Wicked Seasons

One year, when I was young, I spent the summer at my grandfather's farm. Out in the center of the cornfield he had an old scarecrow, and it scared the living hell out of me. My cousins and I would play this game where we would dare each other to run up and touch him. I could never get as close as they could. At night they would tell me scary stories about him. My cousin Ronnie even claimed to have seen him move once.

On my last night at the farm, just as summer was turning to fall, I awoke in the middle the night to hear a deep and sorrowful singing. It was coming from the Cornfield. It was coming from THE SCARECROW. He stood there, beneath the blood moon singing his haunting, and mournful hymn all through the night. The early morning fog carried his song to me and each note hit me so clearly that it shook my bones, and made my teeth chatter. I stood there listening, to scared to move, but also, too enthralled by the beauty of his song. There was a warmth too it, a comfort. It felt like home.

In the morning, the ground around the cornfield was littered with dead crows. And no one ever saw my cousin Ronnie again.