1976: The Year We Both Dressed Up Like Scarecrows

The year was 1976

Olivia looked in the mirror for a moment; her reflection stared back at her with the same shape, size, and movements. She was a short and chubby little girl, only eight years old, with white skin covered in freckles and orange hair curled down to her shoulders. This year, she was dressed up as a scarecrow for Halloween- one with overalls, a straw hat, and painted-on stitches. She liked how she looked. It was a well-made costume in the eyes of a child who had crafted it, but one that would bring embarrassment when looking back on it in the future.

Leaving her room, Olivia slowly walked down the steps to the grand floor of her home, in fear of making too much noise. She lived in a farmhouse about four miles or so from the nearest town. The farmhouse was small in size and two stories tall; rested upon a small chunk of the four acres of land around it was a cornfield with only a single scarecrow that remained stuck up on a post and that kept the birds away.

She made it down the steps successfully and with very little noise. She was proud of herself and relieved that she was able to obey her father’s rule of being quiet. Her father did not like it being loud, which to her felt ironic, seeing as whenever he told her this, he would always be screaming. But that was really when he had his beer, which was almost always.

Olivia had snuck a sip of beer before; The beverage tasted awful. She didn’t understand why he was always drinking it. He was always mean when he did. Olivia had bruises on her arms as well as the tear-stained pillow which was never dry from many nights of crying in order to prove that fact.

But tonight would be different. It was the night Olivia looked forward to the most; Every year, on Halloween night, her mother would always drive the two of them into the closest neighborhood to go trick-or-treating.

And though her mother had passed away seven months prior, Olivia was still as determined as ever to go. So what if she couldn’t drive a car?; She could always just walk there; It was only a mile after all, and she could run a full mile in nine minutes according to her timed record in PE class.

Walking to a small closet, she opened the door and squatted down, shifting through a few things to find her candy bucket. It was a white candy bucket that took the form of a happy, carved pumpkin after rummaging through a few things, she eventually found it.

“ There it is,” She thought to herself as she took the hollow piece of plastic into her hands. She was about to stand back up, but then, all of a sudden, she froze. Now blatantly away from a looming shadow that had now fully draped over where she was standing.

There was someone behind her.

Every hair on her body immediately stood on edge as her breath hitched in anxious anticipation. A feeling of dread consumed her as she slowly turned around. Assuming it to be her father, she braced herself for the worst: Screaming, kicking, maybe even some hair or arm pulling if she was unlucky enough . . .

But when she turned around and stared up at him, there was nothing; No physical violence, no outbursts of any kind. Instead, there was her father just looming over her in complete silence. And that was something that filled her with far more fear than any amount of screaming or hitting had ever been able to do.

He seemed to have gone out to the cornfield at some point that day. He was wearing the same scarecrow from the cornfield—the one posted up on that long, wooden post for as long as Olivia could remember. He was covered in rags and pine straw, and a burlap sack covered his face with a stitched-on smile. Now, the scarecrow had eye sockets- ones sloppily cut out and showing two human eyes attached to a face hidden behind the rough burlap.

The eyes were sharp and dark, almost unnatural, as if staring into her soul. Olivia felt a shiver travel up her spine.

“ Uhhhhh . . . Dad?” She quietly called out to him as her emotions had shifted away from fear and she was now just unsettled as well as a bit confused. Why was he acting like this?

Suddenly, it was as if a lightbulb clicked in her head as she spoke once again with caution.” Wait. Are . . . A-are you going to take me trick-or-treating?”

There was another moment of silence between the two of them. The older scarecrow shifted slightly as if he were almost uncomfortable. He tilted his head to the side. “ . . . Yes.”

His voice was raspier than Olivia remembered: deeper too. Though maybe she was remembering it wrong; that was always a good possibility. She never really heard him speak normally. It was always either loud and scary or just incoherent, drunken babbles and slurring of the tongue.

Even though Olivia felt as though her father’s unusual niceness was just a pity move- a weak attempt at atonement, her eyes still lit up at his words. He was choosing to do this with her. Maybe there was hope. She decided to look on the bright side of this situation despite her doubts. And with a naive and trusting heart, she willingly went to their truck to head into town. Her father had forgotten the keys to the truck and quickly went inside to go get them; Once he got back they drove off.

When the two of them made it to the neighborhood and found a parking spot, her father immediately became on edge the moment they stepped out of the car as he quickly grabbed her hand. That was something of familiarity that Olivia could hold onto amid all the odd behaviors he was showing- his grip was still as strong and rough as ever.

But still, they went on, going from door to door and acquiring candy. Not only that, but they also got many compliments from the homes they visited.

“ You and your daughter are just precious together!’ A kinder old woman hand exclaimed. The bigger scarecrow next to Olivia only responded with a small, gruff “Thanks.”

The two of them continued on- house after house with nothing too interesting happening. Although Olivia did recall seeing a few different “wanted by the FBI” posters plastered around the area; There were three that appeared the most. The first one was a black man by the name of Tony Barany. He wore a crooked grin with buzzed, black hair and a rather nasty wound on his lip. His stature was tall like a tree and thin like a twig.

Another poster had a plump woman on it with bloodshot eyes and missing chunks of brown hair. Shelly Maurice was her name, and she was hideous to look at. She was old and shaggy. And her skin was so sickly to the point she looked grey and green instead of a normal peach.

The third poster was probably the most interesting one to her. It was of a man with the same bodily proportions as her dad- tall and though not muscular, not skinny either. He had a tired, unpleasant look on his face with paler patches of skin splotched on either corner of his lips, standing out from his already rather pale complexion. Those said lips formed into a scowl as he held up a sign showing his ownership by the prison which had held him captive for a long time- an especially dangerous prisoner. Pale patches of white on his hands which spread from his fingertips down to the middle of his hands were on full display as he held the sign up.

His hair was a dark shade of brown, almost to the point of being black, and was also short and curly with patches of white scattered about it just like his skin.
His name was Brutus Montague.

Olivia had looked at the posters and softly tugged at her father’s hand. It was an action that did not go unnoticed by the taller man who immediately looked down at her. With soft words, she told him, “ We need to be careful, there are a lot of bad guys around.”

Her father only let out a small grunt of understanding. The two of them kept walking when they came across an officer speaking to a mother and her two young children, neither of which looked over the age of four. Olivia watched as the mother’s eyes widened in horror as she gripped her children tighter; she quickly thanked the officer and scurried off to her home.

“ Stay safe now . . . Oh! You there!” The officer turned his attention towards Olivia and her father, quickly walking up to them. In a swift movement, the bigger scarecrow pulled Olivia closer to him in an act of defense. Yet he still allowed the officer to approach them.

“I’m sorry to disturb you both,” The officer continued. He seemed like a sweet and well-meaning man; Someone who had been doing his job for a long time yet had not succumbed to a power trip with being an enforcer of the law. “but there is a strict 9:30 pm curfew tonight. I don’t mean to frighten y’all, but a known suspect is on the loose still and we’ve heard from other neighborhoods that he had been spotted in town. The next best guess is that he is coming this way, so we need to have the streets clear to better look out for him. Now I understand if you have any complaints, but rest assured it is merely for the safety of y’all and all the other civilians.”

“ I see . . .” Olivia’s father answered slowly. “Thank you, officer. We’ll be sure to get going then.”

The officer gave him a smile and an affirming nod. “ Thank you for understanding sir. You and your daughter stay safe now.”

“ Will do . . .” Her father’s voice trailed off.

Olivia wasn’t too bummed about the curfew. Not really anyways. She was getting rather tired and was ready to go to bed in all honesty.

Tension still remained in the man dressed as a scarecrow, even away from the presence of the officer. As the two of them piled into the old pickup truck- Olivia in the passenger seat, the young girl rolled upher sleeves, sighing at the relief of the sweat and itchiness of her costume. And in turn, allowed the black and purple marks of her abuse to be visible. She wasn’t worried about her bruises being shown; she knew her father didn’t mind as long as they weren’t able to be seen by others.
Still extremely tired from all the walking, she paid no mind to the scarecrow in the driver’s seat who looked towards the bruises with some interest.

“ Thank you by the way,” Olivia quietly spoke up. She kept her eyes facing forward towards the truck’s windshield. “ I had a lot of fun tonight.”

Her father did not say anything.

They drove the rest of the way home in complete silence. It was nice.
Back in the house, Olivia let out a yawn as she headed for the staircase up to her bedroom. Her father watched as he did so. His eyes unblinking and following the little girl in front of him as she headed up the steps and soon vanished.

Even as she was gone, he still remained down there with his eyes intently staring up to the second floor, his breathing heavy from behind the burlap mask he wore. He stood there for a good thirty minutes before taking a step . . . then another . . . then another.

Slowly the man in the scarecrow costume began making his way up the steps, and with every step he took there was an ominous creek of the floorboard that went along with it, as if the house was trying to warn the little girl upstairs of his oncoming arrival. But its warnings were not heard.

At the top of the second floor now, the man made his was to the second door on the right and opened it carefully and as quietly as he could. The light from the hallway seeped into the room as the man nom=w had a clear view of the tired little girl sleeping peacefully in her bed now- her costume thrown carelessly on the floor from wanting to change into her pajamas as quickly as possible.

He continued to watch her for a moment longer. He watched as the covers moved up nd down slightly to signify her deep breaths as she dreamt peacefully.

He stepped inside the bedroom. Prepping up to the right side of the child’s bed frame: His bigger form once agian looming over the child as it had once done hours prior. And then, reaching out his hand, the man grabbed the pink unicorn covers of the bed . . . Slowly pulling them farther up onto the girl’s small form.

Olivia only shifted slightly. Turning over to the side as the man in the scarecrow costume lte go of the covers.

And then.. . . he slowly swalked back to the door of the bedroom, shutting  the door behind him as he made his way back down the steps and outside to the front of the house.

Looking to his right, he gazed across the landscape to the cornfield a few feet away from the house; The cornfield where his handiwork remained from earlier that evening as little Olivia had been getting dressed for a night of candy and costumes.

There out in the field, on the wooden post which bore a resemblance to a cross, where the scarecrow normally resided, was instead a middle-aged man with messy and long red hair. His face was drained of all color and his throat was slit; His eyes were dull and lifeless as the dried-up blood seemed to have poured down onto his filthy, white tanktop.

His wrists were broken as his arms remained outstretched; his hands tightly tied to the post with a leather rope. His legs were tied together and to the post as well.

This man, this man brutally murdered, was none other than Olivia’s own father.

Her REAL father.

As the man in the scarecrow costume took one final look at his masterpiece, he gripped the keys tightly in his fist as he made his way back to the truck he had just driven in. He knew at some point the little girl would find the horror waiting for her just beyond her bedroom window; Her pathetic and horrid screams echoing throughout the cornfield as tears began pouring from her eyes.

Obviously, she would then go and try to find help. He needed to make sure he was long gone by that point. Something that would be easily achieved since the girl was asleep and he had the perfect get-away vehicle.

He would be all the way to the other side of Georgia by the time that gullible little girl discovered what he had done. And it would already be too late.