Jesse Potter still hates Halloween. But he loves his boyfriend Patrick, and plans to spend the last week of April inside Patrick's large house getting acquainted after months apart. But Patrick's sister Kayla is staying with him, and she's nine months pregnant, and so the house may as well be haunted.
Then the corn dolls start to appear everywhere. Kayla claims there are demons in her bed. And Jesse becomes haunted by two fairy creatures who won't leave him alone.
When a time-slip six months into the future gives Patrick and Jesse a chance to heal everyone they've come across, will they take it? Or will they distrust the fae who say they are here to help, simply because it's now -- once again -- Halloween night?
Jesse had changed at least twelve dirty diapers before he saw another corn dolly. Four days after saving the day with his drugstore run, plus coffee and lunch, Jesse walked into the kitchen to dispose of one of those particularly nasty diapers when he saw it.
He stopped. He walked back two steps, and saw it again.
There.
Underneath a coffee table, twisted into a human star, was a familiar yellow glow of corn. He considered several events, several possible interpretations before the smell of the diaper got to him.
He threw it out in the kitchen, then walked back to the edge of the living room.
He checked on the doll again.
Still there.
He was no longer filled with as much fear as curiosity. Huh. How did that get here? He'd wanted to believe Patrick's explanation -- kids as the school making paper dolls -- that he repeated it to himself several times. Maybe these kids had noticed a new mother and gave her some dolls, and since all babies put things in their mouths, someone left it in here.
That made so much sense that Jesse left the living room without discarding the doll.
The laundry was next on his to-do list, so he made his way to Patrick's facilities. He took clothing out of the dryer, put them into a laundry basket, and lifted them to the folding table. As he worked, he went over all the possible things that were in the house that could have also been mistaken for a corn dolly. Nearly everything postpartum also had that same yellow shade: the breast pump, the bottles, the nursery clothing, the milk itself. He was getting pretty sick of seeing yellow over and over, but that was normal considering that Kayla was almost always in the bedroom nursing, or in a different part of the upstairs nursing -- so that meant that Patrick was either taking care of Kayla or cleaning up after all that nursing.
Which left Jesse here, doing laundry. The baby folding. The dinner ordering, and then tucking everyone into their sleeping places (bed or not) as the house became quiet. The four days had basically the same pattern, shuffling through this silent language and this caretaking language was all they needed.
Except now.
Because as Jesse finished folding, and thought there was nothing else amiss, he found another doll in the laundry room.
And well, there was just no reason for it to be here.
Hidden, almost crushed to dust inside the dryer.
How had the doll survived the heat? The dryer had been on -- the laundry was always going now -- and the husk was dry as flint. It should have lit up if it was truly corn, and it had stayed inside that dryer.
So it couldn't be corn husks, it couldn't be natural items, if it had survived the dryer. Which meant it was supernatural.
Jesse jumped back from the dryer and folding table.
"No, no, no." He slammed the door to the dryer, then banged his hands on top of it. "No, no, no."
The dryer banged back.
Jesse jumped back.
The dryer jumped.
"Oh, no, no. I'm done. Nope. Goodbye."
