, and was reluctant to enjoy it in childish, uncomplicated ways. Instead, she had embraced the “cover yourself in fake blood, get drunk, and scare yourself senseless” side of the holiday. And in their dinky rural town, the best place to get the sense scared out of you was the annual Haunted Woods, put on by the local college a few towns over but held in Purgatory’s notoriously creepy woods.
Because of their differences in perspective, Wynonna had spent the past few Halloweens disappearing to watch whatever the newest Saw or Saw-adjacent movie was and have raucous parties with her new friends from the college, where Waverly refused to follow. Halloween hadn’t felt the same without her.
And so here they were, compromising. A trek through the haunted woods for Wynonna, followed by a movie night for Waverly.
With an enthusiasm usually only directed towards trips to the town’s cheapest dive bar, Wynonna all but literally dragged her towards the entrance, as Waverly wondered if this would even be worth the bribe. Some of the people exiting the woods into the parking lot looked ashen, and others were giggling nervously and glancing over their shoulders. Waverly felt the start of a shiver worm its way through her.
“I’m actually not sure—” Waverly started, but Wynonna clapped her on the back bracingly to cut her off.
“Hey, it’ll be fine, I promise. It’s just actors and props and stuff. I even know some of them. It’s a fundraiser for the athletics department, so it’s all sports guys. They’re harmless. Just a bunch of dumb, sexy himbos.”
That was almost comforting, but as they got closer to the entrance, Waverly’s courage waned farther. There was a big signboard, painted with an intentionally sloppy hand, that read “Welcome to the Purgatory Haunted Woods— You’ll Never Want Be Allowed To Leave” in bold, dripping letters. Handprints and scratch marks marred the bottom of the sign, smeared as though whoever made them had been dragged away.
“Just actors and props…” she repeated, her intelligent, logical side warring with her instinctive, Halloween-scardey-cat side. “And then we go home and watch movies, right?” She had carefully chosen a subset of festive but non-terrifying movies for a fun-filled marathon— Hocus Pocus, Halloweentown, Addams Family, Paranorman. Wynonna would roll her eyes through the whole thing, but secretly she would enjoy them. And finally Waverly would get the family Halloween celebration she had always dreamed of.
“Right,” Wynonna sighed. “With that disgusting bubblegum saké I ordered for you, and all the candy we can eat.”
“And—”
“And caramel apples and popcorn balls and lots of apple cider. Right?”
“Right.” She tried to fortify herself with the thought of curling on the couch with a dozen blankets and pumpkin-spice candles and silly movies.
They passed the spooky sign and stopped at a picnic table that had been converted into a welcome desk. The table was old and weather-beaten. The wood was wet from rain and crumbling at the edges, moss creeping up its legs, all of which added to the ambience.
The guy manning it was tall with dark brown skin and a hood pulled over his shaved head, his body draped in a full Grim Reaper costume that didn’t quite disguise his muscular arms. He raised his head in a nod to Wynonna as they approached, a familiar greeting.
“Welcome, travelers. It’s so rare for us to get visitors these days. I’m so glad you didn’t listen to the stories… or the screams…” His voice turned low and ominous at the end. The sound made Waverly’s stomach drop, even though she knew it was an act, she knew it was all just an act. She glanced to the side and caught Wynonna grinning broadly.
“Hey, Dolls. This is my sister I’ve told you about,” Wynonna said, nodding towards Waverly. “Two tickets.” She started sliding money across the table, but he shook his head at her and waved it back. Wynonna tucked the bills back into her pocket with a smirk.
“There’s safety in numbers. It might be best to wait for other brave souls to arrive before setting off…” the man, Dolls, said in the same theatrically eerie tone.
“Sure, whatever,” Wynonna agreed immediately, stepping to the side.
“We have to wait?” Waverly hissed, dismayed by this turn of events. She’d been hoping that she could walk straight through it, head down, and get it all over with as fast as possible. Having to wait around beforehand, marinating in her own dread and anticipation, was the worst case scenario.
“It won’t be that long. And it’s not even cold,” Wynonna told her, preemptively cutting off her protests before she could voice them.
The air wasn’t frigid, but it was brisk, and Waverly crossed her arms, pulling her hands into the sleeves of her jacket for warmth. The smell of leaves and earth and soggy wood swirled around them in the breeze, and she shivered.
Both thankfully and annoyingly, Wynonna was right, and another group of students arrived within minutes. Apparently that gave them enough people to set things into motion, and Dolls came around from behind the table. He stopped in front of them, pulled out a large, tarnished bronze bell from behind the sign, and rang it several times, the clanging echoing back into the forest, alerting whatever was lurking in its depths to their presence.
“The bell warns the spirits to keep their distance from travelers… but the bell doesn’t always work…” he said, his voice still low and threatening, meeting each of their eyes in turn before settling on Waverly.
Waverly shifted a little closer to her sister, who looked like they were going to Disneyland, not a creepy walk through a haunted wood. There was a childish grin on her face and she kept rocking up on her heels like she was resisting the urge to set off into the darkness alone. Waverly tried to take some reassurance from that. Wynonna wasn’t scared, so she didn’t need to be scared. They would both be fine.
Dolls started leading them down the path, using his scythe like a walking stick, beginning some tale about the ghosts and monsters in the cursed forest. Waverly felt her whole body tense as she waited for the scares to start. She clung preemptively to the fringe of Wynonna’s leather jacket, and her eyes swept the woods around them in a constant loop, determined to have forewarning for any incoming terrors.
She didn’t have to wait long. Within a minute or two of walking, they passed a body sprawled out atop a log, splattered with blood. The contents of his backpack were strewn around him, torn and broken. Waverly took a deep breath. That wasn’t so bad. Just someone pretending to be a dead body. Probably some rando from the track team or something. Maybe even just an unusually convincing mannequin. No big deal.
The air around them was split by a nearby howling noise— loud enough to make the hair on her arms stand on end but not convincing as an actual animal howl. It was probably just some kind of generic sound recording loaded onto a speaker somewhere, or someone faking. There was nothing to worry about.
“Did you hear that?” Dolls asked them ominously. “They say there are many things that live here in the woods. I’ve seen some of them myself. And none of them were friendly…”
He gestured towards a tree trunk, where there were more bloody handprints, this time with grooves dug into the dirt underneath like someone had been dragged away. That was… creepier. Waverly crossed her arms and pressed closer to her big sister, telling herself that it was for warmth.
Most of the scares stayed small— they had someone in werewolf makeup crouched over another fake dead body, a fake ransacked campsite with more fake blood spattered and smeared all over. Still, each one seemed to raised Waverly’s heart rate just a little more, as some instinctual part of her brain whispered words of panic to her body.
Every so often, after one of the bigger scares, there would be a break in the action, and the woods would be quiet and empty for a long minute. Those parts were almost worse. The anticipation was scarier than anything they could have thought up to fill the space.
It was during one of these quiet sections, as Waverly was waiting for the next scare to appear in front of them, wondering how much longer the path could possibly be, when a mechanical growl sounded behind her. She jolted and turned to see a man in a hockey mask standing behind her, a chainsaw in his hand. The chainsaw revved, the mechanical growl growing louder by the second.
Waverly instinctively tried to scramble away, her whole body nerveless from shock and fear, and their guide shouted, “RUN!”
She didn’t need telling twice. She took off, she and Wynonna sprinting side by side down the path until Dolls waved them to a halt.
“It’s okay, I think we lost him,” he assured them.
Waverly braced her hands on her knees, catching her breath and shaking. Beside her, Wynonna laughed breathlessly, clearly enjoying herself, and Waverly sacrificed one hand to shove her.
“That was good, I hadn’t heard about the chainsaw! I bet it’s new this year,” Wynonna cackled. Waverly huffed at her.
“Let’s just keep going,” she said flatly. The sooner they got through this, the sooner she could get safely to her couch for movie night. To make up for the addition of surprise chainsaws, she would have to add more movies, or more of the fancy sweet alcohols that Waverly loved and Wynonna loathed.
From that point on, the scares seemed to ramp up. Another hunched, werewolf-type creature dashed across the path, right though the middle of their group, making Waverly flinch and cower. Later, a zombie-like person was trapped under a falling log, moaning and reaching towards them with mud-caked fingers.
The props she could deal with, but the moving human bodies were a completely different story. Waverly had to brace herself every time, clenching her hands so hard that her nails dug into her palms.
And then she caught the growl of the chainsaw again, and saw the masked man perched atop a rock, revving the machine. It looked like he was staring straight at her. Like she was his chosen victim. But he didn’t approach this time. Still, the sight made her heart race in panic.
As they got farther and farther from the parking lot, her nerves started to get the better of her. She didn’t know how long this path was, but it didn’t feel like they were looping back around yet, which wasn’t a great sign. And it seemed to be a little darker now than when they had started. It felt colder, too, which put her even more on edge. And Wynonna had left her at the back of the group to instead walk up at the front with Dolls, who she seemed to be flirting with.
Waverly shivered and longed for everything to just stop for a few minutes, with safety and hot chocolate and maybe a fire and blanket for warmth.
But they didn’t stop.
There was another animalistic snarl as the werewolf creature ran through their group again, clawing at the air, scattering the group. Waverly’s heart hammered as she stumbled back, unexpectedly hitting something solid behind her. She whipped around, expecting to see Wynonna, but instead found herself almost nose-to-nose with Mr. Chainsaw, who revved the machine and made a low, satisfied growl. The sound and the surprise activated some primeval fight-or-flight instinct inside her. She was in the woods. Everyone around her was distracted, running from the wolf. Wynonna wasn’t at her side. She was alone with this man and his chainsaw.
She bolted.
She whirled around and dashed off the path, away from all the scares and all the people in costumes and props and fake blood and everything. She only stopped when she needed to catch her breath, off the path and knee-deep in dead, brittle undergrowth.
The sound of crunching leaves and snapping twigs sent her spinning around, hoping that Wynonna was catching up to her, but of course not— that would be too easy.
No, instead, Mr. Chainsaw had given chase and was lumbering towards her.
“Stay back!” she snapped with as much force as she could muster. The shout echoed around them. Mr. Chainsaw jolted to a stop, clearly startled.
“Huh?” A voice came from behind the mask— not a low, scary growl, but something higher, something more normal-sounding. “Oh, crap, sorry, I forgot.”
Mr. Chainsaw threw aside his namesake, letting it drop heavily onto a pile of leaves, and wrenched off his hockey mask.
Or rather— wrenched off her hockey mask.
Because underneath the mask, pink-faced and sweaty, was a tall college-aged girl with red hair.
“Sorry again. Hey, are you okay?” The woman’s voice was serious, and her features were scrunched up into a worried expression.
Waverly shook her head, trying to reorient herself to this new reality.
With the mask and the chainsaw thrown aside, it was like a spell being broken. There really wasn’t anything to be afraid of. The woman’s face was mercifully human— flushed, with damp red locks clinging to her face, and warm, penitent brown eyes.
“I’m fine,” Waverly snapped, feeling emboldened by the sight. “No thanks to you. Did you really have to get in my face like that?”
“Sorry.”
“Do they tell you to pick on people like that? Did I just look more scared than everyone else?”
“No, God, nothing like that.” The woman’s face flushed pinker, her ears burning red. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
Waverly gave her a long, silent look, then pointedly eyed the chainsaw on the ground. The woman blushed harder.
“Oh, right. I mean, yeah, I did, but not like, actually scare you, you know? Just regular, uh… haunted woods spooky scare.” She grinned sheepishly, and against her better instincts, Waverly felt some of her fear and anger waning.
“Look, I’m sure you’re just doing your job. It’s just— I don’t even like these things, I just came to keep my sister company. I hate people running at me and getting in my face and— just, all of this, okay? I already have issues with Halloween as it is, I don’t need even more reasons to not like it.”
“I really am sorry. It’s my first year doing this, I just got roped into it because the basketball team needed more of us to volunteer.” She looked awkward and apologetic.
“Why did you keep coming after me?”
“I didn’t mean to pick on you. Honestly. I guess I was just focusing on you because… well…” Ms. Chainsaw chuckled nervously, and Waverly waited impatiently for the explanation. “You’re really pretty, that’s all. I guess I had my eye on you because of that. But I didn’t mean to target you or anything.”
It was maybe the last explanation Waverly had expected. She felt her perspective shifting, and suddenly looked at the redhead with different eyes. She was tall, with an athletic build. Fine features, visible confidence. Her brown eyes were warm and expressive, and she seemed sincere.
“Oh… Okay…”
“I can just take you back to the entrance if you want. You don’t have to keep going through till the end.” Ms. Chainsaw’s eyes were penitent.
“How much more can there possibly be?” Waverly asked, more shocked than she cared to admit at the thought of the path going on for longer.
“Oh, the path is three quarters of a mile. You still had maybe a third of it left. But like I said, I can just take you back to the start.”
Waverly leaned against the nearest tree and groaned, an action that made Ms. Chainsaw look at her in bewilderment.
“Um… what?” the actor asked after a second or two.
“I’m only here because I made a deal with my sister, but it only counts if I go through the whole thing.”
“Oh.” Ms. Chainsaw blinked. “What do you get out of it?”
“She has to watch a bunch of Halloween movies with me, and provide enough candy and snacks to last us all night. And honestly, I’m probably going to add some more caveats after all this. She’s going to owe me that much.”
The other woman looked amused by this.
“That seems fair.” She picked up her mask and chainsaw from off the ground. “Um… well, at least let me take you back to your group.”
She tentatively started to lead the way, and looked relieved when Waverly followed without protest.
“Will they still be there?”
“Yeah, if they lose track of anyone, it’s policy to stay put until they come back. Whoever your guide is should be holding them there until we get back.”
“I think his name is Dolls. My sister knows him”
“Oh yeah, then he’ll keep them there. He’s a good guy. Football team. Running back, I think.”
Ms. Chainsaw, who was long-legged and clearly used to walking through the forest, kept getting too far ahead and thus had to keep sheepishly waiting for Waverly to catch up. They hadn’t made it as far off the path as she had thought, and it was only about a minute before Ms. Chainsaw (Waverly was already kicking herself for not asking for her name earlier, but it felt too late now) pulled her mask back on and they emerged back onto the path. With a bracing clap on the shoulder, Waverly was gently pushed back towards the group, and especially her visibly worrying sister.
“Wave, what the hell!” Wynonna said, jogging over as soon as she saw her. “You just disappeared!”
“I’m fine. I just… got a little turned around. The, uh…” She looked back for her rescuer, but she seemed to be long gone. “The chainsaw guy came and brought me back.”
“Do you want to just bail?” Wynonna asked her seriously. She gripped her arm, which actually felt kind of reassuring. “We can totally just bail.”
“No, it’s okay. She said we’re like two thirds of the way through. I think I can make it.”
“Who said?” Wynonna asked, confused.
“The chainsaw guy. He’s actually a girl. Or, she’s actually a girl.”
“Okay…” Wynonna looked back at their group, who were watching them. “Are you sure?”
“Yeah, it’s fine. Let’s just get this over with, and you owe me a whole night of Halloween movies. If not a whole week.” She was actually glad they would be up all night watching kitschy movies and eating candy— who knew if she would be able to sleep tonight, after all this.
At long last, the group traveled on, the guide noticeably picking up the pace to make up for the lost time, hurrying them past some kind of spiderweb monstrosity.
They reached a fallen tree that blocked the path.
“Oh, this isn’t good,” their guide said grimly. “We’ll have to go around.”
Waverly started bracing herself immediately.
Sure enough, as they tried to round the tree, a slavering zombie crawled up from behind the tree and staggered towards them.
Waverly felt herself starting to tense up, willing him to stop and go another way, wishing they had made his makeup a little less gruesome, when she heard a chainsaw rev. She looked past the zombie and saw Ms. Chainsaw standing by the fallen tree, as though she had just felled it.
Waverly marveled at how quickly the fear evaporated now that she knew what was under that mask. It even made the zombie less scary by extension, knowing that Ms. Chainsaw could easily get between them if he tried to go after her. She relaxed.
And Ms. Chainsaw didn’t leave. For the entire last stretch of the tour, anytime they pulled a big scare, with live actors in gruesome costumes, there she was lurking in the background. If it had happened at the beginning of the walk, it would have seemed menacing and downright terrifying, but now, it was oddly comforting. It was like having a secret bodyguard.
Still, she breathed a huge sigh of relief as they stumbled out of the end of the loop and found themselves back at the entrance.
“You alright?” Wynonna asked.
“Yeah, just glad that was it.”
“Alright. Let’s hit the store for snacks, and then it’s movie time. As many as you want,” she promised. Wynonna set off for the truck, but Waverly lingered for a moment, oddly reluctant to leave. She wasn’t sure why until she saw the redhead jog out of the woods, looking around until her eyes found Waverly. Ms. Chainsaw. She grinned at Waverly and held something up, then threw it to her.
Waverly caught it instinctively, blinking down at it. It was a candy bar, with a scrap of paper stuck to it.
“For your movies!” Ms. Chainsaw called, then jogged back into the woods, clearly needing to get back to work.
Waverly unstuck the note from the back of the chocolate bar. It simply had the word Nicole, and a telephone number scrawled hastily underneath. Waverly felt a smile spread across her face.
“Hey, Waves, you coming?” Wynonna’s confused voice interrupted her reverie, and she quickly trotted back to her sister’s side.
“Hey, Wynonna, do you think we can come back tomorrow?”
Wynonna shot her a bewildered look.
“Come back? I thought you hated it. You literally ran away.”
“Sure, but it had its… redeeming moments. I just think maybe I could give it a second chance.”
Her sister eyed her long and hard, before finally shrugging, not understanding but not complaining either.
“Uh, sure… okay… if you’re sure… tomorrow it is.” Wynonna’s step seemed to have an extra skip in it at the thought.
“Good.” Waverly glanced down at the card in her hand, then back at the woods. “It’s a date.”