by Gord Rollo
Heathens and whores. How dare they defile my land!
The more Joshua thought about them, the angrier he became. Rage had been his only companion for so long he knew no other friend. Payback and stone-cold retribution were the only things that mattered to him now, the only thoughts on his seething mind. He let out a low, rumbling growl as he descended the stairs, free of his prison for the first time since before he’d been betrayed. Many of the crows watching from above took flight, feeling the madness coming off him like pulsating waves of icy rain. Joshua watched them fly away, just small, dark shadows against the even darker night sky but he knew what they were. Ignoring the smaller birds, he looked up toward the church roof and spotted the big leaders of the murder. He couldn’t see their eyes from on the ground but instinctively he knew they were awake and watching his every move. This pleased him immensely.
Our time has finally come, my friends, the creature that used to be Reverend Miller thought, a smile playing across his cruel visage. Vengeance will be mine…but the glory will all be yours!
The scarecrow walked off into the corn, disappearing into the night.
Chapter Nineteen
“Come on, Kim,” Pat said for the third time now. “Don’t worry about it. For Christ’s sake, just lie down and go to sleep. We’ll deal with it in the morning. You’re still too damn drunk right now.”
“I am not too drunk,” Kim said. “And fuck you anyway. This has nothing to do with you so get out of my face.”
Several hours had passed since the big blowup between her and Kelly out by the fire, and once Kim had stopped puking her guts out, Pat had managed to get her into their tent and wrapped up in a warm blanket. Unfortunately, she’d only slept for a few hours and she’d woken Pat up trying to crawl over him to get outside again. A few questions was all it had taken to understand that her master plan was to apologize to Kelly and try to get Dan to go for a walk with her so they could work things out. Obviously that was a terrible plan and Pat was getting frustrated trying to talk her out of it.
“What do you mean this has nothing to do with me? ’Course it does. You’re supposed to be here with me, remember?”
“Ahh…poor baby. Feeling left out, little boy? Well, get over it!”
“So you never liked me? That what you’re saying? It was all just a bullshit way for you to get closer to Dan?”
“What’s the difference, Pat? But no, for what it’s worth, at the start I liked you quite a bit. To be honest though, you’re too much of a whiny little boy for my tastes. And that shitty hobby of yours is driving me nuts. I’m used to guys who want to put their hands on me…not a bloody camera. Screw that. I’m out of here.”
“Wait,” Pat said, her words stinging but knowing he shouldn’t let her out of the tent. “You can’t go over to see Dan and you definitely can’t go see Kelly.”
“Why not?”
“Christ, Kim, think about it for a second. Don’t you think you’ve caused enough trouble around here for one night? You might have feelings for Dan but wake up for God’s sake…Dan and Kelly are in love. You don’t have the right to get in the middle of that. Just lie down and go back to sleep.”
“You can’t tell me what to do. I’ll go see him if I damn well please.”
Pat was tired and fed up dealing with all this bullshit. He’d tried to talk sense into her but screw it. She wasn’t interested in his feelings so why should he give a damn about hers? “Okay, piss off then. What do I care? You go be a bitch and see what it gets you. My guess is Kelly will kick your ass and Dan will never speak to you again. Have fun!”
“Thanks, I will!” Kim said, finally finding the zipper and climbing out of the tent. She turned around and zipped it back closed. “And don’t bother following me.”
“Don’t worry. I don’t want nothing to do with you anymore. Go straight to hell for all I care!”
“Yeah, well screw you!” Kim said, turning away and heading in the general direction of Rich and Dan’s tent.
It was chilly outside tonight, much colder than she had expected. She had a warm sweater and a coat back in the tent but damned if she was going back in there with Pat to get them. Besides, it wasn’t that cold out. She could tough it out for a while. Maybe she could curl up with Dan in his sleeping bag? He’d know how to keep her warm, that was for sure.
Approaching the guys’ tent quietly, she looked in through the small window screen and was surprised to only see Rich inside. He was curled up in a sleeping bag in the center of the floor snoring softly but there was no one else in the tent with him. Where the heck is Dan? she thought, unaware that he had also woken up about an hour ago and had stumbled over to Liz’s tent to fall asleep beside Kelly without either of the girls waking up or even knowing he was there.
The sound of footsteps crackling in the field off to her right startled her. When she looked, she just caught a hint of a man walking between the rows of corn, heading farther into the lush crops. “Dan?” she said, but was afraid to say it too loudly in case she woke everyone up. Her heart was hammering inside her chest with excitement. If Dan was up and outside on his own, this was her chance—maybe her last chance—to talk to him and convince him she was a better woman than Kelly ever would be. She had no idea why he would be out wandering in the cornfield in the middle of the night but at this point she really didn’t care. Maybe he had woken up needing to be sick like she had earlier and hadn’t wanted anyone else to know about it. Regardless, feeling warmer by the minute, Kim set out into the field to find him.
The corn swallowed her in seconds, cutting off her view of the camp within ten feet. Surrounded on all sides by the massive stalks, it was dark and more than a little claustrophobic, but thankfully there was a partial moon out tonight and the light shone down on her from directly above, lighting her way as she pushed farther and farther into the field. The crows watched her progress from high above.
“Dan?” she said, louder this time. “Are you out here?”
There was no reply.
A stalk snapped a few rows to her left and Kim thought she heard the sound of quiet laughter. She walked over to where she thought the noise had come from but there was no one there. Was he teasing her? Staying hidden on purpose?
“Come on, Dan. Where are you? Look, I’m sorry about earlier tonight. I was smashed and didn’t know what I was doing. I just wanna talk, okay?”
Everything was quiet for a moment, and just as Kim was about to shout again, she heard a whisper. “Over here.”
The voice had come from deeper into the field but it hadn’t really sounded like Dan’s friendly voice. It was rawer, guttural, the voice of a man badly in need of a drink. It had to be Dan though, didn’t it? There wasn’t anyone else out here for miles in any direction. Disguising his voice, perhaps? Still playing games? She probably deserved to be treated like this, but that didn’t mean she had to like it. Ahead she saw a shadowy silhouette and she hurried toward the hidden man, getting angry now.
“This isn’t funny, you know. Stand still, for God’s sake!”
Kim moved over a row and had who she thought was Dan clearly in her line of sight. He was standing with his back to her, arms spread out to either side at shoulder level, wearing some sort of dirty brown robe or housecoat. When she got close enough to see his long, dirty hair, she stopped walking, her heart racing a mile a minute and jumping into her throat.
That’s not Dan, she thought.
She nearly screamed but she noticed the cornstalks sticking haphazardly out of the ends of his shirtsleeves and pants legs and took a good look at his wooden posture; she giggled and let out a sigh of relief instead. It was just a big scarecrow wearing a silly old wig. Nothing to worry about. She started walking again, knowing Dan must be around here somewhere. She stepped around the scarecrow and peered into the darkness beyond. “Come on, Dan. I’m sick and tired of this. If you don’t come out here right now, I’m going back to my tent. Where are you?”
“Right behind you,” the raspy-
voiced man she’d heard earlier whispered in her ear, scaring the hell out of her and causing her to spin around as fast as she could.
Kim looked up into the glowing green eyes of Joshua Miller, his previously dry, pasty skin radiant and healthy beneath the light of the moon, his body somehow huge and bulging with muscles beneath his robe. He was grinning down at her, mouth gaping with big yellow teeth, Rich’s blood still staining his thin lips. Kim tried to scream and run away, but the reverend grabbed hold of her before she could move and clamped one of his huge hands across her mouth to stifle any noise she might try to make.
“Shhhhh…” he whispered in her ear. “It’s peaceful out here tonight. Been a long time since I enjoyed a night outside like this and the last thing I want to hear is a Jezebel like you screaming and hollering. Understand?”
Kim barely heard anything he had to say, she was so terrified and intent on trying to get away. She kicked and punched the unholy man as hard as she could, even biting his filthy hand so she could try and scream for help. His grip on her was like an iron vise though, and all she was doing was making him angrier.
“Harlot!” he said, furious that she’d disobeyed him and bit his hand. “When I say I want quiet…I mean it. You’ve got a big mouth, but I know how to shut you up!”
Joshua used his strong fingers to pry open Kim’s mouth and jam his hand in as far back as he could go, gagging her with his sausagelike digits. He grabbed her tongue as far back as he could and began pulling it out of her throat, stretching and yanking with all his strength until her tender flesh began to rip and tear, a torrent of hot blood spraying out of Kim’s mouth and soaking the front of her shirt.
When he’d separated her tongue from her body, he held her upright and forced her to watch as he slid most of the thin, raw morsel into his salivating mouth and chewed slowly, savoring the sweet meat in front of her horrified eyes. The scarecrow whistled a strange high-pitched tune and held his left arm out to his side. Within seconds, a large crow flew down from the sky and perched upon his offered shoulder. Man and beast looked into each other’s eyes for a moment, silent understanding passing between them, the covenant between Joshua and the crows of Miller’s Grove still as strong as the day the bond had been formed, even if this bird was generations removed from the murder he’d known. Joshua fed his companion the last piece of the woman’s tongue, smiling as the crow eagerly gobbled it down.
Kim was losing a lot of blood and about to pass out but Joshua wasn’t about to let her drift off to sleep and die quite that easily. He still wanted her to suffer, like he had for all those years alone in the dark. Reverend Miller sliced open the defenseless woman’s belly with his razor-sharp nails, forcing his entire hand inside her stomach cavity and pulling out a handful of wet, sloppy intestines. Her ropey intestines steamed in the chilly night air, the sickening stench of peach schnapps and bile permeating the area. Joshua handed a loop of bloody intestine to his dark-feathered friend and said in a commanding voice, “Flyaway. Go now!”
The crow took to the air, a section of Kim’s intestine firmly clamped in its beak. It rose high up into the night air, dragging the poor woman’s guts with it, easily uncoiling several hundred yards of her innards like unspooling the string on a high-flying kite. Kim was still alive, still on her feet, still trying to scream, but there was nothing she could do. She had no strength left to fight. All she could do was look up into the eyes of the half man-half creature that was killing her. Her small intestine eventually snagged on one of her ribs, mercifully severing the cord attaching her to the far-off crow with an audible SNAP and Kim finally closed her eyes.
The scarecrow let her drop from his arms.
Kim was dead before she hit the ground.
Chapter Twenty
Pat was starting to get worried. It had been at least an hour since Kim had stormed off and there was still no sign of her. He’d been sure she’d go blow off some steam and maybe even try talking to Dan, but Pat knew his friend well enough to know he’d make her hit the road and leave him alone. With nowhere else to go, Pat was sure she’d have ended up back here at his tent, but that hadn’t happened. He was still alone and when he finally poked his head outside to check things out, no one was over by the burned-out fire pit and it was quiet everywhere else in camp.
Too quiet.
Pat lay back down and tried to go back to sleep but he couldn’t do it. He hated himself for admitting this, but no matter how badly Kim had treated him tonight, he still cared about her and even though she’d walked off like a first-class bitch, he was worried about her. She was still really drunk when she’d left and who knew what might have happened to her? She could have passed out in the grass and was lying out in the cold somewhere without a sleeping bag. Hell, she didn’t even have on her coat. Even if she hadn’t passed out, she might have wandered off and gotten lost. Everything looked the same here in the daylight, never mind at night, and she might wander for hours out in the endless fields of corn and dense forests. She might even have fallen somewhere and hurt herself; the possibilities were endless.
“Yeah, and she might be over there safe and sound getting humped by Dan,” Pat said, not believing it but fearing there was a chance it might be true. “Dan wouldn’t do that…would he?” Probably not, he figured, but now that the seed of doubt was planted in his mind, Pat couldn’t stop wondering if that was where Kim was and screwing Dan was exactly what she was doing. “Shit!” he muttered, reaching for his clothes to get dressed. One way or another, he needed to find out where she was.
He dressed warmly, putting on a sweater and his coat, and as an afterthought grabbed Kim’s coat as well, in case he found her outside somewhere, lost and cold. Flashlight in hand, Pat left his tent and headed over to take a look in Dan’s tent. He was hoping for the best, that Dan and Rich would be sleeping in there alone, but he was prepared for the worst, that Kim would be naked and curled up in Dan’s arms. Neither scenario ended up being true. To his surprise, Pat found Rich sleeping alone.
What the hell? he thought. They’re both gone? Together?
Pat never even thought of checking Liz’s tent. Jealousy was kicking into high gear and he was sure Dan and Kim had snuck off somewhere to be alone, and it didn’t take a genius to figure out there was only one possible reason why they’d do that. They were fucking each other. Pat was sure of it. He was also sure Dan would regret it big-time in the morning when Kelly got wind of it, but both he and Kim were likely still half drunk and didn’t give a shit about the consequences right now.
“That bastard!” Pat said, not that he could really blame Dan. Kelly was a pretty girl and a wonderful woman but let’s face it, Kim was a wet dream on legs. If it were he in Dan’s shoes and he’d had the chance to bone her, he doubted he’d have had the willpower to say no either.
The real pisser was that it should have been he with her right now. Kim was his girlfriend, or at least had been up until a few hours ago. They’d been getting along great too, at least until the booze had started pouring. Not that any of that mattered now. Kim was gone and in the grand scheme of things he was okay with that. Screw her if she didn’t want to be with him. He wasn’t going to let her get him down. He’d been shit on by other women too—most recently by Sheila, his goth girlfriend back in Cedar Rapids—and he was sick and tired of always getting the short end of the stick. To hell with Kim. To hell with all women; he was going back to bed and getting a decent night’s sleep.
Still, he wondered where they had gone. Where could you take a girl around here where no one could see you doing the nasty? The cornfields, sure, but it was pretty damn cold out to be rolling around in the dirt. Pat spun around and looked over at the church.
“That’s it. That’s where he took her.”
It made perfect sense. Inside the church it was warm and dry, and far enough away from the tents that no one could hear what they were doing. Pat couldn’t see any flashlights moving around inside, but that didn’t mean much. It wasn’t like they’d want to
broadcast where they were to anyone who might wake up to get a drink of water or to take a leak.
They obviously wanted privacy, which brought a smile to Pat’s face, giving him a great idea how to get back at both of them for what they’d done; her for breaking his heart, and him just for being a two-timing douche. He’d sneak up and scare the shit out of them, hopefully catching them red-handed in the act. There was no reason to do this, and really it was a pretty childish thing to do, but fuck it; he wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep yet anyway and it just might be fun.
Pat turned off his flashlight and, as stealthily as possible, made his way back over to his tent to toss Kim’s coat back inside and quickly pick up his camera bag. If he wasn’t getting laid himself, at least maybe he could get the money shot on film. And man would it piss Dan off knowing he had photographic proof he’d cheated on Kelly. He’d owe Pat big-time to get that memory card. Not that he’d ever rat out his friend and show Kelly. They could deal with their relationship problems on their own without him interfering, but still, it would be great having something to hold over Dan’s head and make him sweat it out for a little while.
Camera and flashlight in hand, Pat snuck over to the stairs of the church and tiptoed inside the doorway as silently as possible. Cupping his ear toward the darkness within, he tried to listen for any sounds that might give away their whereabouts. He couldn’t hear anything. Wherever they were and whatever they were doing, they sure were being quiet about it, but Pat was determined to root them out and catch them in the act. He took several half steps into the front room, feeling somewhat giddy, enjoying the hunt as if they were playing a childish game of hide-and-seek. He had an insane urge to shout out to Kim and Dan, “Ready or not…here I come!” but, of course, he didn’t. Instead he moved over to the near wall and started edging closer to the reception area and coat room, where he was sure he’d find them.