Valley of the Scarecrow (19 page)

Midnight.

A light rain falls from the black sky.

He walks through the wet cornfield, relishing his freedom, something short and heavy held in his powerful right hand. It’s part of a tree branch that’s fallen in the nearby woods and he likes the weight of it, the way it balances perfectly in his grip. It’s wood from an oak tree so he knows it is solid, very hard to break even if he were to smash it down on the ground or a rock.

Or a skull.

He exits the field and his eyes search the darkness, easily making out the triangular shapes of the campers’ tents in the gloom. He knows they’re all inside, asleep and totally defenseless. A smile touches the corner of his mouth, but just as quickly it’s gone, replaced with a scowl as the rage fills his mind again. Sometimes it seems fury is the only state of emotion he’s capable of, the ultraviolent thoughts that constantly fill his mind taboo for the vast majority of human beings. Mind you, he’s no longer human so their pitiful rules don’t apply to him anymore.

Not tonight they don’t anyway.

Tonight’s special.

He starts walking toward the tents, fingernails digging into his makeshift club and squeezing it tightly. It’s time to make these troublemaking strangers pay for what they’ve done: trespassing on his land, trying to steal his secret possessions, and
defiling his church simply by their mere presence. For those crimes and more, they deserve to die horribly, screaming and suffering as much as possible.

As he approaches the camp, he wonders which one he’ll begin with, a male or perhaps one of the females? Yes, he prefers the idea of killing one of the girls first. No real reason, it just seems like the thing to do. Not knowing who’s sleeping with whom, he chooses the middle tent and carefully unzips the entrance zipper. Silently, he peeks inside and is pleased to see two people snoring on their backs, one the dark-skinned man and the other, his white girlfriend. What better pair to start with than these two? Their shameless mixing of the races sickens him to his core and he looks forward to permanently putting an end to this offensive, deviant union.

First, the girl.

Silently, he enters the tent, moving slowly and carefully so he doesn’t wake up either of them. He doesn’t want to spoil the surprise. Not yet anyway. He’s already picturing the coming death stroke, her head opening up like a ripe, juicy melon, her blood and spongy brain meat splashing in all directions and painting the plastic walls red and gray. Raising the oak branch as high as he can within the confined space, he grits his teeth tightly together and swings with all his considerable strength, the wooden club striking the woman flush between the eyes and…

…and causing Malcolm Tucker to bolt upright in his bed screaming, trembling with panic and gasping for breath in the wake of what had unquestionably been the worst nightmare he’d ever experienced. Certainly the worst he could remember, anyway.

“Kelly!” he shouted, still not fully awake, his heart beating like a jackhammer against the old bones of his chest. He was covered in sweat and for a moment not at all sure where he was. His eyes darted around the dark room,
searching for his precious granddaughter, her boyfriend Dan, and the monstrous man who—just seconds before—had been standing here trying to kill them.

“Just another dream, you silly old bugger,” he said to himself, trying to draw in a few deep breaths and calm down. This had been the third such nightmare in as many nights but by far the worst. The others had also been about Joshua Miller and the Grove where he’d grown up, but tonight’s dream was the only one where he’d been forced to sit and watch while Kelly was brutally murdered.

Malcolm’s bad dreams were getting progressively worse and he knew it was his conscience’s way of getting back at him for allowing Kelly and her friends to wander off to a place of absolute evil without putting up more of a fight. The moment the taxi had pulled away from the curb with him in the backseat, leaving Kelly standing there in her friend’s driveway, he’d known he had just made a grave mistake. Sure he’d given her his father’s White Magic ring and made her promise to leave at the first sign of trouble, but that wasn’t enough. Not nearly. That was the problem though. What could he have done any differently? He’d told her everything he knew about Miller’s Grove. Everything he feared about Joshua Miller. Nothing he’d said had any influence on her, and he could have warned her not to go until he was blue in the face and she still would have gone. The only way he could have prevented her from going was to have dragged her kicking and screaming into the taxicab and physically tied her up back here at his apartment. That wasn’t going to happen, obviously, but no matter how hard Malcolm analyzed and justified his behavior he still ended up with the same conclusion.

He’d let his granddaughter down.

He’d put Kelly and her friends in danger.

People might think he was overreacting, a crazy old fool getting himself all worked up over nothing more than some twisted childhood memories that his delusional vigilante father had helped forge into a family obsession to cover up his lifelong shame, but Malcolm knew better. He’d lived in the Grove, felt the Man in Black’s presence every time the sun went down, witnessed his dark hand touch the lives of every family there, not only Reverend Miller’s and his own. No, he wasn’t overreacting or making things up. The danger was definitely real.

The question was what was he going to do about it?

Malcolm climbed out of bed and turned on the light. He put on his slippers and walked out into the kitchen where he had a list of emergency numbers taped to the wall beside the telephone. At the bottom of the list, he had a number for Kelly’s cell phone written in. Middle of the night or not, he picked up the phone and dialed her number, not worrying about what he might say if she answered. He just wanted to hear her voice and hear her say that everything was all right. Maybe then he could let this fear go and start sleeping at night again.

No one answered.

Her familiar answering machine message clicked on right away, but Malcolm didn’t bother saying anything. He hung up and sat down at the kitchen table. He was smart enough to know reception out in the woods would probably be nonexistent, and he also was aware that this late at night, even if her phone had been receiving a signal, she was probably fast asleep and wouldn’t have heard it ring anyway, but none of those facts eased the growing ball of terror growing in his belly.

“I have to go help her,” he said. “There’s no one else who can.”

Being a realist, he knew it was practically suicide for an eighty-four-year-old man to go on a long hike alone in the woods, but such was his conviction that Kelly was in terrible danger, he was willing to try. He was old, sure, but he still had a lot of fight in him yet. He’d kept himself in good shape and he even knew a shortcut to Miller’s Grove that would get him there a lot faster than his granddaughter and her friends probably got there. It would still be incredibly hard for him to get back there, but not impossible.

He stood up and went back into his bedroom. Opening the top drawer on his bedside table, he reached inside and withdrew something else his father had passed down to him when he’d died. It was a Smith & Wesson Model 13 six-shot revolver. Its four-inch blue steel barrel had a fixed sight on top and produced a hell of a kick, firing .357-caliber rounds powerful enough to shoot straight through a brick wall. Malcolm had cleaned the handgun religiously every month for over forty years, but had never actually fired the weapon. Not even once. Until tonight, he’d never had any reason to.

What if you’re wrong?
he wondered.
What if you barge in there waving your dad’s old gun around and everyone is fine, drinking beer and roasting marshmallows?

He could live with that, he thought. No shame in acting like an old fool. They probably all thought he was nuts already anyway, so what was the difference? At least he’d know for sure that Kelly was okay.

No, there was no problem at all if he was wrong.

He just wasn’t sure what to do if it turned out that he was right.

When Rich Borden woke up on Friday morning and saw daylight filtering in through the thin plastic walls of their tent, he was honestly shocked he’d slept straight through the night without waking up even once. He’d gone to bed dead certain Pat and Kim were going to show up at some point through the night waking everyone up trying to pull some jackass stunt or another but obviously it hadn’t happened. Either that, or Lizzy and he had been so tired from their unsuccessful search of the abandoned village yesterday that they’d both fallen into the deepest sleeps of their lives, nestled so far down the rabbit hole no one or nothing had been able to disturb their comalike rest. Rich wasn’t a heavy sleeper though, so although he’d been extremely tired last night, his vote went for option one—Pat and Kim simply hadn’t shown up.

Leaving Lizzy to let her catch a few more minutes of rest, Rich quietly crawled into his clothes and left the tent. He wanted to check in with Dan and Kelly to see if either of them had seen Pat or Kim sometime during the night. He normally wouldn’t wake people up like this but Dan had said he wanted to get an early start on the day anyway, so Rich supposed it was okay to disturb them. To his surprise, neither of his friends had been rudely awakened last night either, both Dan and Kelly having
slept like babies from the moment their weary heads had hit the blow-up travel pillows.

“Well, where the heck can they be?” Rich said. “I was sure they’d show up and do a sneak attack on us. Pretty sure anyway.”

“So was I,” Dan said. “Don’t see any other reason why they’d paint that message on the church and move the reverend’s dead body. Unless maybe they realized it was a lame idea to start with, and changed their mind. Did you check their tent yet?”

“Nope. Was just about to though. I’ll be right back.”

Rich walked over to look inside Pat’s tent but he’d known it was going to be empty the minute he looked at it. The door flaps were spread wide-open and the entrance zipper had been left open all night long. He returned to Dan and Kelly’s tent to let them know what he’d found—or more precisely, what he hadn’t found—and together they decided to let the matter drop. Pat was a big boy and Kim could certainly look after herself as well, so as far as Rich and Dan were concerned, if they were set on playing some silly, childish game of hide-and-seek with them, they were officially on their own. They had neither the time nor the inclination to carry on this craziness anymore, not if they still wanted to find the treasure and get out of here before it was too late in the afternoon to risk not making it to their cars before nightfall.

“What time would we have to leave to play it safe?”

“I’m not exactly sure,” Dan said. “Early afternoon. One or two maybe. After that and we might still be wandering around in the woods when it gets dark.”

“Nothing’s set in stone though, right?” Rich said. “I mean…there’s nothing saying we absolutely
have
to leave tonight. It’s not the end of the world if we have to spend one more night out here.”

“Exactly,” Dan said. “We’ll just have to play it by ear and see how the day goes. Hopefully we can go home today, but either way we better get our butts in gear and get moving. We’re already behind schedule and haven’t even left camp yet.”

“I’ll go grab Lizzy then and we’ll be ready to roll in ten minutes.”

“Make it five.”

“Yes, sir, boss man. Just better hope Lizzy isn’t in a romantic mood.”

“That would still leave you four minutes and thirty seconds to get ready,” Kelly said, she and Dan bursting into laughter.

“Oh! Everyone’s a comedian now, huh? Not only do I get heckled by my own girlfriend…now I have to hear it from you too! Nice!”

“Sorry…couldn’t help myself.”

“No worries, kiddo. Be right back.”

True to his word, Rich and Lizzy were packed up and ready to head for the woods five minutes later. Dan and Kelly were set too, so together they headed behind the church to hit the trail that they hoped would lead them to Joshua Miller’s house. Overhead, the crows followed them, keeping a watchful eye from way up high in a cloudy, overcast sky that threatened rain.

At the fork in the wooded trail, Kelly led the group off to the left this time, onto the smaller path they hadn’t had the time or the energy to explore last night. This trail was a lot more overgrown than the other branch leading to the village had been, and there were several places along the way they had to stop and look hard just to determine if they were still on the path. Somehow they
managed and within about fifteen minutes they walked out of the dense trees and into a small man-made clearing in the forest. The villagers had obviously cut all the trees down in a large circular area to let the sunlight in, then used the excessive amount of large chopped logs on site to build a massive family-size, two-story log cabin in the center of the clearing for Reverend Miller.

Even by today’s standards, the sturdy oak house would be considered large and considering all this had been built back then for just one man it must have seemed like a mansion to the common families living in cramped quarters in the nearby village. With a lavish house like this to live in, it wasn’t hard to imagine how some of the hardworking people of Miller’s Grove could start to get a little jealous and begin resenting their charismatic leader. Perhaps the very first seeds of discontent had been sown right here, long before Angus Tucker and the village elders had decided to permanently remove Joshua Miller from his duties. Unfortunately, there was no one left alive who might have had knowledge about this who’d been an adult in the Grove back then.

From the outside, the house appeared to be in remarkably good shape and had weathered the years of sun, wind, snow, and rain much better than the smaller dwellings the gang had explored yesterday. Even the second floor was still standing, along with six unbroken stained-glass windows that were popular at the time. Other than the roof, which by the looks of it had crumbled years ago, the house still looked like it could be fixed up and lived in. If Kelly was to hazard a guess why, it was because Reverend Miller’s house had been built out of larger, sturdier logs than the other homes; most of the timber here were entire trees stacked one upon the other. It was
built more like a fortress than a residential house, an old frontier fort built to last, with walls close to two feet thick in some places.

“Wow!” Kelly said. “Not bad, huh?”

“Beautiful,” Dan said. “A log cabin like this today would be worth a fortune.”

“For sure,” Rich chimed in, amazed at the size of the place. “This Joshua Miller dude must have been a hell of an important dude around here for the villagers to have built a joint like this for him. It’s triple the size of the houses the rest of them lived in.”

“Probably more than that,” Lizzy said. “It’s huge.”

“Let’s leave the size of my manhood out of this, sweetie. Save it for later. We’ve got work to do. Right, Dan?”

“Right,” Dan said, smiling at his best friend’s last comment.

“Jackass!” Lizzy said, punching Rich in the shoulder. “Let’s get at it then. The sooner we find that treasure, the sooner we can go home, and I can climb into a nice hot bubble bath.
Alone!”
She directed that last word at Rich and punched him again just for good measure.

“Ow! What was that…hey, did you guys see that?”

“You deserved it,” Kelly said.

“No, not that. In the house. I saw something move in there.”

“Get lost,” Lizzy said, sure Rich was kidding around again.

“I’m serious. Something moved upstairs. I saw someone in that middle window.”

“Someone? As in a person?” Dan asked.

“I don’t know. Some movement caught my eye and when I looked up I swear someone was standing there. Maybe it was just a shadow or something.”

Everyone’s eyes turned to the second floor, scanning
the windows for any sign they weren’t alone, but there was nothing to see. If there ever was someone or something up in the window, they were certainly gone now. Or hiding.

“Maybe Pat?” Kelly said. “This might be where he and Kim have been hiding.”

“I don’t know,” Rich said. “I’ve given up worrying about him. Maybe it was nothing. Just a trick of the light. Screw it, let’s go have a look.”

Together they walked across the clearing and cautiously entered the house through the front door. It was sitting open about eight inches when they found it but even if it had been closed, there was no locking mechanism on the door anyway. There probably hadn’t been any need for locks on houses back then. They stopped just inside the entrance, in what must have once been Joshua Miller’s living room, and they all listened for any noises coming from the floor above their heads. At the moment, everything seemed quiet.

“Before we do anything else, I think we should at least go upstairs and check it out, huh?” Dan said.

“Definitely,” Kelly said. “Lizzy and I will wait here.”

“How come I always get volunteered for this crap,” Rich said, but Dan was already dragging him by the shirt collar toward the rustic wooden staircase.

“Those with the biggest mouths have to do the most work. Move it!”

The stairs had been coated with a clear varnish or some other type of transparent sealant and they appeared solid enough to hold their combined weight. There was some rubble from the collapsed roof on several of the top steps and from below Dan and Rich could look straight up into the sky and see the dark gray storm clouds that were quickly moving into the area.

“It’s gonna rain soon,” Rich said, stating the obvious. “Wind’s really picking up too. We’d better hurry or we’re gonna get drenched.”

“After you, then.”

Rich led the way upstairs, not really expecting to find Pat or Kim hiding on the second floor. He’d pretty much convinced himself that he hadn’t seen anything in the window and his eyes were just playing tricks on him. He paused briefly at the top of the stairs to have a look around, but there wasn’t much to see. The entire upstairs seemed to be one massive bedroom chamber for Reverend Miller. His bed was still here, but broken in pieces and lying beneath a heap of roof debris. Despite most of the floor area being hidden in wreckage, the entire second floor was visible from the landing at the top of the stairs. The only possible hiding place in the room was inside a large hand-made wooden wardrobe unit that still stood upright in the far left-hand corner. It was as big as a bank vault and just seeing it started Rich’s heart and thoughts racing.

“Look in the corner,” he whispered to Dan.

“What? The closet? You think someone might be hiding in there?”

“Actually I was thinking more like the treasure. Looks like a perfect place for the reverend to stash valuables to me.”

“Jesus, you might be right. Let’s be careful though, just in case.”

“In case of what? Pat?”

“No. Hell, I don’t know. This place kind of gives me the creeps. Let’s just get this over with.”

They carefully made their way over to the wardrobe, having to scramble over several large sections of the
fallen roof, but soon they were standing right beside it, ready to reach for the handle.

“Anyone home?” Rich said, knocking on the door.

“Stop screwing around and just open it for God’s sake.”

“Okay…relax, man. Look, there’s nothing inside—” Rich started to say as he yanked on the handle, but something huge and black lunged at them as soon as the door was out of the way, coming after Rich with its mouth open and its sharp claws bared. Rich screamed long and loud and Dan opened his mouth to scream too, but recognized what it was that was attacking them.

“Shut up, Rich. It’s just a big-ass crow.”

Sure enough, the bird took to the air, mad as hell it had been disturbed and in a hurry to get away. It snapped its powerful beak at Rich’s face as it flew past, just barely missing the tip of his nose by an inch, but then it was airborne and swooping high up into the dark swirling sky. He’d been lucky the crow hadn’t caught him; it could have bitten off a big chunk of his nose, or worse, it might have plucked out one of his eyes.

“God dammit!” Rich yelled, his voice a little more high-pitched than normal. “Did you see that? That son of a whore went after my face!”

“Daughter of a whore, more like it.”

“What?”

“Daughter. It was a female.”

“How the hell do you know that?”

“Easy…look,” Dan said, pointing inside the wardrobe Rich had just opened. There was a large hole in the top of the cabinet for access and on the floor was a huge bird’s nest made out of sticks and leaves and whatever else it had found foraging around in the nearby fields and
woods. “I think she was making her nest. We probably startled it a bit. Might have been what you saw up here through the window earlier too.”

“We
startled
it!
You kidding me? I nearly shit my pants when it flew out at me. The bitch tried to bite me!”

“Yeah, I saw that. You have that effect on a lot of women.”

Despite still shaking from the near miss, Dan’s comment made Rich laugh. “Screw you too.”

“The truth hurts, buddy. Come on, let’s get back downstairs. There’s nothing up here to find. To be honest, I’m starting to think we’re wasting our time.”

They spent the next hour and a half searching every nook and cranny of Reverend Miller’s house, but in the end found nothing. To make things worse, the clouds finally let loose and it started to rain. Hard. One moment it was dry and calm, and the next it was a downpour and the wind was whipping the nearby tree branches into a frenzy. The four friends were relatively safe but not very comfortable inside the house, and they still had a twenty-minute hike back to camp. If the weather stayed like this, it wasn’t going to be a very fun stroll.

For the next hour they stayed put, hoping the rain would taper off, but it didn’t. If anything, the weather appeared to be getting worse. The wind was howling stronger than ever, the rain coming down sideways it was blowing so hard. Around 1:00
P.M.
the wind died down enough that they decided to make a run for it, wanting to get back to camp as soon as possible. If the storm hung around all day like it looked like it might, at least they could grab something to eat and sit inside the church, where it would be much more comfortable than this damp, drafty place. At least the church had a roof on it.