The Scarecrow Of Barrenfield

The Scarecrow Of Barrenfield

by Paul McCann

The town of Barrenfield was just a very recent place that sprung up in the Vale of Black Bracken that was situated far enough away from Guardian City but close enough to access it if you had too .

Developers and builders had been given an approval to establish a township to assist some young families to move to a quieter life there in Barrenfield.  A lot of people were attracted to buying homes in Barrensfield and borrowed from the bank to get themselves a brand new home .

In little less than year Barrenfield was well populated and yet many of the older people of that area were not all that happy about all these city folk who had come to live near to their farms and properties .

As time went on they all learned to get along . The old ones and the   new settlers .

For the farmers nothing ever changed and at harvest time seasonal work attracted many tourists who would work for a while for some extra cash and then they would leave to continue their journey around the country . Most of the farms on the outskirts of Barrenfield were well able to provide food and accommodation for all the seasonal workers who arrived every year to help pick the fruit and pack the boxes unto trucks  for despatch .  

The farmers also profited more with all of the new settlers in Barrenfiled who purchased their produce in the local fruit and vegetable markets .

There was some talk among the locals at the local pub one night about the rising number of missing persons around the country.

Many of those missing were tourists who had never returned to their home . One afternoon some police arrived to speak with the farmers in Barrenfield and showed some photographs of missing tourists . The police were asking if they had been working on the farm .

Most of the farmers said they never recognised any of the people in the photographs and denied giving any of them work on the farm .

When some photos of the missing tourist was put on the television one evening a few of the lads remember them because they had come in to the pub during the summer. As they sat sipping beer from glasses they shouted out to Adrian the publican to turn up the volume on the TV .

The publican himself recognised some of the faces of the missing people there who appeared on the TV news report.

In fact he knew that a couple of them had been working a few weeks ago on his neighbours property so later that night after the patrons had left and he locked up the pub he went to pay a visit to Darren Dunn to ask if he knew where those people had gone .

When he arrived at the farm he knocked on the front of the homestead but no one was home . Then he heard someone laughing in the field opposite so he called out ,

‘Hello ,Is that you Darren.”

The laughing got louder and Adrian thought he would take a look for himself to see what was going on. So he took a torch from his car and went into the field shinning the light in the direction of the laughter .

“Is that you there Darren , are you ok ?’

There was no answer and the laughter continued .

Adrian shone the light a saw someone standing there in the middle of the filed . As he made his way across the field the laughter stopped .

Then as he got closer he saw it was just a scarecrow standing there in the filed . Then the laughter started again .

“Hello , are you ok .“

Suddenly the light from the torch went dead and in that moment the scarecrow came alive and pounced on Adrian with a rope , tying his arms and feet and then put a noose around his neck .

As Adrian screamed for help the scarecrow just laughed .

Then the scarecrow took a tractor from a shed and used it to pull Adrian by the feet into a barn . Inside the barn hanging from the rafters were  Darren Dunn and all his family . A large hole in the ground had already been dug and one by one Adrian watched as the hideous laughing scarecrow dismember all of the bodies of his dead neighbours .

Then the scarecrow hoisted up Adrian and left him hanging there by the neck with his feet wriggling in mid air all Adrian could hear in his final moments was the evil laughter pf the scarecrow in the dead of the night.

Some of the locals were very concerned when the pub was closed the following day and when a few days passed the police began to search for Adrian Moss the publican of The Barrenfield Tavern .

Although his disappearance was very strange nothing was stolen from his home or the pub . As Adrian had no wife or family nobody was able to shed any light on why he would suddenly go missing .

They visited the Dunns farm but no one was there to help with the investigation . As the police widened their search a small group went from field to field looking for any small clue . One of the police ventured into the corn field and made his way across to the scarecrow in the middle of the field and suddenly the scarecrow came alive and rushed at the policeman laughing and holding a pitchfork that he drove into his chest . As the policeman lay there bleeding from the wound the scarecrow continued to laugh as he dragged his victim over to a barbed wire fence where he lifted the lifeless body of the policeman and left him entangled there on the barbed wire fence . His dead body was found later on that day and the shock of that had left many people frightened.

The police found the bloodstained pitchfork and confirmed that it was the weapon used to kill the policeman who had been murdered .  There were no finger prints on the pitchfork and no reason for this senseless killing . That week three more tourists were reported to have gone missing in that area.  Some farmers in Barrenfield had stated that those missing tourists did come looking for work on their farm however they were not given a start due to the recent events in Barrenfield .

The local people were asking for something to be done to capture the person responsible for the recent murder and the police stepped up their investigation into the awful events happening in the town.

With no leads and no evidence the police were unable to make any progress with the case . The disappearance of the Dunn family was still a mystery for the police and as yet none of the missing tourists had been found . Summer passed and winter came and all life seemed to go into hibernation . During the next few months the fears of the local people started to diminish then when the spring came the colours of life  appeared again in the gardens and around the farms crops were almost ready for harvesting . Tourists began to arrive into the town looking to find work on some of the farms.

Standing in the middle of an empty field the eyes of the scarecrow opened and there in the silence an evil laughter echoed as if it had been told some sick joke about those who might come to visit the town of Barrenfield .

The End