by Joe Zito
It was only last month that she last stepped foot in her granddaughters room. After Amy died, Susan would spend most of her time in there, just like she did Heather’s when she passed, but after a few months of soul treachery the visits became less frequent and eventually she stopped going in there all together. Just only on those hard days like the one she was having today ever since she opened her eyes this morning and stared blankly at the ceiling, wondering how in the hell did she lose so many people close to her.
She went and sat on the bed. Everything in the room was covered in dust. Even the picture frames of Heather, Mark and herself. A lump formed in her throat when she saw the pictures. She really did love us, she thought. Much like Heather’s room, the fixtures sitting amongst three year old dust seemed lonely. Susan sat on the bed, feeling numb. Why would she torture herself like this? I can’t seem to move on. Everyone in my life has left me behind. Her body trembled slightly because she felt somewhat guilty being in Amy’s room. Amy was so distant and kept to herself that Susan now felt as if she was invading her privacy. She glanced slowly around the room, looking at the big wooden dresser, its oversized mirror, a plethora of shoes up against the wall. And then a small book sitting on the nightstand caught her eye.
Her hands began to shake like she hadn’t smoked in a week. She knew why she was scared to death sitting on her granddaughter’s bed and she knew exactly what that little brown book was. She massaged her forehead and rubbed her eyes, trying to convince herself that it really wasn’t a diary sitting there almost tauntingly. The air conditioner kicked on and it startled her making her jump a little. She couldn’t help but laugh at herself for being so jumpy. But those laughs turned into cries that were quiet and weak sounding. What am I doing in here? Don’t even think about opening that book Susan. You know better. Go work in your garden, read a magazine, watch Phil Donahue. Just get out of here! As much as she didn’t want to look inside the diary with all of its secrets and demons flowing across the pages in blood red ink, she felt drawn to it. Did she really want to read about the horrors of Amy’s life? Should she open it or just get the hell out of there and go do her laundry and play the, what I don’t know can’t hurt me card. Her mind was going in ten different directions and before she knew what she was doing, her hand was laying on the small brown book. Slowly and cautiously as if she was moving a time bomb, she slid the book in her direction and picked it up. Her heart was pounding in her chest and for a second she thought she might be joining her husband. Her hands were shaking more now that the book was in her hands. Even though the air had come on and the room was cool and comfortable, she broke out into a sweat. She hesitated as her fingers caressed the cover. She set it on her lap and just stared at it. Why was Amy’s diary just sitting out in the open? Did she want Susan to walk into her room and discover the truth about her life? Had she left it on her nightstand purposely for that reason or did she just forget to put it away? As secretive as Amy was, Susan didn’t believe she would forget to hide it, yet she didn’t understand why Amy would want anyone to know about her life. She sighed, letting out a tired breath and opened the diary. A combination of sickness and guilt formed in her stomach. I shouldn’t be doing this. Her eyes saw all the words but her mind didn’t comprehend anything. It was like her conscious had put up an invisible guard, protecting her against reading anything life altering, but then her eyes focused and she began to read and understand.
It is with a led lock and key that I shall use………
As Susan read the words on the first page a heavy lump formed in her throat and she put her hand to her mouth. Warm tears fell from her eyes and then she heard the faint sound of a car crunching against gravel, coming down her driveway. She looked up and immediately slammed the diary shut. She didn’t even get past the first few sentences. She stood up and went to the window, still with the book in her hand. Her eyebrows slanted together in confusion when she saw a black car driving up to her house. She couldn’t get a good view of who was driving. It wasn’t uncommon to have solicitors come out to her house, even though it was in the county. She assumed that’s who it was. She pursed her lips together as stepped away from the window and prepared the speech she was going to give about not wanting to be bothered by whatever it is they’re trying to sell, be it a vacuum cleaner or the good word of Jesus Christ. Before leaving Amy’s room, she gently placed the diary back on the nightstand where she found it. Not today Susan. Not ever. It’s not for me to read. She went downstairs, wiping away the fresh tears on her face and tried to compose herself. She peeked out the front room window just as the car came to a stop. She felt a tingling in her stomach. They’re not selling anything, she thought and then the ball bat under her bed flashed in her mind. No time to run back upstairs and get it. The car door slowly opened, but she still couldn’t see clearly who it was. Someone stepped out of the car. It was an older looking man. Tall and roughly the same age as Susan. She saw a white head of hair on him and was for sure he would be asking her if she’s found Jesus yet, because he looked like a preacher in his long, black trench coat. He stood by his car for a moment then glanced around as if surveying his surroundings. He had a grimace on his face that revealed his teeth. He began walking towards the front door. Susan had relaxed just a little when she saw that it was just some old man, who was probably lost. But still, she wasn’t in the mood for small talk or salesman jabber.
She went to the door just as he began to knock. She beat him to it and opened the door and then let him have it.
“Sorry friend. I’m not interested in whatever it is your sellin’, so you can just waltz on back to your car and get off my property.”
She had her hand on her hip and stood in a haughty stance. The old man stared directly at her with eyes that struck her as being honest. Seconds that seemed way too long to Susan crept by. Then the old man said, “Mrs. Smith, I believe I may be responsible for the death of your daughter.”
And then she fainted.
“Ma’am.”
The word sounded far away in Susan’s ears as she laid flat on her back on her kitchen floor. The old man was fanning her face and had his hand under her left arm as if to help her up.
“Mrs. Smith,” he said, “are you all right?”
His voice was a little clearer this time and slowly Susan began to sit up. She had a dazed look to her eyes like she was lost. She looked at the old man, a mask of confusion on her face.
“Mrs. Smith. Are you ok? You took quite a fall there.” His voice was low and deep and sounded as if he had a wad of phlegm trapped in his throat. She still had that confused look on her face, but it started to dissipate when a frown formed on her lips. She said, “Who are you?”
The old man shook his head and grinned a little like he knew this was going to be the outcome of his visit.
“C’mon,” he said softly, “let’s get you up.” He helped Susan up slowly. She leaned onto the kitchen counter for support.
He smiled and said, “Let’s have a seat,” and pointed to the kitchen table. He was wearing a black farmer’s type hat with a wide circular rim. He took it off after they sat down. His hair was almost pure white. Susan stared at him with wide, frightened and unknowing eyes. The air conditioner kicked off. The kitchen was eerily quiet as they both stared at one another; Susan’s face terrified and confused and the old man’s concerned yet ashamed-ashamed that his visit had made this poor woman lose her bearings and collapse in her own kitchen.
Finally he leaned forward a bit like a preacher getting ready to explain some bad news and said in a low voice, “Mrs. Smith, my name is Eldon Wharton. I’m sure you don’t know who I am. I use to live in these parts a very long time ago.” He paused for a moment and then continued. “I apologize for barging in on you like this. And I’m sorry that my words made you faint like that. But there is something very important that I need to te……”
“How do you know my daughter?”
Susan interrupted with contempt in her voice. He looked dow
n at the table and shook his head. He looked up and told Susan, “But that’s just the thing Mrs. Smith. I’ve never met your daughter in my life.”
Susan looked at him still with that mixed mask of confusion and hate.
Eldon said, “Are you feeling better Susan.”
“How do you know my name?”
Eldon took a deep breath.
“Mrs. Smith, I know this is going to sound very strange but I’ve been seeing you in my dreams for the past two months.”
He paused and their eyes were still locked together.
“Mrs. Smith, my dreams are of you lost in a cornfield. You are so scared. I can feel your horror and you are calling out for someone named Amy. I don’t know who this Amy could be or who she was to you, but almost every night it’s the same. I can feel your sadness and loss and I need to know why.”
After another lengthy pause Susan said, “Get out!”
Eldon looked stunned.
“You get the hell out of my house. Right now!”
She stood up quickly and clenched her hands into fists.
“You better leave right now!”
She was almost in tears but Eldon didn’t move and could clearly see that Susan was more terrified than angry by what he had just told her.
“Get out!” She yelled.
She went for him, her teeth clenched and fists balled up like she was going to pound his old face in but as she did Eldon put his hands up as if to protect himself and yelled, “The girl with long black hair!” Susan halted her attack. “The girl with long black hair, I’ve seen her too Mrs. Smith. Please, if you would just listen to what I have to say then all of this might make sense.”
Susan raised her shaking hands to her face and covered her mouth.
“I’ve never seen you before in my life. And somehow you seem to know a lot about me. How do you know my daughter and how could you be responsible for her death. They convicted and put away her murderer years ago. But now she’s…..”
“Dead?” Eldon finished her sentence. “I know. I had a dreamt it about three years ago.”
Susan was speechless and at a loss for words. This was all too much.
“Please Mrs. Smith,” Eldon said, his eyes honest and pleading. “Let me explain all of this.”
How could this old man who seemed gentle and non-threatening know so much about Susan’s life?
Moments later they were in the living room and Eldon Wharton began to tell Susan the tale of the night he and his father created something hideous, vile and deadly.
“The crops were our livelihood.” Eldon took a sip of his coffee Susan had offered him. She felt it was the least she could do for scaring the hell out the old guy and yelling at him to get out. In the fifteen minutes that she’s known this man, she couldn’t help but like him already. He had a friendly aura she thought and seemed to pose no threat, other than just having a very creepy story of bad dreams involving her and her deceased family.
“It was our only source of income, so we couldn’t afford to be in the middle of a drought. Unfortunately there was one that year; a bad one. The worst part about it was all of those crows peckin’ at our corn. It drove my father mad, those darn black crows. He actually believed that those birds were evil, as if the drought had brought them to our crops. He would sit on our porch with his arms crossed and a mean look on his faced and just stare out at the cornfield with all those crows flying around, snatchin’ up bits and pieces of corn. He’d sit there for hours it seemed and just stew over them crows. It frightened me sometimes, that look of hate on his face.”
Eldon paused for a moment and looked up at the ceiling, letting the memory soak in. He took another sip of coffee. Susan sat on the other side of the couch listening quietly, paying no attention to her cup of coffee that was now turning cold. Every so often, during Eldon’s tale, she would glance up at Heather’s picture sitting on the fire place mantel. Eldon continued his story but Susan did notice a change in his eyes. They looked scared.
“Well, Mrs. Smith, I do believe that my father had had enough of those crows. He decided to do something about it.”
“I was playing in our barn one day when he came walking through the barn doors with a bag hung over his shoulder. ‘Quit messing with that hay Eldon and get over here’, he said. I did as I was told and when he dumped the contents out of the bag onto the floor, my life from that moment on would never be the same, although I didn’t know it at the time.”
Susan started to wonder where all this was leading. His father was nuts, so what. What does that have to do with Heather or Amy?
Eldon set his cup of coffee down on the coffee table. “There were all kinds of things in that bag like work boots, my father’s black work shirt, some rope and nails………a bear trap.” He paused again and Susan suddenly had the feeling that he didn’t want to say anymore by the haunted look in his eyes.
“I didn’t have a clue of what my father wanted to do Mrs. Smith. His moods were changing so rapidly, I never knew what to expect half the time. Then my father said to me, ‘we’re gonna make a scarecrow Eldon.’”
Susan was quiet and listened intently to Eldon’s story but now Eldon noticed a change in Susan. He couldn’t pin point what it was, be it fear, confusion or both, but there was a slight change in her facial expression. He put it aside for now and continued his story.
“We started right away building that scarecrow from all those spare parts in the bag. My father kept urging me to make it as scary as possible because we needed to get rid of them crows. I did the best I could. I didn’t want to disappoint him. When we were finished we stepped back and took in our creation. I didn’t like it one bit. It indeed was scary. In fact it was downright terrifying and I was for sure that no black crow would ever steal from our cornfield ever again once they came face to face with the horrid thing. The wind began to pick up outside. I could feel it rush through the half open barn doors. We heard a distant rumble of thunder and my father said with a crooked grin on his face, ‘look, it’s working already’.”
“We drug that monster out into our cornfield and hung it up on a wooden cross. It was horrifying the way it looked up there. My father left me alone there with it. He said he had the final piece for it. I remember being alone with that thing. The thunder boomed in the distance and it looked like the thing was staring right at me. I was for sure it was going to jump down off that cross and come lurching toward me right then and there.
“Finally my father returned and with him was a big witch’s hat my mother had worn the previous Halloween. I hated it. Well, my father got up that ladder and put it on what we created and then it was complete.”
“Soon after, the rain hit and it hit hard. We were soaked within seconds and my father started jumping up and down and yelling at the sky saying thank you over and over again. I don’t know if he was thanking God for the rain or that beast hung up on that cross. I wanted to run out of the cornfield not only because I didn’t want to be outside in a thunderstorm, by my father was scaring me half to death by his manic clapping and yelling. And then a streak of lightning hit the scarecrow. There was a big blast of sound and light and it knocked both me and my father to the ground. The jolt also knocked the monster off the cross.”
Susan had not taken her eyes off the old man for the past five minutes. She was so caught up and mesmerized by his story. She hadn’t even looked at her daughter’s picture.
“Mrs. Smith, I…..”
“Please, call me Susan.”
Eldon smiled but faintly.
“Susan, what I’m about to tell you is a secret I’ve kept hidden inside of me for fifty years. I have never told anyone. Not even my wife of thirty five years, god rest her soul. Not even my two sons.”
He stopped and took a deep breath and was wondering if he had made the right decision coming back to Indiana to tell a woman he’s never met but only in his dreams, the nightmare truth of that night back in 1947.
“This thing, the beast my father a
nd I made in our barn……it came alive.”
Susan’s eyelids had been immobile but now they fluttered like butterflies in spring when she heard Eldon speak of the living scarecrow. They both were silent for a while. It was as if they both were digesting all the information and words spoken the last ten minutes or so. Eldon was expecting Susan to start screaming at him again to get out at, but instead she surprised him when she told him to go on.
“I tried to tell myself I was just imagining things when I saw that giant beast rise up from the ground and tower over my father. It had to be at least eight foot tall. And then it roared. It shook the ground more than the thunder. It stomped its way over to my father. He was lying flat on his back. I don’t know if he was hurt or just scared stiff seein’ that thing stand in front of him. The next thing I remember is my father yelling at me to run and get out of there. So I did and I ran for dear life through that corn and rain and darkness and thunder until finally I reached our yard and could see the faint orange glow our the porch light.”
“Days after I was standing next to my father’s coffin at the funeral home. There really was nothing left of him. He looked like he’d been stuffed by the people that worked at the funeral home. I was later told that he had no blood left in his body. I don’t know how that can be possible, but it was, and I reckon that beast we made had something to do with it.”
A tear fell from Susan’s eye. The tale Eldon was telling her had struck a nerve and for good reason. Her daughter had also been found bloodless at the time of her death.
“I’m sorry. I’ve upset you,” Eldon said gently to Susan.
She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. She suddenly felt foolish for letting her emotions get the better of her in front of a complete stranger.
“No, it’s all right, really.”
But why are you so upset Susan? Does all of this sound familiar?
Eldon continued. “The thing that haunts me the most I guess is, after I had made my way out of the corn and went running towards my house, I turned around and I could see two red eyes staring back at me from a distance and I knew it was that thing and I knew it had just killed my father. I couldn’t sleep for weeks after that night. I was for sure it was going to come back for me one night and bust through our back door and kill me and my mother and three sisters. But it never did. I moved from Indiana when I was nineteen. I went to California and never came back, that is until now.”