I grew up in a rural town in Ontario, Canada. When I was about seven a new family moved next door to me and they had a son roughly around my age, so obviously I was very excited, being that there was only three houses within walking distance and i was an only child. So after they finished the move and looked setteled enough, my parents had their family over for dinner, showing that good countryside hospitality. The family seemed nice from what I gathered but I was more focused on having a new friend around. After dinner myself and the neighbour’s kid, Jeffrey, easily convinced the adults to let us play outside in the surrounding woods as kids do, giving the adults time alone to talk and get to know each other. Now the woods behind the house weren’t some massive dark fairytale haunted woods but rather a well lit collection of trees dividing ours and the neighbour’s property from the farm fields just beyond. As a kid they seemed huge but in reality it was probably only about 200m deep before the corn filled fields began.
I took Jeffrey down the path I always took when I played out here, it was much more fun playing adventurer with someone else and he was a good kid, good first impression, easy to get along with and was open to playing and exploring the well lit, sparse “woods” with me. We grabbed sticks and pretended to fight off imaginary bad guys trying to find the gold we were looking for and had a blast doing it. We made it to the end of the woods and sat down near the fence that divided the property line, it was more of big sticks in fence shape than an actual fence and just beyond the tall corn stalks blew gently in the august breeze. We had stopped for a moment to rest and enjoyed the mesmerizing corn sway in silence.
I looked down with a smile at the stick figure drawing I’d made in the dirt. Without taking my eyes off it, I broke the silence and asked Jeffrey what he thought about it. No response. I asked a bit louder and looked up at him but didn’t finish my sentence. He was hyper focused on something else by the fence so naturally I followed his gaze and nearly pissed myself. At the edge of the corn on the opposite side of the fence was a figure dressed in a black hooded cloak standing completely motionless. Inside the hood was a round white mask with no defining features other than a red stripe where the eyes should have been. I had heard no footsteps, no crunching, no pushed aside corn stalks up to this point. I inhaled sharply with a high pitched squeak and stood up ready to run. My ears started to ring and my vision started to blur. Jeffrey didn’t move or react in any noticeable way he just said, “I was hoping he would’ve stayed behind”.