Shadow Puppets: Scarecrows of Minnow Ranch Read online

  CRACK…CRACK…CRACK…

  The sound of the bones grew closer and closer.

  “Don’t look back,” she warned Matt. “Just get the door open, please.”

  He did and they burst through the door, slamming it shut behind them and bolting it in place. Matt looked out the window and saw the figures standing side by side right outside the corn.

  “They’re scarecrows,” he said.

  “I told you,” she replied.

  “Harvey…Harvey…was…they killed him.”

  “Dawn,” she yelled, suddenly remembering her sister was asleep upstairs.

  She took the stairs two at a time with Matt right behind her. She opened the door, hoping her sister would still be asleep in bed, but that’s not what she saw at all.

  There, in the dim bedroom light, Dawn was naked, bent over at the waist, holding onto the window frame while a naked man, a big, handsome man, fucked her from behind. The man huffed and puffed and her sister’s ass rippled each time the man drove his huge cock into her.

  Dawn looked back at her and smiled. A lazy grin grew on her lips and then the man seemed to hit the right spot as she yelled out, “Unnnnh! Yes!”

  Dawn shoved back against the man as if wanting him to drive deeper and each time his cock plowed into her, blood oozed down her leg. He was ripping into her, like the doctor had said.

  Daisy couldn’t move. She was stunned and was oddly aroused by the scene. She remembered her mother and the way she’d been getting fucked. Of course, back then, she didn’t understand it. Her young child’s mind couldn’t comprehend what she’d seen. Her mom had simply been naked with a man, but as she grew older, she’d had to come to grips with the fact that she’d seen her mom getting fucked in the barn. Her mom was cheating on her dad and seemed to have some man kept prisoner out there. His hands were tied and her mom was sneaking out to fuck him every night.

  Fucking him the same way Dawn was fucking this guy in the bedroom.

  “What is this?” Matt asked from behind her, peering over her shoulder at her older sister getting fucked doggy style.

  She should have been embarrassed knowing that her boyfriend was watching, but she wasn’t. Instead, she was aroused. Her sister was getting dick from a gorgeous specimen of a man. She thought she should warn them about the scarecrows surrounding the house but she didn’t want to interrupt them.

  Being in the presence of this sexual being made her horny and Daisy reached back to cup Matt’s cock in her hand. She gave it a squeeze. Matt pulled away from her.

  “What the fuck is wrong with you?!” he yelled.

  “That’s my sister,” she said. “Look at her go.”

  “I know who she is,” Matt replied, “But what is she doing? That’s sick.”

  “It’s just sex,” Daisy replied as she reached for his zipper again. “Fuck me like that, Matt.”

  “I don’t understand,” he said. “Don’t you see?”

  “It’s beautiful,” Daisy said, “How she’s making love to him.”

  “With a dirty fucking scarecrow?” Matt asked.

  Suddenly the man her sister had been fucking whipped his head around and stared at them. His eyes glowed red.

  “You don’t see what I’m seeing, do you?” Matt asked.

  “He’s so good looking,” Daisy said.

  “Daisy,” Matt shouted, turning her face toward his. “What’s wrong with you? Stop smiling like that. Like her. Daisy.”

  With that, he slapped her face, hard, once, but it stung, and Daisy snapped out of it. Her face welled up with tears. She looked back at her sister and was horrified. The scarecrow stared back at them. His eyes were red. He wasn’t the handsome man she’d seen a few seconds before. It was one of the scarecrows from the field. Its hay was stuffed into brown slacks and a plaid shirt. Its face looked like it was made out of old leather. Its lips were stitched shut.

  What horrified her most, was the giant, brown, hard but wrinkled up looking cock that jutted out from its pants and fed into her sister’s pussy, like a hose of some sort. They were linked and the strange brown penis pulsated like it was pumping life into her, pumping something into her. She could practically see the fluids draining from him and filling her up.

  “Isn’t he beautiful?” Dawn asked, that same lazy grin on her face.

  She clearly couldn’t see what they saw. The scarecrow turned away from them, grabbed Dawn’s hips, and fucked her harder. He had no care that they were standing there watching. He needed to finish whatever he’d started.

  “Get off her!” Daisy yelled and as she began to run toward her, Matt screamed from behind her.

  A sharp pain tore through her shoulder. She stumbled and fell, leaning against her good arm and trying to return to her feet. Behind her, Matt fell to the floor. A pitchfork was shoved through his left shoulder and had gone all the way through and into her. Blood ran from her arm onto the floor, but Matt was much worse off.

  Two scarecrows shoved their way into the room and reached for her. She swatted their hands away and ran for the window. Dawn was blocking her, but she pushed past her, grabbed her sister and dove out the window. She’d expected to pull her sister out with her, but instead Daisy tumbled out into the night air. She hit the ground hard with a thud, landing on the damp grass.

  She looked up through blurry, tear filled eyes to see Dawn still up there with the monsters. She seemed content where she was. Matt was up there too and she didn’t know if he was still alive. The pitchfork had gone through his shoulder but would that kill him?

  She heard the bones snapping and knew she was surrounded. The line of scarecrows emerging from the corn forced her back to her feet. She couldn’t lie there and feel sorry for herself or return to the house and try to get her sister and boyfriend. She could only run. She needed to save herself first.

  So she ran. She ran toward the back of the house. She had nowhere to go. The corn completely encircled the house and she couldn’t go into the field. Those things were out there. It’s where they lived. She’d always been afraid of the corn and it seemed for good reason. The barn was the only place to run. And she hated the barn.

  She limped her way there, fighting off a sharp pain in her leg and the fire that had been lit at her shoulder. The fear drove her forward. She didn’t know where to go or what to do but she knew she didn’t want the scarecrows to catch her. The sound of their feet marching slowly toward the barn was enough to push her through the door.

  She locked the door and found the light switch. She turned in a slow circle, checking all around her, praying to God she wouldn’t come face to face with any of the creatures. They were so ugly, so scary, and so evil.

  Matt. No, Matt. Please let Matt be okay. God, please save Matt. I’ll be good. I’ll love him and settle down and grow my hair out and take this stupid ring out of my nose and I’ll change. I want to change. I want Matt. Please, God.

  The sound of rocks being dropped on a cement sidewalk was so close that it chilled her to the bones.

  Crack…tap…tap…tap…

  Daisy hated the sound. She dreaded it. It meant something bad was coming and there was something bad outside too. She couldn’t go out there, but she couldn’t stay here.

  Crack…tap…tap…tap…

  “Go away!” she cried. “Leave me alone!”

  Crack…tap…tap…tap…

  “Please. I’m begging you. We’re good people. We just wanted to gather my mom’s things. We’ll sell the ranch and leave! Please leave me alone.”

  Crack…tap…tap…tap…

  The sound wasn’t getting any closer and finally Daisy was scared enough that her fear changed to anger and her anger made her want to take action. She scanned the barn around her for anything that could be used as a weapon. She found a pitchfork shoved into a bale of hay. She pulled it loose and shook the hay onto the ground.

  Crack…tap…tap…tap…

  Daisy followed the sound to the back of the barn and to where the horses used to
be kept. She found the stable she’d entered as a kid and realized the sound was coming from inside there. She pushed the small gate open and entered the stable with the pitchfork raised high above her head, ready to slam it down into something if she needed to.

  There, with the wooden post tied to the wall with some sort of old twine, was a scarecrow where the man had been who’d fucked her mom when Daisy was a young girl. She was tired of all this scarecrow nonsense. She held the pitchfork out in front of her and was about to shove it into the face of the thing when it transformed. It changed into the man her mother had been fucking. His blond hair hung in tangles. He was so handsome, a lot like the one she’d seen upstairs with her sister.

  The stitching on the lips was removed and the man smiled at her. He looked exhausted and dirty, but he still forced a smile.

  “You’ve come back,” he said to her.

  “You know me?” she asked.

  “You don’t remember seeing me when you were a young child?” he asked. “I imagined that must’ve been quite traumatic to a girl your age.”

  “You were with my mom,” she said.

  “Yes. I was with her.”

  “You’re one of them,” she said.

  “One of whom?”

  “The scarecrows.”

  “Oh,” he said. “We hate that name.”

  “So what should I call you? I wouldn’t want to offend the murderous creatures who’ve raped my sister and stabbed my boyfriend.”

  “Your sister hasn’t been raped,” he said. “She is completely willing.”

  He was practically begging to get a pitchfork through his eyes. She wanted so badly to stab him.

  “Bjorn,” he said, “You can call me Bjorn. Or that’s the name I’m known by. But us…us as in the um…scarecrow word, we go by another name. Have you ever heard the name fugleskremsel?”

  She hadn’t heard the name, but thought it might sound less horrific than scarecrow.

  “What do you want from us?” she asked.

  “Personally, I would like to be loosened from this stake so I could go on to live my life, but they would put me right back here. Your mom loosened me once. A ranch worker did it another time. Both times I was brought back here and tied to this post.”

  “But why? Why would they do this to you? And who is they?”

  “My people. The…scarecrows as you call them. Let me tell you a quick story. Many many years ago, my people were common folk. Much like your family, we lived off the land. What we didn’t grow to eat, we grew to barter with the other tribes and families in the area. We, my people, are originally from Norway. We traveled into the country, far from the sea, to escape the natural life of our people, fishing and raiding.”

  “You were Vikings?”

  “Something like that,” he said. “But things went bad. The sun grew stronger, the rivers dried, the land became scorched, and the corn refused to grow. We were starving. Here, touch my head. It is better if I show you.”

  Daisy held back for a moment. Touching this man, this creature, didn’t appeal to her.

  “I will not hurt you. I will show you so you will understand.”

  She took a deep breath, touched his forehead, and suddenly she felt lightheaded. The world went black.

  Through a gray mist she floated, smoke, that of a fire, and then through the fire she moved until she stood at the center of a village. She was no person. That much was clear. She was there as a spectator, seeing from within. She saw the villagers, felt their fears, heard their thoughts, experienced their emotions. The language wasn’t English. A jumbled cacophony of foreign sounds hit her ears and then word by word she began to understand, hearing the dialogue in her native tongue.

  She floated into a hut of sorts where one family seemed to be the focus of her vision. It was Bjorn with a young, beautiful woman, and two kids. The youngest was an infant lying in a hand-carved bassinette. She had the feeling it was a little boy but couldn’t be sure. A young girl peeked in at the baby, no older than five. Bjorn’s wife cried into his shoulder. They looked malnourished, far too skinny, with deep shadows beneath their eyes.

  “The crops will grow again,” Bjorn assured his wife. “Just give it time. We’re doing all we can. Tomorrow I will go out again with Anders and Hans and we’ll find meat. We always do.”

  “No, you don’t. Not always,” she cried into his shoulder. “We’re going to die. Let’s go back. Go back to the sea. We can fish. That’s what our people do.”

  Daisy’s vision blurred and suddenly she was outside, near a roaring fire at the edge of the village. Something was cooking. It was a body. Bjorn ate a piece of meat and coaxed his daughter to do the same. The wife refused. He hugged her and held her forehead to his chest, whispering to her.

  “It’ll be okay. It’s necessary,” he assured her. “She wouldn’t have wanted her body to go to waste if it could save us.”

  “I cannot eat her,” the woman said. “I cannot. She was my friend.”

  Suddenly, Daisy heard footsteps from behind. She turned to see three hooded figures step out of the trees. The men around the fire jumped up with their weapons, ready to fight off any threat to the village. Bjorn stood next to Anders. They both held axes.

  Only one of the figures, the tallest one in the middle, removed his hood. He was bald and a portion of his head looked caved in as if he’d had his head bashed with a rock. One eye stared off to the side and was nearly all white, glazed over. The other held the glow of the fire, giving him a supernatural appearance. His mouth never opened more than half an inch when he spoke, but within that small gap in his lips, Daisy saw crushed teeth, mostly jagged pieces.

  “You suffer,” he said in their tongue.

  “He speaks our language,” Anders announced to the others. “But he is not one of us.”

  “Does it matter from where I come as long as I can point you to where you’re going?” the strange figure said.

  “He speaks in riddles,” Bjorn said. “Witches speak that way.”

  “Friends speak the way of the truth,” the man said. “And I come to offer you salvation from your current…predicament.”

  A meeting took place and Daisy saw pieces of it as her mind flashed forward, catching the gist of each piece of evidence Bjorn provided, but not hearing every word. The stranger pointed at the corn and Daisy saw there was none. She would have never guessed it was the cornfield from the ranch. The land was bald. The stranger, or visitor as Bjorn’s people called him, told them he could fix their problem. He claimed to have come from a similar village that had suffered the same fate and the discovery of the solution came after it was too late. Everyone had died of hunger other than these three visitors.

  Daisy watched as the men agreed. The women seemed afraid, but they followed the lead of their husbands. They drank some sort of concoction given to them by the visitors.

  It was dark. Everyone slept.

  The parents didn’t wake as the visitors took the children, one at a time from the huts, and placed them on the ground by the fire. Some of the children looked afraid. Some slept. Some cried. Daisy could only watch and somehow she knew what was coming.

  “No! Go back inside and wake your fathers!” Daisy yelled.

  Her voice was not heard. Tears ran down her cheeks as she approached a child and tried to shake his little hand but he wouldn’t respond to her.

  Daisy turned her head. She couldn’t bear to watch. But she could hear the screams.

  In the morning, the children were all gone. They’d been consumed by the fire and surrounding the village was corn like she’d never seen. Healthy, strong stalks. Men came out of their huts and rejoiced, seeing the abundance of crops surrounding them. They would never starve again.

  The women were different. They staggered from the huts looking desperate and confused. They cried the names of their children. They searched, they screamed, they pounded their fists and attacked their husbands.

  She moved across the village and saw the sun was set
ting. The three visitors sat at the edge of the village, on the ground, and again, only the one in the middle had his hood off. He smiled a toothy grin. The women yelled at them and tried to attack but the men held them back.

  Men around the village consoled their wives. For some reason, the men seemed oddly at ease with what had happened. They weren’t angry like their wives. They seemed content. In her head, she heard Bjorn’s voice.