The Demon Scarecrow of Hollow Fields
On the edge of the village lie the Hollow Fields, where corn grows tall enough to touch the underside of a moon and the wind carries rumors louder than any sermon. I came to tend the land after the harvest, thinking to rest my bones among the rusted effigies that kept crows away and kept the night at a polite distance. But the old scarecrow—gaunt, patched with scraps of gray cloth, its grin sewn with patient malice—began to watch me with something heavier than glass eyes.
Some nights the field keeps its own counsel, and its counsel is hungry. Listen long enough and you’ll hear a debt you didn’t owe, repaid in rustle and ash.
The first sign was not the birds but the absence of wind. Yet the stalks moved—ever so slightly—like ribs beneath a pale cloth. The scarecrow’s head tilted to follow my steps, though no wire or pulley kept it upright. Crows cried from the treeline and the field endured them as if listening to a sermon in a language I could not pronounce. The air smelled of old scarecloth and rain that never fell, a mixture that clung to the tongue and would not wash away.
- Stalks bending toward a figure that wasn’t there, as if the field itself leaned in to eavesdrop.
- The scarecrow’s stitched grin widening at the corner of my eye, then snapping back to its ruddy, fixed smile when looked at head-on.
- A whisper of a farmer’s name drifting through the corn, spoken as if someone tall and dry had cleared his throat right behind my shoulder.
- Footprints in the dust that appeared to be made by boots with no sole left to them, leading straight to the stump where the scarecrow’s pole was anchored.
That night I understood the demon did not haunt the field so much as own it, a creditor of fear collecting interest in the harvest season. The scarecrow opened its mouth not to speak but to exhale a hunger that swallowed the surrounding quiet. The ears of corn twined together, forming a ledger of every broken vow and every prayer for rain that had fallen unheard. I saw the harvest become a record book, each kernel a confession of a promise betrayed to someone forgotten in the dark.
To survive, I tried to walk away with the dawn, but the field stretched onward, rows becoming a tunnel of pale teeth, guiding me back to the sentinel at the center. I laid a circle of salt and ash around the base of the stalks, murmured a stubborn prayer taught by a neighbor who had once believed the land was a living thing, and faced the horizon as the sun bled gold into the stalks. For a heartbeat the world held its breath, and I believed I had sealed the gate. Then the light fractured, and the scarecrow’s shadow grew long enough to touch the tips of my boots.
When I finally left Hollow Fields behind, I learned that courage is not the absence of fear but the stubborn insistence that some debts are better left unpaid. Yet the field keeps score in whispers, and on certain nights you can hear the demon counting the harvest, tallying every frightened sigh until the dawn forgets how to call the sun back.