"Mom!" Sophie cries, wrapping her arms around Mom's middle and clinging to her.
The wind is faster and louder, full of screams and panic as the cornfield burns.
We are about to be trapped.
Sadie tears our sister from mom, wrapping her in her arms and hefting her onto her hip. And then, she runs.
I have half a mind to run after them, but I'd rather them escape. Maybe if I give them a lead, I can try to escape after.
I reach for Mom, preparing to pull her behind me. But she seems stuck to the ground, her feet unable to move, and she doesn’t look at me. Her gaze is fixed on the scarecrows behind the stage.
“John?” Her voice trembles, and Gianna smirks at whatever my mother sees. When I turn my attention to the scarecrows, I know it in my gut.
I don’t know how she does it, but Gianna rises into the air; her feet lift off the fucking ground, but I can’t be properly horrified by that because she pulls the hood off the first Scarecrow.
A head of jet-black hair falls forward onto the chest of whoever’s strung up there, and I know immediately it’s Hector. I can’t see much of his face, but it’s pretty clear he’s dead by the gaping hole on the top of his skull and the corn skewers shoved into his ears.
I stare transfixed, horrified, and unable to move as Gianna moves to the next. The hood reveals Uriah, whose head doesn’t fall forward this time. Gianna holds him by the throat, letting us see her handiwork… the thick black thread crossing his lips, forming a series of three X’s… one in each corner of his mouth, and one in the center. Dried blood crusts on his chin and throat,and I can’t quite tell what killed him. I don’t get a chance to think about it, either, because she moves to the next victim.
I know it’s Owen before she ever pulls the hood off his head. I didn’t expect that she was capable of such savagery, though.
Where Owen’s eyes once were, now all that greets me is two large, empty sockets.
I thought seeing the inside of my friend’s skull was bad, but that wasn’t as remotely horrible as this. This is fucking…
Faintness sweeps through me, and I think I sway a little. Mom grabs hold of my arm, but I don’t know if it’s to try and keep herself from falling or me.
“I’m glad you’re here for this, Christine. It’s so… poetic.” Gianna laughs. “Do you get it?”
Mom blinks, but she’s unable to take her eyes off the last scarecrow, the one whose hood is still fixed in place… the one who is dressed in the sheriff’s uniform my father was wearing earlier today.
“Hear no evil…” Gianna prompts, gesturing for mom to continue.
The man who lit the match on the cornfield appeared over Mom’s shoulder in a single instance, and I watch my mom’s eyes close in resigned acceptance as he places a hand over her mouth.
“Speak no evil.” He says, answering for her.
“See no evil.” Gianna laughs coldly, ripping the hood off the last figure… my father.
It’s him, but something is wrong. His face is slack, and his neck is stretched too far; it doesn’t fit his body. Perhaps because, as she illustrates a moment later, it’s no longer attached.
The painted man backs away from my mom, telling her, “Think fast,” as Gianna lifts his head off the stake and tosses it through the air, right at my mother.
She doesn’t have a chance to do anything but catch it or get hit by it, and she doesn’t even realize what it is until she catches my father’s decapitated head in her hands.
I watch in horror as confusion and shock turn to disgust as she realizes she’s holding her husband’s head… and then grief, outrage, and pain a moment later when she turns it entirely and gets a look at his face.
It’s droopier than it was when I left him in the field earlier, and his eyes are flat and dull, lifeless.
Mom screams, and the noise is unlike anything I’ve ever heard. The closest I’ve ever come to hearing anything like that was last night, when Gianna realized what was going on.
I grip Mom by the upper arm, forcing her to drop my father’s head and let it roll to the ground. Her feet are clumsy, and I have to drag her to get her to move.
Gianna and her friend step in my path, barring our exit, but I don’t stop. I veer to the left, trying to dart past them.
It does nothing; they move in a strangely fluid sort of tandem, barring our exit once more.
They’re fucking ghosts, right? I didn’t think ghosts even existed, let alone that they could harm people, or touch them, or even be seen. But if they’re ghosts, they’re not real. And if I can’t go around them, I’ll just have to go through them.
