مترسک شبگرد فصل 01

The Scarecrow Walks at Midnight - Chapter 1

“Hey, Jodie—wait up!”

I turned and squinted into the bright sunlight. My brother, Mark, was still on the concrete train platform. The train had clattered off. I could see it snaking its way through the low, green meadows in the distance.

I turned to Stanley. Stanley is the hired man on my grandparents’ farm. He stood beside me, carrying both suitcases. “Look in the dictionary for the word ‘slowpoke’,” I said, “and you’ll see Mark’s picture.” Stanley smiled at me. “I like the dictionary, Jodie,” he said. “Sometimes I read it for hours.” “Hey, Mark—get a move on!” I cried. But he was taking his good time, walking slowly, in a daze as usual.

I tossed my blond hair behind my shoulders and turned back to Stanley. Mark and I hadn’t visited the farm for a year. But Stanley still looked the same.

He’s so skinny. “Like a noodle”, my grandma always says. His denim overalls always look five sizes too big on him.

Stanley is about forty or forty-five, I think. He wears his dark hair in a crewcut, shaved close to his head. His ears are huge. They stick way out and are always bright red. And he has big, round, brown eyes that remind me of puppy eyes.

Stanley isn’t very smart. Grandpa Kurt always says that Stanley isn’t working with a full one hundred watts.

But Mark and I really like him. He has a quiet sense of humor. And he is kind and gentle and friendly, and always has lots of amazing things to show us whenever we visit the farm.

“You look nice, Jodie,” Stanley said, his cheeks turning as red as his ears. “How old are you now?” “Twelve,” I told him. “And Mark is eleven.”

He thought about it. “That makes twenty-three,” he joked.

We both laughed. You never know what Stanley is going to say!

“I think I stepped in something gross,” Mark complained, catching up to us.

I always know what Mark is going to say. My brother only knows three words—cool, weird, and gross. Really. That’s his whole vocabulary.

As a joke, I gave him a dictionary for his last birthday. “You’re weird,” Mark said when I handed it to him. “What a gross gift.” He scraped his white high-tops on the ground as we followed Stanley to the beat-up, red pickup truck. “Carry my backpack for me,” Mark said, trying to shove the bulging backpack at me.

“No way,” I told him. “Carry it yourself.”

The backpack contained his Walkman, about thirty tapes, comic books, his Game Boy, and at least fifty game cartridges. I knew he planned to spend the whole month lying on the hammock on the screened-in back porch of the farmhouse, listening to music and playing video games.

Well… no way!

Mom and Dad said it was my job to make sure Mark got outside and enjoyed the farm. We were so cooped up in the city all year. That’s why they sent us to visit Grandpa Kurt and Grandma Miriam for a month each summer—to enjoy the great outdoors.

We stopped beside the truck while Stanley searched his overall pockets for the key. “It’s going to get pretty hot today,” Stanley said, “unless it cools down.” A typical Stanley weather report.

I gazed out at the wide, grassy field beyond the small train station parking lot. Thousands of tiny white puffballs floated up against the clear blue sky.

It was so beautiful!

Naturally, I sneezed.

I love visiting my grandparents’ farm. My only problem is, I’m allergic to just about everything on it.

So Mom packs several bottles of my allergy medicine for me—and lots of tissues.

“Gesundheit,” Stanley said. He tossed our two suitcases in the back of the pickup. Mark slid his backpack in, too. “Can I ride in back?” he asked.

He loves to lie flat in the back, staring up at the sky, and bumping up and down really hard.

Stanley is a terrible driver. He can’t seem to concentrate on steering and driving at the right speed at the same time. So there are always lots of quick turns and heavy bumps.

Mark lifted himself into the back of the pickup and stretched out next to the suitcases. I climbed beside Stanley in the front.

A short while later, we were bouncing along the narrow, twisting road that led to the farm. I stared out the dusty window at the passing meadows and farmhouses. Everything looked so green and alive.

Stanley drove with both hands wrapped tightly around the top of the steering wheel. He sat forward stiffly, leaning over the wheel, staring straight ahead through the windshield without blinking.

“Mr. Mortimer doesn’t farm his place anymore,” he said, lifting one hand from the wheel to point to a big, white farmhouse on top of a sloping, green hill.

“Why not?” I asked.

“Because he died,” Stanley replied solemnly.

See what I mean? You never know what Stanley is going to say.

We bounced over a deep rut in the road. I was sure Mark was having a great time in back.

The road leads through the small town, so small that it doesn’t even have a name. The farmers have always called it Town.

It has a feed store, a combination gas station and grocery store, a white-steepled church, a hardware store, and a mailbox.

There were two trucks parked in front of the feed store. I didn’t see anyone as we barreled past.

My grandparents’ farm is about two miles from town. I recognized the cornfields as we approached.

“The corn is so high already!” I exclaimed, staring through the bouncing window. “Have you eaten any yet?” “Just at dinner,” Stanley replied.

Suddenly, he slowed the truck and turned his eyes to me. “The scarecrow walks at midnight,” he uttered in a low voice.

“Huh?” I wasn’t sure I’d heard correctly.

“The scarecrow walks at midnight,” he repeated, training his big puppy eyes on me. “I read it in the book.” I didn’t know what to say, so I laughed. I thought maybe he was making a joke.

Days later, I realized it was no joke.