Children of the Corn Read online

  shoulders swiping the leaves and making them tremble. Twenty yards in' he turned

  right, parallel to the road again, and ran on, keeping low so they wouldn't see

  his dark head of hair bobbing amid the yellow corn tassels. He doubled back

  towards the road for a few moments, crossed more rows, and then put his back to

  the road and hopped randomly from row to row, always delving deeper and deeper

  into the corn.

  At last, he collapsed on to his knees and put his forehead against the ground.

  He could only hear his own taxed breathing, and the thought that played over and

  over in his mind was: Thank God I gave up smoking, thank God I gave up smoking,

  thank God -Then he could hear them, yelling back and forth to each other, in

  some cases bumping into each other ('Hey, this is my row!'), and the sound

  heartened him. They were well away to his left and they sounded very poorly

  organized.

  He took his handkerchief out of his shirt, folded it, and stuck it back in after

  looking at the wound. The bleeding seemed to have stopped in spite of the

  workout he had given it.

  He rested a moment longer, and was suddenly aware that he felt good, physically

  better than he had in years excepting the throb of his arm. He felt well

  exercised, and suddenly grappling with a clearcut (no matter how insane) problem

  after two years of trying to cope with the incubotic gremlins that were sucking

  his marriage dry.

  It wasn't right that he should feel this way, he told himself. He was in deadly

  peril of his life, and his wife had been carried off. She might be dead now. He

  tried to summon up Vicky's face and dispel some of the odd good feeling by doing

  so, but her face wouldn't come. What came was the red-haired boy with the knife

  in his throat.

  He became aware of the corn fragrance in his nose now, all around him. The wind

  through the tops of the plants made a sound like voices. Soothing. Whatever had

  been done in the name of this corn, it was now his protector.

  But they were getting closer.

  Running hunched over, he hurried up the row he was in, crossed over, doubled

  back, and crossed over more rows. He tried to keep the voices always on his

  left, but as the afternoon progressed, that became harder to do. The voices had

  grown faint, and often the rustling sound of the corn obscured them altogether.

  He would run, listen, run again. The earth was hard-packed, and his stockinged

  feet left little or no trace.

  When he stopped much later the sun was hanging over the fields to his right, red

  and inflamed, and when he looked at his watch he saw that it was quarter past

  seven. The sun had stained the corntops a reddish gold, but here the shadows

  were dark and deep. He cocked his head, listening. With the coming of sunset the

  wind had died entirely and the corn stood still, exhaling its aroma of growth

  into the warm air. If they were still in the corn they were either far away or

  just hunkered down and listening. But Burt didn't think a bunch of kids, even

  crazy ones, could be quiet for that long. He suspected they had done the most

  kidlike thing, regardless of the consequences for them; they had given up and

  gone home.

  He turned towards the setting sun, which had sunk between the raftered clouds on

  the horizon, and began to walk. If he cut on a diagonal through the rows, always

  keeping the setting sun ahead of him, he would be bound to strike Route 17

  sooner or later.

  The ache in his arm had settled into a dull throb that was nearly pleasant, and

  the good feeling was still with him. He decided that as long as he was here, he

  would let the good feeling exist in him without guilt. The guilt would return

  when he had to face the authorities and account for what had happened in Gatlin.

  But that could wait.

  He pressed through the corn, thinking he had never felt so keenly aware. Fifteen

  minutes later the sun was only a hemisphere poking over the horizon and he

  stopped again, his new awareness clicking into a pattern he didn't like. It was

  vaguely. . . well, vaguely frightening.

  He cocked his head. The corn was rustling.

  Burt had been aware of that for some time, but he had just put it together with

  something else. The wind was still. How could that be?

  He looked around warily, half expecting to see the smiling boys in their Quaker

  coats creeping out of the corn, their knives clutched in their hands. Nothing of

  the sort. There was still that rustling noise. Off to the left.

  He began to walk in that direction, not having to bull through the corn any

  more. The row was taking him in the direction he wanted to go, naturally. The

  row ended up ahead. Ended? No, emptied out into some sort of clearing. The

  rustling was there.

  He stopped, suddenly afraid.

  The scent of the corn was strong enough to be cloying. The rows held on to the

  sun's heat and he became aware that he was plastered with sweat and chaff and

  thin spider strands of cornsilk. The bugs ought to be crawling all over him. . .

  but they weren't.

  He stood still, staring towards that place where the corn opened out on to what

  looked like a large circle of bare earth.

  There were no minges or mosquitoes in here, no black-flies or chiggers - what he

  and Vicky had called 'drive-in bugs' when they had been courting, he thought

  with sudden and unexpectedly sad nostalgia. And he hadn't seen a single crow.

  How was that for weird, a cornpatch with no crows?

  In the last of the daylight he swept his eyes closely over the row of corn to

  his left. And saw that every leaf and stalk was perfect, which was just not

  possible. No yellow blight. No tattered leaves, no caterpillar eggs, no burrows,

  no -His eyes widened.

  My God, there aren't any weeds!

  Not a single one. Every foot and a half the corn plants rose from the earth.

  There was no witchgrass, jimson, pikeweed, whore's hair, or poke salad. Nothing.

  Burt stared up, eyes wide. The light in the west was fading. The raftered clouds

  had drawn back together. Below them the golden light had faded to pink and

  ochre. It would be dark soon enough.

  It was time to go down to the clearing in the corn and see what was there -

  hadn't that been the plan all along? All the time he had thought he was cutting

  back to the highway, hadn't he been being led to this place?

  Dread in his belly, he went on down to the row and stood at the edge of the

  clearing. There was enough light for him to see what was here. He couldn't

  scream. There didn't seem to be enough air left in his lungs. He tottered in on

  legs like slats of splintery wood. His eyes bulged from his sweaty face.

  'Vicky,' he whispered. 'Oh, Vicky, my God -'

  She had been mounted on a crossbar like a hideous trophy, her arms held at the

  wrists and her legs at the ankles with twists of common barbed wire, seventy

  cents a yard at any hardware store in Nebraska. Her eyes had been ripped out.

  The sockets were filled with the moonflax of cornsilk. Her jaws were wrenched

  open in a silent scream, her mouth filled with cornhusks.

  On her left was a skeleton in a mouldering surplice. The nude jawbone grinned.

  Th
e eye sockets seemed to stare at Burt jocularly, as if the one-time minister

  of the Grace Baptist Church was saying: It's not so bad, being sacrificed by

  pagan devil-children in the corn is not so bad, having your eyes ripped out of

  your skull according to the Laws of Moses is not so bad -To the left of the

  skeleton in the surplice was a second skeleton, this one dressed in a rotting

  blue uniform. A hat hung over the skull, shading the eyes, and on the peak of

  the cap was a greenish-tinged badge reading police chief.

  That was when Burt heard it coming: not the children but something much larger,

  moving through the corn and towards the clearing. Not the children, no. The

  children wouldn't venture into the corn at night. This was the holy place, the

  place of He Who Walks Behind the Rows.

  Jerkily Burt turned to flee. The row he had entered the clearing by was gone.

  Closed up. All the rows had closed up. It was coming closer now and he could

  hear it, pushing through the corn. He could hear it breathing. An ecstasy of

  superstitious terror seized him. It was coming. The corn on the far side of the

  clearing had suddenly darkened, as if a gigantic shadow had blotted it out.

  Coming.

  He Who Walks Behind the Rows.

  It began to come into the clearing. Burt saw something huge, bulking up to the

  sky . . . something green with terrible red eyes the size of footballs.

  Something that smelled like dried cornhusks years in some dark barn.

  He began to scream. But he did not scream long.

  Some time later, a bloated orange harvest moon came up.

  The children of the corn stood in the clearing at midday, looking at the two

  crucified skeletons and the two bodies

  the bodies were not skeletons yet, but they would be. In time. And here, in the

  heartlands of Nebraska, in the corn, there was nothing but time.

  'Behold, a dream came to me in the night, and the Lord did shew all this to me.'

  They all turned to look at Isaac with dread and wonder, even Malachi. Isaac was

  only nine, but he had been the Seer since the corn had taken David a year ago.

  David had been nineteen and he had walked into the corn on his birthday, just as

  dusk had come drifting down the summer rows.

  Now, small face grave under his round-crowned hat, Isaac continued:

  'And in my dream the Lord was a shadow that walked behind the rows, and he spoke

  to me in the words he used to our older brothers years ago. He is much

  displeased with this sacrifice.'

  They made a sighing, sobbing noise and looked at the surrounding walls of green.

  'And the Lord did say: Have I not given you a place of killing, that you might

  make sacrifice there? And have I not shewn you favour? But this man has made a

  blasphemy within me, and I have completed this sacrifice myself. Like the Blue

  Man and the false minister who escaped many years ago.'

  'The Blue Man . . . the false minister,' they whispered, and looked at each

  other uneasily.

  'SO now is the Age of Favour lowered from nineteen plantings and harvestings to

  eighteen,' Isaac went on relentlessly. 'Yet be fruitful and multiply as the corn

  multiplies, that my favour may be shewn you, and be upon you.'

  Isaac ceased.

  The eyes turned to Malachi and Joseph, the only two among this party who were

  eighteen. There were others back in town, perhaps twenty in all.

  They waited to hear what Malachi would say, Malachi who had led the hunt for

  Japheth, who evermore would be known as Ahaz, cursed of God. Malachi had cut the

  throat of Ahaz and had thrown his body out of the corn so the foul body would

  not pollute it or blight it.

  'I obey the word of God,' Malachi whispered.

  The corn seemed to sigh its approval.

  In the weeks to come the girls would make many corncob crucifixes to ward off

  further evil.

  And that night all of those now above the Age of Favour walked silently into the

  corn and went to the clearing, to gain the continued favour of He Who Walks

  Behind the Rows.

  'Goodbye, Malachi,' Ruth called. She waved disconsolately. Her belly was big

  with Malachi's child and tears coursed silently down her cheeks. Malachi did not

  turn. His back was straight. The corn swallowed him.

  Ruth turned away, still crying. She had conceived a secret hatred for the corn

  and sometimes dreamed of walking into it with a torch in each hand when dry

  September came and the stalks were dead and explosively combustible. But she

  also feared it. Out there, in the night, something walked, and it saw everything

  . . even the secrets kept in human hearts.

  Dusk deepened into night. Around Gatlin the corn rustled and whispered secretly.

  It was well pleased.