The Influence(72)

She navigated by landmark and knew she had reached the eastern end of Cameron’s vast holdings when she saw the familiar water tank and adjacent rusted tractor. But there was something new here today, and she slowed down, peering through the windshield.

What the hell was that?

She stopped the car. Scarecrows had been put up in Cameron Holt’s field.

Even at a casual glance, there seemed something disturbing about them. That field had been fallow for as long as she could remember—Cameron was a rancher not a farmer—and the figures were not spaced throughout the pasture but were lined up in a row along the edge of the fence, facing the highway. They were not uniform, but were of different shapes and sizes, wearing different types of clothes.

They looked real.

Jeri didn’t want to think about that.

She rolled the car forward slowly, until she was even with the first of the figures.

She remembered, years ago, when she was in high school, renting a video with a couple of her friends, a horror movie about a deranged farmer who killed people and installed their bodies in his cornfield as scarecrows.

Why was that even in her head? That obviously wasn’t what was going on here.

Was it?

The scarecrows, she could see now, were made of clay or mud. She looked out the window at the one nearest her. This close, the detail of the face was clearly visible, so meticulously wrought that it resembled an actual person. The hands, too, she noticed, were realistically shaped from the mud, like a sculpture. She got out of the car for a closer look. She could even see an expression on the brown grainy face: anger.

How could mud be posted on a pole? Jeri wondered. The figures couldn’t be nailed there, and she saw no ropes or twine. What was holding them up?

She stepped up to the fence, staring over it at the raised figure. She still didn’t understand the purpose of these scarecrows. There weren’t any crops to protect, and there weren’t even many birds to scare away. What was the point? Why had Cameron put them up? She glanced down the row, and a chill passed through her.

Had the second one been facing straight ahead a moment ago, looking toward the road?

Because its head was now turned in her direction.

They were all turned toward her, she noticed, and, heart pounding, she backed slowly toward the car, keeping her eyes on the row of scarecrows, alert for any sign of movement. Her rear bumped against the car door, and she quickly fumbled for the handle, opening the door, hurrying inside and locking it.

She knew about the thing in Cameron’s smokehouse, the angel, as everyone called it, and she wondered if it was in any way connected with these eerie effigies. People told her that the angel had great power, even though it was dead, and several individuals on her route had been the victims of mysterious circumstance. It hadn’t affected her or Don, but then again she was afraid to look at things too closely. It was said that the angel turned good luck bad and bad luck good, and it was true that weird things along those lines had been happening since New Year’s eve. Roscoe Evanrude’s celebrated mineral spring had run dry overnight, while Jackass McDaniels’ ridiculous mine had yielded gold. Dave and Lita’s hens had stopped laying, while Mary Mitchum’s long-dead apple tree was suddenly full of blossoms.

Jeri started the car, put it into gear. Ahead, a man was walking toward her down the road, a man holding a large bunch of balloons that were sagging above his head, half-deflated. An odd sight at any time, it was downright creepy under the circumstances. Where had he come from? she wondered.

The man, she saw as she approached, was Paul Coburn, that rich nerd with the bimbo wife who’d decided to slum it in Magdalena for some strange reason. He was filthy, wearing torn raggedly clothes, but he was smiling at her. On the satellite radio, Johnny Cash was singing about “Ghost Riders in the Sky.” Jeri maneuvered around the balloon man, not making eye contact, speeding up as soon as she passed him.

Glancing in her rearview mirror, she saw a gap in the line of scarecrows.

One of them had come off its pole.

She floored the gas pedal, fishtailing for a second before the tires caught, and sped away, topping seventy on the narrow dirt road as she hauled ass toward town. She flew past Cameron’s drive and the dented mailbox at its head without stopping.

New rule, she decided. She was no longer going to deliver the ranch route. If Cameron and the other ranchers wanted to pick up their mail, they could come to her house. She’d set up afternoon hours for them. If the postal service didn’t like it, they could find someone else to do her job. But she was not driving out here again.

She did not look any more in her rearview mirror, and she did not slow down until she reached Margo Hynde’s place at the edge of town.