Thomas finished scrubbing a pot and started drying it.
“I’ll tell you what he does, Earl—he plays in my cornfields with a scarecrow. Can’t make any friends in school so he plays with a lump of straw all day. Feeds the crows too. Feeds ‘em with food from my cupboard. You believe that? I got a scarecrow that don’t scare shit, all because of my son.”
Earl finished his beer and asked, “That true, Thomas?”
Hunter answered. “Sure as shit it’s true. He’s out there every chance he gets. Even caught him sneaking out of bed a few times to go out there and do whatever the hell he does with those winged rats and that stupid straw friend of his.”
Hunter stood and fetched two fresh beers from the refrigerator. He sat back down and handed one to Earl. “Used to draw pictures for him didn’t ya, boy?”
Earl gave Hunter a funny look.
“That’s right,” Hunter said. “He’d draw pictures for him—used to hang ‘em up all over the damn thing. I put a stop to that though.”
Earl twisted off the top of his beer and took a deep pull. He let out a satisfied gasp, wiped his mouth and said, “Well let’s see one of ‘em then.”
“I told you I took care of them—tore them all up.”
“Let’s see a new one then.”
“Don’t encourage the boy, Earl. This drawing’s going to stop.”
Earl leaned in his chair and gave his friend a playful shove. “Come on, Hunt. Let’s see what the boy can do.”
Hunter’s anger grew. “I told you—”
“I’ll do one,” Thomas said. He was turned on the stool and looking at the two men. His face held an odd purpose.
“The hell you—”
Earl shoved Hunter again. “Come on, Hunt, I want to see what the fuss is about.”
Hunter filled his glass to the top with whiskey, nearly emptying the bottle. He did not sip from his glass—he gulped from it, his brow a mess of tight wrinkles in the middle. “Well go on then, boy. Go get your stuff. Show my friend what you can do.”
Thomas wiped his hands, hopped off the stool, and left the kitchen.
Hunter glared at Earl. “You’re encouraging my boy to be a sissy.”
Earl laughed; his belly and meaty breasts shook. “Oh come on, Hunt, it ain’t that bad.”
Hunter took an angry swig from his beer. “Says the man with an athlete for a son.”
Thomas returned with a thick piece of white paper and a pencil. “Can I work in the living room?”
Hunter waved him away with less courtesy than he’d give a mongrel dog. “Go on then.”
* * *
Thomas returned to the kitchen an hour later. The bottle of Jim Beam was now dry; empty beer bottles littered the cracked oak table.
“Took your time, didn’t you?” Hunter said. His words were slurred, his eyes bloodshot.
“Let’s see what we got,” Earl said. His words were more pronounced, but his torso rocked gently. He was equally drunk.
Thomas handed the drawing to Earl. The man looked at it close, held it away at arm’s length, and then pulled it close again.
“Boy’s got some talent,” he said.
Hunter snatched the drawing from Earl’s hand. He glared at it. His vision was blurred from drink, but he squinted and focused intently. He thrust it back into Thomas’s hollow chest knocking him back a step. “What is this, boy? Explain it.”
Thomas’s posture straightened—he appeared confident in front of his drunken father and friend. He held the drawing out with his left hand and traced his right finger over the picture as he explained it.
“It’s a boy, holding hands with his mom and dad,” he said.
Hunter blinked. Blinked several times. A feeling of empathy surfaced for a fleeting moment before it was buried quickly by years of conditioned rage. “Boy, I told you about your mother. Drawing a picture about me an’ her back together ain’t gonna make it so. You need to start accepting—”
“It’s not you,” Thomas said. He pointed to the far corner of the picture. The details were small but there. A man was being enveloped by crows. A scarecrow looked on. “This is you.”
Hunter blinked some more. Drunk or sober he wasn’t getting it. “Well then who’s that there holding hands with—”
“That’s Todd—Mommy’s friend. That’s me, Mommy, and Todd. I see them every day after school. Todd buys me ice cream. He’s nice to me. He likes me. He likes my drawings.” Thomas lowered the picture to his side and drilled his father with the eyes of a grown man. “My mother’s not a whore.”
Hunter leapt to his feet, banging the table, the bottles clanking and rolling to the ground, shattering. He was on Thomas in two steps, snatching the boy by the shirt. Thomas went spark-out from the first blow, his body going limp, nearly slipping out of the shirt gripped tight in his father’s fist. Hunter adjusted his grip and flung Thomas against the wall where he bounced off and crumbled to the ground like a large puppet.
Earl hopped up from his chair and grabbed Hunter from behind in a bear hug. Hunter became a wild animal—growling, fighting, roaring. Earl held tighter, but Hunter was wearing boots; Earl was wearing sneakers. Hunter brought his foot high in the air then down with his heel onto Earl’s instep. The big man cried out, releasing his grip. Quick as a gunslinger, Hunter grabbed one of the remaining bottles from the kitchen table and whipped it down onto his friend’s skull.
Earl dropped to both knees, clutching his bloody scalp. “You crazy son of a bitch!”
Hunter picked up a second bottle, cocked it back. “Get out! Get the fuck out of my house!”
Earl turned on all fours, his heavy frame doing its best to scurry along the floor and out of the kitchen until the distance was safe enough for him to rise to his feet and run. The back door slammed, an engine roared, tires screeched. The sounds of the fleeing car dwindled to nothing in seconds.
The quiet kitchen hummed with recent tragedy, Hunter Bowen’s heavy breathing the only constant. His rage and adrenaline had sobered him some, but he would remedy that soon enough. As for right now, he had one final thing to take care of. He walked towards his unconscious son, bent over, snatched his drawing in one hand, the boy’s ankle with the other, and dragged him out of the kitchen, through the hall, out the back door, and towards the cornfield.
* * *
Hunter Bowen faced the scarecrow high up on its wooden pole. A crow was perched on either shoulder, standing their ground. His son’s ankle was still in one hand, his drawing in the other.
If he thought the straw man and the crows could understand him he would have berated them. He spoke anyway—the alcohol made the notion of venting to birds and a scarecrow credible. Besides, it was not the scarecrow and the crows he was addressing.
“You want him? You want to look at his sissy pictures? You want to encourage him to draw this crap?” He held up the drawing, spit on it, then crumpled it into a ball and flung it at the base of the wooden pole. “You can damn well have him. Come judgment time, you’ll all burn. You’ll all fuckin’ burn.”
Hunter dropped his son’s ankle. The boy was still unconscious—a starfish position on his back. The two crows kept their position. They did not squawk; they did not twitch. They just watched—beady black eyes zeroing in on Hunter, not even blinking. To the onlooker they could have been a fine work of taxidermy.
Hunter turned and stormed through the stalks of corn, swatting and punching them out of his way en route back to his house. His whiskey was gone, but he had plenty of beer left. And he was going to drink it. Drink it until his rage succumbed to inebriation.
* * *
Thomas was still out, the crumpled picture still at the base of the pole. Gloved hands reached down and took hold of the drawing, fanning it out, taking it in. More crows appeared on the scene. There were squawks now, but not frightened, fleeing squawks—they were chattering calls. The gloved hands dropped the drawing back to the ground and tightened into fists.
When Thomas woke minutes later
, his vision was hazy. He rubbed his eyes and stared at the wooden pole—unoccupied.
* * *
Hunter Bowen had already drained his fifth beer since returning to the house—his sixteenth that night in addition to the half-bottle of Jim Beam he’d consumed. He sat slumped in his living room, a drunken sleep seconds from taking him. He mumbled gibberish into the air: His wife’s name. Todd. His son. The scarecrow. His wife’s name again. Profanities.
The half-empty beer bottle dropped from his hand and hit the rug. He cursed that too and didn’t bother reaching for it. His eyes were heavy. He did not want to submit to sleep just yet. There was still more beer—more medicine that needed drinking.
He stumbled from the sofa, his body bouncing off each wall as he entered the kitchen. He bent forward to open the fridge and fell back on his bottom. He did not curse his equilibrium; he embraced it now, giggling like a fool. The gibberish continued but its hateful tone had now taken on a carefree, indifferent one—the alcohol doing the job he had hoped it would.
“Stupid cheating bitch,” he slurred, getting back to his feet. “Todd, huh? Bought you ice cream did he? I’ll take that ice cream and shove it straight up his—”
He stopped. There was an image in his periphery. He turned too fast and swayed, latching out to the refrigerator’s handle to stay upright. Someone was standing in the distance—past the kitchen’s entrance through the hall, and into the adjoining mudroom by the back door. His drunken vision was poor, and for a second he thought it was the boy, but the figure was far too tall. He took a step forward.
What he saw was impossible.
The lighting in the mudroom was dim, and the figure was more a silhouette than anything. But even his drunken eyes knew a scarecrow when he saw one.
“No fucking way.”
Hunter staggered to his left, back into the living room. He stood alone in the room, his heart thumping in his ears. A trick of the eyes. Yes—he was drunk; a drunken trick of the eyes is all it was. He took cautious steps back into the kitchen, peered out through the hall into the mudroom.
The scarecrow was gone.
He sighed, smiled, then laughed. Hunter took his intended beer from the fridge and went back into the living room. The scarecrow was there. No mistake now. It stood tall, far taller than him, its inanimate face and button eyes somehow looking deep into Hunter—he felt it.
“No fucking way!”
Hunter dropped the beer, turned and bolted from the room. He was a pinball through the house, bouncing and colliding with everything in his path until he reached the back door, ripped it open, and sprinted out into the dark. He managed ten feet down the path. The scarecrow was blocking his exit. Hunter screamed like a woman, his terror superseding any pride for the pitch that squeaked from his mouth. He banked right off the path and headed towards the cornfield.
* * *
Thomas had started to wander throughout the cornfield. He did not head back to the house. His head was still foggy from his beating, but his only thoughts were concern for his friend; he feared his father had ripped him down and destroyed him in his drunken rage.
The boy wandered aimlessly in the dark throughout the stalks of corn, desperately worried he may find the straw man dismembered and discarded somewhere along the ground. His compass came in the guise of screeching and screaming—the crows were screeching; his father was screaming.
* * *
Thomas followed the shouts until he returned to the wooden pole where his best friend used to be. His father had now taken his place on the pole, stuck fast and hammered against the wooden beams like a giant T. His body was littered with crows, perched on every conceivable ledge of his body.
Standing in front of his father was his straw friend. The scarecrow turned and looked at Thomas as he came into view. The straw man’s button eyes and sewn mouth were as inanimate as they’d been in Hunter’s living room, yet Thomas saw love in those plastic eyes.
The scarecrow waved Thomas close. The boy went to him. When he arrived by the straw man’s side, the boy latched onto his waist and hugged. The straw man bent forward and hugged him back.
Behind the pair, the crows were very busy. They plucked flesh from the body of Hunter Bowen like rabid piranha, swallowing it as greedily as they had done with the bread Thomas always offered them. Hunter cried out and called to his son who was deaf to everything but the warm embrace of his friend. Besides, the cries were short-lived—Hunter Bowen’s tongue and throat were devoured soon after.
The assault’s final act saw one of the crows pluck the discarded drawing from the ground then drill it into the gutted ribcage of the now dead man on the pole.
* * *
Thomas ultimately turned and looked at his father. The crows were gone, but he could still hear them nearby. His father had been reduced to nearly a skeleton—only random bits of flesh remained on his body. Thomas was not shocked. Nor was he upset. He had wished this. Drawn it. And it had come true. He only began to express concern when he realized what was happening next.
The crows had returned and started undressing the straw man. The flock of black birds started with the straw man’s hat, lifting it off his head and flying it towards the skull of Hunter Bowen. But they did not drop the hat onto the skull just yet; they needed something to cover the face first. More crows flew back to the straw man and tugged at the burlap sack with the button eyes and sewn mouth that was his face. Thomas cried out to interject, but the straw man extended his gloved hand, caressed the boy’s cheek, and nodded his reassurance to Thomas who was certain he saw the sewn mouth curve upward into a smile before the burlap sack was finally tugged off, spilling the straw inside to the ground where the limp body of the scarecrow fell seconds after.
The crows worked faster now, meticulous and precise in their movements. Their black wings and beaks flapped and clicked, working in unison as they pulled the hood down over Hunter Bowen’s skull, setting the straw hat over it, tugging it snug to his crown.
The straw man’s shirt was next—the crows working furiously at freeing the buttons, half a dozen lifting the shirt into the air, wrapping it and fitting it around the torso of what used to be Hunter Bowen.
The pants were last, and before long another scarecrow had been erected upon the pole—a dead ringer for its previous occupant.
Thomas looked down at the pile of straw that had once been his friend. He was crying, but not sobbing—he understood. The crows squawked, and Thomas looked up at them. There were dozens perched mightily atop their new home.
Thomas opened his mouth to thank them, but his mother’s voice cut him off. She was rushing through the stalks of corn with Todd close behind. She dropped to her knees before her son, spotted the welts on his face, and pulled him into her. Todd looked on with angry tears in his eyes.
Mrs. Bowen, crying, explained that Earl had phoned and told them what had happened. When Todd asked where Hunter was, Thomas did not hesitate.
“He said he was leaving…and he was never coming back.”
Mrs. Bowen hugged her son again, and then Todd took his turn. Moments later the three of them walked through an open path of cornstalks—Thomas in the middle, his mother holding his hand on the right, Todd holding on the left.
* * *
Mrs. Bowen insisted on sitting in the back seat with her son. Backing out of Hunter Bowen’s driveway, Todd wheeled the car around, but stopped before going any further. A crow had landed on the hood of the car, a folded piece of paper in its beak. A second crow landed soon after—then a third and a fourth.
Todd went to hit the horn, but Thomas quickly shouted his objection. Instead the boy unbuckled his seatbelt and went to open the door. His mother grabbed his arm, but her son’s expression assured her it was alright. He told her they were his friends. She let him go.
Thomas exited the car and approached the crows. They greeted him with quiet clicks and calls, and Thomas gently took the folded piece of paper from the first crow. He opened it and looked at the drawin
g he had done earlier that day. The one of him and the scarecrow together, their smiling faces side by side—the same drawing he had hid deep inside the straw man’s chest. A solitary piece of straw was stuck to the picture. Thomas smiled and tucked the piece of straw into his pocket before pressing the drawing to his heart. The crows flew off the hood of the car and were soon invisible in the black sky.
Thomas re-entered the car. His mother could only stare incredulously at her son. Thomas simply repeated what he had said earlier. “They’re my friends.”
Todd spoke up from the front seat, his tone was warm, a shot at levity. “Thomas, did you know that a group of crows is often called a murder?”
Thomas smiled and said, “Yeah, I did.” He hugged the drawing again.
END
BUSINESS IS BUSINESS, JAMES
“Murphy?”
The voice—deep and rough—spun Jen Murphy on the spot. She stared eye to chest with an enormous man, the width of his shoulders nearly matching her diminutive height.
“Yes?” she whispered, shocked she even got it out at all.
“You alone?”
She managed another yes.
The giant man waved her inside the entrance of the warehouse. Outside, the urban environment showed Jen a pathetic building that looked as though a determined termite could fell it. Inside, it was solid and meticulous; a place of business that demanded secrecy.
Jen followed the giant man’s steps along the smooth concrete floor, her tiny taps to his booming thuds. She took her surroundings in without turning her head. It felt wrong to take in any more. It made her feel…what? Like an accomplice? She was an accomplice though, right? Yes. Maybe. You could rationalize it anyway you wanted, but she was here to have her husband killed. And you better believe it was her idea.
WARPED: A Menapace Collection of Short Horror, Thriller, and Suspense Fiction Page 2
