The Town Whispers: Season 1

Chapter 21.5: It Stands in the Field

[birds chirping]

After a very long and very cold winter - spring had finally sprung in the fort.

The air was filled with pollen spit high into the air by early spring blooms - the crocus, some jasmine, and snowdrops - the tiny white and drooping flowers that dotted yards and ditches all across the fort.

The pine trees looked mottled as the waxy needles of winter with their dark green, almost muddy looking needles gave birth to nearly neon sprigs and sprouts at the tips of each branch.

The clouds still - remained persistent guardians over all those in The Fort - but their hues were less moody - the sun burning distant and weakly behind them - cast a desaturated sprightliness to the world.

Although spring had arrived - and the rain was not so unrelenting, and the world was slightly warmer and drier - the wind still brought with it a bone chilling sting, and the fields which would soon be filled with corn or grain, or tall grass, were still trampled and moody.

In one such field - in the dead center of old man Alfie's farm - standing watch over dead land that would soon wake from it's frozen slumber - was an old and weathered Scarecrow.

The old farmer had fashioned him with care - and it was those careful stitches, and stuffing that had carried the weathered scarecrow through many cold, wet winters, and abusively warm summers.

The makeshift man had remained crucified - impaled in the those fields for years and years - more then enough to have seen Mildred as a small child - unencumbered but the judgements of others, unencumbered by the weight her mother's eccentricities placed on her shoulders - he'd remained a silent watcher long enough to see Mildred fall in love that first night when she'd snuck out to the well with the charming, young, and affluent Mark LaPonte - marching their way with naive purpose, taking a shortcut through Alfie's farm - that intersected their path with the post from which the scarecrow watched them.

His straw-filled heart - well, didn't exactly beat for the young couple, but it had shifted slightly in his hollow, deflated chest as he watched the two, completely enthralled with each other, go traipsing off into the warm evening's glow.

Now the scarecrow, still impaled - standing guard over the mud of a spring farm field - watched as Mildred's son Tom, and his friend James ran past, hurling handfuls of mud at each other, and swinging sticks like expert fencing duelists, on their way to find some mundane adventure for the evening.

His stitched mouth - if it could - would have curled slyly at the edges as he watched, not so far behind Tom, and James - little Peggy LaPonte, doing her best to stay concealed in the bent and broken stems of tall grass that had sprouted up in the fall in one last hurrah before winter had settled in.

She slunk low, knees bent, head lifted only so high that she could peep the two boys with one eye, through the foliage before ducking quickly to avoid any chance they might see her.

If only he could wrench himself free - if only he could taste their freedom, their joy, experience the joy of earth beating at the heels of his feet, as he ran and jumped - feeling the percussive jolt of life run through his body - if only he could feel it jostle his brain, feel it rattle against the inside of his head as he would fall, and tumble covered in mud, laughing, high of the euphoria of youth.

But the scarecrow had no heels with which to run on, he had no elbows or knees, he could not twist himself, arching his back to pluck himself from the rod that propped him up and kept him watching.

If the scarecrow had eyes, they would have been glassy - the distinct notion of tears hanging at the edges of his eyelids - they would be happy melancholic tears, born of the nostalgia he had for something he had never experienced, nor would he ever.

He was only a scarecrow - with a face stitched together with some course, thick, fibrous thread -

His skin resembled some mottled leftover leather hide - although it would have been impossible to tell just by looking at the scarecrow what sort of animal hide that would have been.

His mouth - as if by some cruel joke - had been carefully constructed from a slow, sharp cut of a knife and tooled in place, the edges of the ragged leather flaps - bent over, and cured in place to form lips - a unique touch, one that made his visage look almost too human when the light hit him just right.

The cruel joke was the fact that Alfie - alone in his farmhouse - had taken the time to then stitch those lips together as if to keep his creation from speaking.

The strawman's eyes were just holes - made black from the molding straw that filled him - but they could see just fine.

Peggy bent in the grass - waiting for her brother and his new and mysterious red headed friend to continue their journey so she too could follow in secret pursuit - could feel those empty molding eyes watching her.

She'd trespassed in Old Man Alfie's fields before - she'd skipped through on summer days, picking wildflowers along the irrigation ditches between the farm plots and measured out acres - In the fall she'd stolen apples from the apple trees that served as old archaic property lines, back when The Fort had started to grow, and farm land began to be swallowed up by eager would-be farmers.

Peggy had run, as fleshy red apples jostled in the loose cradle of her arms - oftentimes spilling on the ground leaving a trail behind her as she made her way home.

She'd seen the scarecrow - straw protruding, spilling from it's tightly packed limbs - many times before.

She'd even stopped to fix the uneven buttons on his shirt - unbuttoning them to reveal the leathery pillow like torso - before then buttoning his shirt back up - matching each button to the right holes.

Never once had she felt watched - but she did in that moment.

Kneeling behind an errant island of dead grass - she felt seen by the scarecrow - she felt examined - she watched his lips, too real and fleshy to be those of a scarecrow - she watched for any sign of life. From where she sat crouched, she squinted, and tried to see the pupils of eyes hidden behind the ragged leathery holes where eyes would have been, but she could see none.

Peggy, all alone, shrugged her shoulders - as if to say to the strawman - that she didn't believe he was watching her. If not to convince him, then why else would she shrug her shoulders? There was no one else around for her to try and convince of her nonchalant bravery - no one except that leathery faced, hollow man, and herself.

Something stirred in Peggy.

A whisper that tickled the bridge of her nose - a nerve plucked by instinct - the residue of a time in the evolution of people where they perceived those things which were not completely natural.

That scarecrow....

He

Was

Watching her.

She could feel it's gaze on her - it was in the same way she could feel eyes burning holes in the back of her head when someone glared at her from across the room, the same way the weight and tension in the air changed and grew stagnant when words were left unspoken - she'd felt that between her parent's many times before.

The scarecrow was watching her, and if Peggy wasn't completely losing her mind

[Crows Squawking]

Peggy nearly yelped, the sound of crows scavenging and screaming for one another had nearly stopped her heart from beating.

She looked back at the makeshift thing that resembled a man stuffed with straw, strung up on his pole in the middle of the muddy field.

She tried for a moment to find that thin connection - but it was gone, there were no eyes peering at her after all.

Tom and James laughed - hooting and hollering before running off into the distance - continuing their adventure once more.

Peggy - shook her shoulders, letting the last of that unsettling feeling of being watched fall from her - as she stood up, and stretching her legs briefly as the boys ran out of sight, before continuing after them.

Just as Peggy had felt perturbed, and unsettled, seeing the dark pits in his leather face following her, and watching her - setting a look of dread and unwanted surprise across her face.

The scarecrow also felt equally as unsettled, that she had seen him as well. 

...

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