These late, clandestine gatherings with Conal O’Herlihy and his other followers, coupled with his wariness of these strange lands, had once left Hezekiah a nervous wreck, requiring a jar of dandelion wine and a long smoke of his pipe to calm him enough for sleep. He was glad to say he barely noticed the odd noises and shadows of the forest night any longer.
Until he reached the cornfield, where a mute army of scrawny troops formed across several acres of Schroeder’s land.
It would be shorter to cut through the middle of this field. But Hezekiah was not about to traverse the narrow aisle in the dark between tall, ever-rustling rows whose inhabitants seemed to lean forward and inspect him as he passed.
Worse, neighbor Schroeder had built what he called a bootzaman—a figure made from old clothes dressed on a frame and stuffed with straw and leaves to appear human. Raised on a cross with arms spread like a mocking idol of Christ, it was meant to scare away the ornery crows that brazenly helped themselves to the crop.
Smiling with satisfaction befitting an acclaimed painter, Schroeder had shown the false man to Hezekiah under blazing daylight. It had left him in such a state of unease that he came to dread opening his door after dark, for fear the crow-scarer would be there, issuing its perpetual, silent threat.
Hezekiah knew that Schroeder often moved the man-thing around the field to keep black-feathered thieves on their toes. It was somewhere among the stalks.
Hezekiah did not wish to ever encounter it again, in any light. He hadn’t grown that brave.
However, he had overcome his fear of the odd orange fruit that grew here in the new world this time of year, the one the settlers discovered growing alongside corn and apples when summer began to wane.
Hezekiah had once imagined the huge fruits as monstrous bald demon heads waiting for him to come close so they could rise to the full heights of their misshapen bodies. They would drag him to hell as they mockingly cried out a litany of his frequent impure thoughts for Margaret Worthington, Mary Hodgins, Glory Brightwell, and a good many other of the settlement’s womenfolk.
Now, Hezekiah saw only another harmless crop, no different from the hay and potatoes that filled their barns and barrels as winter threatened. A shortcut over the quiet, musky soil of the pumpkin patch only made good sense.
Peering through the steam of his own breath for the candle lantern he’d left hanging outside his door, still a good two dozen yards away, Hezekiah caught a whoop of surprise in his throat as he tripped on the vine of one of the ubiquitous squashes.
“Damn you!” He kicked the mute obstacle, thinking of Conal O’Herlihy’s fiery rail he had listened to less than an hour ago, against the evil the Irishman was sure had infected the settlement, wickedness that the Lord had shown to the fiery zealot via the fungus, despair that would run rampant and claim them all if not soon addressed.
Looking toward the clearing where his homestead stood, Hezekiah again strained to spot the candle lamp. Since that afternoon, a steady autumn wind had come and gone. But it shouldn’t have been enough to unsettle the lantern hung on a peg outside his door. The beacon was as sturdy as they came, and the candle set within had many hours yet.
No matter. Just past Friedrich Schroeder’s cornfield, his clearing would be unmistakable, even under this weak moon.
The cornstalks rattled against each other in the steady wind, like the dying leaves of poplar trees all around his homestead, or the tail tips of the deadly snakes that had them all wary of where they trod during the hot season.
Hezekiah knew that he and others from the settlement would soon be called upon to help with harvesting the well-bred ears of the field he was passing, though Schroeder himself often mysteriously seemed to fall ill when his time came to reciprocate.
Still, the Dutchman’s special wine was as good as his corn, and often given freely.
Hezekiah wondered why Schroeder had not attended the evening’s meeting. It was the first he had missed, though Schroeder seemed well devoted to O’Herlihy’s cause. Hezekiah already bore a measure of distrust for Schroeder, owing to the Dutchman’s growing love of his own product—the one other than corn, of course.
Surely, with all he stood to lose, Friedrich Schroeder would not betray his friends to—
Hezekiah froze in his tracks.
A strange amber glow appeared, cresting the hill a few yards to his left.
The Devil.
Sinister eyes and mouth burned orange, floating and dancing in the sharp air.
To mock Hezekiah’s secret fears, the Author of Evil had taken the form of a pumpkin.
A low snicker, at once childishly innocent and wickedly ancient, issued from the fire-filled gourd.
Hezekiah felt the urge to run, like the pull of a strong mule, and did not resist it. But no sooner had he pivoted than his feet again tangled in the vines of the new-world fruit—servants, after all, of the encroaching, orange-faced Satan. He pitched forward and fell upon the cold, earthen rooftop of The Devil’s hot home.
With sharp grunts, Hezekiah kicked and scrambled, reaching for the matchlock at his side. But it too was trapped, twisted at an unwieldy angle by his fall. He tried rolling to his side to free the weapon, but the vines twisted tighter. He needed to twist his body the other way.
He did—just as the childish mirth sounded closer.
The burning-eyed demon floated above him, held aloft by something its inner flame—Hezekiah’s own lamp candle—revealed to be far worse.
Schroeder’s scarecrow.
Behind ragged strands of rough fabric, very real eyes and teeth reflected the candlelight. Real, yet only vaguely human.
This was not Lucifer, but Hezekiah prayed it was Schroeder, having a cruel ruse at his expense. He prayed but knew, by
