Reborn as a Prophet in a Horror Movie

#059Reader Mode

Trigger Warning: May contain scenes of violence that are graphically depicted, which may upset sensitive viewers.

#059

“A child?”

Seojun’s gaze drifted down to the mop of brown hair on Tracy’s head, and his heart skipped a beat. The image of the emaciated, mummified child he had found earlier flashed through his mind, jolting him like a lightning bolt. Biting his trembling lower lip, he asked cautiously, “Have you tried calling 911 yet?”

Tracy’s brow furrowed with concern as she shook her head. “We were in such a rush to get out of the car that we both left our phones behind.”

“That must be really worrying for you,” Seojun said sympathetically.

“Of course we’re worried,” Tracy admitted, but then her demeanor suddenly shifted to a composure that seemed oddly out of place given the circumstances. “But it’s not like we’ve been out here for days. Right, Bailey?”

Bailey nodded, his voice surprisingly calm for a father with a missing child. “Yeah, the sun was still high in the sky when we got here. There’s still plenty of daylight left.”

The Laurens’ remarkably collected attitude, considering their child was missing, was unnerving. Tracy went on, “Kids can be resourceful when they wander off on their own. They get themselves into all kinds of mischief before strolling back like nothing happened, usually when their stomachs start rumbling.”

There was an eerie undercurrent to Tracy’s voice as she talked about their missing child, so at odds with the warmth she had shown Bailey just moments ago. Seojun’s dark eyes flicked between the couple, searching for any trace of a connection to the mummified remains he had discovered earlier. But no matter where he looked, this lively pair seemed a world away from that tiny body, with no hint of grief or recognition in their eyes.

It was uncharacteristically thoughtful of Seojun to hold back from mentioning the child’s body right away. He didn’t want to heighten the anguish of parents who had already lost their child. Yet the Laurens chatted breezily, their laughter punctuating the conversation.

“Help yourself to some corn while we wait,” Tracy offered casually, waving at the rows of stalks surrounding them. “We were just saying how hungry we were, so we started snacking.”

“Absolutely,” Bailey chimed in, plucking an ear from the stalk beside him and holding it out to Seojun, husk and all, with a grin. “The kernels are huge and juicy. You must be starving after all that walking, huh?”

The sweet aroma of ripe corn blended with the sharper, more cloying scent of green leaves, permeating the air. Wary of the pointed tips, Seojun drew back slightly. “No thanks, I’m fine. But is it okay to eat it raw like that?”

Bailey tore the large leaves off the cornstalk with gusto and sank his teeth into the juicy cob with an audacious crunch. Still chewing, he cheekily responded, “What else are we supposed to do when we’re this hungry? It’s just corn, isn’t it, darling?”

Tracy eagerly joined him, stuffing her face heartily as the succulent kernels glistened like pearls against her deep red lips. “Exactly! We’re starving here, and there’s an endless supply.” Her cheeks bulged as she spoke. The chilling sight made Seojun shiver as much as the sound of their teeth crunching on the raw kernels.

He couldn’t understand the Laurens’ nonchalance. They were in a seemingly endless cornfield, venturing further with every step they took. How could they possibly come across their missing child in a place so vast, let alone prioritize their hunger in such circumstances?

A lump formed in Seojun’s throat, and his shoulders tensed with unease. He contemplated distancing himself from the Laurens immediately. But before he could excuse himself, Bailey’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he wiped his chin with a kerchief. An dark chuckle escaped his lips, his mouth twitching into a smirk.

“Speaking of scarecrows,” Bailey began, “have you heard about the murderous scarecrow that haunts these parts?”

“A… murderous scarecrow?”

The name itself sounded sinister, but how could an inanimate sack of straw and burlap commit murder? Seojun’s gaze drifted up to the scarecrow looming overhead – a tattered sack for a head, red gloves for hands, and a sloppy permanent marker face with an almost mocking smile.

Bailey followed his suspicious look and guffawed. “Haha! what, you think that happy fella is the culprit?”

“You never know… it could be,” Tracy interjected around an ear of corn, a sly grin on her lips. One hand gnawed the cob while the other pointed to their silent, grinning companion, almost ominously. Were it not for the corn in both hands, the mood would have been eerie.

“Long ago,” Tracy intoned, her eyes glinting, “some parents abandoned their child in a field, leaving them with nothing but a scarecrow for company… Just like that one.”

“Abandoned their child? In a place like this?” Seojun rasped, his throat parched, and not because he was thirsty.

He surveyed the landscape – the scarecrow smiling dumbly with its crooked grin, the afternoon sun still blazing overhead, the endless cornfield. Abandoning a child in such a huge field alone was a death sentence.

Seojun eyed Tracy skeptically. Her smile seemed friendly, yet those slate-blue eyes flashed cold as steel. “Not all children in the world are cute and cuddly,” she continued airily. “That child was too strange. Oh, you might be too young to understand, but some are inexplicably nasty little creatures – clinging, demanding, always fixing their gaze somewhere else entirely when you try to talk sense into them, you know?”

She gave an exaggerated shiver, as if the mere thought raised goosebumps. Seojun felt a pang of recognition. Hadn’t he been just such an odd, distracted child, mixing reality and imagination? But now, as an adult, Seojun had the sense to see how absurd Tracy’s argument was.

“Are you saying they abandoned their child just for being unpleasant?” Seojun asked incredulously. “That hardly seems like the kid’s fault.”

Tracy tilted her head with a patronizing smile. “It might seem that way to someone who doesn’t know any better. I understand. The world isn’t so black-and-white, dear. Without walking in another’s shoes, who are we to judge? But some children… they have a darkness. Bailey, why don’t you tell this young man about that dreadful child…”

She trailed off leadingly as Bailey snapped his corn cob in two, kernels raining down. He chased them through the dirt, scooping a grimy handful into his mouth with a loud crunch.

Seeing Seojun’s shock, he gave an awkward chuckle. “Sorry, just famished, y’know?” He licked his lips before adding, “So this tale seems hard to believe, eh?”

What seemed unbelievable was this man’s strange as hell behavior. But Seojun held his tongue. He had a foreboding feeling that questioning these two odd characters might end up with Bailey biting off more than just corn.

Seojun gave an ambiguous nod instead of a clear response. Bailey nodded as if he understood, stroking his chin with his dirt-covered hand. Seojun couldn’t figure out what the hell he knew.

“Yes, that’s possible. But we’re really telling the truth. We’re not sure how old the child was. Let’s see, about up to my knee?”

Bailey tapped his knee. Both Laurens were shorter than Seojun, but unlike Tracy, who was as thin as a branch in winter, Bailey had a stockier build, with slabs of muscle covering his thick arms and legs.

“There’s a major artery here, you know it?” Bailey continued, drawing a line across his thigh with a finger. “Well, that abandoned child, couldn’t have been more than nine, knew it too. Can you imagine? He reached out not for candy, but for flesh – tore through muscle to sever that vital vessel.”

“It didn’t matter what the weapon was,” Tracy sang in a macabre tune as she plucked a corn kernel for each unfortunate animal killed in the story. “A kitchen knife, a stray screwdriver, or even a pen, they were just tools to unlock the secrets he sought.” She met Seojun’s gaze, her cloudy eyes holding his reflection hostage.

“He started innocently enough, you see,” she continued. “In science class, dissecting frogs wasn’t enough to quench his thirst. What happens if you cut a frog in half? He wanted to touch their beating hearts, their slimy livers, and explorable lungs with his own two hands. Oh, he had such a hunger for knowledge!”

Tracy crushed an unripe corn in her hand, punctuating the words with a snap. Sour juice dripped down her fingers. “Then he moved on to the winged ones. What if you stab a sparrow’s eyeball with a knife? Can it reach the depths of an eye socket and find the optic nerve? And they say rabbits don’t vomit, but what if you feed them needles? It was the curiosity of a special child, you see, a hunger for knowledge that only grew with each new lesson learned.”

“When his blade finally turned to people, the child’s parents knew they couldn’t ignore it any longer. They decided to abandon him. Who could blame them? A child that just wouldn’t change, year after year… it was too much to bear.”

With a sweeping motion, she pointed to the cornfields around her. “Yes, abandoned right here, beside that scarecrow.” Her grey eyes narrowed. “The murderous scarecrow’s origins are unclear. But what’s certain is that it haunts these acres still, swaying gently as it waits for another opportunity.”

She leaned in, her voice dropping. “Left alone, the child grew weaker, while the scarecrow’s patience tightened like a noose. Watching, waiting… until the perfect moment to strike.”

Thump, thump, thump. Her ominous words mingled with the heavy thuds of Bailey gnawing on corn. The psychopath’s childhood story and the discordant backdrop left Seojun reeling. The searing wind clawed at his neck, scraping down his dry throat like sandpaper.

The cornfield, the mummified corpse, the couple with bizarre behavior, the murderous scarecrow… it was all utterly strange.

“Do you see the pitchfork clutched in the scarecrow’s grasp? That exact one… The bloodthirsty scarecrow lurched towards the child, fallen and defenseless, and savagely tore into his tender belly. Can you believe it? The scarecrow, lacking any manners, ripped him apart without so much as a thought to remove the child’s clothes first. The red flesh, the blood, oh goodness the blood. Bailey, Bailey, you must tell him about it too!”

Instinctively, Seojun’s hand ran over his lower abdomen. His skin was smooth, untouched. Yet, he could almost feel himself transformed into that small child, standing helpless before the scarecrow, his stomach throbbing with a phantom pain. Tracy cackled at seeing Seojun’s involuntary action.

Encouraged by her mirth, Bailey moved towards her with ease. He pulled Tracy into a warm embrace, his eyes never straying from Seojun’s face. They swayed and twirled in a silent dance, their gaze locked onto his.

“My wife speaks the truth. Are you aware of how effortlessly human skin can be punctured? The murderous scarecrow, after ripping open the child’s belly, twisted the empty intestines around its pitchfork!”

“There’s a belly, gaping wide, nothing inside you see, hollowed out, but not a trace of anatomy,” Bailey and Tracy’s speech became increasingly disjointed and chaotic. “Inner bits all tangled, like potato roots they’re strung, organs all in a mess, how splendidly fused!”

Seojun’s frown deepened as the Laurens swayed chest to chest, lost in their own twisted world. Clearly these two were downright insane. Did their lost child even exist?

He wasted no time in thinking about it anymore; he decided to part ways with the Laurens immediately.

Seojun cautiously stepped back, hoping to slip away unnoticed. However, as he retreated, his sneaker heel crushed scattered kernels with a sickening squelch. Glancing down, he expected to find the usual white remnants, but instead found them coated in a deep, dark red liquid. Without thinking, he picked one up, the sticky substance clinging to his fingers.

It was strange. Why would the corn that Tracy and Bailey had been munching on and carelessly tossing aside be smeared with such a thick, gooey substance? His gaze traveled upward, following a trail from their feet, over their knees, and along their thighs, until it finally settled on their lower abdomens, which were pressed firmly against each other. A sudden, nauseating realization hit him like a punch to the gut. How had he not noticed until now? Their bellies were sliced open from end to end, a sinister darkness oozing from the wounds.

And from that pitch-black void, a single kernel of corn fell.