Information collected from police case file 71103.
The setting sun cast a warm glow over the endless sea of wheat as Marcy trudged down the long winding road. The drive back home from college flooded her with lukewarm memories and persistent stress. As the last glares from the retreating sun danced on her rear view mirror, her mind wandered to the comforting ebb and flow of people and city lights now far away.
She hadn’t revisited her old home since she moved out her freshman year. She thought she had escaped this place for good, but the summer holidays brought the closing of dorm rooms and the withdrawal of her newfound friends to their undoubtedly picturesque nuclear families. Marcy’s mother passed away during child birth and her father and siblings passed away to one of the tornados that so frequently plague the fields. Left with her modest farm house and a few acres of golden wheat as inheritance, Marcy had few reasons to visit home willingly.
Her trance was broken by the loud cawing of a murder of crows in the distance. This is the third one she had seen, and each seemed to be dive bombing themselves into the fields. Marcy couldn’t tell what they were doing as depth and details were hard to tell in an endless sea of wheat.
As she pulled off the dirt road onto the slim gravel patch that marked her driveway, the cracks in the dam that held back her grief finally gave way. Through her tears she remembered the faded memories of her dad and sisters running out to greet her with warm hugs and fresh cold apple cider.
Her grief was interrupted by the sight and sound of twenty or so crows attacking what seemed to be a fallen over scarecrow. Marcy found some relief in the chuckle that followed. Her younger sister Alice always said that the two dozen scarecrows her father had put up a few years ago looked nothing like a man, or even like a human. Even though straw isn’t the most forgiving artistic medium, the scarecrows had twisted limbs and oblong heads. Alice used to joke that they were more successful at scaring drunk teenagers hanging out in the fields than scaring any kind of bird from pecking at their wheat.
Alice got out of the car and reluctantly shut the door behind her. She walked over to the scarecrow that seemed to be in even worse condition than when her father first made it. The crows weren’t just pecking at the scarecrow, they were trying to completely destroy it. As soon as Marcy bent over to re-erect the spindly creation, the birds around her began swarming and clawing at her. Twenty crows make quick work of supple skin and it wasn’t long until they drew blood. Marcy ran back to the car and shut the door with much more conviction than she had before.
She reached into the black hole that was her glove compartment and dug around the various articles of value and trash until she finally found a few bandaids to stop the bleeding. By the time she had applied them all, the sun had completely set and the birds had completely disappeared. With the car turned off, she had forgotten how dark country nights really were. Even to turn on the lights in her house she would have to go down the moldy wooden steps to the storm shelter and hand crank the generator. Marcy hated that storm shelter. It was where her family had been hiding during the last big storm….
Marcy was in her freshman year when she got the news. News like that moves quickly in a small town but even then she didn’t receive the call from the Sheriff until the next day. The deafening darkness of her surroundings somehow pervaded her thoughts. She had no choice. She needed to first turn on the generator if she was going unpack her car and eventually find way to settle in for the night. Marcy reached for her car keys and twisted them into ignition waiting to be greeted by the blinding flood of her headlights. No luck. She knew she should’ve gotten a new alternator before starting her drive back home but her Dads old truck in its original form had a sentimental purity she was reluctant to dirty. She twisted and twisted but knew that persistence would do her no favors. Fuck. She reached for the car door and only then recognized the trembling of her fingers and the shortness of her breath.
As she got out of her car her foot was met by a surprising unfamiliar plushness. She turned on her phones flashlight and found herself standing on a ring of straw that surrounded her car. The new discovery was quickly dismissed by the more pressing need to turn on the generator. Marcy quickly found her self at the side of the house and after a short struggle quickly pried open the heavy metal storm doors leading to the shelter. After three years away from home she lacked a familiarity of the surroundings that otherwise she grew up around. She stumbled down the rotting wood steps and fell face first onto the cellar floor. She had no scrapes and she felt no pain her landing had been cushioned by straw. In fact all around her the floor and the walls were haphazardly covered in straw.
Only when she tried to stand she realized the depth of the straw. She couldn’t tell if her feet could find no traction or just couldn’t reach the floor. Struggling to stand Marcy frantically pointed her phone in different directions as the bright white of her flash bounced off the golden strands of brittle straw that surrounded her. She caught a glimpse of the generator before she felt the straw start moving…start rising all around her. Her feet desperately tried to kick to find the solid floor underneath her but it was of no use. At the worst possible time the battery on her phone ran out. Marcy frantically turned to the only source of light. The pale dim white light of the moon still leaking in through the cellar entrance. The straw was at her neck now, and she kicked towards the now buried stair case behind her. She heard a rustle from outside and screamed for help. When she looked up she saw the scarecrow she had tried to pick up earlier, now positioned upright at the entrance to the cellar. She was spitting out straw as she hyper ventilated and grew tired of the constant kicks to keep her afloat. She heard the slam of the storm door before her eyes could register the pitch black around her.