Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
Atticus
Another victim has come to pay the Watcher a visit.
Even after all these years, I’m still surprised that locals venture into my cornfield. Despite the rumors and the stories and the dead townspeople. They still come to gawk or prod.
To try their luck, to risk it all.
But what surprises me most about the woman standing in front of me is that she doesn’t look like the rest; she doesn’t fit in with the others I’ve seen. Rather than boots, she wears a pair of gray and pink sneakers. And instead of flannel or denim, a jacket with a hood swallows her whole.
If I had to guess, I’d say she isn’t from Cold Springs.
Then why is she here?
Has the legend of the Watcher finally spread farther than the sleepy town nearby? Did the disappearances make the news? Will even more people soon come snooping, eager to catch a glimpse of me?
I swallow down my curiosity, knowing there’s nothing I can do about it.
If they come, they will be dealt with. The way it’s always been.
My eyes drag over the woman, who's shaking like a leaf as my vines slither their way up her legs. She’s tall, close to my height, and has supple curves beneath her ill-fitting clothes. She’d look much better draped in flowing fabrics than the bootcut jeans she’s wearing.
Her skin is pale as moonlight, smattered with copper-colored freckles, and long, fiery hair falls down her back in messy waves.
She’s pretty in a reckless way. Lacking the sophistication of a socialite, but radiating raw and untamed beauty nevertheless.
Too bad she has to die.
“Do you still believe she has no cause to fear me?” I ask, my voice gravelly from disuse. It isn’t often that I have conversations with anyone other than myself, and even those don’t last very long. A few words at most.
She trembles against the vines slowly crushing her to death; it won’t be long before they wring the life from her completely. Still, she doesn’t scream or cry like the hundreds who’ve come before her. They all come looking for the Watcher, but none of them leave.
Not a single one.
“N-no,” her cracked reply hits my ears. She’s no longer looking at me, her eyes squeezed shut in anticipation of what comes next.
The vine around her throat tightens at my silent command, but she does nothing more than wince. Not even a single tear falls.
I'm disappointed.
“You’re as evil as they say. Is that what you want to hear?” she asks, gasping for breath. Anger burns through me, and I don’t hear the rest of her words.
She thinks I'm the evil one.
Of course, she does. They all do.
My origin story has been distorted, forgotten over the decades I've been trapped inside this cornstalk hell. The truth of how I became the Watcher lost to lies and fanciful tales.
They all paint me as the villain.
Sure, I've slaughtered countless men over the years, but it wasn't without cause. They show up to torture and mame me. To try and rid this town of the curse they think I am.
Little do they know, I'm the one cursed, and I’ll be here long after all their corpses are rotting in the ground.
“They are the evil ones,” I correct through gritted teeth—teeth I’m fairly certain no longer resemble my own.
I’m a whisper of the man I once was, my current form a mockery of the life I left behind.
The life that was stolen from me. “So eager to point fingers when they had the chance to save me and left me to rot instead. They turned my curse into a twisted game of torture and expected me not to retaliate. Tell me, girl, how am I the monster?”
“What did they do to you?” she asks, her voice barely above a whisper.
The question fills the space between us, and my vines still. More of her is encased in foliage than not at this point, her face one of the only things I can see. Her eyes have popped open again, vibrant as the bright blue sky, and they're glaring at me, shimmering with desperation.
Does she really care about what happened to me? How I became what I am?
Or is she trying to buy herself time? To figure out a way to escape?
I chuckle. It would be a vain effort at best.
No one escapes unless I allow it.
And I never allow it.
“You wish to know what happened to me?” I inquire with a skeptical lilt to my voice. “It’s not a tale for the faint of heart.”
She narrows her eyes on me. “Now you think I’m dumb and squeamish. I'm flattered.”
I fight the upward twitch of my lips, and my nose brushes against the burlap sack covering my head. Apparently, in the face of danger, her stubbornness runs thick.
A dry chuckle escapes me.
“You amuse me, girl,” I say, silently ordering the vines to loosen their hold. Her throat reappears, along with her shoulders, but her legs remain firmly restrained. “That’s the only reason you’re still alive.”
Her shoulders slump and she sighs.
Is she relieved? She really shouldn't be.
Not when she has just minutes left to live.
“Well, if I entertain you so much, you can call me Cassie, not girl.” She sounds much more confident than she appears. Or maybe she just always looks a little disappointed. “Do you prefer Mr. Scarecrow or the Watcher?”
I glare.
Mr. Scarecrow?
Do I look like a children's storybook character?
I open my mouth, tempted to ask what makes her so brave in the face of death, but her question gives me pause. In all the years that I've been stuck here, frying beneath the blistering sun or freezing to the point of numbness in the winter, I've solely been known as the Watcher.
No one ever lives long enough to ask many questions, and no one has asked my name.
Cassie cocks an eyebrow at me, waiting, and for the first time in over a hundred years, I falter.
Do I remember who I was before I was tied to this post?
My mind wanders, slipping back in time. Slowly, like a stone sinking through molasses, I fight my way through the seemingly endless stretch of faces and attacks I’ve endured. The pain, the boredom, the hatred that’s burned for a century.
I reach farther into the past, to before the cornfield…
Before the curse…
My heart—or what’s left of it—slams hard in my chest when a long-lost memory sparks to life.
It’s hazy, but it’s there.
A beautiful white farmhouse on the outskirts of Cold Springs with a sleek Model T parked out front. A happy dog bounding through the yard. My parents sitting together on the porch swing, while my siblings and I played in the yard. And then—
Atticus.
The name comes out of everywhere and nowhere all at once. I don’t remember who called to me in the memory, but the name snaps into place with a sense of rightness I can’t deny. Recognition lights me up.
“My name is… Atticus,” I say.
“Atticus,” she repeats, and unfamiliar warmth spreads through me. It’s a feeling I no longer recognize, something that died along with my former life when I was cursed to this existence.
I immediately shove it down, intent to ignore it. There is no place for warmth or happy feelings in this cornfield. I’m doomed to eternal agony, and getting my hopes up for even a second that I could have something more is pointless.
My jaw hardens at the thought.
This is what I am.
It’s all I can be.
The hardened, heartless, hollow Watcher.
“What did they do to you?” Cassie’s voice somehow makes it through my bitter thoughts.
“You’re too nosy for your own good,” I warn her, but the sharpness has faded from my voice. “But, as I’ve said, you amuse me. So I will tell you the truth. I was cursed.”
She blinks at me, a furrow forming between her auburn brows. A mix of skepticism and awe washes over her features, and the spark of anger I felt earlier returns.
“You don’t believe me?” I ask.
“I… I don’t know what I believe,” she admits, running her tongue over her teeth. “Curses and talking scarecrows shouldn’t exist by any means, and yet…”
“And yet, here I am.” I cock my head to the side, one of the only motions I’m allowed with my bindings. “If you can’t believe your own eyes, what can you believe?”
She chews her bottom lip, and I can almost see the gears turning in her head.
“I can believe these vines are cutting the circulation off in my legs.” She glances down at the foliage restraining her, and they twitch a little tighter in response. With a hiss, she looks back up to glare at me. “Fucking stop it, won’t you?”
I chuckle in earnest. “Such a filthy mouth for a lady.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t put up a front to please strangers. Especially ones trying to kill me.” Her eyes narrow to slits. “Who cursed you?”
“A woman.”
“Really? I would have never guessed,” she replies, her tone full of sarcasm. “Especially when you’re such a charmer…”
It’s my turn to glare as annoyance ripples through me. Maybe it would be better to just end her now. Sure, I’d once again be alone without anyone to talk to, but I wouldn’t have to deal with her sass.
“She cursed me because I didn’t love her,” I grind out, refusing to dwell too much on the memory. I’ve forgotten her name after all these years, but her wicked eyes and raven hair are burned into my soul. “She saw to it that if she couldn’t be with me forever, no one could.”
Her cocky facade fades, replaced by a look I know far too well: pity.
“I-I’m so—”
“Save it,” I cut her off, looking past her into the endless sea of cornstalks. “I don’t want your sympathy.”
Silence falls over the field. My closest companion, my only friend.
It’s comforting, familiar.
Then, I look back at Cassie, and my normalcy shatters.
The fact that she’s still standing, still breathing, is a miracle in and of itself.
Why haven’t I killed her yet? The question plays on repeat in my head and goes unanswered.
“And since then?” she asks when I don’t say anything else. “Since you’ve been trapped here… the townspeople have tried to kill you?”
“Countless times.” I roll my eyes toward the sky, which is quickly fading from blue to rich hues to violet and red.
“They’ve set me on fire, torn me apart, shot me.
One farmer even fed me to his horses, but while I feel pain, I can never die.
It’s part of the curse. I wither away all year, only to be rejuvenated on All Hallows’ Eve. It’s a cycle I can never break.”
“How long have you been cursed?” she asks softly.
I sigh automatically, the harshness of my reality hitting me like a sack of feed.
“Over a hundred years,” I answer. “With hundreds more to go.”