Carl had been complaining about the tooth for nearly twenty miles.

“It tastes like pennies,” he said, pressing his tongue against the replacement molar. “Whole side of my mouth tastes like I’m sucking on loose change.”

Lenny kept both hands on the steering wheel and watched the empty country road stretch into the sinking sun.

“You paid forty dollars for it,” he said. “What did you expect, gold?”

“I expected a tooth.”

“You bought it from a guy working above a laundromat.”

“He said he was licensed.”

“He had a toolbox, Carl.”

“A medical toolbox.”

“It said Stanley on the side.”

Carl grumbled and turned toward the passenger window.

Outside, fields rolled across the deep country in every direction, broken only by leaning fences, telephone poles, and occasional walls of corn. The plants had gone dry and pale at the edges, their stalks scraping together whenever the wind passed through them.

It was Friday evening, and the sun was already touching the tree line.

They had not seen another car in nearly an hour.

Then Lenny’s engine coughed.

He looked down.

The temperature needle climbed suddenly into the red.

“Oh, come on.”

The car shuddered beneath them. Steam began leaking from under the hood, thin at first, then thick enough to curl past the windshield.

Lenny pulled onto the gravel shoulder and killed the engine.

For a few moments, neither man spoke.

Carl clicked his metal tooth against the one below it.

Tick.

Tick.

Tick.

“Stop doing that,” Lenny said.

“I’m thinking.”

“You sound like a broken clock.”

Carl opened his door and stepped outside.

The country air was colder than it had any right to be. It smelled of dust, dry leaves, and something faintly rotten beneath the sweetness of cut grass.

Lenny climbed out and raised the hood. A white cloud rolled into his face.

“Radiator hose,” he said after a moment. “Split clean through.”

“So fix it.”

“With what?”

Carl looked across the road.

Beyond a sagging wire fence lay a broad field of dead grass. Patches of corn stood throughout it in uneven clusters, tall enough to conceal whatever lay behind them. Far in the distance, between the stalks, Carl thought he could see the black corner of a roof.

“There’s a house out there,” he said.

Lenny looked.

The corn shifted in the wind, briefly revealing what might have been a chimney.

Then the stalks closed again.

“Probably half a mile,” Carl continued. “We ask to use a phone.”

“We have phones.”

Carl held his up. No signal.

Lenny checked his own.

Nothing.

The sun dipped lower.

The road behind them remained empty.

Lenny glanced at the field. “We go straight there and straight back.”

Carl smiled and clicked his tooth.

Tick.

“Stop that.”

They climbed over the fence.

The grass came nearly to their knees. It was brittle and grey, whispering against their jeans as they crossed. The earth beneath it was soft despite the dry weather, giving slightly beneath each step.

The field looked smaller from the road.

Inside it, the patches of corn rose like islands, blocking their view of everything beyond. Whenever they walked around one cluster, another seemed to appear ahead of them.

The roof was gone.

“Still see the house?” Lenny asked.

“No.”

“Great.”

“It was there.”

“I’m sure it was.”

They continued.

Behind them, their car slowly disappeared beneath the rolling land.

Carl began complaining about the tooth again.

“It’s loose now.”

“It’s been loose for six months.”

“No, I mean really loose.”

“Pull it out.”

Carl looked offended. “I’m not pulling out my tooth in a field.”

“Then stop talking about it.”

They reached the first patch of corn.

The stalks were taller than either of them, their leaves curled and brown. There were no proper rows. The plants grew in a dense, tangled mass, forcing Lenny and Carl to turn sideways and push between them.

The sound changed as soon as they entered.

The open wind vanished.

Everything became close and dry.

Leaves dragged over their jackets with a sound like fingernails across paper. The corn husks hung blackened and empty from the stalks.

Lenny could hear Carl behind him.

Breathing.

Footsteps.

The occasional metallic click of his tooth.

Tick.

Tick.

Tick.

“You better not be doing that just to piss me off,” Lenny said.

Carl did not answer.

Lenny shoved another stalk aside.

The field opened in front of him.

He stepped through, relieved to see open grass again.

“Carl?”

Nothing.

Lenny turned.

The corn stood behind him, trembling gently.

“Carl.”

He waited for the joke.

Carl had always loved stupid jokes. He would jump out, grab Lenny’s shoulder, laugh like an idiot, then complain when Lenny punched him.

“Very funny.”

No answer.

Lenny pushed back into the stalks.

“Carl?”

He retraced his steps, though every part of the corn looked identical. Bent stalk. Black husk. Dry leaves. Soft soil.

There was nowhere Carl could have gone.

Lenny had heard him walking three seconds earlier.

He had been close enough to hear him breathing.

“Carl!”

His voice died inside the corn.

No birds answered.

No insects buzzed.

There was only the faint rustle of the stalks and the beating of Lenny’s own heart.

He found one of Carl’s footprints pressed into the dirt.

Then another.

Then none.

The trail simply stopped.

The earth ahead was smooth and undisturbed.

Lenny stared at it.

There had been no shout.

No struggle.

No breaking plants.

One second Carl had been behind him.

The next, he had ceased to be there.

Lenny pushed wildly through the stalks, calling his name until his throat hurt. He emerged on the far side and scanned the field.

“Carl!”

The sun had almost disappeared.

Its remaining light spread red across the horizon, staining the field the colour of old blood.

Something moved near another patch of corn.

Lenny froze.

A shape passed between the stalks. Tall. Thin. Human.

“Carl?”

It vanished.

Lenny ran toward it.

The dry grass cracked beneath his shoes. He reached the corn and circled it, expecting to find Carl crouched on the other side.

There was no one.

Instead, lying in the grass, he found Carl’s jacket.

Lenny picked it up.

The sleeves were turned partly inside out, as though someone had pulled it from Carl’s body in a hurry.

It was still warm.

There was no blood.

“Carl?”

Far across the field, something clicked.

Tick.

Lenny looked up.

Another click came from inside the corn.

Tick.

Then one from behind him.

Tick.

He spun around.

Empty grass.

“Cut it out!” he shouted. “This isn’t funny anymore!”

His voice broke on the final word.

The last piece of sunlight slipped beneath the trees.

Darkness came quickly after that.

Lenny took out his phone and switched on the flashlight. The beam seemed weak in the open field, illuminating only a pale circle of grass before dissolving into blackness.

He tried calling emergency services.

No signal.

The battery read sixty-three percent.

It flickered.

Twelve percent.

Then forty-eight.

The screen went black.

Lenny slapped the phone against his palm. The flashlight returned, pulsing faintly.

Somewhere nearby, corn began moving.

Not swaying.

Parting.

A path travelled slowly through the stalks toward him, as though something invisible were walking between the rows.

Lenny backed away.

The movement stopped at the edge of the corn.

Nothing emerged.

He held the light on the opening.

“Carl?”

A voice whispered from deep inside.

“Lenny.”

It sounded like Carl.

Almost.

The pitch was right. The shape of the word was right.

But it was spoken too carefully, as though whoever said it had only heard Carl’s voice once and was trying to reproduce it.

“Where are you?”

A pause.

Then:

“My tooth hurts.”

The corn erupted with movement.

Lenny ran.

He did not know where he was going. The road had vanished behind hills and corn, and the farmhouse roof had not appeared again. He sprinted across the field with Carl’s jacket clutched in one hand and his phone in the other.

Shapes stood in the darkness ahead.

At first, Lenny thought they were people.

Then his light passed over wooden posts and outstretched arms.

Scarecrows.

Dozens of them.

They had been placed throughout a shallow depression in the field, hidden from the road by the rising land. Some wore mouldering coats. Others had burlap sacks tied over their heads. One had been dressed in a child’s yellow raincoat.

All of them faced Lenny.

He slowed.

Their wooden arms creaked in the wind.

His flashlight dimmed.

At the centre of them stood a taller scarecrow, mounted on a black post.

It wore no clothing.

Something pale hung from its shoulders.

Lenny raised the phone.

For several seconds, his mind refused to understand what the light revealed.

Then he saw the hands.

Carl’s hands.

Empty, flattened things dangling from the ends of wooden arms.

Carl’s skin had been removed in a single piece.

It had been draped over the scarecrow like a suit laid out to dry.

The cut began beneath the jaw and travelled down the centre of the body with flawless precision. Every section had been separated cleanly. The face sagged over a sack of straw, its mouth hanging open and its eyes reduced to dark, empty holes.

There were no tears in the skin.

No ragged edges.

No clumsy knife marks.

Whoever had done it had worked with the care of a surgeon.

Lenny could see every wrinkle.

Every pore.

Every fold where the skin rested against the straw beneath it.

Carl’s lips moved in the breeze.

Lenny dropped the jacket.

A sound escaped him, thin and animal.

He staggered backward, shaking his head.

“No.”

The scarecrow’s wooden frame creaked.

Carl’s empty face turned slightly toward him.

Lenny ran again.

He collided with another scarecrow and knocked it sideways. Its burlap head rolled toward him, splitting open when it hit the ground.

Something wet spilled out.

Teeth.

Human teeth scattered through the grass like white seeds.

Lenny screamed and fled into the nearest wall of corn.

The stalks lashed his face. Leaves cut his cheeks and hands. He pushed through blindly until the field of scarecrows disappeared behind him.

He no longer called for Carl.

He knew Carl could not answer.

Not really.

The darkness grew deeper.

Every few minutes, Lenny heard footsteps matching his own.

When he slowed, they slowed.

When he stopped, they took one additional step.

Sometimes Carl whispered from behind the stalks.

“My tooth hurts.”

Sometimes the voice came from directly above him.

“Lenny.”

Once it came from inside the ground.

He kept moving.

His phone battery finally died, leaving him in total darkness.

He felt his way forward with both hands, breathing through his mouth, trying not to imagine Carl’s empty skin twisting in the wind.

Then his foot struck something hard.

Lenny fell.

His hands landed in cold mud.

The smell reached him immediately.

Sweet.

Rotten.

Thick enough to taste.

He crawled backward and fumbled for his phone. The screen flashed once when he pressed the power button, giving him less than a second of light.

It was enough to show him a human skull.

Lenny froze.

He pressed the button again.

Another flash.

Ribs.

Vertebrae.

Long bones stripped completely clean.

The skeleton lay in a shallow hollow between the corn, arranged neatly on its back. Not a shred of meat remained. Even the joints had been picked bare.

Lenny covered his mouth.

The bones were fresh.

Wet in places.

Fine tooth marks covered the ribs.

The screen flashed again.

The skull had turned toward him.

Its jaws hung open.

Inside, set among the remaining teeth, was a dull piece of cheap metal.

Carl’s replacement molar.

For a moment, the field became perfectly silent.

Lenny stared at the tooth.

The skin on the scarecrow.

The bones in the mud.

Everything that had been Carl had been divided and used.

Something stepped into the hollow behind him.

Lenny did not turn around.

He heard dry grass compress beneath a bare foot.

Then another.

A hand settled gently on his shoulder.

It felt warm.

Human.

Carl’s voice spoke beside his ear.

“My tooth doesn’t hurt anymore.”

Lenny looked down at the skull.

The metal tooth was no longer there.

Something clicked inside the mouth behind him.

Tick.

Tick.

Tick.