The Scarecrow: A Supernatural Thriller (Solom) Read online

  Behind the mirror was a long, wooden box covered with books. The box appeared too large to have fit through the access hole. Katy wondered if someone had carried the boards up one at a time and assembled the box in the attic. If the box were meant for book storage, it would have been simpler to nail the shelving boards between the joists.

  So something was inside the box.

  Maybe books, maybe air.

  Maybe a piece of Smith family history, something that would help her better understand Gordon.

  Or understand Rebecca.

  As Katy crawled past the clutter, she regarded her reflection in the mirror. Because of the dust, her reflection was fuzzy. Katy tried to grin at her double that was crawling closer. In the dim light, the reflection became distorted and for a moment, Katy’s face was narrow and pinched and snarling. But was it her face? The fragrance of lilacs rose over the odor of dry wood and blown insulation.

  She closed her eyes and forced herself forward, knocking over a stack of Mason jars filled with a dark substance. One of the jars broke, emitting a fetid smell and spilling a tarry liquid on the plywood floor. Katy brushed the shards of glass away and eased her way beside the box. She carefully removed the books from its top. The lid was hinged, with one end held in place by a hasp that was hooked with an open, rusty padlock. Katy removed the padlock and laid it to the side, propping the flashlight so that its cone of light swept over the box.

  The lid lifted with a groan, and Katy broke a fingernail as the lid banged back against the floor. She gathered the flashlight and brought its beam to bear on the box’s contents.

  Katy nearly bumped her head as she drew back from the sight.

  A prone figure was laid out in the bottom of the box. Its suit was faded black, spotted gray with dry rot. The arms were crossed over the chest, a straw boater hat resting on them, and straw spilled from the stained sleeves. The face was made of cheesecloth, with white buttons sewn for eyes. A gash in the cheesecloth represented the mouth, and filthy cotton wadding bulged from the opening. The scarecrow was almost a replica of the one in the barn, except this one had never been in a field and seemed somehow feminine.

  What had she expected to find? Rebecca’s body?

  She wouldn’t have looked otherwise.

  Katy was about to close the lid when the flashlight glinted off something tucked in the scarecrow’s jacket. She reached toward the dusty figure and pulled the object into the light, a small chain trailing behind. It was a locket, its gold plate peeling away in spots, the alloy beneath smudged and worn. Katy opened it and played the light over the portrait that was set in the locket’s base and covered with glass.

  The woman in the black-and-white photograph was beautiful. Though the hair style was not of any identifiable era and she’d seen no other photographs of her, Katy knew it was Rebecca. No wonder Gordon still thought of her and fantasized about her. She was ethereal, cheekbones fine and thin, eyes dark between soft lashes. She wore a dress with a frilly collar, and Katy recognized it as the dress with the autumnal print.

  Gordon must have placed the locket here. But why go to all the trouble of making a scarecrow, an oversize fetish doll? Looking at the objects stored in the attic with new interest, she realized that none of these things were Gordon’s. The books were mostly older romantic suspense, Mary Higgins Clark, Daphne Du Maurier, and Anne Rivers Siddons.

  The few pieces of furniture might have come from a college girl’s sorority room, thrift shop junk made of cheap wood. Perhaps Gordon had set up the attic as a shrine to Rebecca’s memory, though there was certainly no loving arrangement to the clutter.

  Gordon studied religion and probably saw symbolism in ordinary objects. The locket was more than just a picture memory; it must have been an aged heirloom, and Katy found it hard to believe that Gordon would banish it to the attic. Maybe Rebecca’s loss had been so devastating that he’d put her things out of sight and out of mind, though he hadn’t the heart to throw them away. Katy played the light over the scarecrow once more.

  Had the mouth twitched?

  She let the lid drop with a wooden bang and backed away to the mirror, propping the flashlight on a ceiling joist so that it shone down like a stage spotlight. She hooked the clasp on the locket’s chain and placed it around her neck. Her reflection seemed pleased, smiling back at her through the snowy film that covered the glass. Katy picked up the tiny spray bottle and sniffed.

  Lilacs.

  This was Rebecca’s scent, the one that drifted across the kitchen or rose from the bed in sudden urgency. Katy sprayed a little on her neck, the mist tickling and chilling her flesh.

  She then picked up the lipstick tube, pulled off the cap, and regarded the rose shade. This might have been the lipstick Rebecca wore when the portrait was made. Katy sniffed it. She rarely wore make-up, although as a business professional she’d had to dress in pants suits. Her hand lifted as though of its own accord, the lipstick sliding across the grinning lips in the mirror. Next she applied the blush to her cheeks. Her reflection startled her. In the yellow circle of the flashlight, she looked deathly pale.

  Too deathly.

  She stood and removed her robe. The attic was warm but her nipples swelled inside the cups of her bra. This was dirty and exciting, the putting on of a mask.

  Katy tried on the dress.

  It fit perfectly.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Give me a freaking break.

  Jett couldn’t take another second of reality. She probably should have hidden in the woods, but needed to be close to the house in case Mom called. Jett could always claim to be feeding the chickens or something. The barn door was nearly closed, allowing just enough light to take care of business. Her back was against the wall, and from her sitting position, she could see the back door that led to the kitchen.

  She laid out her World History book and pinched some of the pot from the plastic baggie. In Charlotte, she’d owned an alabaster pipe carved in the shape of a lizard, but she’d left it with her best friend. It was time to improvise. She took the piece of aluminum foil from her pocket, twisted it into a narrow tube, and used her pinky to make a hollow depression in one end. A piece of baling wire hanging on the wall of the barn served to prick three tiny holes in the curved end of the makeshift pipe.

  Smoking in the barn was dangerous. During his Great Barn Tour of July, Gordon had made a big deal about how dry the place was. Apparently one of his grandparents’ barns had burned to the ground in the 1940’s, but that had been the fault of lightning. This barn had been built on the same foundation, and lightning never struck twice in the same place, did it? Dad would sure appreciate that sort of twisted logic—you had to risk a little to catch a good buzz.

  She sprinkled some of the dark green leaves into the depression and set the pipe on her book. She’d taken some matches from the tin box on the mantelpiece. She snapped one of the sulfur-tipped stems free from its folded-over cardboard sleeve. “Get a degree at home,” the matchbox read, along with an 800 number, and beneath that, in smaller letters, “Close cover before striking.”

  “Screw it.” She scratched the match head across the rough strike pad and the flamed bobbed to life. She tucked the pipe between her lips, applied the flame, and inhaled. The first hit tasted like hot metal, like braces, and she nearly coughed. The harsh smoke settled in her lungs, and then she blew out gently. The match had burned down to her fingers, so she held the pipe in her mouth while she used her other hand to grab the burnt end of the match. She then turned the match upside down so it would burn the unused portion of the paper.

  The Kid knows all the tricks.

  The next hit was a little smoother. She held the flame just above the grass so that it toasted rather than scorched. Yep. That was the ticket. Her throat was dry and she wished she’d brought a soft drink from the fridge. The smoke filled her nostrils, weakening the smell of old dust and animal manure.

  She let the buzz work its way through her nervous system, feeling her pu
lse accelerate. Tears collected in her eyes. Good shit.

  Tommy Wilson may be a redneck jerkwad, but he had killer connections. A smile crept across her face, and it felt good. Why did the cops and Jesus freaks get so uptight about something that was so natural? She hadn’t smiled in weeks, and now here she was with her cheeks stretching and her head feeling light.

  The fucking weight of the world temporarily lifted.

  Fucking. What a weird word, when you think about it. I mean, fuck, what was the big deal? Mom said I’m able to have babies now. I don’t understand how a boy’s weenie can fit in there, as little and floppy as they are. At least Mom didn’t give me the jazz about safe sex. Guess she trusts me.

  Trust. Jett looked down at the pipe and the bag of dope, the crumbled marijuana scattered across her book.

  I don’t have a drug problem. “Drug problem” is what the English teacher would call an “oxymoron.” Well, the TEACHER’S a plain old fucking moron.

  Jett’s stoned leap of logic seemed like the most hilarious thing since Beavis and Butthead did America, and she giggled. The sound was like blue bubbles in her brain. She closed her eyes and listened to them pop.

  Blop bloop blooooop.

  Beh-eh-eh-eh-eh.

  Beh-eh?

  That wasn’t right.

  She opened her eyes to find the goat standing right in front of her, its head at eye level with hers. She rolled away with a start. The goat lowered its neck and sniffed at the marijuana, then licked at it.

  “Get away, ugly,” Jett said, picking up a dry, dark clod that was probably a goat turd. She flung it at the goat, but it swabbed its tongue across her stash again.

  Damn it, this is war.

  She gave the goat a kick in the side, not too hard but loud enough for a thunk to fill the barn. The goat turned toward her. For the first time, she noticed the pale brown horns. Though they lay nearly flat against the animal’s skull, the tips curled back under and out above the ears like oversize, twisted fish hooks.

  “Easy, there, Fred,” she said. Gordon had names for the goats but she hadn’t bothered to learn them. He’d taken them all from the Old Testament. She wondered whether it was Adam, Seth, or Ruth. Couldn’t be Ruth, because it had a tube of loose flesh hanging from its loins. She figured the goat didn’t know its name, either, so “Fred” would work just as well.

  She backed away and the goat stepped closer. At least she’d distracted it from her expensive cash crop. Now if it would only go out the door and act like the brainless sack of fur and manure it was.

  But it didn’t go for the door. It backed her to the foot of the stairs that led to the loft. And the loft was where she’d blanked out the day before yesterday. Freaked Mom out but good. But the blackout hadn’t been drug-related. She’d let Mom suspect drug use because the alternative was just a little too weird, even for her.

  Because you can come down from a high but you probably can’t come down from insanity.

  Jett didn’t want to climb those stairs. Because the image of a man flashed across the inside of her forehead, like a still from an out-of-focus slide projector. The man with the out-of-fashion hat with the low crown and wide brim, the one who had warned her to “Know them by their fruits.” She had a feeling he was waiting up there in the silence and dust of the hay bales. And if not him, maybe that Scarecrow Man.

  The goat snorted a little and bobbed its head as if threatening her. Or else commanding her to climb the stairs.

  Whoa the fuck down. Goats don’t boss humans around. They’re stupid Fred-faced, squid-eyed, dumb-as-dirt pieces of meat on the hoof.

  The goat grinned, revealing a five-dollar chunk of marijuana bud that was stuck between two upper teeth. Jett almost laughed. This was the kind of stoner story she’d tell at the next party, if she ever made any friends in Solom: “Yeah, a goat came up while I was smoking and gobbled down my stash, yo.”

  She’d leave out the part about the goat scaring her, and the man in the black hat, and the voice she’d heard in the boiler room behind the school. Because those were things that could get you locked up in the nuthouse, where the drugs were no fun at all, according to her friend Patty from Charlotte. Nuthouse drugs were designed to perform chemical lobotomies, eliminating problems by stripping away any desire to suffer a thought or feeling. As tempting as oblivion was, Jett liked hers in small and controlled doses.

  Besides, who could be bored when a goat was after you?

  The wall was covered with garden tools, ropes, and harness. She picked out a hoe, figuring she could use the blunt end of the handle to drive the goat away. The animal clambered forward as she leveled the handle and pointed it like a jousting lance. In the distance, the Ward’s dog barked, followed by the sound of tires on gravel. Gordon must be home.

  Great.

  Gord the Wonder Nerd.

  She waited for his SUV engine to die and for the vehicle’s door to open. Then she could yell for help. Except the goat had paused, too, and lifted its head as if listening. Like maybe Gordon had a treat.

  If Gordon came to the barn, he would see the pot and bust her. She’d probably be grounded for the rest of ninth grade, or maybe even until graduation. Gordon was one of those uptight people who made a big deal about morals without being religious. Because, despite all his blowhard lecturing at the dinner table about this and that denomination, and the fact that he was the great-great-grandson of a circuit-riding preacher, Gordon wore a sneer on his face when he talked about people going to church. Jett wasn’t sure what she believed yet, but one thing was for sure, she thought Jesus Christ was the kind of guy who wouldn’t put you down for a little bit of weed. True, he probably wouldn’t inhale, but he also wouldn’t hit you over the head with a Bible because of it.

  So calling for Gordon was out of the question. She had to make a decision on whether to try for the loft and wait it out, or scoot past the goat, collect her stash, and sneak around the back yard and into the house before anyone noticed she was missing. Mom had been a real space cadet lately, so Gordon would probably make the obligatory room check. She planned to be at her desk with a textbook open, so she could bat her eyelashes at him in a “What do you want?” look. Pop an Altoid mint, drop in some Visine, and she was bulletproof. The only symptom would be goofiness, and all fourteen-year-old girls were goofy.

  She prodded at the goat with the hoe handle. It turned and trotted to the barn door, standing just beyond the reach of daylight, as if it were afraid the sun would burn its skin and turn its carcass to dust. Jett dropped the hoe and scooped up her baggie of marijuana. She tucked it in the pocket of her sleeveless jean jacket. Though she was craving another hit to cap off the buzz, the whole scene was getting to be like a psychedelic, fluorescent-colorized episode of “The Twilight Zone.” She expected the ghost of Rod Serling to step from one of the stalls at any second, wearing a tie-died T-shirt and a ponytail, a pencil-sized joint replacing his ever-present cigarette.

  The rear of the barn had another large wooden door, suspended on rollers that slid in a steel track overhead. It was latched from the inside with a deadbolt, but Jett thought she’d be able to maneuver the heavy door open enough to slip around the back way. Gordon’s SUV door slammed. That meant he’d go through the front door in about fifteen seconds if he followed his usual routine. Unless he saw the goat in the barn.

  Jett wrestled with the deadbolt. It was rusty, as if it hadn’t been operated in years. She banged her knuckles trying to work the bolt free, scraping the skin. She put her knuckles in her mouth and sucked at the blood. Something nudged her hip, and she looked down to see the goat’s face turned up to hers, its nostrils dilating, eyes glinting in the dim light. The animal emitted a low moan, as if a hunger had been awakened by the scent of fresh fruit.

  “Back off, Fred,” she said.

  Jett threw back the bolt and leaned against the edge of the door, hoping to get some momentum. The door opened six inches. The goat jumped up and put its front hooves on the door, raising itself u
p to the height of her shoulder. It was bleating deep in its throat, and raised one hoof and banged it against the wood. Frightened now, almost forgetting her buzz, Jett flung her shoulder against the edge of the door, sending a fat spark of pain down her arm. The goat hammered on the wood with both hooves as the door creaked open another half a foot. Jett turned sideways and squeezed her body into the gap, squinting against the early evening sun.

  As she worked her way free, she felt a rough tongue against the back of her hand.

  Great. Goat cooties on her wounded knuckles. She’d probably get a staph infection.

  She struggled through the door and moved away from the barn. The goat was too plump to get through the door. An absurd wave of relief washed over Jett. Getting stoned had been almost more trouble than it was worth.

  As she went down the path that led between the barn and the garden to the apple trees near the house, she glanced back. In the loft opening was a dark shadow that looked a lot like a man in a black suit, arms spread, a wide-brimmed hat on his head. Jett blinked and hurried under the trees. She wanted her drug-induced visions to stay inside her head where they belonged, not out wandering around in the real world.

  But the world hadn’t been very real ever since she had moved to Solom. Thank God for dope.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  “Honey, what are you doing?”

  At the sound of Gordon’s voice, Katy turned away from the squash casserole she was making. Her hands stank of onions. Little jars and bags of spices were strewn across the counter: basil, pepper, dill weed, cumin. Eggshells lay in the bottom of the sink, slick and jagged. The clock on the wall read ten after six.