Valley of the Scarecrow (12 page)

Rich easily located the front door, noticing there was
also a staircase heading upstairs in this room as well. Probably the stairs leading to the bell tower, but that was an adventure for later as well. Right now he needed to get this door open and let some light, not to mention fresh air, inside. It was a lot warmer up on the main level, shockingly so, oven-hot almost, and Rich had sweat running down his face already and he hadn’t even done anything yet. If he were stuck inside here for too long, he would likely pass out from heat exhaustion within the hour.

“Made it, Dan,” Rich shouted, banging on the inside of the doors to get his friend’s attention. “It’s hotter than hell in here, buddy. Let’s get these damn things open. How you making out?”

“I got another two off but it’s tough slugging.”

“What can I do to help?”

“I don’t know. Will the original doors swing open from inside? If you can open them, at least all we have is the nailed-on planks to deal with.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

Rich turned the handles and pulled backward but naturally it wasn’t going to be that easy. He set down his flashlight and grabbed one of the handles with both hands and yanked with all his might. He was rewarded with the door on that side creaking against a hundred nails and actually moving an inch inward. Getting his fingers in the crack, he heaved again and managed to move the door another inch. A shaft of light and a cool breeze blew in through the crack and felt wonderful on Rich’s face. He sucked in the fresh air, savoring the moment before exerting himself again on the door. No matter how much he pulled and yanked though, he couldn’t seem to get the door to budge any farther. Getting down on his knees, he could see outside where Dan
and he had already removed the outside planks, and he had an idea.

“Hey, Dan, hand me one of those loose boards. If it will fit through this opening, I think we can use it as a pry bar to lever this sucker open.”

Dan slid the oak plank on its edge through the two-inch gap and when it was approximately halfway inside, both guys pulled from their respective ends, leaning their weight on the sturdy wood like boys on a rich prep school rowing team, bending it under the strain. Just when Rich was about to stop pulling and have a rest, a bunch of nails must have let loose and the left-hand door into the church popped open with a loud tearing and splitting noise that sounded like gunfire inside the sealed room.

“Yes!” Dan screamed from outside. “We did it!”

With five boards off now, there was a sizable gap more than large enough to crawl through to get inside but for a minute Dan and Rich just stared at each other with big grins on their faces, happily catching their breath.

“See anything in there on the way up here?” Dan asked.

“Yeah. Lots. No treasure yet but there’s dead bodies down in the basement. They’re not very pretty either so we might want to keep the girls out of there, but one way or the other I’d say it sure looks like Kelly’s grandfather knew what he was talking about.”

“Did you find Reverend Miller?”

“Nope. Haven’t looked in the sanctuary yet. Figured I’d save that treat for everyone. We gotta get some air flowing though. It’s way too damn hot in here.”

“We’ll open some windows or something. First I gotta see if Joshua’s there though. It’s been driving me crazy wondering if he’s really still in there.”

“Get Pat and the girls then. They’ll wanna see this too,
I’m sure. Tell them to bring more flashlights. It’s pretty dark in here.”

Kelly was the last person to creep through the gap and enter the church. She wasn’t claustrophobic but there was something unsettling about getting on her hands and knees to voluntarily crawl into a dark, mysterious place. The heat hit her like a physical blow, worse still when Dan helped her to her feet. There was a stench to the church but it wasn’t overpowering or for that matter necessarily bad. To Kelly, it just smelled old and dry, like a well-used woodstove badly in need of cleaning.

The mood of the group was quite tense, everyone on edge and probably more uneasy than anyone wanted to admit. After all, this was a place of death, a house of torture, and it was difficult not to let their imaginations run wild on them. One by one they turned on their flashlights though, which helped dispel the gloom considerably, and once everyone realized there were no pointy-tailed devils or evil preachers lurking inside ready to devour them for daring to enter, they calmed down.

“Oh well, I’ve seen enough. There’s no treasure here, so let’s go!” Lizzy said, and everyone started laughing.

“You’re not getting away that easily, sweets,” Rich said. “Come on, the sanctuary door is over here.”

“Do we really have to?” Pat said, sounding a bit grumpy. “I mean, whether he’s in there or not, what’s the point?”

“The point is we’ll know for sure that we’re not wasting our time,” Dan said. “Jesus, Pat, did you walk all the way out here
not
to see him?”

“Oh he wants to see him,” Rich joked. “He’s just worried Joshua will look better than him still and he’ll be sleeping with you again.”

Everyone laughed, except for Pat, of course. Kim walked
over and put her arm around her new boyfriend in a show of support. “No worries there, big guy. Tonight you’re all mine.”

The gang whooped and cheered at that comment, slapping Pat on the back and trying to cheer him up as best they could. For some reason he was in a bit of a funk but Kim’s promise definitely had put a smile back on his face for the time being. Hopefully he’d snap out of his bad mood for good.

“Here’s the sanctuary, guys,” Rich said. “Let’s check it out before Pat cums in his pants over there.”

“Fuck you, buddy,” Pat said.

“Sure, but I think you just got a better offer.”

Even Pat enjoyed that one, and they all joked and laughed their way inside the true heart of the church, moving inside a few feet but suddenly coming to a halt. A hush settled over the group, the fooling around instantly over as they walked a few tentative steps farther into the sanctuary. Whether it was from respect for the dead or from fear of the unknown, Kelly was unsure, but without any of them having to voice their thoughts, they’d all simply gone quiet as if on cue, the desecrated church returning to the silence it had enjoyed for decades. The temperature in here was rising, the smell of stale vegetation and dry-rotted wood even worse than in the other rooms. Dust motes danced in the air, as several flashlight beams tentatively crisscrossed the dark chamber before eventually all focusing in on the towering altar cross at the far end of the room.

Kelly only gasped, but Lizzy let loose the first scream and buried her head in her boyfriend’s chest.

“Unbelievable,” Rich said, stroking Lizzy’s hair. “It’s actually true. The freakin’ story’s true, Kelly. They really did crucify their preacher and leave him here to die.”

Kelly didn’t know how to respond, a mental and physical numbness akin to shock creeping over her body, leaving her at a loss for words as she stared up at the monstrosity that had once been a man. It was well over a hundred degrees in here and suddenly she felt chills, the tiny hairs on her arms standing at attention.

Joshua Miller’s corpse hung above them, his long arms still lashed tightly to the cross post with thick, braided ropes and his legs tied together and similarly strapped to the center beam. He was wearing a tattered brown robe, moth eaten and open at the chest, mottled with black bloodstains where he’d long ago torn his flesh frantically trying to struggle free of the ropes that bound him in place. His exposed skin was withered and pulled taut, a husk of dead gray flesh that looked as dry as beef jerky and thin as onion paper. As incredible as it seemed, Joshua Miller had been mummified on the cross from his lengthy stay in this smoldering hot crypt, the stifling temperature slow-cooking the poor man’s life juices out of him over the years.

The preacher’s head slumped forward toward his chest, his long black hair hanging in a tangled ruin mercifully covering up most of his leathery face and whatever pain-filled expression death had frozen his features in. Strangest-looking of all, and something that happens to all people when they die, Joshua’s nails had continued to grow after his final breath, his fingers now tipped with long black talons, his toenails shredding the ends of his homemade leather shoes and curling a full two inches beyond. Below him, some of the floorboards had caved in and more of the massive green cornstalks had pushed up through the old boards and intertwined around his desiccated legs, unnatural fingers reaching up from the strangely fertile earth to claim their grisly prize.

Even in his emaciated state, it was clear to everyone that in life Reverend Miller must have been a massive man. Although skeletal, his frame was huge, his arms stretched out like the wings of a giant bat, his legs seemingly endless, the segmented limbs of a monstrous spider. Just looking at him now in this pitiful state was enough to make Kelly tremble. She couldn’t imagine how intimidating this man must have been back in her grandfather’s youth.

“Son of a bitch,” Pat said, breaking the silence. “That’s by far the most crazy thing I’ve ever laid eyes on. He looks like Jesus, man…or maybe some sort of demented scarecrow. That’s just fucking bizarre!”

“Sure is,” Dan said. “Can you imagine what dying like this must have been like?”

“No, and I don’t want to,” Kelly said. “Let’s get out of this room. The heat and the smell are making me sick. Can’t we at least open a few of these windows and let some air and light in?”

“I second that,” Rich said, having spent more time inside this hellhole than any of them had. “Besides, there are holes in the floor all over here. We need some light in here so no one gets hurt. Trust me, you don’t want to fall into the basement. Some of Joshua’s buddies are chained up down there.”

“Are you serious?” Kelly asked.

“Unfortunately, yeah. You wanna see them?”

Kelly and Lizzy both said an emphatic, “No!” at the same time.

“Kel and Rich are right, guys,” Dan said. “Before we explore any further, let’s get some more fresh air and light in here. Come on. Let’s start out in the other room. Getting these oak planks off isn’t easy and I’d rather work out there than in this creepy-ass place.”

The gang followed Dan back out into the front room to get to work, but Kelly hung back for a moment, shining her light on the crucified man at the far end of the room. She’d known all along that her grandfather had been telling the truth, but a huge part of her had hoped Malcolm had either misremembered the past or had been flat-out lying. Now she knew her family had been a party to murder and no matter how long ago it had happened or how justified they thought they’d been, Kelly couldn’t help but feel a little dirty and ashamed of her ancestors. She supposed this wasn’t the time for feeling sorry for herself though. Her friends needed her help.

Turning to exit the room, Kelly took a step toward the door, but she caught movement out of the corner of her eye and swung back around and shone her light at the dead man on the cross. Nothing moved on the altar other than the dust motes in the air. Kelly’s heart was thumping like a jackhammer in her chest but there was nothing in sight to have scared her like that.

“Easy now, girl,” she chided herself. “It’s just your imagination. The dead can’t hurt anyone anymore.”

Steeling her nerves she turned away from the cross and walked out the sanctuary door, determined not to be a scaredy-cat and have the rest of the gang laughing at her. Still, deep down she honestly thought she’d seen Reverend Miller move. Just for a moment, she’d been positive the crucified man had defied death and had somehow lifted his head and opened his eyes to look at her.

Travis and Timothy Skyler weren’t due into work at Carlton Auto until noon today, and the twins had spent most of Wednesday morning talking about the future. Or at least Tim certainly had been. Travis had been forced to do all the listening, his brother fully cranked up and building steam by the minute. Even now, he was pacing back and forth like a caged tiger out front of the trailer home their father had left to them after his untimely death.

“I’m telling you, Bro,” Tim said. “This is it, the one we’ve been dreaming about all these years. The hoax to end all hoaxes.”

“I don’t know. The Reverend of Rock Creek sounds a bit corny to me. I thought I liked it but—”

“Nah, forget that name. That’s old news. I got a better one.”

“What?”

“Well, think about it for a minute. Those broads that were at the garage said this whole area used to be called Oak Valley, right?”

“If you say so. I wasn’t—”

“And they said the villagers didn’t kill Reverend Miller…they strung him up on a cross in a church out in the middle of the fucking cornfield, right?”

“That’s what you keep telling me, yeah. What about it?”

“Come on, man, think. Strung up on a cross…cornfields? What does that make you think of?”

“I don’t know…scarecrows?”

“Yes! Now you’re with me, Bro. We’re gonna start calling this place Valley of the Scarecrow and the woods north of here are ground zero, dude. We’re gonna plaster this all over the Web. Just think what we can do with a supercool legend like that? I can see it already: Yea though you walk through the Valley of the Scarecrow…ye
SHALL
fear his evil! It’s perfect. Don’t you just freakin’ love it?”

Travis had to admit he liked what he was hearing. Valley of the Scarecrow had an awesome ring to it and when they tied in the spooky story of the murdered holy man, this thing might really have legs. It was certainly better than anything they’d ever come up with in the past, that was for sure. “It’s fantastic. The only problem I see is it’s not our legend, it’s those campers’ you talked to.”

“Exactly. And that’s what makes it all the more perfect.”

“I don’t get it.”

“It’s their story, Travis, so they’re naturally going to believe it. That one broad’s grandfather supposedly lived there for God’s sake. He told her it was all true.”

“Which it probably isn’t.”

“Of course it isn’t. All these damn legends are bullshit, but we’re going to sneak up there and bring this one to life for those campers. They think it’s all true and after we’re done fucking with them they’ll be even
more
sure. They’re gonna run back home and start telling other people what they think they saw up here, which is exactly what we want. It’s how the story spreads, right?”

“Others will eventually start coming here to check it out.”

“You got it.”

“What do you mean, ‘fucking with them’? What are we gonna do?”

“Aha! That’s the fun part. Follow me.”

Tim led his brother around the side of the trailer and headed out back through a maze of rusty car parts and discarded trash, eventually stopping outside an old falling-down shed with a corrugated metal roof. Before opening the shed, he stopped to talk some more. “I’ve got a few ideas planned. For starters, I figure we can put together a scarecrow outfit easy enough. We got all kinds of old work clothes and hats and shit around here. We’ll just stuff some straw or cornstalks or something sticking out the sleeves and pant legs. Doesn’t have to be perfect, because we won’t be getting close enough for them to get a real good look at us. I also found this…” Opening the shed door, Tim reached inside and brought out a wicked-looking curved blade on the end of a six-foot-long wooden handle.

“A scythe? Cool! Where the hell did that come from?”

“No idea. Maybe Dad used it at work, hacking down weeds and bushes when he was spraying for bugs? Who knows? I just found it last night out here in the shed.”

Their father, before he’d gotten so sick, had run his own pest control company, spraying neighbors’ farms and houses to get rid of spiders and pretty much any other little bugs that were becoming a nuisance.

“Why were you poking around out here in Dad’s shed? It’s just a bunch of crap out here, isn’t it?”

“To most people, yes, but not to us. Here, look at this…” Tim stepped inside the shed and pointed to a set of large metal tanks welded together and fastened to a sturdy leather harness that someone could slip their
arms into and wear the contraption on their back. A plastic tube ran from the top of the metal tanks, joining together into a copper hand wand.

“What is it?” Travis asked.

“It’s a sprayer. Dad mostly did bigger farm jobs, but every now and then he’d just have a porch on a house or something to spray. Instead of taking the whole spray truck, he used to just fill these tanks and wear it on his back. Prime it up and blast away.”

“What are we gonna do with it?”

“Crop circles,” Tim said with a straight face.

“You’re kidding, right?”

“Do I look like I’m kidding? No.”

“What do crop circles have to do with scarecrows or evil preachers?”

“Nothing, but people love them. More importantly, people flock to them. All we’re gonna do is make a few small burned-out areas in the cornfield and let our campers find them. We can make religious symbols or something like that, to tie it into the reverend. Satanic stuff, maybe, like the number of the beast or a big inverted cross. That kind of shit, you know? We get some aerial shots of them on the Internet and we’re in business, man!”

“Sounds good, but you’re forgetting something.”

“What?”

“Dad’s chemicals. His sprays were used to get rid of bugs. They don’t harm the crops. That’s the whole point, you know? Kill the bugs but not the plants. That’s why they’re called
pesticides.
Spraying them on the cornfield won’t do squat. You’ll need a strong herbicide to do what you have in mind. Where are we gonna get our hands on some of that?”

“Vietnam,” Tim said with a grin.

“The hell you talking about? The country?”

“Nope. The war. You’re gonna love this.” Tim stepped over a broken toolbox and grabbed hold of a rotted burlap tarp, lifting it up and showing his brother the two fifty-five-gallon drums with bright orange stripes on them that were hidden underneath.

“Are those what I think they are?”

“Agent Orange, dude. The most fucked-up chemical soup Uncle Sam ever invented. It also just happens to be one of the most powerful herbicides on the planet. A few squirts of this shit and those cornstalks will melt like butter.”

“It’s also illegal to use, not to mention own. That crap is really dangerous. It causes cancer.”

“I know it does. It might even be what killed Dad. He always used to tell us how they dumped it all over the jungles to clear out the vegetation and kill the trees so Charlie didn’t have anywhere to hide, remember? Said it used to fall like silver rain and stick to them like greasepaint that they had a hard time getting off.”

“I remember. Wonder why he would have a supply of it sitting around though? Seems pretty dangerous and stupid, really.”

“To be honest, I think he used to keep it in case some of his customers stiffed him on his bill. If they didn’t pay up, I think he used to secretly spray a little Orange on their precious crops. Serves the bastards right, I’d say. He must have done it too, because there’s at least half of one of those drums gone already. That still leaves lots for us though.”

“I don’t know, Tim. You sure it’s safe?”

“No, but we’re not going to have a bath in the damn stuff like Dad did over in ’Nam. We’ll fill those portable tanks and be in and out quick. Don’t worry about it. I’ll do the spraying if you wear the scarecrow suit. Deal?”

“Fine with me, I guess. When were you thinking of going?”

“Tomorrow morning, I think. First thing. It’s our day off so no one will miss us at the shop. We’ll load up, hop on the quads, and see if we can track those campers down. Shouldn’t be that hard. We basically know where they are from what they told us.”

“You really think we can pull this off? I mean, if the campers see either of us, we’re screwed.”

“Not necessarily. It might mean those guys never fall for it, but that doesn’t mean we can’t get things set up and start planning for other people. We can get the inverted cross burned into the field and take some video of it, maybe get some shots of the church for the website too, if we actually find one up there. It all works better and the word will definitely spread faster if we can scare those guys without them seeing us, but it doesn’t kill our idea if they do. We’ve waited a long time for this chance. There ain’t nothing gonna stop us this time, Bro. Valley of the Scarecrow is our ticket out of this dump, I can feel it. We just gotta get the ball rolling, then quietly get the hell out of the way. Sneak in there, scare the bejesus out of those campers, and then hope they go home and help us spread the word. You with me?”

“All the way, big guy. One hundred percent!”

“Atta boy.”