Part Four

When I finally came to, my first sensation was of the moonlight.

It was shining down all around me, white and cold.

I could feel the earth beneath me, slightly damp from yesterday's rain; all around was the cacophony of cicadas calling in the night, and the whisper of corn stalks brushing together -

I was in the cornfield.

I sat up, pushing through the fog that still clouded my mind.

Panic gripped my chest as I glanced around, realizing I was trapped. All around me the stalks stretched upwards towards the moon-washed sky, their thick leaves as straight and constricting as prison bars.

I forced myself to stand, though my limbs felt like water. Every childhood fear - fear of the dark, fear of monsters, fear of being lost - flooded through me in an instant, and I fought back the urge to cry.

I remembered what someone had told me, in the days after I had been lost in the cornfield all those years ago; that to find your way out, all you had to do was walk in a straight line. Keep walking straight, and eventually you'll come out the other end of it.

I looked around for any sign that a path had already been made; there, to my left, a few broken stalks, bending at odd angles. Whoever had brought me here had come from that direction.

Father.

The realization hit me like a ton of bricks, as the memories of the evening came back in a wave. He had drugged me. Drugged me, and then dragged me out to the middle of this field.

But why?

I didn't have time to think about that.

I had to focus on getting out of this field, so that's what I did. Staggering towards the broken stalks of corn, I pushed my way forward, focusing on keeping my path straight. The terror I had felt as a child, making my way through this featureless maze, was nearly suffocating. But I had to keep going.

I had to get out.

(((0)))

When I finally stepped out of the cornfield, I was out of breath and covered in dozens of tiny cuts from pushing through the sharp-edged leaves. Relief washed over me like moonlight as I stepped onto the grassy field, leaving the labyrinth of corn stalks behind me.

I was free.

I had followed the path, and it had led me to a familiar patch of grass; the dirt road stretched out in front of me, and I could see my house in the distance.

I had to get back to the house.

Of course it felt foolish to go back to the place where my father was, but I had no other choice. Maybe I could have walked to the nearest farm house, but I was tired of stumbling along in the dark. If I could get to my truck, I'd be ok.

I wasn't thinking clearly, my brain still a jumble from the drugs and the confusion, so I began to make my way towards the house, breaking into an awkward jog as I tried to put space between me and the field as quickly as possible.

I slowed as I approached the house.

Someone was approaching me as well.

It was Father, I realized, some strangled emotion catching in my throat. I didn't know whether to run to him or flee. Instead I simply froze, a tremble overtaking my exhausted limbs as he came closer.

"Elias?" he called from the darkness as he approached me, "What are you doing here?"

I began to stammer out an answer, my mind short-circuiting with my own confusion. He closed the space between us, his strong hand reaching out and grabbing me by the arm.

"I-I don't know what's going on," I said shakily, as the adrenaline that had pushed me through now began to dissipate. Father looked past me, his gaze set on the field. His face was an unreadable mask in the moonlight, and when he spoke, his emotionless tone made my blood run cold.

"You weren't supposed to come back."

I swallowed hard, trying to steady my voice as I replied,

"What are you talking about?"

He didn't answer. He just looked down at me, and his face was one I didn't recognize. The fear that filled me now was something deeper than what I had experienced in the corn field. I wrenched my arm out of his grasp, and I began to run.

I could hear his footsteps behind me. He was moving much faster than I was, unimpaired by whatever drugs were still coursing through my system. But he was still an old man, and I thought I had a chance in outrunning him.

A moment later something heavy crashed across the back of my skull, and for the second time that night, my world went black.

(((0)))

The first thing I was aware of as I woke was pain.

A deep red pain, throbbing through my head, threatening me with nausea if I dared to open my eyes. But I didn't need to open my eyes to know where I was. The whisper of the corn shifting in the night breeze told me all that I needed to know.

But I wasn't alone this time.

I was lying on the ground, but I was being held, my head and shoulders cradled in arms that I should have found comforting, but that filled me with terror. I tried to speak, but it only came out as a groan.

Father's voice spoke from above me, cutting through the ringing of my ears. His tone was gentle, almost kind.

"Quiet," he soothed, as he ran his hand over my injured head, "it will all be over soon."

Panic clutched my heart again, growing even stronger as he continued speaking,

"I wish you wouldn't have tried to run. He'll be angry now; I had hoped he wouldn't be angry, for your sake."

I took a deep, shuddering breath and shifted, trying to orientate myself. I could feel the damp earth beneath me, broken pieces of stalks pressing painfully under my legs. I forced my eyes open a crack, enough to see the cornstalks towering ominously above me, their stark forms casting sharp black shadows across me in the moonlight.

I realized with slowly-descending horror, that Father meant to kill me here.

How or why, I didn't know and never could have guessed; but it was as clear to me as the bright moon above that this would be my end.

The fear granted me another rush of energy, and I twisted away from him, pushing myself up from the ground. I tried to get back to my feet, but Father's hand grabbed me by the ankle and I stumbled forward, catching myself by my hands.

"Don't you run, boy!" he yelled, frustrated anger replacing whatever loving emotion he had felt moments before, "Don't you know you'll only make it worse?"

"What are you talking about?" I screamed back, trying hopelessly to pull myself free, "What am I making worse?"

"You'll anger him," he replied, and a chill ran up my spine.

"Who?" I pressed, "Who are you talking about?"

When he answered me, his tone was flat and strange as though he were repeating a chant, and his gaze had drifted towards the tops of the corn.

"He who brings the harvest. He who sees our suffering, and who makes the fields grow."

"You mean God?" I asked through a sob, "God is making you do this?"

"Not God," he snapped, a bitter edge to his voice that I had never heard before, "believe me, I prayed to Him enough. Prayed, and prayed, and prayed. But in the end, it wasn't God who finally answered me. It was someone else."

A ghastly cold seeped through my body, as though my blood had turned to ice water. I swallowed down the fear that was rising like bile in my throat.

"What do you mean?" I asked slowly, "Who was it that answered you?"

He stared back at me, and his eyes seemed wild and inhuman in the moonlight.

"You'll meet him soon enough," he said.

As soon as he spoke those words, something invisible moved through the field. It wasn't something I heard or saw, but something I felt; like the electricity of a summer storm, that sense beneath the skin that something is moving closer, something dark and dangerous and terribly alive.

Then, after the feeling, came the sound.

The hushing of the corn as though the wind were moving through it, followed by the snapping of stalks and the tramping of some heavy animal. I started at the sound, preparing to run, but Father's hand held me still.

"Don't try to run again," he hissed through clenched teeth, "you can't outrun him; you'll only make him punish you."

I heard the thing moving closer, and a terror unlike anything I'd ever known took hold of me. I couldn't have run now, regardless of how much I wanted to. I was frozen in fear, barely able to lift my eyes from the moonlit patch of earth in front of me, from which the roots of the corn were sprouting like pale fingers.

"Get on your knees," Father commanded, as the ground began shaking beneath me, "you need to show him respect."

I collapsed to the ground as he pressed his hand against the back of my head, forcing me into a deeper posture of submission. The scent of the earth, of damp mud and rotting vegetation filled my nostrils, while whatever was moving through the corn quickened its pace as it drew nearer.

Suddenly it stopped, and the corn fell silent.

I felt Father's breath quicken as my own panic reached a fever pitch

I could hear it breathing - the thing, whatever it was - and it was like the wind moving across the plains, carrying the smell of the soil and growing things with it. I could feel its presence, dark and enormous as a thunderhead, looming over us, and I clenched my eyes shut in childish terror.

"Father, please; please help me," I begged, my words coming out in sobs - but it was my heavenly father I cried to, not the one who held me there on my knees. I had lost faith in him.

When my father spoke, it was finally a voice I recognized; the voice I had heard a hundred times from his pulpit, powerful and authoritative - though there was a slight tremble to it now.

"My lord, I've returned," he said, lifting his hand from the back of my head, "just as I told you I would. I have come to thank you for the last fourteen years of harvests; and to humbly ask for fourteen years more."

There was a creaking sound, like the bones of an old house settling. I felt sure that I was going to die soon; but I realized that I didn't want to die with my face in the dirt. If I were to be killed, I wanted to at least see the thing that would be responsible for my fate. Slowly I lifted my head, and forced myself to open my eyes and look.

It took a moment for my mind to even comprehend what I was seeing. Whether it was an animal, a man, or some twisted amalgamation of corn stalks and mud, I couldn't be sure. It was pale, the same sickly yellow as the corn roots that protruded from the earth. Its body was thin and misshapen, as though its bones had been broken and set again at wrong angles. Though it was shaped like a man, it walked on all fours; its face reminded me of a snapping turtle, with bulbous eyes staring out from either side of its skeleton's nose, its toothless mouth a gaping darkness recessed in its pale flesh. All over its body hung strips of a paper-like skin, like the husk of a corn that it was slowly shedding.

As horrified as I was by the creature, I was unable to turn my gaze away.

The thing straightened its back and stood; now it loomed over us, over the tallest stalks of corn, the height of two men at least. It hovered there for a moment, casting a long black shadow in the moonlight. And then it spoke.

If 'spoke' is even the right word for what was happening. It wasn't speech that the monster used. It was feeling, sight and sound, impressions in my head as though my conciousness had been hijacked. Suddenly, the creature's mind crowded the space that my brain had once occupied - only this mind was something greater, something vast and ageless and unbearable.

It was then that I knew it was ancient, that this thing - whatever it was - had been born alongside Creation, had watched eons of the earth pass. I saw ancient lands, civilizations built and unbuilt, creatures writhing within the earth that had no name; I saw snows and heat, fire and flood, saw long-extinct animals and storms and destruction. The life of the universe seemed to flash before my mind, and if I hadn't already been on my knees, I would have fallen to them in wonder. But behind the wonder was a dizzying terror, the insanity of peering into the abyss of time - how could my father have lived like this, with this voice in his head? How had he not lost his mind, driven crazy by the sheer intensity of this creature's voice? I had only felt a flash of it, and I felt as though I were teetering on the edge of madness.

YOU DO NOT OFFER WHAT I ASK

The creature's voice thundered through my mind, as inescapable as the night. When my father answered, his voice was like a whisper in that darkness.

"I kept my word!" he screamed at the monster, "I brought you the thing I love the most in this world! How can you tell me that's not enough?"

He gave me a shove towards the beast, for emphasis.

YOU HAVE BROUGHT WHAT YOU LOVE MOST TO MY HOUSE; BUT YOU DO NOT OFFER IT FREELY

"Take him," my father said, frustration creeping into his voice as he backed away from the creature, his arms outstretched towards me, "he's all yours."

The creature sighed, its breath carrying the smell of moist earth.

I WILL TAKE WHAT YOU LOVE MOST, it continued, its voice shaking me to my bones, BUT SINCE YOU HAVE NOT GIVEN IT FREELY, THE HARVEST WILL NOT COME

The creature's ancient eyes looked down at me, as one of its gnarled white claws descended. I cowered, clenching my eyes shut as I covered my head. I prayed that God would let me die quickly, that I wouldn't feel the monster's claws tearing through me or its powerful jaws crushing my bones.

I heard a piercing scream - and it took me a moment to realize that it wasn't coming from my own throat.

I looked up; it was my father who was screaming, kicking his legs as the creature's twisted hands wrapped around his body and pulled him close in a hideous embrace. I shot to my feet as the earth around me began to shake and swell, as a sinkhole began forming around the creature.

Even if I had wanted to save him, my father was well beyond my reach. As the earth churned around me, I watched the creature pull him closer as they both began descending deeper into the roiling soil.

I stood and ran.

My father's screams echoed in my ears as I forced my weak and shaky legs to carry me forward.

I didn't know which direction to go, but I ran for my life, keeping my path straight.

(((0)))

The town doesn't exist anymore.

There was a blight on the corn that year; some disease that ravaged the fields and yielded shriveled, brown stalks which rattled against each other like dried bones. The town had lost its shepherd, a pillar of our community who disappeared without a trace one August night; soon after, it lost its livelihood as well. When the next year yielded a similar harvest, and the year after that; well, that was when the farmers moved on. It was as though the ground had been cursed again, and family after family had soon packed their things and headed for greener pastures.

I visited the town not long ago.

The buildings still stand, though they've been long since vacated. Our old white chapel still sits keeping vigil over the fields, the stones of the graveyard now stark against the backdrop of barren gray. I made my way through the silent graveyard, stopping to pay my respects at the gravestone of Reverend Grale.

The headstone, of course, marks an empty plot - they never found his body. It was a mystery to the town; still is.

But I know where he was truly laid to rest.

He's still there, beneath the fields that are now brown and barren.

Under the corn. Deep in the damp earth, where ancient things sleep the winter away. Down beneath the pale roots of the stalks.

Down, deep below ground, where the Harvestman waits to be awoken once more.