Terry

There was nothing but corn behind and on both sides for five miles. Ahead was a narrow lane of dirt and grass extending from the garage of the agricultural lab to the farm, almost three-quarters of a mile to the east. On both sides of this lane there was also corn, and after reaching the farmhouse and crossing the road, even more. There was corn everywhere, and nothing else but earth, sky, and the lab.

The lab had been purposely set back, as far as was practically feasible, from the farm and the house and the road for the reason that researchers from the state university would only contribute to its construction monetarily if they could be assured of the purity of their data. "Too close a proximity to the house or the road," they said, "could compromise the integrity of our studies." As such, provisions were made for the purchase of an off-road golf cart to make the commute from the barn both quicker and, for the female technicians, less seemingly dangerous, than walking. Terry was not a female, yet as he made his way out of the lab after locking up for the night he was exceedingly grateful for the vehicle provided.

The outside door faced the corn to the north, higher than his head by at least a foot, and the golf cart was just outside, parked parallel to the doors of the garage. The technicians always parked it in the same place, as there was no light until the farmhouse except for the motion-light above the door of the lab, and, sometimes, the light from the moon and the stars.

This particular night was cool and black, no moon and no stars. The wind blew softly through the drying shafts of stalk, rustling the husks and leaves with the crumpling sounds of balled-up paper. Terry hurriedly made his way to the golf cart and sat down on the cold imitation leather of the driver's seat. He reached toward the ignition to bring the vehicle to life, and found nothing. His hands panicked briefly to the seat, the floor, his pockets, before he finally remembered bringing the keys into the lab on his arrival earlier that day. He hesitated, sighed and ran back around the corner to the door, where the motion-light had yet to switch itself off. He had gotten halfway there before he realized that when checking his pockets he had not only found no vehicle key, but no keys at all. The lab door locked from the inside, and he had not brought the keys out with him.

Terry swore and put his face up to the glass of the window on the upper half of the door. The window fogged with his heavy breathing, and he swore again, wiping the steam from the glass with his sleeve. He cupped his hands around his eyes to keep out the glare from the motion-light, and peered inside. Sure enough, the keys were on a table just inside the door, adjacent to the remnants of some recently shelled corn, the kernels bagged in paper sacks, the leftover cobs broken into pieces, naked on the floor. He swore again, this time louder, and jiggled the handle of the door violently. He was going to have to walk.

It was not that walking was so bad, it was just that walking the dark was such a pain, an unwanted inconvenience. Any other technician on the farm would have at least had a flashlight with them, but then, any other technician would not have locked their keys in the lab.

As a four-year-old boy, Terry had wandered away from a picnic with his extended family behind his grandparents' house, into a field of corn strikingly similar to the one he was working in now, as a grad student. He had little memory of his time being lost, just the remnant of the feelings of aloneness and vulnerability that were left over. He had been gone seventeen hours before they found him, huddled up and shivering in the ground-litter of a trough between two rows of corn. That was the last time he had been alone in a cornfield at night.

The wind rose, quivering the stalks like wind chimes made of old newsprint. With every shift it sounded like there were bodies moving through the field, their footsteps like Rice Krispies bathed in milk. Terry shivered, imagining formless shadows skulking though the sheaves of growth on either side of him, whispering in the darkness. He had been carrying a small sack containing leftovers throughout the brief ordeal with the keys, and as he began his trek he inspected the bag by touch to discover what was left of his dinner. There was the core of an apple and half a bag of animal crackers. He grabbed the crackers, and stopped. A noise from behind had startled him, a soft thud he may or may not have heard in the distance. Turning around quickly, he peered into the darkness. As he did so, the motion-light at the lab went out, encasing him in a void of pitch even thicker than the one before. He listened, held his breath. Nothing.

When Terry's family finally noticed his absence from the picnic, they first attributed it to his playing in the field with his cousins. There was little worry until supper had come and gone, and the clouds of dusk rolled in over the ocean of corn. After rounding up the cousins and finding out that they, in fact, had not seen him all afternoon either, the adults of the party split up with flashlights and made their way into the field in pairs, shouting and calling his name. Terry had heard none of this. His only memories of the occurrence consisted of abstract images of cornstalks, walking, and the jarring circumstances of his rescue.

The wind was blowing stronger, and the noises of the field rose with it. Terry moved on, quickening his pace to match his pounding heartbeat. Turning his attention back to the animal crackers, seeking to distract his mind from the task at hand, he stumbled, nearly fell, dropped the sack of leftovers and its contents, and swore. It seemed like swearing was the only thing he could do right. He leaned forward and felt around for what was left of his food. His eyes had begun to adjust to the dark, yet still all he could make out were the leaves of the corn on either side of the path, rising and falling with a subtle, almost ghostly wave, like a million hallucinatory arms reaching out to him through a bony, crackling silence. He scrambled for his food, finding it quickly and placing it back in the sack, only to find that the bottom was torn, half gone, the core once again in the dirt. Something caught his attention out of the corner of his eye, and he realized that it was the motion-light at the lab turning on. Something had triggered it.

When his family had no luck finding Terry, they called the police to help them in their search. His mother had been hysterical. The authorities came in numbers and with dogs, and the officers, the family, and some volunteers who were family friends from the area all set off into the corn to search for the missing boy. Terry, having walked for nearly a day with no food or water, scared and alone in the dark, was discovered near dawn by an officer and his dog. He had not heard anything before the rustling of the stalks, and when he turned to see what it was that was pursuing him, it was just in time to see the beast of a dog barreling through the stalks, grunting, frothy drool splashing from its open mouth, its teeth visible and massive. Terry, semi-delusional from hunger, fatigue, and emotional as well as physical exhaustion, did not have the faculties to see that this was his salvation. He ran, terrified, until he collapsed onto the dirt, covered his head, and sank into unconsciousness.

Leaving the core where it lay, Terry hurried down the path, passing stalk after stalk after stalk. He felt like he was that child again, lost in the field behind his grandparents' house, tired, scared and alone. He began to recall pieces of his time in that field, wanting nothing more than to find his family but only finding more corn at every turn. It was the same for him as it was looking into a campfire, where the memories from every campfire he had ever attended coalesced and blended into that single, nearly identical experience of staring into the flames. He could have been in any cornfield in the world, at any time.

The wind had grown into a steady whirl, and a constant murmur came from the corn as if crowds of invisible creatures or spirits were following his every step. Terry picked up his pace. His eyes betrayed him, as they had, he now recalled, as a boy; unaccustomed to such darkness and space, they melted the boundaries of the path with that of the field, and many times he stumbled over sharp mounds of earth at the edges, where the soil had been cultivated prior to planting, but was, for whatever reason, unfertile or corrupt.

Once when he stumbled he fell into the stalks, the leaves scratching his face and his arms like an old woman's fingernails, the silk at the tip of the ears like webs between her fingers. He landed on his back and looked up into the darkness, the organic spires of the cornstalks projecting themselves into the emptiness and obscurity beyond. The vastness of the world on top of him, the bigness of the vacant sky crushing what was left of his resolve, Terry's notions of space and time and reason collapsed, and he rose with haste and ran as he hadn't run since he was four, until he could see the light from the porch at the back of the farmhouse.

Terry stopped at the edge of the lawn, both to catch his breath and to make sure no one from the house would see him running like a child. He looked back down the path and laughed.

Collecting himself, Terry straightened, walking across the yard toward the house. He noticed with some surprise that he was still holding the half bag of animal crackers, many now crushed at the bottom from the pressure he had exerted on them during his run. He laughed again, opening the bag, and pulled out a handful of the small, animal-shaped wafers. As he neared the porch light he lifted the one on top closer to his face. It was a lion. He ascended the porch and bit its head off, but before he could chew it he began to choke, and had to spit it out.