Valley of the Scarecrow

by Gord Rollo

  A few minutes later, they ran across a section of field where the cornstalks were withered brown and lying dead on the ground. It was a strange enough sight that Dan eased off on the throttle and coasted to a stop out in the middle of it.

  “What the hell is this?” he asked, not really expecting Kelly to know.

  “No idea. A fire from before we got here, maybe?”

  Not a bad guess. It almost looked like a large section of the field had been burned away but there were no signs of a fire anywhere—past or present—and the air reeked of some kind of chemical.

  “I don’t think so. You smell that? It’s not really strong, but I think it’s a chemical of some kind. Something nasty, I’ll bet. Looks to me like someone was spraying these crops but I don’t know why they’d only do part of the field. And look…that section there is longer than this one, almost like a cross.”

  “I saw metal tanks back where we found the quad that might have chemicals in them. They were filled with something anyway, and a hose that was probably used to spray it.”

  “Just one more crazy thing to add to the list around here, I guess. Do you see Joshua yet? He still coming?”

  “Not yet, but listen…I can hear him. Better get moving.”

  “Hold on a second. Not yet.”

  “What do you mean? You’re just gonna sit here out in the open?”

  “Until he sees us, yes. I’ve got a plan. I don’t want to risk cutting back and hoping we can slip past him. It’s too dangerous. I’d rather get him to chase us around the outside of the church until we’ve done a 360 and he’s behind us and we’re facing the way we want. We won’t be backtracking…just moving forward where he can’t catch us. Get it? Once we have him and the church at our backs, we can gun it across the field again to the trail and head for home.”

  “Here he comes!” Kelly said, pointing behind them. “Watch out!”

  When Dan looked, he saw the huge scarecrow break through the last few rows of standing cornstalks and skid to a sudden stop on the edge of the dead part of the field. His eyes burned bright green in the darkness and his bullet-ridden brown robe was wet and muddy, trailing behind him on the saturated ground. By the look on his face, they could tell he was absolutely livid, gnashing his teeth together and finally opening his deformed mouth wide to let loose a scream of primal rage and frustration. The reverend clearly wasn’t used to not having things go the way he wanted.

  “Who did this to my field?” Joshua screamed, pointing an accusing finger at Kelly and Dan. “You’ll pay for this, heathens. Pay dearly!” But instead of running toward them as expected, he ducked back into the field and disappeared.

  “Where’s he going?” Kelly said, confused.

  When Joshua didn’t come back out, Dan started to worry. “Don’t know, but I don’t like it. Let’s stick to the plan…see if he’ll follow us around the church.”

  He put the Yamaha in gear and tore off in the direction of the church. Once they were back in the maze of cornstalks, their anxiety levels started to climb, not knowing where the reverend was or when he might dive out of the darkness from one side or the other. They should still be out in front of him though, so they should be okay.

  Should be, but they weren’t.

  As soon as they exited the field onto the grass surrounding the church, the scarecrow was waiting for them, scythe back in his hand from where he’d dropped it earlier. He was standing spread-eagled and balanced, ready to swing the sharp blade at their heads as they passed by. Dan had no time to swerve out of the way so he did the only thing he could think of; he hammered the throttle and turned directly into the reverend’s legs, catching the man-monster off guard. Kelly screamed and held on around Dan’s waist as tightly as she could. The collision was violent, the powerful machine slamming into Joshua at full speed, weapon flying out of his hands, knocking him to the ground and continuing on right over the top of his prone body.

  When they were thirty feet past, Dan and Kelly turned around to look, hearts pounding in their chests at their close encounter with death. Reverend Miller was still on the ground, but clearly not out of the fight. Within seconds he was slowly climbing to his feet again, reaching for his lethal scythe and taking up the chase.

  “I’ll tear you both limb from limb,” the scarecrow shouted, seething in anger and some obvious pain.

  “You’ll have to catch us first, asshole,” Dan said, heading off behind the church and hoping they’d pissed the reverend off enough that he’d chase them. “Is he coming after us?” he shouted over his shoulder to Kelly.

  “Yes,” she replied. “And he looks pissed! Move it!”

  Dan didn’t need to be told twice. He gunned the engine and took a clockwise circular route around the desecrated church. He quickly swept past the painted warning about the scarecrow walking at midnight, then around back where the path led to the village and Reverend Miller’s old house, then completing the route back where they’d started, the nose of the quad finally pointing in the proper direction. All they had to do now was cross the field again, find the trail heading south, and they would be home free.

  The only trouble was Joshua was no longer behind them.

  When Dan turned to check, the reverend was nowhere in sight. “Where the hell did he go?”

  “Don’t know. I thought he was right behind us.”

  “Shit! He could have stopped following us at any time. We don’t know if he’s behind us or back out in front.”

  “Just go anyway. What choice do we have? Drive as fast as you can and get us the hell away from here.”

  It was as good of a plan as they were going to get. Dan threw caution to the wind, flying off into the cornfield as fast as the Yamaha engine could push them. It was a huge field and the odds were they’d be able to slip by the reverend and his scythe even if he was out in front of them somewhere. He held the throttle buried the entire way, slipping and sliding in the mud and knocking down row after row of corn under their wheels, but several extremely tense minutes later they burst out of the field and up the dirt slope heading into the trees.

  They were just starting to relax a little when they hit the wooded trail, but Dan was driving too fast and his eyes hadn’t had a chance to adjust to the gloom yet. He made the first turn to the left and started to slow down but flew straight through the next right, slamming head-on into a one-hundred-year-old oak. The quad stopped instantly, its engine grinding to a stop in a mash of twisted metal and broken parts. Both riders were tossed from their seats, flying over the handlebars in different directions. Kelly flew to the left, barely missing the oak and tumbling to a stop in a blanket of wet pine needles fifteen feet away. The fall hurt like hell but she only suffered scrapes and a few bruises.

  Dan hadn’t been quite so lucky.

  Chapter Thirty

  When Dan went over the handlebars, he’d missed the big oak that the quad had smashed into, but slammed into a smaller tree beside it midsomersault, hitting the trunk with the small of his back and spinning around to savagely hit his head on a rock buried in the ground. Even through the sound of the quad disintegrating against the oak, Dan had heard something inside of him break, but then he’d hit the rock and instantly everything went black.

  When Kelly finally made it to her feet, she went to see if her boyfriend was okay. “Dan? Where are you?” she asked, but there was no answer. Without the sound of the noisy 4×4 running, it was incredibly quiet in the woods. Too quiet. “Say something, will you? You’re scaring me.”

  She walked around the big oak and nearly tripped over Dan’s body. Panicking, she got down on her hands and knees and felt around until her eyes adjusted to the dark enough that she could see what had happened to him. His back was bent around a young oak at an unnatural angle and he had blood oozing from a fresh wound high on his forehead. “Oh my God!” she said, crying as she got underneath his head and gently moved him toward her until she was cradling him in her arms at the base of the big oak. She was sure he was dead and l
ost to her, but a moan escaped his lips and he sucked in a huge lungful of air.

  “Dan…can you hear me?” she asked, holding her breath that maybe he’d be okay.

  “I hear you,” he said, his voice weak and filled with unbearable pain. “Be quiet though. Joshua’s still around here somewhere.”

  Kelly looked around and listened as hard as she could, but so far they seemed to be alone. “You have to get up. We need to get out of here before he finds us.”

  “Can’t, sweetie. My back…I think it’s broken. I can’t feel my legs.”

  Five minutes passed. Then five more. Time slowed down to a crawl in the overgrown woods. Kelly sat in the dark crying, kissing the man she loved on his cold hands and face but not having a clue what to do to help him. She’d run every scenario she could think of through her head but nothing she could dream up was going to get her and Dan away from here alive.

  “You can’t be hurt. I need you.”

  “I know…and I’m sorry. You’re gonna have to walk out of here alone.”

  “I can’t leave you here. Not like this. I…I won’t do it.”

  “You have to, Kelly. There’s no other way.”

  “Yes, there is. I can stay here with you.”

  “You can’t. You’ve stayed way too long as it is. Leave me and try to make it back to the car. Get some help and come back for—”

  “It’ll be too late and you know it. I’m not leaving you here to die so just forget it.”

  “You won’t be saving me…you’ll only be killing yourself.”

  “I don’t care. I love you and like it or not, I’m staying.”

  Kelly kissed him on the lips, long and hard, mostly because she’d wanted and needed to, but partly she’d done it just to shut Dan up so he wouldn’t argue with her anymore. The sound of a stick snapping off to their left ended their kiss, both of them jerking their heads up to look around, eyes wide with fear and alert to every sound in the forest. There was nothing else to hear though, and still nothing to see in any direction.

  Eventually Kelly stopped holding her breath.

  “Maybe he won’t find us?” she said, but her lie didn’t even sound convincing to herself, much less her injured boyfriend.

  “He’ll find us. I’m surprised he isn’t here already.” Another stick snapped in the darkness near them, and Dan finished his thought out loud. “Maybe he already is.”

  Kelly shuddered at the thought, picturing the beast that had once been Joshua Miller sitting just out of sight in the dark, biding his time, amused as he listened in on their private, intimate discussion. She strained her eyes back and forth around the woods, looking carefully at every bush, every tree, every dark shadow, but as far as she could tell they were still alone.

  “There has to be some way out of this,” she said.

  “Not unless you can fly, or you have another…hey, wait a minute. We do have another quad! The one we left in the circular clearing.”

  “What are you saying? We don’t have the key to the other quad, remember?”

  “I’m not so sure about that. The one I smashed had a set of keys in the ignition, right? A set…not just a single key. I’m thinking maybe the other key on the chain will start the other bike. Whoever owns the other quad probably has a matching set as well, just in case one of them loses their key.”

  “Worth a try, but what about your back? Can you travel?”

  “Drape me over the seat if you have to. I didn’t want to tell you this, but since we’ve been sitting here I’ve got some tingling back in my feet. Don’t wanna get my hopes up, but if I can get to a doctor, maybe there’s a chance I’ll get better.”

  That was all the encouragement Kelly needed to hear. “Really? That’s incredible, baby. Just hold on…I’m gonna go get those keys.”

  She gently slipped out from under Dan’s head, hope burning in her heart like a well-stoked fire, propping him up against the trunk of the big oak as she moved around the other side to search the wreckage of the first quad. It only took her thirty seconds to find them, and she was back holding the two golden keys in her hand.

  “Okay. I’ll follow the trail to the second quad. If the other key fits, we’re gonna give our position away in a hurry once I fire up the engine. I’ll get back here as fast as I can though, and somehow get you on the back of the damn thing.”

  “Be careful, okay?”

  Kelly slipped the quad keys in her front pocket and prepared to leave. She turned to head for the trail but had only walked four steps when she heard the low growl of an animal rumbling somewhere nearby, much too close for comfort. The unnatural growl turned into human laughter and Kelly knew they would never get Dan to the hospital. That opportunity, if it had ever existed, was now gone. The laughter seemed to come from everywhere at once, but mostly it came from above them. Kelly looked up and screamed when she saw a pair of glowing green eyes looking down at her, the reverend hiding up in the tree about fifteen feet up. He’d probably been up there from the start, listening to them just as she’d feared.

  “Watch out…above you!” Kelly screamed but there was nothing Dan could do to defend himself and nothing she could do to help.

  Like a giant spider or mutated bug, the scarecrow used his taloned fingers and clawed feet to scale down the side of the oak tree, grab Dan in his powerful right arm, and race back up the trunk of the tree at an inhumanly fast speed. Kelly tried to stop him, tried to grab for Dan’s feet and hold him on the ground, but she was too slow. Dan had disappeared into the branches and leaves above in a matter of seconds, leaving nothing behind but his long, echoing scream.

  “Dan?” she shrieked, horrified he’d been taken from her so quickly and easily. “Leave him alone, you bastard!” The fury in her voice drained away to a whisper as she dropped to her knees. “Give him back to me…please.”

  “If you insist…” came the scarecrow’s reply, his voice cold and cruel.

  Somewhere above her Dan’s screams grew louder and thick, warm drops of blood began to rain down upon Kelly’s face and body below. Just a few drops at first, but then a great gushing torrent of life juices cascaded down on her. Utterly helpless down on the ground, Kelly was frozen in place, unable to move while forced to hear the sounds of bones breaking and flesh being torn apart. Small red chunks and meaty pieces of the man she loved fell to the ground beside her, but she’d closed her eyes by this point and refused to look closer for fear she’d recognize any parts. She heard them though, splashing and thudding all around her. The crimson shower only lasted for a minute but it was long enough for Dan to thankfully stop shrieking in agony and for Kelly to know she was now all on her own.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Get up and run, Kelly thought.

  She willed herself to open her eyes and get back on her feet but the message wasn’t getting through, her body steadfastly refusing to budge from where she knelt on the sticky red ground at the base of the giant oak. She knew the man she’d loved—the man she’d hoped to spend the rest of her life with—was lying in pieces all around her on the forest floor. All her hopes of marriage, kids, and growing old together were gone in one savage act of evil cruelty, and Kelly had no desire to open her eyes and bear witness to what had become of her friend and lover. Seeing Dan’s body spread out like a jigsaw puzzle that could never be put back together might push her completely over the edge into insanity, if she wasn’t already there.

  So Kelly stayed where she was, eyes clamped tightly shut and praying the world would just go away and leave her alone. She understood she was being irrational and making a stupid, if not fatal error in judgment, but she just couldn’t help it. Denial and death were preferable to the stark bloody truth of the reality that still dripped onto her face from the branches above.

  She heard movement in the oak tree but refused to look.

  Someone, something, clawing its way down the trunk until it was eventually standing behind her. She could feel the scarecrow’s gaze on the back of her head and feel h
is hot, putrid breath touch her exposed neck as he leaned in close to whisper in her ear.

  “Careful what you wish for, little girl,” Reverend Miller said, licking the edge of her blood-drizzled face with his long black tongue, savoring the way Kelly was helplessly trembling, frozen in shock. He placed his large right hand on the back of her neck, squeezing ever so slightly, an unspoken promise of what was to come. “In the Bible, they used to bury sinners and whores up to their waists so they couldn’t move, then stoned them to death, but here in the Grove we make do the best we can with what the Man in Black provides.” Joshua squeezed Kelly’s neck a little harder. “Any last requests?”

  “Did you kill my grandfather?” Kelly asked, eyes still glued shut, more worried about what had become of Malcolm than what fate had in store for her.

  “What did you say?” Joshua asked. When she failed to respond, he viciously yanked her to her feet by her hair and spun her around, screaming into her face and surprising Kelly enough that she finally opened her eyes to look at him. “Tell me your name, girl. Who are you?”

  “Kelly…Kelly Tucker.”

  “Tucker…” the scarecrow hissed, a vein in his forehead pulsing, thunderous rage building behind his bulging green eyes. “Another hell spawn of Angus! Must be my lucky day.”

  Kelly struggled to free her hair from his ironlike grasp, standing on her tippy-toes to ease the pain, but the reverend had no intention of letting her go. All she managed to accomplish was pulling some of her hair out by the roots.