Fields of the Demon's Scarecrow

By Corvus Harrowfield | 2025-09-23_02-20-54

Fields of the Demon's Scarecrow image

Fields of the Demon's Scarecrow

When I returned to the old family farm at the edge of town, the fields wore their usual armor of dusk and dust. The scarecrow stood in the middle, a sentinel stitched from rag and rumor, its hat perched crooked as if listening for mischief beyond the hedges. The corn swayed with a patient rustle, and the air tasted of rain and something older—sawdust, old blood, a prayer whispered too many times. Locals claimed the field kept bargains with a bound demon, a price paid in memory and breath; I had come back to settle what I never meant to owe.

Night pressed in like a lid sealing a jar, and the sentinel did not blink. I stepped closer, and the straw limbs sighed, a creak that traveled the rows as if the field itself exhaled. The scarecrow’s one eye—an old button sewn with black thread—flickered with a cold light, while the other eye was nothing but a hollow seam. The wind curled around it, and for a heartbeat the figure tilted its hat toward me, as if tipping a quiet greeting to a trespasser who knew too much about the place.

I plucked a memory from my pocket—an heirloom I kept for luck, a tarnished locket containing a girl’s portrait who once belonged to this soil more than to me. The field smelled sharp with corn silk and iron. The scarecrow spoke without moving its mouth, a rasp like dry leaves scuttling across a wooden floor. “Return what you took,” it whispered, a demand more ancient than harvest. The line of stalks behind it rustled in agreement, and the ground between the rows hummed with a memory I would rather forget.

Field memory is patient; it waits for a breath, then it takes the thing it was kept for.

The bargain unfolded in silence, and I found myself confessing a truth I did not intend to say aloud. The memory in the locket was never mine to borrow; it belonged to a girl I never truly knew, to a past that refused to lie down. The scarecrow’s head jerked, a bone-deep hinge turning, and the corn around it swelled as if listening to a secret I had spoken aloud. The locket slipped from my fingers into the furrow, gleaming once before sinking into the dark soil, and the air tasted of rain that would not fall for hours more.

When dawn finally pressed its pale fingers over the horizon, the field appeared ordinary again, save for the sentinel’s shadow, which stretched long like a dark oath. I walked away with the weight of unresolved debts echoing behind me, a gash of memory that would not close. The fields kept their watch, patient and inexorable, while the scarecrow remained—still, stubborn, and somehow more alive than any statue should be.