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THE COMPANION
by Joe, Keith, and Kasey Jo Lansdale
They weren't biting.
Harold sat on the bank with his fishing pole and watched the clear creek
water turn dark as the sunlight faded. He knew he should pack up and
go. This wonderful fishing spot he'd heard about was a dud, but
the idea of going home without at least one fish for supper was not a
happy one. He had spent a large part of the day before bragging to
his friends about what a fisherman he was. He could hear them now,
laughing and joking as he talked about the big one that got away.
And worse yet, he was out of bait.
He had used his little camp shovel to dig around the edge of the bank for
worms. But he hadn't turned up so much as a grub or a doodlebug.
The best course of action, other than pack his gear on his bike and ride
home, was to cross the bank. It was less wooded over there, and the
ground might be softer. On the other side of the creek, through
a thinning row of trees, he could see an old farm field. There were
dried stalks of broken-down corn and tall dried weeds the plain brown
color of a cardboard box.
Harold looked at his watch. He decided he had just enough time to find
some bait and maybe catch one fish. He picked up his camp shovel and
found a narrow place in the creek to leap across. After
walking through the trees and out into the huge field, he noticed a
large and odd-looking scarecrow on a post. Beyond the scarecrow, some
stretch away, surrounded by saplings and weeds, he saw what had once been a fine two-story farmhouse. Now it
was not much more than an abandoned shell of broken glass and aging lumber.
As Harold approached the scarecrow, he was even more taken with its
unusual appearance. It was dressed in a stovepipe hat that was
crunched and moth-eaten and leaned to one side. The
body was constructed of hay, sticks and vines, and the face was made
of some sort of cloth, perhaps an old towsack. It
was dressed in a once-expensive evening jacket and pants. Its arms were
outstretched on a pole, and poking out of
its sleeves were fingers made of sticks.
From a distance, the eyes looked like empty sockets in a skull. When
Harold stood close to the scarecrow, he was even more surprised to
discover it had teeth. They were animal teeth, still in the jawbone,
and someone had fitted them into the cloth face, giving the scarecrow a
wolf-like countenance. Dark feathers had somehow gotten
caught between the teeth.
But the most peculiar thing of all was found at the center of the
scarecrow. Its black jacket hung open, its chest was torn apart, and
Harold could see inside. He was startled to discover that there was a rib
cage, and fastened to it by a cord was a large faded
valentine heart. A long, thick stick was rammed directly through that
heart.
The dirt beneath the scarecrow was soft, and Harold took his shovel and
began to dig. As he did, he had a sensation of being watched. Then he
saw a shadow, as if the scarecrow were nodding its head.
Harold glanced up and saw that the shadow was made by a large crow flying
high overhead. The early rising moon had caught its shape and cast it
on the ground. This gave Harold a sense of relief, but he realized
that any plans to continue fishing were wasted. It was too late.
A grunting noise behind him caused him to jump up, leaving his camp shovel
in the dirt. He grabbed at the first weapon he saw — the stick jammed
through the scarecrow. He jerked it free and saw the source of the
noise — a wild East Texas boar. A dangerous animal indeed.
It was a big one. Black and angry-looking, with
eyes that caught the moonlight and burned back at him like coals. The
beast's tusks shone like wet knives, and Harold knew those tusks could
tear him apart as easily as he might rip wet construction paper with
his hands.
The boar turned its head from side to side and snorted, taking in the
boy's smell. Harold tried to maintain his ground. But then the
moonlight shifted in the boar's eyes and made them seem even
brighter than before. Harold panicked and began running toward
the farmhouse.
He heard the boar running behind him. It sounded strange as it came, as if
it were chasing him on padded feet. Harold reached the front door of
the farmhouse and grabbed the door handle. In one swift motion, he
swung inside and pushed it shut. The boar rammed the door, and the house
rattled like dry bones.
The door had a bar lock, and Harold pushed it into place. He leaped back,
holding the stick to use as a spear. The ramming continued for a
moment, then everything went quiet.
Harold eased to a window and looked out. The boar was standing at the edge
of the woods near where he had first seen it. The scarecrow was gone,
and in its place there was only the post that had
held it.
Harold was confused. How had the boar chased him to the house and returned
to its original position so quickly? And what had happened to the
scarecrow? Had the boar, thinking the scarecrow was a person, torn it
from the post with its tusks?
The boar turned and disappeared into the woods. Harold decided to give the
animal time to get far away He checked his watch, then waited a few
minutes. While he waited, he looked around.
The house was a wreck. There were overturned chairs, a table, and books.
Near the fireplace, a hatchet was stuck in a large log. Everything
was coated in dust and spider webs, and the stairs that twisted up
to the second landing were shaky and rotten.
Harold was about to return to his fishing gear and head for the bike when
he heard a scraping noise. He wheeled around for a look. The wind was
moving a clutch of weeds, causing them to scrape against the window.
Harold felt like a fool. Everything was scaring him.
Then the weeds moved from view and he discovered
they weren't weeds at all. In fact, they looked like sticks . . . or
fingers.
Hadn't the scarecrow had sticks for fingers?
That was ridiculous. Scarecrows didn't move on their own.
Then again, Harold thought as he looked out the window at the scarecrow's
post, where was it?
The doorknob turned slowly. The door moved slightly, but the bar lock
held. Harold could feel the hair on the back of his neck bristling.
Goose bumps moved along his neck and shoulders.
The knob turned again.
Then something pushed hard against the door. Harder.
Harold dropped the stick and wrenched the hatchet from the log.
At the bottom of the door was a space about an inch wide, and the
moonlight shining through the windows made it possible for him to see
something scuttling there — sticks, long and flexible.
They poked through the crack at the bottom of the door, tapped loudly on
the floor, and stretched, stretched, stretched farther into the room.
A flat hand made of hay, vines, and sticks appeared. It began
to ascend on the end of a knotty vine of an arm, wiggling its fingers
as it rose. It climbed along the door, and Harold realized, to
his horror and astonishment, that it was trying to reach the bar lock.
Harold stood frozen, watching the fingers push and free the latch.
Harold came unfrozen long enough to leap forward and chop down on the
knotty elbow, striking it in two. The hand flopped to the floor and
clutched so hard at the floorboards that it scratched large strips
of wood from them. Then it was still.
But Harold had moved too late. The doorknob was turning again. Harold
darted for the stairway, bolted up the staircase. Behind him came a
scuttling sound. He was almost to the top of the stairs when the step
beneath him gave way and his foot went through with
a screech of nails and a crash of rotten lumber.
Harold let out a scream as something grabbed hold of the back of his coat
collar. He jerked loose, tearing his jacket and losing the hatchet in
the process. He tugged his foot free and crawled rapidly on hands and
knees to the top of the stairs.
He struggled to his feet and raced down the corridor. Moonlight shone
through a hall window and projected his shadow and that of his
capering pursuer onto the wall. Then the creature sprang onto
Harold's back, sending both of them tumbling to
the floor.
They rolled and twisted down the hallway. Harold howled and clutched at
the strong arm wrapped around his throat. As he turned over onto his
back, he heard the crunching of sticks beneath him. The arm loosened
its grip, and Harold was able to free himself. He scuttled along the floor
like a cockroach, regained his footing, then darted through an open
door and slammed it.
Out in the hall he heard it moving. Sticks crackled. Hay swished. The
thing was coming after him.
Harold checked over his shoulder, trying to find something to jam against
the door, or some place to hide. He saw another doorway and sprinted
for that. It led to another hall, and down its length were
a series of doors. Harold quickly entered the room at the far end and
closed the door quietly. He fumbled for a lock, but there was none. He
saw a bed and rolled under it, sliding up against the wall where it was
darkest.
The moon was rising, and its light was inching under the bed. Dust
particles swam in the moonlight. The ancient bed smelled musty and
wet. Outside in the hall, Harold could hear the thing scooting along
as if it were sweeping the floor. Scooting closer.
A door opened. Closed.
A little later another door opened and closed.
Then another.
Moments later he could hear it in the room next to his. He knew he should
try to escape, but to where? He was trapped. If he tried to rush out
the door, he was certain to run right into it. Shivering like
a frightened kitten, he pushed himself farther up against the wall,
as close as possible.
The bedroom door creaked open. The scarecrow shuffled into the room.
Harold could hear it moving from one side to the other, pulling
things from shelves, tossing them onto the floor, smashing glass,
trying to find his hiding place.
Please, please, thought Harold, don't look under the bed.
Harold heard it brushing toward the door, then he heard the door
open. It's going to
leave, thought Harold. It's going to leave!
But it stopped. Then slowly turned and walked to the bed. Harold could see
the scarecrow's straw-filled pants legs, its shapeless straw feet. Bits of
hay floated down from the scarecrow, coasted under the bed and lay in
the moonlight, just inches away.
Slowly the scarecrow bent down for a look. The shadow of its hat poked
beneath the bed before its actual face. Harold couldn't stand to
look. He felt as if he might scream. The beating of his heart seemed
as loud as thunder.
It looked under the bed.
Harold, eyes closed, waited for it to grab him.
Seconds ticked by and nothing happened.
Harold snapped his eyes open to the sound of the door slamming.
It hadn't seen him.
The thick shadows closest to the wall had protected him. If it had been a
few minutes later, the rising moonlight would have expanded under the bed
and revealed him.
Harold lay there, trying to decide what to do. Strangely enough, he felt
sleepy. He couldn't imagine how that could be, but finally he decided
that a mind could only take so much terror before it needed relief —
even if it was false relief. He closed his eyes and fell into a deep
sleep.
When he awoke, he realized by the light in the room that it was near
sunrise. He had slept for hours. He wondered if the scarecrow was
still in the house, searching.
Building his nerve, Harold crawled from under the bed. He stretched his
back and turned to look around the room. He was startled to see a
skeleton dressed in rotting clothes and sitting in a chair at a desk.
Last night he had rolled beneath the bed so quickly that he hadn't even
seen the skeleton. Harold noticed a bundle of yellow papers lying on
the desk in front of it.
He picked up the papers, carried them to the window, and held them to the
dawn's growing light. It was a kind of journal. Harold scanned the
contents and was amazed.
The skeleton had been a man named John Benner. When Benner had died, he
was sixty-five years old. At one time he had been a successful
farmer. But when his wife died, he grew lonely — so lonely that
he decided to create a companion.
Benner built it of cloth and hay and sticks. Made the mouth from the
jawbone of a wolf. The rib cage he unearthed in one of his fields. He
couldn't tell if the bones were human or animal. He'd never
seen anything like them. He decided it was just the thing for
his companion.
He even decided to give it a heart — one of the old valentine hearts his
beloved wife had made him. He fastened the heart to the rib cage, closed up the chest with hay and sticks, dressed
the scarecrow in his old evening clothes, and pinned an old stovepipe
hat to its head. He kept the scarecrow in the house, placed it in
chairs, set a plate before it at meal times, even
talked to it.
And then one night it moved.
At first Benner was amazed and frightened, but in time he was delighted.
Something about the combination of ingredients, the strange bones
from the field, the wolf's jaw, the valentine heart, perhaps his own
desires, had given it life.
The scarecrow never ate or slept, but it kept him company. It listened
while he talked or read aloud. It sat with him at the supper table.
But come daylight, it ceased to move. It would find a place in the shadows
— a dark corner or the inside of a cedar chest. There it would wait
until the day faded and the night came.
In time, Benner became afraid. The scarecrow was a creature of the night,
and it lost interest in his company. Once, when he asked it to sit
down and listen to him read, it slapped the book from his hand
and tossed him against the kitchen wall, knocking him unconscious.
A thing made of straw and bones, cloth and paper, Benner realized, was
never meant to live, because it had no soul.
One day, while the scarecrow hid from daylight, Benner dragged it from its
hiding place and pulled it outside. It began to writhe and fight him,
but the scarecrow was too weak to do him damage. The sunlight made it
smoke and crackle with flame.
Benner hauled it to the center of the field, raised it on a post, and
secured it there by ramming a long staff through its chest and paper
heart.
It ceased to twitch, smoke, or burn. The thing he created was now at rest.
It was nothing more than a scarecrow.
The pages told Harold that even with the scarecrow controlled, Benner
found he could not sleep at night. He let the farm go to ruin, became
sad and miserable, even thought of freeing the scarecrow so that once
again he might have a companion. But he didn't, and in time, sitting right
here at his desk, perhaps after writing his journal, he died. Maybe
of fear, or loneliness.
Astonished, Harold dropped the pages on the floor. The scarecrow had been
imprisoned on that post for no telling how long. From the condition
of the farm, and Benner's body, Harold decided it had most likely
been years. Then I came along, he thought, and
removed the staff from its heart and freed it.
Daylight, thought Harold. In daylight the
scarecrow would have to give up. It would have to hide. It would be
weak then.
Harold glanced out the window. The thin rays of morning were growing
longer and redder, and through the trees he could see the red ball of
the sun lifting over the horizon.
Less than five minutes from now he would be safe. A sense of comfort
flooded over him. He was going to beat this thing. He leaned against
the glass, watching the sunrise.
A pane fell from the window and crashed onto the roof outside.
Uh-oh, thought Harold, looking toward the door.
He waited. Nothing happened. There were no sounds. The scarecrow had not
heard. Harold sighed and turned to look out the window again.
Suddenly, the door burst open and slammed against the wall. As Harold
wheeled around he saw a figure
charging toward him, flapping its arms like the wings of a crow taking
flight.
It pounced on him, smashed him against the window, breaking the remaining
glass. Both went hurtling through the splintering window frame and
fell onto the roof. They rolled together down the slope of the roof
and onto the sandy ground.
It was a long drop — twelve feet or so. Harold fell on top of the
scarecrow. It cushioned his fall, but he still landed hard enough to
have the breath knocked out of him.
The scarecrow rolled him over, straddled him, pushed its hand tightly over
Harold's face. The boy could smell the rotting hay and decaying
sticks, feel the wooden fingers thrusting into his flesh. Its grip
was growing tighter and tighter. He heard the scarecrow's wolf teeth
snapping eagerly as it lowered its face to his.
Suddenly, there was a bone-chilling scream. At first Harold thought he was
screaming, then he realized it was the scarecrow.
It leaped up and dashed away. Harold lifted his head for a look and saw a
trail of smoke wisping around the corner of the house.
Harold found a heavy rock for a weapon, and
forced himself to follow. The scarecrow was not in sight, but
the side door of the house was partially open. Harold peeked through a
window.
The scarecrow was violently flapping from one end of the room to the
other, looking for shadows to hide in. But as the sun rose, its light
melted the shadows away as fast as the scarecrow could find them.
Harold jerked the door open wide and let the sunlight in. He got a glimpse
of the scarecrow as it snatched a thick curtain from a window,
wrapped itself in it, and fell to the floor.
Harold spied a thick stick on the floor — it was the same one he had
pulled from the scarecrow. He tossed aside the rock and picked up the
stick. He used it to flip the curtain aside, exposing the thing
to sunlight.
The scarecrow bellowed so loudly that Harold felt as if his bones and
muscles would turn to jelly. It sprang from the floor, darted past
him and out the door.
Feeling braver now that it was daylight and the scarecrow was weak, Harold
chased after it. Ahead of him, the weeds in the field were parting
and swishing like cards being shuffled. Floating above the weeds were
thick twists of smoke.
Harold found the scarecrow on its knees, hugging its support post like a
drowning man clinging to a floating log. Smoke coiled up from around
the scarecrow's head and boiled out from under its coat sleeves and
pant legs.
Harold poked the scarecrow with the stick. It fell on its back, and its
arms flopped wide. Harold rammed the stick through its open chest,
and through the valentine heart.
He lifted it from the ground easily with the stick. It weighed very
little. He lifted it until its arms draped over the cross on the
post. When it hung there, Harold made sure the stick was firmly through
its chest and heart. Then he raced for his bike.
Sometimes even now, a year later, Harold thinks of his fishing gear and
his camp shovel. But more often he thinks of the scarecrow. He
wonders if it is still on its post. He wonders what
would have happened if he had left it alone in the sunlight. Would
that have been better? Would it have burned to ashes?
He wonders if another curious fisherman has been out there and removed the
stick from its chest.
He hopes not.
He wonders if the scarecrow has a memory. It had tried to get Benner, but
Benner had beat it, and Harold had beat it too. But what if someone
else freed it and the scarecrow got him? Would it come after Harold
too? Would it want to finish what it had started?
Was it possible, by some kind of supernatural instinct, for the scarecrow
to track him down? Could it travel by night? Sleep in culverts and
old barns and sheds, burying itself deep under dried leaves to
hide from the sun?
Could it be coming closer to his home while he slept?
He often dreamed of it coming. In his dreams, Harold could see it gliding
with the shadows, shuffling along, inching nearer and nearer….
And what about those sounds he'd heard earlier tonight, outside his
bedroom window? Were they really what he had concluded — dogs in the
trashcans?
Had that shape he'd glimpsed at his window been the fleeting shadow of a
flying owl, or had it been—Harold rose from bed, checked all the locks on
the doors and windows, listened to the wind blow around the house,
and decided not to go outside for a look.
Roll back here Thursday, February
27, for another free short story from Champion Mojo Storyteller Joe R.
Lansdale!
"The Companion"
originally appeared in Great Writers and
Their Kids Write Spooky Stories. It later appeared in A Fist Full of Stories [and Articles], a collection published by CD
Publications, and Bumper Crop, a
collection published by Golden Gryphon Press. "The Companion" © 1995 By
Bizarre Hands, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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