Norman Partridge - Dark Harvest

So that’s Mitch’s game. You remember how it feels, don’t you? All that desire scorching you straight through. Feeling like you’re penned up in a small-town cage, jailed by cornstalk bars. Knowing, just knowing, that you’ll be stuck in that quiet little town forever if you don’t take a chance.

So you know what it’s like to want to fly down that road and see what lies beyond it… to want that so bad, you’ll do just about anything to make it happen. Sure. You remember Mitch Crenshaw’s game, the same way you remember that it isn’t the only one running tonight. Glance over at the side of that black road and you’ll see undeniable evidence of that. Might not be any little guy standing there in a black suit to set up the story for you, the way there is every Friday night on TV. But like that little guy says damn near every week, there’s a signpost up ahead, even if it ain’t a hunk of metal you can touch. It’s written on the darkness, and it tells us that we’ve got a few hard miles of prime-time Twilight Zone action ahead on this road tonight.

Picture if you will: The flipside of a game played by a pack of teenage hoodlums in a rusty Chrysler. It’s a solo B-side for a thing born in a cornfield, a requiem for the shambling progeny of the black and bloody earth. Because the October Boy has his own game. It’s played with pitchforks and switchblades and fear, and its first scrimmage is set to begin on a quiet strip of two-lane that marks the midnight trail to town. For this creature with the fright-mask face is both trick and treat. He comes with pockets filled with candy, and he carries a knife that carves holes in the shadows, and his race will take him from a lonely country road to an old brick church that waits dead center in the middle of a town square… in The Twilight Zone.

Uh-huh. That about covers it, if you want the teaser. Hang around for thirty minutes and we’ll give you the payoff. And the show can kick into gear right about here:

The October Boy spots the Chrysler’s Gorgon headlights about a mile off, but he doesn’t freeze. He makes for the side of the road and ducks into a clutch of cornstalks that close around him like a skeletal fist. He stands there with the butcher knife vined in his gnarled grasp, waiting as those lights grow larger… thinking… planning… and his thoughts aren’t so different from those of the boy behind the Chrysler’s wheel, because the October Boy has his own game to play, and its played with a deck that’s stacked against him.

Yeah. If there’s one thing the October Boy knows, it’s that. But he doesn’t have another way to go tonight. He’s already crossed the starting line, and there’s nowhere to head but the finish, though he can’t imagine how he’ll get there. It seems impossible. How he’ll make it from this spot into town, and how he’ll run the teenage gauntlet that’s itching to chop him down like a two-legged weed, and how he’ll reach that finish-line church in the town square before the steeple bell tolls midnight… well, it’s gotta be the longest of all long shots.

It never happens that way.

Everyone in town says it can’t happen that way.

But the October Boy has to make it happen that way.

If he wants to win.

So the Boy thinks about how he’ll play it. Not long-range, but step by step. He hears the Chrysler’s engine now, hears too the cool October breeze rushing in the car’s wake as the Chrysler speeds through dead corn a quarter mile away.

He sucks a breath through his arrowhead nose and steadies himself. The car’s coming fast. Forget miles… we’re talking yards, now… and the October Boy’s already moving. He slips free of that cornstalk fist, clutching the knife in his hand… racing through the ditch and up the incline… severed-root feet scrabbling over blacktop as he hits the road and crosses the white line.

The Boy’s head swivels as the Chrysler closes on him. He strains for a glimpse of the driver’s face through the windshield, but the window’s as black as the night. The Boy can’t see anyone behind it.

His carved eyes flicker in the darkness.

The dead-white headlights don’t flicker at all.

Mitch jerks the steering wheel hard to port, just missing a king-sized puppet scrambling across the road. Even as the Chrysler slips into a skid he’s cursing his capacity for instinctive response, because he realizes a second too late that puppet had a big orange head and hitting it head-on would have hammered flat every challenge this night holds as surely as a Sonny Liston right cross.

He doesn’t have one idea about the right thing to do. That bottomless hunger churning inside him has jacked his response time around but good. So he hits the brakes, because he hates indecisiveness. The wheels lock up, and the car keeps spinning, but it doesn’t go far. When it comes to a stop the rear wheels are on the edge of the road, just short of the ditch. The headlights are still trained on blacktop, only now they’re aimed in the direction of the town.

As far as Mitch can see, there’s not a damn thing between the Chrysler’s front bumper and Main Street.

The headlights reveal nothing but road.

There’s no walking nightmare in sight.

“Where’d he go?” Charlie asks.

“Has to be in one of those cornfields,” Bud says.

“Or maybe we hit him,” Charlie says. “Could be the whole thing’s over. Could be all we have to do is find out where he dropped and shovel him into a bag.”

“No,” Mitch says. “I didn’t hit shit. Nothing’s over.”

Mitch is out of the car before the words are out of his mouth. He slams the driver’s side door. A second later, he’s keyed the trunk and popped it. Bud and Charlie are standing at his side now, but he doesn’t even shoot a glance their way. They know what they’re supposed to do.

Mitch hands Charlie a big flashlight.

Bud gets a rusty pitchfork.

Mitch takes another.

Twin headlight beams stretch through the night like spun glass, but the car’s not moving. Not now. From his hiding place in the dead corn, the October Boy sees three guys coming his way. One of them carries a pitchfork down the middle of the road; in the headlight glow he looks like a man walking the length of a freshly blown bottle. Behind him, a dimmer light bobs through the darkness at the road’s shoulder. Two silhouettes trail along behind that solitary beam, so close that they melt into a shadowy pair of Siamese twins — a pitchfork in its left hand, a flashlight in the right.

The October Boy clutches his knife, waiting, listening.

“The Chrysler’s skid marks start here,” says the guy standing in the road. “See if there are any footprints down in that ditch.”

Boots kick through a tangle of weeds. The Siamese twins work their way down the berm, heading toward the October Boy. “Shit, this is slippery.” A splash through a puddle, and more cussing. And finally an old beer can crumples underfoot as the flashlight beam slides over the ground, marking a trail that leads from the side of the road to a break in the cornstalks.

“These don’t look like any footprints I’ve ever seen,” one of the twins says, “but something sure as hell ran through here.”

The guy walking the road doesn’t say a word. He’s standing in the darkness now. The Chrysler is a good distance behind him, and so are its headlights. That pleases the October Boy, because it means it’ll be tough going if these guys make a run for the car… especially if they have something chasing their tails that means business.

The kid in the road kneels.

“Hey,” he says. “Shine that light over here.”