Summary: Something evil lurks in a cornfield on the Ponderosa and unleashes terror on the Cartwright family. What is it?

Rated T     Wordcount: 8, 070

~~1~~

  “Come on, L’il Joe, jus’ throw the ball. Quit lookin’ at there field,” twelve-year-old Hoss called out to his brother, the afternoon sun sending splinters of gold to glisten over the boy’s sandy hair.

   “Alright Hoss,” Little Joe called back, but still the seven-year old didn’t throw the ball to his older brother. Instead he stood, transfixed, as he stared at the cornfield.

   It was really a vegetable garden at the back on the Ponderosa ranch, a half-acre in size, which is a really good size for a garden. Hop Sing, the Cartwrights’ faithful Chinese cook, had planted it several years ago so they didn’t have to ride to the General store in Virginia City all the time for provisions. As the land’s bounty of potatoes, carrots, onions, peppers and peas ripened, Hop Sing would collect it in huge baskets and then keep it in the storehouse.

   But this year, Hop Sing had planted a crop of corn, pumpkins, and squash. It was now the middle of October and the cornstalks were way taller than Little Joe. The boy would bet they were even taller than his eldest brother Adam, maybe even Pa.

   There was something just not right about that cornfield though. It was just a feeling that Little Joe had, but whenever he walked by, he had the feeling of being watched. As if something sinister lurked among the tall cornstalks. Something not of this world, but belonging to the world of slithering shadows. On the surface it looked like any ordinary cornfield, but the seven-year-old boy could sense eyes on him, following him everywhere. That’s why Little Joe always ran the long way around the field instead of cutting across the far western corner like his older brothers did. But the boy would never admit to it. He would rather have scorching splinters of firewood shoved under his fingernails than admit to being afraid of a cornfield.

   Maybe it was the crows. For the past week, a murder of crows had been gathering in the field, every day the cackling society grew larger until it was no longer a murder, but a full-blown bloody slaughter of crows perched on the cornstalks and pecking away at the golden niblets of corn.

   Just then, something hit Little Joe on the head! Then another plummeted him.

   “Ow!” Little Joe cried as he dropped the ball and rubbed the mess of chestnut curls on his head. What hit him? He looked down and saw an apple. Two apples in fact. A worm was in the process of eating its way through the rotten core of the fallen fruit.

   “Eeww”. Little Joe stepped away from the wormy apple just as Hoss ran up to him.

   “That’s what you get fur standing in a daze under an apple tree an’ not payin’ attention, little brother,” Hoss admonished. Joe gave him a foul look.

   “Now where’s the ball?” Hoss asked. Little Joe looked around him, but all that surrounded him were decaying leaves and worm-eating mouldy apples. Then he and Hoss looked in the near distance.

   “Oh uh, it rolled in the cornfield,” Hoss said, squinting from the waning sun in his eyes. Not many hours of daylight left. We better get inside soon or Pa will tan our hides.

   “Since you dropped the ball, it’s your job to git it,” Hoss said, prodding his little brother forward. Joe gulped and went visibly whiter, but Hoss pretended not to notice.

   “Or are you ‘fraid?” The chubby twelve-year-old taunted his sibling.

   I’m not afraid,” Little Joe defied the accusation as he squared his shoulders and proceeded to walk…into the cornfield.

   The cornstalks stood deathly still, not a crow was seen nor a whisper of wind stirred its golden leaves or the plump husks, not a sound shattered the silence…except for that of Little Joe’s ragged breathing and the shuffling of his feet over the furrowed ground. All the little boy could see was a maize of cornstalks. And his ball just another twelve feet ahead where it rested at the base of a particularly large one. With a burst of speed, he ran and grabbed the ball.

   “Caw! Caw-caw!” Little Joe gave a startled gasp as he spun to the right, his eyes wide. A large crow perched on a husk of corn leveled with the boy’s curly head.

   “Go away! I’m not afraid of you, dumb bird!” Little Joe yelled at the carrion in his fright. But where did the crow come from? When he started walking into the maize of cornstalks, there wasn’t a crow to be seen. That crow seemed to appear from nowhere.

   Little Joe looked around him and felt his heart plummet into his stomach. There was not just one, no, every single cornstalk had at least one crow inhabiting it. With silent stealth the flock had flown in and they were here. Each one had their obsidian beady eyes on Little Joe. They had him surrounded. The youngster took a step back from the one that sat defiantly before his face. But as he did, the carrion predator gave another harsh caw as it suddenly left its perch and flew at Little Joe’s face, then it soared upward but not before its extended claws left a bloody scratch on the boy’s forehead.

   “Ow!” Little Joe screamed as he ran as fast as his legs would carry him from the cornfield. He ran as if the hounds of hell were chasing him, or was it the enormous murder of crows? The boy would swear that he heard the feathered fluttering of their wings as they chased him. They might’ve been. He even imagined that he heard heavy breathing behind him. That stale stinking breath inhaling and exhaling on the back of his neck, was that the crows swooping down on him? But Little Joe never looked back to know for sure. He just kept on running…until he ran right into Hoss. On impact, the seven-year-old fell down as if he ran into a tree and not his brother.

   “Little Joe, are you alright? What happened?” Hoss asked, clearly alarmed at his kid brother’s frazzled state. I never should’ve joshed him as I did.

   Then, upon looking closely, Hoss saw blood trickle down his forehead. “Hey Joe, you’re bleeding…”

   “The crows…” Little Joe stammered breathlessly.

   “What crows? There’s none there,” Hoss said, concerned at his brother’s state. Joe looked back and he saw…nothing. The crows had disappeared. But they were there? Weren’t they?

   “Come on, Shortshanks. We’ll be late for supper. Adam’ll fix that cut for ya,” he said as he put his arm around his little brother’s shoulders and together they walked back to the Ranch.

~~2~~

   “Ow, that hurts,” Little Joe protested as his eldest brother, seventeen-year-old Adam, administered the antiseptic to the cut on his head.

   “Well, quit your squirming. This will be over a lot faster if you would just hold still,” Adam said impatiently while continuing to dab the ointment to his kid brother’s forehead.

   “Now, you say a crow attacked you?” Their father, Ben Cartwright, asked incredulously.

   “It sure did!” Little Joe stuck to his story even though he knew that his Pa was having a hard time believing him. Ben looked from Little Joe to Hoss.

   “And you didn’t see it happen?” Ben asked Hoss.

   “No, I didn’t see it…this time. But I did see crows in that cornfield a few days ago,” Hoss answered, a little distracted by his growling stomach. Dinner had been postponed while Adam tended to Little Joe’s cut.

   “I’ve noticed them too, Pa. The fields are nearly barren because of them,” Adam said as he placed a padded bandage on his little brother’s head. “There. You’ll be alright, but another inch down and that crow would’ve taken out your eye.”

  “I’ve never known crows to act like this, but something must be done.” Ben was clearly troubled. Not so much over the nearly barren field, but now they were attacking people. His heart clinched at the thought of his youngest son almost losing an eye. If it happens again, it could be worse. No, it must not be allowed to happen again. Not to Little Joe, not to anyone!

   “And soon. Before bad birds make dinner of us,” Hop Sing said as he placed the roast beef on the table before returning to the kitchen for the mashed potatoes and gravy.

   “We’re riding into Virginia City tomorrow for supplies. I’ll talk to Mr. Bryor at the General Store about the crows and see if he has a suggestion,” Ben said as he and his somber-looking sons took their places at the dining table.

~~3~~

   The sun, once the sultry seducer of Summer and her perennial fans, was to Autumn a friend as he broke through the steel grey clouds with the dozy languidness of his golden ore. It was on such an afternoon that the Cartwrights arrived home from their visit to the brash and brazen lady known as Virginia City.

   The gravel crunched like chicken bones beneath the wheels as the wagon came to a stop in front of the ranch. Ben got out then his sons, with Adam lifting Little Joe to the ground. All three went to the back of the wagon and stared at their ‘passenger’.

   “Well boys, let’s get it out,” Ben said, coming around after he tied up the reins.

   He had told Mr. Bryor at the General Store about the crows savaging their fields until it was reduced to a destitute wasteland. But most of all, Ben told Mr. Bryor about the crows’ attack on Little Joe. The ancient storekeeper listened, his face somber and grave, then he led Ben and his sons to a locked room at the back of the store.

   “I have something that I believe will be the answer to your problem,” he had said as he unlocked the door and it creaked open.

   Air, musty and stale from being closed up in that dirty room for so long, crept out. If air could be said to creep, then the air from that back room certainly did. And it crawled too, along with the spiders once their shut-away darkness was disturbed by the creaking door.

   Mr. Bryor had entered with a lantern and motioned in the Cartwrights. “Here it is. The answer to your problem,” he said as he held up the lantern to a large shape on a wooden chair. With the cast of the lantern light on it, the Cartwrights could see that it was …a headless body. Little Joe gulped noisily.

   Ben and Adam peered at it in the dimly lit room, neither one knowing what to make of it. Hoss stood back; he was trying to be brave even as he brushed off a giant cockroach that had crawled from the wall onto his shoulder. Little Joe stood back too, a good distance from the headless body on the chair…and away from the grimy walls. He was no fool.

   So, Ben and his sons brought this ‘headless body’ home. It was, as Mr. Bryor insisted, the answer to their problem. Actually, it was a scarecrow.

   Blue corduroy pants were stuffed with straw along the wooden beams that gave the raggedy creation its humanlike shape. It was wearing a red plaid shirt with straw sticking through the ends of the sleeves, as well as through the many holes in the shirt and pants. Mr. Bryor didn’t remember how the scarecrow lost its head, but he told the boys what he used for a substitute.

   And so, after the scarecrow was staked into the middle of the cornfield, Adam came back carrying the substitute for a head: a freshly carved jack-o-lantern.

   “Do ya think that will really work?” Hoss asked doubtfully as Adam fastened the pumpkin head to the vertical pole that ran the length of the six-foot scarecrow and poked out of the top…as if waiting for a head. Once he inserted the visible end of the pole through the hole he made into the bottom of the jack-o-lantern, he stood back to see if his creation needed any more adjustments. It didn’t.

   “If it doesn’t, then I don’t know what will,” he said as he inspected his handwork. “What do you think, Little Joe?”

   “It looks scary enough to me,” Joe answered.

   “I think so too. Those crows don’t stand a chance,” Adam reassured his kid brother. Then he looked at the deepening twilight sky.

   “We better get back. Pa will have the fire going for us,” Adam said as he watched Hoss and Little Joe run ahead of him, each racing the other back to the ranch.

   Adam took only a few strides when he suddenly stopped. What was that noise? Thinking it was the wind ruffling through the cornfield – along with the eerie atmosphere that rattled his mindful calm for a moment – Adam continued walking. Then abruptly stopped again.

   There it is again. Was that…giggling? Scarecrows don’t giggle…neither does the wind and certainly not a cornfield. Was someone out there hiding so they could play a Halloween trick on him?

   “Hello!” Adam called. “Who’s there?” He felt the hair stand up on his arms when he heard the giggling again. Who would be out in a cornfield with the twilight leaning heavy in the sky?

   Adam turned away, determined not to let whoever was out there get to him with their juvenile games. He continued to walk back to the ranch, his strides long and purposeful. Even when the girlish giggle turned into a low raspy cackle, Adam didn’t look back.

   But if he had…Adam would’ve seen something he would not soon forget. If he had stopped and looked back at the scarecrow…he would’ve seen a luminous green light shine from the eye-holes that he carved in its pumpkin head. He would’ve seen its mouthful of jagged pumpkin teeth glinting sharp as if they were real teeth.

   But Adam didn’t stop to look back. Even when the eerie cackling grew louder and more maniacal, he didn’t look back. He just kept on walking at a steady pace to the ranch. Then just as calmly, Adam closed the door behind him.

~~4~~

   The moon was not seen that night as it was coffined in darkness brought about by the clouds that obscured her celestial light. The wind clamored like a lost soul about the sleeping Ponderosa ranch, seeking a crevice so it may enter and thereby chilling the homey warmth within. Finding none, next it rattled seventeen-year-old Adam’s window as the youth slept, blessedly unaware when the wind started scratching at his windowpane in the manner of bony fingers until finally…it creaked open…oh so slowly. The invading wind entered, softly moaning over Adam’s desk where laid an assortment of books and papers and with its invisible phantom fingers it intentionally creased and crumpled the young man’s papers into fantastic forms, even shredding a few so they would resemble a death shroud.

   If only Adam was awake to see them, surely fear would pierce his heart. But he wasn’t. Though he slept, it wasn’t an easy sleep that held him in its thrall. No, that night his slumbers were the playground of a nightmare.

   He walked through the night, naked, to where he was going naked as the witching hour boomed its silent toll through him Adam couldn’t say. He only knew that he had to, as if he were being summoned. The trees reached out with their skeletal limbs, but Adam paid them no mind, nor to the shadows that wreathed darkly over him as they tried to chill his blood. But they were of no consequence. He didn’t shiver, he didn’t shake.

   “Please help me,” a disembodied girl’s voice cried.

   “Where are you?” Adam called back as he stopped walking, his bright hazel eyes searching the darkness. But all he could see was a forest of shadows. Then he heard muffled weeping. The girl’s obvious misery tore at his heart.

   “Please…help me. I’m over here,” the girl’s voice ghosted over to Adam from its mysterious origin.

   “Where are you? Keep on calling! I’m coming,” Adam called, his voice echoing behind him as he started walking, then quickened his pace to a run.

   He came to a giant puddle in a clearing, the water frozen over in a transparent sheet of ice. He went over to it and kneeling down, he looked at the icy mirror.

   There, beneath the icy puddle was the girl. Her chestnut hair hung down in soaking strands about her deathly pale face, her eyes were blinded by tears and when she saw Adam on the other side of the ice looking at her as if through a mirror with concern etched on his handsome face, she started pummeling her prison with her fists.

   “I can’t get out,” she wailed. “Please help me. It won’t let me go.”

   “Who won’t? Who has you? Hold on…” Adam called to the soaking wet girl as he banged his fist into the ice. But his mortal strength was no match against the supernatural strength of the ice and he didn’t even make a dent in it.

   Evil cackling was heard from beneath the ice. The girl heard it too and she grew more frantic. There was nothing Adam could do but continue to pummel the unbreakable ice, even as a shadow started to form behind the girl…Adam didn’t give up.

   “Stay away from her!” He called vehemently. But his efforts were only met with more maniacal laughter. Then before his eyes, Adam watched helplessly as the pumpkin-headed scarecrow appeared behind the weeping girl and with one swipe of its deadly sickle it grabbed the girl by the throat and dragged her down into the fathomless depths beneath the icy puddle. The girl’s screams echoed behind her as they both disappeared from sight.

   “NO!” Adam called, then he…

   “Adam, wake up! Wake up!” Adam was startled awake by Hoss shaking him.

   “What the…” Adam blurted, breathless and disoriented for a moment as his consciousness struggled to emerge from the throes of the nightmare.

   “You was having a nightmare,” Hoss said as he stood beside Adam’s bed in his nightshirt.

   “You sure were,” Little Joe piped up as he came into his eldest brother’s bedroom.

   We heard ya calling all th’ way down the hall. It must’ve been some dream you was having,” Hoss observed.

   “I’ve never had one like it before,” Adam mumbled, wiping his hand at the perspiration that beaded his brow.

   Suddenly, there was a gigantic crash as the pumpkin-headed scarecrow hacked its way through the wall into Adam’s bedroom with its sharp sickle, sending a shower of wooden splinters onto his bed.

   Hoss and Little Joe were scared dumb, then with a malignant grin at Adam the scarecrow gave a deadly swipe of its crescent-shaped sickle at Hoss, impaling the rotund twelve-year-old boy before he even had the chance to scream. Blood gurgled out of his mouth as he fell; next the scarecrow turned his bloodstained sickle onto Little Joe. Before Adam’s eyes, his kid brother was skewered and laid next to Hoss in a pool of his own blood.

   “NO!!!” Adam screamed in horror…

   Then, just as quickly as it started, Adam was wrenched from the clutches of his second nightmare with a jerk.

   “Oh God! He breathed heavily as he sat up in bed. “A nightmare within a nightmare…”

   Adam was unusually quiet the next day. Pa had asked him what was bothering him and Adam knew that he was concerned and would want to help anyway he could. As would his brothers. Adam admitted to having bad dreams, but there was no way he would disclose the horrific events that were happening in those nightmares, especially to Hoss and Little Joe. Nor would he disclose the fact that he was having nightmares every single night since they erected that darn scarecrow out in the cornfield. A stampede of crazed cattle couldn’t get Adam to admit that every night they were getting worse too. More disturbing and more bloody.

   It wasn’t the same nightmare either, but often a gruesome variation. The two constant elements that every nightmare had were: one, the girl. She was always there, calling to Adam to help her. And two, the pumpkin-headed scarecrow. It was always there, wielding its deadly sickle at Adam as he fought to save the innocent girl. But his efforts were always futile and the scarecrow would just laugh maniacally at him. That evil malicious laughter, it made Adam’s skin crawl to remember it.

~~5~~

   It was just one week before Halloween and Hoss was having his own disturbing observances about the scarecrow. Namely, its location in the cornfield…or to be more precise, its refusal to remain in one place. Hoss first noticed it when he and Little Joe were walking home from school.

   “Hey, L’il Joe, that there scarecrow…ah, it’s facing the wrong way,” Hoss said, not quite certain what he was seeing.

   “Ah, I don’t know. What do you mean?” Little Joe answered offhandedly, wary of approaching the subject. Since the day of his attack by the crows – only a week ago – he gave the cornfield a wide breadth. He still felt an unexplainable foreboding about it and had the sense of something sinister lurking in the maize of swaying cornstalks. The feeling hadn’t dissipated with the healing of the gash on his forehead either. Instead, it intensified with each passing day. The scarecrow…well, Little Joe felt the same way about it. Though, he had to admit, he hadn’t seen any crows in the cornfield since the scarecrow was situated in the center of it like some soulless sentinel, but still Little Joe felt an evil presence out there and the scarecrow…it was following him…with its eyes. Not in the manner that Hoss was now insinuating. No, Little Joe didn’t like that idea at all.

   “Well, Adam staked it in the ground facing west…and now it’s facing south…towards the ranch. And its smile has changed. It looks more…” Hoss tried to explain, but was at a loss of words to articulate the ominous feelings he was experiencing.

   “It looks like it’s snarling,” Little Joe said, taking a step back as if to distance himself from its sinister presence.

   “Yeah, it does…but why is it facing towards the ranch now?” Hoss said, clearly disturbed. He brought the matter up to Pa at dinner that night.

   “You’re right Hoss. Adam staked the scarecrow facing west. And now it’s facing south toward the ranch, you say?” Ben Cartwright tried to soothe Hoss’ trepidation as he tried to think of a rational explanation. His middle son had always been more gullible than Adam, even more so than Little Joe, and his gullibility had always made him an easy target for others to play jokes on him. Maybe that was it.

   “Perhaps one of the ranch hands moved it as a Halloween joke?” Ben said reasonably. “Although most of our ranch hands are busy with roundup in the northern fields…or at least they should be. I can’t imagine who would be irresponsible enough to stay behind and play such a prank on you, Hoss.” Ben was a little perturbed at this thought.

   “Yeah…” Hoss muttered, unsettled, but he turned his attention back to pouring more gravy onto his mashed potatoes.

   “Well, at least there aren’t any crows around now,” Little Joe said, trying to cheer up the dinner conversation.

   “You’re right, Little Joe. At least there are no crows around. That’s one good thing,” Ben said heartily as he reached over and tousled the boy’s head of chestnut curls.

   Adam remained quiet during this exchange at the dinner table, but in his inner being he knew that Hoss was right. The scarecrow had moved from its original position. Not wishing to heighten his brothers’ fears, nor to add more drama to an already tense situation, Adam remained silent. About his own observations of the pumpkin-headed scarecrow’s roving over the Ponderosa and his own nightmare encounters with it too.

   But the next day, the scarecrow had moved again! Its ramblings had taken it right out of the middle of the cornfield and now it was standing on the border of it. It was still facing south in the direction of the ranch, but thirty feet closer to it. Its sneer had turned into a menacing scowl.

   Upon seeing it, Hoss and Little Joe just ran inside the ranch. Hoss slammed the door behind them and Little Joe jumped on the sofa as he pulled the afghan over his head.

   The following day, the scarecrow had moved to the corral gate just beside the barn. Hoss and Little Joe looked at it, at the gleeful snarl on its jack-o-lantern face and felt their stomachs plummet to their feet. What could they do against a scarecrow that refused to remain stationary?

   By the next morning, it was even closer as it stood by the hitching post, nearly within spitting distance of the front porch. The scarecrow’s pumpkin-carved face was contorted in a ferocious snarl. It was enough to chill the blood of the heartiest cowboy.

   Hoss and Little Joe could feel the sharp prick of ice formulating in their veins with each passing day. Adam was just as disturbed by the scarecrow’s tendency to wander about and its obvious advances toward the ranch. As the eldest brighter, he put on a brave front so as not to inflame the fears of his younger siblings with his own nightmare battles concerning the homicidal scarecrow.

   Instead, Adam just carried it back to the cornfield. Once, he’d swear that the scarecrow had bit him. He had carried it under his left arm and as he released it so he could stake it back in the ground – for the third time – he felt a sharp stabbing pain. He looked down and his shirt sleeve was torn open, his forearm had deep teeth marks in it and was dripping blood. Adam’s head whipped up to look at the scarecrow in disbelief and the scarecrow just looked back at him defiantly.

   “Whoever you are, stay away from my family!” he yelled vehemently at it before stalking out of the maize. By the next morning though, the scarecrow was back to its ramblings again.

   But it was the day before Halloween that terror reached its climatic moment. There was a dance being held at the Town Hall in Virginia City that the Cartwrights were planning to attend that evening. Adam had been giving Hoss dancing lessons out in the barn for the past few weeks in anticipation of the big harvest dance. And now here it was. He was looking forward to surprising Bessie Lou with his new dance moves. He knew she would be expecting to be his partner, but Hoss was secretly hoping that Cameo would be there. If she was, he just hoped that he would have the courage to ask her to dance.

   Little Joe just looked on at these “dance preparations” in revulsion. Yuck, what did Adam and Hoss see in girls anyway? They smelled funny and were always afraid of getting dirty. At seven years old, Little Joe was not interested in girls. His Pa would just chuckle and say “your time will come, Joseph.” Little Joe would just roll his eyes.

   Hoss had his clean white shirt on and his hair was slicked back really nice. Now, he just had to tie his blasted black ribbon tie. He didn’t know how Adam managed to tie his so effortlessly. Big brother made it look so easy, but Hoss was all thumbs. He couldn’t get the knack of it.

   “Hop Sing, where’s Pa? I need help with this here tie,” Hoss asked in his growing frustration over the necessary dresswear.

   “Honorable father in barn. Check on horses,” Hop Sing answered as he placed a tray of Halloween gingerbread cookies on the dining table. Little Joe was going to stay home and help Hop Sing ice the cookies with orange and black frosting. He’d choose cookies over girls any day. Especially eating them. The cookies that is, not the girls!

   Hoss went over to the window that overlooked the front yard and the barn as he searched for Pa. “I don’t see him,” he said as he turned back to the living room for a moment, then he looked out the window again.

   “AAARGH!” Hoss screamed. There, at the window was the pumpkin-headed scarecrow! Eerie green light glowed from its carved eye sockets and its smile was a slash of cruelty across its jack-o-lantern face. It smiled malevolent and wide to show off its mouthful of pumpkin teeth, each tooth had been sharpened to a deadly point…not by Adam, surely…the scarecrow must’ve sharpened its own teeth. Each one glinted with brutal force and was ready to tear flesh from bone. Ready to kill. As evidenced by the bloodied sooty-black feathers around its cruel mouth. Crow feathers?! Though Hoss was scared out of his wits, he noticed the feathers sticking to its terrible teeth and around his wide jagged mouth with the dried blood. Was that why they hadn’t seen any crows around the cornfield? Was the scarecrow eating the crows? Dad burnit! It was! Talk about being an overachiever at your job!

   Then before Hoss could scramble away from the window, the scarecrow grabbed Hoss by his black ribbon tie and pulled it tighter about his neck.

   “Aaargh!” Hoss managed to strangle out another cry. “…Can’t breathe…help.” His voice was just a hoarse gasp as his face started to turn plum-purple.

   “Adam, Pa, help! Come here! Hoss is being strangled!” Little Joe screamed, black and orange frosting smeared around his mouth. Much better than crow feathers!

   Just as Adam came barreling down the stairs and Pa barged through the front door, Hop Sing busted from the kitchen with a meat cleaver in his right hand and raised it in the air.

   “Bad scarecrow leave Mistah Hoss alone!” He screamed as he brought down the meat cleaver on the scarecrow’s straw hand. The one that had been strangling Hoss with his own tie. Hop Sing severed the hand with one gigantic murderous chop, then in a frenzy, peppered with many Chinese curse words, he exhibited his expertise with the meat cleaver as he proceeded to chop up the hand into bite-sized hors d’oeuvres. Forced to let go of its prey, the scarecrow with a look of pure hatred contorting its diabolical face, faded into the shadows.

   Released, Hoss gulped in some much-needed breaths of air. Then the chubby twelve-year-old was surrounded by his Pa, Adam, Little Joe, and Hop Sing. Surrounded by the love of his family, there was no better place to be. Especially after such a harrowing near-death experience.

   “Hoss, are you alright?” Ben asked his middle son.

   “Yes ‘em, Pa. Thankie Hop Sing,” Hoss said as the family watched his color return to normal.

   “Kill bad scarecrow before kill you all,” Hop Sing said sternly, then he returned to the kitchen. The family looked back at the window, but the homicidal scarecrow had disappeared! They weren’t surprised.

   “Yes, something must be done,” Ben said grimly. “Every day it gets worse…”

   “As it gets closer to Halloween…which is tomorrow night. I believe Halloween is when its power will peak. That’s when we must confront it and bring an end to this horror story,” Adam said, never more serious.

   Somewhere out in the camouflage of dark slithering shadows, a lonely wolf howled. And the wandering pumpkin-headed scarecrow cackled.

~~6~~

   “Adam, help me!” The girl screamed. So began another nightmare, but she wasn’t imprisoned in an icy puddle this time. She was imprisoned in a tree, a weeping willow, calling for Adam to help her.

   “Where are you?” he would call. He was always trying to rescue the girl…always trying to find her before the scarecrow did.

   “I’m here,” the girl’s voice quivered like Autumn’s first offering of leaves being led astray by the wind. She was calling to Adam from her prison inside the tree.

   Before Adam could touch her bark and find a way to free the girl, the scarecrow showed up. He shoved Adam aside and smiled his evil smile at him as he raised the axe like an executioner and struck the tree.

   The girl screamed and the tree bled. But it didn’t bleed blood as us humans had in our veins, no, it bled a golden-brown sap. It bled amber. Tree blood. With each strike of the axe, amber poured from the wound in the trunk and the girl screamed. And the scarecrow just laughed at Adam’s futile efforts to save the poor girl.

   As always, Adam was wrenched from his nightmare as if someone was roughly shaking him. He threw off his bed covers, ran his fingers through his disheveled black hair as he got up and went to his window. He hadn’t intended to fall asleep when he entered his bedroom, but a strange heavy druggedness overcame him and before he knew it, he was asleep. And the nightmare began.

   Adam stood at the window of his upstairs bedroom looking out at the night. The sun had extinguished his fire on the western horizon until all that was left of it was a red disc that was soon swallowed up by the devouring darkness. Now the moon reigned from her nocturnal throne this Halloween night. She was full and round, but her silvery face looked like it had been splattered with blood…as if some coven of dark deities on high had held a celestial sacrifice and the moon was sitting too close to their slaughter. So, now her argent visage was blemished with blood. Her luminous light soiled, the moon actually looked shocked, even horror-stricken.

   But what light there was spilled down in unfurling fingers of grey exhaust that captured the ground in a vaporous orgy of dew and frost and moonshine. It looked unnatural and eerie…but beautiful at the same time. This was quite a beginning to this Halloween night and Adam wondered how it would end.

   He watched as his window clouded over until it was dull steel…then dingy pewter…then silver decaying into an impenetrable fog. What was happening? Suddenly, she was there. The girl.

   “Adam, please help me,” she whispered as she materialized in the glass. She was deathly pale and her eyes that Adam once thought to be silvery grey, were actually golden. Her long nut-brown hair still had the appearance of being soaking wet but it framed her oval face like a mirror. The girl’s ethereal loveliness pierced Adam’s heart.

   “How can I help you?” Adam asked urgently, placing his hand on the window. The ghostly girl placed her vaporous one on the other side of the glass. Her phantom hand lining up against the outline of Adam’s flesh-and-blood hand. Oh, if only they could touch!

   “The scarecrow…you must kill the scarecrow. For a hundred years it has held my soul a prisoner,” the ghost cried.

    “How can I kill it?” Adam asked the weeping spectre.

   “Only one, brave and pure of heart, can kill the scarecrow, thus freeing me.”

   “Am I such a one,” Adam asked softly.

   “I believe you are.” Her voice was as ethereal as mist, as fine as a wisp of whimsy, but Adam heard it just as clearly as the tinkling of church bells.

   “Who are you?” Adam asked the sad ghostly girl who haunted his dreams. There was a heartbeat’s pause, then he heard it.

   “Amber.” Her voice was just a whisper, but it echoed behind her as she faded from the window. Her golden eyes were the last to vaporize, lingering for a moment longer while they breasted the dark breathing space that existed between the spirit world and the mortal world before they too, faded away with the echo of her name.

   Adam remained in the silvery silence, waiting. The ghost didn’t return. Alone he knew himself to be, but he could still feel Amber’s presence swimming around him. When he closed his eyes, he could see her. A lovely young girl as gentle as the fawns she would befriend, she was happy outside in the nature she loved. Surrounded by nature and the animals, she felt accepted and loved. But at home with her parents, she felt incredibly sad and vulnerable. Rejected. Adam could feel the sweet softness of her spirit surround him, as gentle as the most loving kiss, as serene as Spring’s first thaw when the brooks started gurgling, when the grass turns into a lush carpet of green and the snowdrops show their shy white faces above ground for the first time. That was Amber’s spirit. And Adam vowed to help her any way he could.

   As his window cleared of its otherworldly atmosphere, he looked out and saw an eerie green light emanating a short distance away. From the cornfield. The time had come.

~~7~~

   The ground, adorned in its embroidery of frosted lace, crunched a tempo beneath the Cartwrights’ boots as they walked across the field with Adam in the lead. Dried-up curls of decaying leaves brushed against them as they entered the maize. The stalwart Cartwright family were determined to put an end to the pumpkin-headed scarecrow’s reign of terror that night.

   Little Joe bumped into Hoss as the seven-year-old tripped over something on the ground. He breathed in sharply as he looked down. Ben shone the lantern on the object and the boy could see it was…

   “Aww, it’s just a fallen husk of corn. Nothing to fear, Shortshanks,” Hoss said.

   “I’m not afraid,” Little Joe said defensively.

   “Stay close to me, son,” Ben said as he pulled Little Joe in front of him. Then the trio hurried to catch up to Adam.

   He had stopped in front of the scarecrow. Ben and his two younger sons stopped beside Adam and the family looked at it. The pumpkin head with its empty eye sockets, the jagged row of teeth in its wide mouth, the old clothing stuffed with straw and there the scarecrow hung with a long pole shoved up its backside. It looked just like any old scarecrow. But the Cartwrights knew there was nothing ordinary and certainly nothing harmless about this scarecrow. They could feel the evil radiating off of it in wave after suffocating wave.

   Suddenly, the eye sockets were no longer empty. They were alive with an unnatural green light that glowed bright before it sparked and turned menacingly red. Then it cackled, a low rumble that slowly grew louder and more maniacal. But in between the evil cackles, there could be heard the girl crying.

   “Free Amber now!” Adam seethed as he stood a foot away from the scarecrow.

   “Never!” It laughed and leered.

   “Help me, Adam,” the spectre cried again.

   “She’s mine!” The evil entity sneered. The ghostly girl’s sobs turned into screams. How it wrenched at Adam’s heart.

   “Don’t hurt her! Let her go,” Adam yelled his vehemence at the stuffed caricature of a person.

   For an answer, the scarecrow regurgitated an object and spat it out at Adam. It landed at his feet with a sickening thud. It was a ball of bones and black feathers stuck together with a dark red gelatinous fluid. Blood.

   “Eww,” Little Joe expressed his disgust. “What is it?”

   “It looks like…the remains of a crow,” Hoss said as he scrutinized the object, then stood back from it, repulsed.

   “The crows were just an appetizer, but you’ll be the main course!” The scarecrow bellowed in a deep gravelly voice as a scarlet flash lit up its blackened eye sockets. Its smile was cruel and merciless. Utterly inhuman. “Since you care so much for the girl you can join her. She seems to want your company…and I’m always hungry for more souls to feed my harvest. Hmmm ymmm.”

   “No!” The ghost screamed from her prison inside the monstrous scarecrow.

   “You won’t harm another innocent soul. I’ll see to it! One way or another, your power ends tonight and Amber will be free,” Adam said with a strength stronger than steel behind his words.

   Just then, the full moon overcame her shyness and sailed out from behind her curtain of clouds. Her incandescent light was so lustrous that it cleansed her face of the bloody blemish she had worn earlier. Now unencumbered, her light shone. Brighter. Fiercer. Rapturously radiant, her moonshine illuminated an object below. The sickle.

   Adam saw the crescent-shaped sickle beside the scarecrow, partly hidden by the towering cornstalks. Without wasting another minute, he grabbed the sickle. Holding it with both hands, he raised it high.

   “No! That’s mine!” The scarecrow raged.

   “Not anymore!” Adam yelled fiercely, then with a tremendous stroke, he brought the sickle home to rest right into the scarecrow’s torso. The shirt tore open and Adam disemboweled the beast of its straw.

   “No!” The scarecrow howled in fury and disbelief as it watched its entrails of straw tumble onto the hardened ground. The stench of death and decay rose up from the pungent pile.

   Then, with the next stroke, more powerful than a pendulum drawing nearer to decapitate its victim, Adam struck off the scarecrow’s pumpkin-head. It fell on the straw and Adam hacked it to bits with the sickle until its curved blade was covered in the pumpkin’s guts and the straw on the ground was strewn with the head’s putrefying pulpy mash. Finally, the scarecrow was slayed. Adam dropped the sickle next to it and stepped back.

   Free at last, a silvery diaphanous mist rose up from the diabolical scarecrow’s dismembered corpse. It rose up with the sheerest sound of an exhaled breath. The Cartwrights watched as the mist swirled about in the chilly Autumn air, its ethereal essence wreathing about each family member until it came to Adam…and there it stayed, hovering before him.

   “Amber,” he whispered as the formless mist started to swirl before him and he watched as it slowly took on the form of the ghost girl from his dreams…only this time her face wasn’t filled with fear and horror. Instead, the ghost girl was filled with peace and gratitude…and love. Most of all, love. Adam thought she had never looked more beautiful. Her form was a glowing gossamer, as refined as a diaphanous dream, she shone so bright, she radiated otherworldly warmth. This was Amber in her purest essence, as she was meant to be.

   Even as a young man of seventeen years, Adam was never at a loss for words – until now. In the presence of Amber, so awed was he by this ghostly encounter that for once Adam didn’t know what to say. But he didn’t have to say anything. His actions of fighting for her freedom and thus slaying the scarecrow that had been keeping her soul a prisoner spoke louder than mere words ever could.

   No one had ever performed such a selfless act for her while she was living, she had never felt such love for her before now. Yet Amber was also sad that she had to wait until after her death to find a man who would act out of love for her.

   Holding that love and gratitude within her, Amber leaned forward until her face was level with Adam’s…then leaning forward a bit more, she pressed her ghostly lips to Adam’s living lips. The ghost and mortal shared a kiss that each would cherish for a lifetime and an afterlife time.

   For a minute or two, their souls mingled in that kiss. Adam could feel a sizzling warmth on his lips from Amber’s…he felt like he was sipping her love. A love so purely given, it pricked him with its intensity. Slowly – and reluctantly – they parted and the kiss ended. Then with a smile, Amber vaporized into a sparkly mist that ascended into the star-smitten night sky.

   “Thank-you, Adam…” the words were a sigh that breathed around him. Then, just as the last of Amber’s sparkly essence disappeared, a paper fluttered down and landed in Adam’s hands. He unfurled the page. It was a poem.

   “What is it son?” Ben asked, concerned when he saw Adam’s eyes grow misty as he perused the page.

   “Amber’s story,” he said, his voice thick with emotion.

   “Why don’t you read it,” Ben said gently. And so, Adam did.

A child of nature, to the animals I was their friend,

I had visions and saw what others couldn’t comprehend,

I was a simple maid except for these prophecies I foresaw,

My parents were superstitious and believed I spawned from the dark,

Belonging not to the light I loved, a strange child, I must be an outlaw star,

They blamed me for the drought that blighted the land so far.

I wished to be loved but knew I was feared instead,

Too often my parents told me they wished I was dead,

I found my escape in books and the poetry I wrote,

Wishing to be somewhere else in my fantasies I did float,

I learned not to speak of my unquiet life of visions,

But my father knew I still had them, he made a decision

To return me to the dark forces, in them he believed,

When I was sixteen, my fate was sealed on All Hallows Eve,

He took me out to the field and skewered me alive,

My blood flowed deep, my screams of pain were no lie,

He tied my dying body in the field, I was his scarecrow,

my blood fed the harvest and the dark seed he sowed.

As I hung there, to the Mother Goddess I prayed,

I heard her speak to me that my rescue must be delayed

Until one brave and pure of heart was found

And moved by love he fought for me, at last would I be unbound

From my father’s curse as the scarecrow falls slain,

Finally, my soul is free and whole and beautiful from the pain,

I can now cross over to where the butterflies imbibe,

On the other side of the Rainbow Bridge I will now reside.

Thank-you Adam…remember me in this here poem…

It is all I own.

   “I will. Goodbye Amber. You’re free now. I will always remember you…always,” Adam said softly, even forlornly, folding up the paper and carefully placing it in his breast pocket. The one over his heart. His words, spoken so tenderly and heartfelt, were carried on the wind, twirling upwards until the wind with a gasp, released them into the spirit world.

   Adam thought he heard joyful laughter and in his mind’s eye he had a glimpse of Amber no longer deathly pale but with a youthful glow to her peaches-and-cream skin; her long hair no longer soaking wet with tears but now rippling behind her; she wore a frock of whimsical white as she ran across a bridge of rainbow light. There, on the other side, she was greeted by those souls she loved and who loved her. Finally reunited, Adam saw her run in a sunlit forest surrounded by songbirds, fawns, bunnies, butterflies…all of her animal kin she loved and who loved her back. At last, Amber was happy and free.

   Adam smiled at the vision and he didn’t try to stop the single tear that trickled down his cheek. He was happy for Amber but at the same time…sad for what he lost. His beautiful ghost girl.

   “Phew! I’m glad this here Halloween night is over,” Hoss exclaimed in relief. “One thing confuses me though…”

   “What’s that, son?” Ben asked as he put his left arm around Hoss. Little Joe was under his right as they walked back to the ranch.

   “Why is it that Little Joe gets attacked by a murder of crows, I nearly get strangled to death by a homicidal scarecrow…but the only thing that happened to Adam is that he gets kissed?”

   “It’s just one of those unexplained mysteries of life,” Ben chuckled.

   Adam remained silent as he walked behind his father and brothers, content to remain in the solitude of his own thoughts. Some things were too precious to talk about and this was one of them. That ghostly kiss – steeped as it was in sweetness and a purity of spirit – was the most loving kiss that Adam had ever known.

The End

Author’s Note: This is my very first Halloween horror story.

Tags:  ghost, Halloween, Horror, Scarecrow