Stories (2011) (93 page)

Harold let out a scream as something grabbed hold of the
back of his coat collar. He jerked loose, tearing his jacket and losing the
hatchet in the process. He tugged his foot free and crawled rapidly on hands
and knees to the top of the stairs.

He struggled to his feet and raced down the corridor.
Moonlight shone through a hall window and projected his shadow and that of his
capering pursuer onto the wall. Then the creature sprang onto Harold's back,
sending both of them tumbling to the floor

They rolled and twisted down the hallway. Harold howled and
clutched at the strong arm wrapped around his throat. As he turned over onto
his back, he heard the crunching of sticks beneath him. The arm loosened its
grip, and Harold was able to free himself. He scuttled along the floor like a
cockroach, regained his footing, then darted through an open door and slammed
it.

Out in the hall he heard it moving. Sticks crackled. Hay
swished. The thing was coming after him.

Harold checked over his shoulder, trying to find something
to jam against the door, or some place to hide. He saw another doorway and
sprinted for that. It led to another hall, and down its length were a series of
doors. Harold quickly entered the room at the far end and closed the door
quietly. He fumbled for a lock, but there was none. He saw a bed and rolled
under it, sliding up against the wall where it was darkest.

The moon was rising, and its light was inching under the
bed. Dust particles swam in the moonlight. The ancient bed smelled musty and
wet. Outside in the hall, Harold could hear the thing scooting along as if it
were sweeping the floor. Scooting closer.

A door opened. Closed.

A little later another door opened and closed.

Then another.

Moments later he could hear it in the room next to his. He
knew he should try to escape, but to where? He was trapped. If he tried to rush
out the door, he was certain to run right into it. Shivering like a frightened
kitten, he pushed himself farther up against the wall, as close as possible.

The bedroom door creaked open. The scarecrow shuffled into
the room. Harold could hear it moving from one side to the other, pulling
things from shelves, tossing them onto the floor, smashing glass, trying to
find his hiding place.

Please, please, thought Harold, don't look under the bed.

Harold heard it brushing toward the door, then he heard the
door open. It's going to leave, thought Harold. It's going to leave!

But it stopped. Then slowly turned and walked to the bed.
Harold could see the scarecrow's straw-filled pants legs, its shapeless straw
feet. Bits of hay floated down from the scarecrow, coasted under the bed and
lay in the moonlight, just inches away.

Slowly the scarecrow bent down for a look. The shadow of its
hat poked beneath the bed before its actual face. Harold couldn't stand to
look. He felt as if he might scream. The beating of his heart seemed as loud as
thunder.

It looked under the bed.

Harold, eyes closed, waited for it to grab him.

Seconds ticked by and nothing happened.

Harold snapped his eyes open to the sound of the door
slamming.

It hadn't seen him.

The thick shadows closest to the wall had protected him. If
it had been a few minutes later, the rising moonlight would have expanded under
the bed and revealed him.

Harold lay there, trying to decide what to do. Strangely
enough, he felt sleepy. He couldn't imagine how that could be, but finally he
decided that a mind could only take so much terror before it needed relief -
even if it was false relief. He closed his eyes and fell into a deep sleep.

When he awoke, he realized by the light in the room that it
was near sunrise. He had slept for hours. He wondered if the scarecrow was
still in the house, searching.

Building his nerve, Harold crawled from under the bed. He
stretched his back and turned to look around the room. He was startled to see a
skeleton dressed in rotting clothes and sitting in a chair at a desk.

Last night he had rolled beneath the bed so quickly that he
hadn't even seen the skeleton. Harold noticed a bundle of yellow papers lying
on the desk in front of it.

He picked up the papers, carried them to the window, and
held them to the dawn's growing light. It was a kind of journal. Harold scanned
the contents and was amazed.

The skeleton had been a man named John Benner. When Benner
had died, he was sixty-five years old. At one time he had been a successful
farmer. But when his wife died, he grew lonely - so lonely that he decided to
create a companion.

Benner built it of cloth and hay and sticks. Made the mouth
from the jawbone of a wolf. The rib cage he unearthed in one of his fields. He
couldn't tell if the bones were human or animal. He'd never seen anything like
them. He decided it was just the thing for his companion.

He even decided to give it a heart - one of the old
valentine hearts his beloved wife had made him. He fastened the heart to the
rib cage, closed up the chest with hay and sticks, dressed the scarecrow in his
old evening clothes, and pinned an old stovepipe hat to its head. He kept the
scarecrow in the house, placed it in chairs, set a plate before it at meal
times, even talked to it.

And then one night it moved.

At first Benner was amazed and frightened, but in time he
was delighted. Something about the combination of ingredients, the strange
bones from the field, the wolf's jaw, the valentine heart, perhaps his own
desires, had given it life.

The scarecrow never ate or slept, but it kept him company.
It listened while he talked or read aloud. It sat with him at the supper table.

But come daylight, it ceased to move. It would find a place
in the shadows - a dark corner or the inside of a cedar chest. There it would
wait until the day faded and the night came.

In time, Benner became afraid. The scarecrow was a creature
of the night, and it lost interest in his company. Once, when he asked it to
sit down and listen to him read, it slapped the book from his hand and tossed
him against the kitchen wall, knocking him unconscious.

A thing made of straw and bones, cloth and paper, Benner
realized, was never meant to live, because it had no soul.

One day, while the scarecrow hid from daylight, Benner
dragged it from its hiding place and pulled it outside. It began to writhe and
fight him, but the scarecrow was too weak to do him damage. The sunlight made
it smoke and crackle with flame.

Benner hauled it to the center of the field, raised it on a
post, and secured it there by ramming a long staff through its chest and paper
heart.

It ceased to twitch, smoke, or burn. The thing he created
was now at rest. It was nothing more than a scarecrow.

The pages told Harold that even with the scarecrow
controlled, Benner found he could not sleep at night. He let the farm go to
ruin, became sad and miserable, even thought of freeing the scarecrow so that
once again he might have a companion. But he didn't, and in time, sitting right
here at his desk, perhaps after writing his journal, he died. Maybe of fear, or
loneliness.

Astonished, Harold dropped the pages on the floor. The
scarecrow had been imprisoned on that post for no telling how long. From the
condition of the farm, and Benner's body, Harold decided it had most likely
been years. Then I came along, he thought, and removed the staff from its heart
and freed it.

Daylight, thought Harold. In daylight the scarecrow would
have to give up. It would have to hide. It would be weak then.

Harold glanced out the window. The thin rays of morning were
growing longer and redder, and through the trees he could see the red ball of
the sun lifting over the horizon.

Less than five minutes from now he would be safe. A sense of
comfort flooded over him. He was going to beat this thing. He leaned against
the glass, watching the sunrise.

A pane fell from the window and crashed onto the roof
outside.

Uh-oh, thought Harold, looking toward the door.

He waited. Nothing happened. There were no sounds. The
scarecrow had not heard. Harold sighed and turned to look out the window again.

Suddenly, the door burst open and slammed against the wall.
As Harold wheeled around he saw a figure charging toward him, flapping its arms
like the wings of a crow taking flight.

It pounced on him, smashed him against the window, breaking
the remaining glass. Both went hurtling through the splintering window frame
and fell onto the roof. They rolled together down the slope of the roof and
onto the sandy ground.

It was a long drop - twelve feet or so. Harold fell on top
of the scarecrow. It cushioned his fall, but he still landed hard enough to
have the breath knocked out of him.

The scarecrow rolled him over, straddled him, pushed its
hand tightly over Harold's face. The boy could smell the rotting hay and
decaying sticks, feel the wooden fingers thrusting into his flesh. Its grip was
growing tighter and tighter. He heard the scarecrow's wolf teeth snapping
eagerly as it lowered its face to his.

Suddenly, there was a bone-chilling scream. At first Harold
thought he was screaming, then he realized it was the scarecrow.

It leaped up and dashed away. Harold lifted his head for a
look and saw a trail of smoke wisping around the corner of the house.

Harold found a heavy rock for a weapon, and forced himself
to follow. The scarecrow was not in sight, but the side door of the house was
partially open. Harold peeked through a window.

The scarecrow was violently flapping from one end of the
room to the other, looking for shadows to hide in. But as the sun rose, its
light melted the shadows away as fast as the scarecrow could find them.

Harold jerked the door open wide and let the sunlight in. He
got a glimpse of the scarecrow as it snatched a thick curtain from a window,
wrapped itself in it, and fell to the floor.

Harold spied a thick stick on the floor - it was the same
one he had pulled from the scarecrow. He tossed aside the rock and picked up
the stick. He used it to flip the curtain aside, exposing the thing to
sunlight.

The scarecrow bellowed so loudly that Harold felt as if his
bones and muscles would turn to jelly. It sprang from the floor, darted past
him and out the door.

Feeling braver now that it was daylight and the scarecrow
was weak, Harold chased after it. Ahead of him, the weeds in the field were
parting and swishing like cards being shuffled. Floating above the weeds were
thick twists of smoke.

Harold found the scarecrow on its knees, hugging its support
post like a drowning man clinging to a floating log. Smoke coiled up from
around the scarecrow's head and boiled out from under its coat sleeves and pant
legs.

Harold poked the scarecrow with the stick. It fell on its
back, and its arms flopped wide. Harold rammed the stick through its open
chest, and through the valentine heart.

He lifted it from the ground easily with the stick. It
weighed very little. He lifted it until its arms draped over the cross on the
post. When it hung there, Harold made sure the stick was firmly through its
chest and heart. Then he raced for his bike.

Sometimes even now, a year later, Harold thinks of his
fishing gear and his camp shovel. But more often he thinks of the scarecrow. He
wonders if it is still on its post. He wonders what would have happened if he
had left it alone in the sunlight. Would that have been better? Would it have
burned to ashes?

He wonders if another curious fisherman has been out there
and removed the stick from its chest.

He hopes not.

He wonders if the scarecrow has a memory. It had tried to
get Benner, but Benner had beat it, and Harold had beat it too. But what if
someone else freed it and the scarecrow got him? Would it come after Harold
too? Would it want to finish what it had started?

Was it possible, by some kind of supernatural instinct, for
the scarecrow to track him down? Could it travel by night? Sleep in culverts
and old barns and sheds, burying itself deep under dried leaves to hide from
the sun?

Could it be coming closer to his home while he slept?

He often dreamed of it coming. In his dreams, Harold could
see it gliding with the shadows, shuffling along, inching nearer and nearer

And what about those sounds he'd heard earlier tonight,
outside his bedroom window? Were they really what he had concluded - dogs in
the trash cans?

Had that shape he'd glimpsed at his window been the fleeting
shadow of a flying owl, or had it been- Harold rose from bed, checked all the
locks on the doors and windows, listened to the wind blow around the house, and
decided not to go outside for a look.

This recipe is in response to the one I posted here on
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Your Recipes
a week ago that proved to be more popular than I expected. I
have been asked by so many readers to post another, and as I am not immune to
flattery or persuasion–even mild persuasion–I am back with culinary enthusiasm
and this time out I would like to post my recipe for dragon chili.

I know dragons are not normally thought of as an ingredient
in chili, but trust me, they are an excellent source of protein, are low in
fat, and the meat is very clean and low caloric and it does not taste like
chicken or the more popular chili meat.

Dragon meat has gotten a bad reputation due to a
misunderstanding about dragons. First off, for the meat to be good, and for it
to work in my chili recipe, it is necessary that you acquire a very young
dragon. The younger, the meat the sweeter.

You should also avoid the green dragons, as there is nothing
you can do at any time or any age to make that meat serviceable. The brown
dragons are the best. At an early age, when they are no more than three feet
long, they are perfect. Their eyes are just open (which is a sign the toxins in
the blood have passed, which is the way of brown dragons), and the meat,
especially in the tail, is ready to be harvested. The head meat, though darker,
is also tasty, and is best made into ground patties. The body meat is fine as
well, but riddled with bones, so extreme care should be taken, lest you get one
of the small bones that litter the dragon’s torso and appear to accomplish
nothing towards locomotion or the firmness of the body and are extraordinarily
hard to detect during a simple cleaning.