I’ve been cooped up in my bedroom for nearly two days now. I don’t know why they’re taking so long.
I tell myself that I’m just losing my mind. That I’ve had some sort of breakdown.
But I know it’s not true. I know what I saw, and I know what awaits me on the other side of the door.
Let me start from the beginning.
I’m a private person. I can think of a few people I enjoy being around. Margaret, for instance. I like Margaret. But, generally, I value being alone.
That’s why I built my life around a job that doesn’t require me to leave my crummy basement-level apartment. The bug problem inside of it is preferable to the human problem outside of it.
It all began on one of those abominable days when I needed to venture into civilization. I’d been dreading it for weeks.
My virtual co-worker Natalie had been insistent about my attendance at a fundraiser for her kid. Something about raising money for some research foundation. Blowing off her relentless emails and messages eventually got too tiring. I ran a mental cost-benefit analysis and determined that a brief appearance would amass me enough goodwill to get out of it next time.
As I exited my apartment building, I passed my fellow basement-dwellers’ seasonal decorations. The wreath on the door of my immediate neighbor, a repairman named Brian, included a ghost and a witch hat. A mat by the door to the adjacent apartment, in which a young couple and their small child resided, featured black cats and a full moon.
The surrounding neighborhood was just as insufferable. I scowled at the displays of pumpkins and mock graveyards, skeletons, and spider webs. All plastic, fake, straight-from Wal-Mart bullshit. I knew it was only going to get worse in the lead up to Halloween. As soon as November first rolled around, they’d replace this junk with equally obnoxious holiday decorations. I yearned for January.
As the highway took me past the county line, I was stopped by construction. A man in an orange vest halted me and waved for opposite traffic to go through the single open lane. Behind him, workers labored at the outskirts of a large pit. It was strikingly deep. From where I was sitting, I couldn’t even see the bottom of it.
The delay made me late. When I reached the farm, its dirt lot was already packed with cars. I wedged my rusty sedan into a narrow space and climbed outside.
A distant breeze swayed crops and trees. The only other sounds I heard were those of birds and insects.
I reached the field. Balloons were tied to a sign that reads “Walk Against Diabetes”. I shook my head. What did walking have to do with it? Couldn’t they just have accepted my money without having to bring me all the way out here for walking?
I looked around. The field ahead was littered with jack-o-lanterns, cornhole boards, bales of hay, some sort of pumpkin ring toss. Oh, and scarecrows. Lots of scarecrows. Whoever decorated this place went a little overboard with them. But where were the people?
A sign over a small tent read “Registration”. At a table inside, a figure obscured by shadows presided over several piles of paper.
I approached. “Hey there, can you help me-”
I froze when I discerned the straw hat and cloth face underneath it. The scarecrow wore blue overalls on a plaid shirt. Its face consisted of a red nose, blue eyes, and a simple smile drawn with a single black, dotted line.
I didn’t smile back. Where was everybody? I wanted to at least sign in to the event.
“Hello?” I called. My voice faded into the empty ambience. I tried again, this time shouting as loudly as I could, but no one responded.
I circled through the tents and the start of the one-mile course, but there was not a soul in sight.
I couldn’t make any sense of it. Did everyone start walking, and then just keep going to some other location? Or was the event cancelled at the last moment, with me alone not finding out about it? But, if that were true, why was the parking lot so full?
On the way back to my car, I passed the registration tent again. To my surprise, the scarecrow was gone. “What the hell?” I mumbled, perplexed and more than a bit spooked.
My pace increased to a jog. I was eager to leave this place. There was something about it that just felt so off, so wrong. I pulled out in my car and didn’t look back as I returned to town.
I approached the construction site. This time, no one was around to direct traffic. There were no workers at all, in fact.
I could have gone, but I worried about a car approaching from the opposite side. I rolled down my window. “Hey, is anyone there?” I asked.
Something caught my eye. Several bales of hay decorated the edge of the pit. They hadn’t been there before. For a moment, a brown, jagged stick emerged from the hay, reaching out like an arm before receding out of view.
I resolved not to wait there any longer. I wanted to leave this cursed hole in the earth behind, just like the farm and its deserted fundraiser. I jolted the accelerator and zoomed into the open lane.
As I drove, I checked the rear view mirror. What I saw sent my heart racing. In the back seat, directly behind me, was the thin smile of the scarecrow from the registration tent.
“Fucking hell!” I screamed. My car skidded at an angle as I slammed on the breaks.
Sirens blared in front of me. Just my luck. The first car at the other end belonged to a cop.
The officer approached. I remained still, resisting the temptation to look behind me. In my state of near-panic, I accidentally rolled down one of my rear windows instead of my own. I rushed to correct my mistake as the officer neared.
The officer leaned down and asked me questions.
“Officer, in the back seat, there’s…there’s…” I realized that telling the truth wasn’t going to help me. So, I came up with a slightly more plausible story. “I’m driving alone, but I looked in the mirror and saw someone in the back seat. I panicked.”
The officer peered behind me. There was no one there, she insisted.
“Not even something that might look like a person?” I croaked. “Like a doll, or something?”
She shook her head, handed me a ticket, and informed me that I’d need to go to court to address it.
I thought about telling her everything else I’d seen – the desolate fundraiser, the stick reaching out of the hay – but I decided to cut my losses. I politely nodded and told her that I’d be more careful.
I examined my car upon parking it in my building’s garage. Indeed, the back seat was unoccupied. Had I imagined seeing the scarecrow there? Was I losing my mind?
In my apartment, I took a long shower and started to unwind. I decided to keep the inexplicable things I’d seen to myself, at least for the time being. I had Margaret to prepare for.
I shaved my face and put on my nicest set of clothes. I cleaned up, stuffing my dirty laundry into a basket and moving my laptop from where I’d left it on top of my comforter to an end table by the bedroom door. I counted out five fifty-dollar bills and placed them in an envelope by the entrance to the apartment.
Margaret was five minutes late. On another occasion, I’d have argued over subtracting twenty dollars from what I owed her. Twenty-one, to be more precise. But, that day, I was just happy to see her face.
Margaret smiled and addressed me as her husband. She displayed a cheap replica of the engagement ring I’d given to Anne, and she wore an olive green dress like the one Anne had been wearing when I’d proposed to her.
Margaret didn’t mention the children I hadn’t seen in years. They weren’t a part of the script.
The hour moved efficiently. We chatted over a drink and then slowly made our way to the bedroom. We screwed around. When it was over, I wrapped my arms around her bare back and held her tightly.
She asked me if something was on my mind. She said that I seemed a little wound up.
I started to tell her about the strange things I’d seen that morning. When I brought up the mysterious pit by the highway, she mentioned that she’d heard something about it. She said that a friend of hers worked at that site. Ever since his drilling operation tapped into some unknown substance deep underground, workers had been disappearing without a trace.
“Do…do they know what the substance is?” I asked.
She burst out laughing. She told me that she really had me going.
I was annoyed. But Anne’s sense of humor was on the list of traits I’d given her to study. I couldn’t hold it against her.
Margaret dressed and headed to the door. “See you next week,” I told her as she slipped the envelope into her purse.
On Monday, I exchanged chat message with Natalie. She told me not to worry, that the participants had gathered around a hill at the end of the mile-long course for a group photo, but she appreciated the effort I made coming out there.
It didn’t make sense to me. I wasn’t all that late. I should have seen somebody. But I let it go.
Work resumed. Groceries arrived at my front door. My apartment building was quiet. The tedium of daily routine settled my nerves. The weird events of the weekend faded from my mind.
Finally, the date on my ticket arrived. To my chagrin, I found that those obsessed with tacky Halloween props included whoever ran the general district court.
Fake cobweb lined the metal detector. The officers manning it directed me to the appropriate room.
I climbed the central staircase. Posing throughout it were more of those damn scarecrows. I hated their smiling faces, their straw hats, and the big red buttons that matched their small red noses.
I approached the courtroom. After a short wait, an officer called the number on my ticket.
“Yes, that’s me, officer,” I said.
The officer instructed me on where to go. I opened the two sets of doors and stepped into the courtroom. I approached the podium, paying little attention to the handful of people scattered throughout the public benches. My eyes raised to the judge.
I gasped when I finally got a look at him.
I recognized the beaming face of the figure before me. It was the same one – the same goddamn scarecrow that had climbed into my car the other day, except now it sat in a black robe before a gavel.
“Is this…are you…” I stuttered, dumbfounded. I glanced at the prosecutor’s table, where two scarecrows sat in suits. I looked behind me, and realized that the rest of the audience was no different. I was the only human in the entire fucking room.
I stormed out. I spotted the officer who’d let me in and called out for him. When he didn’t respond, I tapped his left shoulder.
I jumped back as his left arm detached. Tightly-wound straw spilled out of his empty sleeve onto the floor.
I backed up. I needed to leave.
The figure moved. It knelt, picked up the detached arm, and stuck it back in place. Then, it turned towards me, continuing to display the same, sick expression of perpetual bliss.
A stumble sent me toppling down the first set of stairs. I banged my head. My body ached as I climbed back to my feet and ran down to the lobby, where I found the metal detector manned by two scarecrows dressed in police uniforms. Their heads tilted slightly in my direction as I sprinted to the exit.
There was almost no traffic as I drove back to my apartment. I spotted no people in the early evening light. Only scarecrows, everywhere, of all shapes and sizes. They appeared still, silent, content.
In the apartment garage, an elderly man hobbled over to me. He was the first human I’d seen since leaving the courthouse. He pointed to a red bruise on my temple and told me that I’m not one of them. He insisted that I not trust anyone, not even him.
I left him behind as I scrambled down the basement hallway. The door to the building elevator opened, revealing three scarecrows – a man, a woman, and a small child standing between them.
I passed Brian’s apartment. I looked through the open door. Inside, two figures were engaged in a scuffle.
A scarecrow had Brian pressed against the wall. His panicked eyes turned towards me as he attempted, futilely, to pull the scarecrow’s hand off of his neck. With its other hand, the scarecrow pried open Brian’s mouth.
The thin line that formed the scarecrow’s smile expanded until its mouth was a gaping hole that covered most of its face. Brian made a muffled scream as straw shot out of the scarecrow’s mouth into his own. He gagged and choked.
The straw poured down Brian’s throat. It filled his body until it bursts through his skin. As layers of straw spread over Brian, transforming his appearance, the scarecrow turned towards me.
I shut the door to my apartment and bolted it behind me. In the crack beneath the door, shadows of legs approached. The door jostled, the same way the door to my bedroom has jostled periodically for the last several hours, and the handle shook. Then the shadows departed.
I didn’t know what to do. After what I’d seen at the court building, I wasn’t eager to contact the authorities.
A familiar voice called for me from outside. I checked my phone to confirm that it was the correct date and time.
Using the peephole, I saw that it was only Margaret, with no straw hat to be found on her. Relieved, I ushered her in.
She asked me what was wrong after I frantically locked the door behind her. “I’m just so happy to see you,” I replied. “You’re the only thing that seems real to me.”
She looked at me strangely. I wasn’t supposed to call her by her real name. She asked for some wine. Anne loved wine, after all. That trait was in the materials I’d provided to Margaret.
I gave her a glass. She lifted it. I put my hand around hers as I poured. I thought about recent events. About how everything around me was falling apart.
Yet, amidst all of that, here was Margaret, showing up at her scheduled time to pretend to be the wife who’d stormed out of our marriage years ago. Who’d taken away my kids. Who’d told me I had no heart, no soul. Who’d said I was as dull and ugly and lifeless as a-
Margaret shrieked as the glass shattered. I’d been gripping it too hard, and several fragments had torn into Margaret’s hand.
I apologized profusely. When I brought her a set of bandages, she opened her hand to reveal a long gash that extended across her palm.
What I saw sent me darting into my bedroom, where I have been hiding – cowering – ever since.
You see, no blood emerged from the wound – just the ends of thin, golden pieces of straw.