10

I entered the cornfield and was immediately disoriented. I’d heard military veterans talk about something called the fog of war, during which they become confused and unable to determine the best course of action. I felt that now. In fact, I stopped almost as soon as I entered, trying to figure out where I was and what had happened to the road and the water tower. They were gone. It was all gone, replaced by the looming stalks and the claws of their tassels, which seemed to scrape the bottom of the starry sky.

I moved my flashlight slowly, tracing a wall of plants clustered so tightly they could have easily been mistaken for a single, impenetrable barrier.

These stalks hadn’t been planted in neat rows like most of the cornfields I’d visited. These were tossed haphazard and thick across the land, so that it was difficult to see a way forward.

“Come on,” Mary said. “Stay close.”

I heard her voice but didn’t see her. I moved my flashlight slowly as I turned around, trying to locate the source of her seemingly disembodied voice.

“You just passed me,” she said.

I moved the light back, blinking into the dimness, and saw the edge of her and then all of her. How many times had I passed the light over where she stood and not seen her?

And then she was gone again.

I followed, coming to my senses gradually as my eyes became accustomed to the blinding presence of the stalks. Picking up my pace, I reached for her and slid my hand from her shoulder down her arm and grasped her hand.

She squeezed and let go. “It’ll slow us down.”

“Okay,” I said, but the words in my mind were Ronnie’s: “Stick together.”

“We need to slow down,” I said.

She stopped. “What’s going on with you?”

I decided to come clean. “Bad dreams. A feeling something is about to go wrong. Something Ronnie said that didn’t sit right with me.”

“What did he say?”

“That we should—”

There was a clattering of stalks just behind Mary. It sounded like some wild beast was barreling through the corn.

She turned, gun raised. Something pushed against the stalks near Mary, bending them forward, like a piece of buckled wood, before straightening again, leaving the stalks wagging, their tassels dripping corn silk into Mary’s hair.

“Who’s there?” I said.

There was no answer. But it was clear that whatever it was that had caused the damage to the stalks was still there. The night had fallen into an uneasy silence. A waiting.

“Ronnie?” I said. “What the fuck is going on?”

Then something happened that would stay with me for a very long time. Someone laughed. It came from behind the wall of stalks, an eerie tinkling of laughter that penetrated the wall of stalks like a sharp blade.

Mary stepped back.

“Show yourself, or I’ll shoot.”

I meant it. I had my 9mm out, had it aimed steady at the place in the thick stalks, had it leveled at the place I guessed a man’s heart might be.

The stalks whispered. The sounds moved away.

The night let out the breath it had been holding.

“Shit,” Mary said.

“Let’s go back to the road. I think we’ve been set up.”

“Either that or somebody’s trying to play a trick.”

“Hell of a trick,” I said.

“I know this question is going to sound crazy, but was that…”

“A person?”

“Yeah.”

“I think so. Just a person trying to scare us, I think.”

“Why?”

“Hell if I know. Come on.” When I reached for her hand this time, she grasped mine tightly and held on. After a few false starts, we found a path that led us back to the road.

Once there, Mary walked to the truck and leaned against it, her gun still in hand. “Something’s bothering me too,” she said.

I walked over and leaned against beside her. I had to piss, but that could wait until Mary had had her say.

“My first thought when I heard that thing was of Jeb Walsh.”

“Jeb Walsh? You think he’s running through the cornfield, spooking folks?”

“No…” She shook her head. “I can’t quite explain it. It was the way he looked at me that day. It was … I don’t know … more than a threatening look. I could actually see the … I guess I’d call it calculation.”

“You mean he was thinking of how to hurt you?”

Mary nodded.

I put my hand on her shoulder and squeezed gently. “Whatever that was—inside that corn—it had nothing to do with Jeb Walsh. Walsh might wish he could hurt you, but he can’t.”

She nodded.

“You okay?”

“Yeah, I guess we both got a little spooked.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I’m going to take a piss, and then I’m taking you to the house. Fuck Ronnie Thrash and his pot field.” I started toward the corn and had my pants unzipped, meaning to take care of business fast when I heard her groan.

“I gotta go too.”

“Grab a stalk,” I said.

“Easy for you to say.”

I closed my eyes as the piss started to flow. Daddy used to say a good piss was better than good sex, and though that made me question whether he’d ever even had good sex before, I did enjoy a good piss.

“You okay?” I said, craning my head to see where Mary was. “Mary?”

“Over here,” she said.

“You didn’t go back in the cornfield?”

“Just a little. I’m not peeing out in the open where a car could come by and—”

She stopped abruptly.

“Mary?”

No answer.

A drop of panic hit me. Just a tiny drop. I felt it somewhere in my neck as it spread, warming my face, tingling my scalp.

“Mary?” I said, raising my voice as loud as I could without screaming.

I cut my piss off midstream, wincing at the pain. Zipping my pants as I turned, I realized I’d put my 9mm on the truck, and now I had to go back for it.

In my hurry to grab the gun, I knocked it across the roof to the other side of the truck. It hit the ground with a thunk.

“Say something, Mary. Say something for me, please!”

But the only sound was the wind, a high and lonesome keening through the stalks.

Mary was gone.