Sunday 6 November 2011

Dead Man's Field

So, as it was Halloween 6 days ago, I figured I'd write something interesting. This short story is based on a creepy field that my family and I were walking across in Wales. It was a cold windy day, and dead leaves were blowing everywhere. Although nothing grew in the field, there were three scarecrows, two of which were rotten and decrepit. One of them was new.
As we walked across the field, I could feel their eyes on me. Watching. Waiting.
I had never been so glad to get out of a field in my life!

Anyway, enjoy this little story, titled Dead Man's Field.


The dead leaves danced in the wind. The creeping autumn mist wreathed itself around the traveller like a long-lost lover, chilling him to the bone.

In the darkness, the eight silent figures of scarecrows watched and waited.

The traveller fumbled in his pockets for a cigarette, found one, and put the stick in his mouth, searching for a match.

He lit it, and the resulting flare lit his face briefly, illuminating the features of his face for an instant.
He inhaled the smoke, and coughed. You couldn't smoke in a place like this. You felt dizzy and sick, either from lack of oxygen, or something more sinister. After all, this was the domain of many unspeakable things.

The silence crowded around the traveller, and he began to wish that he'd never lit the cigarette.
The mist was developing into a fog alarmingly quickly, and the traveller walked around the barren landscape, searching desperately for cover. It wasn't safe to be caught in weather like this, and anyway, you heard stories...

"But not all stories are true," muttered the traveller, arms wrapped around himself for comfort and warmth.  The fog thickened, and soon he couldn't even see his own hand in front of his face. He sat down on the dead soil, half frozen with cold, half frozen with fear. This is what happened to people before they Vanished. And he desperately didn't want to become one of the many names on the back of the newspaper, under the title of "Missing: presumed Dead or Gone". It was a kill or be killed world he lived in, and he preferred to do the killing.

He wrapped his cloak around himself in a vain attempt to keep the cold away from him. He was shaking now, and he craved warmth. His stiff, trembling hands found the match-box, and struck. He cupped the little flame, the mere sight of the warmth and light it offered was enough to sustain him for now.  Too late, he realised that he should not have drawn attention to himself. "Only stories," he muttered.

"Ah," said a dry voice from beside him. "But some stories are true."

The traveller started, looking for the source of the voice. But there was nothing and no one there.

The traveller slowly drew his knife from its sheath and held it in front of him as he stood up. He squinted into the fog. Mocking laughter drifted on the edge of his hearing, like the whispering of dead leaves.

The traveller twisted around, and lunged at a shadowy figure, barely visible. The fog parted to reveal a rather battered and ugly scarecrow. The traveller nearly cried in relief.
"Better you than me, my friend." whispered the traveller.

A harsh caw was heard, muffled by the fog. The scarecrow twitched, and to the traveller's horror, turned it's misshapen face towards him.

He yelled and ran, not glancing back until he was sure he wasn't being followed. He bent over, panting, and saw something out of the corner of his eye. He straightened up slowly and decided to back away. He bumped into something soft and moist. Another scarecrow loomed before him. It spilt open, maggots crawling out of the filthy straw and sackcloth as if it were a bloated corpse.

The traveller stared in horror as the scarecrow lurched towards him and tried to run again, but found his route blocked by another scarecrow. In sheer panic and desperation, he struck a match and threw it at the scarecrow, which instantly went up in flames. The traveller grinned, he was going to get out of this alive! He left the flailing scarecrow and ran on through the fog, but soon found himself surrounded by seven scarecrows. Dead eyes studied him from bits of sackcloth. Stitched mouths twisted in a grimace of triumph. Slowly but surely, the scarecrows lurched towards him, their jointless limbs swinging in a cruel parody of human gait.

As they closed in on the traveller, he cried for help, seeking aid of any sort. But there was no one to help him. As the charred but whole eighth scarecrow appeared, the traveller realised an awful truth. Fire couldn't stop them. Maggots dwelled inside them. And as he realised this, he remembered the rumours that circulated. How there was supposedly treasure buried underneath the barren soil. And how eight people had gone missing in a mysterious fog that appeared out of nowhere. And how, after each disappearance, another scarecrow was sighted, silently guarding the field.

The screams of the traveller cut into the fog, as leathery sackcloth hands began to pull and tear.


The fog cleared as if it had never been. The dancing dead leaves covered the body of the traveller.
Soon there would be nine scarecrows in Dead Man's field.

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