Brian was nearest the opening in the rocks. Carefully, quietly, he peered out the entrance. Ollie and Cocofollowed, and they all managed to wedge their heads together so they could see.
No one said a word for a moment. Coco spoke first. “It—it’s not people dressed up as scarecrows?”
“I don’t think so,” Ollie whispered.
“It has to be,” insisted Coco, but her voice was a thin, scared thread.
“Quiet,” said Ollie.
The scarecrows were marching. Knee up, knee down, like puppets, they marched. Wearing old secondhand clothes—plaid shirts, and funny hats, and long strings of beads—they clomped through the leaves.
Hooked onto their curving garden-rake hands, stumbling in a silent, straggling line, came the sixth graders of Ben Withers Middle School.
“Where’re they taking them?” Brian asked. His voice shook.
Why don’t they run away?Ollie thought.
Brian gasped—“Phil!” He spoke too loudly.
Ollie wrenched around, but Coco had already flung herself forward and put a hand over Brian’s mouth. “Quiet, Brian!” she snapped.
Phil didn’t even look up. But one of the scarecrows had stopped. It raised its head. Sniff. Shuffle. Sniff again.
The others were marching off.Swishwent their feet.But the one scarecrow stayed, looking around with its stitched-on eyes.
None of the three under the rocks dared to breathe.
The scarecrow was going here and there, jerkily, like a dog that had lost a scent. It came right up to their tiny cave. All three flinched and hunkered down. A scarecrow arm thrust itself into the hole. This arm ended in a trowel. Ollie and Brian and Coco pressed themselves into the rock.
Then the hand was gone. The scarecrow marched away, following the others. The sound of footsteps faded.
“Why didn’t they run?” whispered Coco.
Ollie didn’t know.
“We have to help the others,” Brian breathed. “We have to—” He looked like he was going to go charging out into the night.
Ollie got hold of the back of Brian’s jacket. “Do you think we could help them? Right now?” Ollie demanded. “You’ll only get caught by a scarecrow yourself, and how would that help anyone?”
“Ollie’s right,” said Coco. “You can’t do anything while it’s nighttime. They’ll just get you too.”
Brian flinched, but the crazy impulse seemed to pass. He gathered his knees to his chest and didn’t say a word.
“We have to stay here until morning,” Ollie said. “Tomorrow—we’ll figure out what to do.”
No one said anything else, but after a minute, Coco began to cry.
“Come on,” said Ollie. “Don’t cry. Tomorrow we can make a plan. Tomorrow.”
Ollie could hear muffled sounds, as though Brian were crying in the dark as well but didn’t want them to know.
“What is this place?” Coco whispered.
Ollie had no idea. The night had gone very quiet. There was no noise at all except for their breathing in the little cave. They were all jammed together, but no one suggested getting out. Ollie was sure she would be awake all night. The space was really uncomfortable. Pitch-black.
But she fell asleep anyway.
She dreamed, as she nearly always did, of fire in a gray field. But this time, ranged around the edges of the field were scarecrows, watching the metal and plastic and grass burn. Ollie could see her mother, there in the wreckage, and she tried to run but a scarecrow had her by the hair, had hooked its rake hand in, and she could only writhe helplessly as the fire grew and grew and grew...
