Curse of the Shadows: The Shadow Hunt Series Book 2

Prologue

The tops of the corn stalks were well past seven feet tall. When the breeze blew strongly enough, the wide, rough leaves rustled together, and the sound was like a thousand harried whispers. The cornfield was telling secrets, Paul’s grandmother used to say.

In the height of summer, those leaves scraped and grated even more loudly. The difference was hard to notice with just one plant. But get a few hundred thousand together, all five inches apart, and the whispers were like a symphony of secrets. At night, it could become terrifying.

When Paul was a child, he couldn’t sleep on stormy nights because of the cornfield. Once it started raining, it was not a big deal. But in those moments leading up to it, which could sometimes take an hour or more, it was like enduring a waking nightmare in the darkness of his room on the third floor of the house all by himself.

The wind rushed through the field, and the shushing sound made its way to his ears in the most terrifying way. If he listened hard enough, he could imagine he heard words, the way he sometimes picked faces from the patterns in the wallpaper. His mind tried to make sense of the noise, and he swore that someone was saying his name. That the field knew who he was, and it was angry at him, and if he didn’t hide, it would come for him in the dark. He hid under his sheets and waited for the rain to shut the whispers up.

Of all the things in the field, nothing terrified him more than Uncle Burle. No one could ever tell him who had named Uncle Burle. His father said it was his grandmother. His grandmother claimed it was her father. But however it had started didn’t matter.

Uncle Burle was the scarecrow posted in the center of the field. Paul could see it night and day from his bedroom window. It faced the house, and he always imagined it was looking at him.

The scarecrow was made the way any other scarecrow might have been. It was mounted on a cross-shaped set of timbers, and the body was formed from a set of straw-stuffed denim overalls. The material had endured many a storm and was weather-beaten and well worn, but the denim was sturdy, and it held up over generations.

Beneath the overalls was an ancient plaid flannel shirt. It was red and white and reminded Paul of a tablecloth. Like the coveralls, it was stuffed to bulging with hay, and sometimes, his father had to bring Uncle Burle down and stuff it anew when weather or animals caused him to go limp.

An old straw hat was affixed on the scarecrow’s head. Beneath it was a burlap sack, the origin of the scarecrow’s name. The bag was stuffed with straw just like the body, and big, black Xs were stitched into it for eyes. The mouth was a series of smaller Xs, stitched with the same thick, black thread. He was neither smiling nor frowning; the stitches were a straight line across, making the scarecrow forever look disinterested.

When he was very young, Paul imagined it was Uncle Burle whispering in the storms. When he thought he heard his name, he feared it was the scarecrow calling out.

In his mind, Paul imagined that the scarecrow would capture him one day, and the burlap of its head would tear as it forced its mouth open, ripping the stitches until the bag was so wide it could open its jaws and swallow Paul whole. He would be dragged into the old, moldy straw and digested inside the coveralls, hanging from those timbers where no one would ever find him.

As he grew older, those fears subsided. He understood that the whispering was just the rough texture of those leaves rubbing together, the dry stalks and the husks creating friction. Uncle Burle was just unwanted old clothing and straw. It was just another mundane detail of life on the farm.

Paul was twenty-one, and his parents wanted him to do more with his life than they had, so they made sure he focused on his education above all else. But he worked the farm every day in the summer with his father.

He was the first in the family to go to college. He had a degree in biology and was pursuing a master’s in agricultural engineering. He planned to ensure his education would still help the family and improve life for them and the other farmers he had known since he was a boy. That had been the plan, anyway.

The whispering from the corn was as loud as Paul had ever heard it. Sweat ran down his face, and he felt it warm and cloying around the collar of his shirt and down the small of his back. It was hard to breathe in the field. The rows seemed to close in on him and hold the humidity. The air was thick and clung to his face.

He knew the field like the back of his hand. He had seen it every day of his life for as long as he could remember. Except now, he couldn’t find his way out. No matter how far he ran or how fast, the corn never ended.

He should have hit the house by now, or the road, or anything. Instead, there was only corn. The silky tops barely moved, showing there was no breeze and no reason for that whispering sound to be so loud. He couldn’t see over anything. He couldn’t find his way and had lost all sense of direction.

The sun was high in the sky. It was anchored dead center above him, so perfectly placed that he had no idea which way was east or west. If he could orient himself and guess the direction, he could leave. But nothing seemed to work.

The rows were planted from north to south. A run to the east or west should have freed him in minutes. But he had been in the field for more than half an hour without a sign of anything. It made no sense.

South of the field was the house. He had barely gone far enough to lose sight of it when he entered, following a shape that he thought was one of the local teens causing trouble. But nothing was what it should have been. And the whispering only grew louder.

The day was supposed to be hot, but the temperature in the cornfield was so much worse than Paul expected. It was stifling, and he feared that he would get heat stroke if he didn’t find his way out soon.

He called out for help again and again but no one replied. His father had gone into town, his mother was in the house, and no one else was around. If his mother didn’t come outside, no one would hear him. If he hadn’t left his phone on the porch where he’d been sitting, he could have done something more. So many ifs.

Paul kept running. East or west, he would have to reach the edge of the field. It was much longer than it was wide, and he should get out sooner or later. He had to find a way out.

Dried leaves scratched at his skin as he passed between the stalks, moving row to row to get out. More time passed, too much time by far, and soon, he saw something. It was the first thing he had seen that wasn’t corn since he entered the field. A shape in the near distance. He ran toward it.

He recognized the wooden pole before he reached it, the boots that hung a few feet off the ground, and the dark blue denim tucked into it. He had reached Uncle Burle.

The scarecrow hung stiff and silent, bits of straw poking out at the wrists around its gloves and under the burlap sack of its face above the collar of his shirt. Paul turned to face the same direction as the scarecrow. The corn was too high to see the house, but he knew it was there. The scarecrow was only about sixty yards from the edge of the porch.

He ran south with Uncle Burle at his back, focused on escaping and the flat, green lawn around the house that he knew would appear at any moment. The sun blazed down on his flesh, and the leaves rustled loudly, devoid of a breeze. He ran and ran and ran. The corn did not end.

Five minutes passed. It was impossible. He was no sprinter, but he was running. He should have reached the house three times over.

Paul cursed. He felt like he was losing his mind. Like he was caught in the most realistic dream he had ever experienced.

Several more minutes passed. Sweat covered Paul’s face. He wiped his brow and kept running even as some made its way into his eyes, stinging and compromising his sight. He slowed down, stumbling as he used his sweaty, dirty hands to clean his eyes. When he lifted his head again, blinking to clear his vision, he saw a shape looming above him.

Blue denim coveralls. A red and white plaid shirt. The burlap face under the straw hat looking down at him with big, black X eyes.

“What the hell is going on?” he whispered.

Paul stared up at Uncle Burle, at the thick, black thread stitched into the loose weave of the old, brown burlap. The black X mouth was pulled taut around the edges and, as he watched, the thin, brown fibers pulled so tight that they snapped above and below the black Xs. The mouth tore itself open in a jagged split above and below the stitching, wherever the fibers were the weakest.

“Paulllllll,” the scarecrow whispered.

Paul couldn’t form words. For a heartbeat, he couldn’t even move his body. He didn’t believe what he saw. He couldn’t because it was impossible.

Uncle Burle’s arm rose slowly at its side. Paul heard the straw crinkling and snapping inside the limb as the gloved hand closed, forming a fist with only the index finger extended, pointing at Paul.

He turned and ran as the scarecrow moaned his name a second time. He made it only three paces before his feet got tangled in something thin and hard. Paul tripped and fell face-first into the dry soil, landing hard enough to give himself a nosebleed.

An old garden rake with thick, curved teeth was half-embedded in the dirt. He had tripped over the handle.

Paul wiped blood and muddy sweat from his face and looked back. The cross-shaped timbers were still behind him, but Uncle Burle was not. There was no sign of the scarecrow.

He scrambled forward quickly, getting to his knees and then his feet as he put distance between himself and where the scarecrow had been. Within seconds, a scraping sound drew his attention back the way he had come.

Uncle Burle stood in the spot where Paul had just fallen. It held the rake in its gloved hand and slowly, loudly, scraped across the dry soil as it pursued him.

“Paullllll,” the scarecrow moaned again, dragging the rake with one hand and reaching out for him with the other.

Paul ran, panic gripping him tightly and twisting in his guts. He did not know where to go or how to get out, and it didn’t matter. He just needed to get away from the impossible thing calling his name.

The nightmares of his childhood flooded his mind, of the field and the burlap face speaking his name in secret, calling out to him as though accusing him of unknown crimes, and he wanted to scream. He wanted to call out for his mother and father and grandmother to make the sounds go away and make everything better. But this was not the nightmare of a little boy.

He dashed between stalks of corn, trying to put the straw-filled creature behind him and find the way out. Leaves slapped him in the face, the dry edges cutting his flesh and leaving stinging, bloody scrapes across his arms and cheeks and throat. His breath came in deep, struggling gasps as the humid air refused to fill his lungs.

The rake slashed out between rows and Paul reeled back, narrowly missing the curved, steel teeth. Uncle Burle stumbled forward, ahead of him once more, and stared down with black X eyes.

Paul was on his back, gasping in fear and exhaustion. The scarecrow lumbered forward and dragged the rake, lifting it slowly up and up as though raising an ax to bring down on a log.

Paul was too tired to run anywhere and too terrified to even get back to his feet. Paul simply stared in wide-eyed horror. He was going to die in the cornfield, and he knew it.

The sounds of metal scraping against metal rang out above the whispering leaves. Fire took hold of Uncle Burle’s arm, and the scarecrow moaned, stumbling left and dropping the rake.

Paul watched as the fire consumed the dry straw and ancient fabric. Despite the humidity, the years of being exposed to the sun had made the scarecrow into a man-shaped tinderbox. Flames engulfed the body in minutes, and as the scarecrow fell to the ground, it revealed someone behind it.

Paul watched a scarred, bruised, bald man slip a Zippo into his pocket. He stared down at Paul, a plume of smoke rising from the cigarette in the man’s mouth as the scarecrow shuddered and twisted in the fire.

“House is that way,” the man said, pointing to his right. Paul looked at the writhing mass in the flames. “You should go.”

The man kicked the burning scarecrow, and chunks of straw and burned clothing sloughed away as the fire petered out. There was something in the center of it, untouched by flames, and that was what the man focused on.

“Where the hell are the Harvesters?” the man asked, plucking the dark shape from the scarecrow’s smoldering remains. “Where’s Beatrix?”

The dark shape began to speak in a low, horrible voice, and Paul rolled over, scrambling to his feet and running before either the man or the thing he’d pulled from Uncle Burle thought to focus on him again.