He left the carcass where it had fallen and walked out into the cornfields to clear his head. The tall stalks swayed and danced in the sun. A ragged scarecrow clad in orange flannel hung from a makeshift cross in the center of the field. It was the one he had made the first year they had bought the farm. There was something almost martyr-like in the way it hovered above the corn like a thief on a cross.
George wasn’t impressed.
“A lot of good you’ve done for me, you bastard,” he said, spitting tobacco juice at the scarecrow. “If you were any kind of a scarecrow at all, my cows wouldn’t be dying.”
He looked out at the vast expanse of countryside and saw the three scarecrows all hanging there, doing absolutely nothing to stop the loss of his herd. It was all he could do not to rip the straw men down and set fire to them out of sheer frustration and rage. The loss of those cows meant a loss of money, and money was scarce. He was already behind on the mortgage and the note on his tractor. He couldn’t afford to keep waking up and finding the remains of his animals lying about the yard. He had to do something.
Over breakfast, he pretended to read the newspaper while he silently pondered his problem. But Cynthia wasn’t fooled.
“Something’s bothering you,” she said as she fed Wyatt, their 10-month old son.
George put down his paper and sighed. “I found Thunderhead this morning. The body was pretty mangled.”
Cynthia frowned. “Have you called the Sheriff yet? We can‘t keep losing cows like this.”
George frowned. “The Sheriff don’t care about us. He’s got bigger problems than dead cows. This is my mess to deal with.”
Leaving his half-finished plate behind, George stood up from the table and walked into the living room. He came back with a twelve-gauge shotgun and a handful of shells.
“Where are you going?”
“To have another look around,” George said. “I’ll be back after while.”
He completely avoided the bull’s remains on his way out to the woods. He didn’t need to see the lengths of wet ropy intestines or the open windows of striated muscle again to realize that immediate action had to be taken.
Although it hadn’t rained in a couple of weeks, there was a very definite set of tracks leading away from the bull’s carcass toward the woods flanking George’s cornfields. The warm summer breezes had ruined many of the tracks, rendering them unreadable. Yet the direction was clearly defined, and he had little trouble following the marks in the dirt.
The tracks went about a quarter of a mile into the woods, across sun-dappled ground, through a dense copse of elms, finally stopping at a campsite. George was immediately confused by what he saw, but he wasn’t exactly sure why. Everything had the look of ritual to it just as he had imagined. The ground was littered with leaves and what looked like dried blood. Strange symbols had been carved into the trunks of the surrounding trees as well as scrawled in the dirt.
George had seen most of this before and wasn’t really bothered by it. Misguided teenagers dabbled in the occult all the time and found this particular stretch of wilderness a good place to practice. Mostly they just stared at the stars around a campfire and recited incantations in Latin. As far as George knew, the incantations never amounted to much. The teenagers were usually drunk when they wandered out here in the first place.
This, however, felt different. The intricacy of the symbols and the copious amounts of blood was part of it. The enormous crater in the earth was the other part. George studied the gigantic hole with fascination and trepidation. He wasn’t an expert on this sort of thing, but there was one thing that made him doubt the hole had been made by a meteorite. There, at the edge of the hole, was a set of massive handprints that gave the impression that someone or something had clawed its way out of the earth.
Hoping to get to the bottom of everything, he decided to spend the night on the porch. The vantage point from the porch gave him a clear view of all his fields. If something happened out in the corn fields, he would see it...and stop it.
Dark fell quickly. The sun melted into the horizon and was replaced by the moon which looked cold and frigid. The wind blew just hard enough to make lighting a pipe difficult. George finally managed to keep a match burning on the third try. Smoking, however, didn’t have the same effect that it usually did. His nerves were wound tight like guitar strings, and he just knew that something was going to happen at any minute.
When something did finally happen, however, it wasn’t at all what George expected. He had just closed his eyes for a moment when he heard the shrill sound of crows cawing in the fields. Something had disturbed them. He realized what it was when he opened his eyes.
The scarecrows, one by one, were coming down from their crosses and walking toward the house.
The pipe fell from George’s open lips, but he hardly noticed as the smoldering ash spilled out onto the porch. His attention was focused on the ragged hay-men that were striding through the corn rows toward him. The shotgun suddenly seemed like pitiful protection.
George would have stood his ground if the threat had been a mountain lion, a wolf, even a grizzly bear. He knew those things, recognized them for the danger they represented. The scarecrows, however, didn’t fit into his nice, tidy perception of the world. They should have still been hanging there in the corn fields, repelling the magpies. But they weren’t.
In earlier times, scarecrows were used to ward off evil spirits along with the worrisome birds. But now, it seemed as if the scarecrows were possessed by the very evil spirits they were designed to repel.
Quickly, George sprang up from the rocking chair and raced inside the house. He took the steps two at a time.
“Cynthia, wake up,” he said sharply as he entered the room. “Get Wyatt.”
Cynthia sat up immediately. “What’s wrong?”
“Just get Wyatt and go into the attic.”
Cynthia saw the shotgun in George’s hands and knew that it could only mean bad things. It only took her a few seconds to grab baby Wyatt and scramble up the ladder. George followed quickly behind her, pulling the ladder up.
He put his finger to his lips in a quieting gesture then crept cautiously toward the window. He didn’t see the scarecrows, but he heard a struggle of some sort going on outside. He couldn’t tell what was happening, but it sounded like the scarecrows were trying to break in to the house. He heard something thud against the outside wall followed by the shattering of glass.
“They’re coming inside,” George hissed. “Keep the baby quiet and don’t say a word.”
Cynthia was confused but nodded to show her cooperation.
They waited for what seemed like hours. George wanted to run to the window and see what was going on, but the plywood floor was sure to creak if he moved too much.
He looked at his watch and waited for five excruciating minutes. He expected the fiends to bust in on them at any second. He expected to hear them scrabbling around on the roof. He expected one of them to jump through the window. But none of that happened. Not even after ten minutes.
Cautiously, George motioned for Cynthia and the baby to stay put. Trying hard not to put too much weight into each step, he carefully tiptoed to the attic window. He took a deep breath, checked his shotgun to make sure the safety was off, and peered out. He was surprised by what he saw.
The scarecrows were all in their rightful places, hanging from makeshift crosses in the cornfields.
“I don’t believe it,” he whispered. “The scarecrows don’t look like they’ve moved.”
“Scarecrows?” Cynthia asked.
“They were walking around out there.”
Cynthia crept over to join her husband. “The scarecrows look just like they always have,” she said, a hint of worry creeping into her voice.
“I’m not crazy,” George protested. “I saw them coming toward the house. Something broke the downstairs window. It didn’t break itself.”
“I’m sure there’s a perfectly good
explanation for it all,” Cynthia said.
Realizing that there was no point in arguing, George dropped the attic ladder and climbed down. “Pull the ladder back up,” he said. “I’ll let you know when it’s safe to come down.”
“We’ll wait for you,” Cynthia replied. “Be careful.”
It was a little over five minutes before George returned for his family. “The window is destroyed,” he said, obviously frustrated. “Come and see for yourself.”
When they got to the window, hundreds of bits of broken glass crunched beneath their feet. But that wasn’t the strange part. A thin pool of spreading black ichor puddled beneath the window sill.
“What is that?” George asked, disgusted.
“It’s blood,” Cynthia said. “Animal blood, I would imagine.”
“Animal blood?” George questioned.
“You probably just thought you saw those scarecrows coming toward the house,” Cynthia rationalized. “What you saw was a wild animal charging at you and the scarecrow was situated in the background. You probably just transposed the two and imagined you were seeing a scarecrow.”
“No,” George protested. But it was a very weak protest. Maybe everything had happened just the way she had described it.
“I think we should go to bed now,” Cynthia said, obviously relieved now that the threat had been confined in her mind to something that a rifle or a bear trap or another natural predator could take care of. “This has been a long day. We’re all exhausted. Wyatt’s starting to get cranky. You’re tired. We all need some rest.”
George couldn’t argue any more. He couldn’t even argue the fact that the scarecrows had been alive. The truth was, he wasn’t sure.
He spent the next few minutes out in his workshop, digging out a sheet of plastic and a roll of duct tape. He used them to cover the broken window in hopes of discouraging animals from making themselves at home in his living room. Then, he lumbered to bed, his mind full of questions.
Surprisingly enough, he slept soundly. When he woke up, he was hopeful that the events of the day before were just a big misunderstanding. He realized that wasn’t the case, however, when he went outside and found another dead cow, mutilated like the others.
The carcass, by itself, wasn’t much of a surprise. What he hadn’t expected was what he found in the folds of dead, larvae-infested meat. In another place, it would have seemed harmless, inconsequential. But here in the rank, steaming bowels of a cow, the blade of hay was completely out of place. If nothing else, it reaffirmed George’s belief in what he had seen the night before.
This time he didn’t give Cynthia the chance to rationalize the situation.
“I want you to take Wyatt to your mother’s for tonight and let me handle this.”
“We’re not leaving you,” Cynthia said. “Call the game warden. Tell him what’s going on. I’m sure you’re not the only one who’s losing livestock. Maybe somebody’s reported seeing a cougar or a pack of wolves.”
“I can take care of my own house and my own land,” George erupted. “What I can’t do is take care of the threat and take care of you at the same time.”
“George,” Cynthia began. George cut her off short. “Just do what I’m asking you to do,” he said as sternly as he could. She nodded and quietly headed to the back of the house to prepare for the trip.
It took her less than an hour to pack of a few of their things and load their son up in the car. George breathed a sigh of relief as he watched the Honda drive away.
The moment he was certain that they were gone is the moment he began preparing for the night. He gathered up his shotgun, extra shells, a pair of binoculars, a can of kerosene, a pack of matches, an axe, a sling blade, and a pitchfork. He wasn’t sure what good any of it would do. But he knew that he had to try and take care of the problem himself.
Once or twice he grabbed up the can of kerosene and the pack of matches and set out toward the fields to burn the scarecrows before they got the chance to crawl down from their perches and wreak havoc. But he always stopped short of the fields, scared and more than a little unsure of himself. The scarecrows didn’t move except when the wind tousled their flannel shirttails or rustled their pants legs. They looked too ragged and incapable of movement to be any real danger. Maybe something else had been coming at him from across the field. Maybe Cynthia had been right about what he had seen.
He sat on the porch all day long. He kept his eyes on the fields, searching for the faintest sign of movement on the part of the scarecrows. The straw men, however, were still.
By the time the sun began to dissolve like a piece of orange candy, George was tired and frustrated and growing more and more certain by the minute that he had been mistaken.
Then he heard the cows snorting and kicking up dust in the field behind the house. Cursing, he grabbed his shotgun and ran around the porch to see what was causing so much commotion. Everything looked as it was supposed to at first glance. Everything except for the dead cow.
George knew that whatever had killed the cow had done it in seconds. Of course, the scarecrows couldn’t have done it. He’d had his eyes on them the entire time.
Yet he wasn’t even certain of that anymore when he ran to the front of the house again and realized that all of the scarecrows were gone. The sling blade, the pitchfork, and the axe were gone too.
George pumped a shell into his shotgun, grabbed the kerosene and matches, and ran back around the house, fully expecting to see the scarecrows murdering one of his cows in cold blood. The scarecrows, however, hadn’t reached the cows yet. But they were headed in that direction, brandishing the axe, the sling blade, and the pitchfork like rioters in a Frankenstein movie.
“Stop,” George screamed at the scarecrows, temporarily distracting them from their mission. The gaunt figures turned to look at him with their button eyes.
George dropped the kerosene and matches and raised the shotgun. The first shot nearly cut one of the scarecrows in half. George pumped the shotgun again and was about to fire a second shot when the scarecrows turned from him and headed toward the cattle. They were lithe like cats, and the shot missed by a mile, disintegrating one of the fence posts.
The can of kerosene and the matches lay useless at his feet. Weighing his options, George decided to discard the gun and to go with fire instead.
Unwilling to get too close to the scarecrows, George ripped a swatch of cloth from the tail of his work shirt and stuffed it into the mouth of the gas can to use as a fuse. Then he lit the match. The cloth was old and dirty and caught fire easily. It was all George could do not to hurl the can immediately as he was terrified of the inevitable explosion. But he willed himself to count to five before launching the can of kerosene into the air like a pot of boiling oil from a catapult.
The kerosene can exploded in midair, sending smoldering fragments of metal and a heavy rain of fire down on the scarecrows and the cattle. The cows’ skin was tough and had endured similar marks from branding irons before. The fire seemed to almost slide off of their leather backs. It wasn’t nearly so kind, however, to the scarecrows. One of them, the first one George had ever fashioned, blossomed into flames like a white-hot flower. It flailed and flopped around like a beheaded chicken for several seconds before finally collapsing in a smoking pile of burned hay and cloth.
Satisfied with his progress, George was just about to finish what he had started and hunt the last scarecrow down when he saw another set of eyes lurking at the edge of the murky woods surrounding the corral. The scarecrow, pitchfork brandished high, had stopped and seemed on the verge of attacking the threat in the woods. But attacking what, George asked himself?
His question answered itself as a shadowy, blood-soaked behemoth with glowing golden eyes stepped out of the forest to face off with the scarecrow. It was like no animal George had ever seen, and he knew immediately that this was the beast that had emerged from that pit he had stumbled onto at the ritual site. This was the beast that someone had called fo
rth.
With that realization, came another. He had been wrong about the scarecrows. They weren’t responsible for the deaths of his cattle. The scarecrows had done as they were made to do, attempting to scare away any threat to the farm. He had just been too stupid and unobservant to realize it. To make matters worse, he had completely decimated two of the straw-men, leaving only the one to defend itself and the farm. The scarecrow was no match for the dark juggernaut.
George watched in horror as the fiend picked up the scarecrow and ripped its legs off like the wings of an insect. The scarecrow, however, wasn’t going to go down without a fight. It buried the pitchfork deep into the yellow eye of the beast as it was tossed away like a rag doll. The same sort of ichor that George had seen near his broken window oozed out of the wounded socket.
The beast howled, sending the cattle into a frenzy. But the fence that corralled them was electrified, and the cattle knew better than to get too close. The juggernaut, however, did not. It smashed through the fence as it rushed at George. The voltage-drenched wire sparked and sizzled where it touched demonic flesh.
Realizing that he would be dead soon if he did nothing, George grabbed his discarded shotgun from off of the ground and fired a quick succession of shots. The fiend was much too strong and much too fast. The buckshot bounced off of it like pebbles off a speeding freight train.
George turned to run but knew that he didn’t stand a chance of escaping. Whatever had been called forth out there in those woods was much stronger than any weapon. It was also much faster than George.
Twisting his ankle, he fell beside the remains of the Holstein that had been killed only minutes before. He winced at the smell of exposed innards and offal. Hobbling to his feet as the dark brooding entity from the woods gained ground, he saw something out of the corner of his eye that surprised him as much as anything possibly could at this point. The scarecrow he had cut in half with the shotgun was pulling itself toward him, hauling itself forward with one arm, brandishing the axe in the other. Staggering along behind it was the smoldering remains of the badly burned straw-man, sling blade hanging limply from its grasp. The scarecrow whose legs had been ripped off was dragging itself toward the fight as well. What was left of the three scarecrows was all that stood between the demonic horror and George.
The Misunderstood and Other Misfit Horrors Page 10