Fear and dread began to creep through her, like cold rivers flowing in her blood. She tried to still the frantic beating of her heart by telling herself that Eric Rolfe and all his cohorts were grown up now. The competition had fallen by the wayside, and there were no longer any kids trying to terrify their friends by creating straw-stuffed monsters looming above the corn.
Whatever was in the field with her now was just a scarecrow, nothing more.
Just a scarecrow.
She had to look up.
She’d seen a car just before she’d run into the field. Jeremy was coming. She had to get up and go meet him or else he was going to think she’d truly lost her mind, but she was paralyzed. In her mind, she could already see the scarecrow.
She would look up, and it would lift its head.
Its empty eye sockets would stare at her malevolently. Its head would be a skull, with rotting, blackened flesh hanging in strips from its bony cheeks, and while she watched, one of the crows would land on it and peck at what had once been living flesh.
What was left of the mouth would be opened in a final, silent scream. Some silly coat would be thrown over a bloated body, bones breaking through long tears in the fabric.
And then she would hear laughter, because the demon, who had left the body in the cornfield for her to discover, would somehow see her, and he would laugh at her terror. And then the corpse would begin to weep, and its tears would be blood, as its putrid fingers of bone and maggoty flesh would twitch and reach out for her….
“Rowenna!”
Jeremy, she thought in sudden relief.
She inhaled raggedly and almost laughed aloud at her own foolishness.
She lifted her head then.
And saw the scarecrow.
The mouth was open in a silent rictus of terror. The eyes were sunken pits that seemed to stare at the world in anguish. Jagged bones stuck out from flesh pecked bloody by the crows and through rents in the old coat that had been thrown over the body before it had been staked out in the field. Black hair, beneath a ridiculous straw hat, moved in the breeze, except where it had been matted to what remained of the face by dried blood.
She stared at the vision in such stunned horror that her own mouth opened and nothing came out. Her blood congealed, and she feared she would be sick.
“Rowenna!”
Jeremy’s voice again.
And then another voice cried out, but not her name this time, just an endless sobbing cry of “Oh, God! Oh, God! Oh, God!”
She managed to turn in time to see Brad Johnstone fall to his knees, screaming at the sight of the savaged corpse.
7
Jeremy was paralyzed.
Rowenna was staring up at the dead woman, white as a sheet, a silent scream branded on her features.
And there was Brad, collapsed on the ground, screaming.
Not to mention the horror of the corpse staked out in the field like a scarecrow.
He pulled out his phone, hit 911 and asked not just for emergency vehicles, but that Joe Brentwood be informed about the situation. He strode forward, caught hold of Rowenna’s shoulders and spun her to look at him.
“You all right?” he asked huskily.
“I will be,” she said, and offered him a pale smile, so he turned and raced over to Brad.
He knelt down and took his old partner by the shoulders.
“Brad. Brad, listen to me.”
“She wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for me. Oh, God, how she must have suffered,” Brad said, tears streaming down his face.
“It isn’t Mary,” Jeremy said.
“What?” Brad whispered.
“It isn’t Mary,” Jeremy repeated.
Standing now beside the two, Rowenna breathed a sigh of relief. Until just now, he realized, she hadn’t known Brad Johnstone, and she had never met Mary. But they were friends of his, and judging from the sympathetic look in her eyes when she turned to him, that mattered to her. She was clearly as horrified as he was by what they had seen, but he couldn’t help feeling grateful that at least the horror wasn’t compounded by the victim being someone he knew, and apparently she felt the same.
Brad wasn’t looking at the corpse. He was staring at the ground, clearly afraid to look back at the mockery of a scarecrow.
“Not Mary,” he said firmly, as if speaking to himself. “How do you know?”
“The hair, Brad,” Jeremy said, looking down at his friend. He’d seen enough of that corpse himself, and he knew he would have to look at it again—even more closely—before this was over. For the moment, he was just trying to breathe, hoping the image of the dead woman wouldn’t become permanently imprinted on his mind. “This woman had black hair. This isn’t Mary.”
Brad turned his eyes toward the corpse for a fleeting moment, his whole body convulsing in a shudder. “It’s—it’s not a wig?”
“No.” Jeremy inhaled deeply to steady himself. “And she’s too short…Brad, I swear to you, it isn’t Mary.”