The Green Guardian

"Hey, Sarge, look."

Hank looked up from his phone and saw that one of the Inmates had raised a scarecrow in front of the leaf pile they'd been making. He was unsurprised to find that it was Jasper. Jasper had always been more of a talker than a worker, and today it was clear that his rake hadn't seen much use. He had come across an old green button-up shirt and stuffed it with leaves, making the body bulge oddly. He'd put a sack head on top to complete the ugly golem and drawn a crude scarecrow face on the front. The whole works had been stuck on top of a broken rake handle and stuck in the ground before the ever-growing leaf pile. It hung there like a silent guardian as the inmates raked their piles closer and closer to the growing mound.

Hank wanted to be angry with Jasper, but honestly, this was a great idea.

"Well, look at that, Jasper. You made us a little mascot."

"I didn't make him, Sarge. He told me how to put him together. His name is Grun."

"He tell ya that too?" Hank asked, beginning to get a little tired of this game already.

Jasper nodded, "Whispered it to me when I found his head in the ditch."

Hank sighed before telling Jasper to get back to work and returned to the bus.

As he slid into the cab of the van, he picked up the dummy phone and texted Al the location.

"Look for the Scarecrow with the sack head." He typed, and when Al or whoever was manning the phone sent back a string of question marks, Hank elaborated.

"One of the inmates made a scarecrow. You can't miss it."

As Al sent back a thumbs-up, Hank sat back in his chair and reflected that this was the easiest job he'd ever had.

Hank had worked for the Department of Corrections for the past five years, but he had only been a sergeant on the road crew for about four months. The job wasn't particularly hard, and Hank mostly found himself sitting in the cab of his work van and watching Netflix. He would count inmates or inspect the job site every now and again, but the job was mostly sedentary. The reputation he had built for himself as a badass on the compound meant that none of these guys really messed with him, but that wasn't too surprising. The guys they sent to the Work Squad were short-timers, guys with a few years left, and you didn't usually get hard cases or mushy brains out here on the road. So far, Hank had only had to point his gun at one person, and the sight of that gleaming black barrel had taken all the fight right out of him.

It had all been pretty boring until Al had come along.

Al found him drinking alone in a local dive bar, and Hank had marked him as trouble from the second he'd caught him sneaking peeks at him. It was something about working behind the fence. You gained the ability to judge someone at a glance, what they wanted and what they were capable of, and Hank had mistrusted Al from the get-go. Al had come to sit next to him and offered to buy him a drink, which Hank had declined. He told him thanks but that he wasn't into men, and Al had laughed before asking if he was into money? Hank started to get mad, but Al told him he had a different sort of offer for him. He bought him another round and asked if he would like to talk it over?

Hank had leaned back, taking a sip from his fresh bottle of PBR as he invited Al to proceed.

Hank had his beer; he might as well listen.

Al's request was simple.

Al, or more likely the people Al worked for, wanted to use their leaves; that was all.

"I've seen your boys out there working, and I know how big your piles of leaves are at the end of the day. All I'm asking is that you let me use your leaf pile to store some things discreetly."

"I dunno," Hank said, "Guys in the department that try to diversify their income tend to end up wearing blues themselves."

"How much do you make a day sitting in your van and watching these fellas work?" Al asked, getting right to the point.

Hank thought about it, "Four hundred." he said, hoping it sounded confident,

It was a lie, but not a big one.

"How would you like to make twice that?" Al asked, smiling his shark's grin.

Hank waffled as he thought about it, knowing he should say no. It was a bad idea to mix business with financial stability, but Hank was in a little bit of credit card debt and needed a way out. It was stupid, a sure-fire way to get himself thrown in prison, but as he reached over to shake Al's hand, it just felt so right.

And that was how Hank had begun his employment with the less than reputable elements of the city.

The setup was easy. The inmates raked up the leaves along the Highway. They piled them up, adding to the pile daily, and at the end of the month, they burned the leaves and started again the next month. At night, Hank's newfound benefactors would dump something into one of those piles of leaves, something Hank didn't need to know about. At the end of the month, Hank and his crew would burn that something along with the leaves, and then next month, they would do it all over again. Every day that Hank continued to not know about this something in the leaf pile, he netted a cool four hundred dollars in his account.

It was almost too good to be true and was great until the damned scarecrow went up.

Two days after the horrid guardian had been erected, Hank started to feel like something wasn't right. He would find himself sitting in the cab of the bus, watching Netflix or something on his phone, when he suddenly felt like he was being watched. He'd look up and count the inmates, coming up with twenty men all at work or at least not staring right at him. More often than not, it was the scarecrow Hank would find looking at him, giving him the creeps. It always seemed to have turned on its post, and its grease paint eyes were always glaring at him, judging him.

Hank would always turn back to his screen and try to ignore it, but it gave him the willies to be sure. By the end of the first week, he had made two thousand bones for doing nothing more than not reporting something, and he was feeling pretty good about the setup. His creditors were satisfied with the money Hank had given them, and Hank had sliced up a few of the cards that had gotten him into the situation he was in. He didn't need the credit anymore now that he was making the kind of money that Al was providing, and it made him feel pretty good.

Despite this, he also felt a little guilty about double-dipping. Hank tried to justify it to himself, making excuses that all seemed to ring hollow. Al and his friends were only doing whatever they were doing at the one location, after all. It wasn't like they were using every location Hank had been to. He was free and clear anyway. All he had to say was that he had no idea what was going on and divert attention away from himself. Hell, whatever they were doing at the sight was none of his business anyway, right?

Despite his reasoning, site number 8 became one of his least favorite stops of the day.

With twelve stops, he always spent about thirty minutes to an hour at each so the inmates could clean up the trash and rake the leaves. From six am to four pm each day, Hank and the guys went from site to site to do the same thing they did the day before. The guys had been doing this long enough that most of them could have a site cleaned up in about twenty minutes, but site 8 was becoming the exception to the rule. Site 8 became a daily chore that Hank wished he could skip.

If Hank had been superstitious, he'd have said the site was haunted.

It had always taken about fifteen to twenty minutes to clean this site in the past, but now it was taking right up to an hour every day, and it seemed to correlate with Jasper making that damn scarecrow. As the inmates worked, Hank saw many of them cast sidelong looks at the thing. On more than one occasion, he saw them stop what they were doing entirely and just look at the scarecrow with rising levels of anger. It was as though it were talking to them, and whatever it was saying, they didn't like it. More than one of them took a step towards it before Jasper would run over and say something to soothe them. They would always go back to work, but Hank was sure that one day they would hear something that would send that scarecrow sailing into the pile too.

They weren't the only ones hearing things. Hank usually sat in the cab with the windows down so he could catch a breeze, gas being too expensive to sit with the AC on. As he sat there one morning, Hank suddenly heard a weird whispery voice, and it brought him out of a near doze. He looked up and counted the inmates in a quick sweep of his eyes. He was making sure no one was close enough to the bus to be heard and had expected someone to be playing a joke. He was not in a joking mood, and this was something Hank was prepared to take that someone back to the prison over. What he found was all twenty of them were hard at work. Even Jasper was raking this morning, and none of them were anywhere close to the van. Hank looked back down at his phone, his eyes growing a little heavy again, but his head snapped back up when he heard the same whispery voice as before crawl across his nerves. He looked around to make sure no one was playing games with him, knowing already that it couldn't have been anyone on his crew. Hank glanced around the truck to make sure it wasn't an outside party, but there was no one anywhere near the bus. The breeze creaked the scarecrow on his post, and as it turned him in Hank's direction, the ragged thing seemed to inquire if Hank was looking for him? Hank climbed back into the cab, looking back down at his phone as he tried to drown the sound out with some show or another. He could hear that spidery voice as the opening to Law and Order scrolled severely by, and no amount of volume increase could stop it from rankling his senses. When it whispered again, Hank jumped as he thought someone was right next to his ear. Hank had thought he heard it plain as day, and the words were low but clear.

"He comes."

The slamming door turned all of the inmates around, Hank's eyes creeping over them accusingly.

"Which one of you is doing that?" He yelled, all twenty of them glancing at each other in confusion.

They didn't understand, but when the guy with the shotgun spoke, the masses listened.

"Doin what, boss?" Creed finally asked.

"Whispering real loud. Whoever's doing it, stop it. It's giving me the creeps."

Twenty sets of shoulders shrugged in that eerie unison that inmates seem to possess and went back to work. The Scarecrow groaned on his post as he observed them, and as Hank returned to the truck, he heard it again. It was plain as day now, and it sounded as though someone was standing right behind me. Hank glanced over his shoulder at the inmates, but they were thirty to fifty feet away. There was no way any of them could have whispered that loud and that clear. He closed the door and settled onto the front seat. The scarecrow creaked on his post again, snaping Hank's head around the look at him. He saw that all the inmates were watching him, their faces telling him clearly that they were worried about Hank. He shouted at them to get back to work and rolled the windows up. He sat watching them for a few minutes, just watching them go about their drudgery, and marked each of them. Several of them looked at the scarecrow as they raked, and Hank could see that the leaves around the ragged sentry were unraked in a large circle. He felt another urge to tear the thing down and throw it on the pile but squashed it. The scarecrow was the marker. He needed it to mark the spot where Al was to drop whatever he dropped.

Besides, it was just a scarecrow.

"The Green Man comes."

He jumped high enough to bash his head on the roof of the bus this time. Hank looked around nervously, but there was no one there. The radio hadn't made a sound all day, and that whisper had been close enough that it might have been coming from lips pressed right against his ear. He rolled down the window and told them to get in the bus cause they were moving on. The inmates ran over quickly, looking relieved as they threw their tools in the back and climbed into behind the wire mesh that separated the front of the bus from the back. Hank put the van in drive, and they rolled to the next site, leaving the scarecrow behind with his leaf pile. Hank was never happier to leave a stretch of road behind, and the clamor from the back made him think he wasn't alone.

Hank may have left him, but the scarecrow didn't seem to be done with him that day.

That was the first night he started having dreams about Site 8.

Hank dreamt he was at the roadside, just him and the site. The light of the moon shining full and pale above him seemed to leave him and that green guardian in a spotlight. The pile of leaves loomed up twenty times as big as it had before, and the scarecrow stood before it like a grinning sentry. The pile moved and stirred as something slid beneath the leaves, and Hank could see little humps sliding beneath the dense foliage.

All at once, the pile burst into flames, and from within came the screams of the damned. The humps beneath churned wildly about as the flames licked at the massive mound of dead leaves. The scarecrow turned on its pole to face him, and a wide tear began to rip across his mouth. It was as though something was clawing to be free, and it seemed as violent as the creatures in the leaf pile. The scarecrow danced on his pole as his arms waved and flapped in the phantom wind. As the fire backlit the scarecrow, his mouth came open, and he spread that dark pit that was fit only for terrible things.

"He COMES! HE COMES! THE GREEN MAN SEEKS HIS SACRIFICE!" the Scarecrow screamed at him.

Hank shuffled back a step, seeking escape, when his foot caught on something. He fell hard to his backside as the flames danced higher. Hank could hear the screams take on a tortured, catlike wale as the flames sent a shadow up behind the pyre. The shadow was monstrous. Its head was a mass of antlers. From the shadowy face, its eyes burned, and its voice rose. Its voice was that of the Headless Horseman when it spoke to Ichabod, the voice of the wolf when it spoke to little red riding hood.

The voice Faust heard just before he was drawn into hell.

"I COME!" it bellowed, and Hank awoke in a cold sweat with the covers constricting him.

"Aren't we ever going back to see the scarecrow?" Jasper asked.

Hank ignored him as he drove on to sight 9.

He avoided Site 8 for the last three days.

The inmates didn't seem to mind, except for Jasper. He would press his face against the window, leaving smudges on the glass as he followed the lonesome scarecrow with his sad eyes. Every day, he would ask if they were going to Site 8, and every day Hank would ignore him. The money kept being deposited, despite Hank not going there. The leaves gathered and the trash collected, but no one seemed to notice but Hank. The dreams persisted, though, and Hank was beginning to sleep less and less. He had hoped that maybe avoiding the site would help him kick the dreams, but it seemed to be a pipe dream. Every night he would dream about that screaming scarecrow, and every night he would see that horrid monster as it stood behind the fire.

Hank had hoped that after a week of not going to the sight, the dreams would cease, but it seemed fate had other ideas.

After five days, someone noticed his lack of attention. Hank suspected that Jasper had written a grievance about it so he could take care of that damned scarecrow, but it could have just as easily been a phone call from a concerned citizen. Hank got an email from his boss telling me that Site 8 hadn't been visited in several days, and if he didn't get back out there, they would find someone who would. It was two weeks from burning day, so it wasn't as though Hank could put him off either.

The phone call from Al, however, was far less pleasant.

Hank had been keeping the little phone charged up, just in case, and when it rang one night, he nearly jumped out of my skin. He was so used to it being silent that when it finally did ring, it was like the family dog talking. Hank picked it up nervously like he thought it might explode, and when he said Hello, he heard Al on the other end as he asked what was going on with the drop site?

He was clearly smiling as he spoke, but his voice was full of razors.

"We've paid you a lot of money, buddy, and you haven't been maintaining the site. A messy site draws attention, and attention is the last thing we want, understand? I trust you'll stop by tomorrow and ensure everything is ship shape? Wouldn't want to have to show you what we've been using that site for, now would we?"

With that, Al hung up, and Hank began to realize that he had bitten off more than he could chew.

The next day, he was back at site 8, and Hank was not looking forward to what lay ahead.

The inmates were already grumbly about having to do a week's worth of work and tempers were definitely on edge. The wind was making the Scarecrow creek on his pole, and Hank saw more than one of them stop and look at him as they went about their business. Jasper was the only one who seemed to want to get close to him. He was plucking at his sleeves and crooning to him as the others worked. His lack of help wasn't going over very well, and after an hour of raking and picking up had gone by, Hank saw one of the others striding towards the scarecrow with murder in his eye.

Rogers was a big black guy whose prison blues looked painted on him, and his destination was pretty clear.

Jasper looked scared as he watched him approach, but Rogers knew exactly what he wanted.

"No, don't touch him. He's," but Rogers cut him off.

"I'm tired of that goddamn thing whispering at me! Move Jasper. I'm throwing this trash in the pile."

"No, you can't! He serves the Green Man! He'll strike you down if you mess with his serv…."

Rogers threw a right cross and laid Jasper out, but as he gripped the post on which the scarecrow hung, Jasper howled and grabbed his leg as he forced him to the ground. The two rolled in the leaves, hitting and kicking, but as they got closer to the main pile, Hank began to get scared that something would be discovered. He reached into the cab and grabbed the shotgun, firing it into the air to bring them back to their senses. The two stopped fighting immediately, and as Hank walked toward them, they sobered up quickly.

"That's enough; that's the last straw. Everyone get your asses back in the bus NOW!"

As they shuffled off towards the van, Hank did what he should have done weeks ago.

He picked up the scarecrow and threw him into the pile.

Jasper cried out harshly from the van, and other inmates restrained him as he tried to rush Hank and get himself good and hurt. The Scarecrow landed post down, and when he did, Hank heard the sharp end stick into something meaty. It was a big pile. There was no way he should have been able to hit more than leaves. As a red splatter crept up the post, Hank knew what was being dumped here. When Hank picked up the shotgun and walked back to the bus, Jasper was laughing in the far back of the van. The others were giving him a wide berth, and Hank couldn't blame them. Hank tried to tune him out, but it was impossible as Jasper kept giggling and gibbering from the back of the van.

"His sacrifices lay below the surface. The Green Man will have his treats this year."

Jasper giggled all the way to the next site, and Hank let him stay on the bus for the rest of the day.

That night, the scarecrow was back at his appointed place in Hank's dream.

This time when the fire was lit and the shadow was cast, Hank could see the caster of it. He was tall, dressed in armor, and his head was christened with a rack of magnificent antlers. He noticed Hank noticing him, and Hank shuddered as his regard fell on him. The creature came forward, and Hank could hear the scrape of a jagged something as it rasped on the ground behind him. It came toward him, raising a massive ax, and just as he loomed over the terrified Hank, ready to bring it down, he woke up.

The scarecrow was back where it had been the next day; the pole still rusty red where it had pierced something in the pile. Jasper was pleased, stroking the scarecrow and singing to him, but the other inmates seemed as uneasy as Hank was. Who had put it back? Why had they put it back? The more he looked at it, the more Hank thought that it had put itself back. It had gone right back into the hole it had come from, and the more he thought about it, the more Hank thought about the dream he would inevitably have again that night.

On that, he was right, but when he awoke from the dream later that night, he didn't wake up in his bed.

When Hank woke up, he was first aware of the cold on his naked chest. His pajama pants were wet, the cuffs clinging to him and the legs damp on the back from lying on the ground. He was lying on a bed of leaves, an old newspaper under his head, and when he looked up, he felt his heart skip a beat as he jittered backward on his hands and sore feet.

Hank was on the side of the road with the scarecrow looming over him.

He half expected the pile to catch fire and the horned thing to loom over him once more, but when no such combustion occurred, Hank walked home in a daze. It was a long walk, made all the longer by his hurting legs and bleeding feet. It appeared he had walked the eight miles from his home to here, and his feet had suffered the brunt of the excursion. He got back into bed just as the sky started to pinken, and ten minutes later, his alarm blared to life.

Hank growled as he slapped it off.

Today was not going to be an improvement over the day before.

Hank was a zombie at work, and he caught himself napping in the driver's seat more than once. Rogers had commented that he looked like shit when he'd driven up to collect them this morning, and Hank said that with the black eye he was sporting, he must be an expert. Hank didn't notice till they got to the first stop of the day that Jasper wasn't there, and when he asked Rogers where he was, the big man scoffed.

"He went crazy last night in the dorm, and they locked his ass in confinement. Serves him right. He's been actin' crazy ever since he found that rag man."

Hank nodded, knowing the feeling all too well.

He had been feeling pretty crazy since the scarecrow had been found, too, and Hank had a feeling that his craziness wouldn't be so easily cooled as Jaspers.

He woke up underneath the scarecrow again that night.

There was something in his hand this time, and when he looked down, Hank realized that it was a box of matches. They were the big ones from the kitchen, the ones with the fatheads and the long stems. He lit one and watched the way the flames danced against the scarecrows fabric. Hank wondered what it would be like to light him on fire? Just spark him up and watch him burn, and the want was almost too strong to bear. Instead, he just slipped the matches into his pocket, blew out the lit one, and started his long walk home.

He bummed a ride a few minutes later, getting to his house before dawn, but that turned out to be the only bit of luck that day.

Hank was having real trouble keeping his eyes open as he sat in the van that day. His body was sore, and his legs were cramping every time he tried to use them. Hank was barely coherent by this point, but the department was short-handed, and no one had time to listen to his problems. It wasn't as though he had the kind of job you could just take days off from, and unless Hank wanted to find himself demoted, he would have to be at his post. The saving grace was that tomorrow was Saturday, and the work squad did not convene on Saturday. Hank would have the next two days off, and he could hopefully get some rest before hitting it hard again on Monday.

He was snoring a half-hour later when the sound of raised voices brought him around.

Rogers was face to face with another inmate. Hank thought his name was Harrow, and the two had a large group gathered around them. Harrow was yelling about Rogers not helping, and Rogers was yelling about Harrow being an idiot and how he'd picked up most of the trash while Harrow was raking leaves. Hank could see a powder keg getting ready to burst as the scarecrow looked on in smiling approval, and he climbed out of the bus as he tried to de-escalate the situation. He should have brought the shotgun with him, but he still held out hope that he could stop this before it rose out of his control.

That hope was dashed when the brawl broke out. Men with rakes, men with sticks, and men with nothing but their fists started pummeling each other. Hank was still at the edge of the conflict when it erupted, and he back-peddled like a frightened cat as he ran to the bus to get his radio. He called it in, letting them know that he was safe but that the inmates were engaged in a riot. Help was immediately dispatched to his location, but immediate wasn't quick enough.

Hank watched a rake slap across someone's face and sent a wash of blood over the burlap sack that was the scarecrow's head. He saw Rogers bash another inmate, not even the one who had started the argument, across the face with a chunk of deadfall, and they fell in the dirt with blood leaking from their ears. Two more were kicking a third to death until a fourth came and slapped one of them across the back with a rake, leaving a long line of scratches down it. It was hard to look everywhere at once, and as the melee went on, Hank saw the scarecrow dancing gleefully atop his pole. The blood splattering on the ground seemed to please him, maybe it pleased his Green Man too, and when the cars finally got there, more than eight men were on the ground wounded. They were local cops, Highway Patrol some of them, and they shouted and waved their guns around until all of them got on the ground and submitted to restraints.

When it was all said and done, Hank found himself on probation. It was a wonder he wasn't fired outright, the Major told him, and he would be lucky to go back to the work squad at all. "Your slipping. You've been slipping for the past few weeks. Go home and get some rest or something. We'll discuss the terms of your probation tomorrow." Every inmate on his crew was sent to confinement pending discipline, and if Hank was ever allowed to run the work squad again, he would need some new faces.

These things had seemed important while they were happening, but they hardly seemed to matter now.

As Hank stood on the side of the road in his pajama pants with a can of gasoline in one hand and the book of matches in the other, he realized that nothing would ever matter again.

Hank barely remembered the trip. One minute he was stepping out of the shower and slipping on his pajamas, the next, he was in the garage grabbing a can of gas. Hank had a vague memory of walking up the side of the highway as cars droned by, and their drivers likely thought he was crazy. He guessed he must really be nuts, walking up the highway instead of climbing into bed, but Hank had finally given up on what he wanted and decided to give the scarecrow what it wanted.

Hank splashed the gasoline around a little before finally just throwing the can into the pile of leaves. It wasn't as big as it was in his dream, but it was pretty big. Nothing moved below the surface, but Hank thought he could see some weird shapes under the pile as he stuck the match and looked into its dancing flames. It was so pretty, so warm, and if Hank looked deep enough, he could almost see someone other than this Green Man that haunted his dreams and filled his days. He dropped it, and the gas took flame effortlessly. The whole pile burned cheerily, and when the can erupted suddenly and explosively, the whole mess went up in a huge conflagration.

Hank lit His beacon.

He could smell His feast cooking.

As Hank watched the flames, they seemed to beckon him forward.

Hank shivered as the autumn wind glided over his skin.

He was so cold, but, he thought, it would be warm in the flames.

As the scarecrow burned happily, his face melting as the flames devoured him, Hank thought he might go find out what that lovely green guardian had discovered in the flames.

Hank took a shaky step towards the pyre, preparing to be warm eternally.