Scarecrow

Chapter 7

A murky red dawn envelops the town of Beauty the next morning, a sunrise flavored delicately with fresh blood. It trickles, silent as a scarlet serpent, into the flowery bedroom of Miss Linda Sue, who mumbles something and turns over in her slumber. It seeps through the drawn blinds of Lewis Meyer's apartment, and the new sheriff, finding sleep impossible since putting a sickle in his partner's throat, watches the crimson glow with something bordering on apprehensive dread. At the Donnelly farm, the light falls on Eddie Harrell's sleeping form through an attic window, as well as Jim's in the master bedroom. Funnily enough, the sunrise ebbs and dies at Penny's body, who, despite the baby, continues to sleep peacefully. All of them oblivious, all of them unprepared for the horrors that await them each in turn. The bloody dawn stretches over all of Beauty like some great and terrible hand, and the town is but a speck in its malevolence.

"Jim? Jim, wake up."

"Wha–" Donnelly slowly opens his sleep-heavy eyes to feel someone shaking his arm. Mumbling a faint plea of apology, he turns back over as his eyes begin to droop, but they pop open again when the hand on his arm pinches it roughly.

"Jim!"

"The hell was that for? I'm up, god!" he pulls himself up and onto one elbow, pushing Penny's hand away as he does so. "What is it?"

"I'm not sure..." Had he woken up quickly enough to notice his wife's face just then, he would have seen a woman as mystified as she is scared. "For starters, how did you lose all that weight?"

"What?" Donnelly rises and stumbles to the bathroom, head spinning. Getting to the sink, he peers into the mirror to see what all the fuss is about... then recoils in cold shock at what he sees, for the man in the mirror is not Jim Donnelly. He has his nose, his eyes, his hair, his clothes, but that is where the resemblance ends. He has always been overweight, but this new face is far from it. Unlike Donnelly, this man is not heavy-set around the places where fat would normally be; truly, he is underweight with the lack of it, malnourished even.
Very, very slowly, Donnelly reaches up and caresses his stubbly cheeks. In the mirror, the man does the same. His face feels sallow, not his own. Its shape and feel match mirror-man perfectly. Donnelly weighs himself before leaving the bathroom in a stumped daze, still trying and failing to find a logical explanation to how a person could lose 75 pounds in one night. Donnelly, who has not played sports since his high school days, is not the man expected to lose that weight. Penny cringes visibly as he reenters the room, seeing a stranger in place of her husband.
"Did you figure it out?"

Donnelly shakes his head, still mystified. On top of this new development, his awakening is slowly bringing back the horrible reality of his life: of Walt's murder, of his postponed harvests, of Mr. Straw in the storage shed.

"These past couple of months have been hard on us all, especially hard on you– Jim!"

Donnelly's vision pitches forward unexpectedly, then goes completely black. When he comes to, the covers are at his chin and Penny is sitting on the edge of the bed alongside Doctor Henry Meers, Beauty's top general practioner and an old friend of the family. The doctor is talking quickly and seriously to Penny.

"No abnormal heart rate, no visible affliction to the liver or lungs... all I can conclude from this is that he is what we like to call a walking medical wonder."

"Yeah, well, medical wonders don't pay the bills. Can you give me something that puts me back to normal?"

Doctor Meers looks toward Donnelly sharply. "Ah, good, you're awake. Good to see you Jim; congrats on the trial. And to answer your question, no, I don't. I'd prescribe a painkiller, but Penny says that you haven't complained of any pain. At this point, you've got me completely stumped; I'd tell you to send in a blood test, but you haven't actually exhibited any signs of internal damage."