It took me one day to memorize the route to my new office.
I’ll be the first to admit I’m not the best when it comes to directions, but for the hour it takes me to get to work, I only have to make four turns, not counting my driveway; it’s hard to mess that up. Now an hour commute might not appeal to most, but driving from one nowhere farmtown in Ohio to another is more bearable for me than driving into a big city. In my experience, driving alongside cornfields is a lot less stress-inducing than playing bumper cars on the interstate. I even used to think it was relaxing. Not anymore…
I get up for work at 5:00 AM, and I usually have my morning joe and am on the road by 5:30. It’s dark when I leave, but it eventually lightens up. At some point, while I’m not paying attention, my black or dark-blue surroundings will give way to a gray and eventually a white hue as the cloud-shrouded sunlight is scattered by the fog that hovers over the fields and clings to the road. The first half of the drive is pretty mind-numbing since I’ve driven that road before. The second stretch, when I’m in the next county, is still fairly new territory to me all these months later, and I hadn’t gotten bored enough of the scenery yet to stop paying attention to my surroundings.
Fields usually all look about the same, but if you’re observant you might notice little signs sticking out near the road. Something that looks like a company name on top, with a jumble of letters and numbers below, occasionally the odd logo. These are usually benign, just letting other farmers know what variety of seed is growing there. I’m not a farmer myself, and I certainly don’t keep an encyclopedia on me to decipher seed type, nor do I have the interest. It is interesting, however, to drive by and see how that seed fared that season.
There are other signs, though. I’m not talking about the usual warnings about pesticides. They’re almost identical to the seed signs, with a name on top and a random string of characters just below. Without fail, these always have a picture on them. I noticed them for the first time when I was called back to the office just hours after getting home several days ago. I grumbled the whole first half of the trip back, annoyed that they called the guy who lives the furthest away to come back and deal with this. By now the sky was dark, but unlike my morning commute, it was only getting darker. I turned on my headlights.
I noticed that there were no other cars around; not semis, not even police cars out running radar. This was the case for a while, at least 20 minutes and whatever number of miles that would’ve been. I had the road all to myself, and with my usual radio station crackling out as I crossed the county line, I found myself glancing at the fields as I passed them just for something to do. Everything looked normal until I started paying closer attention to the signs. My eyes were drawn to them, given that my headlights were reflecting off them. I didn’t realize what it was at first, but something just seemed not right about them. I started to slow down. Then I stopped.
“What the hell?” I was sure I’d never seen this sign before. You don’t keep track of the companies and the alphabet-soup seed number, but the image…
Company name: NeoGenesis
Seed number: 2C4R3CR0W
There was an illustration of what looked like a scarecrow, only it had one large eye and a terrifying, toothy grin. It was a low detail, black and white image, just like any street sign, but…
I got back in my car, but I did take a picture of the sign. “Some prank,” I told myself, shifting into first gear and climbing up to fifth in seconds, back on my way. It was almost October, after all. I felt more unsettled as I saw that same sign in other spots, but a wooded area broke up the field, and before I knew it, I was passing a small town that I’d only seen the church and city hall of due to the route I take. After the town was another field, and this time I had to get on my brakes quickly.
Up ahead were some white trucks flashing green and white LEDs. One of the trucks was full of signs, and the other truck was empty. I passed by them and rolled down one of my windows, flagging a worker over. “Hey, is there construction here? I didn’t see any signs”
He told me that they were just replacing the signs in the fields and that they wouldn’t be there long. I thanked him and started driving again, but curiosity got the best of me. I found a long driveway to turn into and turned off my lights. I only had to wait a few minutes before the trucks passed by me, on their way to the next field. I turned left, going back to the town I’d just passed and making a U-turn to get back to where I’d seen the trucks. I stopped at the first sign I saw and was shaken to see a sign much like the one I’d passed just miles earlier.
Company Name: NeoGenesis
Seed Number: L4NDM1N3
This one had a picture, too, only it looked like a potato or something under the soil of a cornfield. It had a mouth on it and vines or roots around it, and it was very close to the surface.
“What the fuck?” I muttered. If this was a prank, then every farmer on this stretch of road must be in on it. I took a picture of this one, too. Realizing I had delayed my trip by over 20 minutes at this point, I didn’t stop at any of the other fields and didn’t even look at the other signs I saw. I made it to the office, and thankfully no one had asked about my delay as there wasn’t anyone else there. I did what I was called to do and stopped for dinner before driving home, taking the same route back as I had arriving, until I saw another sign, a larger sign: the road was closed.
“You’ve gotta be kidding…” I put on my hazard lights, parked while I unlocked my phone, and plotted a new way home. Thankfully, my GPS seemed to know about the road closure and suggested a quick detour that would get me back on the same road. I put my rust bucket in reverse and drove down a small, one-lane road that landed me just a few hundred yards past the sign. I mentally added five minutes to my commute time and got back on the main road.
I had been driving for just a few minutes when I realized my car was slowing down. Sure enough, looking at the dashboard, the light was on indicating that I had a flat. I stopped the car and got out, looking around at all the tires before finding the rear passenger side tire was almost completely deflated. Not wanting to be on the side of the road any longer than I had to, I got the jack out of my trunk and lifted that side of the car. As I was taking off the tire, I realized that it was covered in something. I visually inspected it and found that it was wrapped in what looked like little roots or vines. Now I didn’t remember driving offroad, and I couldn’t even imagine what you’d have to do to drive through so many roots and get that many stuck on your tire. What troubled me the most was when I saw that a chunk of the tire was just missing. “No patching that” I grumbled, rolling the tire to the side of the road and walking around my car to get the spare.
I didn’t get to the other side of the car, not immediately. Looking across the road into the field, I thought I saw a silhouette in between two rows of corn. I’m not much of a horror movie guy, but I’ve seen enough to know that if you try talking to the shadowy figure across the street from you, you’re probably going to die. I acted like I hadn’t seen it, and at the time it wasn’t hard for me to convince myself that my mind was just playing tricks on me. I got the spare out of the back and torqued it on where the old tire had been. I lowered the car, decided to leave the other tire to rot, and drove off as fast as I could.
On my way into the office the next morning, I had almost wiped the incident from my memory. The first half of my commute was as boring as ever, and it wasn’t until my favorite radio station fizzled out once more and I began looking at the signs that I remembered what had happened last night. These signs, however, were just your typical seed signs.
Company name: Cowboy
Seed Number: 01BE84
Now I knew for a fact that those signs hadn’t been there the night before; I didn’t know if those were the signs that had been there yesterday morning, but they weren’t the ones from last night, I was sure of it. There weren’t any cars in front of me or behind me for as far as I could see, so I felt comfortable enough to look at my phone and swipe through my pictures to-
I felt the impact before I heard something roll up my windshield and across the roof of my car. I screamed and dropped my phone, grabbing the wheel and yanking it dead center before slamming on the brakes, not even bothering to downshift or hold the clutch. My car stalled, and the motion jerked my head around, causing the back of my head to hit the headrest, but luckily the seatbelt kept me from busting my forehead on the steering wheel. Once I got my bearings, I checked my mirrors and looked frantically through all my windows, still not seeing any other vehicles. I hadn’t gone off-road, so I mentally eliminated the possibility that I’d hit a farm animal. I got out of my car, rubbing the back of my head as I walked to the front of the car. Sure enough, my hood had a sizable dent, but the windshield was intact, and I didn’t see any blood, only…
I looked behind my car, towards the middle of the road. There was a vaguely human-shaped form laying there. I walked over slowly, dread filling me as I got closer. Blue overalls and a plaid shirt. No hands, no feet- I dropped the fistful of straw I’d found lodged under my windshield wiper, but I wasn’t relieved. It was a scarecrow, but where did it come from? I’d grabbed my phone when I got out of the car, prepared to call the cops or somebody, but now I was finishing what I had been doing and scrolled through the photos.
Company name: NeoGenesis
Seed number: 2C4R3CR0W
And that stupid picture…
I got back in my car and kept driving. I didn’t even turn the thing over to see if it matched up with the graphic, I just got in my car and left. I didn’t go in to work that day, and I took a different way home. I told my boss that he was going to have to find someone to fill my position because you couldn’t pay me to drive past another field. I’m looking for an apartment in the city now, and a new job. You can’t take the country out of the boy, but you sure as shit can take the boy from the country; I never want to see another ear of corn for as long as I live.