“Field of Dreams?” Matthew asked.
“Yes, that one,” I said.
“Never heard of it,” Belle said.
“If you build it…” Dylan said.
“He will come,” Matthew said.
“Great movie,” Dylan said.
They high-fived.
I caught the reference but Belle, utterly clueless, just stared blankly at them.
“Forget it,” I said. “My point is, shouldn’t we check in the area where the head rolled from?”
Dylan shook his head. “It’s probably just some stupid kids messing around trying to scare people. I just don’t think it’s all that funny. Let’s keep an eye out for anything else, just in case. That’s all I’m saying.”
“Got it,” I said and took the lead.
Suddenly, a long dark haired person with knives for nails stepped out of the corn. Dressed all in black with white face paint and blackened eyes, crouched down and crawled toward us making this screeching sound. It sent me retreating backward. Dylan caught me, steadying me in his grip.
The thing laughed, a wicked, eerie laugh.
But it walked past.
“That was freaky,” I said.
“I think you went out with him once,” Belle said.
“When was that?” Dylan asked.
“Between break ups with you,” Belle said.
“Which ones?” Matthew asked.
The maze split in two directions.
“Hey y’all,” I’m right here, you know,” I said. I pointed to the right. “I think we should go this way. I think it’s east.”
“What does that matter?” Belle asked.
“It doesn’t but at least we’re not talking about my relationships any longer.” I headed toward the right, ahead of everyone else.
Something drifted past my right side but when I glanced behind me nothing was there, so I kept walking. Dylan’s hand trailed down my back and gathered at my waist. Normally, I didn’t mind that, but at that moment, it wasn’t comforting. Instead, it sent shivers down my spine. I glanced back, and he wasn’t there, but when I straightened my neck again, he was in front of me. “Did you just—wait. Were you just rubbing my back?”
“No. It must have been something in the corn.” He smirked.
“I’m serious. Were you?”
“No, I really wasn’t. Why?”
“Because something was, and I thought it was you, but it didn’t feel quite right, so I looked, but nothing was there.”
“Probably just one of William’s people in the corn. You know they do that.”
He was right, they did, but it was creepy. I brushed it off.
We kept moving.
Belle screamed.
“What?” Matthew asked.
She pointed to another scarecrow head on the ground.
“Sweetie, this place is all jacked up,” she said.
A big smile spread across my face. “I done told you that already,” I said.
“Well, now I believe you,” she said.
“You get to the party, you just get there slower than the rest of us, don’t you?”
She kicked my boot. “Hey, play fair.”
Matthew picked up the head and sniffed it. “Same stench.” He handed it to Dylan. “Man, I don’t know how you people do this. I could never hunt. I’d be sick the whole time. That thing stinks.”
“You get used to it. I don’t hunt though. Used to with my daddy, but Kate con—” he stopped, and his eyes widened in something similar to embarrassment or fear. I wasn’t quite sure.
Belle placed her hand on her hip, jutted it out and flipped her dark, matted zombie hair back. “Oh, excuse me, what’d you say?”
Dylan fixed his eyes on me and bit his lip.
I froze. We’d dated in high school and part of college. He was my first and only love, and he broke my heart when he dropped out of college, dumped me and went into the police academy in Atlanta. We were apart for several years and only reunited recently when he returned to town after being appointed the sheriff and basically convinced me to give him another chance. I hadn’t dated, and we’d never talked about whether he had. It hadn’t occurred to me that he might have had other relationships, and he never mentioned that he did.
I wasn’t sure whether the mentioned Kate was a reference to a former girlfriend, but this wasn’t the time to discuss her, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. Ever.
My face thawed, and I conjured up a smile. Dylan’s worried eyes softened, and a slow smile spread across his face. I smiled, too, which surprised me.
“Do you want me to keep the head?” Matthew asked.
Dylan said no. “Just set it aside. I’m still pretty sure it’s just a prop.”
Belle held her nose. “Lord, it stinks to high heaven right here.”
I pointed to the fence lining the corn to our left. “I think I know why.”
Hanging from the fence were five scarecrows, all missing their heads and all dripping deer blood, so much of it, it pooled in puddles on the ground.
Bonnie and her crew snuck up behind us and scared me half to death. I almost fell on top of Dylan when she spoke behind me. “Gracious light, that is one nasty sight, she said.
“Don’t look like those scarecrows are gonna be getting much hunting done with their heads rolling around on the ground like that,” Old Man Goodson said. He pointed down the sloping path as the heads rolled away.
“That’s as creepy as the day is long,” Henrietta said.
The two couples stood paired up again, and Belle and I gave each other raised eyebrow glances, wondering if we’d ever figure out who chose whom which day of the week.
Bonnie’s skinny grandson approached us. “That’s cool.” He nodded toward the stuffed heads tumbling down the path. One hit a rock and stuck. “Dude, did you see that one? The blood splattered when it hit.”
“How’d you know it’s blood?” Dylan asked.
He chewed on a fingernail. “Oh, I uh…I don’t know if it is. I mean, I just figure it’s supposed to be blood, you know?”
I waved at the kid because I doubted someone his age would be interested in shaking my hand. “Hey, I’m Lily Sprayberry. I’m a friend of your grandmother.”
“Oh.”
Well, there you go. At that moment I completely understood why my mother said manners were important.
Bonnie whacked her grandson on the arm. “Nicholas, where're your manners?” She hung her head. “And mine. I’m sorry. Everyone, this is my grandson, Nicholas Tyler. We call him Nicky for short.”
The boy drew in a long breath and released it before saying, “Meemaw, you know I hate that.”
“I don’t care much whether you like it or not, Nicky. It’s what I called you the day you was born, and it’s what I’m going to call you till the day I die, so you just hush now, you hear?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Belle shook her head. “Can we stand somewhere else or something? This smell is making my stomach hurt.”
The little boy Dylan spoke to before we came into the maze rushed up to us. “Mister policeman?” He tugged on Dylan’s pant leg.
“Hey big guy, what’s up?” He crouched down to the boy’s level. “Where’s your pa?”
“I don’t know. I can’t find him.” The boy cried. “I’m scared.” He wrapped his little arms around Dylan’s neck and hugged him with all his might. “I think the scarecrow ghost took him.”
Nicholas laughed, and Bonnie thunked him on the head with her large black purse. “Shut up, you big lug,” she said. “Where're the manners my son taught you?”
He cowered, his shoulders shrinking even closer to his chest. “Sorry, Meemaw.”
She shot him a look that could kill a black bear on the Appalachian Trail.
Dylan picked the boy up and held him on his right hip. The natural position looked good on him, and a surge of something odd zipped through my body. It surprised me enough to make me jump.
Belle caught m
y surprise and bumped my shoulder. “I know what you’re thinking.”
“Hush.”
“Oh, we are so going to talk about this soon, honey, you can bet on that.”
I wouldn’t look her in the eye.
“When was the last time you saw your daddy?” Dylan asked the boy.
“I don’t know,” he said.
“Do you remember my name?” Dylan asked.
He’d stuffed his thumb into his mouth and couldn’t speak, so he just shook his head.
“It’s Sheriff Roberts. What’s your name?”
With the thumb still planted firmly between his lips, he said, “Lukbus.”
“Lucas?”
“Yuhuh.”
“What’s your daddy’s name?”
“Daddy.”
“Daddy? Okay. What’s your last name, Lucas?”
“Foyer.”
“Foyer?”
He shook his head.
“Foyer.”
Dylan pulled Lucas’s thumb from his mouth. It made a suction-releasing sound as it came out. “Repeat it.”
“Sawyer.”
“Okay, what does your momma call him?”
Lucas said a naughty word.
Bonnie, Henrietta, and Belle busted out in laughter.
The side of Dylan’s mouth twitched.
I empathized with little Lucas. It was obvious to me his parents were either divorced or separated, I knew he would be in the middle of a life-long fight that would shape his world in ways he couldn’t possibly understand. I stepped in to help Dylan. “Hey Lucas, sometimes your mom and friends and family call your dad a first name like they call you Lucas, what do they call him?”
“Luke.”
“Well, there you go,” Bonnie said.
Matthew made a call on his cell phone to the Sheriff’s Office and put a BOLO for Luke Sawyer to the deputies working the festival, and I tapped out a text to Caroline and Matthew to let them know we had Lucas and what was going on.
The speakers throughout the festival sounded a request for Luke Sawyer to please contact the festival hotline at 762-555-8966 immediately.
We hung out with Lucas, assuring him his father would be there soon, and sure enough, he was.
“Hey buddy, there you are. I’ve been looking all over for you.” He arrived in a small farm vehicle driven by William Abernathy.
Lucas wiggled out of Dylan’s arms, sprinted to his father and jumped into his, sobbing profusely. “Daddy, I was so scared. When you told me to stay put, I did, I promise. But when you went into the corn, I got scared, and I didn’t know what to do. And you didn’t come back, and that head rolled out, and it smelled so bad, Daddy.”
I caught Dylan and Matthew glance at each other.
“Well, now that’s interesting, ain’t it?” Billy Ray said.
“Sure is,” Bonnie said.
“Everything okay here?” William asked.
“Give me a minute,” Dylan said.
Dylan asked me to distract Lucas, so I pulled him to the side to show him some corn stalks because I couldn’t think of anything else. While I did that, I kept an ear close to Dylan as he talked to Lucas’s dad.
“Mr. Sawyer, we’ve noticed some of the scarecrows missing their heads, and there’s a lot of deer blood around them. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”
The man shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “I don’t know what you mean, Sheriff.”
“I think you do, Mr. Sawyer.”
“I hear they got a sale up at the hunting store on them extra good hunting knives,” Old Man Goodson said.
“Which ones?” Henrietta asked. “I might could get myself some.”
Bonnie laughed. “What for? You don’t hunt.”
“’Course I don’t hunt, but when one of these two act up, I can chase him ‘round my dining room table. Got to keep our men in line.”
“Maybe we ought to try that,” Belle said.
“It’s a thought,” I replied.
“Hey, I heard that.” Matthew smiled. “And I own a gun.”
We both giggled.
Nicholas tapped Bonnie on the shoulder. “I’m going through the rest of the maze. That okay?” He bit the fingernail on his left pinky and chewed on it.
“Fine by me. Just don’t sneak up on me again like you did a bit ago. Done scared me half to death, and I’ve already got one foot in the grave as it is, you hear me?”
He laughed. “I hear you.” He took off in a slow jog.
“That’s one strange grandkid you got yourself there,” Henrietta said.
“Why you say that?”
“For starters, he’s gone and chewed off nearly all his fingernails,” Henrietta said. She stood there and stared at her friend.
“Well?” Bonnie asked.
“Well, what?”
“You said for starters, so what else? You don’t say for starters and just stop. You got to have another reason you think my grandson is one strange kid. So, what else?”
Henrietta shrugged. “I forget. I had another reason, but it done left the building, just like Elvis.”
I tried not to laugh, but I couldn’t help myself. Henrietta and Bonnie had a way of doing that to me.
She winked at me, and I knew she’d absolutely remembered the other reason but didn’t want to upset her friend, so just pretended to forget.
I said, “Your grandson seems like a very nice young man, Bonnie.”
She waved her hand. “He’s a social deviant. He don’t do anything but play with that computerized flying machine he got for Christmas last year. My daughter sent him to live with me while she’s overseas with her husband. He’s in the Air Force, and they didn’t want to bring him there this time. Lord knows last time he was a handful, so they left him with me. He’s been with me for two weeks now, and look at me.” She held her arms up and wiggled her hands in the air. “Why, I’m a hot mess.”
“How sweet of you to take him in,” Belle said. “And you’re not a hot mess. You’re a beauty.”
“I’m a mess, but a meemaw’s got to do what a meemaw’s got to do.”
Henrietta elbowed me in the ribs. “She’s right, he’s a deviant, and she is a hot mess. Both Old Man Goodson and Billy Ray don’t know what to do. They keep goin’ back and forth between the two of us because having a teenager at the house is mighty inconvenient.” She elbowed me again. “If you know what I mean.”
I was afraid I probably did.
Lucas tugged on my dress. “Ma’am, can I go to my daddy now? He’s really mad.”
“I know, sweetie. Just give the sheriff another minute, okay?”
“Okay.” He shoved his thumb into his mouth.”
“I said I don’t have anything to do with this. Now, if you’ll let me go, I’d like to get my son through this maze and home to bed. He’s been put through enough.”
“Hold up there, Mr. Sawyer.” Dylan pulled William Abernathy aside, but I couldn’t make out what they discussed. I suspected it had to do with the upsetting scarecrows, but I wasn’t entirely sure.
Dylan asked to see the man’s license, which Mr. Sawyer reluctantly provided. He took a photo of it with his cell phone and told Mr. Sawyer to expect a call from him the next day.
Lucas tried to tell us all goodbye but his father dragged him away without letting him.
“Someone might could teach that man some manners,” Henrietta said.
“With a switch,” Bonnie added.
“To a place where the sun don’t shine,” Henrietta said.
“And then some,” Bonnie said.
“All right ladies, we’ve got us some corn to get through,” Billy Ray said. “And we don’t want these young’uns to beat us now do we?”
“We sure don’t,” Henrietta said.
Bonnie held up her right foot but she had to hold onto Billy Ray to do it. “I got me on my good luck sneakers. Nobody’s beating me at nothing with these on.”
“Those things are older than yo
ur granny panties,” Henrietta said.
“Maybe I’m not wearing any granny panties. Maybe I got me on something more fancy than that.”
I felt like I was watching two trains getting ready to collide. I desperately wanted to turn away, but something in me just couldn’t. Belle on the other hand, was all ears glued to every word of their conversation.
Thankfully, William interrupted the exchange. “If y’all see any other scarecrows like this, can you let me know? I’ve got some of my crew coming out to clean these up, but I’d like to make sure we don’t have any more like this.”
“You mean this isn’t part of the maze?” Belle asked.
He shook his head. “The scarecrows are, of course, but not the deer blood, and not the heads being cut off like that. We’re all about some good, scary fun, but I draw the line at real blood and anything that might hurt real animals.”
“We do have an active hunting season here in the South,” I said.
He nodded. “And a lot of displaced deer with the amount of growth we have. I get that. I’m not saying I personally support it or even that I don’t. I’m just saying that as a business, I can’t attach the farm to it. It’s just not a good idea all around.”
“That makes sense,” Belle said.
“Unfortunately, around here, it’s easy to come by,” Dylan said.
“Especially this time of the year. Isn’t it their rut season?” Matthew asked.
“Not here, but because so many are displaced, it’s more confusing to the deer, and we’re seeing a lot more of them all times of the day,” William said.
“Understandable,” Matthew said.
“My grandson works for Handley Butcher off Spot Road,” Bonnie said. “I could ask him if he knows of anyone coming in with any requests for any blood or anything if you’d like.”
I cringed. Just the thought of someone doing that made my stomach hurt.
Belle covered her mouth. “That’s really disgusting.”
“I didn’t say it wasn’t, just that he might could check,” Bonnie said.
“Don’t worry about it, Bonnie. We’ll take care of it,” Dylan said. He patted Old Man Goodson on the shoulder. “Now, how about you two gentlemen get these ladies through the maze before you turn back into pumpkins?”
“I don’t think that’s quite how the story goes,” I said.
The Scarecrow Snuff Out Page 3
