He rushed at her, his arms flailing. Spittle sprayed from his mouth as he sputtered objections at her, nonsensical phrases peppered with the words “no” and “please.” She slashed at him with the keys and felt the metal catch on his cheeks. Blood oozed from the cuts, dribbling down his cheek into his mouth.
He clutched her elbow.
Wrenching her arm free, she threw herself backward through the doorway. Her shoelace snagged on the jamb. Her legs flipped out from under her. When her tailbone smacked into the floor, a lacework of pain fanned out through her hips and legs.
The scarecrow lunged at her.
She kicked at the door. Just as it banged shut, the scarecrow hit it with his full weight. The wood trembled. His cry, muted by the door, sounded more like the wail of a dying animal than the ranting of a madman.
Grace sprang to her feet. She flung herself at the door. Her fingers closed around the deadbolt and, fumbling to move it, she finally shoved the lock into place.
Aftershocks shook her entire body. Her tailbone smarted. Her heart pounded fast and hard, in syncopation with her gasps. Outside, the scarecrow wailed.
“They want your mind!”
Despite the thick wood separating them, his cry vibrated her eardrums with an intensity that rattled her brain.
Abruptly, silence descended.
She stood immobile, the keys still clenched between her fingers, the metal digging into her skin. The doorknob jiggled. Fingernails scraped at bricks. An image flashed in her mind’s eye — the dead, risen from their graves, scrabbling to get inside the mortuary. In the vision, the mortuary bore an uncanny resemblance to her house.
Scratch-scratch. Jiggle-jiggle. Scratch. Jiggle.
Silence. The dead had returned to their graves.
Her heart knocked against her rib cage, wanting out of her chest as badly as the scarecrow had wanted to get inside the house. She took a slow, deep breath. For a long moment, she stood there propped against the door, her entire body shaking. She was afraid to move, to make a sound, to think about what had happened.
Maybe the scarecrow had left.
She needed to know for sure.
Cautiously, she settled her forehead against the door, above the peephole. Her eye lined up with the hole. The scarecrow’s face, distorted by the lens, filled her view. His eyes glimmered green.
Weren’t his eyes brown before?
In the half cone of light created by the porch bulb, she might’ve mistaken brown for green. Hell, she might’ve mistaken up for down when the scarecrow jumped her.
He leaned forward, his green eye staring back at her through the hole as if he saw her. She swallowed against the tightness in her throat. The shimmering of his eyes was… preternatural.
His body convulsed. He squinted and chewed his lip, oblivious of the blood trickling down his chin. His eyes glistened.
Was he crying?
His body convulsed again. In the wake of the tremor, he stilled and tensed his body. All expression vacated his face. Maybe the drugs had worn off.
Without a sound, seemingly in slow motion, he hurled himself at the door. The concussion slammed her forehead into the wood. She stumbled backward and lost her balance. For the second time tonight, her buttocks hit the floor hard.
She shouted a wordless cry of pain.
Footsteps clapped outside, fading as the scarecrow fled the vicinity.
And just like that, it was over.
