“Cornfields…and scarecrows. Only in the crystal ball, it was like I was flying, coming closer and closer to the scarecrows…. And then one scarecrow…it was a corpse.”
“Brad, what you saw in a crystal ball was just a fortune-teller’s trick,” Jeremy said evenly, hoping to calm his friend down before they met up with Rowenna. All he needed was for every formerly rational person around him to begin supporting each other on a quest for a bogeyman. “Brad, the guy was playing you. And I’m not saying he’s a good guy,” he hurried on when Brad started to object, “but you can’t get this upset about seeing a cornfield.”
“Look over there,” Brad said, pointing.
It was strange, Jeremy had to admit, following Brad’s indication.
He’d never seen so many crows circling all together.
He faced forward again, and down the road he could see a car. He didn’t know what Rowenna drove, but he had to assume that was her silver SUV on the shoulder.
He pressed harder on the gas pedal. He could just make out Rowenna and…
And the crows. One of them, and then another, flying around her, swooping low over her head and…
What the hell was going on?
Crows didn’t attack like that!
But these crows were attacking her, diving straight at her.
She should have gotten in the car, dammit, but for whatever reason, she hadn’t.
And they were circling her too closely now, getting between her and the car, so she couldn’t get the door open. It was as if they were driving her, trying to force her off the road and into the field.
And then, when he had nearly reached her, she turned, ducking her head to protect her face, arms flailing in panic, and ran into the cornfield.
This was insanity. She knew it, but she couldn’t stop. As soon as she moved, running from the crows, she knew that she had made a mistake. Wasn’t instinct supposed to help you survive, not send you racing away from the safety of your car and into the unknown?
Mentally reviling herself for being an idiot wasn’t going to help, she thought as she dashed wildly through the rows, the rustling stalks closing in around her as if reaching for her, then dived down low, her arms over her head in an effort to protect herself.
But even as she lay on the ground, tasting dirt, she realized that the crows were gone.
Slowly, she raised her head just high enough to see the ground near her.
She was afraid. She knew the crows…were still there.
Somewhere.
But their shrieking was gone, along with the beating of their wings, which had sounded as loud as thunder when they’d been attacking her. The whole world was silent now. Then seconds passed, and she could hear the natural sounds of the day again, the light whisper of the breeze, the cornstalks rustling as they smoothly bent and swayed.
She slowly moved, easing up onto her knees.
She commanded herself to look up, but she couldn’t bring herself to obey.
Then she heard the crows again, but they were distant now, and they sounded normal, as they circled far overhead. Their cawing was the random, undirected sound she had heard dozens of times before, not that terrifying screeching they’d made as they swooped and dived at her.
She shifted and turned to look up. She could see them behind her now, far away, their black wings shimmering in the rays of sunlight filtering through the clouds.
She realized then that she was just a few feet away from the scarecrow the crows had been circling, but something in her refused to look at it. She told herself not to be ridiculous, not to be a coward, to simply look up and dispel the irrational fear coursing through her veins.
But she couldn’t do it.
All she could do was remember Eric Rolfe’s horrible creations, the scarecrow monsters he had created for the annual scarecrow competition back when she was young, before he had fulfilled his dream and moved on to Hollywood to create real monsters for the movies.
But Eric Rolfe’s artistic endeavors weren’t what was scaring her now.
The dream she had endured—time and again—was what held her in the deadly grip of fear.
She couldn’t look. Not when she was so afraid the horror was going to be right there in reality.
It was just a scarecrow in a field, she told herself. Not a monster, not a rotting corpse nailed to crossed boards, just a scarecrow.
She inhaled, exhaled. Told herself she was being irrational again.
Then told herself she wasn’t, because the crows’ attack had been anything but rational and normal.
In the end, it didn’t matter what she told herself, whether she believed she was being rational or not. She simply couldn’t force herself to look up. Instead she stared at the earth and found a prayer forming on her lips.
No, no, no. Please, God, don’t let it be real. Please don’t let it be real….