Valley of the Scarecrow (17 page)

It was going to be a very long day.

“Think we’ve waited long enough?” Travis Skyler asked. “They’ve been gone for an hour already.”

“Only four of them though,” Tim said. “Besides, it’s only been about forty minutes.”

“Maybe the other two got up and went hiking first, before we got here. All I know is we’re pushing our luck. We need to be set up before they come back and don’t know if we have an hour or five. I say we get our ass moving.”

“You’re probably right. Let’s give it five more minutes…see if the dark-haired dude and the hottie show up.”

The twin brothers from Oakland Acres had been so excited about today’s adventure they’d been unable to sleep. Instead of tossing and turning all night, they decided to just get up and get moving, gathering all their gear together and jumping on their matching Yamaha Raptor 660cc all-terrain quads. The scythe and the tank harness filled with Agent Orange were the only bulky things they had to carry, but they solved the issue by Tim wearing the leather harness on his back the way it was intended to be worn, and Travis strapping the six-foot-long farming tool directly onto his seat with the blade end sticking out a few feet in front of the handlebars, sharp side down. Not the most comfortable ways to ride their ATVs, but Travis and Tim weren’t the kind of
guys who sat around complaining about things when there was work to be done. They’d waited a long time to launch their horror-hoax idea and nothing was going to stop them now.

Having left their trailer home at 3:00
A.M.
they’d easily found the campers’ parked cars left in the middle of one of the old logging roads. There were only four roads to choose from up there and they’d found the abandoned cars on their second choice. Once they’d known where the campers had entered the woods, it was just a matter of fighting through the undergrowth and continuing to watch for the obvious northerly direction the campers had been hiking. The brothers weren’t professional trackers or anything like that but they’d hunted and fished these woods all their lives and they had no trouble picking up small telltale signs of the campers’ clumsy progress through the woods. When the sun rose in the sky, tracking the campers had become even easier, and they’d found the first unusually bountiful cornfields just after eight o’clock in the morning. Knowing they were getting close, they slowed down and hoped the sounds of their engines wouldn’t give them away. They left the quads in the next patch of woods, in a clearing beside a large rock that had a strange carving of a pentacle, triangle, and the all-seeing mind’s eye etched into it.

Tim had dug out his video camera and had taken a little footage of the cool rock and some of the creepy forest surrounding it. It would be great to add to the website he was going to build for their Valley of the Scarecrow idea. Backpacks and supplies in hand, the brothers had carried on down the trail on foot, finding the humongous main cornfield with Reverend Miller’s dilapidated church sitting out in the middle a few minutes before 9:00
A.M.
They’d just been in time to see four of the campers
getting their hiking gear together and walking off behind the church, where they headed toward the woods on the far side of the clearing. They’d been gone for three-quarters of an hour now, but there was still no sign of the other two members of their group.

“I think you’re right,” Tim said. “We should get moving.”

“Definitely. What’s the plan? Spray the field first?”

“Yes, but I want you to do it. I’ve got something else I want to try.”

“Like what?”

“Something else for the website. A surprise. I’ll show you later. Take the tanks and try spraying a design if you can. Make sure you hit the bottom of the stalks the most, so they die quickly.”

“Can I try the inverted cross we talked about?”

“Sure, whatever you want. I’ll videotape it later. It’ll be easier if you walk the border first; then you can just spray everything inside the lines…know what I mean? And be careful. That shit is deadly, dude. Look what it did to Dad. You don’t wanna be swimming in it, okay?”

“Relax. I’m not an idiot, you know?”

“Dump the tanks back by the quads when you’re done and then get into your scarecrow costume. Hopefully it won’t look too lame on video. Meet me over by the church when you’re ready.”

“Okay. I’ll be as quick as I can.”

Travis high-fived his brother and ran off to get started. Tim was playing it cool but inside he was secretly thrilled his twin seemed just as enthusiastic about this project as he was. Without his help, this hoax would be next to impossible to pull off. Even together this was a huge long shot and there were no guarantees, but it felt great to finally be trying something together after all those years
of staying up late talking and dreaming. He hoped all their hard work wouldn’t end up being for nothing. Still, all they could do was try. Nothing ventured, nothing gained and all that jazz. Fully pumped up as well, Tim gathered his gear and made a beeline for the big white church off in the distance.

He carefully tiptoed past the campers’ tents, still not sure if anyone was still around to see him, but when he discovered all three tents empty he allowed himself to relax, thinking perhaps Travis had been right all along and they had the field and church to themselves. He took some video footage of the church and the whirling dervish of crows that circled above it, amazed at how large the building was for such a small backwoods community and knowing this desecrated place would be the epicenter of their tourist attraction. If he and his brother set this up right, thrill seekers and macabre gawkers from all over the country would flock here to see where the unholy reverend had been strung up in a parody of Jesus at Calvary. With this incredible cornfield on the doorstep, he could easily spin the scarecrow legend and the rest would be relatively easy. Especially if they were successful at scaring the young campers enough tonight that they went home and started talking about it. By the time word started spreading (pushed along by Tim and Travis, of course) the website would be up and running and they’d be off to the races. That was the plan anyway, but first things first. There was work to be done.

Tim carried his bag of supplies to the church and dropped them in the short grass beside the front stairs. He took a few minutes of video inside the church but with many of the windows open it was too bright inside the rooms and he wasn’t getting the spooky shots he’d been hoping for. Maybe once the campers had packed up and
left, he could come back at night sometime and get some better clips? Inside the sanctuary, he was disappointed to find there was no dead preacher strung up on the altar. The large wooden cross was there but no tied-up skeletons or rotting corpses were anywhere to be found. A find like that would have been money in the bank for them but Tim was sure they could still rig up a fake body to crucify on the cross before the tourists started poking around. Hanging a stuffed scarecrow in here would tie their whole theme together anyway, especially after what he planned to do outside.

Gathering his supplies again, he walked around the side of the church and stared up at the sturdy oak boards on the wall, seeing how much more the white paint was cracked and peeling from this close up compared to what it had looked like from across the field.

Time for a new paint job,
he thought, grinning as he removed the can of bright red paint and wide brush from the backpack at his feet and went to work.

Two hundred and fifty yards away, back in the middle of the cornfield, Travis was also hard at work. He always tried his best to make his brother happy and even though this crazy scarecrow scheme was far more Tim’s dream than his own, he was happy to go along with the plan. If they succeeded, maybe they’d end up cashing in on the flood of tourists who’d eventually come calling, but even if they never got this hoax off the ground, he knew his brother would have the time of his life working on the website and giving this his best shot. For Travis, that would be more than enough.

’Course, the money would be cool too.

Spraying the inverted cross design on the crops with his dad’s Agent Orange went fairly well and was quite a
surreal experience for Travis. He’d watched his dad suit up and head off to work for years, but he’d never once gone with him or seen what these powerful chemicals were capable of. Not from up close anyway. To be honest, it was horrifying, the cornstalks and leaves wilting within minutes of the heavy soaking he gave them. Travis could just imagine what it must have been like over in Vietnam, back in the 1960s when Operation Ranch Hand had been in full effect. That’s what the military had called the defoliation operation in the jungles over there, and although Agent Orange was only one of several “Rainbow Herbicides” used (there was also Agents White, Purple, Pink, and Green), Agent Orange was by far the worst of them. The main ingredient was an especially virulent form of dioxin, a poisonous carcinogen once described by leading scientists rallying against its use as the most toxic molecule ever synthesized by man. Eleven million gallons of it rained down on the jungles, crops, animals, and people in ’Nam, and the devastating effects were still being felt today.

Those same shocking effects were on display for Travis as well, the corn in the area he’d sprayed fading in front of his eyes, the leaves turning black and shriveling in on themselves and the thick stalks leaning and bending toward the ground as if they were melting and lying down to die. Travis was a little unsettled by the display, having had no idea the chemical would work so quickly. In fact, he thought he’d read somewhere that it normally took much longer to achieve this result. Had his father added something to the drums? Possibly, but the more likely scenario was that sitting around inside the fifty-five-gallon drums in his father’s shed for all these years had altered the deadly chemical somewhat, making it even more potent and dangerous than before.

It was a frightening, sobering thought, and Travis decided on the spot he’d had enough screwing around with this stuff. Fuck it if the cross wasn’t perfect. How would anyone know it was an “inverted” cross anyway? It would depend on which direction they looked at it from, right? Oh well, whatever. He wasn’t going to stand around breathing in this crap a second longer than he needed to. Mind you, there really wasn’t much of a smell to it. With its name, Travis had expected the chemical to have a citrusy odor to it, but if anything there was a slight musty smell in the air, like charcoal or old fireplace soot. Regardless, Travis wasn’t sticking around. He hurried back to the quads and dumped his father’s tank harness on the ground beside them. He wanted to hurry into his scarecrow outfit and meet up with Tim as soon as possible, more than a little curious what his brother was up to at the church.

His backpack sat where he’d left it on the seat of his quad, and he moved it to the ground so he could pull off the long wooden scythe taped below it. Opening his bag, he was just starting to pull out the bundle of ragged clothes, plastic Halloween mask, and big hand-stitched leather outback hat when he heard heavy footsteps in the woods off to his left. It sounded like someone was walking his way. He stood up straight, looking around, but the steps had stopped and there was no one in sight.

“Tim? That you, man?”

There was no reply.

“I’m going as fast as I can, Bro. You’re gonna love the cross. Dad’s shit worked even better than we dreamed.”

Again there was no reply and Travis was starting to feel like a fool, standing in the forest all alone and talking to himself like a crazy person. He shook his head and went back to putting on his scarecrow outfit. Tim and he both knew this thrift shop getup of his wasn’t going to
fool anyone viewed from up close, but the plan was to just let the campers get a quick look at him ducking into the fields or woods. Maybe running away from the church. If anyone chased after him, he’d run them toward the inverted cross burned into the field. Subtle was the way Tim wanted this all handled. Nothing heavy-handed that would make anyone cry bullshit. The campers already knew the story of the crucified reverend; it wouldn’t take much to push things just a little and plant the seed of fear into one of the them. If they could just get inside even one of the campers’ heads, they’d go back and start talking about this place. Then once the public started hitting Tim’s website for more information, some of them would start trickling up here to check things out for themselves. And he hoped they’d bring their wallets with them.

That was the plan anyway.

Travis tightened the belt on his baggy jeans and was just slipping his arms and head through the holes he’d cut in an old burlap potato sack he was using as his shirt when he heard the distinct sound of a branch breaking behind him. He spun around just in time to see a shadow step behind the trunk of a huge oak tree about fifteen yards off the trail. In the instant that his eyes registered the movement, it was gone, and Travis was left unsure if he’d really seen someone stepping behind the oak or if perhaps his eyes were playing tricks on him. The light in the forest was always shifting like that, shadows dancing everywhere as the sunlight filtered through the thick canopy of leaves above. Still, he trusted his senses, and every nerve in his tense body was telling him he was no longer alone.

“Tim?” he said, afraid one of the campers had returned and their charade was about to be uncovered and busted before it even had a chance to start. “That you, Bro?”

No answer.

It definitely wasn’t Tim.

Travis started walking toward the tree he thought the person was hiding behind, not trying to mask his approach as he left the trail. If they were busted by one of the campers, he’d rather get it over and done with. His mind was spinning with lies, trying to come up with some tale that might yet salvage their hoax. Maybe he could just say he was lost, or that he was out here hunting. The campers were all city folk and might buy it if he was lucky. Travis circled around to the far side of the oak.

“Listen, I’m a little lost. You think you could help…” he started to say, but there was no one standing on this side of the big tree, or anywhere else in sight. “What the fuck’s going on here?”