Rushed

by Brian Harmon

  But now that he was standing out here in this odd field, his signal cutting in and out, he felt a slow dread creep into him.

  A soft rustling noise made him snap his head up. He scanned the area around him, but there was nothing to see but cornstalks.

  The hairs on the back of his neck were suddenly standing at full attention.

  He told himself it was probably nothing more than a crow. Or perhaps a deer. But that eerie chill persisted. He began to walk faster, his eyes darting back and forth from the corn on his left to the corn on his right and back again, half expecting something to spring out at him, determined to drag him out into the sickly stalks.

  Past the middle of the stunted patch, the corn grew taller again, and soon his vision was reduced to only a few shadowy yards.

  Then, abruptly, everything felt different again.

  Eric paused and looked around. The sky was still the same blue. The corn was still the same green. But everything suddenly appeared brighter somehow. That odd chill was gone.

  He glanced back at the path behind him. It looked perfectly normal, except for the stunted stalks. Yet that feeling of uneasiness remained. He continued walking and glanced down at his phone again. The signal was strong and clear.

  He stuffed the phone back into his pocket as he tried to see through the corn, but he had barely withdrawn his hand when the phone buzzed to life against his leg.

  “Where are you?” Karen asked as soon as he answered.

  Shaking off that strange feeling of irrational dread that had been creeping into his gut, Eric dismissed the weirdness of the corn and forced himself to relax. “I’m in a cornfield,” he replied. “Where are you? What are you wearing? Are you naked? I like it when you’re naked.”

  “Yes. I’m naked. I lounge around in my birthday suit all day when you’re gone. Did you say cornfield?”

  “I did say cornfield. You’re never naked when I get home.”

  “Why would I still be naked when you get home? It wouldn’t be relaxing with you around. What are you doing driving around in a cornfield?”

  “I didn’t say I was driving.”

  “Okay. What are you doing walking around in a cornfield?”

  “Checking things out. Considering buying a farm. What do you think?”

  “I think I wouldn’t make a very good farm girl.”

  “Why not? Fresh air. Sunshine. Outdoors. The chores. ‘Green Acres is the place for me.’ The good life.”

  “I get allergic smelling hay.”

  “Well there go all my barn fetish fantasies. Thanks for leaving me empty inside.”

  “You’ll get over it.”

  “I know I will.” He scanned the field around him. Now and then he thought he saw something moving, but could not be sure it wasn’t just the breeze churning through the leaves.

  “So really, can we talk about you walking around in a cornfield? Because that’s a little troubling.”

  “I’ve got to admit, I can see where you might think so.”

  “Yeah. Where’s our car?”

  “Parked it next to a bridge.”

  “Oh.”

  “Don’t worry. I locked it.”

  “That’s good. That makes everything all right.”

  “I’m glad. I was worried this was going to be an awkward conversation.”

  “Why would you think that? You just abandoned our car and decided to take a walk in a cornfield. There’s no reason at all to doubt the soundness of your mind.”

  “I have the most patient wife on the planet.”

  “Yes you do. Now please explain the cornfield to her.”

  “That’s going to be tricky.”

  “I was worried it would be. What are you doing?”

  “I don’t know. Really. I have no idea what’s going on. All I know is the farther I drove, the more sure I was that I was doing what I needed to do. And when I finally pulled off the road, I felt just as sure that I needed to get out and walk. I followed the river to a little path in the woods and I found my way to this house…”

  In as much detail as he could recall, he described his encounter with the old woman and the enigmatic things she’d said to him.

  “That’s so weird,” Karen said when he’d finished.

  “I know.”

  The road curved to the right, winding ever deeper into the field, and again he was struck by that strange sensation of something changing. It happened only briefly this time, for merely a second or two, but the cell phone crackled in his ear as if he’d passed quickly through a tunnel.

  “Do you think she really knew you were coming?”

  “She couldn’t have. I didn’t even know I was coming.”

  Karen was quiet as she contemplated the idea.

  “I don’t think she was entirely there. She probably thought I was somebody else.”

  “Maybe… That stuff about the half-there man… That’s creepy.”

  “I know. Kind of gave me a chill.”

  “I can believe she might’ve just been crazy, but it’s really weird that she said she expected you two days ago.”

  “I know. That was a spooky coincidence.”

  “It was.”

  Again, something changed. At the same moment, the phone crackled. He stopped and began to walk backward. After a few steps, everything suddenly seemed normal again.

  This was interesting.

  He began to walk forward once more. It seemed that he needed to walk almost twice as far as the first time, but that queer, shifting feeling came back as reliably as he could have hoped. There was a definite chill to the air here. And although the sky and the corn and the weeds and the earth remained unchanged, something about the underlying quality of it all seemed altered. It wasn’t as if it had grown darker, exactly. It was, as crazy as it sounded, as if everything had grown deeper.

  He couldn’t wrap his head around it.

  “Listen,” he said as he glanced ahead and saw that the corn was becoming shorter again. “My phone’s been cutting out a little in this field. I lost the signal completely just before you called. So if you lose me, don’t freak out, okay?”

  “I don’t ‘freak out.’”

  Yes, she did. She simply managed to do it with considerably more grace than most. But he decided not to tell her this.

  “You just worry about yourself. Don’t get rattlesnake bit or anything.”

  “I’ll watch where I step,” he promised.

  Karen’s next words were gnarled into a sputtering of disjointed sounds.

  “Karen?”

  Another quick burst of noise crackled in his ears and then there was nothing.

  “Karen…? Hello…?”

  He ended the call and glanced around. Again, he had that uneasy feeling. On either side of him the corn became shorter and shorter until it was little more than sickly sprigs jutting out of the cracked earth, most of them half wilted, some completely dead. He found himself in an odd valley of pathetic stalks barely clinging to life and was unnerved by how silent it was here.

  What was killing the corn? Was there something in the soil? Pollution, maybe? Or Radiation?

  A hard shiver raced through his body as he imagined himself being slowly irradiated by something buried in the ground beneath him. Was he being exposed to something? Would it kill him if he remained here long enough?

  Countless old movies began to surface from his memory, gleefully filling his head with thoughts of crashed alien spacecrafts that oozed terrible chemicals into the ground and filled the air with strange fumes, transforming harmless wildlife into gruesome and violent freaks of nature.

  Why did it have to be a cornfield? Aliens loved cornfields. They were drawn to them like toddlers to coloring books.

  He stepped up his pace to a near jog and soon the corn began to grow taller again, but the queer deepness remained.

  Something rustled in the corn again. Something big. Something definitely not restrained to his imagination. He turned to face it, ready to defend him
self, but he could see nothing. He was standing in an open strip of stunted stalks, completely exposed, searching the taller corn farther out.

  “Hello? Is someone out there?”

  Of course there wasn’t. If there was, it would be someone with a chainsaw and a shirt made out of human faces. Why would such a person reply to a stupid question like that? It would spoil all the fun.

  Eric began to run.

  The corn grew taller and his visibility dwindled. He thought he could hear things moving all around him. An odd, chittering noise rose from somewhere nearby.

  Then everything abruptly became normal again. That strange depth was gone from his surroundings, the chill vanished and everything seemed once more to be perfectly fine.

  He turned and looked behind him, but there was nothing there. It was just an ordinary dirt road winding through an ordinary cornfield. Again, the only thing out of the ordinary was the sickly-looking corn.

  The cell phone buzzed to life in his hand, startling him so badly that he almost dropped it.

  He took a moment to curse at the stupid thing before answering it.

  “What happened?” asked Karen.

  “Nothing. I just lost the signal for a minute there. Like I told you would happen.”

  “That was kind of scary.”

  “Just a lost signal,” he repeated. He had no intention of telling her about hearing something in the corn. He didn’t want to worry her. Besides, he still had no idea what it was or how much of it had only been his imagination. It was probably nothing more than a deer hiding in the field.

  He turned and began walking again. Ahead of him, the road was curving to the right and beginning to slope a little downhill.

  Despite the chill he felt when he was in the strange area with the sickly corn, he now found himself sweating a little. It was going to be a very warm day.

  “How goes the cake?” he asked.

  “Still cooling. I’m getting ready to whip up the frosting. Strawberry pies are done. I have three caramel apple pies just about ready to come out of the oven and two blackberries ready to go in.”

  “See, it’s probably good I’m not there. I can’t behave myself around your blackberry pie.”

  “It does have an effect on you.”

  He followed the road around the curve, his eyes still searching the corn for signs of movement. Why didn’t he hear it anymore? Where had it gone?

  “I kind of wish I’d come with you.”

  “You have pies and cakes to make. And you hate long car rides. They make you sick.”

  “I know.”

  “I don’t think you’d like cornfields, either, actually.”

  “I guess I probably wouldn’t.”

  “Besides, I’m on an adventure, remember. You can’t expect me to take a girl on an adventure.”

  “Oh, right. What was I thinking?”

  Eric emerged from the corn into a wide, weedy clearing and stopped, his eyes fixed on the structure that stood before him. All at once, the mysteries of the field were forgotten.

  “Karen…”

  “Huh?”

  “I just remembered something from my dream.”

  “You did? What?”

  “A barn. A big, red, wooden barn with peeling paint and a sagging roof. …And I’m looking at it right now.”

  Chapter Four

  He recognized the monstrous red structure as soon as he saw it. It was not merely a vague recollection, but was instead perfectly vivid in every detail. It was exactly as he had seen it each of these past three nights, right down to the gaps between the boards and the rusted-through tin roof.

  The memory of the barn from his dream—this barn—came rushing back to him in an instant, and with it came that awful feeling of gut-wrenching fear and foreboding with which he’d awakened each night. Though he could still remember no other details about the dream, not even the reason why this barn filled him with irrational dread, he was sure that he had seen this very same barn in his sleep.

  But how? He’d never been here in his life. How would he even know that such a place existed?

  “What do you mean you’re looking at it right now?” asked Karen. “You mean it’s real? It’s there?”

  “I’m looking right at it. It’s here. I’m standing right in front of it.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Uh huh.”

  “How do you know it’s the same barn?”

  “I just do.”

  “But you didn’t remember anything from your dream until just now.”

  “I know. But this was in my dream. This exact barn. I know it was. As soon as I saw it, I remembered it.”

  “Send me a picture of it.”

  “What?”

  “Send me a picture. I want to see it.”

  “How do you expect me to—?”

  “The camera on your phone, goofball.”

  “I have a camera on my phone?”

  “Yes. You know that.”

  “No I don’t.” But he realized even as he argued with her that he did recall her telling him about the camera when she first gave the annoying little device to him. At the time, he thought the phone was an utter waste of money even without a camera in it. It was just one of dozens of extra features he’d never had any intention of using.

  “Send it to me.”

  “How do I do that, exactly?”

  Karen talked him through the process. He had to hang up to do it, but soon enough she was looking at the very same barn on her phone, seeing precisely what he was seeing.

  He refused to admit that that really was kind of cool.

  “That’s a really creepy barn,” agreed Karen after calling him back.

  “Yes it is.”

  “You’re sure this was in your dream?”

  “Positive.”

  “That’s really weird, Eric.”

  “Well, yeah.”

  “Scary weird.”

  “I know.”

  “What if…”

  “What if what?”

  For a moment she was silent. Then she surprised him by saying, “What if it’s all real? You’re…feelings. The things that old woman said. All of it. What if it’s real?”

  “You don’t really believe any of that stuff, do you?”

  “Do you?”

  There was the real question. After all, if he didn’t believe any of it, why would he be out here? Some part of him must have expected to find something. Otherwise he would have turned around long before he reached the county line. And he certainly never would have left his car.

  “I don’t know,” he confessed. “I really don’t.”

  “I can’t decide if it’s really scary or really kind of cool.”

  Eric found himself leaning toward “really scary” but perhaps that was just him. “Listen, I’m going to have to hang up for a little while.”

  “Don’t hang up. I want to know what you find.”

  He was surprised to realize that he was already walking toward the door. “Even if I don’t, I have a feeling I’m going to lose the signal again in a minute.”

  “Okay. Just… Please be careful.”

  “I will.”

  He hung up the phone and approached the barn. He thought he might find the huge, double doors locked or otherwise blocked off in some way. Given the condition of the barn, he wouldn’t have been surprised to find the hinges sagging or broken, leaving the heavy doors weighted hopelessly into the dirt. If he were to tell the honest truth, he hoped that he would find his way blocked. But one of the two doors stood ajar, almost as if it were waiting for him.

  Just above the doors, someone had mounted a bronze eagle with its wings spread in flight. The instant he looked up at this decoration, he recognized it. He’d looked upon it in the dream, just as he did now.

  An eagle…

  The only thing he’d been able to remember of his dream until a moment ago was that there was something about a bird. And here was a bird now, blatantly emblazoned right abo
ve the entrance of the rundown barn. Even if he could somehow convince himself that this barn wasn’t really the same one from his dream, that it was just his mind playing tricks on him, he couldn’t possibly deny the image of a bird so obviously placed above the entrance.

  Eric tucked his cell phone into his front pocket, looked back one last time at the cornfield and the little dirt road that brought him here and then stepped through the door and into the shadowy interior of the barn.

  Even the inside was familiar. The way the sunlight filtered through the gaps in the boards and the holes in the tin roof was exactly as he had seen it in his dream, down to the last detail. Even the weeds that were reaching through the many sunlit openings near the floor were the same. Every place his eyes fell, he found details he remembered. It was as if he’d been here a million times before, as if he’d spent his whole life here.

  Except there was nothing as warm and comforting as a memory of home. A deep and churning dread was rising in his gut. Something was very, very wrong here.

  He began walking through the barn, toward the door on the far side, his eyes searching every crack and crevice for the slightest sign of danger. But the building was deserted. The stalls on either side were empty, with no evidence remaining of whatever animals they may have once housed. There weren’t even any birds roosting in the high rafters above his head.

  He wished he could remember more of his dream. What happened to him in the barn? What did he see? What did he find? Every surface, every beam of sunlight, every creak and groan of the aging lumber was familiar to him, yet he could not seem to remember anything beyond what he was looking at. It came back to him only as he saw it with his own eyes.