Page 19

The corn closed around us almost immediately.

Damp earth compressed beneath my boots. Dry leaves scraped against one another several feet above our heads, and sunlight came through in thin shifting bands. Electrical cables ran beneath protective covers where the guest path widened. A pair of workers farther ahead tested a speaker, sending three seconds of distorted whispers through the corridor before shutting it off again.

“This section handles the first compression point,” Sybil said. “Groups enter six at a time. If they stack here, the timing dies in the next two rooms.”

She showed me the guest route, then a narrow staff cut-through hidden behind a panel of corn-colored mesh.

“Where does that come out?”

“Back near production.”

“Can guests reach it?”

“Not unless somebody moves the barrier and ignores the STAFF ONLY sign.”

“People ignore signs.”

“I plan events. I’m familiar with people.”

We moved through the Harvest Table set, where a worker had repaired the lantern bracket from the night before. The room smelled of fresh lumber over old fog fluid and cinnamon oil.

Sybil stopped to test the fixture herself.

“Better,” she said.

“You knew it was damaged?”

“Justin caught it before somebody got hurt.”

Her hand stayed on the bracket for a second before she let go and moved on. I left the silence alone.

The next corridor opened into a broader enclosed structure where the afternoon light came through gaps high in the set walls. Rough boards had been painted and weathered to look decades older than they were. A hanging scare figure had been tied back while staff worked beneath it.

Near the guest entrance, a painted pumpkin lantern sat on a low wooden shelf. It was larger than the mass-produced decorations scattered around the public farm, with a crooked black grin, deep red shading around one eye, and a green stem curling sideways from the top.

Sybil adjusted it by an inch.

“That stays there?”

She followed my gaze. “Yes. It gives the actor enough low light to see the next group without ruining the reveal.”

I looked beyond it toward the staff side. “Other access?”

She showed me a curtained opening used by performers and a marked passage leading toward the adjoining set.

“Three people could come through there during operation without crossing the guest path,” she said. “More during setup.”

We continued.

The final scare room remained behind police tape and a locked barrier near the old exit side. Sybil did not slow down when we passed the point where the live route now diverted.

I did.

“Show me the bypass.”

She did.

The new path turned before the sealed structure and fed into a packed-dirt emergency lane running behind two enclosed sets. A narrow transition farther along held a wheeled scenic divider painted to resemble a broken wall.