Valley of the Scarecrow (16 page)

“Rats, boy!” the scarecrow shouted. “We used to stomp ’em!”

He began kicking Pat in the ribs, the arms, the stomach, the legs, and eventually the head, anywhere he could inflict pain and damage without spilling too much blood that he’d be forced to clean up later. Pat tried to defend himself, to cover up as best he could, but in the end it was futile. Joshua’s knifelike toenails sunk into Pat’s battered body, breaking several bones and tearing into his vulnerable flesh in many places. The attack was intentionally cruel and brutally savage, leaving him
broken and helpless on the dusty floor in less than thirty seconds.

“Mash their skulls beneath our heels!” Joshua said, beginning to laugh.

The last thing Pat ever saw was the bottom of Joshua’s huge leather shoe lift high in the air and begin rapidly descending toward his eyes. He said a quick prayer that he’d pass out or die before it landed, surely crushing his face.

His prayer went unanswered.

Lizzy thought she was the first one awake in the morning, but when she rolled over in her sleeping bag and saw Kelly and Dan half naked with their tongues down each other’s throats she realized she’d been wrong. She also knew three was a crowd and needed to get her butt out of there and let her best friends have some alone time after all the craziness that had taken place last night.

“Don’t mind me, guys,” she said, grabbing for her hiking boots and a thick wool sweater. “I’ll be out of here in a jiffy.” Neither Dan nor Kelly even responded, so intent on each other they probably didn’t even hear her. “Alrighty then…have fun.”

She climbed out of the tent and made a beeline over to where Rich was sleeping, but saw he was already up and at it too, and was rebuilding the fire for breakfast. He smiled and waved when he saw her approaching.

“Morning, sexy,” he said. “You hungry?”

“Starving…but it might be just us eating for a while.”

“Why? What’s up?”

“Dan and Kelly are in my tent, ah…making up, I guess you’d call it.”

“Well, I’d call it something else,” Rich said, grinning, “but are you serious? I thought they were fighting again? Wasn’t Kelly ready to kill him last night?”

“Think so, yeah. But to be fair, it was more Kim’s fault that Dan’s. He didn’t really do anything. She’s the one with the hots for him, not the other way around.”

“Exactly. Maybe she’s been sniffing around him while Dan and Kelly were broken up, but that was pretty uncool what she did. Caused a big scene for nothing. I hate chicks like that. Fucking drama queens.”

“Yeah well just be thankful you’ve got me then.”

“I am, sweets. How ’bout we go into my tent and I’ll show you how much?”

“Down, Rover! You promised me breakfast, remember?”

“Food before sex?”

“Always. It’s one of the rules in the official woman’s guide to being a successful bitch. Wanna read it?”

“Nope. Guaranteed that book sucks. Speaking of bitches though, have you seen Kim this morning? I haven’t seen her or Pat yet.”

“Me neither. I just woke up though. Have you checked their tent? Maybe they’re still snoring?”

“Or maybe they’re doing the humpty dance too. I better go check.”

“Uh uh. You get some toast going, sport. I’ll check. You wouldn’t want to have to stomach seeing Kim’s sexy body lying around naked in there.”

“Right. Good call. Thanks…I think.”

Lizzy laughed, kissed her adorable boyfriend on the cheek, and went to discreetly check on Pat and his troublemaking new woman. She hugged herself on the walk over to their tent, warming her hands by rubbing them on her upper arms. The sky above was clear and blue and it looked like it was going to be another beautiful day today but it was still chilly out at the moment and she was glad she’d decided to slip on her wool sweater. Not
wanting to barge in on Pat and Kim, just in case Rich was right and they were in the process of making up as well, she stopped five feet from the front of the tent and softly asked, “Hey, guys…you awake yet?”

No one answered her so she tried again, this time louder.

“Pat? Kim? Rich has breakie on the go out here if you guys are hungry?”

Still no response.

Screw it,
Lizzy thought, and walked right up to the tent. “Knock knock!” she said, unzipping the door and unabashedly sticking her head inside.

She was surprised to find the tent empty, neither Pat nor Kim curled up in the mess of blankets within. “That’s strange,” she said, standing up and returning to Rich by the fire. “They’re not in their tent. Both of them are gone.”

“Gone? Where? It’s not even eight o’clock in the morning.”

“Don’t know. Should I go tell Dan?”

“Hell no. Leave them guys alone. Pat and Kim probably just went for a walk or something. Sit down with me and have your toast. Pat’s always hungry after he drinks, so I’m sure they’ll turn up soon.”

They didn’t though. Not while Rich and Lizzy ate their breakfast and cleaned up their mess, not even thirty minutes later when Dan and Kelly eventually came out of their tent and met them by the fire. Kelly had her arm around Dan’s waist and the couple was laughing and all lovey-dovey, flirting with each other so much it took them a minute to recognize the tension in the air.

“What’s wrong?” Dan asked.

“Nothing,” Rich said. “Well…hopefully nothing. It’s just that we can’t find Pat or Kim anywhere.”

“To hell with Kim,” Kelly said. “I don’t care if I ever see that bitch again.”

“I’m being serious. They’re gone!”

“Gone home?” Dan asked. “They wouldn’t have left without telling anyone, would they?”

“Everyone was pretty pissed off last night. Maybe Kim didn’t want to be here this morning and talked Pat into taking her home?”

“In the middle of the night?”

“I don’t know? I guess.”

“But their tent’s still here. Probably all their stuff too.”

“Pat’s coat and camera are gone. I’m not sure what Kim was wearing. My guess is they’re gone. Either that or they’re playing games and hiding in the field somewhere.”

“What about the church?”

“Nope. I already walked over there and yelled in the front door. No luck.”

“Well, fuck,” Dan said, pissed off. “What kind of idiots would try to walk out of here in the middle of the bloody night?”

“A couple of drunken ones?” Lizzy said, shrugging her shoulders.

“Maybe?” Rich said. “What do we do now?”

“We keep looking for the treasure. I didn’t come all this way just to go home because Pat’s off in a snit again. I need that gold. We all do, and hey, if Kim’s too embarrassed to face us this morning…screw her. With all the trouble she tried to cause, I’m kind of glad she’s gone.”

“Me too,” Kelly said. “I mean, I hope they made it out to their car okay, but what are we supposed to do about it? They can take care of themselves.”

“I guess,” Rich said. “I suppose they know where we are if they change their minds, right? Let’s get you two some breakfast and Lizzy and I will whip up some sandwiches to take with us for lunch. If they’re not back by the time we’re done, too bad, we’ll go exploring without them.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Kelly said. “We still plan on checking out the village today?”

“Yep,” Dan said. “Can’t be far. It’s gotta be in the woods somewhere near the church, right? Might not find the treasure but I think we’ll find the settlement easy enough. Who knows, maybe we’ll get lucky.”

While Liz made the picnic lunch, Rich made Dan and Kelly some toast, burning the bread on one side nearly black, but he smothered it in a thick layer of raspberry jam and his friends never complained at all. By nine o’clock, the temperature was starting to rise, the crows were doing their usual noisy morning laps in the sky, and everyone was suited up and ready to go. Pat and Kim hadn’t returned so it was presumed they were gone for good and the rest of the group would have to make do without them.

“I tell you though,” Rich said. “Damned if I’m lugging his tent and all his shit back with me. He can come back and get it himself.”

“We can’t just leave it here,” Kelly said.

“Sure we can. Why the hell not? Might be a good lesson. It’s high time he got a backbone and stopped letting women walk all over him.”

“Still…seems like a nasty thing to do. If I know Pat, he’s just trying to help.”

“Trying to get laid, you mean.”

“Not everyone’s as sex craved as you—”

“Stop,” Dan said, interrupting, having heard enough.
“We can worry about this later. For all we know Pat might just find Kim a taxi and hike his ass back here. And to be honest, we don’t even know if they’re really gone. Maybe they talked things out like Kelly and I and they’re off on some lovers’ stroll or some damn thing. Either way, they’re not here so what’s the point arguing about it? Let’s just get moving, okay?”

They circled around to the rear of the church, where yesterday they’d spotted the trail heading through the corn and leading into the forest on the far side of the clearing. They set off toward the woods at a brisk pace, Dan and Rich plowing ahead like it was some kind of race to see who could find the village first, leaving Kelly and Liz following behind. Lizzy had been hoping for a chance to talk with her best pal alone anyway.

“So what’s up with you two?” she asked.

“What do you mean?” Kelly said but knowing perfectly well what was coming.

“Bite me, Kel. Let’s hear it. Last night you wanted to kill everyone and bawled yourself to sleep on my shoulder; then eight hours later Dan and you are slobbering all over each other. What happened?”

“Nothin’ really. I woke up and Dan was lying beside me, shivering on the tent floor. He didn’t even have a blanket.”

“I never even heard him come in.”

“Neither did I. We must have both been passed out. Anyway, I woke him up ready to blast him for having the nerve to sleep in our tent, but when I saw how cold he was I just asked him what the hell he was thinking? He could have frozen to death maybe, ya know? Get this…he says he’d rather die than lose me!”

“No way?”

“I swear it. He said he’s sorry I was mad but he’d never slept with Kim. Said she wasn’t his type and I believed him.”

“Kim is
every
guy’s type, sweetie, but for what it’s worth, I believe him too. Dan loves you Kel. Always has and always will. He’s a good-looking man and there’s always gonna be women out there who want him. That’s just the way it is. You don’t like that fact, you should have fallen in love with an ugly dude like Rich.”

“I’m
so
gonna tell him you said that.”

“You do and I’m getting in line for Dan too. All you gals fighting over him, he must be a real stud!”

“Well, I wouldn’t go that far,” Kelly said, grinning. “I do love him though.”

“I know you do. Just like I love crazy ol’ Richie. The four of us…I think we’re just made for each other, you know?”

“I hope so. Maybe I’m a fool, but when I saw how cold he was I just caved in and invited him into my sleeping bag. One thing led to another and, well…”

“Yeah, that’s the part I woke up to, remember? Nearly made me sick to my stomach. Least you could have done is warned me. Seriously though…I’m glad you guys are on track again. Women like Kim will never take Dan away from you. No way. It’s just not gonna happen.”

“I hear ya. I just have a hard time believing it sometimes. Thanks for letting me cry on your shoulder last night.”

“That’s what friends are for, right? Now let’s catch up to Tweedledee and Tweedledum before they abandon us completely.”

“Which one’s Tweedledum?”

“Take your pick!” Lizzy said, bursting into laughter
and putting her arm around Kelly’s waist. Together they hurried to catch up.

They found the village easily, but it was quite a bit farther away from the church than they’d originally envisioned, nearly a half-hour hike along the trail. The path had only split once, with neither of the branches of the trail marked, but the pathway on the right was considerably wider and looked more promising. From there the village was only a ten-minute stroll away, no great hardship other than it was noticeably cooler under the canopy of trees. It had only been a few days but already they’d forgotten how dense and overgrown the forest was in the valley. The tall oak and pine trees completely blotted out the blue sky and kept the temperature at ground level at least ten degrees cooler in the woods than out in the sundrenched cornfields.

Unfortunately, Miller’s Grove was in ruins.

No one had expected the small farming settlement to be in mint condition after being abandoned so long ago, but none of them had realized just how thoroughly the forest had been working to reclaim this section of the woods. They should have though. Seventy-four years is a long time for nature to work its magic. When the villagers of Miller’s Grove had hastily packed their things and left in the middle of the night, the trees, plants, bugs, and animals had been more than happy to move in and take their place. Most of the old log cabins were leaning one way or the other, some of their walls crumbling badly or already completely collapsed and rotting on the ground. Bushes and shrubs covered most of the open ground, thorn-covered vines and saplings and a million other tripping hazards filled in the walkways and roads, and an
assortment of full-grown trees poked straight through the roofs of many of the once-sturdy homes.

“Jesus,” Dan said. “What a mess. Here I thought we’d just have to look inside a few empty houses. Looks like a tornado hit this place.”

“Sure does,” Lizzy said. “It’ll take forever to search this place. It’s bigger than I thought it would be. Needle in a haystack, you know? Do we even have a clue where to start looking?”

Kelly thought back to her talk with her grandfather. “Malcolm told me he always thought the treasure, if it exists, might be hidden inside Joshua Miller’s house. No one was allowed in there and he told me that’s where he’d go first if he was here.”

“Sounds good, but how do we find that? None of the houses have names on them. Least I don’t think so. Hell, most of them are in pieces on the ground.”

“Malcolm said we could find the reverend’s house easily, because it was pretty much twice the size of all the other houses. Guess he lived it up pretty good here.”

“For a while anyway,” Rich said. “The villagers got the last laugh on him though. Fixed his little red wagon good, didn’t they?”

“You shouldn’t talk like that, man,” Dan said, smirking at his friend’s disrespectful comment. “It’s bad luck to speak ill of the dead. Didn’t your mama teach you nothing, homeboy?”

“Yeah, she told me to stay away from troublemakers like you.”

“Well, you should have listened to her. Okay…let’s spread out. We got a lot of ground to cover and we have to be thorough. Take Liz and start checking out these cabins closest to us. Kelly and I will start looking for this
big cabin Malcolm’s talking about. Holler if you find anything.”

“Okay, boss. Unless we find the treasure, of course. Lizzy and I find that, we’re hightailing it out of here, quiet as mice. You won’t see nothin’ but our smoke.”

“Smart-ass!”

They broke off into pairs and began the not-so-easy task of trying to find something that might or might not even exist. They had no idea what to search for or what shape or size it might be. Only a vague idea of what gold and silver coins looked like in the old pirate movies on television. All they could do was check everywhere and hope one of them got lucky.