It’s beautiful, isn’t it? The whitewashed two-story farmhouse. The golden fields. That jagged strip of dark-green forest on the horizon. Like something out of a painting.
There’s something special about this land. It’s kept fruitful and healthy, even after all the other farms on this road shut down long ago.I know you’re interested in buying, and I suppose at my age, it’s about time that I was selling. Before I do, though, there’s something you need to know.
What I’m about to tell you might disturb you–it might even scare you off from buying the place–but it’s got to be said.
You see that scarecrow out by the garden? That dark, raggedy shape with a beat-up old hat?
It stays where it is.
No matter what.
That was my great-grandfather Calloway’s dying wish. He built this farm, you know. It’s been in my family for four generations–and out here, family is everything.
You see, when you’re young, you have no way of knowing whether what goes on in your family is right or wrong. You have nothing to compare it to. And if your family cuts the crust off of sandwiches, puts pineapple on pizza, or hangs a dressed-up skeleton from a cross in the backyard–well, that’s just what’s normal for you.
Growing up out here, every kid had odd chores. Stuff other folks would consider too difficult for kids, or even dangerous. Everything from making soap to driving a combine harvester. That’s why it wasn’t so strange to me that my own chores included painting a face on my great-grandfather’s skull and making sure his clothes were stuffed with fresh hay.
For as long as I could remember, my great-grandfather Calloway’s skeleton had been propped up on two poles in the garden behind the farmhouse where I grew up, looking out over the cornfields toward the forest beyond.
If you didn’t look too closely–and most people didn’t–great-grandpa Calloway looked like just another scarecrow.
Not that we had many visitors. Most people kept to themselves in those days. Each farm was its own little kingdom, protected by the KEEP OUT and PRIVATE PROPERTY signs that hung like sacred talismans from every rusty gate. While pedaling my bicycle along that lonely stretch of country road, I’d sometimes pause in front of one of those long dirt driveways, wondering what secrets were hidden in the toy-sized house at its end.
The Mosebys, some said, raised fighting dogs. And there were rumors that fifteen-year-old Shelly McAllister was about to have a baby by her first cousin–the local preacher.
Compared to that, what was the harm in some sun-bleached bones and an old superstition?
By the time I was twelve, however, I understood that other people wouldn’t see it that way. They’d see grandpa Calloway’s scarecrow as something sick and twisted, like the monster in a late-night horror movie. On the rare occasions that I had classmates over, I made sure to keep them far away from where that dark, ragged figure shuddered in the breeze. The worst were my friends from childhood: I’d told many of them about great-grandpa Calloway before I’d realized just how strange our little family tradition truly was, and I was perpetually terrified that one of them would insist on seeing his skeleton up close. If anyone at school found out…
I could already hear my jeering classmates: ‘Scarecrow Girl! Scarecrow Girl!’
I begged my parents to take great-grandpa Calloway down from his pole.
“It’s what your great-grandfather wanted,” my mother explained. “He carved this farm out of the forest with his own two hands. He tilled the land and turned it into the farm you see today. This place is Calloway’s life’s work, and he has a right to watch over it.”
As a child, Calloway’s scarecrow hadn’t frightened me. Polishing those two electric-blue glass eyes and returning them to Calloway’s hollow eye sockets–or using red lipstick to paint a smile around his skinless lip–were just chores, no different than mucking out the chicken coop or washing the windows. Yet once I’d begun to feel the wrongness of Calloway’s dangling corpse, I couldn’t get it out of my head. While wrapping a fresh set of secondhand clothes around his bones or adjusting his ropes, I felt sure his skeletal fingers would reach out to grab me. You little traitor, he’d whisper, his white ribs rattling. You wanted to take my farm away from me!
Every time I passed by the window of my second-storey bedroom, I felt compelled to check on Calloway’s scarecrow, to make sure that he was where I’d left him. With my breath caught in my throat, I’d hesitate…as though at any moment he might turn and look up at me.
Of course, the only time I ever saw great-grandpa Calloway move was when a terrified rat scampered out of his straw–but even that was enough to give me nightmares for a week.
By my junior year of high school, I was feeling confident that I was going to make it to graduation without ever having to explain Calloway’s scarecrow. Soon it would be just another one of the dusty, petty secrets of the hometown that I was so eager to leave behind. I felt like a bird caught in a too-small cage, and I was sure that everything would be different when my boyfriend Mark and I went to the state university together next fall.
So far, I’d managed to keep Mark far away from my great-grandfather’s skeleton. When we met, it was usually to do what couples do when they’re alone: in the shadowy corners of his father’s animal feed warehouse, the bed of his pickup truck, or a secluded spot along the creek near my house. Mark had come to dinner with my family once or twice, too, but always after dark…and on those chilly autumn nights there was no reason to go out back, where my great-grandfather’s corpse kept watch over the rustling cornfields.
It was pure chance that I heard the noise, instead of my parents: a low, horrified grunt.
I rushed to my bedroom window.
A dark figure was standing in front of Calloway’s scarecrow.
I threw on my bathrobe, grabbed the flashlight from my nightstand, and hurried to the edge of the cornfields.
Mark stared up at my great-grandfather’s skeleton, a look of disgusted incomprehension on his face.
“I can explain!” I pleaded.
“No way. That’s sick. There’s a dead human body propped up in your backyard. What the hell, Liz?!”
“It’s…well, it’s my grandfather…” I stammered. “This was his dying wish…”
“You have no way of knowing who this guy was!” Mark hissed. “For all you know, he could be some hitchhiker that your parents murdered! This thing’s probably got all kinds of nasty diseases…” Mark held out his hand, showing me the pebbles he’d planned to throw at my window. “I was sneaking through the fields to invite you to prom–”
“Yes!” I shouted, forgetting all about the danger of waking my parents. “I’d love to!” I jumped up to kiss Mark, but he turned away.
“–But I dunno. This is twisted, Liz. There’s something seriously wrong with your family.” The smile washed off my face. I couldn’t believe it.
“There’s something seriously wrong with every family!. Your older brother was arrested for selling heroin–to middle schoolers, for God’s sake–but I didn’t care! Because your family isn’t you, Mark! And my family isn’t me, either.”
“I just need some time to think,” Mark muttered. But I could tell by his tone that our relationship was over. He still cared about his hometown reputation; he was afraid of being known as the boyfriend of the crazy girl with a skeleton in her backyard. Still stammering excuses, he backed away into the gloomy cornfield.
It wasn’t my family’s fault; it wasn’t the scarecrow’s fault, either.
In time, I’d realize that Mark had probably been wanting to break up for quite some time, and Calloway’s skeleton just happened to be the perfect excuse. Even so, I had to take all my anger and disappointment out on something.
I gritted my teeth and wriggled Calloway’s pole until it came free. For a moment I feared a scream might rise from his hideously-painted skull, or that he’d raise a hay-stuffed hand and call a terrible curse down upon my head–
But I was an adult (well, almost) and I knew that there was no such thing as walking corpses and their curses. I hurled Calloway’s hay-stuffed bones onto the ground and dragged them behind the shed. Tomorrow, I’d get rid of that damn scarecrow once and for all. I’d burn it, bury it, call the health department, whatever it took.
Mark would be impressed by how I’d handled the situation. He’d want to forget all about our fight and go to prom together again, I was sure of it. I’d pretend to be mad at first, but eventually I’d take him back…
As I lay my head on my pillow, I was content with my night’s work. Getting rid of those gross old bones had been easier than I’d ever imagined. Only for a second–right before I drifted off to sleep–did I fear that I’d made a terrible mistake.
I woke to the sound of creaking footsteps on the porch. I nuzzled into my sheets and smiled. It was probably Mark, coming back to apologize.
But Mark’s footsteps weren’t so slow and heavy.
My eyes snapped open.
This time, I couldn’t see anyone outside my bedroom window. For a moment I wondered where Calloway’s scarecrow had gone…then I remembered what I’d done.
Voices rose from the porch below.
“Do you think he’s really gone?” came a wheedling, high-pitched whisper.
“It might be a trap…” another responded, in a voice that sounded like the scraping of insects’ wings. “Who knows how long they live for…”
“Look with your eyes!” rumbled a third voice, deep and gravelly. “He isn’t here. We can take what we want.”
I heard a snap. Downstairs, the kitchen door swung open. I locked my door, pressed my ear against it and listened.
My father’s snoring had stopped. I could hear my mother rustling around, probably looking for her glasses.
Footsteps creaked on the stairs.
The first were light and sinister, followed by something that skittered, and finally a slow, plodding stomp, like a mountain walking.
“Oh my god,” I heard my mother whisper. “They’re here…” My father racked the shotgun.
The boom of my parents door flying off of its hinges was followed by two deafening blasts…then laughter. A dull, slow, stupid laughter, like that of a bored child pulling the wings off of a butterfly. Slam. Splat.
“Hahahahaha!” the high-pitched voice squealed. “His skull cracked like an egg!” Something scampered across the ceiling of my parents’ bedroom. My mother screamed.
Ignoring the wet ripping sounds coming from next door, I scrambled to the window, praying that the rusty springs wouldn’t squeak as I slid it open.
The hideous noises suddenly stopped.
“There might be more treats in the other rooms…” the skittering thing whispered. I heard the handle ripped from my door, but I didn’t turn to see what was coming inside. I let myself drop from the windowsill. A burst of pain shot up from my ankle when I landed on the porch, but I was already running to the shed. I fumbled in the straw and secondhand clothes, frantically trying to reassemble my great-grandfather’s skeletal scarecrow. The porch groaned beneath heavy footsteps.
“Where’d she go?” the deep voice asked.
“Shed!” replied a squeaky, high-pitched answer. “I saw her!”
I jammed a hat onto great-grandpa Calloway’s skull and heaved him upright. His electric-blue glass eyes rolled wildly, but his structure was intact.
“It’s him!” the rustling voice rasped. “The one who banished us to the woods!”
“Back from the dead!” another squealed.
“Run!” came a thundering command.
The trenchcoat wrapped around Calloway’s bones smelled of straw and wet earth. Peering out from behind it, I could barely make out three almost-human shapes scampering for the cornfields and the safety of the trees: one small and impossibly thin, another somehow buglike, and a third that was nearly as tall and wide as the shed that had hidden me.
Strange footprints.
The smell of death
That was all they left behind.
I suppose what I’m trying to say is, once you buy this place, it’ll be yours: you’ll have a right to make any changes you see fit…
But if I were you, I’d leave Calloway’s scarecrow right where it is.