The Scarecrow

A Short Horror Story

I built the scarecrow a week after my dad's death. I thought it looked just like him.

My dad was a recluse. In his later years, he had become so reclusive that the only people he had left to attend his funeral were my mother, my sister, and me.

It was a warm early fall moment when my family and I returned from the funeral. It would soon be time to harvest the crops we had been growing since spring, but now that Dad was dead, we had no idea how we were going to work the fields without him.

No one spoke as we entered our house. It was as if there was nothing left to talk about now that Dad was gone. Our house was suddenly filled with a silence as heavy as the deep grey storm clouds blooming outside.

I couldn't bring myself to sleep that night. How could I when my dad was no longer sitting in his old armchair in the living room, laughing at his favorite nighttime sitcoms even though he had already seen them hundreds of times.

Now that Dad was gone, the house felt so empty that it didn't even feel like mine anymore. It was like the entire home and everything in it had been replaced with uncanny identical copies, just different enough for me to take notice.

After staring up at my bedroom ceiling for what felt like half the night, I decided to get up out of my bed, slip on my hoodie and jeans, and go out for a walk on the path surrounding our fields in an attempt to clear my head.

My family's farm was set so far away from any other sign of civilization that the front porch light of our little farmhouse was the only source of electric light to be seen. It was the only thing I had to light my way, save for the soft glow of the moon.

My late-night walks through the farm had always been my favorite way to clear my head. When I found myself feeling sad, stressed, anxious or frustrated, the dark of the night and the vast emptiness of the fields were what made me feel like myself again.

But it seemed that the peaceful empty dark was not enough to bring me comfort, even though I walked my laps around the fields over and over again until the sun began to rise over the horizon.

Just as I was about to turn in for the night, to go back to my imposter of a bedroom and make another attempt at sleep, an idea popped into my mind.

It was a strange idea and not one I would entertain if I were in a right frame of mind, but the emotional stress and exhaustion were weighing on me enough to make my thinking foggy enough to make me do things I wouldn't normally do.

I stuffed its body with the spare straw from the barrels in our empty barn, hazily stuck a friendly-looking face for him on a potato sack,\ and dressed it in one of my Dad's old flannel shirts and a pair of his old work overalls.

Once I was finished, I took a step back and examined my handiwork. It wasn't my Dad and never would be, but it sure did look like him.

The morning came as always, I didn't remember how I had ended up back in my bedroom, but I found myself sprawled out on top of my bed over the sheets, blinking in the sunlight seeping through the window.

"Breakfast!" I could just barely hear my mom call out from the kitchen as she always did every weekend morning. This was the only sliver of normalcy I was expecting to get that day.

I kept my head down as I entered the kitchen, rubbing the remaining sleep out of my eyes as I took my spot at the breakfast table.

That's when I noticed it. The scarecrow I had constructed last night was set up right at the breakfast table.

"What's this?" I asked my mom as she fried a sunny-side-up egg on the stove.

"What do you mean?" My mom asked, not looking up at me.

"Why is the scarecrow I made last night sitting at our breakfast table?" I said

My mom shot me a weird sideways glare. "What are you talking about?"

"I made that scarecrow last night!" I said, pointing a finger at the scarecrow. "One of you set him up at the table. Why?"

My mom continued to look at me as if I were crazy.

"What are you talking about?" She said. "That's your father."

Rage was beginning to bubble up in me.

"This isn't funny," I said through my teeth. "This is a really cruel joke to play on someone who has just lost their father."

Before my mother could say anything in response, my younger sister, Marge, came skipping out of her bedroom to sit at her usual spot at the kitchen table.

"Good morning, Mommy, Good morning, Daddy.' She greeted both my mom in the scarecrow with equal respect.

"Marge is in on this, too?" I demanded. "This isn't funny. You guys are pulling a really mean prank on me, you know that, right?"

Marge's face screwed up as if she were about to cry. "What do you mean? I didn't do anything."

My mom came up behind me and rested a stern hand on my shoulder.

"I think you should go back to your room and get some more rest." She said. "You're clearly not in your right mind right now and I really can't have you upsetting your sister like this."

I could feel my face grow hot with rage as I shot up from the table and headed back to my bedroom.

"You guys are sick!" I shouted, "Seriously sick!"

As soon as I hit my bed, I fell into an instant, dreamless sleep. When I next opened my eyes, the sun was once again making its descent under the skyline.

My stomach lurched with hunger pains. I didn't want to go back to the kitchen. I didn't want to have to face my mom, my sister, or especially that stupid fucking scarecrow, but I desperately needed something to eat.

When I got to the kitchen, I found it to be empty. Neither Marge nor my mother were anywhere to be found.

The only thing left in that kitchen was the scarecrow.

I tried my best to ignore the scarecrow as I opened the pantry and poured myself a bowl of cereal, but it seemed that his stitched thread eyes seemed to follow me around the kitchen.

"What are you?" I said, glaring down at the scarecrow. "Who do you think you are, pretending to be my dead dad?"

The scarecrow continued to stare at me, its stitched on smile never wavering.

Now that the hush of the empty kitchen, it was quiet enough to hear the steady thumping of a heartbeat.

I paused to press a hand over my chest. Was it me? Was my heart beating so loudly it could be heard so far outside of my body? But my heart was keeping its normal rhythm. The thumping heartbeat had to be coming from somewhere outside me.

Hesitating for a moment to catch my breath, I pressed my ear to the scarecrow's straw-filled chest.

Sure enough, a heavy heartbeat was thumping under the flannel of the scarecrow's chest.

Without thinking, I unbuttoned the scarecrow's flannel shirt and reached a shaking hand inside its chest. I was shocked to find that its insides were warm and wet, much like those of a flesh-and-blood human being.

I was able to feel around for a heart in the scarecrow's chest, ripping it out from its arteries and pulling it from its body.

In utter shock, I held the scarecrow's heart in my hand like an apple picked from a tree, gobs of blood dripping down my arm and onto the floor.

All at once, I saw my father's face projected on the scarecrow's cloth head like a movie on a screen. I could only watch helplessly as the life drained from its eyes.

For the first time since my father's death, I broke down and cried.

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