Scary stories

26

this guy is good this isn't my story

The Scarecrow

A Ghost Story

There he stands, smiling at me from across the barren field. I cannot help but smile back. In the gray November light the trees surrounding our desolate farm groan, their gnarled and naked limbs shuddering against the melancholy sky as the first breaths of winter stir the clouds.

Yet even as the trees utter their discomfort against the cold, I feel nothing. There is naught left in my being with which to experience cold, or exhaustion, or pain. My soul is empty, much like the barren expanse across which my friend, the only companion left to me in the world, waves to me.

And yet I cannot help but smile.

Once upon a time I could have claimed a reason for my inexplicable expression of mirth. Perhaps that spring, so many years ago, when I first met the woman who would become my wife. There, amidst a floral veil of petals that tumbled lazily from their delicate perches, I beheld her strolling down the path by the stream. Intoxicated by the sweet-scented breeze, we whispered our love for each other, our voices masked by the steady murmur of the swift-flowing water. Within a few months, we were married. I smiled a lot that day.

Or perhaps the summer of the following year, when that beautiful woman, now my wife, gave birth to our first and only son. What joy he brought us! On that warm day, when the golden sunrays bathed the emerald landscape in such a heavenly glow, my smile was so great it brought tears to my eyes.

My son grew strong, taking after the manners of his father, proudest and happiest of men, and when he was barely beyond youth he had proven his worth in working the farm. What pleasure we both took in laboring together in the fields.

But it would not last.

First came the plague, the storm of crows that blotted out the early autumn sky with madly flapping pinions and pierced the cooling air with torturous cries. Our crops were ravaged, set upon by the screaming flock of blackbirds, and the threat of starvation loomed over us as winter drew near.

It was then, in an effort to save what remained of our livelihood, that I set about creating my friend. He was a crude construction. From a frame of weathered wood, the remains of a fallen tree limb, I hung his clothes: a clean shirt, thick and long to keep out the cold, and a pair of trousers our son had outgrown. On the peak of the knotted branch that formed his spine, I impaled a hollowed pumpkin, carved with a wide thin smile and a pair of large round eyes, beneath which perched a tiny nose, just a small empty hole. Lastly I armed our new friend against the murderous crows, tying his sleeve around the long handle of an extra scythe, and charged him with the defense of our field. As I stepped back to let our friend do his frightening work amongst the shrieking fowl, I saluted him, and in the wind his loose clothing fluttered, his free sleeve waving in the noisy air, assuring me our crop was safe with him.

And indeed it was. I awoke each morning not to the din of the hungry swarm, but rather a few startled shrieks as one crow who ventured too close was chased away by the ghostly flailing of our guardian. Thus we were saved from starvation, although more grievous ills were soon to follow.

I recall during the harvest months that we made a few grisly discoveries amongst the rustling stalks. My son was gathering in the vicinity of our friend when he suddenly called out to me, "Father, look!"

As I approached to see what had alarmed him, my son muttered sadly, "Poor thing...", and I beheld in the dirt a bloody mass of black feathers. The sight was shocking at first, but I was glad to be rid of the malignant creature.