1965. Hangwell, Kansas. Peculiar County
“Help me...”
It takes a mighty big effort to stir me from my sleep. Grams used to say I slept like the dead, then carried on like it was the funniest thing ever. Given the family business, Dad didn’t really find it very funny, just not his cuppa’ joe, being the proprietor of Caldwell’s Funeral Home and all.
But that night, something yanked me from a deep sleep like a battling catfish.
“Help me...”
Quite possibly, I’d been hearing the voice for some time, trying to stitch it into a dream the way folks do while in mid-slumber. But the insistent nature of the cry, the rising panic, forced me awake. I shuffled to the open bedroom window, my feet dusting up bunnies. A breeze set the curtains to sailing. I pinched them aside, stuck my head out. Even with the moon riding high, I couldn’t see much, just the tops of the neighbor’s corn stalks rattling like a hundred catalogs dropped from an airplane.
“Help me.”
Nothing but a kid, a boy by the sound of his voice, maybe a little younger than me, possibly just goofing. But I didn’t truly think that; nobody could fake stark fear like that.
I’ve always been a curious sort, following in my dad’s scientific footsteps. Mostly it’s because I’m fifteen, I suppose, trying to get a handle on things, adding to life experiences whenever I can. Either way, nothing was gonna stop me from investigating, ‘specially when a kid might be in trouble.
“Help…please…”
The kid sounded downright terrified and I gotta admit, it scared me a bit, too. Not that I’m a scaredy-cat, mind you. But when you live in Peculiar County, well, let’s just say the county’s name fits like a glove.
I slipped my overalls over my pajamas. Lately, it’d been raining enough to float an ark, so I capped my feet with boots.
Out in the hallway, Dad’s snoring nearly whittled a hole through his bedroom door. Like me, if put to the test he could sleep through a tornado.
Hardly my first nocturnal visit out of the house, I knew the tread and creaks of the stairwell just fine, the map imprinted in my brain. The moon guided me, shining through the window at the bottom of the steps, as sure-handed as a Starlight Cinema usher with his flashlight.
I inched the front door open. An uppity how-do-you-do wind gust greeted me, whipped my hair back and nearly took the door slamming against the wall. I caught the handle and struggled to shut it behind me.
“Help…me…”
Tonight, an unseasonable chill crested the wind, downright unwelcoming. A shiver scuttled down my back, more than just the wind rattling my nerves.
“Please…please…”
Now out in the open, I high-tailed it through our yard, across the gravel drive, and into the field next to the Saunders’ farm. I didn’t know the Saunders well, other than an occasional hand-wave (which they sometimes returned, other times not). I could pick Evelyn Saunders’ Sunday bonnet out of a crowd, but that’s as far as our country neighborliness travelled with them. Dad had always told me to keep my distance. With a cross face, he’d add, “they’re not very hospitable.” Then he’d vanish behind his newspaper the way adults have a tendency to do, leaving most of my social education to myself.
‘Course this just made the Saunders’ farm all the more intriguing.
“Help me! Please, don’t let…”
The pleas had turned downright horrific. His voice lifted in the night like a heated barn-cat.
The wooden fence separating our properties had seen finer days, weathered down to splinters and loose two by fours. I managed to unhinge one of the boards, swung it down, hiked a leg over and followed through.
More wind kicked up, setting the stalks to waving. Leaves whispered to one another, sharing secrets. Telling stories better suited to the golden light of day.
Taller than me by a good couple of feet, the corn giants hovered over me. As I entered the field, they crowded in.
“Help me!”
The stalks’ reaching fingers hid the moon’s brilliance. I couldn’t see for beans. But the boy’s voice cried out louder. My heart likewise thumped to beat the band.
“Oooohhhh…help me…please…”
Tears flooded his voice now, his words garbled. Terror struck a spark in me, urgency suddenly crucial. I wanted to help the boy, get it over with, leave the field.
“Eeeeeeee…”
His sudden scream—pitched high enough to hurt dog ears—plugged ice into my veins. The voice echoed next to me, above me, behind me. Everywhere. I twisted in a circle, closed my eyes, honed my hearing the way hunters sometimes do. Leaves scratched my arms, poked at my face. Corn stalks rattled, knocking around with a tornado’s intensity.
“Help me!”
Closer, the voice so close now, I could almost—
“Help!”
The boy burst out of the stalks, nearly plowing into me. I shrieked, pasted my hand over my mouth but good. As I suspected, the boy was young, probably eight or nine, maybe a shrimpy ten on a good day. Dressed in nothing but filthy underwear.
Breathless, we stared at one another. His small chest heaved out, sunk back into his bag of bones. Raccoon-lined eyes filled with fear, distrust. Moonlight fingered in through the stalks and touched him with an eerie blue color, a color I was right well-accustomed to: the inescapable color of death.
He stuck out bony arms, palms up, shaking worse than ol’ Hyrum Thurgood’s three-day tremors. We stood that way for a spell, before I mustered up courage to speak.
“Are you in trouble?” I whispered.
His entire body trembled. His fingers clawed up and stuck, the way heart attack victims shuffle off.
Never one for playing with dollies, a sudden need to protect the boy, to mother him, took hold of me. I wrapped him in my arms, held him tight. Tried to quell his shakes and make them my own.
“Please…” he whispered, “please, help me…”
“Help you what?” My voice rose, just a hair, nerves grinding down.
A sudden moan—not unlike a freight train—supplied the answer the boy couldn’t. The inhuman sound hitchhiked along a frigid wind gust, road the cornstalk tops, and crashed toward us. Louder and louder, hellishly so. My chest thrummed, pounding with fear.
In my arms, the boy jerked straight up, stiff as an ironing board. His eyes rolled into his skull. Spittle bubbled at his mouth and drew down his chin.
Madder than hell, the earth pounded. The heels of my boots shook, tremoring up into my molars.
Thrum…thump…thump…
The sound of a giant in the cornfield, racing toward us, ready to bring down his Paul Bunyan axe to cleave us in two.
Thump…thump…tump…
“It’s too late!” The boy’s eyes remained locked into his head. His voice climbed to shriller heights. “He’s coming!”
I wanted to grab his shoulders, shake some sense into his head. Tell him everything would be all alright. Truth be told, though, it would’ve been a lie, a parental lie. Every bit as terrified as him, I knew we had to skedaddle. Now. His hand in mine felt cold as a winter’s day, but I clung onto him regardless. Unsure which way to go, lost in the cornstalk maze, I whirled in a panic-driven circle, swinging the boy with me. Because whatever approached seemed to be coming from every direction, an army of beasts now.
I picked a dirt row, any old row, and wrenched the boy behind me.
Exploding footfalls drew closer, louder. Behind me, the boy murmured, crying nonsense. Next to us, stalks tumbled and crashed.
Tump…thump…thump…
Louder now, heart-bursting, bladder-pushing closer.
Like an arrow shot straight into my heart, a scream arose. One the likes of nothing I’d ever heard before. And living in a funeral home, I’ve heard lots and lots of mournful screams.
I let go of the boy’s cold, cold hand. Clamped my hands over my ears.
One last blast of wind knifed down our path, targeted me. Lifted me off my feet and tossed me into the cornstalks. Woozy, I shook my head, sat up.
The wind stopped. As did the screaming. No more crazy, thunderous footfalls either. Absolute silence.
Likewise, the boy had vanished.
On sea-faring legs, I managed to get up. For the longest time, I stood still. And listened. Other than the banging of my heart into my ears, I heard nothing. In fact, the entire night had stilled, quieter than…well, quieter than death.
In a loud, hoarse whisper, I called for the boy. Poked around the field a bit looking for him. No sign, no trace, nothing out of the ordinary other than a few trampled stalks.
As if the boy had never existed and maybe he hadn’t either.
Folks always say life is different in Peculiar County. More than ever, I suspect death is, too.