“Edie?” she repeats, louder. Her hair blows across her face and she pushes it away. The outline is motionless. Jayne forces herself to step through the darkness toward it in spite of her building fright. From prey to huntress. This is what she trained to do. The flashlight hangs in her hand as she approaches, heavy enough to be an effective weapon.
A sheet of lightning bleaches the valley, followed by two more, strobing everything around her.
The face is suspended on a stick and is moon round, made from sacking stuffed crudely with straw, a cruel mouth painted on with one slash of a brushstroke. Where the paint has dripped, Jayne sees drool. Slavering. The nose is a large safety pin, attached at an angle. Hair is draped over the top of the head and looks fat-white and bloody. She realizes with a spasm in her own gut that it’s fashioned out of entrails.
“Jesus!” she says. Somebody must have put this here in the last few hours. Or minutes. Was it here earlier? She can’t remember how carefully she looked. Who did this? Emily? Edie? Someone else?
She backs away. The blood isn’t good. Her heart rate increases. This mustn’t start. Not here, not now.
She kicks at the scarecrow, hard, and it topples. A fucking broom. She keeps kicking until all its component parts are scattered and robbed of their power to frighten and half hidden beneath the hedge where neither Ruth nor Emily should be able to see them tonight. The badger will have the entrails quick enough, or any other hungry creature around here lucky enough to come across them.
She kicks at everything some more and when she’s finished, she stops, panting, and knows that things have got way out of hand, beyond her ability to rationalize what’s happening. She’s very afraid and she needs to shelter. The storm is almost on her.
And she and Ruth need to make a plan, but Jayne won’t mention the scarecrow. Whoever put it there wants to terrify them and she’s not going to let that happen to Ruth.
She thinks of her gun. She brought it here for one reason, but might she need to use it for another?
She knows she can’t go back inside just yet. She needs a few minutes to calm down first because Ruth shouldn’t see her like this.
Nobody should.
She strikes out into the darkness once more, to circuit thebarn, however many times it takes, until she regains control and proves to herself that she’s brave.
John thinks he wanted something like this to happen, that it’s right, somehow, this sense of fear emanating from the young woman he’s found on the lane. But he’s also horrified.
Accustomed to the dark, his eyes can make out the whites of hers, the outline of her body, her arms outstretched as if she fears a gust of wind could tip her over.
She hasn’t taken a step since he touched her fingers. She is immobilized. Effectively blind until the lightning strikes. Her eyes dart from side to side, her body sways as she tries to stay upright. Her breathing is no more than fast, shallow panting. He can’t smell her fear, but Birdie would be able to, and every living creature out here must be paying attention, sniffing, listening, pupils dilated.
I’ll help you, I’m here to help you. The words are stuck in his throat.
He’s standing very close to her, but she’s so seized by panic that she can’t see him.
He’s seen terror in the eyes of animals but never in a human before. It wasn’t meant to go this far, he thinks. Whatever I did.
He feels guilt, terrible guilt, and fear, for this, for whatever else he’s done, though it could have been his brother Danny getting up to mischief, he supposes and feels briefly reassured until, in the next moment, he remembers that Danny died years ago.
“It’s okay,” he tells her.
“Who’s there?”
“John Elliott. From the farm. Do you need some help?”
She turns toward his voice. “Did you touch my hand?”
“Don’t cry now,” he says. “I’ll see you’re safe. Are you hurt?”
“My ankle is.”
“Take my arm here. It’s okay. I’ll get you down the hill to the farm, rather than back up, if you’re injured. Maggie will take care of you.”
She sees him now, in another flash of lightning. He offers her his arm, grazing her elbow with his to coax her to take it and at first her touch is feather light but then she slips her arm through his and grips his forearm hard.
“Yes, yes please,” she says. She’s tiny, but John’s not young any longer and he wonders how easy it’ll be to get her down safely.
She shudders against him. He feels as if she got heavier.
“Here,” he says. “Don’t cry. There’s no need to cry now. John’s got you. I’ll see you safe, I promise.”
