Valley of the Scarecrow (23 page)

Dan hadn’t been quite so lucky.

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 lost 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.

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 his 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.

“You really want to know what I did to your dear sweet
grandfather? He’s inside the church. Come…I’ll show you.”

Without waiting for a response, Joshua tossed Kelly over his shoulder as if she weighed nothing at all, and started walking toward the path that would lead them back to the cornfield and the church beyond. “No, stop!” Kelly cried out. “I don’t wanna see what you did to him. Just leave me alone…please!”

“Too late for that, Tucker. Careful what you wish for, remember?”

Kelly’s mind was in a spin, feeling helpless as she was carried like a sack of meat over the monster’s shoulder, her head and arms behind him hanging upside down. Blood was rushing to her head and part of her hoped it would make her pass out before they made it back to the church. She couldn’t bear to see someone else she loved dead. Thinking about Malcolm reminded her of the silver and gold ring he’d given her before they’d left Rich’s house to come to this awful place—the ring that was still on the index finger of her left hand. What was it he’d said about it? That it was some sort of ancient symbol of White Magic and would protect her against evil. Kelly wasn’t an overly religious person but if ever there was a time to believe in
something,
it was here and now. God would never get a better chance to prove to her that he was real.

Without having a clue what she was doing, Kelly kissed her great-grandfather Angus’s ring, said a quick prayer to whatever gods might be listening, and touched the sacred family heirloom into the small of Reverend Miller’s back through a rip in the fabric of his filthy bloodstained robe. She felt a great jolt of energy burst from her hand and in the next moment Joshua screamed and stumbled to the ground, his legs collapsing beneath him. Kelly tumbled
off his shoulder and quickly jumped to her feet with the reverend on his knees in front of her. Again, acting purely on instinct, she touched the ring onto the scarecrow’s forehead, shocked to see him start to shake and convulse, his skin where she touched him starting to blister and burn.

Reverend Miller’s eyes rolled up into his head and he dropped to the ground at Kelly’s feet, down and incapacitated for the moment but still very much alive. She’d been thrilled when she’d seen how the ring had affected him, secretly hoping it would finish the job and kill the son of a bitch, but his legs were still twitching so apparently she wasn’t going to be that lucky. She needed to get away from here, and quickly. Mustering up all her strength, Kelly kicked the man-monster squarely in the face, then did what anyone would do in her situation.

She ran like hell.

Kelly briefly considered trying to head for their campsite beside the church, knowing they had a small hatchet back at the fire pit she could use to defend herself with. The scarecrow’s scythe was back there somewhere on the grass as well, but it was too far to run, not trusting she could make it all the way back across the cornfield before Reverend Miller would catch her again. That left really only one place she could run, and after weighing her limited options it made far more sense. Digging the keys out of her pocket as she ran, Kelly headed for the circular clearing on the wooded trail, going after the remaining 4×4. If she was lucky, one of the keys would start the second quad and she could hightail it out of there as fast as the powerful machine could take her.

Then again, maybe the keys wouldn’t fit and she’d be in big trouble.

Moving as quickly as she could but staying on the trail so she wouldn’t get lost, Kelly made her way south through the woods, expecting with every step to feel a clawed hand grab her shoulder and pull her to the ground. A branch snagged on her sweater as she ran past and she was so convinced it was Reverend Miller that she screamed, spinning around, ready to fight for her life. No one was there, of course, and she wasted precious seconds stopping to look over her shoulder.

The closer she came to the clearing and the waiting ATV, the more she was convinced she was being followed, the reverend’s dark presence filling the woods, an icy shadow squeezing in on her from all sides no matter how fast she ran. No doubt, he was out there and hunting her down. Kelly could feel it in her bones and started glancing over her shoulder more and more often. She even kept an eye on the tree branches above, not sure if up was a safe direction anymore either, but she safely made it back to the clearing without being attacked.

The Yamaha Raptor sat where they’d left it, on the trail facing north in the direction of the church. Kelly climbed on, panting from exhaustion from her sprint through the woods but knew she didn’t have time to relax and catch her breath. She could rest later if she somehow made it out of this forest alive. The first key she jammed into the ignition fit perfectly into the slot but wouldn’t budge at all, forcing her to waste more precious time trying the other key. Kelly’s eyes frantically darted all over the clearing as she fumbled with the keys, eventually pushing the other gold key into the ignition and trying to crank it to the on position so she could hit the electronic starter.

The second key wouldn’t move either.

Oh fuck!
she thought, knowing she was in big trouble.

Dan’s theory about having both 4×4 keys on each set had been wrong. Kelly had no idea what the second key in her hand was for but it sure as shit wasn’t for the quad she was sitting on. She had no way to start the machine now, and time was running out. Reverend Miller was getting closer and closer; already she could hear him charging like a bull through the dark woods, snarling and growling in a fit of rage as he tried to track her down. It would only be a matter of minutes until he did.

She had to think of a plan B in a hurry.

She needed a weapon to defend herself with, that much was a given. Her great-grandfather Angus’s ring had badly hurt the evil preacher but whatever strange magic it wielded wasn’t strong enough to kill him. Joshua was so much more than just a mere man now; he’d somehow become this hideous scarecrow-creature chasing her, becoming part of the unnatural fields around Miller’s Grove. Maybe White Magic just wasn’t enough to defeat whatever he’d become.

Kelly’s mind flashed to the hatchet back at their camp, but how could she possibly make it all the way back to the church to get her hands on it? There was simply no time for something like that. Joshua was nearly on top of her. No, she needed something close by. Something right here: a heavy branch or a rock or a pointy stick or…

Her eyes fell on the twin metal tanks and the plastic hose attached to the leather harness sitting about eight feet away on the ground near where the first quad had been parked. Kelly’s mind spun back to what Dan had said earlier tonight when they’d seen part of the cornfield had been deliberately sprayed, for whatever reason destroying a segment in the shape of a cross.

You smell that? I think it’s a chemical of some kind. Something nasty, I’ll bet.

Something nasty?

How nasty?

Kelly jumped off the Yamaha and ran for the harness. She had no clue that the tanks contained a home-doctored batch of Agent Orange and absolutely no idea how to use the chemical sprayer, but with Reverend Miller practically breathing down her neck she pushed her arms through the thick leather straps and intended to find out in a hurry. No sooner had she clicked the harness in place
around her waist and reached back to grab the small Y-shaped wand at the end of the plastic tubing, Joshua Miller ran into the clearing and leaped up onto the 4×4 beside her, spreading his arms open wide to finally give Kelly a close-up view.

The man who’d once been the guiding light for this small backwoods community had become a creature out of children’s storybooks and Hollywood nightmares. Growling like the true monster he’d become, huge swollen purple veins standing out on his forehead, eyes burning with unholy green fire, massive body literally shaking with insane rage, and clawed toenails gripping the quad hard enough to puncture through the thick leather seat, Reverend Miller hunched down, preparing to launch himself onto what he thought was a helpless woman.

He was wrong.

If this nasty shit can destroy the corn that easily,
Kelly thought, fighting back her fear of the beast about to strike,
let’s see what it can do to a scarecrow!

Kelly squeezed the trigger, shooting a heavy mist of greasy liquid into the air, but her aim was slightly off. The majority of the Agent Orange fell harmlessly to the ground on the reverend’s left but some of it landed on his outstretched arm, soaking through his robe and coating his cornstalk-fused wrist. The effect on his skin was immediate and incredible, the powerful herbicide eating into Reverend Miller’s flesh like acid, bubbling and blistering the skin on contact and starting to burn down through his long-dead meat to his cornstalk-reinforced muscles and bones.

Joshua just stared at his slowly disintegrating arm for a moment, confused as to what Kelly had done to him, but then the pain must have hit and he screamed in clenched-teeth agony, fire blazing through his veins. He
looked over at the wand Kelly held in her hand, then up at her face, the first glimpse of terror starting to show on his deformed face.

Kelly smiled at him, adrenaline flooding through her own body, knowing the tide had turned and the hunter had suddenly become the hunted. He was more part of the corn than even he realized, its unnatural essence the dark heart of the beast, his flesh and bones merely dirt and dust held in place after all these years by whatever malevolent power had taken root in these unholy fields. She took a step forward, still wary of her enemy, but her confidence was growing by the second. She felt even better about her chances when Reverend Miller jumped off the quad and turned to run away.

Oh no you don’t, asshole. You’re not getting off that easy. You owe me a whole lot more than just one arm!

Kelly took up the chase.

Even running full out, Kelly knew there was no way she could keep up with the raw speed of the hulking scarecrow, but before he could kick it into high gear and disappear down the wooded trail, she fired the chemical sprayer again, getting lucky enough to douse his right calf muscle just below the hem of his robe. Joshua screamed again, skin and muscle evaporating in a steamy hiss, but he limped on, still able to move at a speed Kelly had a hard time keeping up with. She had no intention of letting him out of her sight though. No way, not after the sick things the evil bastard had done to her family and friends in the last few days.

Reverend Miller was headed back in the direction of the church, limping badly now, whimpering in agony every time his right leg touched the ground. Behind him on the wooded trail, Kelly almost felt sorry for him, almost
called a stop to her cruel vigilante pursuit and instead just run away but they were passing the section of forest where Joshua had killed and savagely dismembered the man she’d loved. Where had his compassion been for Dan’s suffering? Had Joshua felt sorry for his pain? No.

Fuck you, preacher…you’re going down!

Kelly squeezed the trigger again, aiming the wand at the scarecrow’s left leg, hoping to end this race once and for all. He’d have a hard time running away with no legs but she misjudged the distance between them and the Agent Orange splashed through the tear in his robe up by his waist, devouring the skin at the small of his back and starting to eat into the soft flesh around his tailbone, spine, and hips. He hobbled forward five more steps, his hip bones starting to boil within their disintegrating sockets, then fell forward, tumbling down the steep embankment that led out of the forest and down into the cornfield below.

From the top of the slope, Kelly watched him crawl on his belly toward the corn, shrieking in misery like a wounded animal as his flesh and bones continued to dissolve, pulling his massive body forward using only his one good arm in an attempt to make it into the cover of the tall cornstalks. Kelly didn’t think he was going to make it, but part of her also worried that if he did, the reverend might somehow get some of his former strength returned to him. Obviously he was connected to the corn somehow—body, mind, and soul—so the last thing she wanted to do was let him crawl back into the field that was potentially his source of power. She quickly ran down the slope and doused him again, head to toe, several times with the world’s deadliest herbicide. She held
down the trigger mechanism for a full thirty seconds until no more liquid came out the wand, the tanks on her back finally empty.

There wasn’t much left of Reverend Miller’s back and legs and he’d all but stopped moving. His flesh had corroded away down to the exposed bones and they too were melting, his entire body returning to the dust from whence it came. A low gurgling noise escaped from a hole in his ravaged throat, but Kelly had no idea if it was a cry of pain or a plea for help. With his last shallow breath he reached out with his right hand and grabbed a hold of one of the cornstalks at the outer edge of the field and then lay still, Joshua’s mission to reach the corn over.

The scarecrow of Miller’s Grove was dead.

Watching what was left of the reverend decompose and dissolve at her feet, Kelly unstrapped the spraying harness and tossed the metal tanks to the ground. She sat down on the wet ground beside them, thinking the night couldn’t possibly hold any more surprises in store for her, but there was one more revelation still to come. The tall cornstalk Joshua’s hand was wrapped tightly around started to lose its color and began to wilt. It went from a healthy shade of bright green, to a dirty brown, to a burned black all in a span of five seconds, dying in front of Kelly’s eyes. It wasn’t the only one either—cornstalk after cornstalk around Reverend Miller began to wilt and die. Like a ripple in an ocean, every healthy green plant in the massive field started turning brown and then black, falling dead to the earth like a series of dominoes strategically lined up and left standing for decades, then toppled in less than a minute. Everything was dead, the entire crop surrounding the desecrated church gone just like that.

“Whoa!” Kelly said, shocked to see the massive stalks of corn wither and fall to the ground before her. She certainly hadn’t expected that. It made a lot of sense though, when she stopped to think about it. Reverend Miller’s final breath had meant the death of the entire field, one unnatural evil clearly not able to survive without the other, their unholy relationship forged in hell and returning there together.

Kelly caught her breath for a minute, but knew if she sat still for too long she might never get up. Besides, the moldy burned smell of the chemical she’d been spraying was starting to make her feel nauseated. Either that or her head was just spinning from the horrendous events she’d been forced to witness the last few hours.

She climbed unsteadily to her feet.

Part of her wanted to walk back up the muddy slope and start hiking home, her need to get away from this evil place very real, but she couldn’t abandon her grandfather without knowing he was beyond help. The very last thing in the world Kelly wanted to do was walk back into that church and find Malcolm cut to ribbons or beaten to death but there was a tiny chance he was still alive and she’d never forgive herself if she didn’t at least go check. Decision made, she started walking toward the far-off front. It was the creepiest walk she might ever take in her life, the moon breaking through the clouds to shine down on her trampling on row after row of dead corn. Their black husks like fallen soldiers on a blood-drenched battlefield, with her the only survivor of the war.

She eventually found herself back at their camp and stopped to pick up the short-handled hatchet that was sitting where she’d remembered it was near the fire pit. She wasn’t expecting any more trouble tonight but holding the weapon just made her feel safer and more in
control of the situation. Inside the church it was still very dark, the moonlight not filtering into the rooms nearly as much as Kelly had hoped. Dan’s flashlight was still burning brightly in the coatroom though, so her first stop was to go in there and get it. She averted her eyes as much as possible, not wanting to see poor Pat’s dead body hanging upside down again. She’d seen more than enough death tonight already.

Back in the main reception area, flashlight in hand, she slowly approached the sanctuary doors, instinctively knowing that was where Reverend Miller would have taken her grandfather. Steeling her nerves against what she might see, Kelly pulled open the door and walked inside.

“Oh my God!” she said, shaking her head in denial when she saw what the scarecrow had done.

Malcolm had taken the reverend’s place upon the cross, lashed tightly to the thick wooden beams with his frail arms spread out to either side of him. His head hung low, a line of thick, syrupy blood dripping from his mouth to the raised altar floor. His body twitched though, when he heard Kelly’s voice, and he struggled to raise his head to look across the room at her. He tried to speak but no words came out.