The Scarecrows in My Town Are Trying to Kill Me | Part 2
39:36 Share

Four years. That's how long it took Democrats to ruin our economy and plunge our southern border into anarchy. Who helped them hurt us? Ruben Gallego. Washington could have cut taxes for Arizona families, but Ruben blocked the bill. And his fellow Democrats gave a bigger break to the millionaire class in California and New York. They played favorites and cost us billions. And Ruben wasn't done yet.

We'll be right back.

Carrie and the Republicans will secure the border, support our families, and never turn their backs on us. Carrie Lake for Senate. I'm Carrie Lake, candidate for U.S. Senate, and I approve this message. Paid for by Carrie Lake for Senate and the NRSC. Church's original recipe is back. You can never go wrong with original. Still tastes the same like back in the day. Right now, get two pieces of chicken starting at only $2.99 or 10 pieces starting at only $10.99. Church's. Offer valid at participating locations.

Someone else has to drive. My fucking face. Danny pulled over and parked by a field. Christian? I asked from the back, knowing I was too jacked up to drive. Fuck no, man, he said. Not me. I'm shaking like a goddamn leaf up here. What the fuck was that? Andrea? Andrea swallowed. Yeah, I can drive. I guess we'll go to the urgent care.

"Yeah," Danny said. "No shit. I'm gonna need stitches and a tetanus shot." The two of them switched seats, and Danny rooted around in the back for a moment, finding an old t-shirt to press against his face. I noticed remnants of the dark, oily liquid he'd gotten on his hand when he pulled that hay out of John's backpack. "What is that stuff?" I asked as Andrea started driving. "What was on that hay?"

"I don't fucking know, man," Danny said. "How would I know what that psycho was doing?" We all fell silent. Andrea turned at the next intersection, heading in a roundabout way toward town. The most direct route would have been back the way we'd come, but none of us were willing to do that. A minute passed. "I guess we should call the cops," I said. "I already did," Grace said in a hollow voice.

"They're going to get there and see that guy with his jaw ripped off, and the dead guy in the scarecrow costume." "I don't think that was a person," I said. "Didn't you see him getting back up after Danny ran him over?" Grace laughed without humor, shaking her head. "That's impossible. Danny killed him. But it's okay because it was self-defense. We all saw it." We came upon a field of corn on our right. I forced myself not to look at it as we drove alongside the dark rose.

"That thing got back up like nothing happened," Danny said, T-shirt pressed against the left side of his face. "And you think a regular person could rip someone's jaw off like that? There's no fucking way." "What are you saying?" Grace asked. "That it was a monster? Monsters don't exist, Danny. I think we might have to accept that maybe they do." Andrea said from the driver's seat.

"Maybe we should call the cops again and explain the scarecrow," Christian said. "Warn them. Go for it," Danny said. Christian pulled his phone out. A figure lurched out into the road ahead. Andrea slammed the brakes, coming to a stop just a few feet from the scarecrow that had darted out of the cornfield. This one was different from the jaw-ripper.

This one had a jack-o'-lantern for a head, its face illuminated from inside by some kind of sourceless orange light that did not flicker even as its grin expanded and its eyes tilted toward us in an expression of joyous evil. It wore overalls and a blue tunic, both of which were splashed with glistening red liquid. In its hands, which were covered with, or perhaps made of, old leather gloves, it held an ancient-looking scythe.

A long second passed as everyone processed this. The first person to shout was Dani, saying "Run it over!" Everyone else, including me, started shouting for Andrea to back up, or go forward, or go around the thing. She hit the gas, but the scarecrow moved with purpose up onto the hood and then the roof. Andrea kept going, picking up speed, hands bone-white on the steering wheel.

We hadn't gone far from where we'd encountered the scarecrow when the scythe blade pierced the roof above my head, catching the left side of my scalp just enough to cause a gash there over my ear. "Get down!" I shouted, slumping in my seat, pulling Grace down with me. "Swerve!" Dani yelled. "Swerve, Andi!" In her panic, Andrea did what Dani said. But we were going too fast, and she swerved too hard, losing control of the vehicle.

We plunged off the road and into the cornfield. Andrea tried to course correct, yanking the wheel to the left. The vehicle whipped sideways, the tires digging into the dirt as the corn whipped against the side. Then we were airborne as the Explorer flipped. The inside of the SUV became a dangerous mess of flying bodies and pieces of shattered glass as the vehicle landed on its roof, slid about 10 yards, and then flipped onto the driver's side, where it came to rest.

At some point, I smashed my head into the window, broke my nose on something hard, maybe Grace's head, and tweaked my right shoulder. For all I could tell, it had all happened at once, because there was no picking out moments from that chaotic crash. None of us had been buckled in, and we all ended up smashed together on the driver's side of the SUV. Grace, Danny, and I in the back, Christian and Andrea in the front.

"Everyone okay?" I asked, crawling into the cargo area to get off of Grace and Danny. It was a strange thing to ask, because I didn't even know if I was okay. Andrea was the first to say something, which was rare for her. "Oh my god," she said in a tone I'd never heard from her. "I broke my leg," she sobbed. "Jesus, I can see bone!"

Somehow, my body dumped more adrenaline into my bloodstream at these words. And at the sudden memory of why we had crashed, Grace whimpered as she crawled off Danny and joined me in the back. Blood streamed down from her nose, and she had a nasty cut on her left eyebrow. But otherwise, she looked intact. Danny pushed himself up and started coughing. "We gotta get out of here!" From the front, Christian grunted as he steadied himself. "We're gonna get you help," he told Andrea.

I said, hearing footsteps approaching through the corn. I couldn't see well out the back, because the roof collapsing had caused the back window to break. But the glass was still partially intact with white spiderweb cracks. Everyone but Andrea froze. She was still sobbing. The footsteps grew closer and stopped outside of the vehicle next to the roof that was now the wall. Nothing happened for a long moment.

I looked straight up, through the broken-out side window over the cargo area, and saw nothing but a dark, cloud-choked sky. The SUV suddenly jerked, tilting violently over and landing upright on its wheels as the shocks groaned in protest. Grace and I ended up next to each other in the cargo area. I got to my knees and looked out, seeing the pumpkin-head scarecrow standing there with its scythe.

Andrea screamed and tried to open her door, but the metal was bent, or the door was still locked. She didn't get out, but she did attract the scarecrow's attention. It stepped over to her glassless window and whipped the scythe through the opening. From where I was, all I saw was Andrea's head whip back against the headrest. In almost the same instant, the tip of the scythe pierced the back of the headrest, like it had gone all the way through her head.

Pandemonium encompassed the vehicle. Christian threw himself out his window, while Grace and I scrambled out the side window that had been facing the sky only moments earlier. As we ran into the cornfield, hand in hand, I glanced back and saw the scarecrow standing outside Danny's window, and I saw Danny still in the car, apparently unable or unwilling to move. I slowed down, wanting to help my friend, but Grace pulled me along, and I knew that there was nothing I could do for Danny.

He was already dead. We rushed headlong into the cornfield, fear driving our legs and turning our breath sour as we ran for our lives.

The dry scrape rattle of the corn was like a calling card.

As Grace and I put some distance between us and our attacker, little bits of logic seeped back into my brain. We had to be smart about this. I slowed down, yanking on Grace's arm. She turned, eyes wild with fear, ready to say something, but I shook my head and pressed a finger to my lips. At my urging, we eased down amid the stalks of dry corn and sat, listening. There was rustling from two different directions.

There was just enough wind to sway the tops of the plants gently, but after we'd been still for about a minute, the wind picked up again. "Rolling in waves across the sea of corn," I whispered. We rushed through the corn, the wind covering the sound of our escape until the wind died down, at which point we stopped running and hunkered down again. Footsteps pounded the earth from nearby, growing louder as they came nearer. I still had hold of Grace's hand, so I felt her tense as if to bolt.

I redoubled my grip and held her in place, shaking my head. The footsteps kept coming, steady and even. I thought I'd made a terrible mistake by staying put. I thought I'd just gotten us killed. But the footsteps moved past us in the dark, three or four rows away, just missing us. The wind picked up again, but we stayed put this time. When it died down, we could hear the footsteps fading into the distance. We waited,

I could feel Grace shaking, the tendons in her hand thrumming like guitar strings. When the wind picked up again, we bolted, heading opposite of where the footsteps had gone. My sense of direction was all screwed up, but I realized where we were when we came out on a road. We weren't that far from where we'd come into contact with John and the first scarecrow with the burlap face. I kept pulling Grace along, starting down the road. "Where are we going?" she asked.

Back to where we were, I whispered. The police should be there by now. No! She shrieked. I jerked on her arm. It'll hear you. After peering around and seeing no sign of any scarecrow, I pulled Grace into the ditch at the side of the road. We crouched down. We need the police, I said. I'll bet they're there by now. Why don't we call them? She asked. Because I don't want to be talking on the phone. Those things might hear us. We can text. That's something you can do, right? I nodded.

"That's a good idea. Text them and tell them where we're headed. If we don't see any police there, we'll head across the field and back to my house, okay? I have guns there. We can lock ourselves inside and wait until the police catch these… things." "Things?" Brace said. "Eddie, they're people. Psychos dressed in Scarecrow costumes. Like what happened in Iowa a couple of years back." My mind exploded with realization.

I had completely forgotten about the news from several years ago that had so shocked my parents. It was barely a blip on my 15-year-old self's radar. Fourteen people had been murdered in a small Iowa farming town when several men had dressed up as scarecrows and went on a killing spree. Four migrant workers had been arrested for the crimes, although the physical evidence was lacking and all four men had maintained their innocence, although none of them could account for the time during which the murders had occurred.

but I knew this wasn't the same thing. The scarecrows that had killed John and Andrea, and probably Danny, weren't people in costumes. They were something else. Grace refused to believe what was right in front of her eyes, but I knew this wasn't the time for an argument. So I nodded and said, "You're right. So the cops will handle them. No problem. Let's go. We have to go that direction to get back to my house anyway." Grace nervously licked her lips and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear with her free hand. "Okay.

She pulled out her phone and texted 911, telling them we were going to be about halfway down Bullock Hollow Road, where John's truck was parked. Then she put her phone away, and we resumed our journey. We stayed in the ditch this time, running along in the wild grass so our footsteps wouldn't be loud. For a change, I was glad it hadn't rained lately. Otherwise, we would have been tramping through mud.

Ten minutes later, after turning back onto Bullock Hollow Road, I saw the flashing red and blue lights in the distance. I couldn't see John's truck or the police car because of the bend in the road, but the lights gave me hope. Grace and I shared a look in the dark, smiling grimly. We hurried around the bend, still staying in the ditch, and saw the white truck right where it had been parked earlier. John's body lay nearby, but it was in a different position from before.

He was still on his back, but his stomach had been ripped open and his insides were strewn all over the road. The police SUV, with its light flashing, was parked a good 15 yards further on, behind the truck. I saw no sign of a police officer and no sign of a scarecrow. I figured the cop was still in his car, maybe waiting for backup to arrive. "Did they text you back?" I asked Grace. She pulled her phone out and looked at the screen.

Her face looked especially pale in the light from her phone. She whispered, "They haven't called either. Maybe they're already on it." I said, "Busy apprehending these guys." Grace nodded, but I knew she didn't believe it any more than I did. We eased forward. I told Grace not to look at the dead body, but I doubt she took my advice. I knew I couldn't look away from the gory scene. We came alongside the truck, and as we passed, I glanced in the window. A small backpack sat in the front seat.

I didn't think much of it then. I was too concerned with getting to the cop. As I passed the truck, I put my hands up and walked up onto the road, noticing out of the corner of my eye that John's backpack was there. The hay that Danny had pulled out was still lying on the dirt road. Although it had been scattered a little by the wind, the dark substance on the straw seemed to glitter faintly with orange light. "Hello?" I called toward the police car.

Grace also had her hands up as she walked a few yards behind me. I couldn't see into the police car because of the headlights and the hazard lights, but the door didn't open. My guts started to squirm with unease. "Hello? We need help!" Still nothing. We came to the cop car, and I knocked on the window, then peered inside. "It's empty," I said to Grace. I looked around and then walked toward the back of the vehicle, bringing another dead body into view.

I flinched as soon as I saw the cop there. His face had been torn off. As I got closer, I could see the sharp divots in his torn flesh. Divots from the scarecrow's metal hand. The guy lay amid spent shell casings, and he had a pistol held lightly in his right hand. Grace, who came up behind me, made a sound that was a half scream and half whimper. I turned around and pushed her toward the police car. "Get in," I said, "and lock the doors."

"What are we doing?" she asked. "Just get in!" I said. She opened the door and got into the back. I started jogging over to John's truck. I recalled John's words before he died, saying something about how he had created the scarecrow or brought it to life. I tried the driver's side door. It opened, but the light didn't come on. I reached in and grabbed the backpack from the passenger seat and moved to the back of the vehicle.

There was a cover over the bed, so I opened up the tailgate and peered inside. There was a single, incomplete bale of hay back there, with about half of its mass missing. It was covered in that black oil, and it gleamed with faint orange light. I shut the tailgate and ran back over to the police car. I got into the driver's seat and put the thing in gear. After making a three-point turn in the road, I headed back toward my house. The police radio was on in the car, but no one was talking over it.

Only static silence filled the vehicle as I drove. Grace cried in the back seat until we reached my house. The place was completely dark as we approached, making my guts squirm again. The power had to be out. I knew I had left the porch light on. As I pulled into my driveway, the headlights splashed the front of the house. I slammed on the brakes, keeping the headlights on the figure standing on my front porch.

Danny? I said. My friend, looking on death's doorstep, waved with both hands and ran toward the vehicle. I put it in park and jumped out. Danny? He slowed as he came near, his face falling. I thought you were the police. Where'd you get the car? Where's everyone else? I thought you were dead. I said to him. How are you not? Once all the doors were locked and both Danny and I had guns at the ready, we caught each other up.

We sat in the upstairs bathroom at the back of the house, where we cleaned and treated our injuries as best we could. Grace was working on the deep gashes on Danny's face, trying to clean the strange goop away before she bandaged them. I tried not to stare at the little specks of orange light that came away from his wounds. "I don't know why it didn't kill me," Danny said. "He was looking right at me. It even reached inside and grabbed me by the neck."

I don't know what was in those gloves, but it didn't feel like any fingers I've ever felt. It was like being choked by a thick tree branch. I thought for sure the fucker was going to crush my throat, but it pulled me half out the window and kind of looked at me, like it was inspecting me with those freaky, empty jack-o'-lantern eyes. Then it just let me go and took off through the cornfield. I thought it was going after you guys. I think it did, I said. I think it walked right past us in the field. I paused.

"I hope Christian's okay. I hope he got away." "Yeah," Danny said. "You guys keep saying 'it'," Grace said. "Why? There was a person in that costume. A man." Danny and I shared a look. He cast his eyes down. "Yeah," I said. "You're right." While Grace worked, I tried calling 911 again. The call wouldn't go through. I tried calling my parents, but nothing was working. No calls went through on any of our phones.

It seemed the towers were either down or overloaded with emergency calls. With no power, we had no internet, so that was a dead end too. Once we had our respective wounds cleaned, we barricaded ourselves in my room, which was upstairs at the very back of the house. With only one door and a window that led out onto the roof, I thought it was as good a place as any.

I had the house locked up tight, but if something did come in and try to get through the door, we could climb out onto the roof over the sunroom and jump down into the backyard. Grace and I sat on the bed, while Danny sat on some pillows on the floor. I had a Mossberg pump-action shotgun nearby, while Danny had a Browning hunting rifle. After a couple of hours of nothing happening, I grew drowsy, drained from the after-effects of so much adrenaline and stress. At some point after midnight,

I fell asleep. I opened my eyes to Grace's urgent whispers as she shook me awake. I sat up in bed and looked around the dark room. "What?" "Danny's gone, and I heard a noise from downstairs." Sure enough, my dresser had been moved from behind the door, which now stood open to the gloomy hallway. The browning rifle I'd given Danny lay on the floor next to his pillows. "Did you see him leave?" I asked. Grace shook her head.

I woke up just now when I heard something downstairs. It sounded like a door opening, like the front door. "Shit," I said. "Okay, stay here and keep the door locked." Grace nodded as I climbed out of the bed with the Mossberg in my hands. At the top of the stairs, I whispered. There was no answer. I heard a faint thump, like a kitchen drawer closing. "Is he getting a fucking snack right now?" I thought as I made my way down the stairs.

I kept the safety engaged on the shotgun, not wanting to accidentally blow my friend away just because I was scared enough to pee my pants. As I stepped into the kitchen, I saw Danny standing near the back door, which was partially open. He was facing away from me with his head slanted down, and he was doing something with his right hand up around his face. A strange squelching sound filled the kitchen. Liquid splattered the tile floor between his feet. I hissed, "What the hell are you doing?"

my friend stopped what he was doing and turned around. He moved left as he turned to face me, and the first thing I noticed was that he was no longer wearing the bandages Grace had put over the gouges made by the scarecrow. In those gouges, his skin glistened with a faint orange hue, like dying embers poking through the dark ashes of a house fire. As he finished turning, I gasped. He held a steak knife in one hand. Having clearly gouged his own eyes out with it,

His sockets were pits in his skull, but they weren't completely dark. Somehow, an orange glow emanated from inside those gory pits. He smiled wickedly but said nothing as he started toward me. "Danny?" I said, backing up, not sure what to do. I bumped into something behind me. Something that shouldn't have been there. Gasping, I stepped away and turned around to see Scully the Scarecrow staring down at me with his skeleton grin. And orange glowing eye sockets.

He whipped an arm out, smacking me in the side of the head with a hand made of tough, knotty roots. I crashed into the wall, my skull putting a hole in the sheetrock. I inhaled drywall dust as I collapsed to the floor.

Danny stepped over me on one side, Scully on the other. They looked down with almost identical eye sockets. I fingered the Mossberg's safety off and whipped the barrel up, firing the gun at Scully's chest. He flew back along the hallway, trailing a confetti cloud of shredded straw. I worked the pump, ejecting the spent shell and loading another one into the chamber.

Before I could fire at Scully again, Danny kicked the shotgun out of my hands. It flipped through the air and landed several feet away between me and Scully, who lay on the floor like an abandoned dummy. I flipped over and tried to get to my hands and knees, but Danny fell onto my back. A searing pain flared in my right shoulder blade, and some part of me knew that I'd been stabbed by my best friend. Shouting, I bucked and slammed my right elbow back, connecting with Danny's head.

The blow knocked him off, allowing me to scramble up and lunge for the shotgun. Danny caught my leg at the last second and yanked me down. Another jolt of pain erupted from my shoulder blade. The knife was still in it. I flipped onto my side and kicked Danny with my free foot. He fell back again, this time crashing into the side table in the hall, knocking off an old vase. The ceramic vessel shattered on the hardwood floor.

With my leg free again, I turned around and grabbed the shotgun, pulling it toward me even as I saw Scully getting to his feet. Some distant part of my brain registered a noise from upstairs. Grace was screaming my name. Then there was a gunshot from up there. And another. I heard ceramic crunch from behind me as I got to my feet.

Danny was coming. I twisted around, leading with the butt of my shotgun, and caught Danny on the jaw with it. He staggered into the side table, then fell onto the ceramic-covered floor. As I turned back around, Scully grabbed my shotgun with one hand. Before he could push it away, I fired. The shot hit him in the shoulder of his opposite arm, blasting the appendage off in an explosion of hay.

The blast seemed to shock him momentarily, allowing me to yank the gun out of his hand and work the pump again. I aimed and fired at his head, blasting the now too real skull away. It didn't stop him. He stayed standing, reaching back out with his one remaining hand. I worked the pump again and fired again, this time blasting off his right leg. Scully fell to the floor, but he worked his one arm and one leg, squirming toward me.

I took a step back as I worked the pump again, frantically trying to remember how many shells the shotgun held. But all coherent thought was momentarily obliterated as excruciating pain detonated on the back of my right ankle. I screamed and instinctively brought my right foot up, twisting around to see Danny sitting behind me with a shard of ceramic in his hand. Blood soaked my sock and poured into my boot from where he'd severed my Achilles tendon.

The pain-induced rage clouded my mind as I turned the shotgun on my friend and fired, decapitating him with the blast that splattered his skull and brains all over the hallway and into the kitchen beyond. A vice gripped my left ankle, and I looked down to see Scully grabbing it. I loaded another shell into the chamber and blasted his arm off. His hand went limp, and I hopped toward the stairs, feeling lightheaded from my injuries. Grace had stopped screaming, but I couldn't pinpoint exactly when.

I yelled as I hopped up the stairs, unable to put any weight on my useless right foot. There was no answer. She had been screaming my name, I knew that, and there had been gunshots. I hoped the rifle Dani left had allowed her to protect herself. Worry compounded my lightheadedness, and I nearly tumbled backwards down the stairs as soon as I reached the second floor. I gripped the railing and gathered myself. I could hear something from my room, but it was a faint noise that I couldn't place.

I hopped down the hallway, shotgun in one hand and the other against the wall for support. The noise grew louder as I approached. My guts coiled as I came to my bedroom door. I hopped into the doorway and brought the shotgun up. Someone I recognized leaned over Grace, who lay on her back on the bed. I could only see her legs from where I was. The rest of her was blocked by this familiar figure that I couldn't quite place at first. Then it clicked.

the maroon plaid shirt and the threadbare blue jeans. It was sad Simon the Scarecrow. I couldn't see his head because he had it craned down to look at what he was doing. I didn't want to see his head. I didn't want to see his creepy, sad burlap sack face or what he was doing to Grace. But, sensing my presence, he paused what he was doing, straightened up, and stepped away from the bed, half turning toward me.

He still had her intestines in his root hands and he looked at me with his downturned mouth and slit eyes that glowed with that same faint orange light. Her guts trailed from her torn open abdomen to his hands, but some of them had been piled next to her on the bed. He'd been pulling them out and throwing them down on the pile, each time making that splat noise. I stared in disbelieving horror, looking at my dead girlfriend on the bed, her eyes trained on the ceiling.

But then she blinked, and her head came up, and she looked at me. I screamed and blasted Sad Simon's head away. I worked the pump and tried to fire again, but it was empty. The box of shells I'd brought up was on my desk just inside the door. I yanked it open and loaded another shell into the shotgun as Sad Simon stumbled toward me. I went for his legs this time, and he fell to the floor, allowing me enough time to load a couple more shells.

Yelling at the top of my lungs, I blasted Sad Simon's remaining limbs off. I don't know if it was the fact that I'd seen nearly all my friends killed, or the stress of the night, or the loss of blood, or maybe some combination of it all, but I went into a kind of fugue state. I saw bits of that strange oil-covered hay bulging from Sad Simon's arms and legs and chest.

Crying and shouting Grace's name, I gathered a bunch of the stuff up and jammed it into Grace's abdomen. I kept shoving fistfuls of the stuff into her. She kept shaking her head and crying and saying "NO" over and over again. But I kept putting that stuff into her. I lost track of time after that, and when I came to again, I was sitting on the floor against my bed. I had pulled the knife out of my back and wrapped a handkerchief around my ankle.

sensing movement. I turned and looked at Grace's body. Her limbs were twitching. I scrambled to my feet and backed away to the door until I saw the bits of discolored straw sticking out of her torn open stomach. I didn't remember what I had done. Grace opened her eyes and sat up on the bed. She looked at me and smiled. Her eyes glowed orange. I couldn't take it anymore. I just fled. I hopped down the stairs and out of my house and got back into the police SUV.

I couldn't use my right foot, so I had to drive with my left, which was awkward, but I soon got the hang of it. I passed Christian's house on my way, seeing that it was engulfed in flames. The last time I had seen him, he was running away from the crashed SUV. I hoped he'd kept running. I hoped he hadn't gone home. If he had, I figured he was dead. Bodies littered the few front lawns I passed. I didn't see any scarecrows, but I could feel them looking at me from their fields as I drove.

I eased the pedal down as much as I dared, afraid of crashing like Andrea did earlier. But I made it out of town without incident, and I didn't stop until I had cell service again. I parked at a truck stop and called the police, and I told them what happened. I told them everything. The 911 operator thought I was crazy, but he sent the police my way. While I waited for them to show up, I noticed the small backpack I'd taken from John's truck. I opened it up and found a recording device.

I listened to it, to John's confession. He started off by saying that his wife and kids were being held hostage by people who worked for Agrigiant, the same company that had been trying to buy up all the farms in the area. According to John's recording, the scarecrow massacre in Iowa a few years back was orchestrated by the corporation, and the migrant workers they pinned it on were innocent. I wanted to know how it worked, how the hay brought the scarecrows to life, and how it brought people back

but John said he didn't know, only that it did work. At one point, he broke down crying on the recording. As I listened, I gripped the device harder and knew he was talking about my farm and my dog.

"The dog was the last straw," John sobbed. "Last night, I was stuffing a scarecrow, and this dog came running out of the farmhouse and attacked me. I didn't even think, I just killed it. Then, as I knelt there in the dark, with this dog's blood on my hands, I knew I couldn't do this anymore. I ran away and told them I was done." John paused, the only sound his hitching breath.

Then they sent me the pictures of my family. Told me I had to finish the job today. Tonight. So I tried. For my family's sake. I tried. But I can't do it. I mean, I don't care anymore about my life. I don't want to live anymore. I can't live anymore. I know there's no saving my family at this point. Even if I did what they wanted and got my family back, I could never look them in the eye again. Not with all the things I've done for this company over the years.

He paused, crying for nearly a minute. "But that dog I killed, it's just too much. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. They're going to kill my family, but I don't know what else to do."

John's voice grew darker as he talked, shifting from a sorrowful plea to a sinister whisper. "They only told me to target four farms, but I've been stuffing every scarecrow I see. There's no turning back now, and this is the only way I can think of to blow their operation up. They won't be able to cover up the massacre of an entire town, but they'll try. They'll send people out to sabotage the power grid and the phone towers so they can contain this thing once they realize I've gone off the rails."

But I'm going to be punished for this thing. Then, so will they. That's why I'm doing this. They're playing with powers they don't understand, that no one understands. But maybe, after tonight, someone will step in and stop them. Because I'm doing all I can." He paused, and when he spoke again, the sorrowful plea was back in his voice. "I just keep seeing that dog I killed. How she looked up at me as she died.

He snorted harsh laughter. "All the people I've killed, all the lives I've ruined, and it's a dog that finally gets to me. A fucking dog." The recording ended just as the police showed up at the truck stop. They pointed guns at me and yelled, but I was so happy to see them. Macy had died for a reason. Her death wasn't pointless. I felt like I could finally rest. As I got out of the police SUV, hands up and empty, I looked at the eastern horizon.

The sun was just coming up. It had a faint orange glow to it, like a dying coal poking through the ash in a cozy fireplace.