The middle of the maze.
The open space was full of scarecrows. They stood in a ragged ring, arms stretched out. Their big garden-tool hands seemed to reach for her. Many of them sherecognized: her classmates, horribly changed. She saw the two tall scarecrows in black suits from those moments in Cathy’s house. Caleb and Jonathan. Perhaps she was imagining it, but there almost seemed to be a look of pleading on their faces. Onallthose blank, sewn-on faces.
In the very center of the maze was a platform, like a farmer might use to keep an eye on the corn. Ollie couldn’t see the top of it. A ladder led up to a hole in the center.
The scarecrows glared, sightless yet somehow seeing. Ollie thought she saw two women, the ghosts of Beth and Cathy, hiding among the scarecrows, watching.A living girl.The whisper seemed to rise from the corn itself.A living girl, here.Ollie took a deep breath and walked past the scarecrows. She walked all the way to the ladder that led to the center of the tall platform.
She began to climb.
Halfway up, Ollie looked back. All the scarecrows were watching her. Ollie’s fingers tightened convulsively on the ladder rungs. Then she called down, “I am going to go home, and I am going to save you all.”
Then she climbed up to the top.
—
Ollie didn’t know what sort of thing she was expecting on a platform in the middle of a haunted corn maze. Horrors for sure, though she was almost too exhausted to befrightened. It was going to be dark very soon. An ugly reddish light bathed the scene.
“My,” said a gentle voice, “all this way. Right to the center. And before dark. I’m impressed.”
Ollie peered into the shadows gathering on the platform—and could hardly believe her eyes.
“You!” she gasped.
“Who did you expect?” asked Seth. His pale hair caught the last of the light. His eyes were as deep and his smile was as lovely as they had been at Misty Valley Farm. Behemoth the cat sat at his side, watching lamp-eyed in the almost dark.
“You’re the smiling man,” said Ollie slowly. She could barely believe it. “I thought—” She’d imagined a skull smile, a pumpkin-head smile. A scarecrow smile.
She’d not imagined a kind smile, the sort that would make a scared kid not be scared anymore.
“I am,” said Seth. He was wearing his jeans, his flannel shirt, just like he was about to go milk cows. But there were no cows. Instead he was sitting on a platform at dusk with a hundred scarecrows at his feet. The cat twined around him, never taking its eyes off Ollie. “Your cat?” she whispered.
Seth smiled. “My servant. Cats are convenient. They go between worlds, their nature unchanged. The only creature that can. How do you think I kept track of you?”
Ollie remembered Coco thinking she’d seen an animal,remembered Brian wondering if he’d imagined a creature’s footsteps.
“The bus driver?” she asked, voice flat to stop it from shaking. His ordinary smiling face frightened her more than any number of ghosts.
“My hound,” said Seth, and shrugged dismissively. “I sent him to bring you to me; folk can wander this maze until they die. It is bigger than it seems. Rather surprising you avoided him and came to the center on your own. Shame about your poor friends.”
“You made that deal with Jonathan. A hundred years ago. More.”
“I did,” said Seth.
“Why?”
“Why not?”
“Why scarecrows then?”
He shrugged. “No one notices them in the sunlit world. They have hands; they are useful. They can be my eyes and my ears, and since they are neither flesh nor spirit, they can be my doorway.” He grinned. “Also they are frightening, and I do love that.”
“Ms. Webster knew who you were,” Ollie pursued doggedly, trying not to hear the sound of scarecrows moving. “She was scared of you.”
“Scared ofme?” said Seth. He laughed, not kindly. “She was more afraid of the future. Her farm was about togo under. She was going to go to prison for fraud. All her pretty dreams sold in bankruptcy court, and all her sunlit life in nature cut short by bars.I’ll do anything,she said.
I told her what she had to do if I was to save her farm for her, save her freedom for her. How she wept when I told her. But she paid the price. Mostly. She neglected to get rid of the book.”
“We were the price,” said Ollie. “The sixth grade.” The day was nearly done.
