elvensorceress: In the Darkest Time of Year 
 Rating: Teen / ~30K / complete / 911HW2021: Free Choic

elvensorceress: In the Darkest Time of Year 
 Rating: Teen / ~30K / complete / 911HW2021: Free Choice
 banner by the most best wife @daisyssousa  It was a farm like this one where he almost died. The earth collapsed, buried him underground, and tried to swallow him whole. There was no light, no air, no way for anyone to descend and save him in time. He tries to never think of it. It was too close. It was in the past and he’d survived. There was no reason to remember. But everything here smells the same. The soil and manure. The livestock animals. The decay of dry, fallen leaves. The putrid, stagnant puddles of irrigation water. The mold and rot clinging to flooded cornstalks that have died and been left standing too long after being harvested. If they were harvested at all. There’s too many similarities. It’s too easy to feel like dying. The far off distance has a sinister glow of wildfire. The other teams are working to put out flames before it continues to spread. The air still carries smoke but the ominous waning moon is hanging over all of them, visible even through dark clouds and the remnants of daylight. Every minute the sun descends, red and blue emergency lights from gathered vehicles grow brighter. They illuminate the peripheral edges of the massive field, but have no help of shining light on all of it. The maze is too vast. There’s no GPS. No radio contact. No cell service. It’s a dead zone. It’s how people get lost here. The corn maze stretches for endless acres. Nearly sixty of nothing but those plants carved in winding, convoluted patterns and pathways. The farm boasts one of the largest corn mazes in the world. A sea of dense rows, and as soon as someone dares to venture into it, the horizon is lost. No shore. No land. Nothing but empty stalks. Those drying stalks can be twice as tall as he is. “Look, cornfields are sketchy as hell,” he remembers Buck’s voice, his warnings on their drive here. “There are all sort of stories about wolf-like creatures that live in cornfields and hide in between stalks and shadows. Their breathing sounds like wind and irrigation pipes. They shapeshift and kidnap children. Or they kill and eat them. Plus corn has to be planted super close together so they can pollinate and produce viable grain so things hide in those tight rows. And corn grows way taller than people. The average can be twelve feet, but the world record for a corn stalk is forty-five feet tall. If you go into a cornfield, you can’t see anything but the corn. You can’t hear anything because all the sounds get muffled. Of course people get lost in corn mazes. Some don’t come back. People see things near cornfields. Red eyes in the shadows. Creatures that are skeletal and move in ways they shouldn’t. You can feel weird energy. There are so many things wrong with massive, monoculture crops. They’re living structures. It’s alive. They’re terrifying.” His voice was strained, frightened, and no one had paid it any mind. There hadn’t been anything to fear. It’s not that Eddie puts any stock in exaggerated stories like that. None of it is true. As much as people like to make up tales and pretend they see things that don’t exist, this is merely a farm. No one is going to die because of a field of grain crops. Even one people refer to as Hell. No one has died here. Injuries have been minor. Everyone has been examined and tended to. Last he heard, they flooded the northern fields and the water will spill downward and collect in the center, and the fire is all but contained. There are no ghosts. Or mythological monsters. There are no corn wolves, no creatures that shapeshift and eat children, no murderous supernatural phenomena coming to attack. No matter what anyone else says or believes. He’s not afraid of urban legends and folklore and tales made up fae creatures. The brain plays tricks when emotional, when exhausted, when stressed or frightened or traumatized. It doesn’t make any of it real. But Buck is still missing. 
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