6. Chapter 6
Hollow cloth divots where eyes should be hover over me, and threaded lips pull upward into a smile. A strong finger scratches down my cheek and traces my parted mouth so gently my heart pangs.
“Silas?” I whisper.
“It’s time, eager one. Come to me.”
I startle awake. My eyes fly open to the dark sky above me and I try to move my hands but they feel heavy and tingly, like I’ve fallen asleep on every part of my body wrong.
“What the?” I mumble.
My mouth is dry like cotton, and tastes of the cider I drank. Cider. I drank Ava’s cider and then—that fucking bitch and her friends drugged me!
I do my best to move, slowly my senses coming back online and my limbs turning usable. The day, and what happened before I passed out, rushes back to me, and my heart takes off like a racehorse at the starting line.
Silas isn’t just a regular scarecrow. He is the long-forgotten harvest god.
And I’m his sacrifice.
A male scream penetrates the air, and a second later I hear running. I force myself to sit up, my vision narrowing to vignettes. I blink to push the darkness back, and when it becomes clear, a scream of my own sticks in my throat at what I see.
Bodies. Bodies everywhere. Jeremy is dead; his throat slit, and eyes vacant. Olive’s neck is cocked to a strange angle, and when I shift to look next to me, I cover my mouth, unsure of what to feel, think, or do.
Ava is dead. Her mouth parted on a silent scream, her eyes bulged and bloody.
I should feel sad about her death, about all these people’s deaths, but it’s hard to feel that way when they fucking drugged me to become a sacrifice. So that I would be the one lying dead and bleeding on the dirt instead of them.
The rustling of corn gets louder along with the beat of heavy footsteps. I scramble to stand, but before I can, Mike bursts through the corn. He stops when he sees me awake, his features shifting from unadulterated fear to anger.
“It was supposed to be you!” He screams.
He lunges for me, but before he can get far, what looks like a piece of wood drives through his chest. This time I do scream.
Mike’s eyes widen with the realization that his time here on earth has come to an end.
“Fucking—” His lungs rattle, “—Silas.” Mike drops sideways to the ground, irises wide and lifeless now, blood dribbling from his lips and the corners of his eyes like fresh tears.
I stare at him for a long time, lost in a trance of what I just witnessed, and the carnage around me. It’s not until I hear the movement of cloth and crunch of straw that I look away from the dead asshole, and up to the being that is the reason for their deaths.
“Silas,” I whisper.
The scarecrow from my fantasy steps slowly toward me, the light from the bonfire flickering over his straw body, and beautifully monstrous face that’s partially cast in shadow by his wide-brimmed hat.
I can’t move, can’t breathe. A small voice in my head tells me to run.
To flee for my life. But with every step he takes toward me, my body does the exact opposite of what it should be doing.
My heart races—not from fear, but from excitement—as my breaths return to my lungs in short pants. When he stops near my feet and peers down at me, sparks shoot from the soles of my feet upward, my clit pulsing back to life and arousal coiling like snakes in my low belly.
We stare at each other, the pop and crackle of the logs and the occasional rustling of corn an eerie soundtrack.
He looks exactly how he did in my fantasy, like he could very well be a tall and muscular man, yet it’s so obvious he’s not.
He sways slightly, as if he can feel the breeze make its way through his body, and the tilt of his threaded mouth should make me scream. Yet, I don’t.
“Silas.” His name tumbles off my tongue, but he doesn’t move. “Are you going to kill me now?”
His silence drags on, the wind picking up around us, and blowing through the strands of my dark hair a mess with bits of dirt and leaves. I slowly push myself up from the ground, watching him carefully as I do. He still doesn’t move, yet his hollow eyes remain on me, never wavering.
I brush the dirt away from my dress, noticing the belt from my costume is missing, and so are my shoes.
I no longer look like a milkmaid, but the sacrifice from my dream last night.
I can’t believe I didn’t think of it before.
But how was I supposed to guess the townspeople would dress me up, drug me, and offer me to their harvest god?
A harvest god who has now taken more than one sacrifice.
Ten, to be exact. That wasn’t in any of the articles I read, and as my brain puts all the pieces together, I know tonight is not his usual MO.
It’s always one sacrifice. And there’s no doubt in my mind that the man who went missing when I was a kid was given to Silas—and before I succumbed to the drugging, I heard one of them talk about the man who lived in the farmhouse before me and blood they had to clean up.
Acid rises in my throat. Did they always put the sacrifice in the Mortimers farmhouse? Fuck. I was literally a lamb being primed and led to slaughter, and I didn’t even know it. But I’m still alive. And well…everyone else is dead.
Silas steps closer to me and reaches out his hand. I flinch, thinking he must have a knife or something, that this is the end of my days. Maybe he’s finally had enough of this town's bullshit, and he won’t rest until every last person is dead.
Before my life can flash before my eyes, his hand cups my cheek. The heat mixed with the sensation of his harsh glove is familiar, and my body relaxes. The warmth that coiled in my belly spreads upward, until I swear a moan almost slips from me.
“I would never kill you, Harper.”
I blink at him. “You know my name.”
His thumb draws over my lips. “And you know mine.”
“Yes.”
“Do you know what I am?”
I nod as he traces my lips again. He’s so close to me that I can feel the heat coming from his body. I wonder if he pressed his hips to mine, would I feel the bulge from last night in my dream? I push the inappropriate thought away.
“You killed them all,” I say.
He cocks his head as the logs continue to snap and pop.
“They harmed you.”
“But I was the sacrifice.”
A tender hum of knowing vibrates from his throat. “You’re mine, Harper. That is a fact.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Do you not remember your words to me last night?”
Confusion clouds my mind before I realize what he’s speaking of. “That was a dream—a fantasy.”
“Was it?” His hand slips to the side of my neck while his other falls to my hip, slowly gliding over my dress toward my sex.
“It had to have been.”
He pauses right above my pussy, one of his fingers trailing back and forth over the fabric on top of my mound.
“This sweet cunt of yours isn’t mine for the taking?”
Saliva pools in my mouth, and my body screams for me to say yes. “This isn’t real,” I say instead. “This is all a wild Halloween nightmare.”
His finger trails dangerously south, but he doesn’t put the pressure anywhere near where I want it.
He lowers his mouth until I can feel his very real breath ghost over my lips, and I smell the same smokey, spicy scent of him that I did in my dream.
My nipples draw into tight buds, and more arousal floods my core.
“It’s real, my eager one,” he purrs. “I’m real. Just as you are real.”
“Prove it to me.”
My heart thuds fast in my chest at the words I didn’t expect to say. I just told a very old murderous harvest god to prove to me that he’s real. How exactly? I want to say I don’t know, but the images in my mind are ones that should be illegal, or at the very least rated XXX.
Silas pulls back just enough so he can lift my chin.
“If I do, do you promise to give your body to me freely, like we agreed? To take everything I give you?”
I swallow the nervous lump in my throat. I should be a smart woman, ask him what exactly he means. But all I can think of is how my body is practically aching for him—needing him in a way I’ve never felt before.
“Will I die?”
He smiles. A wide smile that should be terrifying but is somehow charming. “No, Harper. You will not die. At least, not for a long time.”
“Okay,” I whisper, believing him even though I shouldn’t.
He grips my chin tighter in his grasp. “Say, yes, Silas.”
“Yes, Silas.”
His features turn devilish and my toes curl in the dirt. He releases my chin and steps back.
“Run.”
“What?” I blink up at him.
He looms over me, the strength of him buzzing against my exposed skin.
“I said run, eager one. Before I show you how real I am in front of the dead.”
When I don’t immediately move, his demeanor becomes more ominous, my body pulling tight with need.
He chuckles and tries to snatch me.
My brain logs back online and I take off, his sinister laughter following me through the swaying corn.