They found him some while after dawn, lying among the great stones, crouched in an attitude of fear, though the fear did not show upon his features, for the whole body was most terribly burned. Yet there was no other evidence of a fire, and the night had been rainy. And the scarecrow? Somehow or other the scarecrow had found its way back into its old place in the middle of the field, and now stood, as large as life, staring with its empty sockets at the appalling scene.
Harry Arnold smiled broadly and signaled to the landlord to refill his mug. “Nice little story, ain’t it?” he said.
“Nice little—Ye gods!” thought George. “Interesting,” he ventured.
“Fascinating!” said Lionel Ager. His face was gleaming with the disinterested delight of the scholar, and beads of sweat stood out on his forehead. “Absolutely remarkable. So coherent . . .
“These stones are still there?” he asked abruptly. “On your farm?”
“On my farm,” Harry Arnold agreed. “You see, that old farmer, he was my great great grandfather.”
“Remarkable!” Ager exclaimed again. “And what of the scarecrow?”
“Well, I don’t suppose it’s the same one—not likely, is it?—but there’s still a scarecrow in that field. We reckon to let well enough alone, and every seed-time out he comes from the barn, and when he’s not needed in the field, we put him back there. Matter o’ fact, we do tend to let him stay in the field rather longer than needful. We reckon he belongs there, and we want to do the right thing by him.”
George Cobbett did not like the way the conversation was tending. It took a morbid turn, he thought, and he disliked the morbid, but I should say that he had no presentiment of what would happen, and in any case he didn’t believe in such warnings. He was very young.
His friend continued to question the farmer. Had there been other evidence of this gateway to Hell? he asked—but Harry was vague upon that point, and unwilling to commit himself. It was true that over the decades some people had disappeared or died mysteriously, but that may happen anywhere. No, nothing certain could be said.
Ager fell silent, and George took the opportunity to steer the conversation toward the stone circles at Normanton Lovell. They were still engrossed in that subject when the landlord firmly called “Time!” and amid a clattering of heavy boots, a jingling of glasses, and a cheerful buzz of talk the bar started to empty. Harry gave the young men his enormous hand, and expressed the hope that they’d meet again next day. And so Harry Arnold set off home, and George Cobbett and Lionel Ager—the latter still preoccupied—went upstairs to bed.
At breakfast, Ager’s first words were: “Do you realize that it’s Midsummer Eve in six days’ time?”
“What of it?” replied George.
“Just this: that Midsummer Eve is rather like Hallowe’en, when ghosts and witches walk abroad.”
With an expressive snort, George returned to his bacon and eggs, but stopped abruptly when he realized his friend’s implication. “Oh, God! You don’t mean that you’re going to follow up Farmer Arnold’s ghost story?”
“I mean that we are going to follow up Harry’s story.”
“We most certainly are not! I came down here to look at megalithic remains, and that’s what I’m going to do. You can go ghost-hunting if you like, but count me out.”
George was adamant on this, though he could see that his friend was disappointed. Lionel Ager was equally adamant. “I can’t pass up a chance like this,” he said. “Don’t you see how important it is? The Folklore Society will be delighted to get this story, but it must be investigated properly. Even if you won’t come with me—and even if Harry Arnold won’t agree—on Midsummer Eve I’m going to Nick’s Meadow to see if anything happens.”
“All that will happen is that you’ll catch pneumonia,” observed George, but he was uneasy, all the same.
It was agreed after breakfast that George should accompany his friend to Nick’s Meadow. They both, after all, wanted to see the stones that Farmer Arnold so picturesquely called Hell’s Gate, but George’s interest was purely archaeological, and he had no wish to see the demon scarecrow.
“I did see it, though,” he told me. “And I can see it now, quite clearly. It was a horrid, tatty-looking thing, with most of the straw stuffing gone from it. The clothes, too—I don’t know how they held together. They were threadbare and rotten. I think that the coat had once been black, but it was a dull, nasty green now. For all I know, they might have belonged to the original scarecrow, back in Sir Richard’s day. And the face—my God! The head had been carved from a turnip, and it was all shriveled and wizened, but there was a distinct and rather frightening expression. The half-moon grin and the vacant eye-sockets combined to give a look of utter and menacing idiocy!”
Even Lionel Ager was glad to turn his attention to the group of stones that stood on the western side of the field. Their curious formation held a different interest for each of the young men; to George the central stones were possibly of unique archaeological importance, as the only genuine trilithon he knew of in Britain outside Stonehenge, but to Ager the shape formed by one massive stone lying as a lintel on two great megalithic posts served to reinforce the idea of a gateway. “Hell’s Gate!” he muttered. “Hell’s Gate indeed! Cobbett—” (he turned abruptly to George), “I simply can’t miss this opportunity. Are you quite sure you won’t come and watch with me?”
George thought of the scarecrow’s face, and furiously dismissed the image from his mind. “I won’t come,” he said. “It’s a very silly business, and besides, I see no fun in spending the night in a field when there’s a comfortable bed back at the inn.”
Ager merely grunted. Evidently his own determination was fixed, and Midsummer Eve would see him in Nick’s Meadow, watching for the gateway to Hell. From then on the matter seemed to bar all other ideas from his mind. This was to be a major contribution to folklore, and not until he had seen it through would he return to more mundane matters.
He made no demur at George’s suggestion that they go and look at the stones of Normanton Lovell, some two miles away, but he spoke little as they walked along the narrow roads, and his thoughts were set on Nick’s Meadow and Hell’s Gate.
Harry Arnold was not well pleased when Ager told him of his plan, but he could give no concrete or coherent reason why the young man should not stay the haunted night in the haunted field. Seeing that his advice to “leave well enough alone” had no effect, he grudgingly acquiesced. “You’d go anyway,” he observed, “so you may as well go with my permission.”
When Midsummer Eve came around, he came into the Belchamp Arms looking rather embarrassed, and carrying a shotgun. “You’ve forced an argument on me,” he said, “and for your own sake I’ll force one on you. You’ll take this gun with you tonight. I don’t know that it’ll be of protection to you, but it may be, and I’ll sleep sounder for knowing you have it.”
Rather reluctantly, Ager took the weapon, and thanked the farmer for his concern. Harry had not finished, though. “There’s one more thing. I want you to promise that you’ll stay on the east side of the field—away from the stones.” To George’s surprise, and rather to his relief, Ager agreed, smiling wryly as he saw the farmer’s face clear. “Good lad,” said Harry, and clapped him on the back.
Even so, Harry insisted upon accompanying Ager from the inn at closing time, so that he could be sure when he went to his bed that the young man was keeping to the agreement. George approved of this notion, and when the landlord called time he went with them to Nick’s Meadow. He could do nothing more, save offer to share the vigil, and he was not prepared to do that.
With Ager settled fairly comfortably on a traveling rug, the shotgun and a flask of whisky beside him, good-byes were said, and George Cobbett and Harry Arnold went their ways.
George had difficulty in sleeping at first. Although he was very tired, his mind was so full that there seemed no room for sleep. Curiously, whenever he shut his eyes, one image predominated,
making a clear picture, so disturbing that he had to open them again. It was as if he sat alone on the eastern side of Nick’s Meadow, gazing across the field at the strange cluster of menhirs, and seeing the gateway formed by the trilithon, which stood out clearly among them. It was odd that the stones appeared so sharply to his inner eye, for in fact he could see nothing else—nothing at all. The blackness that covered all—all but that unpleasantly distinct image of Hell’s Gate—was so very black as to be the darkness of the tomb rather than of night. It was almost like a living thing, and it hid everything but those damnable stones.
No, not quite everything, as he discovered the fourth or fifth time that his eyelids involuntarily closed. Far off, by the stones, and silhouetted against their very distinct image, seeming tiny by comparison, was an awkwardly moving figure. It was more human than animal, as far as he could tell, and yet not quite human either. It was walking in a very unnatural manner, almost, he reflected, like a wooden doll that is made to caricature its young owner’s gauche stride.
By the time George Cobbett realized that the gaunt figure’s awkward movement was bringing it rapidly through the stygian blackness toward him, he was struggling to stay awake. But our bodies at their best respond perversely to our minds, and George found himself fitfully dozing, and observing with something like terror the progress of the black, featureless creature across the black, featureless field. As it drew nearer, he found that it brought with it waves of heat, as though furnace doors had been opened—an evil-smelling heat, but with no accompanying light. Whatever illuminated the stones remained itself hidden, and still no features could be discerned on the gothic silhouette that approached him.
Yet something about it—something in that damnably sharp, gaunt outline—scratched at the doors of memory in his brain, and he fought against recognition, while knowing that it could make no ultimate difference.
The heat became—not unbearable, for he bore it—but, like that appalling darkness, it seemed to take on a life of its own, a pulsating life, as though it was generated by some great, unimaginable heart. The figure came ever closer, its stride implacable and unhindered. It moved so stiffly, as though it had no knee-joints. Its arms were spread wide, as though fixed in a mockery of benediction. Its head—ah! its head was small and round, wrinkled and very, very old. Rank shreds and tatters of clothing flapped from its thin frame, and now he could see coals of fire within the deep eye-sockets, as finally it stood before him, and the crushing waves of heat brought with them great gusts of a mirthless laughter.
The doors broke open, and George Cobbett awoke, screaming, to find himself alone and secure in his room at the Belchamp Arms. Almost sobbing with relief, he lay back on his pillow and expelled his breath in a long sigh. God, what a dream! And what a story to tell Ager in the morning! He smiled a little at the unexpected depths of his own imagination, and, feeling sleep approaching again, he turned onto his side and let it come.
He slept easily this time, falling almost immediately into a dreamless slumber, and did not wake again until a heavy knocking at his door aroused him at about half-past-six. Only half-awake, he climbed from his bed and opened the door to his untimely visitors. A yawn became a gasp of incredulity as he saw the urgent faces of the landlord and Harry Arnold, the latter biting his lip nervously, but with fear in his eyes.
The farmer had risen early as usual that Midsummer morning, and gone straight to Nick’s Meadow to see how Lionel Ager had fared. In the meadow he had found Ager’s body, and he had stood, looking at it, for a long horrible moment, unable to move. It lay between the uprights of the trilithon—Hell’s Gate indeed!—and it was hideously burned. The whole corpse was blackened and charred, and still smoking a little, and the face was quite unrecognizable. The hands, clutching the twisted frame of the shotgun, had actually broken around the weapon.
“I couldn’t touch it,” said Harry, later. “And I dared not, for fear it would crumble into ash.”
And yet, despite the condition of the body, Lionel Ager’s clothes were quite unharmed, except that they were damp with the summer dew.
Harry Arnold had turned and shook his great fist at the scarecrow. “Old devil!” he cried. And then he saw that the scarecrow had somehow been turned around during the night, and now stood facing the group of standing stones. On its turnip face, the crudely carved features no longer wore their customary vacant aspect, but had twisted themselves into an expression of malign triumph.
My cigarette had long since burned itself out in the ashtray, and I had hardly touched my beer. Old George’s hands were shaking a little as he fumbled with his tobacco pouch and pipe. I knew that anything I could say would be inadequate, but I said it anyway: “That’s quite astonishing. Quite astonishing.”
George was silent for a moment, while he re-lit his pipe. When he had it drawing to his satisfaction, he looked up and stared gloomily at me. “It was a pretty village,” he said. “And those stones were really remarkable. But you can understand now why I’ve never been back there.”
The End of the World by James B. Hemesath
James B. Hemesath responded to my request for background information with some interesting notes on the history of his story, “The End of the World,” published in WIND/Literary Journal.
“I was born April 25, 1944, in New Hampton, Iowa. After high school I spent three years in the Marine Corps. I’m married (Myrna) and I have a seven-year-old son (Chad). My higher education includes a Master of Fine Arts in English from the University of Iowa Writers Workshop. Currently, I’m the Librarian at Western Montana College, Dillon, Montana. Before that, I was the Librarian at Huron College, Huron, South Dakota. ‘The End of the World’ was written during my stay in South Dakota. A shorter, much earlier version of this story (with a different title) received an honorable mention in the annual Writer’s Digest fiction competition. Yet another early version of the story helped in my receiving a $500 fiction-writing grant from the South Dakota Arts Board. All told—I’ve been writing for approximately twenty years; in recent times, I’ve turned out one, maybe two new stories yearly. During any given year I spend a lot of time rethinking/rewriting stories from previous years. ‘The End of the World,’ for example, was written one year, then rewritten and expanded over a two- or three-year period. As you might guess—I’m not prolific.”
Hemesath has had short fiction published in Again, Dangerous Visions, as well as in Fantasy Book, Eldritch Tales, Just Pulp, Coe Review, Dare, Blue Light Review, and Each Step I Take. He also reviews fiction for Library Journal.
He had counted telephone poles for the first hour; next, farm houses; finally, deserted farm houses. Ralph Watson stared through the bug-splattered windshield. In the shimmering distance along a two-lane highway that ran straight as a rifle barrel, a solitary grain elevator rose from the surrounding dusty-green earth like the front sight of a high-powered rifle. Next to him his wife, Jane, pondered the television listings in a New York Times that she had brought with her. She wore a red halter top and blue gym shorts. A leather sandal hung from the big toe of her crossed leg.
“Are you sure they have public television?”
“The night before the interview,” Ralph said, “I watched Dance in America in my hotel room. Baryshnikov.”
“That was on in New York months ago.”
“I probably saw a re-run.”
“I doubt it.”
“It’s summer, Jane.”
“Tell me about it!”
“I don’t want to fight.” Ralph pondered the grain elevator. It didn’t seem any closer. Poor Jane! He increased the pressure of his foot on the gas pedal. The speedometer crept past 60 mph. She wanted to be at her father’s summer house in Vermont. Instead, they were enroute to Ralph’s new position as academic dean at a college that neither of them had heard of a month ago.
Two weeks ago Redemption College had flown Ralph from New York to the interview. On the final hop of a late afternoon flight from Minneapolis-St. Paul, he had shielded his e
yes to look out the tiny window next to his seat. The wing tip of the Republic Convair, transformed by the sun into a fiery knife point, cut through the airy void. The Great Plains unrolled beneath his feet like a bolt of dull green cloth. An enormous world with plenty of elbow room for an ambitious young man.
Driving across those same plains was something else. The flat countryside rolled past like a conveyor belt. Overhead, the late-August sun rode roughshod through a cloudless sky. Ralph drove with his elbow out the window. It glistened with suntan lotion. A white bath towel draped across the window sill protected his upper arm from the scorching metal.
In the endless fields alongside the highway, the knee-high corn stirred in the stiff, hot breeze. Ralph wondered if it was dead of the drought. No rain for weeks, the TV weatherman had said the night before in their motel room in Sioux Falls. If one stopped the car and listened, the leafy stalks crackled in the breeze—a sound like the breaking of tiny bones. Ralph imagined the corn stalks turning to dust before his eyes.
“Look at those pathetic trees,” Jane said, pointing at the ragged, thin-ranked cottonwoods that protected yet another deserted farm house from the prevailing wind. They were stunted, dying of thirst, slump-shouldered. Ralph pretended to ignore her. Still, in the yard of that abandoned and windowless farm house, he had seen a load of tattered wash on the clothes line. He wondered how many years ago it had been put out to dry and forgotten.
Ralph pressed the gas pedal still harder—69, 70, 71 mph.
“Dad!” Ralph glanced at the rear view mirror. His six year old son, Bobby, stared back. Slashes of red warpaint colored his face. The work of a felt-tip marker. A souvenir turkey feather jutted from his blond hair. “You’re going too fast.”
Ralph eased his foot off the gas.
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