The Corn Man

Against my better judgement, I sprinted into the rows of corn, my heart racing. I always knew the Beast was going to be the death of me someday. His talent for finding new and strange ways of endangering my life seemed to know no bounds. In the first year and a half since he entered this world I had nearly drowned, caught fire, lost a leg to snake bite and dang near got fed to a grain combine. You’d think he’d give me a break knowing I had a farm to mind by myself with a killer on the loose? Nope, not the Beast. I’d begun thinking that devil of a dog hated me.

“Stay out of trouble while we’re gone. Is that clear? Just keep Mabel milked and the animals fed,” my dad had instructed two days before as he packed the last bag into his Task Force. He turned to face me fully, his normally serious face wearing a small smile. “It’s only for three days. We’ll be back before you know it,” he gave me a wink.

My stepmom brushed past us both in her high heels and added, “Oh, and Kate, try not to burn the other half of the barn down if you can manage it.”

I aimed a scowl at the back of her head as Dad chuckled, placing a hand on my shoulder.

“Don’t mind her,” he whispered in my ear, giving my shoulder a squeeze, “not everyone can be born with a wild heart like you. But seriously, no barn fires.”

My wild heart. That’s how he always described it. Whenever Dad talked about my birth mother, which wasn’t often, he used those same words. She had a wild heart that was full, fearless, and refused to be tied down. He always said it lovingly, which I had trouble understanding. What good is a wild heart if it makes you leave your family behind? The kids at school had another way of describing me. Tomboy.

Little Maisy stuck her head out of the back-seat window, her blonde curls bouncing, eyes rimmed with tears.

“Give Mr. Buttons lots of hugs,” Maisy’s high voice trembled, “and don’t forget to feed him and rub his tummy and tell him I love him, okay?”

I forced a smile and gave my half-sister a thumbs up. The Beast was way more accurate a name for that dog than Mr. Buttons, but he was Little Maisy’s Christmas gift, so whatever. After the truck rounded the corner, I took a deep breath full of crisp autumn air and twirled for a bit in the driveway. I loved my family and all (well, most of them), but sometimes a girl going on thirteen needed some time alone. When the visit to my stepmom’s family was planned, I jumped at the chance to stay behind and take care of the animals. Even though it had been six years since the wedding, I still didn’t feel comfortable around her, let alone her “big city” family. The feeling of excitement about being in charge rushed through me like wildfire.

Funny how fast feelings could change. We had all heard about the girl gone missing across town, but it wasn’t till the evening on the day my family left that the body was found. I heard it on the tabletop radio right after listening to the latest episode of “The Falcon”. The police found her near her house in a corn field. Strangled, they said. The bowl of sugar and cherries I was treating myself to fell right out of my hands, staining the carpet. I planned on blaming the dog.

The Beast broke out of the house the second night while I was setting out the trash. The last time he escaped it took me four hours to catch him. I was in no mood to repeat that adventure with the sun gone down. I had to catch him fast or risk losing him for good, which, if not for Maisy, didn’t sound all that bad.

“Mr. Buttons! Get back here right now before I kill you!” I yelled at his dark shadow darting ahead of me in the corn, right before tripping on a stalk and getting a mouthful of dirt. After a few moments of spitting mud and curses, I looked up to find he was gone. A half-moon hung in a twilit sky, and the chilled ground caused me to shiver. I hadn’t had time to grab a jacket. I lay there listening for dog sounds above the rustling wind. In a row to my left the leaves crunched softly, and my hopes returned. That mutt had circled back. If I were lucky, he would emerge right in front of me any second.

Just then the Beast barked, a short and faint sound, in the distance to my right. I should’ve known better than to trust in luck with that dog around. The leaves crunched again, and at that moment it was like a hand squeezed my heart and pushed all the blood out of my body.

Frozen to the ground, I lied to myself.

There’s no one there.

In response, the corn next to me shifted and was pushed aside. The first thing I saw was yellow toenails, jagged and crusted over with dried blood. A thin man stepped out in front of me, wearing nothing but threadbare overalls tight against his bony frame, the bottom of his pants ending just below the knee. It looked like a child’s outfit. His dirty blonde hair and patchy beard were long, his eyes pale and deep set.

“Josephine?” The voice was high and cracked with emotion. I was still sprawled out, my limbs paralyzed although my mind was screaming to run.

“Josephine! I can’t believe it! Papa said you was dead! I told him I’d find ya, though. I broke out, just like you taught me and lookie here, find you I did!” The moonlight showed me his eyes were glistening as he crouched down, his thin bony knees jutting out like a grasshopper, his face so close I could smell his hot, sour breath. 

He grabbed me by the shoulders and forcefully lifted me up to my knees. The man’s face erupted with slimy brown teeth in what might have been a horrible attempt at a smile, but then his expression fell, and his eyes grew scared.

“Josephine, something’s wrong with me. Papa’s mad all the time…and Josephine? Can you keep a secret? You were always good with my secrets…” He looked at me pleadingly. I couldn’t respond.

           “Josephine,” his voice trembled, “when I look in a mirror, my eyes…they don’t move. They don’t move at all, always in the same place…” He released my shoulders and started tearing at his hair. The guy had totally flipped his lid. My strength finally returned so I spun around and began pushing myself up when he pulled me back around to face him. Bony fingers wrapped around my throat and squeezed, cutting off my air.

           “You can’t leave me! Not again! Papa keeps me in the cellar now! My eyes don’t move Josephine! They don’t move!” 

           I’m going to die, I thought, looking up at the mad man’s face. His brown teeth gnawed on a bleeding tongue and his pale eyes rolled in their sockets. Spots swam before my eyes, when suddenly a dark shadow flashed across my vision, a familiar tail of fur slapping my face. A growl and scream blended in my ears as the man’s cold fingers released my throat. Somehow, I was running on my feet, my brain so shrunk with fear I could only think of escape, not destination. I slowly began to realize I was running deeper into the cornfield and farther away from the house, which made me let out a swear word so bad I had only heard my dad say it once my entire life. I crashed through the corn like I was drunk, while the Beast barked between me and the safety of my back-porch light. Every small sound made my muscles knot up in preparation for a second attack. Every ear of corn seemed to reach out for me like fingers looking for a throat.

I kept running, taking a wide path towards my house.

The Beast growled again somewhere close. The man’s voice came through the corn, even closer. “Why did you leave me?” I couldn’t tell whether he was weeping or laughing.

Suddenly footsteps pounded the earth behind me. I couldn’t look back, had to keep running. I was close to the field’s edge, the silhouette of the swing set partially obscuring the porch light’s beacon of safety. But I wouldn’t be any safer there, I thought with a panic; there was no one home to protect me. A hand swiped at my ankle, tripping me to the ground. The Beast barked again and pounced on top of my attacker, burying his teeth into his shoulder, and the man from the corn screamed in anger. I glanced back to see the two of them wrestling on the ground, and a mix of gratitude and concern for Mr. Buttons filled me. Hang in there, boy, I plead silently. It was time to return the favor.

I leapt up and escaped the corn, bee-lining for the back door, jumping over the trash bags that got me in this mess in the first place. Once inside, I quickly locked the door behind me, then sprinted upstairs to my dad’s bedroom closet. He hid his shotgun there, but I discovered the place long ago. Loading two shells, I went to the open window in my room that overlooked the backyard. Below, I could see the corn stalks thrashing, indicating the fight was still in progress.

“Get out of here! Don’t come back!” I yelled out the window, then leaned out and fired one shot into the air. It almost knocked me on my butt. The corn stopped moving after that.  I stood there on guard at my window for what felt like hours, my heart wild with adrenaline that dispelled all desire for sleep.

I detected no sign of the Corn Man after my gunshot, as if he were an apparition that dissolved into the night. The psycho must’ve snuck off with his tail between his legs. I worried about the dog, as there was no sign of him, either. At some point I risked calling out for him from my window, with no result. I feared the worst, but I could not make myself go outside to look. What was I going to tell Maisy? Against my will, sleep finally pushed through my fears in the early morning hours and took me.

Amazingly, as I woke leaning against my window frame still standing vigil, the sun barely rising, the dog finally emerged from the corn, padding up to the back porch. Apparently, he stood watch all night, too. My heart leapt in my chest for that furry guardian angel. From then on, we were thick as thieves, Mr. Buttons and me. 

My family returned the next day. Even after the bath I gave him, Little Maisy still asked why the white fur around Mr. Buttons’ mouth was stained pink. Without blinking an eye, I told her he had gotten into my cherries. I had to come up with some more whoppers once Dad asked me why some of his corn stalks had been trampled, and the look he gave me told me he didn’t believe a lick of it. He didn’t say anything, though, probably because I succeeded in keeping the rest of the barn intact. I didn’t say anything about what really happened, either, afraid if I did my newly granted independence would be closed to me forever.

The whole town showed up for the funeral for that girl who was strangled. I noticed from a portrait that she had the same shade of blonde hair as me.

Then, strangely, life just returned to normal, at least for everyone else. I never saw or heard of the Corn Man again, except for the times he would show up in my dreams. He would appear in the most unlikely of places, always begging to share more of his secrets, his pale eyes growing angry every time I ran away. Some nights I would wake up before he caught me. On the other nights, I would wake up screaming.

Halloween came and went but I didn’t feel much like celebrating. The next spring, I finally turned thirteen and got a bunch of girlie things like a dress, a hairbrush, and my birth mom’s old hand mirror my dad had found in the attic. I wished that someday I would grow to like that kind of stuff. Maybe someday I would meet a boy and fall in love. I imagined growing old together and not leaving like my mom did before I could remember her face. Turning over her hand mirror on my birthday I saw a name engraved on the back of the handle. 

Josephine.

Goosebumps popped up all over my arms and my blood ran cold. Dad had always only referred to her as Josie. My mind expanded and shrunk at the same time, warping my reality until nothing felt familiar anymore, until I was no longer Kate, the tomboy from Kansas. The world felt unsteady under my feet and I could feel the cold fingers against my throat once more. It couldn’t be, could it? Just a coincidence, I told myself, nothing more.

Even so, for the longest time I couldn’t look at the hand mirror and kept it buried deep in my dresser, but when I turned fourteen and started getting excited about the upcoming school dances, I pulled it out. I was surprised to find that I liked the way I looked. Surely, I was destined for breaking some hearts. I wondered how she looked at my age. I wondered where she was at that very moment, and why she decided to leave. I would gaze for hours and hours in that mirror, Mr. Buttons curled up at my feet, until the day I noticed it. 

Maybe the mirror had a defect. Someday, I would need to get a new one, but I decided to wait. I wasn’t anything if not determined. Sooner or later, I would catch it, if even for a moment.

If I stared long enough, I was bound to see my eyes move.