A Pearl Scarecrow

She hadn't been here before nor would she be here again. She did not like traveling with her friends as much anymore; things were getting more complicated as the days went on. It was the middle of summer; the air was thick and heavy; the shadows long as the sun stayed up; insects hummed across the hot breeze. Her name was Evelyn and she hated going to her friend's farm in Round Prairie. She was a normal young girl; thin, quiet, with brown hair and brown eyes. Nothing had happened in particular to make her dislike it. She all of sudden really disliked her friend Emily and did not really know why. It did not matter much though. They were on their way home from the green and wild farm.

When you travel through Round Prairie, there is only a house every few miles, maintaining that calm isolation of the typical small town. Emily's grandparents owned a farm and her parents regularly visited it in the summer. Evelyn would tag along occasionally during the summer just to get away. Hard to believe that a twelve year old would need time away like a hardened adult, but she did and she took it.

It was a clear day with blue sky looking clear and dominant against the green farmland. They had just left the farm and it would be two long hours across the up and down road. Evelyn hated the drive back passionately and she hated the music even more. Emily's father's music played quietly in the background. It was not loud enough to be heard completely, yet not quiet enough to drown out the ridiculous lyrics.

She was counting the hills as they rose and fell, when the car took an abrupt shiver and was sent shrieking to the shoulder. There was not a lot of shoulder room on those country roads, but there was a deep ditch with a nest of trees at the bottom. The car unceremoniously rocked, then spun and fell front first into them, coming to rest against one of the giants. Evelyn could not discern many details from the spin. All she remembered was Emily screaming. It took her a few moments to piece together that they were in a ditch.

"Everyone alright?" Emily's father Rick asked. He was a short man with a high voice.
"Yeah I think so," Evelyn managed out.
Everyone else agreed and slowly made their way out of the car. It was a Jeep Grand Cherokee, so it was a fair amount of mass that was jostled around the ditch. Its doors were smashed slightly, the windshield had shattered, along with the driver and passenger side windows. The motor spun lazily with a thin wisp of smoke draining up from the hood. Leaves had fallen on them from the tree they had hit. Thick humid heat had crawled in the windows. They all stood and looked at it for, what seemed a long moment.

Rick began to wander around the wreck with his elaborate phone in the air mumbling to himself. Emily's mother began to do that as well and not soon after, Emily followed. Emily's mother was a tall, slender woman. Somewhat the opposite of Rick, she rarely spoke. A few minutes passed of this worship until they all huddled back to where she was standing. They were all sweating already. Rick's panting became almost one tune with the cicadas' singing.

Emily's father took out his phone.
"No signal out here folks. Looks like we're going to have to walk to a phone." Rick said in-between breaths.
Everyone looked at each other painfully hoping one of them would come up with a better solution.
"I think I saw a dirt road driveway thing about half a mile back. Let's head that way," Rick said as he started to climb the hill.
"I don't wanna walk that way," Emily muttered to her mother who didn't really listen.
"Can't you just go Rick? We'll just wait here. It's too flipping hot," Alexis stammered.
Rick looked at his wife and his daughter, not really at their visitor who was also there. He had the perturbed look that a man gets when his masculinity is slightly questioned.
"Yeah, alright, I guess so," Rick mumbled.

More warm breezes and insects calling. They were all sitting in the shade a little ways from the car, no cars had come by for a while and they were too deep into the ditch to be noticed without peering intentionally. The sun curved lower in the sky as an hour passed, maybe even two. Alexis began to get nervous and started to stand up beneath the tree trying to get a signal. After a while, she gave up and began talking to herself slightly. Emily did not seem concerned about the phenomenon, as if she had witnessed this multiple times before. Eventually Emily's mother came over to consult the two girls.

"Your father has been gone for a while. I am going to go look for him at the driveway a way's back. You girls stay here and don't leave the car no matter what," she said quickly.
"Are you sure mom? I don't think it's a good idea to leave us here. What if Dad comes back?" Emily replied worriedly.
"Well if he does, then tell him I'll be waiting for him at that driveway or house or whatever it is he went to. Send him there!" she barked back impatiently.
In a few awkward moments, she was up the ditch and walking down the road leaving the two girls staring at one another. They quickly jumped up and followed not wanting to be left with the smoking bubbling car. Emily's mother, who was not that far ahead, noticed but was too annoyed to actually care.

It took them about half an hour to reach the driveway. It was the typical brown dusty driveway that spread out for a mild forever. There were no green hills that followed it, but a lovely tunnel of trees. There were wild flowers on the edges, living stars stretched along the gloom. It was a calming walk down the dirt road after all the earlier madness, they actually took their time moving between the shadows of the trees. Eventually the trees began to thin out and the wind started to move more wickedly down the road. Evelyn stayed close to everyone as they walked, swearing something was following from within the trees.

The forest eventually ended and curled out along with the driveway. It went down a hill before it ended into a mixture of green and yellow grass. Beyond the driveway was one green hill and a house behind it. It was an old and worn house with gray siding chipped with red paint. There was a big brown door with etchings across it in curves and dots. Even stranger was the four windows that made up the face of the house were all in elaborate patterns of stained glass, not the clear you would normally see on your standard old farmhouse. The house was surrounded by a few trees and rusted vehicles that were covered in ivy. All of that paled in comparison to what was directly in front of the house, a scarecrow, calm and perfect.

It was not a new or modern scarecrow by any means. Definitely not the type you would see on the front yard of some suburb somewhere looking friendly for Halloween. It had a gray coat and gray face with two open holes for eyes. There were two small streaks of red beneath its eyes that were barely visible. Its body was nearly hollow accept for the round stick of wood surrounded by strips of corn. On top of its head was a tattered sun hat that matched its coat slightly, moving calmly to the breeze.

Emily's mother was not deterred by this grizzly location. More than anything she wanted to get home. A weekend away with her in-laws and tedious husband was hard to bear. She walked up to the door quickly past the scarecrow. She staggered a little bit as she walked by, there was a smell coming off of it, something salty and rancid.
"Should we be knocking on the door?" Evelyn chimed in quickly, the smell had hit her now and that was making her even more uneasy.
Something moved in the left ground level window, a quick figure behind the rainbow stained glass.

Only Alexis saw it.

"Yeah, there's someone here. Maybe they have a phone," she barked back.
They climbed some uneven gray stairs to the door, it was a huge door for such a small home. They all stood in front of the door pathetically. Alexis sighed and raised her hand quietly to the door. There was a scream, a male scream from behind it, cutting out the quiet. Evelyn tried to lunge away from the door, but something was against her back. It was something hard and blunt, too close to allow her turn around. She panicked and threw herself against the door screaming. They fell into a dark hallway and the last thing Evelyn remembered before blacking out were the long scraps of wood missing at the base door. Finger nail marks, long and fresh.

There was music playing when she woke up. It was old classical music quiet and peaceful, with light cords and strings. It was something her grandparents would listen to. She was not ill or bloody. In fact, she felt perfectly normal, like she had been sleeping deeply. She was on a couch surprisingly, in the middle of some room. She felt it with her hand. It was a brown leather, soft and old. It bulged out almost like pillows, so much that stuffing came out the seams slightly. At her feet was an end table with a record player spinning. It had one of those huge gold microphones she had witnessed in old movies. It spun quietly, calmly.

It was a large room. The walls were covered in sky blue paint which semi-sprang out since bookshelves covered most of walls. They were overstocked with old books, so old that the gold lettering on their dark jackets had faded to only a few letters. There was a door opposite of the couch; another heavy brown door with some more strange etchings on it. There was a stained glass window that spilled different color rays of sun inside that were marked with bits of dust floating. On the desk was an old globe with faded colors, along with papers that looked like something was scribbled on them. She instantly drifted to the desk. The paper was old, brown, and faded, but the ink scribbled on looked fresh.

It said in wild cursive handwriting "You'll be okay."

She was slightly scared to say the least as her reality caught up with her. Seeing this random note on the desk seemed to quell a little fear within her. She looked at the globe, quietly turning it with her hand as dust spilled out and mushroomed into the light. On the globe, she noticed that Russia was still called the Soviet Union, making her laughing a little bit to herself.

"Didn't you appreciate the note?" a little female voice said.

Evelyn looked around, puzzled at the room, nothing moved, only shards of dust. There was a little laugh somewhere, her eyes sprang around wildly. It was coming from the coffee table in front of the couch. It was a dark brown and blended with the hardwood floor and couch. There was a model ship there with white-brown sails and brown riggings. It was an old and heavy model. On the front of a ship was a mermaid sprawled in clay and green. Her small head turned quickly upon Evelyn's realization.

"Hello!" the tiny head blurted.
Evelyn screamed and fell back against the desk.

"Now why did you do that, why couldn't you just have said hello from the get go," a deep voice said randomly.

Evelyn's eyes shot up towards the blue ceiling with clouds to a book shelf. At the top of the book shelf sat a dark wood face that served as bookend for a chain of large books. It looked Aztec or something, she had seen similar things before at a museum somewhere.

"Yes, I agree you shouldn't have scared her," another equally deep voice stated. Evelyn's eyes shot to the other end of the shelf to see another similar bookend speaking.

"If you continue to scare her like this, it will attract his attention," the other deep voice said.

"It will, it will. That's true. I'm sorry, little girl," the mermaid chimed in.

Evelyn started to calm down a little, the objects no longer looked like pure fantasy dripping out of reality.
"Who? Who are you talking about? Where I am?" Evelyn stammered out.

"It, or Him, the Scarecrow you saw it, it saw you" one of the deep voices said.

"Yes, the Scarecrow," said the mermaid and other bookend.

Evelyn fell back against the desk, it rattled against the blue wall.

The mermaid quickly leaped off the coffee table with an unceremonious thud and slowly began to make her way towards the girl.
It was a strange sight, to say the least.

"It's okay, He doesn't want you. He doesn't, he can't maintain it always," she said quietly.

"Yes, yes, you're okay. Do not worry," the two bookends echoed.

Evelyn sat down on the couch quickly the mermaid followed her over in noisy thuds.

"You said the scarecrow did this?" Evelyn stammered.

"Yes the scarecrow," they all said in some bizarre unison.

"It's alive?" she mumbled.

"Yes very alive," they all said.

"How?" she asked.

They were all silent the music played on and dust hung on the light.

"You people did it, yes, most certainly," the mermaid sang.

"Yes, yes," the bookends said gravely.

"How could we have made a scarecrow come alive? I don't understand." she asked.

"Well, its no different to anything else man makes. You made a scarecrow to be like a man so it acts like a man eventually," the mermaid stated.

"Yes, yes," the bookends said gravely.

"You dressed it up, made it have purpose, it looks just like a man," the mermaid laughed.

"And you expect it to be nice?" one of the bookends said deeply.

"Yes unfathomable, isn't it?," the other bookend added in.

Evelyn stared at the room. She was running out of things to ask, panic was beginning to set in again.
"How are you guys alive? I don't understand how any of you can be alive?" she asked.

They all laughed rather wildly in unison.

"Magic, he learned magic. He has been bored by himself all this time. It's made him a rough customer," the mermaid said.

"Yes, yes, very rough," the bookends added.

"I don't know how that's possible. I don't understand." she pondered out-loud.

They all laughed some more, the bookends shifted shaking the dust of the top of shelf slightly.

"The knives are alive too, they listen to him," the mermaid said wickedly.

Almost on some macabre cue, there was a horrible female scream above the room followed by running.

"Oh no! Oh no! More music quickly, more music quickly!" the bookends yelled in unison.

The mermaid hopped over awkwardly to the record player just missing the volume dial as he hopped. The mermaid began to breathe heavily and stared at Evelyn.

"Sorry, can't make it," she said between breaths.

"He'll demystify us. We'll be empty. He'll demystify us." the bookends yelled.

There was running now to the door. Someone banged up against it, crazily scrapping at it.
"Evelyn are you there!? Evelyn!" Emily screamed wildly.

"Yes, yes I'm here," Evelyn said brushing up against the shaking door.

"He's going to kill me. He killed my parents. Ge has knives that do it. You have to let me in. Let me in!," Emily screamed wildly.

Evelyn immediately tried to open the door but it was locked with a key on the inside. She knew she would not find it, not in this mad room. There was wild laughing and more screaming, a gurgle occurred. Emily became quiet outside the door, she could hear some light tapping on the ground, and an almost laughing sound. Children laughing, children laughing. They had the voices of children. Something was moving outside the door, she peered down to the small crack between the door and floor. Something covered it, it crawled towards her slightly . It was blood, a wide thick pool of blood. She began to scream.

"Blood, not blood?" one of the bookends screamed.

It hopped off the shelf in a wildly heroic manner, as the books he held up scattered towards the floor. The other bookend turned itself towards the fray.

"Soak it up, soak it up!" it yelled wildly.

The mermaid scrambled to move the books towards the gathering pool. It looked awkward and ridiculous as the ship slowly pushed the books across the floor toward the blood. They eventually collided and the books began to suck up the blood into their pages and bindings.

"Such a waste, such a waste," the two bookends complained.

Eventually the blood was soaked up and the books were thrown towards the wall. The mermaid was very exhausted. Evelyn was sitting on the couch now with her knees up against her chest shaking. The bookends for the first time were a little speechless and the mermaid was still too tired to talk. The music hung in the air along with dust, the rays of sun had gotten dimmer.

"Don't worry," the bookends all of a sudden said splitting the silence.

Evelyn continued to shake.
"Don't worry, He'll spare you. He can't kill all the time. It's inconceivable," they said solemnly.
Evelyn turned to them slowly, she could barely speak, she had thrown up earlier when the blood rolled in,; too many wild things in this old room. She turned to them over the end of the couch.

"Why?" she asked

"He can't kill you, nothing in absolution, that whole ying and yang tripe, it's in one of these books," the bookends said.

"Its true, he can't always keep it up," the mermaid chimed in. She stomped around in a circle and looked at her.

"You want some hard candy?" she said joyously.

There was a huge bowl of brown candy in cubes on the coffee table, dust hung off the edges.
The music continued to play.

She could tell the sun was descending in the sky, the beams through the window were getting heavier and heavier. It was not long after that she heard the mermaid leap and the door unlock in a rickety chain. There was solemness among the room almost a sadness.

"Have a nice life. Just walk out. Have nice life," they all said in unison.

Evelyn ran for the door quickly and threw it open. A cloud of salty blood flavored air hit her and she stepped back. The hallway was covered in wet and dry blood. She nearly slipped and fell when she ran for the door. It was heavy and old and it took all her strength to throw it open. Sunlight shot in at her and ran down the rickety old steps. She wanted to see if they were still alive, but she could not risk it, this horrific charity. She was on the path to the forest. Her legs felt weak and wobbly, she wanted to vomit again.

It was waiting for her on the path. The scarecrow fresh in stained blood was between the trees sitting, patiently, almost lovingly. She walked towards it uneasily knowing she could not run around it and she could not scream; she had to show courtesy and gratitude. It was strange how she understood its methods. She bowed her head as she walked up to it. There was a hopping sound as she approached it, a hollow smashing in the dirt. She could hear its clothing move. The shadows of its tatters moving on the ground were in rhythm to it. She had to close her eyes.

She could feel it over her, smelling like salt and blood. She began to cry, but she held it in as hard as she could, the tears bit her eyelids. It leaned over her. Some hot breeze brushed the scarecrow's coat against her. Something damp and rough rubbed against her cheek, it made her stomach turn. Something heavy fell in her pants pocket. Nothing else moved. There was a siren sound somewhere and then the presence was gone, she couldn't smell the blood any longer. She opened up her eyes slowly and the scarecrow was gone. She turned back to the house and it was gone. All that was left was an empty lot of land. With that, she ran.

When she got back to the car, the state troopers had arrived, along with a few worried travelers taking the same highway. They rushed over to her when she arrived, even though to her memory she had not been harmed at all. They ran her over to the paramedics quickly and wiped the right side of her face with a white cloth. The heat from it stung her eyes. It was covered in blood. After further observation and talking to her, they decided there was no wound.

She could not explain it to them, yet. All she could do was cry and not speak. The scarecrow and its home was faraway now, in some other country waiting to play evil and a little good. It would not remember her necessarily except while cleaning up the remnants of her stay and wondering why she had not eaten any candy. Evelyn would eventually speak about it all, but not till she got over the fact there was an 6 Inch diameter pearl in her jeans. A gift from a very charitable scarecrow.