Scaring the Crows Read online

  Table of Contents

  Scaring the Crows

  Big Plans

  Stapleton’s Dog

  Goodbye, Friend

  Without Power

  Two Calls

  The Hunt

  Lorna Gould’s Roses

  Birthday

  The Piano

  Arachno

  The Day After

  Come Spring

  Wolf Stone

  All, Always

  Steel

  An Unknown Shore

  A Sense of Duty

  Welcome Home

  Armistice Day

  Hollow’s End

  About the Author

  About the Illustrator

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  Scaring the Crows

  21 Tales for Noon or Midnight

  Gregory Miller

  Illustrated by John Randall York

  Stonegarden.net Publishing

  http://www.stonegarden.net

  Reading from a different angle.

  California, USA

  Scaring the Crows Copyright © 2009, 2012 Gregory Miller

  ISBN: 1-60076-241-7

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  StoneGarden.net Publishing

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  All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information address StoneGarden.net Publishing.

  First StoneGarden.net Publishing paperback printing:

  October 2009

  First StoneGarden.net Publishing paperback printing:

  February 2012

  Visit StoneGarden.net Publishing on the web at

  http://www.stonegarden.net

  Cover art and design by John Randall York

  “Steel” was first published in ‘Rosebud,’ issue 41 (Spring 2008)

  “Without Power” was first published in the StoneGarden.net Publishing anthology “Don’t Turn the Lights On.”

  For who else but Ray Bradbury

  Scaring the Crows

  Edith Krepps had given up on men years ago, and now avoided them with a passion that bordered on obsession. Too many abuses, insults, lies and disappointments had left her barren of optimism for future relationships and possessive of a distrust and hatred for virility that gained ground with every passing day.

  Anger, she constantly reminded herself. I’m angry. I have a right to be angry. And so she was.

  Yet intermingled with her anger, at first subtly, now all too obviously, was something else.

  She fought it heart, soul and mind. She reasoned against it. She raved at it. But as the flame of her anger burned more brightly, so also did…fear. Men scared her. Terrified her. Intellectually, she had come to understand her own inherent strength. She was self-sufficient, autonomous, and resourceful. She had a good brain on her shoulders and a strong body to support it. But she was…she was…

  Oh, God. Fearful.

  Pittsburgh, home all her life, became unlivable. The close city streets contained too much to prey on her nerves. The source of her fear was everywhere: stopping by her walk with the mail, processing her groceries at the store, handing her change on the toll roads…

  Even Edith’s Family Diner, her one claim to critical and commercial success, had become an emotional liability. Dodging three dozen fears a block, she arrived at work every morning a frazzled, anxious wreck. Once there, she spent the rest of the day serving her apprehensions meatloaf, chicken and biscuits, corn soup, coleslaw, and burgers.

  Have there always been this many in here? she wondered one day, surveying the patrons as her waitresses moved between them. Stifled by testosterone, Adam’s apples, Y-chrome voice boxes and splayed-legged posturing, she closed up early that night, sold out, and retired at the age of forty-seven to the suburbs.

  The suburbs, however, turned out no better than the city. Paternal households hemmed Edith in, keeping her up nights. Since the neighborhood rules precluded mailboxes, every morning the mailman came to the door and jammed letters through a slot. Once every few weeks a meter man prowled the bushes in the back yard.

  Even Edith’s nervous tics developed twitches. She began grinding her teeth in her sleep.

  Then one day she noticed an ad in the paper for a rental house just an hour away, on the edge of a tiny town called Still Creek, population 1200. It was a fading town, dying because the coal mines were dead, the men who worked them having black dust-coughed themselves into early graves decades before.

  It was a quiet town. Isolated.

  Perfect.

  The house was large. It stood on the other side of a hill at the end of Still Creek’s last street. Beyond it, before it, and on both sides? Corn fields. The mailbox was at the end of a dirt lane over two hundred yards from the house.

  Also perfect.

  She rented a moving van, loaded everything up herself, drove it to Still Creek, unloaded everything herself, took a brief look round the property, locked the door tight, and basked in the absence of clammy hands, creeping flesh, pounding heart, and nauseous stomach.

  Life, for the first time in several years, was finally good.

  * * * * *

  The feeling was like a wet, ice-cold finger twisting in her ear.

  In the back yard garden, Edith looked up sharply, pulling off her dirt-caked gloves and letting them fall in the lettuce.

  She stood up slowly, peering carefully at the unshuttered house, the dustbowl driveway.

  Nothing.

  Nothing at all but the dread, three months gone but now returned, seethed through her veins in numbing pulses.

  She turned with a gasp in a quick, tight half-circle, eyeing everything.

  Knee-high corn stalks rustled in a warm, gentle breeze.

  The weathervane rooster atop the house twisted, creaking, to face east.

  A man was standing in the field, staring at her.

  Even as she screamed, Edith took in his patched blue jean overalls, his red and black checkered shirt, his frayed rope belt and black-knit gloves. Her eyes moved up his body, dilated pupils capturing his tattered, wide-brimmed straw hat, his lolling neck, his mottled…

  She squinted in the sun and took a step closer, then two, three, ten.

  A man? Clothes rippling in the wind but no body movement? Arms spread messianically against a wooden pole?

  A man? Straw sticking out of the shirt? A ceramic jack o’ lantern for a head?

  The scarecrow grinned at her stupidly. Edith breathed a long, shaky sigh of relief.

  But where had it come from? It hadn’t been there yesterday, or even earlier that morning, and she hadn’t been away from the house all day. Edith had made it clear to her landlady, Mrs. Amos, that no one was to set foot on the property without prior warning via telephone. No one had called, and beyond that, she should have seen a work truck or heard the pounding of the scarecrow post as it was knocked into the earth.

  She went back inside and called Mrs. Amos, but her son answered instead.

  “She’s in Florida for the next six weeks. Needs the time off and doesn’t want bothered. Her blood pressure, you know. What can I do for you?”

  But Edith, gasping
for air, her very bones chilled, had already slammed down the phone with a heavy clunk.

  Fine, then. The police!…But in this district? Men, all of them…

  Trespasser or no, she would have to make do alone.

  * * * * *

  As the green fields of rustling corn ripened, yellow shocks and seedling strands waving in hot, late-morning summer wind, Edith woke unrefreshed, unfulfilled by sleep, bothered by the lingering obsessions of one AM, two AM, three AM, four. There had been no sign of any outsiders on her property since the appearance of the scarecrow, but the nagging sense of insecurity still plagued her.

  Why? she demanded. No one in the house, no one on the property. No one in sight.

  But…

  But there was, really.

  After the sixteenth restless night had passed, at last, into pale morning, Edith went downstairs and made a pot of strong hazelnut coffee. As she ground the beans she happened to glance out the kitchen window, her gaze quickly drawn to the ragged effigy splayed upright in the field beyond the yard.

  She shivered, then slowly looked down at her gooseflesh, pressed a hand to her quivering, bloodless lips, and tapped a finger to the racing pulse in her clammy wrist.

  “Ridiculous!” she proclaimed. “Beyond ridiculous!”

  Really? Is it really?

  The scarecrow’s clothes, build, presence. Her clacking teeth, cold veins, burning trepidation. The looming sense of dread. The unfounded, pervasive sense of constant invasion; of being watched, scrutinized….

  A scarecrow? Yes.

  Only a scarecrow?

  “Only a scarecrow, yes…but male.”

  Ignore it, she thought. Ignore. To be afraid of the living is one thing. That fear, however irrational, had a foundation in her life. To be afraid of the dead? A little more abstract, but she could understand it. But fear of dried corn stalks and an old farmer’s hand-me-downs? That was a fear which needed to be put down, knocked away, cast off and forgotten. Killed.

  Go on out, now. Ignore it. Go tend the garden.

  “Damn it,” said Edith a week later, peering from behind lace curtains at the dead plants gone back to soil.

  * * * * *

  It was the following day, in the calm, humid warmth following a brief summer storm, that Edith noticed the change.

  The scarecrow was gone.

  Gone! Knowing it was in the field was bad enough. Somehow, not knowing where it was struck her as far worse.

  Taken? Knocked off the pole by wind? Battered down by rain?

  She went to her bedroom on the second floor and looked out the window. Peering down from that angle she could see the empty bamboo pole clearly. Straw hands, wet colored cloth and a ceramic pumpkin skull lay in a tangle several feet away among the corn stalks.

  “Fine,” she assured herself. “That’s fine.”

  But the next day wasn’t so fine.

  “If I didn’t know better,” Edith said, looking out the window for the two-dozenth time in as many hours. She closed her mouth with a clatter of enamel.

  Days passed.

  An inch. A foot. A yard. Ever so slowly, but without a doubt, the scarecrow was closing in on the house.

  “A trick of the light,” Edith said. “Wind. An animal. Kids.”

  At first she believed it, yet the sunlight and moonlight were steady and played no tricks. The air was muggy and calm. There was no evidence of dogs or other large animals on her property. Besides, what animal would return night after night to nudge, prod, pull—just enough to scare? Teenagers? They never bothered her, preferring the intrigue of woods or the troubles of parties far out in the countryside to the boring, cultivated fields around her end of town.

  The chair dragged up from the kitchen became a fixture by her bedroom window. By turn, so did Edith. Downstairs existed in dimness and dark, the curtains pulled across the windows, the doors latched, bolted, and reinforced by stools lodged firmly under knobs. She wanted to leave town but could not; beyond Still Creek prowled fears she could not face. Even the progress of the straw man scared her less than them.

  It did, however, scare her very, very much.

  September came, autumn on its heels. The scarecrow reached the edge of the cornfield.

  That morning, waking from a short, troubled doze in her chair, Edith’s tired, glazed eyes slowly focused. She leaned toward the frost-paned window, found the subject of her constant attention, and stared at it for a long moment before jumping up, skin seething with shock-sweat.

  Colin!

  A high school boyfriend came crashing into her mind, dredged up from deep, lost years: his thick neck, wrestler’s arms, and close-cropped brown hair; his strangely high-pitched giggle when they watched All in the Family on Tuesday nights; his haughty stride, ridiculous posturing and constant primping; his overbearing smile when he announced that, yes, he was too good for her now, it was time to move on, his parents didn’t approve, she came from the wrong side of the tracks; and last but not least, the way he’d swung his Number 28 Martinsville Mariners varsity jacket over his right shoulder as he’d walked away from her for the last time.

  “Now how,” she asked the scarecrow, “did you get that?”

  Instead of the red and black woolen shirt, the scarecrow now sported a tight-fitting denim Martinsville Mariners varsity jacket, Number 28.

  She took two Quaaludes and slept for twelve hours.

  When Edith woke up, she sighed with relief. The jacket was gone, the old weather-stained shirt back in place. It was the same—

  “Wait. Wait.”

  Penny loafers.

  “Bernard Renfrew.” A no-show at Senior Prom. But the day before that horrible night, he’d left those shoes at her house, part of a rented tuxedo outfit that had been used to charm and impress—not her, but a close friend instead. She had fed them to Flower, her purebred German Shepherd. Now they adorned the scarecrow’s husk feet, looking decidedly out of place.

  And the scarecrow itself was unquestionably closer.

  From then on, every time she turned away, slept, ate, scratched herself over the next few days and nights, the scarecrow gained ground … and not only that, changed.

  David Palchak. Nick Miller. Lloyd Stackhouse.

  It was peeking through the last corn stalks, face down, arms splayed out before it, its left wrist sporting a gold Rolex that gave Edith shudders of memory.

  Ryan Nelson. Wallace Goodwin. Jason Knapik.

  It lay among tomato husks in the abandoned garden, a thin silver necklace she had bought for Brian Caldwell, the first man who ever punched her in the face, around its corn stock neck.

  Stuart Baumgarten. Peter Wendell. Marty Bainbridge.

  It sat propped against the peeling red picnic table under the maple tree, a gold and amber ring lodged on a twisted, dry grass finger that dredged up memories of a high-society penthouse, two defense attorneys, and drugged drinks.

  Lester Ringwold. Richard Brummett. Burt Winger.

  It lay six feet from the back porch door, and on its grinning, hollow head a dark smudge in the shape of her ex-husband’s birthmark reminded her of three years she had spent the previous decade trying hard to forget...

  Palpitations plagued her.

  Blood thudded in bright red ears.

  Breathing grew difficult.

  Then, finally, finally:

  “Enough!”

  After days of watching, silent, hungry, scared, Edith leapt to her feet. “Pitiful. Pitiful! You’re a failed businessman now! Your second wife left you! Your son hates you! Six months in jail for a third DUI! How did that feel? You’re nothing! Broken! You’re nothing at all!”

  Triumphant, she grinned. Then, still smiling toothily, she let darkness come. Her eyes rolled back in her head, the world went muddy, and her body ran like water to the floor.

  * * * * *

  Numberless hours of dreamless rest plus something Edith couldn’t later put into words rose to nullify seventy-two hours of sleepless vigil and left her feeling odd
ly refreshed as cold night fell, veiling the house and yard in long shadows.

  Words fell from her lips: “He was the last.” Again: “He was the last.”

  She got unsteadily to her feet, leaned against the chair for support, and pressed the fingertips of her right hand to the cool glass of the window.

  She looked out.

  The scarecrow was gone.

  Taking a deep breath, running a hand through her matted brown tangle of hair, Edith stood, head cocked, listening intently to the sighing of the house. The tension of her weight creaked the floor timbers. A pine branch scratched gently against the tin gutter pipe on the roof.

  Down below, in the dark, something rustled.

  Edith went to the edge of the stairs and peered into the black.

  “You were a hundred and one people, and now all that’s left is… you. That’s my bet.”

  The darkness listened.

  Edith hesitated a moment, then started downstairs.

  The hallway was black, the arched entryway to the living room a yawning mouth. In the living room something whispered too softly to be understood.

  Creaking across the old wooden floor beams, feeling her way carefully in the dark, Edith paused at the entryway.

  “One by one I relived my failures through your clothes, my pains through your face. You tested me, and … I survived. I survived.” She sounded surprised, and realized she was. She was also very calm. “And what’s left is … what? Straw and stick, corn cob and grass. Leaf and wire. Am I right?”

  The silence was noncommittal.

  “No, more than that, of course. You walk. You watch. You wait. But harmless. Defenseless. Easily burnt, broken, withered. Easily mildewed and rotted. More than that, very cold. And perhaps… lonely?”

  The assent came, and it was a corn-shuck voice, a reedy rasp that spoke around the fumblings of field insects and clods of cool mud.

  “I must admit,” she continued, “it has been a very long time since I last had a man in my home—of any kind,” she added hastily. “I’d like to take it slow. Maybe we could just… talk?”