The Barn Run - Part 4

The cars were gone from Wilson’s Lane. The road looked hardened up, but it was still shiny wet, reflecting the streetlights from the deep ridges and tyre marks, and it still smelled of asphalt fumes.

Stephi led off to the side, along the edge of the road, past the row of cones, and we crossed to the fields further up. A half moon was out, and the distant, block-shaped corrugated barn and the dark square of the farmhouse looked like a bowed head, poised to be raised in a growl.

Stephi climbed onto the stile over the fence. Beyond the stile, the track faded into the blackness. “This is it,” she said. “This is your last chance—once you cross this stile, there’s no turning back.”

“Your last chance to chicken out,” Jojo said.

I told him, “And your last chance to stop yourself looking like a complete idiot.”

“All in?” Stephi said.

Yeah, we were both in. Stephi jumped from the fence and onto the path on the other side.

We joined her.

From just one side of the fence to the other, it was somehow colder, quieter; there were no echoes and everything felt closed in. The nights were still too sticky for a long sleeved shirt, and, anyway, I figured wearing a dark tee-shirt would make me harder to see if we roused any attention, but when I jumped from the stile, goosepimples raised on my arms.

“Everything you learn, you must keep secret, forever,” Stephi said. She was little more than a grey shape ahead of me. “The only time you can share your knowledge is on another Barn Run.”

We walked single file into the darkness, away from the streetlights, walking in silence but for the pad of our steps and quickened breaths. Over to the side, the shadowy block of the barn moved closer to the silhouette of the house, like an eclipse of two black suns soon to take place.

Three, maybe four hundred yards up the path, the way was blocked by what looked like a bush. Stephi stopped and her eyes glinted silver.

“We pass through this wall,” Stephi said. “Keep your arms high, walk slowly, and keep going straight, until you can see the way out.”

She raised her arms above her head, and she walked into the wall of blackness.

I followed, with my arms held high, into the wall. Here, it was pitch black, and smelled dry, musty, and sour. The scent of nettles, the acidic sting, and the dust of webs tethered to finger-thick stems which must have been holding up this entire hedge of pain.

“Fuckpig,” Jojo said, behind me.

“Walk straight,” Stephi said. “Arms up.”

“Fucking nettles,” Jojo said, “Shit . . .ow!”

Ten careful steps in, Stephi’s silhouette faded back into view, diagonally to the left, and I wondered how many runners had screwed up here, trapped in the total blackness.

She faced the field now, looking toward the angular block of the barn, now hiding the farmhouse behind it. “This is where we start,” she said. “Like every other Run before us.”