The Harvest Moon Festival

The corn maze stretched endlessly under the blood-orange moon, its stalks whispering secrets that Sarah wished she couldn't almost understand.

She checked her phone for the dozenth time, still no signal. The Harvest Moon Festival had seemed like such a charming idea when Jake suggested it. A quaint small-town celebration, complete with pumpkin carving, apple cider, and what the flyers had promised was "the most challenging corn maze in three counties." What they hadn't mentioned was that the maze seemed to rearrange itself when no one was looking.

"Jake?" Sarah called out, her voice swallowed by the rustling stalks. "This isn't funny anymore!"

She'd lost him twenty minutes ago when they'd decided to split up to cover more ground. A decision that seemed monumentally stupid now that she was alone with the growing certainty that something was very wrong with Millfield's annual festival.

It had started with small things. The way the festival-goers' smiles lingered too long, stretching their faces into uncomfortable masks. The children who played games with an intensity that bordered on frantic, their laughter pitched just slightly too high. The carnival workers who moved with the jerky, deliberate motions of marionettes whose strings were being pulled by an uncertain hand.

And then there were the scarecrows.

Every few turns in the maze, Sarah encountered another one. They were elaborate constructions, far more detailed than typical harvest decorations. Each wore authentic-looking clothes, a woman's floral dress that still smelled faintly of perfume, a man's work boots with mud still caked on the soles, a child's bright yellow raincoat that made Sarah's stomach turn for reasons she couldn't name.

The worst part was their faces. Instead of the usual burlap sacks or carved pumpkins, these scarecrows had faces that looked almost human. Too human. The features were slightly off—eyes set too far apart, mouths that curved in expressions that suggested they'd been interrupted mid-conversation, but they were disturbingly lifelike.

Sarah turned another corner and stopped dead.

This scarecrow was different. It wore Jake's blue flannel shirt, the one with the small tear near the left pocket that he'd gotten catching it on a fence last month. The scarecrow's face was turned away, but something about the slope of its shoulders, the way its dark hair caught the moonlight...

"Jake?" The word came out as barely a whisper.

The scarecrow didn't move, but Sarah could swear she heard something, a muffled sound, like someone trying to speak through cloth.

She forced herself to take a step closer, then another. Her hand shook as she reached out to touch the scarecrow's shoulder. The flannel was warm.

The scarecrow's head snapped toward her with a wet, grinding sound.

Jake's face stared back at her, but it was wrong, stretched and distorted like plastic left too close to a flame. His mouth opened and closed soundlessly, his eyes wide with terror and pleading. Dried corn husks and straw poked through gaps in his skin like some horrible surgical procedure gone wrong.

Sarah's scream caught in her throat as Jake-thing raised one arm toward her. Stalks and twine were woven through his flesh, binding him to the wooden post at his back. His fingers moved with the jerky motions of a puppet, and she could see where the strings disappeared into his wrists.

She ran.

The maze seemed to shift around her as she fled, paths closing behind her and new ones opening ahead. The corn stalks grew taller, their leaves sharper, cutting at her arms as she pushed through. Behind her, she could hear them the scarecrows. All of them. Moving with that awful stuttering gait, dragging their posts behind them like anchors.

Sarah burst into a clearing and found herself back at the festival's main area. But it was different now. The cheerful harvest decorations had taken on a sinister cast under the bloated moon. The game booths stood empty, their prizes—stuffed animals and plastic toys—watching her with button eyes and painted smiles.

The festival-goers were still there, but they stood perfectly motionless, their heads turned toward her in unison. Men, women, children, all wearing those too-wide smiles, all perfectly still except for their eyes, which tracked her movement with predatory focus.

"Welcome back, dear." The voice came from an elderly woman Sarah recognized as the festival organizer, the one who'd handed them their maze maps with such enthusiasm. "We were wondering when you'd find your way out."

"What did you do to Jake?" Sarah's voice cracked. "What is this place?"

"Oh, this?" The woman gestured around the festival grounds with a sweep of her arm. "This is harvest time, sweetheart. We've been celebrating the harvest here for over two hundred years. Same tradition, same... methods."

The crowd began to move then, closing in with that same jerky, puppeted motion Sarah had noticed earlier. As they drew closer, she could see the strings, thin as spider silk but clearly there, disappearing up into the darkness above the festival grounds.

"You see, dear, the soil here is special," the woman continued, her voice taking on the cadence of a practiced speech. "Hungry soil. It feeds us, nourishes our crops, makes our little town prosper. But like any relationship, it requires... reciprocity."

Sarah looked up, following the strings with her eyes, and immediately wished she hadn't. High above the festival, barely visible against the night sky, shapes moved in the darkness. Massive shapes with too many limbs, their bodies a writhing mass of shadows and substance. The strings descended from them like a spider's web, controlling the movements of everyone below.

"Every harvest moon, we give back," the woman said. "Fresh blood for the soil, new voices for the chorus. And in return, we prosper. We thrive. We become part of something... greater."

The crowd was close enough now that Sarah could smell them, the sweet, cloying scent of decay barely masked by potpourri and cologne. She could see where the strings entered their bodies, usually at the base of the skull, the wounds healed over but still visible as dark, circular scars.

"The maze is just for fun, really," the woman added conversationally. "Gives people time to understand what's happening, to make their peace with it. Though I must say, you lasted longer than most. Your friend only made it about ten minutes before he started begging us to make it stop."

Sarah felt something brush against the back of her neck—thin, sticky, seeking. She spun around but saw nothing except the festival-goers closing in from all sides.

"Don't fight it, dear," the woman advised. "Fighting just makes the transition more painful. And you'll find that once you're part of the family, it's really quite pleasant. No more worries, no more decisions to make. Just the simple joy of serving the harvest."

The thread touched her neck again, and this time Sarah felt it, cold and alien, probing for the right spot to burrow in. She jerked away and ran toward the parking lot, but it stretched endlessly before her, the cars fading into darkness like a mirage.

Behind her, the crowd followed with their shambling, stringed gait. And above, the things in the darkness descended lower, their shadow-limbs reaching down like the fingers of some cosmic puppeteer arranging its stage.

"You can't leave, sweetheart," the woman called after her. "No one leaves during harvest time. Haven't you been listening? This is a tradition."

Sarah stumbled and fell, scraping her palms on the asphalt. When she looked up, she saw them, more scarecrows lining the edge of the parking lot. Dozens of them, all wearing clothes she recognized from the festival-goers. All with those horribly realistic faces, all with their mouths moving in silent screams.

And there, at the far end of the line, was Jake. Still bound to his post, still struggling against the stalks and twine that held him. But his eyes had changed. The terror was still there, but underneath it was something else. Acceptance. Relief.

"It doesn't hurt anymore," his voice carried across the distance, though his lips barely moved. "Once they get the strings in properly, it doesn't hurt at all."

Sarah felt the thread at her neck again, pressing more insistently now. Around her, the festival-goers formed a perfect circle, their strings glinting in the moonlight like silver rain.

"Welcome to the family," the woman said, and Sarah felt something sharp slide into the base of her skull.

The pain was extraordinary, but brief. It was replaced by a strange, floating sensation, as if her body no longer quite belonged to her. Her arms rose without her permission, her legs began to move in the stuttering pattern she'd observed in the others.

High above, the shadow-things pulsed with satisfaction, their limbs manipulating a thousand strings with practiced ease. The harvest was complete once again, the soil fed, the tradition maintained.

As Sarah joined the circle of festival-goers, her mouth stretching into that too-wide smile, she found that Jake had been right. It didn't hurt anymore. Nothing hurt anymore. She couldn't even remember why she'd wanted to leave.

After all, this was harvest time, and everyone knew that the harvest required sacrifice.

The corn maze stood empty now, its paths straightening themselves for next year's victims. The scarecrows watched over the festival grounds with their human eyes, keeping vigil until the next harvest moon brought fresh blood to feed the hungry soil.

And in the darkness above, the puppet masters smiled with mouths that held too many teeth, already planning next year's celebration. After all, traditions must be maintained, and the harvest never ended—it just waited, patient and eternal, for the next group of unsuspecting visitors to stumble into its loving embrace.

The festival flyers were already being printed for next year, promising "the most challenging corn maze in three counties" and featuring testimonials from visitors who'd had such a wonderful time, they'd decided to stay permanently.

Sarah would help distribute them, when the time came. She was part of the family now, after all.

And families always helped each other with the harvest.