“Surname,” he interrupted tersely.
My mind went blank. What was my name? “Larkin,” I answered breathlessly, still reeling from his touch.
His eyes went wide before his face turned into a solid block of ice. The muscles in his jaw and shoulders tensed. “It’s you,” he murmured as he slowly backed away from me, then took off running into the corn.
9
INVITATION
“WAIT!” I RAN after him, not caring how pathetic I looked.
Just as I reached the corn’s edge, Rhys stepped out of the towering stalks, nearly giving me a heart attack.
“If you mention this to anyone I’ll never speak to you again.” He made a beeline for the car.
Completely stunned, I stared off into the dense field. Rhys should’ve run right into him.
“Ash,” my brother snipped behind me. “Do you mind telling me why some guy’s taking off our hubcaps?”
I turned, my heart pounding with anticipation. Was it him? How’d he slip by me? I pushed past my brother to get to the car.
When his head appeared over the side of the SUV, my heart fell. An old man, red-faced, wisps of white cotton-candy-like hair shellacked to his skull with sweat.
“There you are,” the man said, as if he was greeting a friend. “I was afraid I’d lost you.”
Rhys looked at me for an explanation, but I had just as many answers as he did.
The old man flashed a grin. “Tanner . . . Tanner Beaumont,” he said as he bent down to put the hubcap back on. “I’ve never seen a spinner like this. Escalade, huh?”
Stained wifebeater, overalls, missing teeth. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said under my breath. This must’ve been my mystery man’s boss. “I think I just met your colleague,” I said in relief as I leaned up against the car.
“Goober?” His eyes lit up.
“That’s his name?” I winced. He didn’t look remotely like a Goober.
“Yeah, he’s a good boy. He didn’t give you too much trouble, did he? Sorry if he drooled on you.”
“No, um . . . no, he didn’t,” I answered as I stared off into the corn.
“What can I do for you?” He stood up and I swear I could hear every one of his vertebrae grind into place. “I got a bunch of Hondas . . . I even got one of them Priuses.”
“Where did all these cars come from?” Rhys asked.
“Well, we call this here the Kansas Triangle.” He motioned at the land surrounding us. “You know, like the Bermu—”
“Yeah, we get the reference,” I interrupted. “But the cars are all here.”
“Oh, it’s not the cars that disappear. It’s the people.”
“What?” My brother went ramrod straight.
“This land here’s cursed. Used to belong to the Indians. See, people come here looking for Quivira. They come from all over the place . . . weirdo spiritualists, reporters, geologists, historians, even a few of them ghost hunters, and they all disappear. Haven’t had anyone in a while, though, not since that 2012 Camry over there.”
“What do you mean they disappear?” Rhys asked, shifting his weight nervously.
The old man leaned forward like he was telling us a secret. “They go into the corn, and they don’t never come out.”
“Have you called the police?”
The man grinned, digging his thumbs into the straps of his overalls. “I am the police.”
Rhys pressed his lips together and then let out a nervous burst of laughter. “Okay, time to go.”
“How do we get there? To Quivira?” I asked.
“I suppose you’re lookin’ at it. There’s at least forty-five miles of corn. No roads.” He looked up at the sky, dreamlike. “Sometimes at night, you hear the crows. All them flapping wings sound like helicopters, only there’s no lights. Just like Nam . . .”
An enormous balding Saint Bernard jumped out of the back of an old white Cadillac, knocking Tanner to the ground. A huge line of drool dropped from its jowls onto the man’s face.
“Goober.” He let out a high-pitched giggle.
“That’s Goober?” I said. “I was talking about the boy . . . the man I met here earlier.”
He looked up at me in confusion. “How long you been out here, missy? Kansas heatstroke ain’t no joke.”
There was no boy or man or man/boy. Awesome.
On the plus side, at least the figment of my imagination wasn’t named Goober.
“You weren’t planning on going in there, were you?” he said as he got to his feet, squinting into the corn. “’Cuz if you do, save me the trouble and leave the keys. This car would make a fine convertible. I could cut off the top. It’d be good for haulin’ trash.”
“Give us a minute, please.” Rhys dragged me toward the back of the car. “We have to get out of here and call the police . . . the real police,” he whispered. “You heard him . . . people go into the corn but they don’t come back. Look at all those cars, Ash.”
I stepped in front of him to try and block his view. “Maybe those people wanted to disappear. Mom said it was some kind of utopia.”