A Scarecrow to Watch over Her (A Horror Novella)

by Saunders, Craig

  The rest was lost on the wind for a moment, and she was grateful. She knew his voice, now. That voice made her blood run cold. She was scared of him and didn't like that feeling. The hairs on her arms stood straight out, some primal response to her fear.

  She daren’t turn back. She daren’t look over her shoulder.

  Then, in a lull on the wind, she heard a loud crack. Margaret had kids herself, long grown now, but not so long grown she didn’t remember the sound a good solid clip round the ear made.

  The last thing she heard was the old woman.

  ‘Ya’s‘ll get no one, ya fecking idyit shite.’

  It was just high jinx to them. Spirited children, playing. But children could bite, and kick, and pinch, and punch. Children could be mean and dangerous.

  They were different people. If her kind of people did their kind of playing they would be in jail. She dreaded to think what these gypsy played at. What had that man called them? Mulrones?

  She didn’t want to think about it any longer. She just wanted to get home, find Bernard, and for this all to be over and done with.

  She didn’t look back. She got in the car and drove. Shaky, then smooth, then fast.

  Hold on, Bernie, she thought. Oh God, Bernie, wherever you are, whatever they’ve done, you just hold on.

  *

  If he threw himself forward, Bernard thought perhaps he could snap the wood that held him off at the base, break it and himself out of the ground. Then what? Fall on his face, for certain.

  After that…wriggle? What, a quarter of a mile? Nailed to a piece of wood? Bugger that.

  'Your weight might tear the nails out.'

  That voice. This morning, that voice had been just a whisper. But it was getting louder as the day went on and the louder it got, the more sense it seemed to make.

  No. The pain. The pain would be tremendous. The blood…the blood would pour. I might lose consciousness. I could die.

  That was the voice he liked. That voice was looking out for him.

  'No, it’s not. Do that, and you’ll die. Crucified. Made to look like a scarecrow, but really, you’ll be crucified. You’ll wither. The bugs will eat your flesh. A year from now, maybe less, maybe more, when the flesh has all gone to dust, your bones will fall free of this cross and you’ll still be dead.'

  Shut up! Shut up!

  That voice, the one he thought of as the sane voice, just laughed at his anger.

  'Then move, you fucker. Move.'

  Except fucker didn’t sound quite like that. It sounded more like ‘fecka’, and that sent shivers down Bernard’s spine.

  The way that sane voice sounded right then frightened him, even if it was for only a second. Then both voices, good and bad, were lost to him, because there was sudden, blinding agony from his legs, legs he thought long dead to all feeling. But they felt this. Oh yes, Jesus, they felt this.

  His weight, pulling him down, finally tore something loose. The nails, through his flesh, into the wood, which had chipped but not pierced the bone on either side, tore long gaping holes in his feet, and the wire tore into the fat at his thighs, round the outside and the front then pulled tight against the wood that held him up.

  His arms held, and the weight on his shoulder increased, then decreased, as he screamed behind his closed lips, hard enough to tear his mouth bloody and free enough space for air to pour into his lungs. The pain blinded him, took away all thought and he felt the nails at his feet torn out.

  Then, though pain was all he knew, his feet and the motion and the weight pulled his body down so he was, suddenly, feeling cold dirt against the ragged soles of his feet.

  Bernard’s head shook from side to side. His cries hitched and tore at his lungs, and tears ran down his shaking, trembling face. Then the pins and needles started.

  And it was far, far worse, because when that finished, the full extent of his pain hit him in horrible, sickening waves.

  Bernard had never known such pain existed.

  He would have gone utterly mad, perhaps beyond redemption, if it hadn’t been for the sound of the car, crunching over the distant, potholed drive. He could see the house now, since shaking his head. The sackcloth, with two holes for eyes, had shifted.

  For the first time he registered that the Volvo was not on the drive. Then the car came into view.

  Please, please, he thought, hope and fear driving the pain from his mind for precious seconds. Margaret got out of the car.

  'Throw yourself forward! She’ll see you!'

  He leaned, ready to do just that, but at the last instant he registered the lilt, the ‘ya’ that should have been ‘you’, and braced himself on feet that were alive again, with pain, yes, but alive.

  He wouldn’t do that. That wasn’t the way.

  He flexed his toes until he thought he could feel, distantly, earth underfoot. That was the way. Patient.

  He could also feel wetness, thick on his legs and ankles, and that wasn’t so good. He thought that was blood, and lots of it.

  He got the idea that maybe patience was good, but not too much, because even fat men only bleed so long, and then…

  ‘Ya cunt,’ said the voice.

  But he didn’t listen, and the voice faded, back to a whisper. A murmur, and hint.

  Bernard’s head sagged forward, and then there were no more voices, just black sleep.

  *

  Margaret put the key in the lock, laid her shoulder into the old warped door and pushed her way into the house.

  The house felt cold. A cold made somehow deeper by the house’s emptiness. The lingering smell of coffee came from the kitchen, but it was a stale smell that made her gag.

  Stop being such a chit, she chided herself. She took big gulps of air, trying to settle herself. That just made things worse. Stars danced across her vision. She put her hands on her knees and bent forward to make the stars go away and vomited on her shoes.

  ‘Oh, Madge,’ she said, as the tears came.

  She stayed that way, hands on her knees, staring at her small pancake of watery sick. Her tears dripped, splashing into the mess. The sight made her want to sick it all up, all her fear, all her anger, but she pushed herself straight.

  ‘Enough.’

  She stepped around the puddle, walked down the hall and took out the mop and bucket. With her eyes screwed shut against her tiredness, she ran hot water and squirted in the floor cleaner.

  When she was done, the slate glistened.

  Then she emptied the bucket. Rinsed it out in the old sink at the back of the house, put everything away. Clearing up wasn’t wasting time. A woman could think and mop. A man, well, he would probably struggle to concentrate on more than two things at once. Women have different skills. Like finding things.

  For instance, Bernard would say to her, head in the pantry, ‘Madge, we’re out of HP.’

  Margaret would move a jar of pickle, maybe gherkins, maybe Branston, and lo, ‘Look, would you? What do you call that?’

  Bernard would look sheepish for a while, take the HP sauce and lather his sausages, his thick hands bashing the base of the bottle.

  Thinking of Bernie hurt.

  She started upstairs. She didn’t try to think of likely places a man Bernard’s size could be stashed. She started at the beginning. She intended to search everywhere, until she found him. Ticking off a mental list she had made while she had been moping up her mess.

  Their bedroom. Unlikely. Really unlikely. But the point of searching for things is that if you don’t know where something is, the chances are it’s not where you’d think.

  Under the bed. In the closet. Behind the shower curtain in the en suite they’d had put in five years ago. In that bathroom, she saw a spot of black mould on the grout, down the bottom where the water had a habit of pooling if it wasn’t wiped after a shower, and Bernard never wiped.

  She made a note to deal with that.

  Three spare bedrooms. Nothing. The last, the smallest, they used mostly for storage. There
was a chest in there, a big old antique thing. Bernard was too big to fit in there, but she checked anyway. She knew why she checked, but she didn’t let herself think about what would have to be done to a man to fit him in that kind of space.

  Nothing.

  She paused at the top of the stairs. They’d have had to bind Bernard – if that was all they had done to him – gag him, or she’d have heard him calling out. All done so quietly that she hadn’t woken. Upstairs was extremely unlikely. She’d checked everywhere, hadn’t she?

  All the wardrobes – each more than big enough to fit a man in, even one of Bernard’s girth. The wardrobes were all antiques. Nearly as old as the house, some of them.

  The thing with people with money is this: they spend less, because the things they do buy last forever.

  Bernard’s parents had run this farm before them, and their parents before them. And not one of them had ever had to buy any furniture, because the furniture in the house was nigh on immortal.

  Thinking about upstairs, Margaret also thought about the furniture, which pieces would be large enough to hide a large man, and...

  The boot of the car.

  The downstairs toilet.

  The back porch.

  Their industrial-sized washing machine (unlikely, but if they’d broken his arms and legs…stop!).

  The bottom of the Welsh dresser.

  The sideboard.

  The base of the couch in the living room.

  In the alcove behind the mahogany shelves.

  Up the chimney in the Inglenook.

  So on.

  She went on, checking everywhere she could think of. Methodical. Cold. Not panicking. And so she searched, until she could search no more without a cup of coffee and something to eat. She ate toast and pushed down her fear. Food was essential. She couldn’t carry on if she didn’t eat, but she didn’t need to waste time on fear.

  ‘Shit,’ she said, half way through her second piece of toast. ‘The bloody attic, fool woman.’

  She finished her toast first.

  *

  When Bernard drifted up into consciousness his mind couldn’t get started. Thoughts skirted his grasp, slapping and pinching, laughing as they ran off.

  Come back, you bastards, he tried to say. He could barely open his mouth. Couldn’t move his legs. There was something holding his arms out straight. Pinching, but distant. His shoulders were on fire.

  His legs…there was something wrong with his legs.

  He couldn’t see.

  Gummy eyes maybe. A heavy night.

  He tried to move his arm to rub the sleep from his eyes, but the bloody thing had gone dead.

  Margaret?

  Pins and needles in his foot. He kicked out, then it hit.

  His right leg, the one he kicked with, tore away something awful that was biting into his thigh. Barbed wire came away, with it a strip of skin and some muscle. He screamed and screamed and nobody could hear him. Even though his legs were dead, there was a core, deep inside, that could still feel. A part of him that knew he had torn a good sized piece of his thigh away, and that the thigh had plenty of places for blood to come pouring out.

  'Now you’ll bleed to death.'

  That voice, the one that used to sound sane. But now, not so much.

  'Now ya’s bleed ta deat’', is what it sounded like to Bernie.

  Fuck off! Leave me alone!

  But no matter what he tried to tell it, to shout at it, no matter how he strove to still that terrible voice, it kept on. A taunting, evil bastard of a voice. On and on, until he couldn’t hear the voice of sanity anymore or tell which voice it was. The gypsy voice, the pikey voice, had taken it and put in chains, in a deep dark box, just as dark as it was for Bernard.

  It was all that remained, but for a whisper.

  Both legs are free, Bernard, it said.

  The hard part’s done, it said.

  'Feckin shut ya mout'...'

  But he concentrated, concentrate so hard, until he could hear that voice, the good voice, telling him what to do. How to do it. How not to fall on his face.

  His arms weren’t shifting, but he had a foot free.

  Work some life into it, Bernard. It’ll hurt like a bitch, but you can take it. You can do it...

  'Dyin’s easy, fecka. Give up, die...'

  Don't listen. Dying is easy, sure. This way will hurt. But you’ll live, Bernard. You’ll live.

  The pain was immense. The blood was pouring. That was a problem. A big problem. So was the weakness, the bright lights drifting across his vision, even though he knew it was full dark beyond the sackcloth, stinking thing over his face.

  But dying was easy, wasn't it? Of course it was. He could just throw himself forward, onto his face, and eat the dirt.

  But that wasn’t his voice. That was them.

  The voice kept on. Bernard tried so hard to shut it out. Swore at it. It didn’t go away, but he was getting angry, and angry was good, because now he had his left foot planted, firm, in the dirt. He had no leverage to push with his right leg, and wasn't sure it held any strength, but either way, he knew he couldn’t face that. He just couldn’t.

  But that didn’t matter, because he didn’t want to do that. If he wasn't gentle, careful, he really would fall. He'd be face down in the dirt, after all, and with his arms bound and nailed against the cross piece, and as weak as he was, he wouldn't be able to move. Might as well stay and die as to take more pain for nothing at all.

  I must not fall.

  His left leg planted, he leaned forward into the pain and let his weight pull at the post along the length of his back. The nails in his arms and his left leg pulled tight. Blood started to pour again, but not in floods.

  There was immense pain. A whole country of pain. A continent. A world.

  And then, something snapped. It was the most beautiful sound he’d heard in all his life. It drove away the pain. There was a moment of panic as he tottered on a torn leg and dizziness washed over him, but then he was straightening, one free leg, one leg weak and numb along the outside. But now he had that post down his back, like a giant walking stick.

  Sure, Bernard, said that wonderful, quiet voice. Just a walking stick. Good work, Bernard. Now for the hard part...

  'Ya’s bleed ta deat’ b’fore ya get home...'

  Fuck off, you bastard, said Bernard, and began to move.

  *

  4.

  Sunday

  By the early hours of Sunday morning, Margaret was certain Bernie wasn’t on the property. There was nowhere he could be. Margaret searched the attic, the barn, the hayloft, the garage, the car, the cab of their old rusty tractor, the bed of the trailer…

  She was tired. She looked at the grandfather clock in the hall. Just standing there. Swaying. Two o’clock. Two o’clock in the morning.

  ‘Bernie, I’m sorry,’ she said. She wondered if he was somewhere he could hear her. Maybe stuffed into a wall.

  Think straight, woman, she said in her sternest voice, the one she used only for herself.

  She couldn’t go on. She wasn’t thinking anymore, she was just roaming from room to room. Like some ditzy, giggling girl.

  ‘Come on, Madge,’ she said. ‘That’s what he’d say. 'Come on, Madge. Get your thinking cap on.''

  Bernie, of course, didn't say anything, but Margaret spoke as though he had, anyway.

  ‘I’m sorry, Bernie. I need a coffee if I’m going to keep going. Just hold on. I’m coming.’

  On unsteady feet, she headed to the kitchen. Her shoes squeaked on the floor. Then, half-asleep, she started out doing all the little things that people do when terrible things happen. She tapped the filter on the side of the bin, emptying the coffee grinds. Measured out two mugs of water, two dessert spoons of coffee, flicked the switch on the percolator, listened to the steady gurgle of the water working its way through the coffee, into the pot.

  She paced. Her shoes on floor squeaked again.

  That sound...that is not my
shoes...

  It took a while to register. She was dog-tired.

  ‘You stupid cow!’ she cried and fell to her knees, beside the cellar door. They always kept a rug over the old cellar, because it was an ugly, mismatched and mislaid door. So many times Bernie had promised to fix it up, and yet here it was, ugly, worm-ridden wood, same as it ever was.

  A heavy wrought-iron ring was set into the boards of the heavy old wooden trapdoor. She heaved it up, the door fell open onto the slate tiles that covered the rest of the kitchen and the hallway. Years back, it had flooded. The smell of damp and rot blasted up.

  ‘Hold on, Bernie!’ she called down into the wet darkness. ‘I’m coming!’

  She was so sure that this was where he'd been kept. Bound, without a doubt, probably gagged. That was why she hadn't heard him call out!

  She hadn’t thought of it because they never used it. It would cost a fortune to fix it up, because Bernie would never do it.

  'Ha!' she said, running back to the hall where she'd left her torch, not thinking straight after searching outside in the dark through the middle of the night. 'I'm coming, Bernie. You just hold on...I'm coming.'

  She shone the torch down into the gloom from her spot at the edge. The smell was rank, musty. The cellar was singularly uninviting and horribly dark. The stairs down were wooden. They'd had years of damp eating away at them. They'd be rotten through. Would they hold her?

  She paused, but just for a second.

  'Can't worry about that now.' She played the beam of the torch around, slicing the dark, but the darkness simply grew back. She couldn't see everything, even with the torch, because the cellar bent round, in an 'L' shape. If Bernie was round that side, unconscious (hurt? God...please let him be okay...please) he might not hear her. The only way to search it was to go down.

  You can do this, Madge, she told herself to stave off her fear...and despair.

  Carefully, like a child testing the sea with a toe, she took one, then two steps. She made sure to place her weight near the edges of the risers where the stairs would be strongest, rather than at their centre. They complained at her, groaning as her weight squashed the fat, wet fibres of the aged wood. But they held.