Reborn as a Prophet in a Horror Movie

#067Reader Mode

#067

“Ah…oh…wow…uh…”

Seojun managed to stutter, his words failing him as he stared at the horrific sight before him. The murderous scarecrow, no longer needing to maintain his disguise, crouched forward with a twisted grin, and the mutilated bodies of Tracy and Bailey lay mangled on either side of it.

April’s body was a nightmarish patchwork – neck, arms, and legs stretched taut, barely connected by strained bones and vessels. Organs bulged against the taut skin, and his lungs spilled out from a gash near his stomach, twitching sporadically. It was a pitiful reminder of the cruel murder inflicted upon him.

But instead of a burlap sack beneath the straw hat, there was a small face with a long slit for a mouth. A whistling laugh seeped out, making it difficult for anyone to see April as a victim. The scarecrow spoke with April’s voice.

“Hello. You’ve brought Leah.”

Seojun’s heart pounded wildly in his chest. Despite mental preparations, he nearly jumped out of his skin at the shocking sight. It was far more terrible than he could have imagined. He pressed down hard on his heaving chest, momentarily considering covering Leah’s eyes. However, the child’s gaze was not fixed on April, but near his feet.

“Mom…” Leah whispered, her voice small and pained.

“Leah, Leah, Leah, oh.”

“Corn, muhguh, ahhhh.”

Tracy and Bailey’s bodies were a mangled, congealed mess – flesh from limbs and torsos sloughing off in chunks to merge into a single disgusting rotten heap.

“Leah, don’t look,” Seojun tugged her hand, but she shook her head stubbornly, staring ahead.

“No, it’s okay. I came here ready to say goodbye to them. It’s okay.”

Voice thick with emotion, Leah muttered ‘it’s okay’ repeatedly under her breath. Rather than dissuade her further, Seojun squeezed her hand reassuringly. Parting was inevitable in their plan. Not letting go of her hand, he approached April. The creature that had once masked itself as a harmless child now reveled in its true, twisted form, cackling mockingly.

“Ahahahaahaha! Why’d you come all this way? You should’ve just run and ran until your last breath.”

Though his eyes were hidden beneath that tattered straw hat, the cruel curl of his smile said it all – a sneer, a taunt. The pitchfork he gripped looked ready to tear Seojun open at any moment, scraping out his insides like a sadistic gardener. A weapon perfectly reflecting its wielder’s malicious intent, quivering with dark promise…

“Leah, let go of his hand and come play with me,” April crooned. “Let’s have some fun punishing the parents who bullied you.”

His gloved finger pointed at Tracy’s ravaged body, her jaw askew – the one part still relatively intact. As if mimicking April’s words, Tracy’s corpse seemed to laugh, a haunting echo. “L-let’s have some fun!”

“I don’t want that,” Leah stammered quickly, face drained of color. April’s lips pursed in an exaggerated pout. It seemed impossible for him to understand, no matter how hard he tried. Straightening the pitchfork, April’s sinewy body merged with the looming scarecrow frame, towering over them menacingly – his unnatural height alone striking fear.

“Why not? Getting revenge on those who hurt you is fun. You just haven’t experienced it yet, that’s all. Or do you trust that guy more than me? I don’t get it.”

The young man in the puffy blue jacket, Seojun, held no redeeming qualities in April’s crazed eyes other than his height, especially as he looked down on them with contempt. With a light, mocking tone, he spoke again.

“Aha! Did that imbecile promise to get you out of here or something?”

Wrong. If anything, it was Leah who had insisted they could escape this accursed place. Seojun barely managed to curl a trembling finger, wiping away the cold sweat beading on his brow.

“Leah, it’s impossible. Someone who’s never been here couldn’t find their way out of this cornfield. He’d be slaughtered by Tracy and Bailey before even taking ten steps.”

“Well, from the looks of it, they couldn’t kill me even if they wanted to. They can barely stand on their own,” Seojun remarked dryly.

“Ah, you noticed their pitiful state? Tracy and Bailey are weaklings playing at monsters. Really pathetic adults, aren’t they?” April’s deranged cackle sliced the air like knives.

The blatant liar was insufferably despicable. Seojun glared at him, clenching his jaw until he relaxed – he wasn’t about to grind down his precious teeth over this creep. April approached slowly, a smirk on his grotesque face, unfazed by Seojun’s death stare. The slurping, wet sounds from his unnatural gait made Seojun’s skin crawl. Now they stood mere steps apart, monster against human.

“Tell me, do you actually believe in anything?”

“I’ve faced an actual monster from space, so this backwoods horror show seems pretty tame in comparison,” Seojun boasted, crossing his arms with a bravado that only drew a contemptuous look from April – the kind of regard one might have for a dung beetle. It was a sad truth that sometimes, even speaking facts doesn’t get the message across. April put on a fake childlike voice.

“I really want to be friends with Leah. So let’s make a deal, hmm? Give me the girl and I’ll let you leave this cornfield.”

“What?”

Leah’s shoulders jerked at the sudden offer, her face turning deathly pale as she tore her sullen gaze away from the congealed mess that had once been Tracy. Was April really trying to turn them against each other? For a moment, Seojun’s mind raced with thoughts of Sun Tzu’s Art of War, but he quickly dismissed the ancient text as a foolish distraction.

Even if April succeeded in driving a wedge between them, what would he gain? Watching an adult abandon a kid might satisfy his spiteful heart for a day, but it would only force him to relive his own unpleasant past.

Or maybe this was all just a ploy to utterly crush Leah’s hope, to make her feel so desperately alone that she’d crumble into despair. Perhaps April had some vile scheme to turn her into an evil spirit herself, using her pain and negative emotions as the mechanism.

But one look at the resilience burning in Leah’s eyes told Seojun that April’s twisted ploy was doomed. She’d slipped through this monster’s clutches too many times to be fazed now. As she stood her ground, Seojun had to wonder what the hell April thought he could gain with such a ludicrous offer. He squinted suspiciously, eye narrowing beneath those long lashes.

“So if I just hand Leah over, what then? You’ll just dump my body on the side of the road? It’s obvious that’s what sick f*cks like you do. ‘I only promised to let you leave the cornfield, not spare your life.’ Is that it? Do you think I’m stupid enough to believe you, you bastard?”

“What kind of messed up life have you lived to be this paranoid? I really will let you go unharmed.”

“Living in the same neighborhood as Bobby, Golden, and Frank can really mess with your head. But why her of all people? Where’s this sudden ‘compassion’ for some dead girl you just stumbled on coming from?”

His sarcastic remark seemed to pull something loose in the Scarecrow. Its head tilted with an unnatural, jerky motion, that mass of tangled leather and muscle lolling disturbingly. The sight of that severed head swinging lifeless on its pole was nothing short of horrific.

“I’ve never let a single lost soul escape this place…” April’s voice took on an eerie, almost wistful tone. “Until now. That was my mistake and I admit it. I never thought I’d feel so…lonely.”

He let the words hang in the air, like a child hoping for sympathy. “I feel this connection with Leah – she suffered the same cruel fate I did. If being family is too much, can’t we just be friends?”

Leah’s face scrunched up like she’d bitten into a rotten apple. “That’s not how friendship works. It’s not a one-way street where only one person feels something.”

An uneasy feeling crept over Seojun as April’s sweet words twisted like venomous snakes, trying to ensnare Leah in its grip. But what was this ominous tingle sending chills through his body? His crossed arms loosened briefly before tightening again. This wasn’t some intuitive premonition, but the gut instinct of someone who had been isolated for far too long. The creeping awareness of a dark delusion taking root.

“The murderous scarecrow is showing you mercy. Accept it gratefully,” April’s voice took on a sly, coaxing tone. “Surely you don’t value Leah, this girl you just met, over your own life…right?” Then, he let out an audible gasp.

“Ah.”

His thin lips parted involuntarily as his eyes, previously hidden beneath the straw hat, scrutinized Seojun. Seojun met April’s piercing amber stare unflinchingly.

“You…you never intended to kill me at all.”

Seojun’s heart skipped a beat as the secret they’d tried to hide sparked a reaction in the scarecrow. April’s eyes twitched, a sign that was impossible to miss.

Flustered, Leah clutched Seojun’s leg. The answer had been hidden in the child’s story. With a discreet look towards Leah, he faced the monstrous, terrifying April.

“So, what’ll it be? The bogeyman or the monster under the bed?”

“……”

Silence fell, broken only by the whispers of the cornfield’s stalks rustling in the breeze.

“Tracy, Bailey, you…” Seojun’s voice was rough. “You described this ‘murderous scarecrow’ in such vivid, disturbing detail.”

The Laurens had initially disguised their true nature, pretending to be human before revealing their gruesome selves. Or so he’d thought. Looking back, their appearance seemed intentionally grotesque.

If they’d shown up with slashed stomachs from the start, Seojun would’ve run without a word. Instead, they posed as human, casually dropping the murderous scarecrow’s name. They hinted at the cruel, terrifying nature of this being, drawing him in.

Then came April’s tale of the murderous scarecrow’s origins—a terrifying legend he’d crafted himself. The scarecrow was a monstrous, curse-wielding force of reckless horror with a dark, haunting past.

Seojun had never heard of this “murderous scarecrow” before entering the cornfield. No surprise, given that April killed anyone who strayed from the path into the crops.

In April’s eyes, any reason was good enough to justify murder. Maybe he needed body parts, so he slaughtered people. Or perhaps he harbored a deep resentment from his own suffering. It could even be a long-repressed desire to kill from when he was alive. Regardless, the outcome never changed.

The Lauren couple’s van, abandoned by the road, must have been April’s last chance. But as he confessed, he’d made a mistake. He murdered Tracy and Bailey, cruelly mirroring his own demise. And though he never physically harmed Leah, he left her to wander the cornfield, slowly starving to death.

Until Seojun heard Leah’s desperate cries, no one else had dared enter this godforsaken place.

“April, you need extra…flesh.”