Luckily, the pumpkin lantern had also survived the explosion and was still dimly illuminating the scene.

Mac retrieved the small flashlight he’d come with from the floor, tapped it back on and stood up, brushing loose earth and debris off his t-shirt, jacket and sweat pants.

Taking tentative steps, he edged to the point of the detonation and examined the carnage. His experience told him he hadn’t been just lucky – this explosion had been very carefully planned to only take out the mine entrance.

The scarecrow was clearly toying with him, first the time capsule and gun, and now this. Maybe it didn’t want him dead just yet, not while it could play sadistic mind games.

In a way, this kind of psychological contest was even worse than the ones Zito played.

But how does it know about what happened when we were kids, and the gun? How the heck did it get the gun? Mac realized he was calling the killer an “it” again and paused, reflecting on what had happened.

He turned back to the table and slumped down in front of it, trying not to look at the box it held.

But his eyes wouldn’t listen to his brain, and no matter how hard he tried, they kept turning back to the gun. Beneath the cold hard killing machine, he noticed cuttings of old newspaper articles. Without pulling them out, he could tell they were all about Jesse’s tragic accident.

MacGyver closed his eyes, forcing them not to look at the table any longer, but then his mind filled in the pictures that his eyes could not, and he was back in the den as a kid with Neil, Chuck, and Jesse.

Jesse was laughing, but then he was always laughing.

Snap out of it, Mac! You need to get out of here! The Halloween party will go ahead now they think Teresa is the killer and in custody. You’re the only one that can tell them different…

MacGyver opened his eyes and took down a breath. How much air did he have? It already tasted stale and dusty, but there were other passageways, other tunnels. In reality, he would probably run out of water and food long before he did oxygen.

A more sobering thought hit him – just who would even know about the den apart from Neil and Chuck? And no way was he ready to believe the scarecrow was either of them.

Maybe this was fate telling him this was the death he deserved? Maybe it was his comeuppance after what had happened to Jesse? Was this the one time he wasn’t going to get away with it and survive?

Mac pinched the bridge of his nose and reflexively closed his eyes again. Within seconds, he was back in the past, haunted by something he no longer had the ability to change.

Jesse was there, calling to him…

MacGyver squinted and his view refocused to see Jesse in the den, just as it was all those years ago. Jesse was grumbling, because he wanted to explore the mine’s tunnels, and as always MacGyver’s younger self was being a spoil sport, pointing out that it was way too dangerous.

Chuck and Neil joined in the conversation, uncertain which friend to agree with. Eventually, Mac put forward the better argument, and all four exited the mine to go and play in the nearby woods.

As Jesse vanished from the mine entrance, complaining about the others being scaredy cats, the scene faded and Mac was back to reality, to here, and to now.

He rubbed at his eyes and his fingers came away moist from the painful memories of his dead friend.

MacGyver shook himself and got to his feet. Reliving the past wasn’t helping his situation, and he needed to stop and refocus. He grabbed the light again and swung it around. There had to be something here he could use.

In the corner, near an old rusted oil lamp was a pile of rocks. But these weren’t from the cave in; they had been placed very specifically a very long time ago.

This was Jesse’s secret place, where he’d hidden things. They’d all had one here down the mine.

MacGyver swallowed hard. Being trapped down here was one of the toughest things he’d had to face.

“Go on, look! You know you wanna, MacGyver!”

It was Jesse’s voice goading him, and even though Mac was sure it was all in his head, the sound seemed to come from all around him.

“Go on, Mac…”

MacGyver couldn’t ignore Jesse any longer. He reached down and carefully took away the top layer of chalky stones to reveal a small tin, not unlike the time capsule. The paint on it was faded, and in places the metal was rusted.

He brushed off loose dirt and carefully opened it.

Inside were a few baseball cards and an age-tanned piece of folded paper.

MacGyver opened up the sheet to reveal a hand-drawn map of the mines in Jesse’s writing. Mac couldn’t help but smile, just a little. Jesse had gone back all those years ago and defied them all to explore.

Or had he? Wasn’t this just all-too easy?

The scarecrow could have put this here, just another trick or treat prank within his sick game!

And yet, MacGyver knew deep down that this was Jesse’s writing, and that the map showed another way out. Part of him wished this was some ghostly form of forgiveness from his friend, but he didn’t really believe that.

He looked back to the lantern he’d spotted earlier and decided to try and light it. If the batteries gave out in his Maglite, then he’d still have something to show the way.

The lamp still held kerosene from when they’d been here as kids, and after all the years that had passed, somehow it still lit up.

Mac put the flashlight in his jacket and held the lamp high as he began to follow Jesse’s directions.

The tunnels were narrow, dark, and in places foreboding even to MacGyver. Water trickled from the roof timbers, and in places pooled on the ground. Every now and again, a bat would flutter past, making the experience even more surreal. Could this even be happening so close to Halloween?

Mac shook his head at the irony as he pushed on deeper into the mountain. He was trapped down a long-forgotten mine, in almost total darkness, and he was following a map that shouldn’t even be here, written by a dead kid.

The thought brought an involuntary shudder, and to add to the ghostly sensation, Mac felt something brush against his shoulder. Another bat, perhaps?

He spun around, keeping the lantern high. What had touched him wasn’t anything living. It was more water, flowing quite quickly here through the shaft ceiling. Not a good sign.

MacGyver pushed on, keeping a close eye on the water level beneath his feet. His sneakers squelched in it now, but it wasn’t over his feet yet.

Eventually, he spotted an opening ahead that was marked as the exit on Jesse’s diagram. There was no light from the hole and Mac abruptly felt his stomach tighten. The scarecrow…

Ignoring the idea that it could be a trap, he moved on until he was standing where “X” literally marked the spot. The opening led into a large area that held old, corroded mine carts, lots of track and mostly rubble. In the old days, Mac guessed this was the part of the mine where whatever was being extracted was moved outside for shipping.

The only problem was that on the far side of the man-made cavity there had been another large cave-in.

MacGyver walked carefully over to it, ever-mindful that the roof over his head, and the walls all around were being held up by timbers that were probably very rotten, and very weak.

He wafted the lamp across the edge of the cave in and noted that it wasn’t a recent event. That at least meant it wasn’t the work of the scarecrow.

The rocks, soil and debris didn’t appear to be very deep, but it was definitely beyond digging out with his bare hands. Maybe if he had food, water, and an endless supply of light, but as it was, he was stumped.

MacGyver sighed and ran his free hand through the front of his hair. “You almost saved me, Jesse, almost…”

An image of the gun in the time capsule flashed across his subconscious and he couldn’t help but wonder if he actually deserved saving.

For a moment, it was as if a voice answered him – no, not a voice, a giggle – Jesse’s unmistakable chuckle.

Mac quickly spun around to face the tunnel behind him, but the laughter was just a trick of nature. The wind on the hillside was whistling through the mine shafts and echoing down the empty tunnels.

“Aww, c’mon, MacGyver, will ya stop being such a quitter?”

This time the voice was in his head, a long forgotten memory of Jesse that he could no longer suppress. At least, that was what Mac told himself.

Taking the advice literally, because there really was no other choice, MacGyver moved back into the tunnels and began searching for anything that might help him break through the cave-in.

The darkness was all-consuming, and seemed to suck him further into some abyss with every turn he took. It wasn’t like Mac to feel helpless, but as he checked his watch and realized he’d been stranded hours already, he couldn’t help but consider his fate.

Eventually, he came back to the point where his sneakers squelched in the water from the roof. He paused and twisted around in a full circle with the lamp. There was something here he’d missed before, a very narrow crevice that had once been another shaft.

Whether it had been abandoned and blocked on purpose, or partially sealed by another collapse was anyone’s guess, but with a little maneuvering, Mac thought he could make it through.

He put the lamp down and pulled the smaller, more easily handled Maglite out of his pocket and flicked it on. Pushing carefully against the rock wall to his left, he squeezed tentatively through the gap, feeling sharp stone edges tease at the back of his leather jacket.

In a couple of minutes, he was through into another chamber. Panning his light around, he paused on a pile of crates marked dynamite. They were old and decrepit, and he almost feared going near them.

Water had almost engulfed the bottom box, and the top one was completely empty. MacGyver put the Maglite between his teeth, flexed his fingers and then carefully removed the top crate. The one below it was empty too.

Mac held his breath, and moved on to the final crate. The lid was still tacked down, and he had to use the edge of his penknife blade to very cautiously tease it open.

Inside were just a few sticks of explosive, and they were so old they’d been leaking, just like the ones he and his buddy Bill had once used to stop a burning oil rig. In places, the nitro-glycerin had leaked into the corners of the box, making it very unstable.

Not only that, but there didn’t appear to be anything left around to use as a detonator.

Great, every time I find a solution, I come up with another obstacle…

Mac took a moment to think, perching himself on the two empty crates he’d moved. Throwing the dynamite at the cave-in wasn’t an option. It might explode on impact in its current condition, but it also might blow his hand off while he was attempting to toss it.

Shipping the sticks to the exit would require some careful thought and very slow movements anyway, but there was no point if he couldn’t come up with a detonator first.

In its current volatile condition, it wouldn’t take much – maybe just something impacting with it pretty hard.

Mac used his flashlight to check out every corner of the mine section he was in. There were a few corroded lanterns, and the remains of a shovel.

The shovel piqued his interest, and he ambled over to it and retrieved it from the center of a large, and very creepy spider’s web.

The shaft was pretty rotten, but he had an idea forming that didn’t need that part anyway. With a swift kick from his sneaker, Mac broke away the rotting wood to leave the metal handle. The top part of that was also wood, and not required for his plan.

Using his penknife and a little more brute force, the wooden section was removed and discarded, leaving a crude iron “Y” shape.

This just might work…

The next item on MacGyver’s shopping list was something stretchy. He looked down and realized he would have had a couple of rubber bands in his pockets if he’d changed back into his jeans, but right now he still had his sweat pants on from jogging.

Mac pulled at the waistband and smiled, a piece of elastic strip should do just fine for what he required. Taking out his penknife once again, he cut out two small sections of the elastic and secured them to either side of the shovel handle through the holes left by the wooden top section. Now all he needed was a middle section for his sling.

Rummaging in his jacket it took two seconds to retrieve a flattened roll of duct tape, and a further minute to double over a few sections to make a wad for the center of his crude sling shot.

Now it was time for a test fire.

MacGyver rummaged on the mine floor until he found a few stones the correct size and fired them off into an empty corner. It wasn’t the most powerful sling he’d ever made, but he believed it had enough force to set off the already volatile explosives.

Now all he had to do was move the sticks to the cave-in without blowing himself up, and he just might have an escape plan.

* * * *

Moving nitro-glycerin that was older than Methuselah wasn’t exactly on Mac’s bucket list, and as he finally set down the last stick at the mine exit, he promised himself he would never try it again.

It had taken hours to slide through the fissure, one stick at a time without jostling the explosives, and even longer to virtually tiptoe through the tunnels with it.

Now that it was in place, he took a moment to wipe the sweat from his brow and pull up his sweat pants for the hundredth time. Stealing the elastic had been a great idea, but it had also left him with some very unruly pants that wanted to now live at his ankles instead of his waist.

MacGyver smiled at the irony just as the oil in his lamp finally ran out, plunging him into darkness.

Remind me never to come home at Halloween again, not ever…

He stuck a hand in his pocket and retrieved the Maglite. How much longer would its batteries last if the escape plan didn’t work?

Mac tried not to think about it as he hunkered down behind one of the huge rotting metal carts for cover, and began sifting through the rubble on the floor for ammunition.

Selecting several medium sized stones, he rolled them over in his palm, assessing their weight, and hoping that coupled with momentum, it would be enough to cause the nitro to blow.

Sucking down a breath, MacGyver aimed the sling and sent off the first projectile. It bounced harmlessly against the rubble of the cave-in and settled back down on the floor with a tapping sound that reverberated through the mine.

Mac tried again, compensating for his first mistake.

The stone caught the edge of the top stick of dynamite, slamming the explosive hard against the remains of the mine wall. It responded with a blast that rocked the ancient complex, making the cart MacGyver was hiding behind move on its rusted rails.

Rocks, stones, earth and anything too close to the mine exit were sent spiraling into the air, filling the room with dust, debris, and in some places timbers that had given way with age.

Mac remained huddled as close to the cart as he dare until the air began to settle, and then risked peeking out at the devastation he’d caused. Part of the roof had given way, blocking off the tunnel he’d used to get here, but thankfully, that didn’t matter anymore.

The exit for the cart’s that had been filled with rubble was now partially clear – the makeshift slingshot had done its job.

Mac scrambled to his feet, mindful that further cave-ins could be imminent, and couldn’t help but cough as he drew down air still filled with dust and dirt.

He jogged to the exit and carefully pushed through the hole he’d made back into the outside world. Looking back just once at the mine, he said a silent thank you to Jesse and his long-hidden map for saving the day and then began to sprint back to the Jeep.

The only problem now, was how he was going to keep his sweat pants up long enough to get there.

* * * *

Lakes Nature Reserve Project
7.45p.m. 31st October

It wasn’t until he got back to the Jeep that MacGyver realized how long he’d been down the mine. Not only was it the next day, it was the next evening – Halloween.

The thought normally conjured up pictures in his mind of kids having fun, adults having parties he’d rather not go to, and of lots of decorations and costumes. Tonight, all it conjured was images of a very real, very evil scarecrow.

Daring to take time to change his damaged pants to jeans that he thankfully had in the 4x4, he’d then headed right back into Pequot Lakes hoping the party was still cancelled.

From the crowds already lining the streets and milling around, he guessed rightly that it wasn’t. Most were heading out in the direction Steffi had mentioned, and that meant the police, and general public had no idea a killer was still at large.

Mac shook his head and spun the Jeep towards the Halloween bash, noting that a lot of the people in fancy dress appeared to be high school kids. The scarecrow’s favorite prey.

He gunned the gas just a little harder, keeping the Jeep at a fast, but safe speed as trick or treaters crossed the roads.

Steffi will be there, she was looking forward to it…

The thought brought a shiver along MacGyver’s spine and he reached for the phone in the center of the Jeep. First, he made a quick call to the local police, followed by one to Neil Ryder.

The whole affair was out of Neil’s jurisdiction, but somehow, after everything that had happened in the mine, Mac needed a friend here, one who would understand.

Luckily, Neil was home and more than sympathetic after hearing what was going down. Steffi was a friend of his too, and Mac, well, he’d never let Mac down.

MacGyver pulled into the reserve’s temporary car lot just as he’d finished the call. The place was awash with people, mostly in fancy dress, and that was going to make things pretty tough.

The townsfolk were oblivious to what might happen and were laughing and joking – basically having fun, but tonight, Halloween was anything but fun to Mac.

To add to the confusion, there was construction work going on at the reserve. It looked like a new car parking area was being made. For tonight, it was taped off and secure, but it would make a very interesting hiding place for the killer.

MacGyver winced as he climbed from the Jeep and began pushing through the crowds. The scarecrow could be anyone, and anywhere, and if it truly was fixated with the thought of pagan rituals and Halloween, then it would surely be here.

His eyes darted through the throngs, searching for something, anything. To his left and back from the main body of people he spotted a skeleton sporting a sling. Wasn’t Steffi wearing a skeleton costume?

Mac began to head for her when he realized she was talking to a scarecrow – not the red-eyed one he’d recently had the pleasure of toying with, but the outfit was familiar. He took a moment to recall that it was Billy, the teen who’d been the first suspect.

A cold harsh thought hit MacGyver, and he quickened his pace.

Could Billy still be the killer?

A large group of high school kids appeared from nowhere, shouting, laughing, and generally pushing in front of everyone else, including MacGyver.

He kept moving, his heart beginning to race in his chest as he reached the edge of the woods where Billy and Steffi had been chatting.

But the pair had vanished.

The lake was to Mac’s left, and the woods were to the right. He spun around, unsure which way to go. The noise from the party was masking any possible sounds, and the ground was too dry here for any obvious tracks.

After a second to deliberate he launched himself into the trees, his eyes hugging the ground for clues. It didn’t take long to find what he was looking for.

Steffi’s sling was hanging from a tree branch, ripped and torn, like it had been left there to taunt him.

Mac stopped dead and touched it as if the tactile contact would kick his mind into overdrive and give him answers.

It didn’t, but the guttural scream that came next did.

It was so loud, so pitiful, and so desperate, that even the revelers at the edge of the party stopped dead and stared into the woods.

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