The gaping eye sockets threw you off but those gappy teeth... those you'd recognise anywhere. Jamie-Ray McCallister had been famous in third grade for his smile, mostly for when he got he got hit in the face with a curveball at a Lakers game. Ever since then he only had three teeth but there wasn't a kid in school who hadn't heard of him.
You'd known him longer than that though, way back to when you clung to each other while you were learning to walk round his aunt's place. She raised you both while your parents were away but when Jamie-Ray went missing she took it all upon herself and blasted her lights out a month after they stopped searching for him.
Everybody'd said is wasn't her fault, blamed the man who owned the fields the two of you'd been playing in that day but you knew it wasn't even that guy's fault. It was the corn itself that had snatched Jamie-Ray up and nearly taken you with it.
He saved your life by running right into those swaying stalks while you pegged it for the fence, praying that you'd see him running out any second now. You never did see him, nor did the police nor did their dogs nor anyone who'd taken the time to scour the fields for all those months.
Now here you both were. You never realised just how much you'd grown those past twenty years until his tiny bones gripped your fingers as he pulled you towards the spot where you last saw him. Your memories of that day were hazy from all those years gone by but the route he was taking ached with familiarity.
The second you saw all those skeletal heads with their gaping eyes peeping at you over the cornstalks you dropped his hand and ran from him like you had all those years ago. This time nothing moved behind you. It was like whatever had been moving them was now using Jamie-Ray instead.
You turned back once you were safely out on the road, looking down into his empty gaze.
You never even heard the truck coming.
You'd known him longer than that though, way back to when you clung to each other while you were learning to walk round his aunt's place. She raised you both while your parents were away but when Jamie-Ray went missing she took it all upon herself and blasted her lights out a month after they stopped searching for him.
Everybody'd said is wasn't her fault, blamed the man who owned the fields the two of you'd been playing in that day but you knew it wasn't even that guy's fault. It was the corn itself that had snatched Jamie-Ray up and nearly taken you with it.
He saved your life by running right into those swaying stalks while you pegged it for the fence, praying that you'd see him running out any second now. You never did see him, nor did the police nor did their dogs nor anyone who'd taken the time to scour the fields for all those months.
Now here you both were. You never realised just how much you'd grown those past twenty years until his tiny bones gripped your fingers as he pulled you towards the spot where you last saw him. Your memories of that day were hazy from all those years gone by but the route he was taking ached with familiarity.
The second you saw all those skeletal heads with their gaping eyes peeping at you over the cornstalks you dropped his hand and ran from him like you had all those years ago. This time nothing moved behind you. It was like whatever had been moving them was now using Jamie-Ray instead.
You turned back once you were safely out on the road, looking down into his empty gaze.
You never even heard the truck coming.
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