The Pact with the Scarecrow

Every November Millford makes a deal with the thing in the field. The scarecrow stands

twelve feet tall, stitched from burlap and barbed wire, and when you get close,

you hear it breathing. Last year, the mayor's son refused to participate in the ritual.

They found him three days later, spread across the cornrows like fertilizer. The scarecrow had

moved from its post. Now it stands at the town's edge, arms outstretched, waiting.

Every family brings an offering, a drop of blood on a cloth tied to its wrists.

The fabric is always wet when you touch it. Fresh. Warm.

My neighbor whispered that her grandfather helped build it in 1947, mixing soil with