Scarecrow by Richie Tankersley Cusick

the east and south, but separated from the side yard of the house by only a narrowing strip of dirt road. My heart caught in my chest. This was the road that led around past the front of the house and eventually to Cranston. And there was the wagon in the tall, dead weeds.
    Franny followed my gaze and snorted. “That old thing—about to fall apart! Held together with spit and a prayer.”
    “Do you know how to hitch it up?”
    “Sure I do, but it’s broken now.”
    “Broken!”
    “Yep, it busted an axle.”
    I could feel my heart sinking. “Can’t it be fixed?”
    “Oh, Seth’ll get around to it sometime, I reckon. Probably this winter, like we told you. I surely couldn’t fix it—could you?”
    I shook my head glumly, hurrying after Franny to catch up.
    A patina of frost still lingered on the ground, although the sun was full in a cloudless sky. As we entered the orchard, my breath hung in small puffs in the air and I clenched my shawl around me, but Franny hardly seemed to notice the cold at all. She plunged ahead between the trees, chattering incessantly, but I was winded and stopped abruptly on the path.
    “It’s a lot prettier here in the summer when everything’s ripe—oh, and the peaches smell so nice—come on, it’s not much farther,” Franny grinned back at me. “Right on the other side of these apple trees here.”
    I shook my head, unable yet to speak, cold slicing through my lungs. I knew I should be interested in what Franny was showing me, but there were too many other things on my mind right now—things besides the wagon and getting away—things I needed to know and talk about. Like that discussion I’d just heard about Girlie, how everything was “real to her.” In my mind I saw the child again, leading me out along the front of the house, her strange eyes so intent as she’d talked—“ I liked you…even before you were real.” And that scarecrow had looked like me if I really stretched my imagination, if I really tried to believe that it did…. But now I’m being silly again, making something out of nothing… It had been idle talk, these things about Girlie—idle talk, that’s all, nothing more. A mother anxious about her child’s overactive imagination. But those looks I’d seen Rachel and Franny exchange hadn’t been normal, and I’d intercepted them, pretending not to see. Their looks had been frightened.
    “Hey, you okay?”
    My head shot up, and I returned Franny’s smile. “Lead the way. I’m ready for anything.”
    “Not for this, you’re not.” Franny warned me. She grasped my arm and yanked me through the last thickness of trees. “My Prince,” Franny announced, and her voice lowered breathlessly. “My Prince Charming.”
    In that first crazy instant I thought it was Seth.
    Seth standing there against a backdrop of meshed trees and towering hills and glimpses of ice blue sky between flaming red leaves. Seth, menacing and invincible and relentlessly watchful…But of course I realized in the next second that it was only Seth’s clothes and not a real person at all, and as my heart caught fearfully in my chest, I managed to take a step forward, to keep my voice steady.
    “Franny…it’s so…” My voice trailed off as I stared up into its almost-human face. Whereas all the other scarecrows I’d seen until now had been makeshift forms of the most primitive kind, this one was frighteningly different. His head was uncannily lifelike—beneath a hat and a thick shock of what appeared to be real human hair, a face gazed back at me with features that seemed to shift and alter even as I watched. Amazed, I took a step closer, trying to examine the cheeks without touching them, the chin, the smooth forehead, the wrinkles at the corners of the eyes. It looked like real skin, so supple in places, so taut in others, and all of it so natural, so natural, except for the white, white coloring and the black holes where eyes should have been. The eyes…My hands