“Sam, tell me.” The legend of theThreshing Manhad deep roots in Cane County, older than the festival, older than most of the buildings in Whistlerun. “Tell me what you saw in those woods that night.”
Sam's hands were trembling now, though not with the familiar agitation of alcohol withdrawal. But with something more primal…like fear.
“I saw something that shouldn't exist,” Sam finally admitted, his gaze lowering to what was left of the napkin. “It was our senior year. We were high on life. All of us—Emily and Mason, me, Jerry, Billy, Lori, and Nicole. We'd gotten our hands on some of Old Man Gleason's moonshine, and I swear that we were on top of the world.”
Gus massaged his hip while he listened, all the while keeping an eye on the front entrance. He didn’t want anyone to interrupt Sam’s story.
“We were at the festival until about ten, and then I got this stupid idea.” Perspiration began to dot Sam’s forehead, and a muscle in his neck twitched rhythmically, like a trapped insect beneath his skin. “I dared everyone to walk through Cox's cornfields to see if we could spot theThreshing Man. It was just supposed to be a joke, you know? Something to scare the girls.”
Sam cleared his throat, as if it had gone dry.
“That meant we had to cut through that patch of woods at the back of the festival to get to the cornfields. Lori and Nicole chickened out at the treeline. Jerry and Billy took off running ahead, trying to be the first ones there.” Sam lifted a hand and pressed his thumb and index finger against both eyes. It was as if he were trying to stamp out the memories of what came next. He finally dropped his arm to rest on the table. “I followed them, but I was drunker than I thought. I got maybe halfway before tripping over something—a root, maybe a rock—and went down hard enough to knock the wind out of me.”
Gus noted how the lines around Sam’s mouth deepened with each word, and how his pupils had dilated despite the bar's dim lighting. This wasn't just the discomfort of an unpleasant memory. Again, this was fear. Raw and immediate, as if the events he described had happened yesterday instead of almost twenty years ago.
“I lay there for a while, watching the trees spin above me. When I finally got back on my feet, I thought I heard a scream. But when I slowed my breathing to hear better, everything was quiet. Too quiet.”
Sam shook his head, an almost imperceptible movement.
“I was all turned around. I thought maybe the others had decided to play a prank on me, so I started walking, trying toeither find my way to the cornfield or back to the festival. I didn’t care which one by that point.”
Sam leaned even closer, his voice dropping to barely more than a whisper.
“That's when I saw it, Gus. I saw it walking through the woods. Tall—taller than any man I've ever seen. Had to be seven feet at least.” Sam's breathing became shallow and uneven. “It was wearing this trench coat. And its arms...”
Sam stopped, swallowing hard.
“Its arms were wrong, Gus. Like they were too long, hanging almost to its knees. And the way it moved—not walking exactly, more like...” Sam made a fluid motion with his hand. “Gliding, like its feet weren't quite touching the ground.”
Gus studied Sam, realizing that he truly believed he’d set eyes on theThreshing Man. Alcohol was funny like that, but moonshine added an additional kick and twisted reality to the point that it could make shadows dance and trees whisper. Not even teenagers, with their rubber bones and iron livers, were immune to its particular magic.
He reached into his shirt pocket and extracted a toothpick, placing it between his teeth as he mulled Sam's story. The ritual gave him a moment to gather his thoughts, to weigh the words of a man he'd known since his first word against the improbability of what he was describing.
“You sure about the trench coat?” Gus asked carefully, rolling the toothpick to the corner of his mouth.
“Positive.”
“That's not how the legend goes.” Gus held up a hand when Sam would have protested such a statement. “TheThreshing Manwears tattered clothes, like an old scarecrow left too long in the fields. Corn husks for clothes, if the oldest tales are to be believed. Not a trench coat.”
“I know what the stories say,” Sam replied, an edge of frustration cutting through his fear. “And I know what I saw. I might have been drunk, but that trench coat is burned into my memory, Gus. I can still see the way it moved when there wasn't any wind.”
In the decades of tending bar, Gus had developed an almost preternatural ability to detect lies. What he witnessed in Sam's eyes wasn't the shifting gaze of a man constructing a story. His gaze was a fixed, haunted stare of someone who had glimpsed something beyond his understanding.
Or so Sam believed with all his heart.
“Did you tell all this to Hadley?” Gus asked as he considered his options.
“Most of it. She didn't seem surprised, though.” Sam rubbed his eyes again. “She said she was looking for connections between the missing girls, going all the way back to Pearl Shepley in '78.”
The mention of Pearl sent a chill through Gus's aging bones. He remembered the girl clearly—vibrant, pretty, with dreams bigger than Whistlerun could contain. Her disappearance had been the first crack in the town's sense of security, a wound that had never properly healed.
“Alright, then,” Gus said, ending their conversation much to Sam’s surprise. He moved the toothpick to rest on the other side of his lip. “You'd best get back to the bar before Keith costs us another case of whiskey. He doesn’t know the proper amount for a shot.”
It was Sam’s turn to study Gus.
“You know something,” Sam muttered as he gripped the wad of white material. “What do?—”
“I’ve got a phone call to make.” Gus took hold of his toothpick and pointed it at the bar. “Get back to work.”
