I live in a rural farming community. Almost everything is surrounded by large cornfields. Now, I’ve heard my fairshare of rumors and myths regarding the fields, but I’m not particularly superstitious.
Or at least, I wasn’t.
I was driving back home after taking my daughter, Salem, to a doctor’s appointment. She’s only four months old, so we still have to go to check ups for her. It’s the time of year when the corn stalks are taller than my car. When it’s light out, I do really enjoy the drive; it’s calming and beautiful. It was dark out though and the stalks looked like they were reaching for my car.
There’s kind of a rule here that when it’s dark out, you shouldn’t look into the corn. I don’t know why that’s a rule, but I followed it to a T that night. My stomach was in knots as I kept my eyes firmly on the road ahead of me.
Salem began crying. That’s normal for her, she’s a fussy baby and she is not a big fan of the car. I dug through her bag in the seat next to me for her favorite toy, a little stuffed mothman that my sister got for her as a joke. With a name like Salem, she regularly gets stuff like that. I reached back to drop the toy into her carseat.
As I did so, my head turned towards the fields. For just that split second, I saw eyes. I immediately turned my attention back to the road. My heart was pounding, but I was trying to be rational. The eyes had flashed, like a cat, but entirely too big.
I swallowed down my fear. I was being rational. It was definitely a cat and nothing more.
Salem stopped crying. She actually started laughing. No one has ever made her laugh before, neither me nor her mother. I looked in the rear view mirror and found those eyes looking back at me again.
There’s a second part to that rule. If you do look into the corn, don’t look in the backseat.
I ignored that rule. My daughter was in danger. It didn’t matter that she was laughing. Even poison can look like precious fruits sometimes. I slammed on the brakes and whipped around. There was nothing there. Salem went back to her forlorn crying. I breathed a sigh of relief, then looked around. There was nothing.
I continued on down the road. Salem’s little screams were a blessing. It meant she was safe. I glanced up into the rear view mirror to check on her.
There were those eyes.
I had no time to react before calloused, long fingers were around me neck. I blacked out.
When I awoke, it was bright out. I was still in the car, in a ditch on the side of the road. Police and ambulances surrounded the vehicle. My ears were ringing. Someone was trying to help me out of the vehicle. When I got out, I saw a man holding Salem’s carseat. His eyes flashed. The eyes from the night prior.
Salem was laughing.
I snatched my baby away from him, pulling her from the carseat so I could hold her to my chest. She immediately began sobbing. When I looked up from her, the man was gone, but when I looked into the fields, they didn’t seem too empty.