The woods of Darkleaf Hollow were littered with thorny, outstretched blackberry vines. They whipped, snagged, and tore the kneehigh athletic socks Sam wore as she sprinted through the narrow footpath. She thought to herself what her shins would look like if she wasn’t wearing them, a request of Miguel. She stopped running for a moment to catch her breath and listen. The fall night air had a slight chill, which conflicted with the rest of her wardrobe.
“Pick something extra slutty,” Maya said. “You want to look extra vulnerable to the target.” Sam wanted to wear her favorite runners and tactical gear, but eventually gave in. It didn’t matter how sexy she looked at the beginning of the night, she was caked in mud and dirt now, parts of her short shorts scratched and ripped and her skimpy white top now a torn scrap of fabric stretched around her neck and shoulders. She pulled her hair into a ponytail and waited. She wondered if she had outran her pursuer when something rustling in the leaves nearby startled her.
The woods were dense and dark, but lit just enough by the full moon so she could make out trees and paths. A ragged, bug eyed possum emerged from the underbrush and onto the narrow dirt path. It was carrying something in its mouth, maybe a chicken bone? The critter dropped it, picked it back up, and continued on. Sam snickered to herself, still a little buzzed.
Earlier in the night, she attended a party she wasn’t invited to. She could still pass as a high schooler, and being tall, blonde, and attractive helped her be instantly accepted by the local football team celebrating a hard fought victory. They drove kegs out to the abandoned mill in pickup trucks, bought skunk weed, and partied. Terrible music played over cheap portable speakers as oblivious teens danced and made out with each other. She introduced herself as the cousin of so-and-so, and would point to a random girl in the crowd, a different one each time. Hopefully, they would forget her when she was gone.
“Make sure to drink and smoke anything that comes your way,” Maya said. “You need to blend in.” When Sam spotted the monster lurking in the shadows, she disappeared from the party. She talked to herself loudly, exaggerating how drunk she was. She tapped on her cell phone angrily and eventually threw it in the woods. She could feel his presence as she walked deeper into the woods to retrieve it. He followed her, away from the party. Perfect.
Something spooked the possum, causing it to rush back into the brush. Sam stifled a chortle with her hand over her mouth. Then her stomach shifted a bit uncomfortably, and she let out a small but audible burp. She held down another burp but finally snorted out some laughter. She could hear Miguel in her head, “You need to take this more seriously.”
The brush shuffled again. A huge dark figure emerged, the man pursuing Sam. She stood up to run away but slipped on the dirt and fell. The tall man approached, raising his hand, revealing a massive hand scythe. Sam landed on her palms and tailbone, but her panic and adrenaline allowed her to see past the pain and quickly flip herself over. She pushed hard vs. the dirt and roots, with her hands scraping and helping her feet get her body moving. Her feet skipped repeatedly on the ground in a panicked, almost cartoonish manner. It might not have looked graceful, but it got her out of the way of the incoming scythe. It barely missed her, kicking up cleaved roots and dirt clumps, the masked man undeterred by the whiff. He snapped his gaze in the direction that Sam ran off to. He didn’t run though. They never do.
Sam was running, but not at her full capacity. She was still doing the “victim jog” as she called it, swaying her arms from side to side with her hands daintily palm up. She intentionally stumbled and grasped onto trees as she passed them, giving the impression that she was far clumsier than she was. She moved slower to preserve her stamina and maintain a specific distance to the target. Close enough to keep him chasing, far enough to be safe. Slashers seek the weak and don’t expect much of a fight from them. But Sam was far from weak.
She exited the dense woods and into a clearing. A massive, open field with a farmhouse at the opposite edge. She stopped for a moment to catch her breath. She surveyed the field. Everything had a subtle, shimmering outline and blue hue from the moonlight. Fog hovered around the ground, appearing gray amongst the black background, floating just a foot above the ground. There were a few collapsed wooden structures and farming equipment, the grayed and splintering wood showing its age.
Sam was now waiting rather than catching her breath. It wasn’t long as she turned to look back and saw him. The Harvester, as Miguel referred to him, emerged from the woods. He was tall, slender, and covered in a black tattered duster. Sam stopped panting and began taking slower, more controlled breaths. She moved her hand to her earpiece to activate the push-to-talk mic.
“I’ve got him in the Farmer’s Field.”
Miguel barked back into an earpiece Sam wore, his voice crackling and staticky, “Are you sure it’s the target?”
The hulking figure stomped furiously toward Sam. As he got closer, he primed the large hand scythe. He spun it around in his hand menacingly. As he got a little closer, Sam could clearly see his scarecrow like mask; An old cloth potato sack, brown and rough texture, large, asymmetrical buttons for eyes, and a huge, stitched smile.
Sam answered, “Yeeeeup.”
“Ok, so you’ve got to lead him into the old farmhouse, do you see it?” Miguel crackled through the earpiece.
Sam spotted the largest building in sight, an aged, barely standing farmhouse. It had faint, dancing light billowing from inside it, bringing an orangish glow next to the purple and black night sky.
“Yeeeeup.”
Sam bolted, her hands karate chopping the air and her head down with a slight smirk as she sprinted toward the farmhouse.
Miguel added, “And Sam? I need you to go slow, ok? I don’t think this guy’s a runner.”
Sam nodded to herself, adjusting her gait. She turned to see the big man and, to her surprise, the monster exploded into a rabid sprint.
Sam chuckled and sing-songed over the earpiece, “I think you might be wrong!”
She took off even faster. It was still a good distance to the farmhouse, but she had no problem keeping ahead of the mysterious figure. She was a champion sprinter on her varsity team before she met up with the crew. She never liked the term Maya gave her; The Bait. Sam saw herself as much more formidable than just a lure.
Back in the van, siblings Miguel and Maya scrambled through their notes. Miguel thumbed through various notebooks, tossing diagrams and sketches into the air and out of the way as he furiously searched for something he missed. Maya furiously searched on her laptop and phone simultaneously for any eye witness reports of the infamous killer they were hunting. If they got part of their research wrong, they could be dealing with a whole different class of killer. They searched and searched until they shouted out simultaneously, “I GOT IT!”
Miguel and Maya overlapped each other, bickering and disagreeing over the comms device.
“Sam, there’s — bzzzt of —mm!” Miguel shouted, with Maya wrestling away the microphone from him.
“Disregard that, Sam, he’s a —er,”
She couldn’t make out what either was saying, with the siblings arguing while the comms device was breaking up. Their comms devices had a history of malfunctioning, as it was second hand equipment from a pawn shop. Hunting monsters wasn’t a lucrative business.
Sam stopped, again, way ahead of The Harvester. As she stopped, so did The Harvester. She looked at him, just trying to think of something to do next. He tilted his head slightly to the left. Sam couldn’t resist breaking character and laughed at him. She tapped her earpiece, trying to nudge it into compliance. Sometimes that worked. The siblings were still coming in broken up, but a crystal clear and calm voice answered back.
“Sam, you copy?” Rod said.
“Yeah, Rod, thank God. What do you want to do, big guy?”
Rod put on his airline captain voice, “Yeah, I’m in position here in the farmhouse, if you want to just proceed forward at your earliest convenience…”
“Roger that, captain,” Sam said through a giggle. She loved the siblings, but sometimes they’re own power struggles got in the way. Rod was simple. He just liked to help…and kill things.
She focused on the farmhouse, only letting The Harvester out of her sight for a second. When she turned back, he was gone.
“Shit!”
She turned back around to run toward the farmhouse, but was immediately cut off by The Harvester, now directly in front of her. He swung his fist and backhanded her powerfully to the ground. It caught her off guard, but only stunned her for a moment. The Harvester brought his scythe down hard, and it landed inches from Sam’s face, so close that she could see her eyes reflected in it. The Harvester pulled the scythe out of the ground and drove it down again and again, repeatedly. Sam dodged each swing easily, rolling to the left, rolling to the right. Before the last swing, Sam actually had her hands behind her head, like she was resting.
She interrupted the final swing with a double legged kick to the Harvestor’s knee. She put her full bodyweight into it, the way Maya taught her. The Harvester’s knee cracked and popped inward, knocking back and stunning the attacker. Sam kipped up to her feet and stared down the Lurch of a man. The monster held his leg and gave another head tilt, this time with some uncertainty. He twisted his waist so that his knee cracked back into place. He stood up straight and spun his heavy scythe again. Sam replied with her own head tilt.
The Harvester charged forward, his scythe raised above his head to strike. Before he could bring it down, a silent, larger and wider figure appeared out of the darkness behind The Harvester. The massive young man in a letter jacket grabbed the Harvester’s wrist and snapped it effortlessly, stopping the advance completely. A second snap happened quickly after the first, as Rod bent the monster’s elbow backwards and rotated the forearm so that he plunged the scythe through the back of the monster’s body and out its chest. The force of the impact lifted The Harvester off the ground. This splattered thick blood and particulates all over Sam. The once intimidating monster sputtered in shock briefly before Rod dropped him unceremoniously on the ground where he collapsed forward, motionless.
“Jesus Rod, I’m covered in it!” Sam exclaimed, her hands stuck in a grossed out pose.
Rod apologized, “Oh geez Sam, I’m sorry! I had to kill him—”
“With his own weapon, I know, I remember. And boy did you…”
“I’m sorry, I could’ve rotated him,” and Rod began to motion, as if he was holding the body of the now dead monster. “Like this?”
“Yeah, just to the left of me,” Sam replied, and she pantomimed that the blood would’ve gone to the left of her.
“They always spray so much!”
“They do, they spray, and that’s not your fault,” Sam replied, restraining a little frustration.
“No, but I should’ve been more careful,” Rod searched his letter jacket for a napkin, not finding one.
“Ah, it’s Ok—” Sam’s eyes got wide as she screamed at Rod, “LOOK OUT!” seeing another potato sack-masked killer with a hand scythe behind him. It was fast approaching them both, its button eyes scrunched and stitched smile replaced with a grimace. As the second Harvester got close enough to strike Rod in the back, headlights washed over it. The sound of a struggling engine revved up, followed by a van plowing full speed into the Harvester, launching it into the air several feet. The van handbraked, drifted, and spun around, the large sliding van door opening simultaneously. Miguel took aim at the airborne target from a large, slide-out, sit-in gatling crossbow turret. Miguel custom built the turret, one of his many contraptions. Time seemed to slow down as he squinted his eyes and shot three huge bolts into the flying body, still midair. The crossbowed corpse of the second Harvester plopped down and rolled several times onto the ground.
The van came to a full stop and Maya immediately exited the van. She walked quickly and calmly toward the body. She picked up the scythe along the way, which had landed in the ground, blade dug in a few inches. The scythe had a lot of weight, but Maya lifted it effortlessly. Upon reaching the body, she raised it up quickly, in a practiced manner, as if she had done this very action a thousand times. She then spun the scythe before sinking it into the downed Harvester. Driven deep through the chest, she gave a final twist to make sure. A mist of blood sprayed all over the place. The majority of it went directly into Maya’s face, but she didn’t even flinch. An auxiliary spray hit Sam again with a large amount of blood that somehow missed Rod, even though he was right next to her, still assisting in toweling her off from the last spray.
Miguel exited from the crossbow gatling gun thing and limped his way over to the first corpse, carrying a large canister of gasoline.
“Twins! I told you they were twins!” he exclaimed at Maya.
“Which could easily be confused with a teleporter,” she argued.
Miguel monster-splained, “Twins will often try to confuse their victims by appearing in multiple places at once or being able to teleport—”
“I mean, we all thought he was just a standard Scarecrow,” Sam said.
Rod emerged from the van, causing the van to lift with his weight. He carried more gas cans and some bags of rock salt.
“I thought I was seeing double for a minute there,” he fist bumped Sam as he walked by. “Good looking out,” he said to Maya as he helped pour gasoline all over both corpses. Sam struck several matches at once and unceremoniously dropped them, setting the two corpses ablaze. They growled into flames, lighting up eerily red and orange in the barely dawn of morning. The red and orange amongst the darkness around them mimicked the sun rising in the sky. They waited a few minutes, silently, and then extinguished the flames with salt. They took the remains, bones still steaming, and put them in a potato sack, the same material as The Harvester’s mask.
“We good, Miguel?” Maya asked her brother. He was tending to Sam, who was opening and closing her mouth to prove her jaw wasn’t injured.
“Didn’t hurt,” she said dismissively.
“You sure?” he said while holding her face with both hands.
“I’m sure, babe!” and she gave him a quick peck that made him smile.
Maya raised her voice, “MIGUEL!”
“Right, yeah, checklist time: Killed with their own weapon?” he asked.
Rod gestured like he was swinging a sword, “Yep!”
“Remains burnt?”
“Burnt!” answered Maya.
“Extinguished with salt?”
“Check!” Maya, Sam, and Rod shouted in unison. Rod dropped the two sacks of bone and ash into deep holes directly underneath the cross mounts where the scarecrows used to reside.
“And buried under their cross?” Miguel finished the list.
Rod tossed the sacks into the grave and the entire crew kicked or shoveled dirt to fill the hole.
“Buried!” everyone said again in unison.
Miguel addressed the team heartily, “I declare this hunt compl—!”
Maya interrupted him, “Who’s hungry?”
Rod answered quickly, “Starvin’!”
Sam seconded, “I could eat!”
Miguel added, “I think I saw a diner on the way in, we can debrief over breakfast, there’s lots to talk about—”
The rest of the crew booed and chided Miguel as they loaded into the van.
garrettkbrown 