Portage, Ohio, in Early Autumn

By Emma E. Murray

A dozen people tread through the corn. Insects fall and writhe against their careful hands as they part the stalks. They curse under their breath for not sowing the seeds in tidy, even rows. Instead, the plants grew nestled close together, their rows zigzagging, mazelike across the miles of flat land.

She is missing. Kira. Five years old. Blonde. Apple cheeks. Last seen in a blue nightgown with a tiny pink rose sewn on the collar. She isn’t from here. Didn’t grow up toiling in the fields of Portage. She’s a stranger, but they band together to find the child. It’s a cold morning and she didn’t take her shoes. Illness, hypothermia, and bad press for the small town all hum in the farmers’ minds. There’s an unspoken urgency.

Her grandmother tells them through tears and yellow teeth, “I woke up and she was gone.”

Her sheets still smell of sleep, and the front door, unlocked, stands ajar.

There’s no need for police. She’s certainly wandered into the corn. Because she’s from the city, she wouldn’t expect the instant disorientation of the world closing behind you when the corn swallows you up. She must be crying, cowering against the hard earth, or searching for a way out. They imagine her breath in the cold air, timid puffs like smoke.

Confident they’ll find her, they imagine bringing her back, smiling, to her grandmother’s thin but sturdy arms, roped with blue veins, calloused hands speckled with age spots and broken capillaries. Hands that have helped tend the land embracing the soft, innocent child. Send her back home and return to work.

The girl’s name rings across the fields, muffled through the guest room window where she’d slept and dreamt of riding horses along the gravel road.

“Kira! Come out, Kira! Shout and we’ll find you!”

Mottled purple, under the bed, she cannot hear them calling for her. Nightgown stuffed down her throat, eyes open, staring blindly toward the bedroom door where his shadow had appeared, finger to lips, whispering in a gruff yet trembling voice, “Stay quiet.”

She’d laughed when her grandmother told her about ears of corn and potato eyes. She’d dashed into the backyard and shrieked with joy while chasing the black speckled chickens. When her grandmother milked Old Bessie, she’d helped tug the udder and tasted the sweet, warm milk. These daytime delights balanced the nights when he’d visit her, thinking she was asleep. His potato eyes roved her body even with the blanket pulled tight. His dry, rough hands ran through her cornsilk hair as he whispered terrible things.

And now, she doesn’t hear the people calling. She can’t hear their voices or the buzzing of flies as they arrive at her ripening body. Her heart can’t break to the crying of her grandmother in the living room. Only the corn listens with its deaf ears. Her lips can no longer form the words to reveal that the voice she’d heard last night still trembles as he shouts her name.

His eyes dart back to her window when no one is watching. He can’t help himself. A voice carries on the wind, so faint and light, he can’t quite make out the words. Could it be? He winces as he remembers that he never let her speak.

No, it can’t. He walks farther, calling her name, his feet sticking in the thick mud. But behind him, he can feel her watching through the walls, from her horrid hiding spot, with open, glassy eyes.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Emma E. Murray writes horror and dark speculative fiction. Her stories have appeared/are forthcoming in anthologies like What One Wouldn’t Do and Obsolescence, as well as magazines such as Vastarien, Pyre, and If There’s Anyone Left. When she’s not writing, she loves playing pretend with her daughter, hiking, and being an obnoxious bard in D&D.

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