“So hungry,” the figure said, in a voice so weak and hoarse and artificial it sounded like something from a ventriloquist's dummy. Spook edged closer.
“So,” the figure said, “hungry.”
“Fright and scare,” Spook began, but even as he said this he knew the thing before him was dying. Around Spook, in the air and trees and soil, fear was truly fading away. He took another step forward and said, his voice filled almost with pity, “Bogy.”
“All true,” the thing before him said; its voice sounded even more hollow and false. “All the stories true. I'm the source of all fear. I howl at the Moon”—he made a sickly, sad try at a wail—”and swim in foul water. I live deep in the woods in a moldy hut. I. . .” The voice trailed off into a reedy gasp and then there was dry silence.
Around Spook, the fear was just about gone.
He reached out slowly, carefully, inch by inch, and put his hand on Bogy's shoulder. The thing before him crumbled into a pile of rags and empty spiked black boots.
“Fright and scare—” Spook began, but then he called, “Augie?” There was only silence behind him.
“All true,” Bogy's voice came, but not from the rags and empty boots.
It came from where Augie should be.
Like a stretching, waking cat, fear began to return. Shadows pushed out from the wall, making the room become long and sinister; things dropped down from the ceiling and the corners became places you wouldn't want to back into. Spook got the shivers, and now when he got them they only got stronger and wouldn't go away. Fear was growing, and very fast. He looked at the pile of Bogy's clothing and a cold hand clamped over his heart and he was more frightened and scared than he had ever been.
“Augie?” he called once more, not wanting to turn around.
“I change shape and throw my voice,” the new boy's voice said, not hollow anymore, “and I kill with my axe and eat what I kill—so hungry.”
Spook knew that fear would return to the town. He felt it radiating out from the hut, pushing out into the woods and beyond. Butch and Bill, wherever they were, would tremble in their boots. All the Halloween costumes would be yanked down from closet shelves; dogs would bay at the Moon, become mock wolves; and Mad Lady Pinkerton would rise from her sleep in front of the barber shop to cry doom upon all who passed.
Fear was back.
“Augie?” Spook called one final, desperate time, but he didn't turn around. He knew Augie was there. As he ran for the door he saw the monstrous shadow rising against the wall, saw the outline of huge claws hands and heard the tread of monstrous feet. He heard the cavernous sharp-toothed jaws behind him.
When he thought he was far enough away for his heart to beat slow and let him hesitate and turn, he saw the glint of the huge axe against the bursting bright October Moon.
THE CORN DOLLY
Come to me, lad.
The voice, a whispery October rattle, called to him at the edge of the forbidden field.
Corn is ripe, lad.
A thousand dry stalks ticked, one against the other. Traced in the stark gray-white of the suddenly-appearing moon, they appeared to the boy as the heads of so many thousand dried-corpse soldiers, snapping brokenly back and forth in the wind in stiff perfect ranks.
Behind and below him, his mother called.
“Robert!” she summoned, and her voice could not hide its anxious tone, “Supper is waiting!” She was fearfully looking up at the corn patch.
Invisible in the darkening light, Robert looked down the hill at her, feeling a momentary pang of sorrow for her tiny, bird-frightened figure outlined against the yellow rectangle of the open doorway. Around her, the sharp lines of the dark little house stood out. A trail of thin, sickly smoke pushed up from the thin chimney. Circling the cottage, a parched blanket of mown fields lay in every direction and sloped steeply up to Robert's feet.
Come see me.
The rattling whisper sounded behind him again.
He turned quickly toward it, staring into the line of cornstalks. A mixture of fear and awe kept him silent. It had taken him much of his ten years to get this close to this forbidden territory.
A slap of icy wind pushed into the rows, making them hiss.
“Robert!” his mother cried frantically, and the boy suddenly realized that she was making her way up the hillside and would see him.
He turned away, beginning to wind his way silently down the slope, circling away from his mother toward the road leading from town.
Behind him, the whisper sounded a last time.
Later, lad.
Above, the silver goblet moon dipped into a cloud.
With soup and bread came boldness.
His mother circled him like a hawk for an hour, probing with the talons of her questions. He told her he had been delayed in town with his friends; they had been playing late, watching the young women make the corn dollys for the Festival.
“Why don't we ever have a corn dolly in the house, momma?” Robert asked. It had not been the first time he had asked.
There was ice in her voice.
“Stay away from the corn, Robert. Stay away from those women, and everything to do with the Festival.”
“But why? All my friends always go, and they call me names—”
“Because it's evil! We want nothing to do with the village and their pagan holidays.” Robert saw that the hand that held her beads was trembling.
“But I want to go this year. Just to see what it's like, all my friends, to make a wish with a corn dolly—”
“Enough!” She was nearly shrieking now, and Robert was suddenly frightened of her.
For a moment she seemed to be staring into some unnamable pit where fires burned; but then her eyes shifted toward him, and the vision that had made her so frightening seemed to melt away. She abruptly reached out and brought Robert to her, pulling him tightly to her breast and rocking him back and forth. He could feel one of her tears drop onto his neck and then suddenly he was crying too, sorry for the way he had acted that had made her this way. He threw his arms around her.
“Oh, momma, I'm sorry....”
“Hush, Robert, it's all right.” Her voice was soothing now “I'm sorry, too.”
“I would never do what you don't want me to. It's just that I was curious—”
“I know, I know. Perhaps someday you can see—” she shuddered as she said this “—but for now please do what I say. Please be a good boy.” She held him away, looked down into his brown eyes. “It's very important, Robert. Please promise me you won't go near the corn. And that you'll forget about the corn days and the Festival.”
He almost told her about the voice then, the crackly whisper that had called to him. He almost asked her if that was an evil thing. “Yes, momma,” he said.
She hugged him again. “You're a good boy, Robert.”
Later, in bed, with his mother moving restlessly in the room next door, Robert opened his window a crack to feel the frosty breeze wash over him. The moon was low and large now, resting like an eerie white face on the crest of the corn patch. Tendrils of ghostly light played around the shifting stalks, and once again the image of a flank of sharp, thin soldiers formed: standing restlessly in place, feet rigid, their thin, ghoulish heads bobbing from side to side.
There was a rush of wind, and Robert thought he heard his name carried above it in a breath from the top of the hill; but then the wind was gone.
~ * ~
Corn!
The day before the Corn Festival, the village was made of string and wire. Wires flew across streets, into and out of windows, into dark alleyways where only the town drunks congregated, and out again. Up and down flagpoles, making Maypoles of them. Where there wasn't wire there was string. Spools of corn silk laced out above doorways, around house lamps and out across windowsills. Inside, the same. Some kitchens looked like spiderwebs, meshed fine with cornsilk. Where there wasn't cornsilk there were ribbons: green and yellow, especially yellow. A corsage of harv
est corn hung on every doorway and on every lamppost. The meanest miser hung out a clutch of dried corn on his thickly paneled door. The meanest house sported an often grander version of the same—with want of plenty came pride. Girls played tag, thinking of the games they would play the next day festooned in corn garments. The Corn King and Corn Queen, chosen by lot the month before, but inevitably a handsome young man and comely young girl, readied their own raiments: rich, bright costumes adorned top to toe with givings of the corn plant: a necklace of corn buds for the Queen; earrings the same; her dainty crown of tiny interlaced corn dollys, her robes of woven cornsilk festooned with ribbons (again, yellow and green); corn slippers, corn dress, corn blouse; corn rings for her thin, regal fingers, corn bracelets for her slim wrists, one wispy bracelet for her ankle. The King dressed similarly, though everything in huskier scale: and for him, a thick woven staff to prove his royalty.
As the day wore on, activity only increased. Cider was pulled from casks and tested, then tested again by one of the town drunkards inching forth from his shadowy alley named above. The streets were swept clean; every house, hovel and manse alike, made spotless. Dogs were bathed, dressed in collars of corn; cats, mostly black, retreated warily to high shelves and pantry tops and coolly watched the preparations. A huge, full, artificial moon made of the finest carved woods and painted in colored paints made of corn meal a hundred years before, was dusted, waxed and hoisted noisily over the town clock in the square: the hands were remounted on its front and would tell time for the next day around the perimeter, crossing as they made their way over the inscrutable cutout eyes and slyly grinning cutout mouth of the Moonman. Children would try to loft corncakes up and into that mouth; those that did would be greeted not with scoldings but with gifts. Corn, dried and just picked, sprouted everywhere: from windows, from every available opening. In a matter of hours the town grew and ripened, waiting for the harvest of the next day which would assure the harvest of the next year.
The village sang with activity, and all day long Robert listened to the song from his room. His friends, all of them, were in the middle of those bright festivities; in his mind he was with them, watching their every move and step. They ran from house to house, trailing cornsilk streamers, and he imagined he was at their lead; they practiced on the Moon-clock's mouth, using rocks as missiles, and Robert ran away laughing with them when the constable chased them off. He hid with them in the mouths of dark alleyways, watching the drunkards with feigned contempt masking fascination. He led them past the bakery to try to steal an early bit of corn bread, fragrant and hot from the ovens. He tried, with them, to peek into the parlor where the Corn Queen tried on her robes, and argued with them later over whether or not they had seen anything—and, if they had, what it was they had seen. He played tag with them; danced in circles with them: sang with them; wrestled with them. Robert imagined all of this; and knew, as he heard the fainter sounds coming to him from his open window as twilight descended, that they were doing all this without him and that they were also making fun of him. There was always that distance between he and them at this time of year, a faint sense of accomplishment shared among themselves of which he was no part. They called his mother names, he knew. They called him names behind his back. They were his friends, and then again they were not.
His mother called him to supper, and there was silence.
“What is it, Robert?”
She knew.
He said nothing, only stared into his soup. His knuckles were white around his spoon and fork.
“Robert,” she said in a fearful whisper, “I want to hear no more of it. After tomorrow it will be over.”
“It will be over,” he said sullenly, almost viciously, “and again we'll be laughed at. I'll be laughed at.”
“Robert—”
“No, momma, it's true. They all laugh at me. Because you lock me in here all day long like an animal. There's only one day the whole yeas when the whole town is together, and we miss it. All the fun, and you lock me away. I never get to dance, or make a wish—”
“Stop it!”
“I won't!” The words shot out of him. He had never done this before; there was a new strength in him. He knew he was passing a signpost, and that he would never be a little boy again. “There's no reason for it, momma.”
“It's evil.”
“It's not evil! How could it be?”
“Pagan rites, Robert—there's nothing sacred about it. They act like animals, with their Festival, and their wishing.”
She was shaking.
“We act like animals, momma. They only do it for tradition. It's all in fun.”
“It's not all in fun!” She was hysterical. “You don't know! It goes back thousands of years; they've twisted it around so that it looks innocent. But it's not, Robert. They dress their town up, and make it all look like a game. It should have ended long ago.” She was clutching her rosary as if it would be torn out of her hand.
“I'm going to the Festival tomorrow, momma.”
It was a statement of fact, not a question.
“I forbid it.” His mother's voice was trembling.
“I'm going.” The strength of his words, the sureness of his conviction behind them, almost frightened him.
“Robert—”
“They call me bastard! Because you set us apart, because I have no father, they call me names! And you make it worse by not letting me be with them on the most important day of the year. I will go to the Festival tomorrow.”
Suddenly her shoulders sagged. The rage was gone from her voice, and only desperation, and a growing resignation, remained. Robert saw with triumph, mixed with a kind of fear, that he had beaten her.
“We will go to the Corn Festival tomorrow, you and I, Robert.” Her voice was nearly a whisper. “For a little while. Just for you to see. For your friends to see you. But you can't have a corn dolly, and we will not take part in their pagan wishing rite. Do you promise?”
Robert's heart leapt at the prospect of going to the Festival at all. “Yes, momma. I promise.”
A ghost of a smile crawled onto her face for a moment, then quickly dissipated. “We'll show them that your mother is not such an ogre after all.” The smile was replaced by a hardness: the rage was returning, held in check. Robert nearly pulled back under her eyes, nearly began to cry and ask for forgiveness for the things he had already said and gained.
“Only for a little while,” his mother said, “and no corn dolly. Then we will come home, and you will stay in your room.” She sighed heavily. “You've been bad, Robert. But I understand. I hope that...after tomorrow you will understand, too. We'll go just for a little while.” That ghostly smile again. “We'll show them your mother isn't so bad. All right?”
“Yes, momma.”
She turned away then, and Robert saw that she had pulled so hard at her rosary that it had broken.
~ * ~
A corn dolly for everyone.
The sun came up yellow, lighting a yellow town. Corn dollys were everywhere. Before dawn the children, Robert's friends, some of them, had risen to do their task. Creeping like so many spiders out of so many doorways, yawning with nightsleep and pulling on sweaters as mothers looked on, tasting last spoonfuls of oatmeal and porridge and last slurps of wake-up tea, they came together in the town square. They were quiet at first, until sleep let them go, and then excitement began. They moved off, one giant clump of sweatered dust motes, to beneath the clock where the barrels waited. In the barrels, sacks, one sack for each to strap on.
No sack was opened, waiting for a signal. Silence reigned in the square. The moon clock moved its hands, too slowly to bear, toward six o'clock. Hands gripped the sides of sacks, waiting to tear them open. The hands moved a tick. Almost up and down but not quite. Another minute. Six o'clock! The moon face lit up as the first sunrays hit it.
A cheer went up from the children.
Sacks were ripped open.
Corn dollys spilled out.
&nb
sp; In a flash, children were everywhere. And with them, yellow corn dollys. Each wire strung across each archway was hung with dollys; each door found one tacked to its knocker. They seemed to fly up into the air, they were hung so fast. The town was nearly drowned in them. Windows, carts, lamps, trees—nothing escaped ornamentation. Children became real spiders, climbed up the sides of buildings it seemed (though they actually stood on each other's backs), found their way into corners a cat couldn't reach.
In ten minutes the job was done.
The Corn Festival had started.
Dancing began at seven. There would be no stopping this day until the sun went down. There were no clouds in the sky; the air was so blue and chilled you could bite into it like an apple. Some tried, but found better luck with red apples, which were everywhere. Everything, the best of everything, was everywhere. The town had become a corn town, a Festival town.
Robert, up at dawn, had heard the distant shout in the village as the corn dollys went out. He ached to be with them, but satisfied himself with the knowledge that he would be with them later. There would be no laughing at him tomorrow. His mother, he knew, was in the next room, praying. He had heard her crying in the night, and had almost gone to her, almost told her that it was all right, he would listen to her and they did not have to go to the Festival in the morning. But something had held him back.
The hours wore away. He sat glued to the windowsill, his arms becoming numb from being propped up on it. The sun was high overhead now. He could hear his mother moving around in the next room. After making breakfast she had gone back in there, and he knew that when she came out they would go. The waiting was unbearable. Each shout that went up behind the hill, each cheer and cry, meant that something else was lost to him. That much more of the day and the Festival had dropped away from him; there would be that much less to talk about tomorrow and forever.
“I'm ready, Robert.”
He turned, and saw that she had dressed in her finest dress. She was smiling, but Robert knew that the smile, behind her lipstick, had been painted on and that her eyes were wild with bright.
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