Valley of the Scarecrow

by Gord Rollo

  Even by today’s standards, the sturdy oak house would be considered large and considering all this had been built back then for just one man it must have seemed like a mansion to the common families living in cramped quarters in the nearby village. With a lavish house like this to live in, it wasn’t hard to imagine how some of the hardworking people of Miller’s Grove could start to get a little jealous and begin resenting their charismatic leader. Perhaps the very first seeds of discontent had been sown right here, long before Angus Tucker and the village elders had decided to permanently remove Joshua Miller from his duties. Unfortunately, there was no one left alive who might have had knowledge about this who’d been an adult in the Grove back then.

  From the outside, the house appeared to be in remarkably good shape and had weathered the years of sun, wind, snow, and rain much better than the smaller dwellings the gang had explored yesterday. Even the second floor was still standing, along with six unbroken stained-glass windows that were popular at the time. Other than the roof, which by the looks of it had crumbled years ago, the house still looked like it could be fixed up and lived in. If Kelly was to hazard a guess why, it was because Reverend Miller’s house had been built out of larger, sturdier logs than the other homes; most of the timber here were entire trees stacked one upon the other. It was built more like a fortress than a residential house, an old frontier fort built to last, with walls close to two feet thick in some places.

  “Wow!” Kelly said. “Not bad, huh?”

  “Beautiful,” Dan said. “A log cabin like this today would be worth a fortune.”

  “For sure,” Rich chimed in, amazed at the size of the place. “This Joshua Miller dude must have been a hell of an important dude around here for the villagers to have built a joint like this for him. It’s triple the size of the houses the rest of them lived in.”

  “Probably more than that,” Lizzy said. “It’s huge.”

  “Let’s leave the size of my manhood out of this, sweetie. Save it for later. We’ve got work to do. Right, Dan?”

  “Right,” Dan said, smiling at his best friend’s last comment.

  “Jackass!” Lizzy said, punching Rich in the shoulder. “Let’s get at it then. The sooner we find that treasure, the sooner we can go home, and I can climb into a nice hot bubble bath. Alone!” She directed that last word at Rich and punched him again just for good measure.

  “Ow! What was that…hey, did you guys see that?”

  “You deserved it,” Kelly said.

  “No, not that. In the house. I saw something move in there.”

  “Get lost,” Lizzy said, sure Rich was kidding around again.

  “I’m serious. Something moved upstairs. I saw someone in that middle window.”

  “Someone? As in a person?” Dan asked.

  “I don’t know. Some movement caught my eye and when I looked up I swear someone was standing there. Maybe it was just a shadow or something.”

  Everyone’s eyes turned to the second floor, scanning the windows for any sign they weren’t alone, but there was nothing to see. If there ever was someone or something up in the window, they were certainly gone now. Or hiding.

  “Maybe Pat?” Kelly said. “This might be where he and Kim have been hiding.”

  “I don’t know,” Rich said. “I’ve given up worrying about him. Maybe it was nothing. Just a trick of the light. Screw it, let’s go have a look.”

  Together they walked across the clearing and cautiously entered the house through the front door. It was sitting open about eight inches when they found it but even if it had been closed, there was no locking mechanism on the door anyway. There probably hadn’t been any need for locks on houses back then. They stopped just inside the entrance, in what must have once been Joshua Miller’s living room, and they all listened for any noises coming from the floor above their heads. At the moment, everything seemed quiet.

  “Before we do anything else, I think we should at least go upstairs and check it out, huh?” Dan said.

  “Definitely,” Kelly said. “Lizzy and I will wait here.”

  “How come I always get volunteered for this crap,” Rich said, but Dan was already dragging him by the shirt collar toward the rustic wooden staircase.

  “Those with the biggest mouths have to do the most work. Move it!”

  The stairs had been coated with a clear varnish or some other type of transparent sealant and they appeared solid enough to hold their combined weight. There was some rubble from the collapsed roof on several of the top steps and from below Dan and Rich could look straight up into the sky and see the dark gray storm clouds that were quickly moving into the area.

  “It’s gonna rain soon,” Rich said, stating the obvious. “Wind’s really picking up too. We’d better hurry or we’re gonna get drenched.”

  “After you, then.”

  Rich led the way upstairs, not really expecting to find Pat or Kim hiding on the second floor. He’d pretty much convinced himself that he hadn’t seen anything in the window and his eyes were just playing tricks on him. He paused briefly at the top of the stairs to have a look around, but there wasn’t much to see. The entire upstairs seemed to be one massive bedroom chamber for Reverend Miller. His bed was still here, but broken in pieces and lying beneath a heap of roof debris. Despite most of the floor area being hidden in wreckage, the entire second floor was visible from the landing at the top of the stairs. The only possible hiding place in the room was inside a large hand-made wooden wardrobe unit that still stood upright in the far left-hand corner. It was as big as a bank vault and just seeing it started Rich’s heart and thoughts racing.

  “Look in the corner,” he whispered to Dan.

  “What? The closet? You think someone might be hiding in there?”

  “Actually I was thinking more like the treasure. Looks like a perfect place for the reverend to stash valuables to me.”

  “Jesus, you might be right. Let’s be careful though, just in case.”

  “In case of what? Pat?”

  “No. Hell, I don’t know. This place kind of gives me the creeps. Let’s just get this over with.”

  They carefully made their way over to the wardrobe, having to scramble over several large sections of the fallen roof, but soon they were standing right beside it, ready to reach for the handle.

  “Anyone home?” Rich said, knocking on the door.

  “Stop screwing around and just open it for God’s sake.”

  “Okay…relax, man. Look, there’s nothing inside—” Rich started to say as he yanked on the handle, but something huge and black lunged at them as soon as the door was out of the way, coming after Rich with its mouth open and its sharp claws bared. Rich screamed long and loud and Dan opened his mouth to scream too, but recognized what it was that was attacking them.

  “Shut up, Rich. It’s just a big-ass crow.”

  Sure enough, the bird took to the air, mad as hell it had been disturbed and in a hurry to get away. It snapped its powerful beak at Rich’s face as it flew past, just barely missing the tip of his nose by an inch, but then it was airborne and swooping high up into the dark swirling sky. He’d been lucky the crow hadn’t caught him; it could have bitten off a big chunk of his nose, or worse, it might have plucked out one of his eyes.

  “God dammit!” Rich yelled, his voice a little more high-pitched than normal. “Did you see that? That son of a whore went after my face!”

  “Daughter of a whore, more like it.”

  “What?”

  “Daughter. It was a female.”

  “How the hell do you know that?”

  “Easy…look,” Dan said, pointing inside the wardrobe Rich had just opened. There was a large hole in the top of the cabinet for access and on the floor was a huge bird’s nest made out of sticks and leaves and whatever else it had found foraging around in the nearby fields and woods. “I think she was making her nest. We probably startled it a bit. Might have been what you saw up here through the window earlier too.”


  “We startled it! You kidding me? I nearly shit my pants when it flew out at me. The bitch tried to bite me!”

  “Yeah, I saw that. You have that effect on a lot of women.”

  Despite still shaking from the near miss, Dan’s comment made Rich laugh. “Screw you too.”

  “The truth hurts, buddy. Come on, let’s get back downstairs. There’s nothing up here to find. To be honest, I’m starting to think we’re wasting our time.”

  They spent the next hour and a half searching every nook and cranny of Reverend Miller’s house, but in the end found nothing. To make things worse, the clouds finally let loose and it started to rain. Hard. One moment it was dry and calm, and the next it was a downpour and the wind was whipping the nearby tree branches into a frenzy. The four friends were relatively safe but not very comfortable inside the house, and they still had a twenty-minute hike back to camp. If the weather stayed like this, it wasn’t going to be a very fun stroll.

  For the next hour they stayed put, hoping the rain would taper off, but it didn’t. If anything, the weather appeared to be getting worse. The wind was howling stronger than ever, the rain coming down sideways it was blowing so hard. Around 1:00 P.M. the wind died down enough that they decided to make a run for it, wanting to get back to camp as soon as possible. If the storm hung around all day like it looked like it might, at least they could grab something to eat and sit inside the church, where it would be much more comfortable than this damp, drafty place. At least the church had a roof on it.

  “It’s now or never, guys,” Dan said. “What do you think?”

  “I say we go,” Kelly said. “We can’t stay here all night.”

  “But we’re going to get soaked,” Lizzy said. “Maybe it’ll stop if we wait a bit.”

  “I doubt it,” her boyfriend said. “Looks like it’s gonna rain all day. If we run, we should be okay. We’ll be under the trees for most of the way.”

  That sounded good, but it wasn’t true. By the time they’d taken twenty steps, they were already drenched, and by the time they made it back to the tents, they were cold and completely soaked to the bone. Adding to their misery was the bitter disappointment of not locating the treasure they’d come all this way to find. Of course, by the time this stormy night was over they’d all learn there were worse things in store for them than having to go home empty-handed. Far worse.

  In fact, it would be a miracle if any of them ever got to go home at all.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  The storm raged on throughout the day, with no end in sight. The wind and rain would let up a little for five or ten minutes but then roar back stronger than ever. Kelly and her friends abandoned their waterlogged campsite and moved everything the four of them could carry into the large reception area of the church, where it was blessedly warm and dry. None of them were overly enthused with the idea of having to sleep inside this creepy place tonight, but what other choice did they have? Even with Reverend Miller’s body bizarrely missing and three mummified corpses locked downstairs in the basement, this was by far their best option. It just didn’t make any sense to spend the night outside in the tents.

  With nothing much to do other than sit around and mope about not finding Joshua’s supposed stash of gold and silver, it didn’t take long for the alcohol to make another appearance. The bottle of peach schnapps was long gone, drained dry at their campfire party on Wednesday night, but there was still half a bottle of Jack Daniel’s left to share. They didn’t bother using cups; they simply passed the bottle among themselves while they sat on the floor chatting, the famous whiskey lighting a fire in their bellies that helped keep the chill of the rain away.

  “I hate to even bring this up,” Kelly said, “but I’m actually really worried about Pat and Kim.” The guys rolled their eyes and groaned. “I’m serious. There’s no way they’d still be playing games with us. I don’t know about Kim, but for sure Pat would’ve come in out of the rain by now.”

  “Screw ’em!” Rich said, already feeling a little drunk from the shots of straight alcohol. “Wherever they are, I hope they’re soaked to the bone.”

  “That’s not very nice,” Lizzy said. “What if they’re lost somewhere or I don’t know…one of them is hurt?”

  “They can’t be all that hurt if they had the strength to move the reverend’s body somewhere. Am I right or am I right?”

  Lizzy and Kelly both had to admit what Rich said had a certain irrefutable logic to it, and the more they drank the better it sounded. But if not in any trouble, where were they then? More importantly, why were they acting so bloody weird, hiding in the first place? None of it made any sense. Kelly was still worried about them but decided to drop it for now. She didn’t know where to look so there was nothing she could do to help them anyway, even if they were in some kind of self-induced danger.

  The conversation drifted onto many other things as nighttime approached, from job prospects back home, to wedding plans a few years down the road, to how much the silver and gold amulet might be worth and what kind of a person would ever want to buy the damn thing. By the time it was fully dark outside, the bottle of Jack was gone and none of them noticed the rain had nearly stopped falling. It had been another long, tiring day and everyone seemed to just want to go to sleep. Weather permitting, they’d be able to get up in the morning and start heading home.

  Dan and Kelly fell asleep first, huddled together in two sleeping bags that they’d zipped together to form one big pouch. Rich and Lizzy talked quietly for another ten minutes but then lay down on their backs holding hands, content to simply be together and hearing the soft patter of the rain drumming them to sleep on the roof above. Rich was nearly asleep when he felt Lizzy poke him in the ribs. He opened his eyes and looked at her in the gloom.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked her, fighting to stay awake.

  “Nothing. I was just listening to the rain on the roof and thinking about you. The sound of rain always makes me hot, remember.”

  Rich yawned. “Well get out of the covers for a minute.”

  “Not that kind of hot, dopey. The other kind!”

  “Oh. OH! Now I get you,” Rich said, instantly fully awake. “Thought you said I was cut off.”

  “You were,” Lizzy said, moving over to purr in her boyfriend’s ear. “But not anymore. Get over here and kiss me.”

  Rich did as he was told, their lips meeting in the dark as he slid his hand up her shirt, searching for her breast. Lizzy quietly moaned as he gently squeezed her left nipple, his hands strong and familiar with the way she liked being touched. She let him fondle her breasts but stopped him when he went to unbutton her pants.

  “Hold on a sec, tiger,” she whispered. “This probably isn’t the best place to do this. Not with Dan and Kelly lying right beside us, you know?”

  “We can try the tents but everything’s probably soaked.”

  “No way. I was actually thinking about the bell tower. It’s warm and dry and nice and private. A guy could probably get away with doing anything he wanted to a gal up there. What do you think?”

  “Good idea. I like it.”

  Lizzy giggled. “Thought you might. Grab a blanket and that flashlight, but be quiet. Wouldn’t want to wake anyone up and ruin the moment, right?”

  “Right. Let’s go!”

  It was considerably darker upstairs than it had been on the main level, probably because no one in the group had bothered to pry off any of the oak planks sealing the windows of the tower room from the outside. They didn’t have a ladder and seeing as there was nothing on this second level, it had hardly seemed worth the bother. Rich solved the problem by turning on his flashlight and setting it down on the ground with the light beam pointed toward the roof. To tone down the brightness a little, he removed his white T-shirt and draped it over the plastic top.

  “Better?” Rich asked.

  “Perfect!” Lizzy said, smiling seductively as she stepped out of her jeans and panties, and fell into her lov
er’s arms. “Now where were we?”

  It didn’t take long for Rich to remind her, taking Lizzy into his arms and lying down with her side by side on top of the blanket. Lizzy pulled off her sweatshirt and tossed away her bra as Rich hurriedly yanked off his jeans and boxer shorts. Naked, they kissed passionately, their tongues exploring each other’s mouths for the thousandth time perhaps, but it still felt fresh and delicious as if they were making love for the very first time. Rich rolled on top of her, kissing his way down her neck and stopping for a while at her perfect full breasts to lick and nibble gently on her hard, engorged nipples. Lizzy moaned and caressed the back of Rich’s head, loving every moment they could spend together like this. They let on to the world that it was Rich who was the oversexed horny partner of the two, but in reality there were times, like this, when she was far worse than he was.

  “Will you go down on me, baby?”

  Rich mumbled something she couldn’t hear, his mouth still smashed on her breast, but it didn’t matter; he was already heading south, his warm lips kissing her firm belly and continuing down to the sweet spot between her legs. “Oh God, yes!” she gasped.

  Lizzy arched her back, looking straight up toward the roof high above and something shiny caught her eye three-quarters of the way up the wall, something sitting on the top rung of the wall ladder about the height of the bottom of the bell. Maybe her eyes were playing tricks but she thought something had moved up there as well. Was that a shadow on the wall beside it, or something else? Whatever it was, she closed her eyes and ignored it, trying to concentrate on the inner fireworks Rich’s tongue was setting off, but she kept opening her eyes and seeing it glint in the light of the flashlight and no matter how much she tried, her eyes kept going back to that spot. The shadow beside it was now gone.

  “Rich? Hold on a sec…okay?”

  “What? What’s wrong?”