Chapter 6: The Cornfield God

Chapter 6: The Cornfield God

The world returned in muffled thuds. Through the thick, crimson fluid, Travis heard the crunch of heavy boots on the mud above, the low murmur of voices, and then, mercifully, the sounds receding. Silence pressed in, thick and absolute, broken only by the frantic drumming of his own heart against his ribs and the desperate burning in his lungs. His body screamed for air.

He held on for ten seconds more, then twenty. An eternity. Finally, when black spots began to swarm his vision, he pushed. The dead weight of Mrs. ClearField shifted with a grotesque sluggishness. They broke the surface with a collective, ragged gasp, sucking in the foul air.

Grace immediately began to retch, spitting out blood and bile, her body convulsing. Travis, treading in the macabre soup, pushed her towards the wall of the pit. "Climb," he ordered, his voice a choked rasp. "Grace, you have to climb. Now."

She looked at him, her face a mask of utter devastation. The long blonde hair she must have spent hours on every morning was a dripping, clotted ruin, plastered to her skull with the blood of strangers. The piercing green of her eyes was the only clean thing left of her.

"I can't," she sobbed, her voice hollow.

"Yes, you can." He found a foothold on a submerged corpse, the body shifting sickeningly under his weight. Ignoring the wave of nausea, he cupped his hands. "Put your foot here. I'll push you."

She did as she was told, a puppet moving on instinct. He shoved with all his might, the strain flaring white-hot agony through his injured knee. Her fingers scrabbled at the muddy lip of the pit, found purchase, and she hauled herself over the edge, collapsing onto the ground in a trembling, blood-soaked heap.

Now it was his turn. The slick, muddy walls offered no handholds. He tried to jump, to find purchase, but his braced leg buckled every time, sending searing pain up to his hip. Panic, cold and sharp, began to creep in. He was going to die here, drowned in a grave dug by monsters.

"Travis!" Grace's voice, thin but urgent, cut through his fear. She was leaning over the edge, her hand outstretched. "Take my hand!"

He reached up. Her grip was surprisingly strong, her fear giving way to a desperate, focused strength. He found a slight divot in the wall with his good leg and pushed, pulling with her, his muscles screaming. He flopped over the edge like a landed fish, gasping for breath on the solid ground, the mud and blood mingling beneath him.

For a moment, they just lay there, two ruined figures under a jaundiced sky. The barn was silent. The archers were gone. But they knew this wasn't over. They were still on enemy territory.

"We have to go," he panted, forcing himself to his knees. "Not back to the town. Through the corn." It was a terrible choice, running back into the place where the archers had hidden, but it was the only direction that led away from the farm.

Grace nodded, her face grim. They got to their feet, their clothes heavy and dripping, leaving a trail of bloody footprints in the mud. They plunged into the wall of corn, the thick stalks closing around them instantly, swallowing them whole.

The world became a narrow, rustling corridor. The corn was so tall it blotted out the sky, creating a green-and-yellow twilight. The air was humid and smelled of damp earth, pollen, and something else… something old and dry, like rotting burlap and dust. Every rustle of a leaf sounded like a footstep. Every whisper of the wind sounded like a voice. The memory of the turning scarecrow was a cold knot in Travis’s stomach.

They pushed deeper, moving as fast as they could. Travis’s limp was pronounced now, each step a fresh agony. Grace stayed close, her hand hovering near his arm, their earlier animosity a forgotten relic of a life that no longer existed.

They had gone maybe two hundred yards when the rustling changed. It was no longer the random whisper of the wind. It was rhythmic. Deliberate. Something was moving with them, pacing them from the next row over.

Swish-thump. Swish-thump.

The sound was wrong. It was too light for a person, but too heavy for an animal. It was the sound of dry stalks dragging, punctuated by a clumsy, heavy footfall.

Travis froze, holding up a hand. Grace stopped instantly, her breathing hitched. They listened.

The sound stopped when they did.

A primal fear, deeper and older than the terror of the barn, seized Travis. This was not a human hunter. He grabbed Grace's hand, his voice a strained whisper. "Run."

They ran. The swish-thump started again, faster this time, keeping pace. It was gaining on them. The rustling grew frantic, more violent, as if the thing was thrashing its way through the stalks.

Travis risked a glance over his shoulder, looking through a momentary gap in the corn. What he saw defied all reason.

It was the scarecrow from the road. But it wasn't standing still anymore. It was moving with an impossible, jerking speed, its body contorting in ways no living thing should. Its stick-like legs pistoned unnaturally, one stiff and straight, the other bending at a sickening angle. Its burlap sack head was lolled to one side, the painted grin a gash of black in the gloom. It wasn’t running. It was lurching, falling forward and catching itself in a fluidly broken rhythm, its twig-like arms flailing for balance. A dry, rasping, clicking sound came from it, like insects chittering inside a hollow log.

This was the god of this place. The god of the corn. And they were trespassing in its church.

A scream tore from Grace’s throat. The creature seemed to react to the sound, its speed increasing, closing the distance with terrifying speed. It was ten feet behind them. Five.

Travis shoved Grace forward. “Keep going!”

He felt a searing, tearing pain in his left calf. He cried out and stumbled, crashing to the ground. He looked down. A long, splintered gash ran down his leg, blood welling up, dark and thick against the drying gore already covering him. One of the scarecrow's flailing arms, a sharpened branch, had caught him.

The creature was upon him, its shadow falling over him. He could smell the rot and dust and something anciently terrifying. Its stitched mouth seemed to widen, a dark void of burlap and shadow.

Grace screamed his name. She didn’t run. She turned back, her face a mask of fury and terror, and threw a rock she’d snatched from the ground. It struck the scarecrow's chest with a dull thud, having no effect whatsoever.

But it was enough of a distraction. Travis scrambled backward, kicking out with his good leg. His foot connected with the scarecrow's wooden frame, sending it stumbling sideways with a creak of old wood. He lurched to his feet, ignoring the fire in his calf, and grabbed Grace’s hand.

They burst from the edge of the cornfield in a final, desperate explosion of adrenaline. Their feet hit something hard and flat. Asphalt. They tumbled onto the paved surface of a two-lane road, sprawling in a heap of raw pain and exhaustion.

Travis rolled over, pushing himself up, expecting the creature to be on top of them.

But it wasn't.

The living scarecrow stood at the absolute edge of the cornfield, its straw-stuffed feet planted firmly on the tilled dirt. It halted so abruptly it seemed to slam into an invisible wall. The asphalt of the road was a line it could not, or would not, cross. It stood there, its body twitching, its head cocked at an impossible angle. A low, frustrated hiss, like wind through a cracked board, emanated from its burlap face. Its painted eyes were fixed on them, filled with a malevolent, territorial hatred.

They had escaped its domain. They were out of the corn.

Breathing in ragged, desperate sobs, Travis and Grace stared back at the impossible creature. They were alive. They were free. But as they looked at the monster standing sentinel at the border of its kingdom, a horrifying new truth dawned. They hadn't escaped a farm. They had escaped a god. And its holy ground was the entire valley.