A Dark and Stormy Night

The bell tolls again somewhere out in the darkness ahead of me, low and hollow beneath the constant hiss of rain. The sound carries strangely across the Blacklands, distorted by the storm until it feels less like something I hear with my ears and more like something vibrating through the flooded earth beneath my boots.

I tighten my grip on the Maglite and leave the road behind, climbing over a rusted barbwire fence before pushing into the cornfield toward the distant ringing. The field swallows me almost immediately. Tall dead stalks crowd tight on both sides, slick with rainwater and black mud.

Their leaves scrape against my jacket and bare legs with dry whispering sounds that almost resemble voices whenever the wind shifts hard enough through the rows. Lightning flashes overhead every few seconds, turning the field white for brief violent instants before dropping everything back into darkness again.

The bell tolls once more, closer now. I sweep the flashlight ahead through the rain and finally see something standing among the rows up ahead. It's only a scarecrow. Its post rises crooked from the mud near the center of a small clearing between the corn.

Rainwater pours from the brim of an old black hat nailed crookedly atop its burlap head. Rotten strips of dark fabric hang from outstretched wooden arms while black feathers dangle from twine wrapped around the torso like trophies. I slow instinctively. Something about the figure feels wrong immediately.

The bell tolls again. This time when I look in its direction I finally see light beyond the cornfield. Warm yellow light glows faintly through the rain far ahead, partially obscured by dead stalks and twisted trees. As lightning flashes again, the silhouette of an enormous manor rises against the storm beyond the fields. Black Gothic towers claw upward into the sky while dimly lit windows flicker behind curtains of rain.

Relief hits me so suddenly that my knees almost give out beneath me. Warm light glows through the rain from the manor windows ahead, cutting through the endless darkness of the Blacklands like proof that civilization still exists somewhere beyond this nightmare swamp. Human beings mean shelter, dry clothes, and maybe somebody with a working phone or a truck with enough horsepower to drag the Harvester free before sunrise before the Blacklands swallow it forever.

I glance back toward the scarecrow one last time. The post is empty. For one long second my brain refuses to process what I am seeing. Rain pours through empty darkness where the figure stood only moments earlier. Torn strips of fabric still flap from the crossbeam nailed to the post, but the scarecrow itself is gone.

My flashlight beam trembles slightly in my hand. Then somewhere deep in the corn behind me, I hear something moving. The sound moving through the corn behind me is not the wind. Something large pushes slowly through the flooded rows with heavy deliberate footsteps that crunch wet stalks beneath its weight one step at a time.

I cannot see whatever is making the noise beyond the walls of dead corn and darkness, but the movement is getting closer, circling somewhere behind me while rain hammers the field hard enough to blur the beam of my flashlight. The bell tolls again ahead at the manor while thunder shakes the Blacklands hard enough to rattle the earth beneath my boots.