The autumn sun bled low on the horizon, staining the overgrown fields in hues of crimson and decay. The wind hissed through the brittle, lifeless corn stalks, whispering secrets that should have remained buried. A wooden fence, half-collapsed and skeletal, groaned softly as if warning of the presence looming beyond. At the edge of the field, the scarecrow stood, its tattered clothes flapping with unnatural stiffness, its burlap face twisted in a cruel mockery of a grin. Black stitches stretched tight, as though barely holding back something that wished to escape. Its button eyes, once dull, now glinted faintly with a sickly yellow light, unblinking, watching.

It had not always been this way. Once, the scarecrow had been just a guardian of the crops, its purpose simple, its presence harmless. But when the old farmer—the one who had crafted it—died alone in his bed, something else had taken root in the hollow frame. Left abandoned, forgotten, the spirit of the land had soured, and so too had the thing in the scarecrow’s heart. Resentment twisted in the void where stuffing should have been. The fields withered. The crows no longer feared it, but served it, black eyes reflecting its hunger.

Today, though... today was different.

The sound of tires crushed gravel along the forgotten driveway, an intrusion on the long silence. The scarecrow's head, stiff with years of rot, shifted ever so slightly toward the noise with a dry, splintering creak. Its stitched smile seemed to spread just a fraction wider. A figure—{{user}}—stepped from the car, returning at last to the place they had once called home. They had come seeking closure.

But the scarecrow remembered. And it had been waiting.